ahh here we are back in the hunter’s dream with at least one insight, home sweet home. things are a little different now. the doll is now animated and speaks to you in the soft voice from the opening cutscene:

Hello, good hunter. I am a doll, here in this dream to look after you. Honorable hunter, pursue the echoes of blood, and I will channel them into your strength. You will hunt beasts… and I will be here for you, to embolden your sickly spirit.

spill blood, collect blood echoes, bring them to you to make me stronger. sure. thanks toots. if your insight drops back down to zero, the doll will return to her inanimate form (but you can still level up). if you’re an animal, you can kill her; you can still level up using her body and the next time you visit the hunter’s dream, she’ll be revived and repeat her opening dialog like its the first time you’ve met. obviously, there are gameplay reasons for you to be able to level up even if you “kill” her…is what i would say if fromsoft was a normal company!!! but there’s a huge chunk of dark souls where some jackass kills the firekeeper at your “safe” zone and it puts the fucking fire out until you finish an optional side quest. fromsoft didn’t have to be nice, so i do not know if its significant that the doll can be “used” even when killed, nor what the mechanisms of the blood echo process are. or if it even matters. you know how it is with bloodborne!

things are worth exploring here now, so let’s get into the nitty gritty. let’s stick with doll facts. most pressing, the doll bleeds what can really only be called “pale blood”. it’s a shade entirely unique to her. it is NOT cum. its NOT.

the doll has a number of randomized behaviors. she can be caught sleeping (?!), praying at plot important graves within the dream, and, before it was cut in the day one patch, would hum a russian lullaby about a wolf getting you.

if you talk to her a few more times, she has some more information for new hunters:

Did you speak with Gehrman? He was a hunter long, long ago, but now serves only to advise them. He is obscure, unseen in the dreaming world. Still, he stays here, in this dream… …such is his purpose.

we haven’t talked to gehrman yet, so guess we’ll do that. funnily enough, it IS possible to run into gehrman before this point. the first time you visit the dream, there’s a decent chance that the old man will spawn behind the workshop where you can walk up on him having a little snooze. WAKE UP BITCH!!!!!

what she means by “obscure, unseen” is that gehrman seems to be literally flickering in and out of the dream. he leaves you a note on the floor later because he’s just AWOL. when you go talk to him inside the chapel-turned-workshop, he’s dressed like a cartoon hobo and his brain is turning into mush.

Ah-hah, you must be the new hunter, eh? Welcome to the Hunter’s Dream. This will be your home, for now. I am [extremely long ass pause as he tries to remember his own name] Gehrman, friend to you hunters. You’re sure to be in a fine haze about now, but don’t think too hard about all of this. Just go out and kill a few beasts, it’s for your own good. You know, It’s just what hunters do. You’ll get used to it.

wow great advice gehrman thanks. “try killing things”. he should recruit for the u.s. army.

talk to his stupid ass again:

This was once a safe heaven for hunters. A workshop where hunters used blood to enhance their weapons and flesh. We don’t have as many tools as we once did, but… You’re welcome to use whatever you find. …Even the doll, should it please you…

alright, shut up creep! eat lead!

 

ooergh

if you simply can’t resist the temptation and hit him with your weapon, he just poofs into white sparkles (and not black nightmare clouds, curiously. other characters either leave corpses or turn into nightmare clouds). fuck this guy. what else we got in here. there’s a workshop bench to do weapon upgrades and maintenance. there’s a weird candlelit altar we can’t use yet. there’s a big huge steamer trunk for storage. there’s a weird statue with sutures on her forehead left over from an alpha build probably. and there’s a note passed to you in secret by some messengers when you approach the back corner of the room:

To escape this dreadful Hunter’s Dream, halt the source
of the spreading scourge of beasts, lest the night carry on forever

not helpful, thanks.

now, hunter: did you know you are SMELLY??? more than one character will express surprise at your smell, noting it as familiar, strange, pleasant, and “moonlit”¹. in fact, your smelly smell gives your presence away in at least one failed attempt to be sneaky later. i imagine that if yharnamites are losing their eyes and turning into dogs, their sense of smell is getting a boost, right? that’s how it works in fiction? it’s a singular scent associated with hunters that’s not “blood or beasts”² that seems to be a rare smell to…sniff…? in modern yharnam. that smell is probably the unique flora of the hunter’s dream!

flora vs fauna is, legitimately, one of the dichotomies set up by bloodborne as becoming unnaturally intertwined, in conflict, and corrupted. the flowers in game are supposed to be lightly analogous to real life flowers but retain unique characteristics that make them impossible to pin to just one plant. these specific flowers look like most star flowers. this is not the only time the plant being referenced has some kind of space theming, so i think it’s a reasonable guess. there’s a field we can’t access yet full of what looks like funeral lilies^[link] which are also a very catholic flower for a very catholic game. these flowers do not appear in the waking world. and they do something weird and subtle later, so stay tuned.

there are two stores here in for the form of baptism fonts staffed by babies. the font that uses insight as currency isn’t selling anything cool yet. the blood echo store has expanded its inventory as a result of obtaining the sword hunter badge, now you can buy the kirkhammer³ and the hunter chief emblem. the emblem is a depiction of the act of communion. we’ll find more proof of this later.

A cloth emblem that belonged to the captain of the Church
hunters long ago. Opens the main gate that leads to the
round plaza of the Great Cathedral.

