"Did you hear about those folks in Yharnam?

"

*cawww* *brawk*"whateva do you mean??"*brawk*

"Apperantly a curse has been going about from civilization to

civilization. Rumor has it that Yharnam's built on top of the
Pthumerian civilization and they will be the ones to have it next,
before that it was the were-wolves of Loran inflicted by ashen blood
or so they say..."

"I don't really have an opinion, but I'll keep that in mind. *brawk*
My mother tells me that sometimes, when I am sleeping, she looks at me and
my eyes are open, but I am thousands of miles away!" (on vacation!)*brawwk*

Bloodborne's Themes Explored *spoilers

• Mythology and Religion pg. 1

• The Sense of Being a Yharnamite pg. 17

• The Great One's and their Kin pg. 28

• Reality-Dreams-Nightmares pg. 33

• Distortion pg. 47
Mythology & Religion
The Nightmare of Mensis - two great ones are tied to this mysterious place.

Oedon - a key figure in Yharnam's Healing Church. Depicted as an old man at Oedon Chapel.
Oedon for the most part isn't in this stor, but for story sake, during the boss fight with the Orphan of
Kos, during Kos' passive-aggro lightning comes down from the sky. I think this is the strongest image
in the game we have of some mysterious god like power.
There is a similar sounding name coming from the constellation Orion, shaped like a bow-
hunter. His belt consist of three stars and his shoulder is formed out of a red giant Betelgeuse. The
almost blue, white-hot star Rigel forms Orion's hip and beyond that an even brighter star Sirius
embezzles the chest of Canis Major, his Canine companion following behind him.
Formless Oedon
"One of the "Oedon" runes.
A secret symbol left by Caryll, runesmith of Byrgenwerth.

The Great One Oedon, lacking form, exists only in voice, and is symbolized by
this rune.

Those who memorize it enjoy a larger supply of Quicksilver Bullets.

Human or not, the oozing blood is a medium of the highest grade, and the essence of the
formless Great One.

Both Oedon, and his inadvertent worshippers, surreptitiously seek the precious blood."
The Great Ones are suggested as being the cause of virgin mothers in Bloodborne, like an old-folk Abrahamic God.

This happened with the Ptumerian Queen, many of her characteristics own up to the idea that she lived throughout the ages
and is undead so she can't conceive naturally. A note at Byrgenwerth reads, "... and when the Great Ones descend, a womb
will be blessed with child." 1
Oedon Writhe

"A "Liaison" Rune.

A Caryll rune that transcribes inhuman sounds.

"Writhe" sees a subtle mucous in the warmth of blood, and acknowledges visceral
attacks as one of the darker hunter techniques.

Visceral attacks restore Quicksilver Bullets.

Human or not, the oozing blood is a medium of the highest grade, and the essence of the formless Great
One.

Both Oedon, and Oedon's inadvertent worshipers, surreptitiously seek the precious blood."

Mergo's Wet Nurse - on the other hand is the angel of death, wearing a dark cloak with
raven wings. It has extra limbs like the goddess of creation Vishnu, from Hinduism, but all of
them are holding sickles, which are tools used for harvesting or in this case collecting blood
echoes. The weapons resemble the Burial Blade which is made from siderite, noted as
"having fallen from the heavens."

Storks are long legged white birds remembered in children's cartoons for
delivering a baby in a basket. German folklore held that storks found babies in
marshes and caves made of adebarsteine or "stork stones." They brought the babies
to houses with sweets left out, sometimes delivering them or dumping them down
chimneys. Birthmarks on the nape of newborn baby, are sometimes referred to as
stork-bite.
Mergo's Wet Nurse is the opposite, she's clearly there to grab the umbilical cord
and whatever else that came out of the ritual or take the infant's soul. She almost has
a snake-like head, even though we can't see it. Her arms are spider-like like that of a
Chaos Witch from Dark Souls.

"Trick weapon wielded by Gehrman, the first hunter.

A masterpiece that defined the entire array of weapons crafted at the workshop. Its blade is
forged with siderite, said to have fallen from the heavens.

Gehrman surely saw the hunt as a dirge of farewell, wishing only that his prey might rest in
peace, never again to awaken to another harrowing nightmare."

2
 Ravens in Norse mythology used to be messengers of
Odin who existed to carry out the natural order. Odin, The
Allfather of the Aesir, gave up one of his eyes for insight and was
accompanied by wolves, ravens and berserker, whom were
untouchable warriors clad in fur. Ravens symbolize creation and
destruction, as birds are predators commonly found in area's
where there is a lot of spawning or extra dinner scraps lying
around. In Norse mythology Valkyries were women that had
wings and collected souls for the after life.
Valkyrie's would celebrate the lives of
warriors through sky burials; the burning of a
body sent out to sea on a wooden raft, before a
feast that lasted all night. A Wet Nurse's duty is
to care for an infant if the mother chooses or is
unable to. The infant it has come to claim is the
Pthumerian Queen's whom has undergone a
Cesarean Section. The charms around the neck
of Mergo's Wet Nurse are indicative of this
cultural reference to the Norse. The symbol on
the charm with three circles looks like the
Communion Rune communion rune.
"A secret symbol left by Caryll, runesmith of Byrgenwerth.

Several runes relate to "blood", including "Communion",

which raises the maximum number of blood vials one may carry.

This rune represents the Healing Church and its ministers. Blood
ministration is, of course, the pursuit of communion."
**This symbol is visually similar to the Egyptian Ankh, a symbol of life

