indigo-cyclops
Member
Ahh okay, I didn't catch on to the abbreviation. Makes sense.
-
Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.
Bloodborne Story and Lore Discussion Thread [Unmarked Spoilers]
- Thread starter GorillaJu
- Start date
Ahh okay, I didn't catch on to the abbreviation. Makes sense.
super-famicom
Member
Posting this here instead of the OT, since it's kinda spoilery, but I started a new character and did the glitch to jump into the Clinic backyard. Then I went into Iosefka's Clinic, and she (the real Iosefka and not the imposter) is still behind the door. All I can do is open the door and speak with her from the lamp side of the doorway. Her model isn't an actual body, as I just run through her and my attacks do nothing.
The squid head in the yard is still present, as is the kin corpse on the table in the room with the Communion rune. But I think they are just always there, regardless of story progression. There are no blue aliens or anything else in the Clinic.
Edit- After exploring a bit more, I went up to the other room and fake Iosefka is there
I can't lock onto her, but I can attack her. Apparently the clone is presently unkillable.
The squid head in the yard is still present, as is the kin corpse on the table in the room with the Communion rune. But I think they are just always there, regardless of story progression. There are no blue aliens or anything else in the Clinic.
Edit- After exploring a bit more, I went up to the other room and fake Iosefka is there
I can't lock onto her, but I can attack her. Apparently the clone is presently unkillable.
indigo-cyclops
Member
I did this as well; the imposter is there as well. Just go to the room that she's in later on.
When you do a search for terms that appear in one of their wikis, fextra will appear first consistently.
Davidfoundation
Banned
Just beat the game (true ending) and wow raises so many questions. I hope Miyazaki at one point discusses the story more. I have a feeling he won't though & will just leave it to the player to choose what they want to believe in. Am I just to be rebirthed as a new great one just be slain by a new generation of hunter & onwards? Nonetheless fantastic game & I will eventually new game+ it once I get through some backlog.
RoyaleDuke
Banned
I've been waiting for my shoulder to heal up a bit so that I could summarize my many thoughts on the game, I have a tendency to jump around but I'll try to keep things organized here.
First, the one thing that most people seem to forget is that this game's world and it's many denizens are deeply inspired by the works of Howard Phillips Lovecraft.
Who is Lovecraft?
Lovecraft was a science fiction and horror writer in the mid 1900s(1917-1938 or until his death at the age of 43 to intestinal cancer) most famous for his initial creation of what most people call the Lovecraft or Cthulhu mythos. There were other writers that added to Lovecraft's mythos, many of which were friends or acquaintances of Lovecraft some of these authors are Arthur C. Clarke, Robert Bloch and many others who later became known as the Lovecraft Circle and curated many works based upon the initial mythos set up by Lovecraft himself. He is one of the single most important writers of the twentieth century despite being relatively unknown in his time and ours but Horror and Science fiction owe him a great debt.
The primary stories that build this mythos are:
Dagon
The Call of Cthulhu
The Shadow over Innsmouth
At The Mountains of Madness
Nylarthotep
The Dreamlands chronicles or "Dream Cycle"(The White Ship, The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath, Beyond the Wall of Sleep, The Other Gods, The Doom that Came to Sarnath, The Hound, Polaris, The Case of Charles Dexter Ward and a myriad of other short stories and poems and novellas including ATMOM)
The Whisperer In Darkness(one of his best IMO)
The Shadow Out of Time
The Haunter of The Dark
The key themes of Lovecraft's stories are the ideas that science is dangerous, and that our understanding of the world and how our science is applied to it is more or less wrong. The idea that gaining insight into the unknown is not only incredibly dangerous, but in the end only leads to madness, and fates worse than death.
Arthur C. Clark once said that Magic by any other means is simply science we don't understand. Lovecraft states the same thing, the primary idea behind his deities is that they are simply beyond our understanding; the way they function and what they truly want is so far out of our understanding that it is folly to try to comprehend it. He acknoweldges that there are people that seek to worship or conjure these beings of impossibility and beckon them for reasons that are at the base of human desires. Many of the people that worship these things of madness do it for many reasons, power, wealth, information; these larger, impossible beings use these against us in the hopes of coming back to power by more or less using humanities weaknesses against them.
In Lovecraft's stories we are merely ants amongst an empire of monsters, things that have existed millions if not hundreds of millions of years before us. While most people live in ignorance there are a few who have learned the Eldritch truth about our fragile reality and our limited understanding of it. In most of his stories this has huge consequences, in the Whisperer in Darkness the Mi-Go(Fungi from Yuggoth) are an ancient race of interstellar beings who traveled the universe absorbing knowledge and fighting the other races of beings great and small(The Great Race of Yith, The Great Old Ones, The Outer Gods, and The Elder Things). They are a race built upon deception and secrecy, one of their many ways of keeping things under wraps is by kidnapping those who know too much or seek to know them, and putting their brains inside jars and showing them the eldritch truths of the cosmos while their cohorts dispose of the body or use it as a puppet to wander the waking world by wearing the person's skin.
