[OOC] Night of the Hunt - a Bloodborne RP

[Bartimaeus]

Still here 🙂 I’m alright with moving along in our scene, @Ashgan @Dark Jack.

[Ashgan]

There, short but gets the story moving forward again. :3

[Habibi359]

My holiday is, sadly, over. So I'm home with my trusty PC and can continue as convenient.

[Ashgan]

Hey people, I randomly found this image on Pinterest earlier and thought it was really cool. Figured I'd share it since it's relevant:

Hider

[Dark Jack]

I actually went back and played Bloodborne some the other day for various reasons, and found various quite interesting things in the game I hadn't noticed or seen mentioned before, especially in Castle Cainhurst. Like, did you realize that every single one of the multitude of statues of mounted knights there are missing their right leg, just like Gehrman does? Despite these statues presumably predating Gehrman and the Healing Church?
I spent quite a while studying the different statues and paintings at the castle, and noticed one particular carving that seemed really interesting: (found pictures online, because taking screenshots on PS4 is annoying) upper and lower part. Been wondering what it means. The way that carving seems to levitate just over the ground reminds me of when Lady Maria enters her final phase. I have no idea what the doughnut-looking thing in her right hand is supposed to be, but the thing on her left arm looks faintly feather- or fin-like. It also may just be my imagination, but doesn't it look a little as though it's wrapped around her wrist rather than held in her hand?

Also, @Th3King0fChaos? Are you still with us?

[Ashgan]

Her left arm doesn't just have the weird feather thing but also seems to have no resemblence to a human hand at all anymore.

As for the missing leg, yeah I did notice that, thanks to some video a few years ago. It gets even more interesting when you consider a tiny tidbit on the Old Hunter Trousers: A widespread belief of the period was that "beast blood crept up the right leg," and this led to the double-wrapped belt.

[Dark Jack]

Hmm... arguable whether I'd say that the left hand doesn't look like a human hand; the lack of details and general stylization of the motif makes it hard to tell. My assumption was that it was just a hand with fingers outstretched and turned sideways relative to the perspective of the viewer/artist, and the rest being the feather/fin wrapping around the arm and hand. Still... it hadn't even occurred to me that the thing might not be something on or in her arm, but could be an actual part of her arm. At first I thought it might be an early stage of a lost child of antiquity, but it just doesn't look right for that. Then I thought maybe it was actually a fin, like with the fishmen from the fishing village... but why would Cainhurst venerate those?
Then, playing some more Bloodborne yesterday and finding a certain rune, it hit me: I was thinking too narrowly. I don't think its a feather or a fin anymore; I think it's a leaf. I think the arm bears a striking resemblance to the arms of a cauliflower Hunter (otherwise known as Lumenwood Kin) that you get from equipping the Milkweed rune, only possibly even further along since it has grown a leaf. If so, the implications are quite interesting... It's as if she has somehow limited the transformation to just part of herself, becoming kin while retaining her humanity... not unlike Hunters. (EDIT: In fact it's a striking parallel to Hunters being able to beastify just one hand to perform visceral attacks.)
I still have no clue what the doughnut is supposed to be, though. There's nothing in the game I'd say really looks anything like it.

And yeah, I'd spotted the connection to the tidbit from the Old Hunter Trousers myself (rather, I remembered that it was mentioned somewhere, but not specifically which piece of legwear had the lore attached to it). What fascinates me so much about the knights, however, is that they predate the old Hunters, meaning that this superstition existed even before Byrgenwerth discovered their medium of blood healing... which meant that they knew beasts were people even long before the Healing Church.
And the fact that these one-legged statues are found specifically at Cainhurst, along with carvings of a maybe-not-quite-human woman... I must admit, I kind of feel the idea of the Vilebloods having been different even before the Healing Church galvanize with this.

Also, happy New Year whenever you hit midnight!

[Habibi359]

Unless @Dark Jack has other plans, I'll post during the weekend to advance plot at the clinic.

[Dark Jack]

Just in case you aren't one to take silence/lack of objection as agreement, you're free to go ahead, Habibi.