In Yharnam there is actually a character in the

game that fights with a weapon in each arm,
Eileen the Crow. She is the only other
character in the game who fights with weapons
made of siderite, the Blades of Mercy. She is
characterized by her black garments and her
mask which was used during the Black Death ,
when the bubonic plague spread as a
contagious airborne disease.
Eileen has taken it upon herself to follow in the footsteps of the Valkyrie lore, as stated
by her Crow Hunter Garb set that talks about sky burials. She ends up fighting Gascoigne's
friend Henryk and the Bloody Crow of Cainhurst. Eileen is there to carry out the natural order
of things, while the bloodsword leeching Bloody Crow stands in the way, eluding death.
Henry is also an old hunter that has gone mad, who sticks around after you kill Gascoigne by
Oedon Chapel. Henryk is noted for using throwing knives. Eileen the Crow also uses them if
you don't help her, because she ends up going mad during the blood moon. His name Henry
means "formidable and mighty" but it's also related to the long line of King Henrys that ruled in
England. They madly executed their wives when they couldn't divorce under the rules of the 3
church.
 Warriors whom die in battle, in the lore of the Valkyries, pass on into Valhalla, a great hall
located in one of the 9 worlds of the Aesir tribe of gods in Norse mythology. Once there they
become Einherjar's, to take on the hunting of beast every day, until they themselves are cut to
pieces. They feast on the beast Sæhrímnir in the Great Hall at night. This cycle repeats everyday
with the same boar coming back to life to be slaughtered again. When the Valkyries are not
preparing for Ragnorak (the apocalypse and death of all, but two mortals) they bear the Einherjar's
mead or fermented honey drinks.
The Wild Hunt was also something that was mentioned in Norse mythology. The wild hunt
consisted of spectral or ghost-like hunters who flew across the sky with horses and dogs. Giant
boar were found and killed by the Einherjar during the hunt, but they also would come back to life
again, like the beast in Valhalla. The common myth was that the boars ate little girls, to scare
children from going out at night. In Yharnam Father Gascoigne loses his daughter to a giant
experimental boar, supported by the fact you find a red ribbon in the sewers by the giant pig. You
can give the red ribbon to her sister in the window by the first lamp. The music box her sister
gave you disrupts the boss fight with Father Gascoigne. Afterwards you find his wife's Red Brooch
on a tomb.
Welsh or Celtic Mythology from 12th-13th Britain entertains the idea of warriors re-
incarnating into animals after death, like wolves, eagles and boar to symbolize the eternal traits
they had while alive as fierce elite warriors. A giant pig as punishment for greedy princes. The
imagery of angels is thought to have originated here with swan wings.
In the fourth branch of the Mabinogian some gods in the mythology are punished for their
sexual relationships. Math is an uncle of Arianrhod's and would die if he didn't keep his feet in the
lap of a virgin while not at war. Gilfaethwy and Goewing engineer a war to keep him away. After
he returns from war and finds them lusting after his footholder Goewin. Maths turns his nephews
into pairs of other animals, as divine punishment.
Celtic mythology has their own version of the wild hunt taking place on
Halloween, by the Wild Huntsman Gwyn, to get rid of unwanted undead spirits.
The symbol of Deer antlers is also a re-occurring image on Celtic shields. The
Executioner's Garb features a stag on it's cape. The Celts covered wide swaths
of land in Europe, during the Iron Age. Anyone who identified themselves as a
Celt, was seen as a Celt. By the time the Roman Empire expanded the Celts
were restricted to Ireland. The Gaels and Celtic Britons are among these groups,
with their own native languages still spoken today in their respective territories.
Gwydion is a hero and trickster from the
Mabinogi. As an eagle he sings to Lleu down a tree in
a poetic tone similar to an englyn, suggesting the tree
is otherworldy, like the giant tree we can spot in
Yharnam if we look off in the distance from Upper
Cathdedral Ward. This great ash tree is known as
Yggdrasil in Norse cosmology and extends to the
heavens. Most if not all religions mention the tree of
life or have their own variation of it.
There is also a story in Norse Mythology of an old man named Mimir, who gains immense
knowledge from drinking out of an ancient well at the base of Yggdrasil. Odin finds him and gives
up an eye to the well for insight. Odin sees visions of the future and the battles to come. During a
truce in the Aesir-Vanir war, Mimir is traded for the wisest Vanir. Whenever Mimir is absent his
chief replies, "Let others decide." The chiefs feel they have been ripped off so they decapitate
Mimir. Odin finds his head, seals his neck with herbs and carries him around to to reveal secrets.
We have something similar called Madman's Knowledge.
"Skull of a madman touched by the wisdom of the Great Ones.
Use to gain insight.
Making contact with eldritch wisdom is a blessing, for even as it drives one mad, it allows one to
serve a grander purpose, for posterity."
4
 The Blood-Starved Beast you fight has some sort of cloth draped over it's
back, perhaps burned into it like the hanging corpse in the other church. The Norse
used to string up the corpse of a sacrificed animal, to honor their God. They boiled
horses, pigs and cattle in a pot, then made wishes and drank the blood every half-
year during blót. In fiction a sacrifice for Odin called the 'blood eagle,' involved
skinning the back of the body, breaking the ribs and pulling the lungs back to make
wings, kind of like the box-art Hunter's blood spray.
The draugr are undead creatures from Norse mythology, coming from the word revenant
(returned from the dead), they are strong enough to draw one back to ones body, but you can also die
again. They live in their graves, surrounded by treasure and are animated corpses, a lot like the
Pthumerians we find in the chalice dungeons. They also partake in shape-shifting, driving people mad and
blood drinking.
In other regions lightning and sightings of fiery dragons were seen as bad omens. Viking raiders in
the 8th century only seemed to want to explore the outer lands and pick on defenseless monasteries in the
North Atlantic, rife with gold treasure. They did not take any prisoners. One of their traditions carries on
today in the form of clapping your cups together and saying, "cheers." This was supposed to be a sign the
beverages they were drinking were not poisoned, as the beer would spill over into each others cups.
The invitation you find in Iosefka's Clinic coming from the forbidden woods
summons undead horses at the Hemwick Crossing, before the cliff on the lake you
see in the game. This essentially grants you passage to Cainhurst Castle and the
Vileblood covenant.
In Norse mythology Hel is queen of the underworld in the frozen Helheim of Nifleheim. Loki is an angel of
death who has no consistent physical form, a shape shifter, Loki speaks to Hel through voices and trickery.
Two dwarf brothers Brokkr and Eitri made a bet with Loki that the dwarves could not make better gifts than
the three made by the sons of Ivaldi. Loki bet his head on Sif's hair, Odin's ship and his spear.The gifts produced
by the two brothers were Thor's Hammer, a ring named 'the Draupnir' or 'the dripper,' and the Gullinbursti, a boar
who's bristles glowed in the dark. Loki had lost the bet, however Loki stipulated that he had only bet his head and
not his neck, so as punishment his mouth was sealed shut with wire by the dwarves. The ring called 'the Draupnir,'
eventually ended up on Odin's son Baldr's funeral pyre.