How do Lovecraft's work relate back? Which stories are most important?
As I played through the game I noticed so much of Lovecraft's influence, Yarnham itself is much like Innsmouth and the feared Innsmouth taint.
What is the Innsmouth taint? The people of Innsmouth suffer from a strange oddness in appearance, they have oddly round deepset eyes and some even have gills in places that no normal person should, they are oddly lanky and large with coarse and almost scaly skin; there are even rumors of those who transform into terrible beasts, and perhaps that is the fate of all Innsmouth people.
What causes this? The towns founding family The Marsh family encountered something in a place close to Innsmouth known as The Devil's Reef, it was shortly after this that the ailing town of Innsmouth became a booming port of business, and the Marsh family became heralds for the town with few questions posed by the townspeople except where the strange white gold that seemed otherworldly came from.
Shortly after this Marsh founds the Esoteric Order of Dagon which becomes the official religion, before long the people of Innsmouth start to change; the most religious of them rumored to become horrific aquatic reptilian beasts. Before long many people left and the town slipped into disarray, and the people that stayed became extremely and fiercely xenophobic and unfriendly to outsiders or any townsfolk that didn't mind their buisiness. It is implied that the many disappearances of travelers to Innsmouth were sacrificed to a deity known as Dagon on the Devil's Reef, under which a strange and vast city exists built by the Deep Ones and the people of Innsmouth who have become Deep Ones themselves.
The Innsmouth taint... The Plague of Beasts... The Healing Church.
It all sounds similar no? See the connections?
In the Dream Cycle of Lovecraft's work he posits that beings like Cthulhu live in two realities, ours(Cthulhu Lies dreaming in the city of R'lyeh) and the space inbetween known as the Dreamlands. A place filled with fantastical and strange creatures, towns, and entire civilizations both benign and insidious from the Plateaus of Leng and the Spiders that dwell there; forever surreptitiously scheming, to the many oceans that are sailed by the White Ship and her crew where beautiful and dangerous lands exist.
These beings can be conjured by strange means and rituals, they can influence through dreams.
If I were to choose which stories Bloodborne pulls from the most it would be:
The Shadow Over Innsmouth
Beyond The Wall of Sleep
At The Mountains of Madness
All of these stories feature many of the same story beats and ideas that Bloodborne has, ATMOM presents a story about a group of scientists who find the remnants of an incredibly advanced and utterly alien civilization that went to war with itself. The scientists not only discover the remnants of this species known as the Elder Things, but glimpses into terrible truths that are beyond the scope of human understanding; in one small moment, we gleaned the information that we are but a speck of dust amongst a vast and terrifying cosmos.
In the world of Bloodborne, they found something in a vast labyrinth of tombs. One could make the comparison to the story in Call of Cthulhu, which in and of itself is a collection of stories based around another character's investigation. What they found is tantamount to finding the sleeping city of Rl'yeh under the ocean and between the realities, or the city of the Elder Things frozen in Antarctica and figuring out how to harness their technology and knowledge.
However, being human we have limited understanding of what any of this is or what it truly means. The Healing Church found strange rituals that allowed them to transcend being human, without really understanding what that transcendence is. In the end it is implied by the Ailing Loran chalice that the endgame of the Great One's plans is propagation and eventually destroying each town that seeks to worship them.
It is implied throughout the game that the hunt has been going on for hundreds of years, or there have been a procession of unsuccessful hunts. I find this idea to be compelling because it plays into the idea of the nightmare theme and the inescapable sense of impending doom, the scourge of the beast will not go away until the Old Ones and their ilk have found someone to bear their children. Even then death offers little solace as the blood imbibes you.
Essentially, like in many of Lovecraft's stories the fear of going mad and the feeling of corruption are key themes alongside the idea that we are not the center of the galaxy and are more or less weak and nothing.
When Rom dies, he was essentially the only thing keeping the Great Ones from descending upon our world as the red moon blurs the line between the Nightmare Frontier in which the old ones dwell except those that have fallen(Ebrietas, and to an extent Rom), this idea also plays into the many in game phrases you can choose to leave behind and from several item descriptions when you examine Choir gear and weapons. This is also why The offspring of Amygdala appear shortly afterwards, and those who have enough insight to see beyond the barrier that Rom produces can also see these terrifying beings.
