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(Bloodborne) What are the biggest mysteries in Yharnam?

Orpheum

Member
What's in the contract you're signing at the beginning? Between which parties is it?

This is something i also wondered. The blood minister is really the only thing i can't really wrap my head around. Is it a contract like a straight up contract? are you giving him permission to inject some sick ass blood inside you?

Is it a metaphorical contract between you and the doll?

Gehrman says that most Blood ministers don't recall hunters anymore so what makes this particular guy so special? I honestly have no idea
 

T8SC

Member
easy mode is for bitches

35lqnh5xrfb51.png
 

DeaconOfTheDank

Gold Member
For me it was the whole link to Lovecraft's Old Ones. Took me some time to puzzle that together.

BB is one of my most loved games of all time and I both see it as complete as well as hoping there will be a follow-up - which is contradictory. If I allow myself to dream I wish that From continued on the old blood, blood sacrifice and the Old Ones, and put a potential sequel in an Aztec setting. Lovecraft created a lot of links between his crazed mythology and Aztec/Inka/Mayan culture. I know it would be a major deviation in graphical form for From but I think it would be so suitable for a BB follow-up without being a straight up sequal.

Edit: Sequal auto-corrected to sexual...
My man. I would absolutely LOVE a setting inspired by Aztec, Incan, or Mayan culture. I actually have a videogame idea that I've been working on based in a similar setting. Honestly, it feels like such an under-appreciated side of history. FromSoftware working on something like that or a dark science fiction setting would be a dream come true.
For me, if want to know if all the souls games are actually in the same timeline. There are hints of it but I would want to know that first and then start with the other questions.
 

Yumi

Member
The Hunters Dream was a place I felt safe in til I found it in Yarnham. Made me distrust The Doll and Gherman, even though I didn’t know why or what was going on. It made it feel that much more dangerous, and mysterious.

Im admittedly not great at connecting the dots in From games, so most of the stuff flew over my head till I watched Lore play through afterwords.
 
What the scholar brought to Cainhurst WAS the old blood found in the Chalices. In other words, Laurence attempted with Cainhurst the same exact thing he did with Yharnam, use the Old Blood to take a foothold in the local power structure and establish himself as an authority. This time though for whatever reason things didn't go as planned, and in the end the Church and Cainhurst entered a conflict until the Executioners were sent to destroy the castle.

Annalise is not "a vampire", as in a creature of a different species entirely, she and the people of Cainhurst are just a different offshoot of Pthumerian descendants, like the people of Yharnam. Their bloodline however has remained closer/purer, hence why she could, in theory, bear the child of a Great One, just like Arianna (also implied to be from Cainhurst) does.

Why she also needs blood dregs to do so is never explained, but I guess it could be because her blood has become too pure as a consequence of consuming the Old Blood (hence the immortality as an additional side effect), to the point that she is closer to being an Old One herself than to being a Pthumerian.

Ebrietas was discovered by the Choir (not Byrgenwerth) in Isz at a much later point in time.
The Vilebloods are what I think the game's depiction of vampires, and Annalise is a blood queen, just like how Lost Children of Antiquity are depictions of gargoyles. Hunters are like Van Helsing, but I don't know, I just think it's a more simple way of describing things. There are quite a few depictions of vampires throughout the game, we just don't consume blood the same way.

There's no evidence in the game that somebody can become a kin of the cosmos by consuming blood alone, but you can by Insight as confirmed by Willem, who looks to be turning into an Ebrietas kind of Great One by the looks of the growths on his back.

I do know all these things, however the biggest mystery in the Chalice Dungeons is how all of the Great Ones we've fought exist down there, and there has to be a lore explanation for it but there isn't any in the items.

Ebrietas I completely forgot about, I was always under the impression that her blood was the Old Blood the church was describing. Alfred's dialog about blood healing may help, but the Choir may or may not have been responsible for the mass amounts of blood ministering.

And I always thought the Old Blood was blood of a Great One based on the "holy medium deep within the tomb", and the Isz Chalice is the last one I believe. It could be Ebrietas's blood or the Amgydala's as Amygdala's look more beastlike but, anyway, the Old Blood is what's responsible for breastbone, so if Annalise has been consuming it, she should have more beastlike features.