The main gate is shut tight on nights of the hunt, and could
only be opened from the other side with this emblem. In
other words, the captain’s return, and this
emblem, determined the end of the hunt.

so until ludwig returned and gave the all-clear, the hunt was considered officially “on” and the church gates closed. that’s bad news for us, because we need to get in there. for a new player, the emblem is pricey at 10k echoes. and frankly, what do you get by skipping part of the game on your first run? nothing. save the emblem for NG+.

you can also pick up the yharnam hunter set, but the lore doesn’t tell us anything WE don’t already know. it’s new info for a new player, but WE know all about ludwig and his crew and the tragedy and so on.

the doll has one last thing to say before we head off:

Ahh, the little ones, inhabitants of the dream… They find hunters like yourself, worship, and serve them. Speak words, they do not, but still, aren’t they sweet?

i guess so. the messengers are kind of ugly-cute in their own way. they’re certainly helpful little fellas. we learn from various stupid items that they enjoy playing dress up the way that children do, prefer the dark, and, though we won’t find this out until much later, they can be found in secret areas of the chalice dungeons.

alright, let’s get back to it. adios, good hunter. try not to fall in.

—

well, the bridge was a bust. the only person willing to help us is gilbert, so let’s go back and ask for advice.

Yes, I see… But the great bridge is the only way to the Cathedral Ward. And during the hunt, the bridge is closed… Hmm… You could try the aqueduct? There’s a rather, how shall I put it, colorful area south of the great bridge. From there, an aqueduct leads to the Cathedral Ward.
Not a place you’d normally want to visit, but… I don’t imagine you have much of a choice. Do you?

this english translation fucking sucks. for one thing, no normal person would describe where we’re going as an “aqueduct”, unless gilbert is actively trolling us. it’s a sewer. its not “colorful”, a word you would use to describe a rowdy neighborhood. its POOP. but, he has a point. we can probably infiltrate the cathedral ward from below if the route above is no good.

if you drop off the side of the great bridge, you can reach an area full of caged puppies that immediately break out of said cages and try to kill you (this happens to the hunter so often that he should probably get insured against it). one especially stubborn mutt barks directly at a house with a red lamp, where you can engage in conversation with an old woman about safe places. kinda awkward because you’re new here and you don’t reall-

Yeah, I should’ve known. Ya good-for-nothing…
No respect for the elderly is what that is! Yeah, fat lot of good you outsiders do.
Go on, admit it, you think we’re all mad, don’t ya?
Well, go and stuff it! I know all yer tricks!

wtf

the building in front of you is one of the few buildings in this game that’s completely inexplicable to me. the art book calls it the “dry dock” but that’s insane. part of the area they would have to fill up would be the open sewer in the center of town. how can these people fucking stand there and blame US for spreading the plague when there’s a major waterway filled with THEIR shit and THEIR dead bodies. fucking whatever dudes!

you can reach this area earlier by rolling through some crap near the red lantern’d house full of people who laugh at you. once you figure out that rolling into things can reveal secret locations, you can use this knowledge to break shit in the dry dock to access the rafters. you can carefully walk on these in order to cut down the strung up corpses of some unlucky bastards. it’s a good day for you, however, because one of these fellows is holding the SAW SPEAR!!!!! this thing is like the saw cleaver but better. i will never forget how it saved me in the chalice dungeons. if you know, you know.

more rolling reveals a balcony where an imposing silhouette is taking a break after a fight. her name is eileen the crow.

eileen is a hunter of hunters, a respected position given to someone “from a foreign land”⁴ (in this case, northern england, yharnamites are so xenophobic, they’re afraid of people who live 3 hours away) who is tasked with putting the hunters who have gone mad from the hunt out of their misery and severing their connection to the dream. it would be a big problem if blood drunk hunters just kept respawning in the hunter’s dream over and over again. so, eileen uses “one of the oldest weapons in the workshop”, the blade of mercy,  to “end their contract”, so to speak.

we can intuit some interesting things from the blade of mercy’s description and its relationship to the only other siderite forged weapon in the game, the burial blade, (used by gehrman to sever hunter contracts once they are “fulfilled”). both item descriptions mention that siderite “fell from the heavens”, likely in the form of a meteor based on real world siderite discoveries. both blades deal arcane damage, hinting at their cosmic origin. it all comes down to this: aliens did it.

eileen is a good natured woman who is old enough to have hung out with some of the more obscure old hunters. her iconic outfit is, of course, based on the plague doctor uniforms from the 16th century bubonic plague and late 2000s halloween parties. her mask contains “incense to mask scents of blood and beast” which is an alarming statement, if incense is a burning corpse⁵. i hope what she has in there are like, ashes. and not little chunks of people.

i have some eileen speculation i’d like to review with you: eileen’s title was granted to her from her predecessor, who in turn so on and so forth. in the past, we know of a foreigner who “killed a compatriot“. if brador was the first hunter of hunters (ostensibly), then the caryll rune for the hunter of hunters depicting a bloodletting⁶ makes more sense.

the tradition of bloodletting hasn’t let up. eileen’s gear mentions this interesting tidbit:

Hunters of Hunters dress as crows to suggest sky burial.
[the hunter of hunters] gave the dead a virtuous native funeral ritual, rather than impose a blasphemous Yharnam burial service upon them, with the hope that former compatriots might be returned to the skies, and find rest in a hunter’s dream.

yharnamites are evidently seen as freaks for burying and burning their dead. and also probably for slicing them to fucking pieces. on the other hand, the “sky burial” is not like the somber and reserved real world practice you might be thinking of. remember the two guys hanging from the ceiling in the other room? and one of them had a trick weapon? that guy was probably a hunter, right.

eileen is pleasantly surprised to see you and gives you a warm outsider to outsider greeting. with a warning that tonight is an especially bad night to have arrived, grandma eileen gives us some great items (bold hunter marks), teaches us a fortnite dance⁷, and sends us on our way.

she’s got a point. we’re a hunter, and a hunter must hunt. and all toasters toast toast.