Is the cosmos far away or merely above our heads within reach?
The answer is somewhere inbetween.
I have more but I'm really tired lol, I plan to extrapolate a bit more and explain more later. Sorry if all of this is confusing, sometimes I forget some things as I'm writing and lose track of my thoughts. I've tried to keep it fairly concise throughout but a lot of it is difficult to explain, Lovecraft's stuff is pretty high concept afterall and I love that a game has finally tried to pay tribute to his work better than the games that are based directly on his work
As for my initial thoughts on why the Hunter was there, my initial line of thinking that the hunter you were playing as was actually an Old One born into human form, upon seeing the devastation that your kin have wrought upon the world you seek out to take back the cosmos by essentially killing the "old guard" so to speak, and taking your reign as the new deity by the end of the game, thus ending the hunt and perhaps even having its true purpose made clear.(following the three umbilical ending) That said, the achievement/trophy you get at the end kind of debunks this theory but the beauty of the story crafted here is the ambiguity and the many different interpretations one can take.
First, the one thing that most people seem to forget is that this game's world and it's many denizens are deeply inspired by the works of Howard Phillips Lovecraft.
Who is Lovecraft?
Lovecraft was a science fiction and horror writer in the mid 1900s(1917-1938 or until his death at the age of 43 to intestinal cancer) most famous for his initial creation of what most people call the Lovecraft or Cthulhu mythos. There were other writers that added to Lovecraft's mythos, many of which were friends or acquaintances of Lovecraft some of these authors are Arthur C. Clarke, Robert Bloch and many others who later became known as the Lovecraft Circle and curated many works based upon the initial mythos set up by Lovecraft himself. He is one of the single most important writers of the twentieth century despite being relatively unknown in his time and ours but Horror and Science fiction owe him a great debt.
The primary stories that build this mythos are:
Dagon
The Call of Cthulhu
The Shadow over Innsmouth
At The Mountains of Madness
Nylarthotep
The Dreamlands chronicles or "Dream Cycle"(The White Ship, The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath, Beyond the Wall of Sleep, The Other Gods, The Doom that Came to Sarnath, The Hound, Polaris, The Case of Charles Dexter Ward and a myriad of other short stories and poems and novellas including ATMOM)
The Whisperer In Darkness(one of his best IMO)
The Shadow Out of Time
The Haunter of The Dark
The key themes of Lovecraft's stories are the ideas that science is dangerous, and that our understanding of the world and how our science is applied to it is more or less wrong. The idea that gaining insight into the unknown is not only incredibly dangerous, but in the end only leads to madness, and fates worse than death.
Arthur C. Clark once said that Magic by any other means is simply science we don't understand. Lovecraft states the same thing, the primary idea behind his deities is that they are simply beyond our understanding; the way they function and what they truly want is so far out of our understanding that it is folly to try to comprehend it. He acknoweldges that there are people that seek to worship or conjure these beings of impossibility and beckon them for reasons that are at the base of human desires. Many of the people that worship these things of madness do it for many reasons, power, wealth, information; these larger, impossible beings use these against us in the hopes of coming back to power by more or less using humanities weaknesses against them.
In Lovecraft's stories we are merely ants amongst an empire of monsters, things that have existed millions if not hundreds of millions of years before us. While most people live in ignorance there are a few who have learned the Eldritch truth about our fragile reality and our limited understanding of it. In most of his stories this has huge consequences, in the Whisperer in Darkness the Mi-Go(Fungi from Yuggoth) are an ancient race of interstellar beings who traveled the universe absorbing knowledge and fighting the other races of beings great and small(The Great Race of Yith, The Great Old Ones, The Outer Gods, and The Elder Things). They are a race built upon deception and secrecy, one of their many ways of keeping things under wraps is by kidnapping those who know too much or seek to know them, and putting their brains inside jars and showing them the eldritch truths of the cosmos while their cohorts dispose of the body or use it as a puppet to wander the waking world by wearing the person's skin.
How do Lovecraft's work relate back? Which stories are most important?
As I played through the game I noticed so much of Lovecraft's influence, Yarnham itself is much like Innsmouth and the feared Innsmouth taint.
What is the Innsmouth taint? The people of Innsmouth suffer from a strange oddness in appearance, they have oddly round deepset eyes and some even have gills in places that no normal person should, they are oddly lanky and large with coarse and almost scaly skin; there are even rumors of those who transform into terrible beasts, and perhaps that is the fate of all Innsmouth people.