You can find another invitation, an unopened summons, in the

Cainhurst Castle throne room, to give to Alfred of the Executioners in
Central Yharnam. Martyr Logarius, outside of the Cainhurst throne room,
was abandoned there after a battle and has become undead. His Crown
of Illusion shows the player the true location of the throne room. Alfred of
the Executioners wants to lay him to rest to give him proper martyrdom.
The Executioners hunt the undead Vilebloods. The Vilebloods came into being after a scholar
from Byrgenwerth left with 'forbidden blood,' according to Alfred of the Executioners. Annalise, Queen of
the Vilebloods is the only Vileblood left, unless you join her covenant and become a member of the
Corrupt. If a Vileblood uses a Beckoning Bell and an Executioner is summoned, the Executioner will be
an invader. If the Vileblood wins the battle they will obtain a Blood Dreg.
"The Vilebloods of Cainhurst, blood-lusting hunters, see these frightful things in
coldblood.

They often appear in the blood of echo fiends, that is to say, the blood of hunters.
Queen Annalise partakes in these blood dreg offerings, so that she may one day
bear the Child of Blood, the next Vileblood heir."
Giving the unopened summons to Alfred ends up with Cainhurst Annalise's body being
ground to bits by his mighty wheel, although she was wearing a helmet before-hand, so you can
take her remnants to Rom's petrified body, in the Upper Cathedral Ward, to be revived under the
moonlight. 5
 The Queen of Cainhurst, Annalise, says she commands no living thing and she is
hidden by illusion. To get there you ride a wagon of undead horses. Helheiss was a wagon
and horse set aflame, that carried Hel to Helheim. Hel's dining table is called hunger and her
knife is called starvation, similar to the Chikage, the sword you get from joining the
Vilebloods, that leeches off you.
"Silver armor worn by the royal guards who protect Annalise, Queen of the Vilebloods at Cainhurst
Castle.

This paper-thin silver armor is said to deflect blood of ill-intent, and is what allows the royal
guards to capture prey for their beloved Queen, so that one day, she may bear a Child of Blood."
"Adornment prized by the knights of Cainhurst. Resembles a ponytail of silver hair.

The Cainhurst way is a mix of nostalgia and bombast. They take great pride even in the blood-
stained corpses of beasts that they leave behind. confident that they will stand as examples of
decadent art."

The Vilebloods are most similar to vampire. Vampires ignite when they go
out into direct sunlight and they can't contain their anger when they see symbols of
Christianity. They are undead, so they stay alive by drinking the blood of humans
One person associated with vampirism is Elizabeth Bathory, a noble from
Hungary in the 16th century. Her mother and uncle were the highest ranked
officials known as the Voivode of Transylvania. Her husband Ferenc Nádasdy was
in charge of the Hungarian estates on the route to Vienna during the Long War
with the Ottomans. When her husband died she was investigated for murder by an
heir named György Thurzó, a Palatine of the royal court, due to complaints by a
Lutheran minister at the courts of Vienna and various rumors being spread.
When she was apprehended they supposedly found various servants locked up and wounded in
her castle. It was said that she had kidnapped maids and lesser gentry, whom thought they were there to
learn royal etiquette, to be tortured in her gynaeceum or female quarters. At her various properties they
supposedly underwent beatings; mutilation of the hands, burning, starvation, freezing, being covered in
honey and ants and having their faces bitten off, as well as being stabbed repeatedly with needles. Over
300 people testified against her about relatives that had gone missing. The count was somewhere
between 30 and hundreds of people. The official count at trial was somewhere around 80 people.
Elizabeth was imprisoned and three of her female accomplices had their fingers chopped off with
hot pincers, before being burned at the stake. King Mathias II urged she be put to death, but Thurzó
disagreed saying it would harm the nobility. It was decided King Mathias didn't have to repay her his
large debt.
Elizabeth spent her last several years in confinement and was found dead one day after
complaining about cold hands. She is remembered as 'The Bloody Lady of Csejte' or 'The Tigress of
Csejte.' Rumors went on to say that she had bathed in the blood of virgins to retain her youth and that
once she was captured, she started to age again. She quite literally had taken a bloodbath.

" A finely tailored bordeaux dress.

Worn by the nobles of the old bloodline that traces back to the forsaken Castle Cainhurst."
6
 The most famous vampire of all is Dracula, based off of prince Vlad III from
Wallachia, now a part of Hungary and Bulgaria. His father was the ruler named Vlad
Dracul. 'Dracul' translates to dragon, he was part of Luxemburg's Order of the Dragon
which was initiated after the crusades to defend the cross and fight against enemies of
Christianity, typically the Ottoman Empire. The Order was brought into being by the King
of Hungary and Holy Roman Emperor up until 1437. Vlad III was known as a hero by his
people, but to everyone else, as far as Germany and Russia, 'Vlad the Impaler.'
In Bram Stokers book, Dracula, the protagonist makes his way to a eerie castle,
in Transylvania, to work out real estate papers for the Count there. Upon first meeting
the count he witness' a sort of floating manner to the Count's walk. He is tired from his
journey, so he spends the night there, waiting for everything to get settled. The next day
he awakes and finds himself unable to leave on his own.
Through the protagonist journal entries it is revealed he loses track of more and
more time within the castle. He tries many and all doors, but they are locked and he
cannot escape. He finds himself cornered. Looking out the window, several stories up in
the air, he notices a dark figure emerge from the window night by night. One night it
stops. He is reluctant to step outside the window so high up, but feeling of
claustrophobia and boredom washes over him. He imagines he may be able to make it
some way down by climbing out the window and straddling the edges.
Back up against the wall, he gets further and further each day until he reaches
the closest window adjacent to his own. He gets inside, collapses to the ground and
feels relieved, conquering his fear of heights. He gets up and makes his way past a
couch and a small table to the door, but it is sealed firmly. In the next room he sees
something odd. It's a coffin. He opens it up and finds it's empty, but there's dirt inside.
He exhales, turns around to leave, but notices something in the darkness above him. He
freezes in sheer terror, realizing who it is and passes out.
He finds himself in some sort of lucid dream surrounded by women and he cannot
help but... enjoy himself. Suddenly he realizes he is lying down on a couch, in the very
first room of the castle he entered, but he is fighting to keep his eyes closed and not let
the women conversing in the room know he is conscious.
He has no idea what is going on for all intents and purposes, because now he
consciously realizes the dark figure he saw on the ceiling, before he passed out, was
definitely the Count, but he appeared to be many years younger. He lies there on the
couch, motionless, feigning a deep sleep, too petrified to move. He deduces, from the
voices, there are two women in the room and they have been kidnapping people from
town, but they are talking as if they're planning a feast. Just then he witness' out of the
corner of his eye an infant in one of their arms. "That poor thing," he thinks to himself in
utter fear. He lies there quite some time before they leave. He doesn't want to be noticed
by those enticing yet devilish things, he can only describe as supernatural predators,
blood thirsty night-stalkers feeding on the innocent!