The whole game is a mystery.
> What is part of the dream and what isnt, or is it all?
> Who is the dreamer (was it really the moon presence?)
> How can Micolash be alive in a dream if he is dead in reality, or was it a dream in a dream?
> Is Kos really dead?
...
Ironic, Micolash was calling out to a dead Great One. How did Kos grant Rom's eyes if she's dead?

There's no evidence that Micolash is dead in Yhar'Gul. He could just be in limbo for all we know.
 
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Bartski

Gold Member
the biggest mystery is what made prospectors think, after finding giant fucking monsters deep inside an ancient dungeon, that the best idea moving forward is to drain some of their blood and shoot themselves up with it
 

Vae_Victis

Banned
The Vilebloods are what I think the game's depiction of vampires, and Annalise is a blood queen, just like how Lost Children of Antiquity are depictions of gargoyles. Hunters are like Van Helsing, but I don't know, I just think it's a more simple way of describing things. There are quite a few depictions of vampires throughout the game, we just don't consume blood the same way.
The Vileblood are definitely "vampire-themed", and Cainhurst looking like the stereotypical Dracula castle is definitely no coincidence. The point is that inside the game universe they are not "vampires" any more than the people of Yharnam, who drink blood on the regular and defined their whole culture around it (we are told).

There's no evidence in the game that somebody can become a kin of the cosmos by consuming blood alone, but you can by Insight as confirmed by Willem, who looks to be turning into an Ebrietas kind of Great One by the looks of the growths on his back.
No, there isn't definitely proof of that, it was just me trying to make sense of the situation. Because, in reality, the only reason why you bring Blood Dregs to Annalise is that her backstory used to completely different, and that is a leftover of a VERY late rewriting of both her backstory and the overall game plot (which happened so late that parts of it survived in the 1.0 retail version of the game, and were only removed via the day-one patch).

We have an entire different set of unused recorded dialogues for her where she explains that she already gave birth to the child of a Great One, that is the reason why she can't die, and that she needs the Blood Dregs to reduce the "purity" of her blood and finally be able to die. Her child was meant to have been taken by Lawrence and used in some kind of ritual (1.0 description of the Third Cord form the Old Workshop), likely whatever brought the Hunter's Dream about.



But all of that was removed from the game, and Annalise was repurposed as a more evil character. The Blood Dregs part is probably just a leftover of that, and they didn't really bother to explain it in-depth other than "she wants to drink blood to become stronger".

I do know all these things, however the biggest mystery in the Chalice Dungeons is how all of the Great Ones we've fought exist down there, and there has to be a lore explanation for it but there isn't any in the items.
The Chalice Dungeons in the form they exist are never explained, and possibly can't be explained. They are 80% a gameplay feature and 20% lore-pertinent. They canonically exist, are located below Yharnam, can be accessed by people from the real world, Byrgenwerth found the Old Blood there and they sort of bend time and space when you traverse them.

They are there because From Software wanted them there. Just like you can't really explain what the fog walls are or why they exist, or how can you go and help somebody else in their game via the Small resonant bell. In Dark Souls the excuse was "Time is convoluted", here it's "Reality and dreams are being blurred by the Blood Moon". I'd leave it at that.

Ebrietas I completely forgot about, I was always under the impression that her blood was the Old Blood the church was describing. Alfred's dialog about blood healing may help, but the Choir may or may not have been responsible for the mass amounts of blood ministering.

And I always thought the Old Blood was blood of a Great One based on the "holy medium deep within the tomb", and the Isz Chalice is the last one I believe. It could be Ebrietas's blood or the Amgydala's as Amygdala's look more beastlike but, anyway, the Old Blood is what's responsible for breastbone, so if Annalise has been consuming it, she should have more beastlike features.
Alfred doesn't really know anything, he is just a low-level dude with a boner for the myth of Logarius.

The Great Isz Chalice description says:

Great chalices unlock deeper reaches of the labyrinth. The
Great Isz Chalice became the cornerstone of the Choir, the
elite delegation of the Healing Church.

It was also the first Great Chalice brought back to the
surface since the time of Byrgenwerth, and allowed the
Choir to have audience with Ebrietas.