What causes this? The towns founding family The Marsh family encountered something in a place close to Innsmouth known as The Devil's Reef, it was shortly after this that the ailing town of Innsmouth became a booming port of business, and the Marsh family became heralds for the town with few questions posed by the townspeople except where the strange white gold that seemed otherworldly came from.
Shortly after this Marsh founds the Esoteric Order of Dagon which becomes the official religion, before long the people of Innsmouth start to change; the most religious of them rumored to become horrific aquatic reptilian beasts. Before long many people left and the town slipped into disarray, and the people that stayed became extremely and fiercely xenophobic and unfriendly to outsiders or any townsfolk that didn't mind their buisiness. It is implied that the many disappearances of travelers to Innsmouth were sacrificed to a deity known as Dagon on the Devil's Reef, under which a strange and vast city exists built by the Deep Ones and the people of Innsmouth who have become Deep Ones themselves.
The Innsmouth taint... The Plague of Beasts... The Healing Church.
It all sounds similar no? See the connections?
In the Dream Cycle of Lovecraft's work he posits that beings like Cthulhu live in two realities, ours(Cthulhu Lies dreaming in the city of R'lyeh) and the space inbetween known as the Dreamlands. A place filled with fantastical and strange creatures, towns, and entire civilizations both benign and insidious from the Plateaus of Leng and the Spiders that dwell there; forever surreptitiously scheming, to the many oceans that are sailed by the White Ship and her crew where beautiful and dangerous lands exist.
These beings can be conjured by strange means and rituals, they can influence through dreams.
If I were to choose which stories Bloodborne pulls from the most it would be:
The Shadow Over Innsmouth
Beyond The Wall of Sleep
At The Mountains of Madness
All of these stories feature many of the same story beats and ideas that Bloodborne has, ATMOM presents a story about a group of scientists who find the remnants of an incredibly advanced and utterly alien civilization that went to war with itself. The scientists not only discover the remnants of this species known as the Elder Things, but glimpses into terrible truths that are beyond the scope of human understanding; in one small moment, we gleaned the information that we are but a speck of dust amongst a vast and terrifying cosmos.
In the world of Bloodborne, they found something in a vast labyrinth of tombs. One could make the comparison to the story in Call of Cthulhu, which in and of itself is a collection of stories based around another character's investigation. What they found is tantamount to finding the sleeping city of Rl'yeh under the ocean and between the realities, or the city of the Elder Things frozen in Antarctica and figuring out how to harness their technology and knowledge.
However, being human we have limited understanding of what any of this is or what it truly means. The Healing Church found strange rituals that allowed them to transcend being human, without really understanding what that transcendence is. In the end it is implied by the Ailing Loran chalice that the endgame of the Great One's plans is propagation and eventually destroying each town that seeks to worship them.
It is implied throughout the game that the hunt has been going on for hundreds of years, or there have been a procession of unsuccessful hunts. I find this idea to be compelling because it plays into the idea of the nightmare theme and the inescapable sense of impending doom, the scourge of the beast will not go away until the Old Ones and their ilk have found someone to bear their children. Even then death offers little solace as the blood imbibes you.
Essentially, like in many of Lovecraft's stories the fear of going mad and the feeling of corruption are key themes alongside the idea that we are not the center of the galaxy and are more or less weak and nothing.
When Rom dies, he was essentially the only thing keeping the Great Ones from descending upon our world as the red moon blurs the line between the Nightmare Frontier in which the old ones dwell except those that have fallen(Ebrietas, and to an extent Rom), this idea also plays into the many in game phrases you can choose to leave behind and from several item descriptions when you examine Choir gear and weapons. This is also why The offspring of Amygdala appear shortly afterwards, and those who have enough insight to see beyond the barrier that Rom produces can also see these terrifying beings.
Is the cosmos far away or merely above our heads within reach?
The answer is somewhere inbetween.
I have more but I'm really tired lol, I plan to extrapolate a bit more and explain more later. Sorry if all of this is confusing, sometimes I forget some things as I'm writing and lose track of my thoughts. I've tried to keep it fairly concise throughout but a lot of it is difficult to explain, Lovecraft's stuff is pretty high concept afterall and I love that a game has finally tried to pay tribute to his work better than the games that are based directly on his work
As for my initial thoughts on why the Hunter was there, my initial line of thinking that the hunter you were playing as was actually an Old One born into human form, upon seeing the devastation that your kin have wrought upon the world you seek out to take back the cosmos by essentially killing the "old guard" so to speak, and taking your reign as the new deity by the end of the game, thus ending the hunt and perhaps even having its true purpose made clear.(following the three umbilical ending) That said, the achievement/trophy you get at the end kind of debunks this theory but the beauty of the story crafted here is the ambiguity and the many different interpretations one can take.
bodyofanamerican
Member
Well she's neutral till you attack her, right? So couldn't it stand to reason that maybe she was super passive and nice and not destructive till the Choir sliced her up? Then they just leave her in the basement as a failed experiment/blood source. And, as they say in that thread, maybe she's trying to heal herself at the altar.