7
 Going back to history Vlad Tepes or 'Vlad the Impaler's quest for power
began when his eldest brother Vlad II died. He invaded Wallachia with the
Hungarian military figure John Hunyadi to drive out Ottoman influences. He
typically used the curved sword, the kilij, a shield, a halberd and even a small
pipe fashioned into a hand cannon. His army did well in the battle of Kosovo,
but eventually Vlad III fled within the Ottoman Empire's borders in Moldavia, in
1448. Vlad returned years later with the Hungarians behind him and purged all
but two of hundreds, maybe thousands of boyars (aristocrats), because he felt
they were responsible for the death of his father and eldest brother.
When John Hunyadi died, his elder son Ladislaus Hunyadi came into power as Captain-
General. By that time the Hungarians did not trust Vlad and they wanted his illegitimate brother
Dan III or 'Vlad the Monk' in power instead. The eldest Hunyadi son, Ladislaus Hunyadi, was
executed for murder by his own brother, now known as the Crowned King of Hungary, Ladislaus
V. His mother Elizabeth Szilagyi (daughter of Ladislaus Szilagyi) and her brother stirred up a
civil war between the rebels and the Barons loyal to the crown in retaliation. Elizabeth Szilagyi
was also known as Elizabeth of Luxemburg, before John Hunyadi died she also widowed King
Albert of Bohemia & Germany, whom died of dysentery in 1439.("Knock, knock, Prince Albert in
the can?")
Meanwhile Vlad III raided Transylvanian territories and plundering them. Afterwords he'd
march their women and children back to Wallachia to be impaled! Prisoners of Vlad were
impaled alive on a pike from one end to another, being pulled along by a horse. Vlad thought to
himself this wasn't punishment enough, so they used stakes with square edges and set them up
vertically to let gravity do the work. Vlad would place the corpses of his prisoners in the areas he
thought the invaders would come in from, so when they saw the impaled bodies they would freak
out and abandon their duties. Vlad has been accused of war crimes for having his prisoners build
his castle during the brutal winter and then killing them anyway.
As the Saxons and Vlad stood within their own borders, a Wallachia merchant's metals
were seized by the Saxons without payment. Vlad in retaliation ransacked and tortured Saxon
merchants and had their children impaled or burned alive, according to Mathias Corvinus the fifth
son of John Hunyadi. (The King of Hungary, after Ladilaus V died childless with bubonic plague.)
Eventually Dan III 'The Monk' invaded Wallachia and was defeated, post victory Vlad
raided Transylvania suburbs and ordered the impalement of all men and women captured.
Years after that, Vlad ignored the Ottomans Empires request to pay homage to the
Sultans of the Ottoman Empire and so they ordered him to come to Constantinople. Vlad found
out he was to be captured after he crossed the Danube, so he executed the two administrators
of Nicopolis in charge of the order.
Vlad then, in fluent Turkish, ordered the gates of the fort in Giurgiu, across the Danube, to
be opened and invaded the fort with his force. He informed Matthias 23,000 Turks and
Bulgarians had been slaughtered and called for the unification of their powers against the
Ottoman Empire under Catholicism, since his peace with the Sultans had fully been broken.