—

alright, now we can just fly past most of this. kill the dudes or whatever. don’t forget to pick up the madman’s knowledge some rats are chewing on. once you get into the poop water, there’s some rotted corpses sploshing around being ominously animated long after they should have died. they’re just yharnamite hunters who didn’t make it, we can tell by the bold hunters marks they rarely drop.

you also run into another common fromsoft enemy from the animal kingdom: a huge pig called the “maneater boar“. it’s been chowing down on the bottomless poop and huntsman soup down here in the sewers; now it’s huge and hepped up on blood and they will burp nasty slow poison on you. enjoy the horrible spectacle of doing a visceral attack on it from behind and pick up the saw hunter badge held by a dead hunter in the pig’s lair. this badge is unremarkable and just gives you access to the entirety of the beginner’s arsenal. the workshop that once produced it is “gone” but the bath messengers will recognize it and “entrust you” with new items to purchase. this is the purpose of collecting these badges; to expand the store. different factions have access to different items. some of these revelations are interesting…!

one of two paths down here will inevitably lead you to the origin of the off-tune ~spoooooky~ music box, a chained up house with bars on the window. knock knock. anyone home? why yes, it’s a tiny child all by herself.

Who… are you?

I don’t know your voice, but I know that smell… Are you a hunter?

Then please, will you look for my mum? Daddy never came back from the hunt and she went to find him, but now she’s gone too I’m afraid. I’m all alone, and scared.

see, you stink. sure kid, no problem.

Really? Oh, thank you!

My m-mum wears a red jeweled brooch. It’s so big and.. and beautiful. You won’t miss it.

Oh, I mustn’t forget… If you find my mum, give her this music box. It plays one of daddy’s favorite songs. And when daddy forgets us, we play it for him so he remembers. Mum’s so silly, running off without it!

sounds foreboding and ominous. thanks for the music box.

A small music box received from a young Yharnam girl. Plays a song shared by her mother and father.

Inside the lid is a small scrap of paper, perhaps an old message. Two names can be made out, however faintly.

Viola and Gascoigne.

you will not believe the fucking rumors and lies made up about this stupid item. it does have SOME mysterious qualities to it, but they will not become relevant until the very, very final portion of the game. as far as i can tell, the only intended game mechanic purpose of the tiny music box is as an assist to new players who might be struggling with the next boss. if you summon gascoigne as a co-operator, he will chuckle if you play it for him. everything else is entirely incidental as a result of the music box having an AOE effect that will accidentally jostle things around it.

—

the sewer leads you to the other side of the great bridge, but requires you to take a back route through what looks like a graveyard. to set the scene: you stumble into a sacred place for respecting the dead covered head to toe in pig entrails and literal, actual shit and are reasonably assaulted on sight for your behaviors and appearance. there’s a tall man⁸ here; maybe you recognize him, if you summoned him for the cleric beast. otherwise, you can intuit from his dress, his weapons, and his actions that he is a fellow hunter who is about to tip into full on hunt induced madness. and if all that isn’t bad enough, he’s irish.

this is father gascoigne, an old hunter once aligned with the healing church (evidently in a “honorary clergy member” sort of way⁹).

gameplay-wise, gascoigne is intended to be the first REAL bottleneck of the game. the cleric beast tests whether or not you can even play a soulsbourne game, but gascoigne will force you to learn how to play the game by its own standards. the parry/stagger/visceral skill is essential to playing the game and refusing to adapt to the fighting style of bloodborne will result in frustration caused entirely by YOU!!!!! stop jumping AWAY and dodge TOWARD the boss, coward! don’t stop to heal!! use the rally mechanic!! NEVER BACK DOWN!!!!

bloodborne lesson five: DON’T BACK DOON, DOOBLE DOON

ok now i can post the music:

a banger track. when it transitions to the second phase track during the fight, it matches your BPM skyrocketing as you realize whats happening. even listening to it now i get goosebumps remembering the feeling of being the hunter and suddenly having the familiar dynamic completely flipped. you are about to become the hunted.

gascoigne is a mirror match on steroids; he has a hunter’s axe and a blunderbuss he can wield one-handed due to being fucking huge. hunters who are able to connect dots will discover that playing the music box will cause gascoigne to stagger in dad-themed anguish, giving them an opportunity to move in for some hits. when gascoigne kills you (he will), he gives you this little bit of exit dialogue revealing that he’s under the impression YOU’RE the beast:

Too proud to show your true face, eh… But a sporting hunt it was.

after losing 30% of his health, he’ll transform his axe and say this:

…What’s that smell? The sweet blood, oh, it sings to me. It’s enough to make a man sick…[the laugh of a man having a wonderful time]

after losing 70% of his health, or hearing the music box three times, gascoigne will clutch his head and transform into a fearsome beast. you can use the music box ONE last time post-transformation before it no longer works. DO NOT USE THE MUSIC BOX THREE TIMES BEFORE HE TRANSFORMS!!!!! you want to put off beasthood as long as you possibly can, because that’s when shit will hit the fan. gascoigne part two has the all the hallmarks of an abhorrent beast in the making right down to having the biggest hit boxes of all time.

do what you have to do to survive, but now is a good time to just unleash molotovs like your life depends on it (it does). put the poor bastard out of his misery. once you’re able to calm down and breathe again, you’ll be sure to notice the difficult to miss corpse that’s been knocked through a wrought iron fence and onto a roof¹⁰.

she’s holding something:

A woman’s bright-red brooch, engraved with the name Viola.