Which means that anything to do with Isz and Ebrietas happened much later than whatever Byrgenwerth did originally when they found the Old Blood. Other items call Ebrietas the "left behind Old One", and say that the Choir are studying her to understand the cosmos.


Amygdala is a completely different story, and one that the game really doesn't explain at all. Going by cut/hidden content again we can infer that Amygdala is something Mensis discovered, and that the One Reborn is an attempt by Mensis to create another Amygdala (Amygdala is called "False God" in the game files, and One Reborn is "Incomplete False God" or something to that effect). But what is Amygdala exactly, or if it even is a singular being projected in different places or there are more of them is anyone's guess at this point.


Also, I don't think that the Old Blood transforms people in the sense you mean, with one blood making you one thing and another blood a different thing. The Old Blood acts as a general "trigger" for starting to transform in general, but the result of it seems dependant on completely different factors. Think of all the patients in the Research Hall, which existed at the same time as people in Yharnam randomly mutating into beast and requiring a stable force of Hunters being created in the city to keep the issue at bay.

The amount of Old Blood taken could, though, be connected to how "far" one will transform - which could explain why the members of the Clergy become massive lupine beasts, while common people usually range from this

huntsman2.png


to this

LargeHuntsman.png



Ironic, Micolash was calling out to a dead Great One. How did Kos grant Rom's eyes if she's dead?

There's no evidence that Micolash is dead in Yhar'Gul. He could just be in limbo for all we know.
Micloash in the waking world by the time you meet him is literally called a "mummy" by the game, so I'm fairly certain he has been dead for a long time.

Also, this is just speculation, but wouldn't it make sense if most Great Ones were actually... dead, as far as we understand it from the point of view of the waking world? The game says the Great Ones went to "sleep" in the Chalice Dungeons at some point, but it doesn't sound like they might wake up at any point in time, and the Chalices are referred to as tombs in a few occasions. The only Old One we undisputedly meet in the "real world" is Ebrietas, and she is referred to as the "left behind Great One", is said to be crying (Rosmarinus description, in Japanese "maiden" is the same word then translated as "daughter" in "Daughter of the Cosmos") and spends all her time intently staring at Rom's corpse (Rom herself is debatable I guess, but I'd argue she doesn't exists in reality proper given where she is and how you reach her - and you find her "corpse" in Upper Cathedral anyway). Mergo and the Orphan are definitely dead, yet you meet them in the dreaming world. Micolash himself is dead in the waking world but still alive in the dream until you go and kill him there as well, so it's clear that being alive in one world has little bearing on your status in the other one.
 
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Aesius

Member
I remember reading about how the Chalice Dungeons suck for years before actually playing through BB. And while I get that they are repetitive in design, the lore behind them is amazing and adds a ton of complexity to an already complex and crazy story. I love how there's essentially another layer of depth to the story that you don't really get unless you do the Chalice Dungeons.
 

Ladioss

Member
How the game pivoted from classic gothic horror to Lovecraftian cosmic horror, and how it was supported - lore-wise as well as gameplay-wise - by the game is what makes it genius... but otherwise, the lore is not that interesting. It's here to serve the mood, what mysteries remains to be explained are not really making me hold my breath.

That being said, I would have appreciated some more details about Loran and how it relates with the bigger picture. I got the feeling of something more related to classic adventure pulp from the chalice dungeon, and classic pulp is the big absent from weird fiction tropes the game could have explored and choose not to.
 

DeaconOfTheDank

Gold Member
I do know all these things, however the biggest mystery in the Chalice Dungeons is how all of the Great Ones we've fought exist down there, and there has to be a lore explanation for it but there isn't any in the items.
I had always imagined that some of the Pthumerians ascended to the status of Great Ones. The Great Ones we find in the Chalice Dungeons are essentially former Pthumerians.
 

Saber

Gold Member
I would say Chalice dungeons. Its an interesting idea, even if some difficulty effects weren't to my liking. The itens(both chalices and difficulty itens) are very interesting piece of info to read. Also the Queen boss there, which includes the baby crying also is a cool thing.
 