150,000 Ottoman men under the Sultan Mehmed II were to drive off Vlad
from Wallachia. During encampment, Vlad raided the area with a "scorched earth"
policy and attempted to attack the tent of the Sultan to confuse and bewilder the
army. Vlad chose the wrong tent and met the Sultans body guards instead, so he
was forced to retreat, having only been a few meters away from the real thing...
8
 Mehmed's father was Murad II who was also an Ottoman Sultan as well. He went up against Hungary in
the battle of Varna in 1444. The King of Hungary at the time was Wladyslaw III, the King of Poland. He saw an
opening for attack on the Sultan thanks to the Hunyadi's and met his heavy calvary with the Jannissary, an elite
corpse of body guards whom were young conscripted Christian slaves, unable to marry or engage in trade.
They were the only infantry on the Sultans battlefield, but they carried curved sabres known as kilijs, axes,
cannons, arrows, explosives and even small firearms if they were available. Wladyslaw III's charge came to a
standstill. He lost his body guard before being beheaded and displayed on a stake
Once Mehmed II's force of 150,000 men got moving after Vlad, they found a deserted town and further
up a forest containing tens of thousands of Turks; man, women and child spitted, going on for 17 stadiums in
one direction and 7 in another. They even noticed babies affixed to their mothers on the same stake. By this
time birds had already begun nesting in their entrails. The Sultan seized with amazement said it was nil; to
deprive a country a ruler of such great worth, in the governing of his own realm and his employment of
diabolical means. The Sultans army itself was dumbfounded and soon later retreated from what they called the
Mad Forest, due to dehydration during the Summer.
Vlad was able to scrape up some winnings in the next battles, but the people of Wallachia
abandoned him for another one of his brothers named Radu who was leading an Ottoman army. Matthias never
joined up with Vlad.
A Czeck captured Vlad by Matthias' order. Letters written to the Sultans with Vlad's name on them
surfaced which suggested Vlad wanted to join them in fighting Hungary, but due to the poor wording they were
recognized as being fake by historians and not like Vlad's character at all; more likely a Saxon priest had written
them. Vlad was imprisoned for 14 years thereafter.
Vlad was released by Matthias after converting to Catholicism and moved back to Hungary. While
staying there some soldiers broke into his house, looking for a thief that tried to hide there. According to Slavic
stories they did not ask permission to come inside, so Vlad had the Commander executed. In 1472 Matthias
ordered Vlad to help the Serbians fight against the Ottoman Empire.
Vlad one day in 1475 was greeted by three Turks whom were wearing turbans. He ordered they take
them off, but they refused due to their religious customs, so Vlad being Vlad, had the turbans nailed to their
heads.
Vlad and Hungarian Stephen Bathory fought off Mehmed II again for Wallachia and contested Laiotia of
Moldavia for the throne in 1476, but after his crowned victory Vlad was defeated in another battle. The
Ottomans cut his body into separate pieces and reportedly sent his head to Mehmed II.
There is another Mad King known as Henry VI from England. During his reign, the last remnants of the
England-Normandy Empire fell apart in Gascony, France, to which Henry went into a catatonic stupor unable to
rule. Richard, the Duke of York, descendant from King Edward the III and Lieutenant of Ireland felt he should be
Lord Protector of the Country, after the Duke of Suffolk was killed by rebels along with the Treasurer. He
blamed the Duke of Somerset's failings in Rounen, France and the high unemployment of soldiers that followed
afterwards as the cause of the rebellion.
When Henry VI's wife, Margaret de Anjou didn't invite Richard to the coronation of Henry's son, he
charged the Duke of Somerset with treason and locked him in the tower of London to keep Henry VI as a
puppet King. Margaret's father was the Duke of Anjou, King of Jerusalem, Naples and Sicily, so she tried to
assert herself, but the English Parliament were reluctant to put a French speaking woman in charge.
A year or so later Henry VI comes out of his stupor and sends Richard packing, stripping him of his
rank. Margerat's ally in power, the Duke of Somerset is released. It isn't long before Richard gathers forces with
the Earls of Warwick and Salisbury to try one last time to inherit what he feels is his rightful throne. They raid
the castle in St. Albans and behead the Duke of Somerset, but the Parliament is infuriated with what he had
done and gives him a resounding 'nay,' under his orders to consolidate power. Margaret passes Acts of Attainer
to strip Richard and his family of their lands and titles, so Richard flees to the North.
In 1460 the Duke of Warwick invades and captures King Henry VI, killing the nobles closest to him.
Richard returns and demands he be made King, claiming his throne was usurped from him by the Lancaster
house. They agree that Richard or his children will take the throne once Henry dies. Margaret however has
other plans and escapes, so Richard follows her North, until he stops at Sandal Castle.
Before Richard can close the gates he finds himself outnumbered 2:1 by Margaret's support. He spends
his Christmas besieged, until he comes out one day to retaliate for one of his foraging parties in the Battle of
Wakefield. He is quickly ambushed and outnumbered. His captors mockingly place a paper crown on his head
and display it on a stake above the Micklegates in York, signaling the end of the first half of the War of the
Roses. 9
 Hemwick Crossing features a lot of female sorcerers, collecting eyes, that you may
associate with magical witches. In the 15th century Christians and Islamic Muslims weren't
as tolerant of other polytheistic religions or beliefs, they would have referred to a non-Jewish
practicer as a heathen. They may have tortured or executed outsiders. One whom practiced
or verbalized these beliefs could be accused of heresy.
Their way of dealing with this became grimmer in 14th century Spain. Once Spain and Portugal's
national religion became Christianity again, the Inquisition was put into place by King Ferdinand II in
Spain and all colonies and territories. Those who practiced Islam and Judaism were forced to convert to
Christianity. Hundreds of Jews where killed and synagogues destroyed during a pogrom or religious riot
in Seville. By the end of the century all of those still practicing Judaism had to leave the country.
Also people that criticized the popular beliefs of the time could be accused of apostasy, described
as turning away, back sliding or falling away from religion, ultimately ending in adultery. Adultery in these
terms is of the profaned blood, despising the oath and breaking the covenant.
Adultery is used to describe Israel's relations with the rest of the world in the bible verses of
Ezekiel 16 when God says, "Have you not committed lewdness beyond all your abominations? See,
everyone who uses proverbs will use this proverb about you, ‘Like mother, like daughter.’ You are the
daughter of your mother, who loathed her husband and her children; and you are the sister of your
sisters, who loathed their husbands and their children... You not only followed their ways, and acted
according to their abominations; within a very little time you were more corrupt than they in all your
ways." He is referring to Yahweh, as the personified nation's husband and is speaking ill of her crime of
idolatry. This was pointing her friends and family in the direction of the fire. "You also took your beautiful
jewels made of My gold and of My silver, which I had given you, and made for yourself male images that
you might play the harlot with them." Casting pearls before swine with her wanton lewdness and
faithlessness. Jeremiah 2 again referring to Isreal, “I remember concerning you the devotion of your
youth. The love of your betrothals." (A marriage engagement)
During the 8th century there was the belief in white magic and black magic. White magic involved
prayer, chants and bonfires to ward off bad weather, protect cattle and ensure a good harvest. Certain
monks also disciplined themselves by not eating for weeks at a time and not sleeping. They thought the
induced hallucinations brought them closer to God. This was not widely practiced for the most part, but
they did abstain from meat, besides chicken and eggs as acts of asceticism. Black magic on the other
hand was associated with malevolent ideas and could get you excommunicated from the church until
some penance was performed through confession or charitable work. Some people thought thunder and
hail could be influenced by the wills of trouble makers. They raised their fist and chanted, 'They raised
the wind," hurling stones at people believed to be conspirators whom heralded bad weather, calling
them storm-makers or tempestarii.
The storm-makers had supposedly beckoned the wind to their region in order to steal or wreck the
crops with hail and flood the lands. They believed storm-makers had summoned cloud-sailors (sailors
held aloft by nothing, but clouds) with incantations and that storm-makers received a Frankish coin in
return, as if they had fallen out of the sky vessels themselves. "Let that cursing tongue be parched,'
sending shivers from the lightning, 'May the tongue that makes this storm be cut off!'
Jews were often accused of 'blood libel' or blood drinking by Christians. 'Blood libel' was thought
to be practiced by Jews during pass over, because Christians rumored the Jews used Christian blood in
their matzah bread. If a person went missing or was murdered in the 12th and 13th century an entire
Jewish community in the area may have been put on trial, tortured, executed or burned at the stake for
what they thought was a ritualistic killing. They also may have been accused of well poisoning or
desecration of the Eucharist. Back then the bread and wine conversion to the body and blood of Christ
during mass wasn't just seen as symbolic, but truth and dogma or good. To Christians, tainting this ritual
was sacrilege and part of what they called a Black mass. Personally I attribute this to the 'bris' ceremony
held by Rabbis. It was performed in arid regions and around 200 A.D. it became more invasive. Being
uncircumcised meant being tame, un-pure or being a heathen. Circumcision was a right of passage to