Perhaps the jewel is a gift from a hunter.

ahh, poor miss viola…that’s gonna ruin christmas. according to the bloodborne-wiki’s datamining adventures, the red jeweled brooch icon is stored with the cainhurst icons, meaning it’s likely the same type of gem found in the cainhurst knight garb. 

heartbreaking, isn’t it? a family torn asunder by what is, essentially, a terminal illness caused by forces and powers far beyond what any of them could ever even begin to comprehend. this family was made to suffer for the sins of others and remained largely ignorant to the supernatural machinations that lead to their horrific demise. the hunt’s victims are not limited to the beasts. everyone suffers when someone pursues their self interests.

alright! now let’s crack this motherfucker like a walnut!

Created from a bright-red brooch, this blood gem strengthens the effect of rallying. A quintessential hunter skill, rallying symbolizes the battle-worn hunter who is often the only thing standing after a bloodbath.

look, if you give this to the kid, it’s just going to piss her off and make her cry and get all sad and shit. we don’t have time for this. i’m sure we’ll think of some sort of excuse about where mom went by the time we see that kid again.

the implicit cultural ramifications of this information are that this rare blood gem was not considered a horrific and morbid gift, but rather a prized possession meaningful enough to a woman to be on her person when she met her untimely death. there’s no proof that gascoigne was the one who actually killed her, though the narrative provided by the little girl strongly implies that this is the case. there genuinely is an equal chance it could have been the huntsmen gascoigne is carving up in his opening cut scene and we’re walking in on the final moments of his revenge. in a world (and series of game releases) that is largely sexless and in which relationships are few and far in between, the tiny slivers of romance in the actions of an unarmed woman facing the dangers of the hunt in search of her monstrous husband, in the melody of lullaby shared by two lovers, in the form of a jewel fashioned into an enviable and recognizable brooch…why not let us be happy…and revel as babes…? why not let us at least imagine that viola’s death was not so entirely horrible that it had to be at the hands of her beloved husband?

the lamp that appears after the fight and the key dropped by gascoigne will reveal that this location is the “tomb of oedon”. oedon chapel awaits us just through the gates.

 —

^{1. fauxsefka dialog: “Ah, moonlit scents…”}

^{2.  arianna dialog: “Oh, my, what a queer scent… But I’d take it over the stench of blood and beasts any day. “}

^{3. don’t overthink the use of nordic runes on the kirkhammer, fromsoft has been using runes as shorthand for magic since dark souls.}

^{4. crowfeather garb description, presumably because of the immunity outsiders arguably present}

^{5. and it is. when you break the incense pots in the world, human remains pour out.}

^{6. the un-transformed bloodletter also resembles the shape of the rune. source: your eyeballs}

^{7. teaches you a gesture. these are used to communicate with players for online play but the doll will sometimes clap, bow, or tilt her head in confusion if you do some gestures at her.}

^{8. i dont think gascoigne’s height is a result of any external influence. he’s like a foot and a half taller than us. i think he’s just a lanky fucker. he should have been balling. also, you know, gameplay reasons.}

^{9. gascoigne’s garb description: “The dingy scarf is a Holy Shawl and symbol of the Healing Church, from which Gascoigne would eventually part ways. ‘Father’ is a title used for clerics in a foreign land, and there is no such rank in the Healing Church.”}

^{10. HER BODY DOES NOT DISAPPEAR AT ANY POINT DURING THE GAME. IT IS A GAMER LIE. A GAMER TRICK.}

you are the hunter! you are on the hunt! rush through the streets of central yharnam in your foreign garb cutting down the twisted, monstrous citizens with wild abandon! carve your way past wooden coffins and ornate caskets-hey, what.

the abandoned carriages were one thing, but the deeper you go into central yharnam, the more bizarre your surroundings become. there’s a horse in an advanced state of decomposition stinking up the street (with like, stinky gas clouds you can see lol) that none of the locals have bothered to clean up. empty wheelchairs and baby carriages are doing some heavy environmental storytelling. coffins and caskets are propped up against confusingly placed gravestones and statues, some of which have been chained shut (to keep opportunistic body snatchers out, or to keep whatever’s in there inside). and in an act of unprecedented catholicism, the townsfolk are uh…they’re uhhh. doing crucifixions.

there are a few houses with red lanterns you can knock on. word about you has spread surprisingly quickly. if you were expecting a bravo for putting your life on the line for a city you don’t even live in, you’d be wrong.

 

when you open the shortcut from iosefka’s clinic to the center of town, there’s an alcove you can dip into with a heavy hitter: the aggravatingly poorly named “executioner“. you can easily see why people would be inclined to call them executioners based their visual resemblance to the western stock character. but the japanese is more like “dismantling man”¹ or, using the parlance of the setting, butchers. they have some visual overlap with other butcher themed enemies who are chopping up bodies for nefarious yharnam purposes. and they share the same pattered hood from the butcher’s set!

before discovering this detail and learning about the loss in translation, these guys seemed truly inexplicable and confusing. the areas they appeared in felt random and they have no identifying markers to indicate which faction they belong to and what their purpose is besides kicking our ass. well, they’re dismantling/butchering people. they even keep some trophies on their belt, if you can get close enough to see.

in a central square, yharnamites sprouting fur and claws shamble toward a scourge beast they’ve nailed to a cross. more than a dozen stand around blankly staring at the beast until a church bell tolls in the distance, then they begin their slow, aimless shuffling back up the road to continue the hunt before the bell’s toll calls them back. they seem barely aware of their surroundings until they see you, which sends them into a frothing rage. they are armed with saws, cleavers, pitchforks, axes, crude wooden shields, torches, and the slowest shotguns ever created in human history. back in the old days you could just sidestep bullets if you were paying attention. oh, and there’s some dogs or whatever. like, real dogs. not people dogs. irish wolfhounds and dobermann were the dogs of choice, apparently.

new time players, you might find yourself stuck and frustrated with this part. the game wants you to realize that in every encounter, you will have two options: kill them all or beat feet.

bloodborne lesson three: if it sucks, hit da bricks!

