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[s0]

ohhh yeah, good find. she still looks really different from the orphan tho

maybe kos was human once? we know that humans can "ascend" to become great ones thanks to the 3rd ending. i think rom was formerly human too (or at least i remember hearing sth about that).

btw: it's interesting that ludwig is apparently sentient unlike every other beast in the game. also one of his mouths has eyes on the inside (shown in his intro cutscene).

[joseph ¯\_(ツ)_/¯]

Not sure (also: dont care) about the actual timeline or what happened with the orphan that much, but some key metaphorical points i didn't see you guys touch on:

The death of the orphan of kos is tied pretty closely to the hunters' powers and the fact that they turn into beasts. Pretty sure it's meant to be obvious that whatever events happened at the fishing village 'created' the hunters (whether or not they actually started directly before it.) Kos, or the orphan is probably also the origin of the old blood that the hunters use.

-the orphan of kos very clearly resembles a hunter, not just a human -- the cry sample that's shared with gerhman, the fact that the ook uses very similar patterns to the other two hunter bosses, gerhman and gasciogne, that his weapon is absolutely a melee/cleaver trick weapon, and shares multiple modes with the trick weapons.

-Kos's curse (deep ocean blah blah blah) is alluded to have been placed on the hunters, who are also described as bloodthirsty beasts or whatever. Charcaters in the DLC also allude to this being the ~secret past~ behind everything. This is also the hunters' nightmare.

-It's not explicit that the orphan even exists in any real way, and is perhaps just a metaphor for the hunters, the 'children' of kos? although most things in the nightmare seem to have real world equivalents, so that may be a stretch.

-kos is a plausible origin for the umbilical cord in the hunters' workshop, since the old hunters bone and doll clothes (presumably both from maria?) already associate the workshop closely with the timeline in the DLC.

bonus additional observation you may have talked about already: as much as anythinmg has a chronological order in bloodborne, the nightmare in the dlc seems to operate in reverse chronological order. We can infer that ludwig and the other hunters fell sometime after the church began to experiment heavily with blood, which is sometime after the church created monstrosities, which is sometime after kos died. There might be something there with luarence's human skull existing in the transition between two of these time periods, and his cleric beast corpse existing in the time of the hunters' fall.

[TeeGee]

his weapon is absolutely a melee/cleaver trick weapon, and shares multiple modes with the trick weapons.

I think his weapon is supposed to be Kos' placenta (you can observe it's linked to him via umbilical cord). Which I always found super-cool and it could hold some interesting metaphorical meaning, if you want to look at hunters as the children of Kos.

[s0]

-It's not explicit that the orphan even exists in any real way, and is perhaps just a metaphor for the hunters, the 'children' of kos? although most things in the nightmare seem to have real world equivalents, so that may be a stretch.

everything in bloodborne is "real" as far as i understand it. the nightmares are just as real as anything else.

i didn't realize the thing about the scream being the same sample. there is definitely some connection b/w gehrman and the orphan. new theory: gehrman is the orphan's daddy.

actually, hunters don't turn into beasts. or if they do, they can control the transformation (beast claws, dlc beast rune) and retain sentience (ludwig). imo, the curse of the hunters is probably the fact that they can't die and have to participate in the hunt unless they manage to find a way by getting gehrman to "wake them up" or "finding paleblood" to become a great one. respawning/reawakening and being bound to the hunters dream is a "diegetic" element, as per djura's dialog. im also inferring this because demon's souls and (especially) dark souls use a similar motif of a curse that prevents people from dying.

also if hunters get "drunk with blood", they go to the hunter's nightmare which is a kind of purgatory where they are forced to relive the sins of the past for all eternity. remember, the player character doesn't enter the hunter's nightmare the "normal way".

the beast is something every human has in them. it's the animalistic side of human nature that byrgenwerth, the healing church etc are trying to transcend ("plant eyes on our brains to cleanse our beastly idiocy"). apparently, laurence thought this could be achieved through the old blood whereas willem thought the blood was the source of beasthood to begin with.

[SousaVilla]

It's unclear how beasthood works exactly. Some people do lose their sanity when they transform, like Gascoigne. Others manage to speak and seem reasonable, like the suspicious beggar. I think Ludwig is some middle term, since he could end up making incomprehensive horse sounds when you talk to his head and he also is not counscious enough to notice the moonlight sword in his back in the beginning of the fight. Overall I think beasthood is always a threat, even to those that manage to control it somehow, as if they could always snap into a more primitive form.

The death of the orphan of kos is tied pretty closely to the hunters' powers and the fact that they turn into beasts. Pretty sure it's meant to be obvious that whatever events happened at the fishing village 'created' the hunters (whether or not they actually started directly before it.) Kos, or the orphan is probably also the origin of the old blood that the hunters use.