Horseticuffs
Full werewolf off the buckle
<3 Excellent, excellent. I loved DS, didn't play DS2 (Yet!), and had kind of fallen away from hardcore gaming when I read a headline that BB was inspired by Lovecraft and went straight away to the store and bought it posthaste! That's all it took.
I'm only up to around the 4th boss area but am truly enamored with it. I hear I haven't really "Seen the sights" so far as Cosmic Horror stuff is concerned. I can't wait.
Here's to hoping that BB2 has some ol' Great God Pan shit in it.
yea, she's basically staring at the altar until you attack her. poor thing.
RoyaleDuke
Banned
Hah, thanks in highschool I had to do a series of college level reports and presentations on a literary figure or historical figure that most people wouldn't know about. I saw how many people cluelessly put together haphazard reports on Edgar Allan Poe and Oppenheimer, I chose Lovecraft because he is my biggest influence as a writer and to see how much we owe him in Science Fiction and Horror(specifically Cosmic Horror which he pioneered) and how little known he is overall; it's absolutely baffling to me, then I played this game and it's basically just one big giant loveletter to Lovecraft.
Also the similarities between myself and him are astounding.
As far as the other games are concerned, I'd skip DS2. I don't know how anyone can defend that game when the hitboxes are so awful unlike Bloodborne, DeS and Dark Souls. I also find the game world less interesting and the bosses completely uninspired.
I find it interesting that the Miyazaki designed games are the strongest and best ones, it's a testament to his ability to create with his team. I kind of view him on the same level as Hideo Kojima, dude is a genius.
It's nice to see another Lovecraft fan. <3
The enemy design in this game is so fucking good.
The eye-mania might also be based on the Amygdala, since they have a multitude of eyes within their heads that bulge out when they use their laser attacks.
Souldestroyer Reborn
Banned
This post is pure win. Thank you.
Quoted in full as to snip it would be a travesty.
Makes me want to start reading some of these books!
Laughing Banana
Weeping Pickle
Nah, it's pretty much established that the Hunter is afflicted with something and thus he/she is going to Yharnam in hopes to get his/her condition fixed. The Doll strongly implies this, as is Gilbert.
What is more of a mystery is what is so special about the Hunter that he/she is specifically chosen as the current inhabitant of the Hunter's Dreams though...
Wow.
I didn't know much about the Lovecraftian universe, it was very interesting to read so thanks a lot!
Lee Chaolan
Member
I did the same thing a few days ago, and the Fake Iosefka is indeed killable, you just have to hit her a friggin lot.
Are we really sure about Rom keeping a "barrier" for the crazy stuff?
I always saw it as you learning his insight, allowing you to see the creppy stuff (minus the red moon, but that's more of a sign of the hunting progressing). If you even get to 60 Insight before Rom, you can already see the Amygdalas/baby cries etc
I always saw it as you learning his insight, allowing you to see the creppy stuff (minus the red moon, but that's more of a sign of the hunting progressing). If you even get to 60 Insight before Rom, you can already see the Amygdalas/baby cries etc
Shin Kojima
Banned
Laughing Banana
Weeping Pickle
At first I am thinking that Rom worked on behalf of the Great Ones... you know, to mask their presence to the general public so they can do their business nilly willy. Recently however I began to thinking that Rom was actually *trying* to prevent the crazy folks continuing their communion with the Great Ones in order to stop Yharnam getting even crazier than usual... so in essence, her function is actually a "good" thing.
I think the Moon Presence as a Great One that actually at odds with the other, sculpting the Hunter as its own personal assassin killing the other Great Ones left and right as well as killing obstacles like Rom. Whether the Hunter him/herself realizes this or not I don't know--I personally think he/she doesn't know.
What I find rather unfortunate about the whole silent character thing here is its *really* hard to eke out his/her motivation about doing things... why he/she does not seem to care about lots of things and just go whatever...... why he/she just keeps on pressing forward without asking questions when doing stuff like killing Rom that throws the entire Yharnam into a crazy loop, etc etc etc. It is kind of hard to make a justification of *why* he/she does stuff, and I don't think "he/she's seeking a cure" or "wanting to escape the dream" is good enough on its own.
Maybe Paleblood is the Moon itself and not the Sky... Paleblood sky meaning the sky that holds the Paleblood; the Moon Presence. If you notice all the corpses sitting on chairs in Yahargul are facing directly towards the Moon.