—

it’s pretty hard to ignore the fucking tolkien-esque troll pounding on the gate and roaring, but closer inspection will reveal that the huntsman’s minions are just very big regular (?) boys in the process of becoming wolves who just happen to want to hit you with a brick (or an entire statue, in one case). their behavior is simple and childlike, and upon death some will plead for the warmth of a “sister” (from the church, like a nun). there no basis for this belief i have other than choosing to believe it because it’s funny: without the guidance of the huntsmen, the minions continue their masonry work without direction, resulting in the awkward piles of statues and gravestones all over central yharnam. this is why the placement of these elements are so awkward and strange; they’re just kind of on autopilot doing what they always do. i think it can be reasonably assumed that these were once children under the care of the church who flunked out of their orphanage program. or passed it. it’s not clear.

carrion crows are so bloated that they are too heavy to fly, either because they have gorged themselves on raw human corpse meat or the eyes they plucked out for a snack have hardened and turned into pebbles. quite thrilling.

i think everyone notices that the pebbles resemble eyeballs a little too closely to be a coincidence. and given the description of the blood stone shard, found in the bodies of deceased yharnamites, they probably were.

After death, a substance in the blood hardens, and that which does not crystalize is called a blood stone.

blood gems, blood stones, and pebbles all form under the same mysterious circumstances. the blood in yharnam either never coagulates or hardens into solid stone. a funny note about the crows is that they will sometimes, rarely, drop other round objects they’ve eaten such as antidotes and beast blood pellets. lol. stupid ass crows.

clearing out this area will quiet things down enough that you can hear the faint tinkle of a music box coming from a home behind a locked gate. we’ll keep that in mind and head up the stairs to the great bridge, which leads to the cathedral ward so we can ask about paleblood like our pal gilbert told us to.

—

this proves to be harder than it looks; there’s a pair of scourge beasts walking back and forth aimlessly just to be in your way. you COULD try to take them on now…or you could cross the road and check out the rickety scaffolding that someone has been building that leads into the…sewer? its gotta be a sewer, right? astoundingly, there’s coffins down here too…and a different type of huntsman. the large huntsman is the tipping point between man and beast…but not quite fully there; the large huntsman will NOT take bonus damage from serrated weapons, a feature unique to enemies classified as “beasts”. however, he WILL take damage from beasthunter blood gems. he is also developing an uncanny resemblance to the ailing loran cleric.

this area is also home to the first appearance of a fromsoft enemy staple: giant rats. fromsoft thinks that rats and dogs move like knight chess pieces and will attack you by changing direction mid-air somehow. these rats are called “labyrinth rats” in the art book, which is probably why they look so fucked up. they too have been snacking on the magic blood that turns you into a monster. the rats on the surface have either just started their transformation or have been above ground long enough that they no longer inflict rapid poison like the rats in the chalice dungeons with the larger boils.

i didn’t bring you down here to get the shit kicked out of you and eaten by rats. at the very end of the route is a sheer cliff and a large huntsman waiting to surprise you and push you off of it. kick his ass and take a look at what he was fiddling with: a hunter’s corpse. well, sucks to suck, bitch! let’s make like new vegas and steal this shithead’s clothes.

what a handsome boy we are now.

the quintessential hunter set was based off the fashion sensibilities of the legendary old hunter djura² and the need for speed emphasized by the hunters of the old workshop, like maria and gehrman. your foreign set had terrible stats (except for a good resistance against slow poison (ashen blood). the stats of the set have the light implication that you, as an outsider, have an immunity or resistance to ashen blood. hence why the plague metaphor exploded into flames in your really nice dream you had. but the hunter set, with its capes and full body cover and thick leathers, protects you from all means of physical damage and beast inflicted damages. uhh. most beast inflicted damages. i mean THIS guy is fucking dead after all.

many of the conventions established by the old hunters still appear in the outfit beyond the hat; the gloves and boots are fortified with the anti microbial metals and now straps run up and down both legs, rather than just a single strap on the right.

lookin’ good! you should now look like the guy on the box. you won the game, congratulations.

—

armor is weird in bloodborne because it actually matters, unlike other fromsoft games where it seems to exist exclusively so we can play dress up with our little jerky man. with the hunter set, you now have a fighting chance against those scourge beasts. now you simply go into a stranger’s house so you can kill everyone inside unprompted. on the first floor, all the way in the back, is an intriguing lantern light and an item.

haha just kidding idiot. its an old man in a wheelchair who is about to or likely already has shot you directly in the face with the first handgun invented to kill elephants. slap him so you can read the lore note.

When the hunt began, the Healing Church left us,
blocking the great bridge to Cathedral Ward, as
Old Yharnam burned to the ground that moonlit night

incomprehensible if this is your first play-through. and a little confusing if you are keeping up. the re-translation is clearer:

(On the) night of the beast hunt, the Great Bridge to the Cathedral Ward was blocked off.
The Healing Church intends to abandon us.
Just like the night of that moon, when *Old Yharnam was abandoned in flames.

oh wait. shit. that’s the bridge we need to be on. what do they mean blocked. oh fuck!! they’re gonna old yharnam us!!!