establish covenants in Judaism or Islamic religions. 10
 Black mass was suggested when people didn't follow the procedures
of regular mass. They were associated with a sort of sexual nature and
shock. They might consider people walking around in bare feet, dancing and
the procession of a dead body to be apart of a Witches Sabbath. Spectral or
otherworldly huntsmen were also recognized as a sign of these paganistic
offenses that were considered some of the gravest sins, associated with
cannibalism and the use of the fat of unbaptized children to enable witches to
levitate.
It is said that witches used to make ointments out of dangerous plants
like Datura or Mandrake from the Nightshade family. This ointment was
green and so, would go on to symbolize their green skin. They would rub the
ointment on themselves all over their body to feel a sort of levitation feeling.
Other shamans used it to transform themselves and communicate with birds. Datura is known as
the 'Moonflower' and while ornamental, very disorienting and painful if ingested. Mandrake on the other
hand was used by ancient Greeks as an anesthesia. It contains other toxic chemicals that ward off
insects, but it will always be remembered as that short screaming half-plant half-infant plucked from the
ground. Before that it was called, "the Hanged Man." People said, "to get a Mandrake out of the ground
without damaging your ear drums, you'd have to trick your hound into pulling it out with it's leash or tail."
The word 'coven' is associated with witchcraft, however it's only been around since the 1920's
when Margaret Murray thought witches met in groups of 13. A coven is made up of Wicca usually. It is a
ceremonial gathering held around the times of the equinox and the solstice in the Northern Hemisphere.
These ceremonies took place roughly eight times a year and coincided with the Sun's closest arc to the
North Star in the Celestial Sphere. People in the Southern Hemisphere held these ceremonies six
months later to coincide with their own seasons. During the ritual, a coven's High Priestess enters a
trance and requests that the Goddess or Triple Goddess, symbolized by the Moon, enter her body and
speak through her.
The moon is also sort of womanly, as opposed to the red hot Sun. The moons light is gentle, it has
it's place in the sky ebbing the tide of the oceans, going through different phases.
During the yearly equinox the moon also appears to come out only 10-30 minutes later each day
rather then the normal 50 minutes it takes, so it appears to rise more. The earth's equator during this time
lines up perpendicularly with the sun. If you place an egg on the ground on this day it should stand up
without falling over like it normally does. The moon while low on the horizon also looks much larger,
brighter and because of the time of year it is at, it is called a Harvest moon or Hunters moon. It appears
orange in color due to the earths lower atmosphere.
Phenomena with the sun and moon, like eclipses, was often explained in lore throughout history.
People thought you could communicate with the dead during eclipses. This helped stop a battle between
the Lydians of ancient Turkey, and the Medes of ancient Iran in 6th century B.C. Both sides took it as a
omen and made peace with each other, laying down their weapons on the spot.
The Vikings interpreted it as two wolves chasing each other. When Skoll catches the Sun it's a
solar eclipse. When Hati catches the moon it's a lunar eclipse. The only way to make this go away was to
howl and make as much noise as possible until the eclipse ended. A Hindu myth tells the story of the
demon Rahu's disembodied head attempting to swallow the sun whole, but because he was lacking in a
throat, it would fall out through the hole in his neck shortly thereafter. The Maya called this chi'ibal kin or
'to eat the sun,' and they could regularly predict this on their calender in the 12th and 13th century. Much
else is not known, as it was destroyed by missionaries in the 17th century.
Women were often accused of witchcraft and burned at the stake or hanged up until the late 17th
century as far as the swampy Salem, Massachusetts. If the convicted woman after trial didn't burn or flew
off a cliff she was a witch, but if she didn't she was innocent. Any strange happenings were a sign of the
devil. A dog accused of demonic possession was even hanged once, but once it died they declared it
was innocent. The events of The Crucible are thought to have occurred, because of land grabbing. Once
a man chose to undergo the trial and die, rather then drag his family into it and risk losing their inherited
land.
These incidents have been attributed to superstition and also Claviceps purpurea, a type of fungus
on rye grains. When ingested by humans it causes problems in circulation and neuron-transmission,
symptoms of ergotism or what they called, "Saint Anthony's Fire," were thought to be a punishment of
God. It caused lots of mischief and loss of limbs to gangrene. Fungus' have a way of spreading pretty
quickly in a short amount of time, such that a contaminated grain used in a bakery could send a whole
village into hysteria without warning. 11
 We can never forget one begrudged character called 'Joan of Arc' born
in 1412, France. She lived a relatively humble and quiet life as a seamstress
with her family, though they were catholic so she spent a lot of time praying.
England during that time had invaded France with the support of the
Burgundians, because it felt King Charles V had lost control over his northern
territories. Joan of Arc at age 13, while outside in the garden receives a
revelation from the angels Saint Micheal and Saint Catherine, designating her
as the savior of France and calling upon her; to lead the Dauphin, Charles VII
to Reims for his coronation, before King Henry's son could be installed as the
successor.
In 1428 she comes in contact with Robert de Baudricourt in Vaucouleurs. At first she is
completely ignored, being an illiterate farm girl, but he notices her amass quite a religous-following
while staying there and she correctly guesses the outcome of a French battle at Rouvray to cut off the
English's supply. As a garrison commander he decides to help her out, so she is sent off to Charles
court at Chinon with a horse and an escort of soldiers. During this time she makes her way through
enemy territory, after cutting her hair short and dressing in mans clothing at the suggestion of the
towns people, as not to attract unwanted attention.
When Joan arrives Charles VII does not know what to make of her, being a strange peasant
girl, but she correctly identifies Charles incognito, rather than his double standing in plain site. Charles
has his theologians look at her, to avoid involvement with a heretic and they report there is nothing to
take note of her, except her piety, chastity and humility. They suggest if she is to be taken seriously
she can go help lift the besieged city Orleans. The royal family provides her with armor, a horse and a
banner and she sets off.
The commanders in charge do not invite her to war councils or tell her when the army engages,
but she makes an appearance at the battles with her banner. After being wounded with an arrow to the
neck and shoulder she appears again once more in the final battle at the main English stronghold
Tourelles and rallies the army for a victory.
She joins Duke John II of Alençon and suggest to follow the retreating English up along the
Loire river to contend for the bridges and open up the way to Reims. Alençon credited her with saving
his life at Jargeau, where she warned him that a cannon on the walls was about to fire at him. They
manage to wipe out a group of archers on the road and circumvent the forces there, setting up a
humiliating defeat for the English.
Reims is located almost twice as far as Paris, but the army along with the Armagnacs makes
it's way towards it shortly after kicking the English out of Loire Valley, Patay and Gien.
The Count of Armagnac and 2500 of his men had been massacred in Paris in 1418 by the
Burgundians, when Charles VII was 14. The Armagnacs broke up the treaty between Charles and the
Burgundians when they got involved in the assassination of the Duke of Burgundy, so England
invaded in full force shortly thereafter with the aid of the Burgundians.
The army in short supply of food arrived in Troyes, the last city to offer opposition. Brother
Richard had been there months prior, signaling the end of the world, so to that effect the short lived
beans were ripening at this time. The army captured Troyes in 10 days after a bloodless siege.
Reims opened up it's gates on the mourning of July 16th, 1429 and the coronation of Charles
VII took place. Joan meanwhile was ordered to Paris and held herself up in the inner trenches. Most of
the English groups there surrendered, before two more battles in other neighboring cities which the
French won. Afterwards Joan and her family were ennobled by the royal family. A truce with England
took place and left Joan with little to do.
Months later the truce ended and she traveled to Compiegne to fend off a seige by the English
and Burgundians. While withdrawing to the fortifications, Joan stayed with the rear guard and was
attacked. An archer pulled her off her horse and she was captured by the Burgundians. She was held
in a castle and made attempts to escape, once jumping 21 meters into the dried earth of a soft moat.
After that she was moved to a Burgundian town.
Eventually she was transfered, by Jean of Luxemberg, a member of the council of Duke Philip
of Burgandy, to the English for 10,000 livres tournois, gold coins engraved with 'John by the grace of
God, king of France,' and 'Charles the V.'
Joan was turned over to church officials whom saw her as a propaganda prize and tried her as
a heretic. During her trials she maintained her innocence against charges like heresy, cross dressing
and witchcraft. She wasn't given a trial of peers and she received no legal advice. 12
"Asked if she knew she was in God's grace, she answered, 'If I am not, may God put me there;
and if I am, may God so keep me.' The question is a scholarly trap. Church doctrine held that no one
could be certain of being in God's grace. If she had answered yes, then she would have been
charged with heresy. If she had answered no, then she would have confessed her own guilt. The
court notary Boisguillaume later testified that at the moment the court heard her reply,
'Those who were interrogating her were stupefied.'"