Shin Kojima
Banned
Maybe so.. but iirc the sun was actually still out when I got there. I wanted to see that section because I didn't know it existed when playing NG, so I had myself abducted as quickly as possible on NG+ (so right after killing Blood-starved Beast).
[QUOTE="God's Beard!";161057710]Is there any lore information about Nightmare Frontier being in a ship graveyard?[/QUOTE]
it's driving me insane I swear. And ENB completely ignored it on his last video
"Marcus...MARCUS...LOOK....THERE...DOWN THERE....NO...TURN BACK....AAAAAH"
it's driving me insane I swear. And ENB completely ignored it on his last video
"Marcus...MARCUS...LOOK....THERE...DOWN THERE....NO...TURN BACK....AAAAAH"
Stratosphere
Member
ENB did mention the ship masts that are visible in NF, but was being coy as to what they might mean.
what a post by RoyaleDuke. More of that pls
hahah oh well how did I miss that!?! I'll go check it out again then
does he even know though? I doubt it
hahah oh well how did I miss that!?! I'll go check it out again then
does he even know though? I doubt it
BrokenIcarus
Member
Any speculation on why iosefka s blood vial is in nightmare of mensis?
Pie and Beans
Look for me on the local news, I'll be the guy arrested for trying to burn down a Nintendo exec's house.
As I said earlier, he makes a coy suggestion that Nightmare Frontier may be part of Loran due to the enemies there being Loran Silverbeasts.
Where Loran is in relation to Yarnham, who knows.
One thing I'd love to discuss, and was waiting for Marcus to see if he would show us some evidence that maybe I didn't pick up on is The One Reborn. But, if even Marcus has only theories about it and doesn't know for a fact, there probably isn't really any solid evidence, and we need to speculate away to find the most fitting answer.
I kinda agree with his theory, but I guess only halfway. I agree it was most likely a failed experiment, I agree they used the people of Yahar'gul for it (looking at the "statues" is enough evidence), very nice catch about the bells being used to reach other worlds before the hunters used it for cooperation, but I don't think it stops there, at "an artificial god", the name makes it seem much more important.
It's The One Reborn, implies both that it's an important figure, and that it was dead. Which makes me think they were trying to create an artificial Great One body for Mergo to come back (my only evidence would be the Host of the Nightmare being a few meters away) or for Oedon (the other Great One we know of that could be dead), we know for a fact he (she? I'd assume Oedon is a male name, but after Rom, I'm not sure about anything that isn't crystal clear) is formless and very important, which could indicate he's "the one", especially since the School of Mensis is part of the Healing Church, and the church worshipes Oedon, and, while that's not really enough evidence, there is a Tomb of Oedon, which indicates he could be dead.
I don't think they would name an artificial god "The One Reborn". Celestial Emissary makes sense, Rom, the vacuous spider makes sense, but "The One Reborn" only makes sense if it's, well, reborn.
Sheeeeit, I was right TT_TT
I need this guide, just for the interview >_<
It is cool, but isn't really backed by the game. The Great Isz Chalice says that the Choir was the one who got audience with Ebrietas, the Choir being an upper echelon of the Healing Church (Upper Cathedral Key description), doesn't make a lot of sense that their findings would lead to Willem's epiphany in Byrgenwerth (Great One's Wisdom description), also, the adage cutscene shows Willem's eyes covered, doesn't it? That was before the Healing Church being founded, let alone the Choir and however long it took for them to finally get to Ebrietas.
Eyes being on the inside, that was indeed a very cool finding, but them cutting her open and that leading to Willem I find unlikely. They worshipped her, even created an artificial Great One to be able to have communion with her, plus she's pretty fucking powerful and will rek you if you try to hit her, let alone cut her head open.
Great post, thanks for that.
What is the name of the NPC Hunter that attacks you in Byrgenwerth?
I kinda agree with his theory, but I guess only halfway. I agree it was most likely a failed experiment, I agree they used the people of Yahar'gul for it (looking at the "statues" is enough evidence), very nice catch about the bells being used to reach other worlds before the hunters used it for cooperation, but I don't think it stops there, at "an artificial god", the name makes it seem much more important.
It's The One Reborn, implies both that it's an important figure, and that it was dead. Which makes me think they were trying to create an artificial Great One body for Mergo to come back (my only evidence would be the Host of the Nightmare being a few meters away) or for Oedon (the other Great One we know of that could be dead), we know for a fact he (she? I'd assume Oedon is a male name, but after Rom, I'm not sure about anything that isn't crystal clear) is formless and very important, which could indicate he's "the one", especially since the School of Mensis is part of the Healing Church, and the church worshipes Oedon, and, while that's not really enough evidence, there is a Tomb of Oedon, which indicates he could be dead.
