Dark Jack

Night of the Hunt - a Bloodborne RP

It's quite all right, Bartimaeus; as long as we know what's going on, you don't drop off the face of the Earth entirely and the delay isn't outrageously long. But if you feel like you aren't going to be posting in, let's say, the next week, maybe you could just briefly summarize what Raine is going to say and do here or in a PM, and I will just incorporate it in my post to spare you the effort.

I think the post was fine, Habibi; seems natural for Marcus to reply when someone calls out and asks a question. Ishin can wake up whenever he's ready.

Night of the Hunt - a Bloodborne RP

Th3King0fChaos' character is a Paleblood Hunter, just not a false one, and has been turned along with the others; his character, Ishin, would be there too.

I just want to be sure that there is an actual plan of action so that we don't sit around waiting for each other while everyone thinks someone else is going first.

Night of the Hunt - a Bloodborne RP

So... who is next to post in the clinic-scene?

Night of the Hunt - a Bloodborne RP

Visitor… Moon-scented hunter… I am Annalise, Queen of Castle Cainhurst. Ruler of the Vilebloods, and sworn enemy of the church. Yet, our people are murdered, and we are prisoner to this wretched mask. What is it thou’rt in search of?

Queen Annalise

She does comment on the mask (very briefly), but I'd say that even that one sentence is enough to conclude that someone put the mask on her against her will, and that she's incapable of removing it. As for what it hides, there is actually official (actually official official) concept art for the game that portrays her without her mask, as well as a couple of in-game paintings that could reasonably be of her.
I have my own theories on her immortality and the Vilebloods, obviously, though maybe that's better left to be touched on IC since I don't think there's anything that would change how I want to depict them at this point. You are definitely right, though: it would be naive to think the Vilebloods were/are entirely innocent, even before the Healing Church branded them as abominations for extermination. I might question why they are different, though.

Night of the Hunt - a Bloodborne RP

Hm. Interesting. I hadn't actually even noticed that about the Blood Saints (Adel, incidentally, also means "nobility" in Danish). And yeah, a tangent indeed. It's good, though; the best way to develop theories like this is to have them challenged, and marriage is undeniably a pretty impactful part of culture. I guess I need to come up with a verdict on how it's included in the RP, though. Hmm...
I'm going to say that marriage is probably a thing reserved for ritual purposes in the country Yharnam is located in, most notably for women (specifically blood saints, maybe?) being "married" to the gods.

As for Queen Annalise and the Vilebloods, they fascinate me to no end as well, particularly since - despite the best efforts of the game to depict them as ugly, unnatural, bloodthirsty and evil - I never really subscribed to the idea that the Vilebloods were the villains. If anything I'd say they were victims. I mean, the Vilebloods were nobles, and Annalise was queen, no doubt of more than just Cainhurst. The way I see it, Yharnam and the lands that now belong to it, were once Annalise's kingdom (queendom?) and that of her family, at least since the time of Queen Yharnam. Then the Healing Church rolled in and decided that they were the new government, and suddenly (and conveniently) every single person that might have contested their rule is a "Vileblood" that need to be executed. Annalise might have gone a bit off the deep end in having her servants hunt for blood dregs, but really, I'm amazed she's as sane as she is with what she's gone through. How many of those dead nobles were her family? How long has she been trapped there, stuck with her mask?
Eh. But yeah, it's probably no surprise nor a secret that the RP will almost certainly take a closer look at both Annalise and the Vilebloods.

Night of the Hunt - a Bloodborne RP

I had the thought that the ring might actually be for "marriage" between a woman and a Great One after writing the post, too, which would explain why only one ring is necessary. That might even be why Arianna and fake Iosefka both fail to bear children for the Great One impregnating them (most likely Oedon); because the children were conceived "out of wedlock" (arguably Arianna did complete her pregnancy, though I'd still argue that the child was a failure since it, even after its birth, apparently remained directly linked to her lifeforce).

About Annalise (Annalise, Arianna, Amelia, Adella, Adeline... Bloodborne really likes its feminine names starting with "A"), it still seems significant to me that the player can use the ring to propose to her (regardless of the player character's sex), regardless of how special the player is, simply because they know that it is a thing. Whatever the player was when encountering Annalise they were originally a relatively mundane foreigner, so the only way they would know about the concept of marriage (barring magical knowledge gained from the ether upon picking up the item) to propose to her would be if it was something most people know about. Of course, knowing about something and being allowed to do it is two very different things...
The angle about eugenics does sound very interesting, though.