   

We don't know how the chronollogy works, but it's possible that Byrgenwerth already had people exploring the tombs and found some other sources of old blood. Also, Ebrietas is definitely another source, although a more modern one. A possible theory is that kos blood is tainted, by the parasites or the curse, and it was incapable of producing real emissaries, hence the living failures, probably more prone to cause beasthood as well. When the choir gained access to Ebrietas and a more pure form of the old blood the church become able to produce kin and the true celestial emissaries.

[joseph ¯\_(ツ)_/¯]

actually, hunters don't turn into beasts. or if they do, they can control the transformation (beast claws, dlc beast rune) and retain sentience (ludwig). imo, the curse of the hunters is probably the fact that they can't die and have to participate in the hunt unless they manage to find a way by getting gehrman to "wake them up" or "finding paleblood" to become a great one. respawning/reawakening and being bound to the hunters dream is a "diegetic" element, as per djura's dialog. im also inferring this because demon's souls and (especially) dark souls use a similar motif of a curse that prevents people from dying.

also if hunters get "drunk with blood", they go to the hunter's nightmare which is a kind of purgatory where they are forced to relive the sins of the past for all eternity. remember, the player character doesn't enter the hunter's nightmare the "normal way".

the beast is something every human has in them. it's the animalistic side of human nature that byrgenwerth, the healing church etc are trying to transcend ("plant eyes on our brains to cleanse our beastly idiocy"). apparently, laurence thought this could be achieved through the old blood whereas willem thought the blood was the source of beasthood to begin with.

I don't think this interpreation of beasthood is very supported by the text in the games -- the werewolf like beast form seems reserved to people who participate in the hunts, both the hunters themselves and the townspeople. Theories involving different types of monsters coming from different sources of old blood are definitely believeable, but not that all humanity has beasthood.  Hunters display greater control of it for sure, but that greater willpower seems to be implied to be a power they get from blood infusions just like their (again, orphan-like) strength and speed.


regarding everything being real: sure, but an alternative way to say what i meant is that bloodborne's cosmology plays fast and loose with what 'reality' is. There's definitely a multiple-layers thing going on where dreamlike elements can become reality, and vice versa. Everything is physical, for sure.

SousaVilla -- I agree totally that we don't know where the dungeon exploration and other sources of blood fit into this. I dont think it matters whether there's other old blood around yet or not when it comes to associating the hunters with Kos.

teegee: yeah I agree with that.

[s0]

lol i forgot about gascoigne. now i feel dumb. forget what i said.

tho iirc it's the blood ministration that turns people into beasts. the blood ministration was originally used to treat something called the "ashen blood disease", which i assume was some kind of plague. the ministration healed the disease but started turning people into beasts as a side effect. the 90 page lore document thing says that and i think the interpretation makes sense.

also i think the reason the townspeople participate in the hunt is because theyre turning into beasts (which at that point has stopped being a hunt for beasts) and not vice versa. also some of the npcs behind locked doors turn into beasts as the game progresses (gilbert being the main example).

my interpretation of beasthood has 3 reasons:

1. similar theme in dark souls ("hollowing" is actually humanity's natural state)

2. this quote by willem: "We are born of the blood. Made men by the blood. Undone by the blood.". presumably the reason the old blood is to be feared is because it brings out the beast in some(?) people.

3. the beast roar description

The indescribable sound is broadcast with the caster's own vocal cords, which begs the question, what terrible things lurk deep within the frames of men?

[TeeGee]

I think you try to put too much literal sense into it.

Imho it's just basic play on the human duality trope, with primitive urges on one side and lust for knowledge on the other; both dangerous in their own way. The game literalizes these concepts with beast/kin transformation, and Yharnam serves as a model anti-utopia exemplifying the pitfalls of these sides of human nature - like in classic cautionary allegories. It doesn't really matter how the beast plague started "scientifically"-speaking.

[s0]

It doesn't really matter how the beast plague started "scientifically"-speaking.

but the game does hint at it, so why not try to puzzle it out? it can be both literal and allegorical.

i mean this is the souls series. things do usually have some kind of backstory, it's just that the backstory is oblique and exists to enhance the atmosphere. i first started looking into demon's souls lore because the levels seemed too obsessively designed and too atmospheric to just be Generic Videogame Locations. i just think it's fun to try and peer behind the curtain.

[SousaVilla]

Imho it's just basic play on the human duality trope, with primitive urges on one side and lust for knowledge on the other; both dangerous in their own way. The game literalizes these concepts with beast/kin transformation, and Yharnam serves as a model anti-utopia exemplifying the pitfalls of these sides of human nature - like in classic cautionary allegories. It doesn't really matter how the beast plague started "scientifically"-speaking.