I don't think they would name an artificial god "The One Reborn". Celestial Emissary makes sense, Rom, the vacuous spider makes sense, but "The One Reborn" only makes sense if it's, well, reborn.
Sheeeeit, I was right TT_TT
I need this guide, just for the interview >_<
It is cool, but isn't really backed by the game. The Great Isz Chalice says that the Choir was the one who got audience with Ebrietas, the Choir being an upper echelon of the Healing Church (Upper Cathedral Key description), doesn't make a lot of sense that their findings would lead to Willem's epiphany in Byrgenwerth (Great One's Wisdom description), also, the adage cutscene shows Willem's eyes covered, doesn't it? That was before the Healing Church being founded, let alone the Choir and however long it took for them to finally get to Ebrietas.
Eyes being on the inside, that was indeed a very cool finding, but them cutting her open and that leading to Willem I find unlikely. They worshipped her, even created an artificial Great One to be able to have communion with her, plus she's pretty fucking powerful and will rek you if you try to hit her, let alone cut her head open.
Great post, thanks for that.
What is the name of the NPC Hunter that attacks you in Byrgenwerth?
The_Darkest_Red
Member
This is one of my favorite GAF posts ever. Thanks so much for putting it together.
Beelzebufo
Banned
Everyone's quoting the super long post that still seems to think Rom is hiding a veil for some reason when she isn't. It's annoying and wrong 
Any new info from the guide?
Any new info from the guide?
Sephiroth_GR_
Member
Everyone's quoting the super long post that still seems to think Rom is hiding a veil for some reason when he isn't
Any new info from the guide?
Yeah, Rom is confirmed as a "she".
Yeah but nothing mind-blowing. Mother brain is the brain of Mensis...
Beelzebufo
Banned
Oooh, well that's exciting at least! We have official names on everything too?
So if it's the brain of Mensis, does that just refer to the fact that Mensis found the brain? Or is it somehow connected to the "aborted their brains" line in the sense that a lot of them created it out of nothing from their own minds?
Paleblood = Moon Presence, Paleblood sky = red moon sky, Laurence is the skull.
I was right about "The nameless moon presence beckoned by Laurence and his associates. Paleblood." being related to both "Three Third Cords" and "Seek Paleblood to transcend the hunt", get rekt, guys
Beelzebufo
Banned
That all seems straightforward. Weird that the random choir dude told you to find the moon presence though. Do we know anything about the BLB?Paleblood = Moon Presence, Paleblood sky = red moon sky, Laurence is the skull.
I was right about "The nameless moon presence beckoned by Laurence and his associates. Paleblood." being related to both "Three Third Cords" and "Seek Paleblood to transcend the hunt", get rekt, guys
Also, that's stupid if the nameless Moon Preaence has a name, and that it doesn't look anything like blood.
That all seems straightforward. Weird that the random choir dude told you to find the moon presence though. Do we know anything about the BLB?
Also, that's stupid if the nameless Moon Preaence has a name
Well, it's not really a name though. Given how the same note mentions both that it's nameless and also that it's Paleblood. Seems more like a title of some sort, or maybe an "event" tied to the beckoning of this moon presence through the use of three third cords?
Paleblood refers to the Moon Presence, but it's not necessarily its name, if that makes any sense.
About BLB, not that I'm aware of, aside from the current speculation. Not sure if the guide mentions anything.
OniBarubary
Banned
I'm almost positive that Oedon is the only canon male Great Old One. There's either an item description or a dialogue that uses a male pronoun to describe him, as I had a theory about all the Great Old Ones being female that I looked real hard into and was disappointed to see that Oedon was not female. Very interesting then that Oedon doesn't have a form and is the one pregnating chicas everywhere. I think.
As for the One Reborn that name bothered me too but I have no good theories on it, though all those Bell Maidens and the state of Yahargul are some interesting evidence. Maybe they tried to bring Mergo back and it didn't work so well.
That said, I find it also interesting that when you have super high insight even before you beat Vicar Amelia you can hear a baby crying randomly anywhere in the world. I wonder what that means, considering you only normally hear Mergo crying in the Nightmares or after you beat Rom.
Beelzebufo
Banned
That does make sense. I wonder what happened to Laurence after beckoning it then. Nothing seems to go well when the moon presence is summoned, even if you have the cords.
There are three possible explanations: The red moon already hangs low but is just hidden by Rom (similar to the Amygdala), the note was made predicting the paleblood sky but long before it actually happens, or there have been previous times where the red moon came. There's a note in Old Yharnam that mentions the red moon and was written before the Church burned down the city.