—

head back to the great bridge and go take a look at this bridge situation for yourself. but then…you hear a deafening, but familiar, inhuman screech! it’s the sound of whatever howled at you earlier!

AND THEN A GUY JUMPS OUT AND GETS YA!!!

OOGA BOOGA BOOGA!!

i’m putting this in an author’s note because its not like. lore related. but they have footage documenting how this song was recorded. every song was performed by a live (?!) 65 piece orchestra and a 32 member choir in the lyndhurst road congregational church (a converted music studio). it took 6 composers two years to compose and they are absolutely not fucking around when it comes to their purpose in the game development cycle. when i post the soundtracks, i really do suggest you listen to them as you read along. they’re good. and you get to imagine all of them being sung by the most normal looking people in the whole world. someone’s grampy was belting out the most evil sounding latin on weekdays.

oh, and keep this in mind: boss tracks will have a distinct change midway through the track. in the game, this is usually triggered by a boss entering a second phase.

as a result of working through the timeline in chronological order, we’ve already seen cleric beasts by way of laurence. so, this is just laurence without fire. or laurence is a cleric beast on fire. whatever. he was a cleric and now he’s a beast. simple as. now that we can see him properly, we can make out some distinct characteristics. and i’m going to suggest something ~thematic~.

the cleric beast has no eyes, only sockets where they used to be. most of the enemies we run into have milky, blind eyes (including the dogs and crows) or have covered their eyes using a mask or bandages. people have often wondered why the covered eyes is a thing and how they chase you so good if their eyes are covered, and i think i have a pretty good answer: remember the beast/cosmos dichotomy? if the result of allying yourself to the cosmos is that you obtain many eyes, and given all the pebbles just…lying around all over the place…could it be that they’re just…falling out (one such case being the eye of a blood drunk hunter)? and as for how they see you, well…remember the fully blind (and probably dead) bloodletting beast WITH the head? puppeted by an enormous maggot? they don’t need eyes to get you.

the cleric beast looks like he’s been through the wringer. he’s missing huge patches of hair, he’s got nails sticking out of his legs, and frankly it looks like his head has been charbroiled. his face looks freaky and unrecognizable because it’s scar tissue and exposed skull. whoever this was likely just escaped from his own burning crucifixion. lmfao hey i just noticed he has the item he drops at the end of this fight, the sword hunter badge, around his neck.

and yeah okay he has a huge vagina cavern in his chest with a clit and everything and a huge arm that makes it look like he beats off a lot. okay. are you happy.

i’m not going to ruminate over the yonic and phallic imagery, but it is there. i can’t just not comment on it. you will see this style of chest deformation in repeatedly in those transforming into beasts and with the beasts come blood, the moon, and open wounds. the phallic cosmos (lmfao i know how i sound) is associated with infestation, the alien, and the space (literally) surrounding the moon. look there’s a c- english paper in here somewhere that dives into how both of these extremes revolve around attempting to explore the unique horror of pregnancy and birth but i’m not going to subject that to anyone. see, now you’re sorry you asked about the vagina cavern.

i will share my bloodborne wisdom with you for fights. just seeing the cleric beast will net you your first two points of insight, so if you die, you will be able to level up. since he is a beast he takes damage from fire and serrated weapons. if you are really, really struggling you can summon an ally by the name of old hunter father gascoigne³ near the fountain. i refuse to believe that you struggle so much that you have to wait a full moon cycle until you can summon old hunter alfred. i didn’t even know you could summon alfred for this fight. you cannot be that bad. it is not possible. and if all else fails, go left.

bloodborne lesson four: go left.

the cleric beast, hysterically, explodes into a rain of blood and leaves you with two more points of insight and the sword hunter badge.

use the lamp that appears to warp back to the hunter’s dream for a quick rest.

—

^{1. this is using the name for them in the art book. bloodborne-wiki has a different name for them (literally just “executioner”, which would fuck up my RANT) but it came from datamined files. so i am unsure if they are mistaken or if the datamined name is different.}

^{2. hunter’s cap description: “Recognizable by its withered feathers, this cap is fashioned after one of the old hunters.”}

^{3. gascoigne at one point was supposed to be a friendly NPC you meet on the great bridge to explicitly help you with the cleric beast. he has cut voice lines and a working AI and everything. i have no idea why they cut this, except maybe it made everything too easy. its too bad, it really adds a lot of sauce to gascoigne’s short arc in the game.}

 

bloodborne begins just shortly after your hunter-to-be asks an unknown question regarding a mysterious “paleblood“. in the opening cut-scene, a rare moment where the player occupies the POV of the hunter themselves, a man wearing the most evil top hat humanly possible dressed like a scarecrow that just got mugged of his eyeballs (the “blood minister”) rolls toward you in his Evil Horror Wheelchair™️ and starts saying a bunch of shit that makes no sense to you or anyone, for that matter.

“Oh, yes…Paleblood…”

this lying ass bitch has no idea what “paleblood” is. i guess there’s no proof he’s actually bullshitting us, but why would he know what it is. he says it in the same cadence as someone trying to soothe a startled horse and not like he has any definitive understanding of the actual question being asked. i think this guy is just making a hard sell like a car dealer. he is truly a character of no importance in any version or build of the game. i think its funniest if he’s just some asshole who makes a commission per hunter he gets to sign up and is like “oh for sure, dude. whatever. sign here.”

the hunter agrees to “sign a contract” (create a character) which is a relatively unexciting process save for a few notes:

• the “noble scion” origin (a set of pre-made character builds to start with) has the descriptor, “scion to a respectable line with faith in your pedigree” and specializes in bloodtinge.
• the “military veteran” origin is the only mentions of a war that occurred recently enough for you to have partaken in it. just a little (truly) useless flavor.
• everyone’s favorite is the low stat challenge origin “waste of skin”: “You are nothing. Talentless. You shouldn’t have been born.” y-you too.