[Bartimaeus]

Terribly sorry about the wait for my post. Getting new jobstuffs situated lately, that accompanied by promised presences in certain RPs that've been in planning has spread me a little thin x3

[Dark Jack]

You know, I was just going about my business after writing that quick snippet for the clinic-scene, but for whatever reason something kept nagging me and I kept thinking about Bloodborne. The (false) Paleblood Hunters reminded me of the Hunter's Dream and the Doll, and something that really stood out to me from the Doll's dialogue when I heard it on my recent playthrough of the game came back to me:

Good hunter... Your presence somehow soothes... I sense the ancient echoes, they course your veins...

The Doll

This was remarkable because I wondered at the time what had triggered her to say this, as I realized that she had made no such comment after me killing Amygdala, despite it being undeniably ancient. So I looked it up, and the trigger for this line is apparently to have killed Rom.
But that doesn't make sense; Rom is explicitly referenced as a Byrgenwerth scholar, which would make her, at most, a human lifetime older than the Healing Church, if she happened to be basically about to die of old age when she ascended. There is very little means of determining how long ago it was, but Redgrave (author of The Paleblood Hunt) estimated that Gehrman had been held in the Hunter's Dream for about a hundred years. We also know that Master Willem was alive at the time of her ascension, and that he remains so at the time of the game; Willem (despite surprisingly having more HP than most of the huntsmen found in the game) also seems to be almost entirely human (aside from a bit of weirdness on the back of his neck), and he seems both very weak and very old. His research/Rom might have extended Willem's life past its natural span, but still, it sort of sets some parameters on how old Rom might reasonably be.

Now, even if I'm super generous with this and presume Rom to be in excess of two hundred years old (which would make Willem... surprisingly youthful for his age), it's still somewhat arguable whether this would make her "ancient". Still, it probably wouldn't be wrong to label her as such... but then I considered that Rom is the only one to elicit this response. Bypassing her, it is possible to kill Amygdala, Ebrietas and Queen Yharnam, not to mention various other, obviously and undeniably ancient creatures in the old labyrinth; all of which are are definitely much older than Rom. (Not to mention that you can literally kill Rom in the old labyrinth before encountering her in the lake, and still not get that dialogue.)
But even if we disregard the old labyrinth for being extra optional, and Amygdala for being optional as well - if we consider only the things one needs to kill before getting to Rom - we still encounter a problem: the Shadows of Yharnam. Even these guys, being Pthumerians, are much older than Rom, and the player needs to kill them to reach Rom.
So... how does that line make sense? It could just be that Rom possesses and passes on the blood echoes of Kos, but even that brings up new questions, like why Rom would have Kos' blood echoes (unless Rom killed Kos?) and why Kos is apparently more ancient than Amygdala?

So I looked up the lore on blood echoes yet again, one of the things that has always sort of been that throwaway, manga-esque bit that was just an excuse to have "souls, but in Bloodborne". It confirmed what I remembered (and wrote for the OP):

Blood Echoes are the echo of someone's will. Like a ghost is the lingering image of a person, Blood Echoes are the lingering presence of their will that stays long after the person has passed away.

Bloodborne Fandom Wiki

But then I read on, looking specifically for something that would explain Rom triggering that dialogue, and I read a trivia line about them that I have read before, but which now hit me a whole lot harder:

In the Japanese version, it is called "Dying Wishes of the Blood".

Bloodborne Fandom Wiki

Not just "dying wish" or "dying will", as I remembered, but specifically the dying wishes "of the Blood". Then I read it all again. And again.
"Blood Echoes are the echo of someone's will. Like a ghost is the lingering image of a person, Blood Echoes are the lingering presence of their will that stays long after the person has passed away."
Nowhere in that does it say that the dying will passed on is that of the creature slain in that moment, nor does it say that it is echoes of those slain by that creature. It occurred to be that with the Orphan of Kos, the player actually witness the orphan being born before the battle; it only became active once approached by the player, and has thus not killed anyone to accumulate blood echoes from... yet one receives a substantial amount of them for slaying it.