The trials were made private once she bettered her accusers and she was held in a military
prison, rather then a church prison. The Armagec's tried several times to force their occupation in her
direction, but it was too late, so at age 19 she was to be burned at the stake. In her final moments she
did not recant her beliefs, that the voices she heard were divine in nature. One English soldier, feeling
sorry, handed her a cross and she kissed it, holding it to her bosom.
During her final moments a Dominican friar held up a cross for her to gaze upon. She called
out her two favorite Saints, Saint Micheal and Saint Catherine, before shouting "Jesus," and dying of
heat stroke. Afterwards they raked back the coals to prove she was dead and burned her body twice
more into ashes, so that no relics could be collected. Legends tell of her heart being unaffected or
doves flying out from her at the time of death, in comparison to a dove that flew out when a normal
person died. The dove was seen as the soul leaving the earthly body or in this case the two seraph
('the burning one,' oft' shown with cherubic faces) leaving hers, but that would have been recanted by
the church in that time period with perhaps harsh consequences...
It has come up recently there is a strong likely-hood the English, specifically the Holy Mother
Church, wanted to cover up the fact that they killed a Royal Noblewoman and circulated the Joan of
Arc story, after the Hundred Year War ended. The 'Arc' in Joan's title refers to Rouen Castle, where
she may have been raised and trained as a 'illegitimate' child of the royal family. Conceived by
Charles VI's wife, Isabeau of Bavaria along with his own brother, the Duke of Orleans. Charles VI was
going through periods of insanity, due to either stress, genetics or undernourishment.(The air at the
time was known to have substantial traces of lead in it from mining) Charles VI in one of his episodes
lashed out at several soldiers closest to him killing one and wounding the others. After that he
became isolated and accused people of poisoning his food. He would get into a rage and hurl objects
at people including his wife Isabeau, whom he married in the Amiens Cathedral. Charles VI was
known as the 'child King,' and one of the only Kings to choose a Sun as his emblem. After Joan's birth
her supposed father Louis, the Duke of Orleans was assassinated and beheaded by John the
Fearless' goons in 1407. In 1420 the Treaty of Troyes was signed giving King Henry's son who
married one of Isabeau daughters control over French territories, Charles VII couldn't be there,
because of what the Armagnac's did in Burgundy.
In 1431, Joan at one of her many trials in Rouen Castle, was shown the instruments of torture,
to which she replied "Truly, if you have to pull my members and my soul from my body, I shall say
nothing else; and if I say something to you, I would always say to you afterwards that you made me
say it by force." The use of the word 'pull' here is key, because she makes it sound as if she's an
animal being prepared for a meal, like a chicken having it's feathers pulled off. She's also saying that
she wouldn't be in the correct state of mind to tell the truth. Someone who spent 18 years of her life
illiterate, I feel would not have made them a laughing stock so many times while under pressure. Also
Joan would have been middle aged at this point in history, old enough to have at least two or three
children, since courtship began in the teenage years for women.
Joan also did recognize what Charles VII looked like, when she arrived in Chinon, however the
King was uniquely tall (people during these times were short from mal-nutrition) and royalty has it's
ways to popularize their features. It's true that instead of hearing the dying English-men's
confessionals, she may have disposed of them herself for delaying her marriage. No matter who you
were back then, you weren't going to be made into a knight without royal blood or wear their crest on
your armor, let alone sleep in it after battle. If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.
Though one could argue the French were a little more liberal at this point and that the army
was in shambles enough to accept such a woman... 13
 Canterbury Tales was a Middle English book written by Geoffrey Chaucer between 1387 and
1400. The short story 'Bluebeard,' is based off of a French serial killer whom is called Gilles De Rais.
He was present at the Seige of Orleans, as a commander in the Royal Army alongside Joan of Arc.
Gilles de Montmorency-Laval took advantage of children and murdered them with the aid of his
servants, at least that was the alleged story he confessed to, but historians today doubt the
inquisition, as identical testimonies were found and parts of the evidence were amended.
"Bluebeard is a wealthy and powerful man, yet a frighteningly ugly nobleman who has been
married several times to beautiful women who have all mysteriously vanished. When Bluebeard
visits his neighbor and asks to marry one of his daughters, the girls are terrified. After hosting a
wonderful banquet, he chooses the youngest daughter to be his wife - against her will - and she goes
to live with him in his rich and luxurious palace in the countryside, away from her family.
Bluebeard announces that he must leave for the country and gives the keys of the château
(castle) to his wife. She is able to open any door in the house with them, each of which contain some
of his riches, except for an underground chamber that he strictly forbids her to enter lest she suffer
his wrath. He then goes away and leaves the house and the keys in her hands. She invites her
sister, Anne, and her friends and cousins over for a party. However, she is eventually overcome with
the desire to see what the forbidden room holds; and she sneaks away from the party and ventures
into the room.
She immediately discovers the room is filled with blood and the murdered corpses of
Bluebeard's former wives hung on hooks from the walls. Horrified, she drops the key in the blood and
flees the room. She tries to wash the blood from the key, but the key is magical and the blood cannot
be removed. Fearing for her life, she reveals her husband's secret to her visiting sister, and they plan
to both flee the next morning, but Bluebeard unexpectedly comes back and finds the bloody key. In a
blind rage, he threatens to kill her on the spot, but she asks for one last prayer with her sister Anne.
At the last moment, as Bluebeard is about to deliver the fatal blow, the brothers of the wife and her
sister Anne arrive and kill Bluebeard. The wife inherits his fortune and castle, and has the dead
wives buried. She uses the fortune to have her other siblings married, and eventually remarries
herself, to a man she loves, and moves on from her horrible experience with Bluebeard."
The Player vs. Everyone enemy type the Shadows of
Yharnam snakes are clearly in cahoots with the Wet Nurse. They
must have been there to tempt the humans with something that
was not theirs to covet, like the story of temptation by the serpent
in the bible's Garden of Eden. One of the first two humans who
lived there, named Eve, ate the forbidden fruit from the tree of
knowledge and shared it with Adam.
The insight they gained actualized their egos, "And the eyes of them both were opened,
and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig-leaves together, and made themselves
girdles." God found out and had them leave the garden for disobeying his orders. The tale
reminds us not to go burning bridges or connections we have with other people. The snake in the
tree that had fooled them only wanted to reveal the truth, that the fruit was not poisonous and
they had been lied too.
The snake had originally been kicked out of Heaven for being jealous of the humans and
trying to play a hand in their lives, sexually I might add!
Other variations of this tale like the one by the Sumerians feature a chief diety Enlil, whom
has the people in his garden-paradise farm gold, for the Anunnaki, a group of chief deities,
known as gods of fertility and judgment later on in the underworld. Anunnaki is taken from the
word Anu for sky god. People who leave this garden go on to farm gold for other God's or for
themselves if they choose too. The symbol of this belief system was actually the hoe used for
tilling the earth, mining for gold and defending oneself. A more relevant tale tells of a Sage
named Adapa rejecting the offer from the snake and being kicked out of the garden. 14
 "According to ancient Jewish texts, Lilith was Adam's first wife. Lilith
considered herself equal to Adam, as they were both created from dust. Lilith
refused to lie beneath Adam while having intercourse,so she cursed him, flew away
and vanished. Adam complained to God regarding Lilith and God sent three angels
to retrieve her.
The angels found Lilith by the Red Sea and commanded her to return with
them. If she refused, she would lose a hundred of her demonic children daily by
death. Lilith replied that she preferred punishment to living with Adam. After this
incident, Lilith took her revenge by injuring babies -- especially male ones because
she can not give them a name."
Lilith is only mentioned one more time when God outlines his punishments to a neighboring nation of
Isreal called Edom, which has been harassing the inhabitants.
"For the Lord has a day of vengeance, a year of vindication by Zion's cause. And
the streams of Edom shall be turned to pitch, and her soil into sulfur; her land shall become
burning pitch... For generation to generation it shall lie waste; no one shall pass through it
forever and ever."
"Wildcats shall meet with hyenas, goat-demons shall call to each other; there too
Lilith shall repose, and find a place to rest."
Samael, the angel of death is the patron of Edom. Sameul tempts people with sin. He is visited by
Moses in the 7th heaven, along with Af and Hemah, angels of 'Anger' and 'Wrath,' in black and red fire
respectively. Samael is "hundreds of years of walking distance," in height and studded in glaring eyes.
The snake is also featured on the healthcare sign surrounding a stick with wings
at the top, this is known as the Caduceus and the staff being carried was held by the Greek God Hermes,
Messenger of the Gods. The staff was given to him by Apollo the god of Healing. Hermes decided one day to
break up the fight between the snakes and yielded harmony between them. Hermes, depicted by his winged
shoes, is known for his fast travel, medicine and is identified with the planet closest to the Sun named Mercury."