for this playthrough, our hunter is going to be a man named hunter, in honor of all the 6-11 year old boys who get yelled at in targets across america. we too are going to get yelled at by a bunch of strangers for getting into things we are not supposed to. however, the hunter has no canon gender, age, or appearance. the only information set in stone about the hunter is that they are just some schlub from out of town who remembers very little about their life before showing up in yharnam. that, and they do not have the common sense to refuse a blood and/or unknown substance transfusion from the world’s sickliest senior citizen who looks like he hasn’t washed his hands ever in his life. the hunter is a fucking idiot lol. what a dumb ass. like, after he figures out what he’s been roped into why doesn’t he just go home and take a nap. is he stupid?? let’s kill him

“Whatever happens…You may think it all a bad dream…”

—

this is the only appearance of the blood minister in the entire game. he is an inconsequential character, but a bizarre one. i seriously don’t think he’s particularly important to the plot and world of bloodborne; i don’t think he’s the missing lore link who will tie all this shit together once and for all. but there are points of his monologue that come off as quite strange when you think about it too much: what the hell does he mean by “you need only unravel its mystery” when it comes to yharnam. what the fuck does he mean by that. in the japanese translation he seems to be a little more direct in his sales pitch: yharnam blood will lead you to paleblood. but he won’t talk to outsiders until they “sign a contract” and get a yharnam infusion. still weird. why would he know how to get paleblood???  well, at least we get SOME information out of him. maybe?

the minister once had a larger role in the game but, in my opinion his excision from the plot was a creative one in the game’s favor. he appeared briefly as an NPC you can speak to after you wake up from your blood transfusion. he would assign you a backstory that ehhhh, you know. it overreaches a little too much in comparison to what a completely blank slate offers us. the minister’s exposition dump fucking sucks¹:

“Welcome, weary traveler. To the great city of Yharnam. The troubles you must have seen. Your homeland, plagued by a sickness that spares few. You suffer. Your loved ones suffer. It’s like a curse. But there is hope for you yet. The blood used in ministration, the trade of Yharnam, is a special thing indeed…The only thing that can cure your sickness…”

the result is a bit too on the nose and raises the same questions: why does this asshole know this? maybe we look like we come from a certain place; everyone DOES instantly recognize us as a yharnam outsider, after all. i dunno. it answers some questions but raises more that are confusing and not worth investigating (what is the disease? where did the curse come from? are we visibly sick? how so? etc). i like it better when the hunter is just some dipshit who asked a question that got him roped into an eternal shift as a dog catcher for the city as cosmic punishment for his curiosity.

—

the hunter does in fact have a bad dream with some heavy-handed imagery: a scourge beast² made out of blood emerges from a puddle of, take a guess- blood before reaching its claws toward you with slow and palpable dread. on the first viewing, you may think that the beast is creeping forward to attack you while you’re helplessly strapped to a gurney, but on “new game plus” (NG+) knowing what you know about the scourge, it will realize that the beast is extending its hand toward you in invitation. then it erupts into flames for no apparent reason and dies. consider this both a metaphor for your good wholesome blood fighting off the beast scourge in the transfusion and a tutorial: dogs hate fire. the hunter reacts like “huh, well that was weird. well, back to transfusin’.” absolutely no sells this. what a pro.

suddenly, you are swarmed by what appears to be an alarming number of ghostly white, deformed, infant critter things. they slowly, almost gently, crawl all over you doing god knows what until the hunter decides he’s had enough of this shit and blacks out (as you are about to wake from this dream). as your consciousness fades away, a soft, russian-accented voice addresses these little freaks with solemn admiration:

“Ahh, you’ve found yourself a hunter…”

you wake up on the gurney alone in a strange medical ward. there is nothing to interact with or signs or any other life in this transfusion room. except a note in your own handwriting³:

“Seek Paleblood to transcend the hunt.”

—

now, this is very important: step one of bloodborne is to die. after leaving the transfusion room, the player will almost immediately be accosted by a scourge beast with half a health bar⁴, suggesting that the man he’s gobbling down put up a decent fight before he became dinner. don’t be afraid.

the first lesson of bloodborne: it’s okay to die.  

after you get your shit rocked, you will regain consciousness in a strange place. the amount of brain damage we must have from passing out so much must be incalculable.

 

before you is a garden of white cosmos (the flower, not outer space. but, get it. lol) with a cobblestone path leading to a dwelling of some kind. perhaps a chapel, judging from the empty baptismal fonts stationed near it. its doors, and the wrought iron doors opening up into a field of lilies, are locked tight. to the left, there is an item you can examine.

further up the stairs, the little baby dudes are back, weeping loudly and weirdly. they have some gifts for you: a trick weapon of your choice and a gun* to pair it with. the weapons, an axe, a saw, and a cane, are modified day to day tools or equipment and are well worn from age and use. a first time player would be wise to pick up the saw cleaver and the pistol. the threaded cane is a trick to make you hate playing video games and i don’t know who the blunderbuss is even for. having a spread shot will not be to your advantage with how we will be using it.

you can wander around a bit more, but there’s not much else here. gravestones litter the tiny landscape, but you cannot “use” most of them yet. there is one you can use right now to teleport from this location to back to yharnam by means of the strange blue-purple lanterns you will now find along your journey. these will act as checkpoints, respawn points, and your means to return to this hub world.

beyond the fence that lines the perimeter of the small, floating rock the garden sits on, there is nothing but a sea of clouds pierced with strange, wooden beams that continue up into infinity and down into whatever lies below. the pale moon hangs high overhead.

this is the hunter’s dream.

note: music does not typically appear in the overworld in fromsoft games. this allows you to listen in on enemies trying to sneak up on you or get spooked by the sound of footsteps. special exception are typically carved out for the “safe” hub areas like the firelink shrine of dark souls or uh, the other firelink shrine from dark souls 3. the hunter’s dream is no different. please enjoy the linked music, especially when we get to the boss battle bangers.

now get the fuck out of there and go kill that dog!!!!