My theory, then, is this: all blood echoes, from the measly amount received from huntsmen and crows to those from the strongest bosses, are echoes of the Great Ones; specifically, given their name in Japanese, dead Great Ones. The fact that the Doll only sense the soothing "ancient echoes" after killing Rom, then, is not because Rom's blood echoes were especially ancient, but rather because killing her has lowered the barrier separating the waking world from the Great Ones.
In other words, it is not that the player comes into possession of new echoes that are ancient, but that something ancient now echoes strongly and palpably inside of the player... perhaps the same thing that seems to drive everyone else mad after killing Rom? Something now echoing strongly in their blood? And if so... it is very interesting that something that drives everyone else (except the especially powerful, namely Hunters and Queen Annalise) mad is "soothing" to the Doll.

[Ashgan]

I'm going to play devil's advocate here if you'll indulge me, as I cannot really overcome my bias against blood echoes. The first point I want to make is that Rom's defeat is a game state trigger for a metric ton of things. The Doll's voice line being just one of them, I don't know that we can necessarily say that it is directly aimed at making commentary on Rom's blood echoes. It's easily imaginable that the designers figured "Okay, it's the halfway point in the game, player probably has a bunch of blood echoes by now. Seems appropriate to put the line in here", and they used Rom's death as the trigger to make it appear. In other words, the Doll doesn't so much say it in response to Rom's death as she does to the passage of time that has elapsed so far. To support my point, I would also point toward how killing Gascoigne makes the sun descend, and how killing Amelia turns dusk into night. Surely nobody would argue that it is their deaths that caused this, but simply a gameplay contrivance to advance the time of day in relation to the player's progress in the game. In a similar vein, I think Rom's death is simply the trigger for a bunch of new things in the game. Maybe I'm selling From short but for all their genius in world building, I think they frequently do make gameplay concessions; Souls titles are not story-driven games, so I feel that much of the things we are presented with have to be taken with a grain of salt. I also wonder what the line is like in the original Japanese script, and whether it would have a different implication.

Second, I'm not sure why you conclude (or posit the theory) that all blood echoes represent the lingering will of the great ones. While it is certainly plausible that a trace of their will would be present in anyone treated with the old blood since it is literally the blood of the old ones being injected into you, I don't see why we should discredit the wills of the dying. Both the Jap and English descriptions for Echoes, which you quoted, to me sound a lot like they are implying that the dying wishes of a recently deceased linger on for a while, like a ghost. Ghosts too are often said to linger in the mortal world because there is some unfinished business they left behind, so the comparison is really apt. Moreover, I also don't think the theory holds water because some of the things we kill, I find doubtful that there is even any connection to great ones. For instance, take wild animals - dogs and crows. I find it a bit difficult to imagine that they have all been treated with blood ministration, and I'm not sure how else they would have "acquired" ancient blood echoes otherwise.

That said, I like the link you establish at the end, that it is something in people's veins that drives them mad during the blood moon, and not just the mere closeness of the moon (which is definitely coming nearer) and a weakening of the barrier between worlds. I also like that it would soothe the doll, while driving others insane. Also worth pointing out that the song Winter Lanterns (whose ties to the Doll are undeniable) sing is pretty "soothing" if you listen to it, and we all know what happens when you are exposed to them.

[Dark Jack]

I'm going to play devil's advocate here if you'll indulge me, as I cannot really overcome my bias against blood echoes. The first point I want to make is that Rom's defeat is a game state trigger for a metric ton of things. The Doll's voice line being just one of them, I don't know that we can necessarily say that it is directly aimed at making commentary on Rom's blood echoes. It's easily imaginable that the designers figured "Okay, it's the halfway point in the game, player probably has a bunch of blood echoes by now. Seems appropriate to put the line in here", and they used Rom's death as the trigger to make it appear. In other words, the Doll doesn't so much say it in response to Rom's death as she does to the passage of time that has elapsed so far. To support my point, I would also point toward how killing Gascoigne makes the sun descend, and how killing Amelia turns dusk into night. Surely nobody would argue that it is their deaths that caused this, but simply a gameplay contrivance to advance the time of day in relation to the player's progress in the game. In a similar vein, I think Rom's death is simply the trigger for a bunch of new things in the game. Maybe I'm selling From short but for all their genius in world building, I think they frequently do make gameplay concessions; Souls titles are not story-driven games, so I feel that much of the things we are presented with have to be taken with a grain of salt.