The Moon Presence maintains the Hunter's Dream and seems to be keeping the Hunt going, so it seems to be trying to kill off the beasts and great ones. Perhaps Laurence realized his folly before death and tried to find a solution.
OniBarubary
Banned
That's kinda interesting. Like...we assume all the notes are recent during this particular hunt or to direct you but maybe they were written a while ago for other people before or during other hunts.
Beelzebufo
Banned
I think it pretty much has to be the second. You can see the Amygdala and not the red moon, and since the note is a messenger note (not a left behind one).
About hearing the baby, as well as seeing the amygdalas with high enough insight, I guess that's one point for team "there is no veil"? Makes sense, Rom gives you the insight to see/hear all of that if you didn't already get it yourself, and the red moon is just a game progression thing.
Though there is also convincing evidence of "the veil", so I don't even know what to think about that anymore.
Good question, "The Third Umbilical Cord precipitated the encounter with the pale moon, which beckoned the hunters and conceived the hunter's dream", it's somewhat clear what happened to Gehrman after the beckoning of the moon presence, but what about those other hunters that were beckoned? Why is only Gehrman still around in the dream?
Both the second and third, right, they work together.
I see no contradiction in the "nameless" one having a nickname since its associated with that moon.
Also correct me if I'm wrong but I thought that the note under Oedeon chapel made it clear what Roms function was. The only mystery for me is: why and what precisely was Willem's role/motivations in that? Does he want you to break the seal or is he pointing at it for some other reason?
Also correct me if I'm wrong but I thought that the note under Oedeon chapel made it clear what Roms function was. The only mystery for me is: why and what precisely was Willem's role/motivations in that? Does he want you to break the seal or is he pointing at it for some other reason?
"Hunters" here could actually be in reference to only Gherman since he was the first or their leader.
I don't buy the insight angle. There's definitely more to Rom than simply giving you more insight.
I don't think so, the grave where you find the Old Hunter's Bone was already there, and it belonged to one of Gehrman's apprentices. So there were definitely more hunters already when the dream was conceived, even if it all happened before Ludwig.
OniBarubary
Banned
I think it's more than just an apprentice, due to the Old Hunter's Bone and the Doll regularly going to that grave in the Hunter's Dream to pay her respects. Maybe it's Gehrman's grave since using the OHB gives you his teleport quickstep.
I find that also very unlikely.
"The bone of an old hunter whose name is lost.
It is said that he was an apprentice to old Gehrman, and a practitioner of the art of Quickening, a technique particular to the first hunters.
It is most appropriate that hunters, carriers of the torch who are sustained by the dream, would tease an old art from his remains."
I don't think the description would be this innacurate with no other evidence in-game to tell you the truth about it.
About the Doll, yes, that makes it very likely that she's connected to that hunter (maybe his creation?), but even that doesn't match too well with said hunter being Gehrman, since she doesn't really care that much about Gehrman, and it's not like she doesn't know of his existence there, since she's the one who tells you that Gehrman awaits you by the tree.
I think bosses follow the same pattern. Beast bosses are weak to fire, kin bosses weak to lightning.
Micolash is weak to everything but will one shot you with spirit bomb on NG+
Probably true. For some reason or another it was Gherman who ended up "stuck". Perhaps he was chosen by Paleblood. I imagine it was Gherman who used that third of the umbilical cord. The Mensis group used one, Willem used his and Arianna's the result of "corrupted blood".
It's also important to remember that the item descriptions are sometimes unreliable narrators regarding fine details.
Micolash is one of the reasons I was asking. I wonder if the guide has them all listed.
OniBarubary
Banned
Just realized I never actually read the description to the OHB. Ha, okay, that one's out the window. Ignore me!
KAMORRAAAA! So good to see you here <3
I'm almost one billion percent positive it's Laurence. The dialogue, the headless version of him before the Queen, the name Bloodletting, the wound on the left side of his head...etc
Not at all, as 140.85 said, we can't always rely on item descriptions 100%, so maybe I did miss something that could prove the Old Hunter Bone's description wrong and show compelling evidence that it is indeed Gehrman.
The dialogue actually belongs to Patches
But yeah, the rest is still preeeetty good evidence imo.
Not at all, as 140.85 said, we can't always rely on item descriptions 100%, so maybe I did miss something that could prove the Old Hunter Bone's description wrong and show compelling evidence that it is indeed Gehrman.
The dialogue actually belongs to Patches
But yeah, the rest is still preeeetty good evidence imo.
Oh man you're right
what a shame, it was such a cool WTF moment.he wasn't a vendor for me yet at that point so it's a bit odd.