Vae_Victis Vae_Victis Great analysis on the Vilebloods, I would have liked a mechanic where Alfred is hostile if you side with the Vilebloods. I definitely noticed that the Chalice Dungeons didn't have as much effort but were fun side activities to grind for.

Interesting analysis of the Amygdala too, perhaps the Old Blood is the blood of Oedon? After all, the Great Ones are sympathetic by nature, although it'd be hard to describe exactly how one could receive blood from a formless possibly omnipresent being.

I understand that the game calls Micolash a mummy, but the Nightmare of Mensis is definitely a real physical place. Are there different means of existence in Bloodborne's world? In Lovecraftian lore, the earth and the dreamlands are one in the same from what I've heard. "Mummy" could imply that it's just been going on for a long time and, when you kill him, he says he's "waking up". I always believed that the entire game is a nightmare/bad dream, and the "Waking World" is the world we wake up to in the "Yharnam Sunrise" ending, because why would the Doll tell us to find our worth in a world of beasts? You end the Night when you stop being a Hunter, AKA finishing the game, therefore IMO the beasts and other creatures no longer exist until the Night begins again, and when and why does the Night begin?

Is the Old Blood the Blood Echoes we obtain, or is it blood taken from Great Ones? Is it Coldblood? Basically the same thing as Blood Echoes. As far as I know, I think the Healing Church took blood from Ebrietas, that's where I got my theory from, but needless to say the Choir is a pretty messed up cult even compared to Mensis.

DeaconOfTheDank DeaconOfTheDank Interesting, I personally don't think they discovered transcendence. They likely didn't even know that both Blood Echoes and Insight are important.
 

Vae_Victis

Banned
Was watching the Lance McDonald video posted by Vae_Victis Vae_Victis which I hadn't seen and it really seems like the lore was changing up to the last second. The day 1 patch changed dialog and item descriptions.
This game went through a BILLION changes from conception to announcement to release. Half the characters have both alternative names and dialogues that hint at them being used for different "roles" over time. As I already wrote a massive plot point involving Laurence, the Hunter's Dream and the child of the Vileblood was just cut for no apparent reason and nothing else was put there to fill the hole.

It doesn't help that we are 90% sure that in the early early stages of production Bloodborne was actually meant to be presented as Demon's Souls 2 (beta tester leaks later confirmed through unused files found in the game, the Old One beach being a hidden Chalice Dungeon map, unused dialogues where people say "Umbasa"). From Software went from that to Project Beast, then the plot likely continued to gradually morph up until the very end.

At some point in time the plot revolved around you travelling to Yharnam to find a cure through blood healing for a plague that had hit your town and yourself. Laurence was a friend of yours who had gotten to Yharnam with you, but had then disappeared while you were in a month-long coma caused by the transfusion you see in the opening sequence. The Hunter's Dream was called the Dream's Refuge, and the protagonist was addressed by the Doll as "Diseased One". The note beside the bed on the clinic had been left by Laurence, and told you to "Find the blood of a sage". Iosefka was a crooked whitch whose clothing bore an uncanny resemblance to those of the Wet Nurse (whether that was plot-relevant at the time or a leftover from an older version still we don't know - the Wet Nurse having originally being planned, god-knows up until what point of development, as a mid-game boss called "Minor Daemon of Death and Darkness", and having a cult composed by the Nightmare Apostles, the Shadows of Yharnam and the Odeon Chapel Beggar, who was in fact a common enemy armed with a wooden staff). Vicar Amelia wasn't a character at all, you fought the Cleric Beast (who was another member of the Church called Father Norbert) in Grand Cathedral, and "Amelia" was somewhere much later in the game (possibly in Upper Cathedral Ward) and was called "Saint Laura".

Pretty much everything I wrote in the last paragraph was restored by Lance McDonald from an alpha version of the game obtained from online testing that took place in October 2014. There are a LOT more fragments we have from before the game was released, but most are hard to "date" or place in a wider coherent frame.






There is also a video by Sinclair Lore where JerksSansFrontiers goes through the full list of cut Boss Livers (equivalent to Boss Souls) and recaps everything Lance and other people in the community had shared behind the curtains in terms of cut content and game files, but I don't have the link at hand right now.
 
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