Ashgan

I will start out by saying that, in theorizing about Bloodborne (and a lot of other games, for that matter), I try to avoid the meta-angle as much as possible due to how insanely difficult it makes theorizing. If I were to comment on the meta-reality of blood echoes, yes, I fully agree that their presence in Bloodborne is most likely just to mimic souls from Dark Souls mechanically (which, in turn, mimicked souls from Demon's Souls; I'd argue that if we get technical, souls (aside from Lord Souls and the like, which actually do have lore significance) didn't make sense contextually in Dark Souls either and most likely only were there because they were in Demon's Souls and still sort of made sense thematically in Dark Souls).
In isolation I would probably dismiss blood echoes in a heartbeat, but they don't exist in isolation, and dismissing them would create a problematic precedence. If blood echoes aren't real, but just there for the sake of mechanical gameplay, what else can we just discard on that basis? Parrying in Bloodborne, I'd say, is probably something added solely for the sake of gameplay. The follow-up visceral attack (that is also doable in other, non-parry situations) might have/most likely has lore implications, but parrying with guns is almost certainly just for gameplay. Bloodtinge, too, probably just exists to have a stat for blood-damage to mechanically scale with. Arcane? Doesn't make a lick of sense.
And once we start, where do we stop? People have spent huge amounts of time pouring over the details of visual design of so many things in the game, down to particular similarities in design and recurrence of certain colors, trying to find meaning in it all. Who says it means anything, though? Could just be to clue in the player of certain behaviors and strengths/weaknesses, or just to make things look cool/scary/disturbing. Everything but specifically written-down lore comes into question and different theorists can pretty much just pick and choose what they want to take into consideration, because anything can be there solely for gameplay or aesthetic reasons.
Considering things I know are most likely there just for the game rather than being "true canon" is a choice, yes, but not one I've made idly. It's a matter of framing one's assumptions, because if you alter the frame for one particular thing, you have to alter it for everything... that, or you pretty much make the lore-equivalent to invoking deus ex machina to resolve narrative problems you don't know what to do with. To me it's everything or nothing.
Likewise, saying "killing Rom is the trigger for lots of things, so they probably just did it because it felt like a convenient time" is the same sort of selective reasoning, hand-waving the situation because... well, honestly it's probably true, at least partially. But once again, once we start, when do we stop?
There's also just the matter of Rom's death generally just being that much more significant an event than anything else in the game up to that point. With Gascoigne and Amelia, yes, I fully agree, the changing of the time of day was almost certainly just as a convenient demonstration/reminder of the passage of time. What happens after killing Rom, however, I just can't accept as being nothing but it getting a bit later in the night. Too many things happen too suddenly and too unnaturally. Besides, we pretty much witness the blood moon being called after the fight; it doesn't happen on its own, but is actively being caused by someone or something.

I also wonder what the line is like in the original Japanese script, and whether it would have a different implication.

Ashgan

I undertook the search for this and actually managed to find a quite interesting compilation of retranslations from the game. Here is the translation of the Doll's equivalent line in Japanese:

"Hunter-sama... I feel *familiarity coming from you... It's because Hunters are inheritors of the old **wills as I expected..."
"*懐かしさ doesn't translate well. It's a fondness for something in the past, like nostalgia.
**意志 - ishi - Oddly enough, this isn't the same ishi used to describe blood echoes. This form of ishi is used to describe volition, will, etc."

The Doll (Japanese)

So it does actually seem to reference something else than blood echoes, but also reinforces my assumption that there is something more at play here. "Inheritors of the old wills"... Ah, can mean many things. I would have said that it could be the will of past Hunters, but she seems to reference that Hunters collectively are inheritors of these old wills, so I don't know... It still feels like it references some kind of originator or progenitor. Interesting.

As for dogs and crows (and animals in general, I guess), no, they almost certainly haven't received blood treatment... but it's probably not too outlandish to figure that they could have gotten Old Blood, and possibly associated blood echoes, from feeding on corpses.
Will think on it some more, but generally take the details of my prior theory with a grain of salt; it was pretty much a flow of consciousness-kind of thing. I practically made it up as I went. I'll most likely change my mind about some things as well in time, it was just what I thought of in the moment.