—

the bottom red line blocking a doorway is the one we’ve just come through at the start; it’s now locked and can no longer be accessed for now. after respawning at the lamp, our hunter is free to fearlessly cut down the scourge beast and make their way outside. it’s twilight in central yharnam. the sun is setting.

BUT: if you return to the locked door, you’ll find that you can chat to an NPC behind it. the woman introduces herself as iosefka, who is a doctor (presumably). she informs you that you can’t be let back in without risking further spread of infection. as thanks for your service, however, she offers you a single use item you can come back and stock up on one at a time: iosefka’s blood vial. it’s uh, weird.

The product of a slow and careful refinement process,
this rare blood vial appears to be a clinic original.

girl what the fuck. what does that mean. it restores more hp than a regular blood vial but that’s not really going to help you in this game. i think this is generally accepted to be serum, which is similar to plasma except the blood is allowed to clot before it’s put in a centrifuge. the result is a thin yellow liquid with no white or red blood cells. i think the “slow and careful refinement process” is supposed to be a little tongue in cheek means of differentiating this spooky not-blood from the spooky-not blood of real life; the centrifugal process is anything but slow and careful.

—

after chopping the dog into mincemeat, you will gain your first blood echoes. you will carry this “collective will” from the blood until you can use it to level up (after we explore most of the first section, the challenge of this first bit is to learn to hang onto your blood echoes). blood echoes function like souls in the souls games with one exception: enemies can pick up your dropped blood echoes (!) necessitating you to defeat them to gain them back. this will also be your first experience with the rally mechanic; in order to encourage and facilitate lightning fast, high risk/high reward game play, you can recover a large percentage of lost hp by consecutive retaliating attacks within a short time limit. each hit recovers more of the lost hp. the in-universe explanation for this is that the blood from your enemies invigorates you. makes sense. just like real life.

exiting iosefka’s clinic, there’s a sight you don’t want to see near a hospital: a graveyard. it’s fenced off for now so the only way is forward into central yharnam, which is in absolute disarray. strewn about are suitcases and clothing with no owners, there are carriages that have been abandoned and the horses nowhere to be seen, and the locals are total dicks. the huntsmen roaming the streets during this twilight of the hunt keep yelling terrible things at you that hurt your feelings like “YOU ARE NOT WANTED HERE!” and “YOU PLAGUE-RIDDEN RAT!” and it’s all very unkind. also they’re hitting you with axes and shooting you in the face and such. luckily, they’re also pretty lethargic, so you can get the jump on most of these guys just by running up on them from behind. the problem is the sheer NUMBER of huntsmen stumbling around tonight. everybody is out and about.

there’s only three huntsmen in the way here and two of them are taking a little nap on the floor; this is the games way of introducing you to the different “states” enemies can be in: patrolling, alert but static, and “asleep”. after dispatching of these fellows, pull the lever on the right to drop an iron ladder down to where you can reach it.

as you climb the ladder, an absolutely HIDEOUS, but distinctly inhuman screech will echo out. don’t worry about it. keep climbing. at the top is your next checkpoint blue lantern and a very curious red lantern, hanging outside of a window covered in padlocks and chains.

the image above is a little inaccurate, the gate to the left should not be open yet. right now, there’s nowhere to go but right. but first. let’s go up to the window and have a little chat with the occupant. red lanterns indicate the presence of an NPC inside of a building you can speak to. this scottish fellow is gilbert.

bloodborne lesson 2: make friends!

he’s so sick he can’t even stand, so he’ll have to speak to you through the window. he, like you, is an outsider⁵ and and came to yharnam looking for a cure but got the same welcome from the locals. he warns you that the town is cursed and to get out once you get whatever you came here for. but he’s up to chat and answer some questions:

“Paleblood, you say? Hmm… Never heard of it. But if it’s blood you’re interested in, you should try the Healing Church.”

yeah, that sounds like an organization with good intentions. let’s try it. gilbert advises you to cross the valley via the huge bridge you can see from where you’re standing if you turn around. from there, we’ll progress to the cathedral ward where the grand cathedral is located. normally, gilbert says, yharnamites do not share their secrets with outsiders. but if you take advantage of the chaos of the hunt…well, we might have a chance.

tally-ho!

—

^{1. here is a lance mcdonald video about this cut content. all of this shit is from a very old build where the “ebrietas” he mentions in his cut content was the name of the moon presence. its very far removed from the end product.}

^{2. all of the fromsoft cut-scenes are rendered in engine, but i don’t know where this guy is in the files. i would be interested to know what his eye color is. hard to tell.}

^{3. the japanese translation clarifies that what is called simply “handwritten scrawl” in english is YOUR handwritten scrawl.}

^{4. you CAN defeat this wolf with only your fists, but there’s no point. the game doesn’t reward you. if anything its more contemptuous of your behaviors and abilities because now if you want to progress the game you have to go and stand around waiting for someone to kill you like a total moron.}

^{5. very strange that he’s able to determine you’re an outsider entirely by how you dress.}

^{*completely inconsequential but funny detail: one of the messengers is looking down the barrel of the pistol lol}