This cautionary aspect is one of the things that set bloodborne apart from lovecraft, in my opinion. If lovercraftian horror is more about the limitations of the human mind and the insignificance of our race in face of the universe, bloodborne is more about the terrible things that can happen when individuals and institutions try to repress human nature in search of an idealized version of man. A lot of the game's images are subversions on catholic dogma, consuming the blood of the gods, the healing church, the saints, the beast hunting, Maria's name, etc. The game's take on the concept of sin is the main metaphorical motivation behind the beast transformation: what causes people to turn into beasts is exactly the "cure" that the church offers. They're creating their own monsters just like in that overused nietzsche quote. The more they try to repress humanity and transcend the "beastly idiocy" the worse yharnam gets and more terrible beasts are created. The healing church also partially represents "science" and "reason", but that side is no better and evokes nazi eugenics with their expetimentation and atrocities in the fishing hamlet. And the results of that search are a stupid giant spider, a bunch of discarted babies in the orphanage, madmen wearing cages in their heads, a supposed ascended fish thing that you become in the secret ending, etc.  
 

[s0]

well ymmv, because you can actually transcend humanity and turn into a great one in the "true" ending. tho of course we don't know what happens after that.

The healing church also partially represents "science" and "reason", but that side is no better and evokes nazi eugenics with their expetimentation and atrocities in the fishing hamlet.

i am from former nazi germany and it was hard not to draw parallels sometimes. the way the hunters/church seemingly try to deny their guilt and put on a "respectable" facade is very nazi-esque too.

btw, another small tidbit: i think when the npc at the beginning of the fishing hamlet calls byrgenwerth "blood crazed fiends", he doesn't mean that they lust after blood, he means that blood is literally what makes them evil.  he also calls out to "the bloodless" for help. interestingly, he shares this distrust of blood with willem.

[s0]

ok i just finished watching vaati's translation video. i don't think any of it is super revelatory, mostly just a bunch of wordplay that got lost in translation. i also thought it was pretty obvious from the item description that the "harrowed" hunters are the church's secret police, the japanese version is just a little more blunt about it.  the thing about maria's grave was interesting tho.

[s0]

btw, regarding bloodborne/lovecraft connection:

bloodborne seems more based on lovecraft's earlier work rather than his later stuff like mountains of madness and etc. if you read his earlier short stories like "dagon", "nyarlathotep", "the nameless city", "the music of erich zann" etc, the exact origin and nature of the supernatural things/old ones/whatever is usually left in the dark and the story is often more about describing the surreal atmosphere of its setting. the later work was when he got a bit more "sci fi" and started explaining stuff and contextualizing it into a more coherent mythos. tho in reality it was mainly other authors who did that, lovecraft himself was not a big lore nerd, contrary to popular belief.

also y'all should read what the moon brings, i'm sure you'll recognize some imagery from the hunter's dream.

[FrankieSmileShow]

My take on all this is that the orphan of Kos that we fight is not the real orphan.

The hunter's nightmare is a horrible purgatory created by Kos in which the cursed hunters are doomed to relive the hunt over and over again, and Gehrman is given the worst, most grotesque role of all in that little nightmarish reenactment.
Where the other hunters just relive the violence, or are twisted into even worse shapes than before, Gehrman is made to take the place of Kos's child (Ebrietas??), whom he ripped right out of the womb to take to the healing church as a captive back in the day. His punishment is a recurring nightmare where he takes the child's place, crawling out of her dead mother Kos's womb and immediately being attacked by hunters. A Great Old One's twisted idea of teaching someone a lesson. We come to put him out of his misery as Kos's orphan, stopping his nightmare and letting him sleep soundly.

[s0]

that makes a lot of sense actually

[Tumetsu]

I so want to play that game ;____; Lore seems so interesting.
Half serious I might buy PS4 once I get more money. Oh well, luckily Dark Souls 3 is soon here.

[gimymblert]

[InfiniteStateMachine]

Into the DLC portion of DS2. The game definitely keeps getting better so far. My partner who is not into these games is really into watching me play the game now. We want to see what can happen with the old king.

[s0]

after investing a lot of time into all of these games, i honestly think bloodborne is the best as far as mechanics and level design goes. i also really really enjoy the setting and lore. the way it doesn't immediately draw you in but slowly tightens its grip on you reminded me of playing demon's souls for the first time.

the mouse game looks ok i guess. 

[InfiniteStateMachine]

I think I'd have to play all 4 again to be sure but I could probably get on board with that. The changes to the combat in bloodborne were really nice.