[Ashgan]

Will think on it some more, but generally take the details of my prior theory with a grain of salt; it was pretty much a flow of consciousness-kind of thing. I practically made it up as I went. I'll most likely change my mind about some things as well in time, it was just what I thought of in the moment.

@Dark Jack

Of course; hopefully I didn't come across as contentious. I was mostly trying to be a counterpoint, or an anvil upon which to refine your thoughts. I'll also try to be a bit more open minded when it comes to things I personally believe are guaranteed to be gameplay contrivances in the future.

As for dogs and crows (and animals in general, I guess), no, they almost certainly haven't received blood treatment... but it's probably not too outlandish to figure that they could have gotten Old Blood, and possibly associated blood echoes, from feeding on corpses.

@Dark Jack

I also thought of this possibility, but I also have to wonder... *all of them*? And also, can we say for sure that nibbling on the corpse of someone who has the old blood is enough to transmit, ehm, Yharnamism? It seems like it might be the case. But if it is, that also means that animals could transform into beasts, right? And if we assume that, then it begs the question of what those beasts would be like. Humans, for some reason, turn into wolf-like things. ...So what would happen if a wolf became a beast? Likely it would not become a man, disturbing as that might be. Maybe the fire dog in the old labyrinth sheds some light on this. Yet if that thing is a beast, it's also interesting that the Pthumerians have been able to domesticate it to an extent - it appears to be guarding their sanctum, after all. As for the crows, I have a feeling you already have something in mind.

[Dark Jack]

Humans become wolf-like? What about bloodlickers? Brick trolls? Rotted corpses? And of course, the already IC relevant church giants and servants? These are all humans corrupted by the scourge of beasts, yet none of them are particularly wolf-like.

Point being, the scourge of beasts can have many and varied ways of manifesting itself; lycantrophy just so happens to be the most common for humans. For animals, all signs point to them defaulting to gigantism by becoming unusually large and bulky.

[Bartimaeus]

By the way, whoever shared the "No one well save you" song by Aviators, I'd like to thank you xD I've been enjoying hearing it every once in a while on my playlist.

On a more important note, working on my response.

[Dark Jack]

Always good to hear! I'm looking forward it.

It was Ashgan who brought it up, I'm pretty sure, though I have to admit that I was familiar with it already from listening to a bunch of Aviators' songs (I think I was introduced to him through one of his Dark Souls-songs). He's made some pretty nice songs, and No one will save you now is one of my mainstays I listen to while writing. I'm also a huge fan of Remains and a few others, but those two in particular feel like they fit the Bloodborne-theme really well. (I would say that No one will save you now would obviously fit the game since it was directly inspired by it, but Wake me when its over and Here come the ravens are both Bloodborne-inspired as well, yet I would never associate the mood in them with Bloodborne).
EDIT: May be wrong, actually... have searched the thread, and it seems the song hasn't been mentioned at all...?

[Bartimaeus]

@Dark Jack Hmm...I swear one of us brought it up(I thought it as Ashgan too). Maybe...I'm crazy? *sweatbrow* Haha.

Anyways, what do you think about posting characters in the Character tab?

Also how long, roughly if need be, would you say Victor has been a hunter?

[Ashgan]

Okay this is weird. Even *I* am fairly sure I posted it at some point because I really like the song. But I can't find the reference either. What the hell? oO

Jack's opinion on the char tab has basically been: he prefers editing the OP with links to wherever we posted them originally, but isn't averse to you putting your character in the char tab. Correct me if I recalled that wrong ^^

[Dark Jack]

What Ashgan said; I prefer to manage them in the OOC tab, but you can put them in the Characters tab if you want. The reason for this, by the way, is that players tend to come and go in RPs that go on for a long time. With CSs posted in the OOC and linked in the OP, I can simply change the OP to either mark a character as inactive or remove it from the list if that happens, as I have full control over the OP. If a player leaves with their character in the Characters tab, however, I can't do anything about that. That player's character will remain there forever unless the player themselves decide to mark it as inactive, potentially confusing people.
It's a relatively small inconvenience - I will still keep the list in the OP, after all - but it's just a small measure to avoid potential confusion. If you do keep more than one CS, by the way, please do tell which one you want linked in the OP.

As for Victor, he has been a Hunter for about two years.