Extra: Digging some more, I discovered the existence of "official" Bloodborne comics that, as the only IC source, has a woman - a commoner, no less - referencing her "husband", strongly suggesting that they were married. I can't find any reliable source that these comics are official official to the extent that they would be a suitable basis of lore speculation, but it's something.

Night of the Hunt - a Bloodborne RP

Marriage is definitely a thing, though you are right that there isn't actually any definite evidence that Gascoigne and Viola, or any commoners for that matter, actually engage in marriage.

The inhuman beings known as the Great Ones imbued this Ring of Betrothal with some special meaning.

In the age of the Great Ones, wedlock was a blood contract, only permitted to those slated to bear a special child.

Ring of Betrothal

This suggests that marriage is considered even more sacred in Bloodborne than it is on Earth; something, at least at one time, only allowed for a select few. Given that the ring specifies "in the age of the Great Ones" and that you can use the ring to propose to Queen Annalise, however, it seems likely that marriage has become a more widespread practice since those days. (The bit about Queen Annalise would, ironically, not be evidence on its own, given that she has her Hunters collect "blood dregs" (cough) so that she can bear a "Child of Blood" to succeed her, which certainly sounds like she is a person "slated to bear a special child".)

Night of the Hunt - a Bloodborne RP

Something I have personally wondered about a lot when contemplating how to write for Bloodborne, language-wise: what expletives do you imagine they would use in that universe? I've been reading through the various characters' dialogue from the game, and very few expressions are ever used that could count as such, the closest probably being "Dear gods...", and the negative, angry adjective "bloody" (as in, "bloody wench"). They don't have (or at least refer to) a "Hell" the way we do, and you don't ever hear them - no matter how uncultured - being vulgar; even Arianna, a professed prostitute, and the notoriously antagonistic skeptical man, seems pretty reluctant to be too direct.
I'd imagine that their expletives would revolve around the gods, blood and beasts. We could naturally completely circumvent this by simply not writing IC expletives explicitly, by paraphrasing it as "muttered a stream of expletives" and such, but I'm curious if you have any ideas.

Night of the Hunt - a Bloodborne RP

Been thinking a lot about what the beast-repellent incense is supposed to be, and trying to find others theorizing on it, but it seems that it's a mostly unanswered question, the explanations for which I've found being only very loosely justified.

Here is what we know about the incense: it masks the scent of Hunters, and given that Hunters are known to smell very strongly, probably also masks the smell of Yharnamites and humans.

Ahh, a hunter are ya? Very sorry, the incense must've masked your scent.(...)

Oedon Chapel Dweller

We also know from how beasts interact with the heavily incense-filled Oedon Chapel that beasts are repelled by it, and that thick enough incense can literally act as a barrier keeping beasts out, making them stay back even in the face of someone attacking them from within the incense.
And finally, we know that incense is hard to come by. Citizens have a very finite supply, if they have any at all, some not even enough to get through a single night. All the larger stores of incense belong to the Healing Church and are used to block possible venues of access for beasts to the Cathedral Ward, suggesting that the church is likely also the producer and supplier of incense to the rest of Yharnam.

So it has a really intense smell, and it repels beasts; two traits that are not necessarily related. And the Healing Church has a bunch of it. We also know that if you break the containers supposedly filled with incense in Oedon Chapel, there's human remains inside.
In conjunction with a few scattered theories I found, but mostly from logic, I will then say that in the RP, incense is beasts. The Healing Church collects the corpses of beasts and somehow uses them, or part of them (bones, fur, eyes, blood or some other organ; could even be some kind of scent glands naturally developed by those afflicted with the scourge of beasts) to produce incense. I'd be tempted to think that the corpses of Hunters could be used as well, but the game seems to suggest that the smell of a Hunter is clearly distinctive from that of a beast, so I don't think that would be the case.
I also can't imagine that the incense has a very pleasant smell... but that's just me. Everyone has different preferences, I guess.

Night of the Hunt - a Bloodborne RP

Thank you, Bartimaeus, though I admit I was more interested in news from the ones playing (false) Paleblood Hunters with Habibi, namely @Th3King0fChaos and @King Cosmos, if nothing else then just to make sure that they aren't waiting for me or each other to post in that scene.

EDIT: As for cut content, I was interested in the one you found there, Ashgan, which is theorized to have been an early or alternate version of the Moon Presence. I'm also somewhat intrigued by creatures with such uninspired, clearly temporary names such as the snake ball, the Great One Beast and the beast horse.