This snake typically represents free will or libertarianism, it is an American grass snake that is
harmless. As the revolution went on the snake took on the form of a venomous rattlesnake.
"Mask of the Madaras twins, denizens of the Forbidden Woods, likely belonging to the older of the two.
The twins grew up in silent kinship with a poisonous snake. Eventually they
learned human ways, and became hunters.
When they discovered vermin even in their beloved snake, the younger brother is said
to have murdered the older.
Both the twins became hunters, and brought back and dissected their beast prey, in order
to support the villagers in their forbidden research."
In old tales a snake pit is where fierce men meet their end. Gunnarr, The King of
Burgundy is said to have met his demise in a snake pit at the hands of Attila the Hun, as did
Ragnar Lodbrok a fictional Old Norse hero thanks to King Ælla of Northumbria. Being
penetrated by venomous fangs was Ludbrok's Achilles heel you could say.
In one of his earliest battles with King Froh, the King's pet twin snakes attack him only
to be discouraged by his furly beard. Ragnar sung a hymn to himself, before his death in the
snake pit, lastly declaring his sons would avenge him in battle. The Great Heathen Army of
Vikings from Sweden and Denmark invade shortly thereafter.
"The historical invasion of Northumbria in 866 occurred in retaliation for Ragnar's execution,
according to Ragnarssona þáttr ("The Tale of Ragnar's Sons"). While Norse sources claim that
Ragnar's sons tortured Ælla to death with a blood eagle, Anglo-Saxon accounts maintain that
he died in battle, at York, on 21 March 867" 15
 Two hundred years later in 1066 the Vikings invade again, under King Harald Hardrada of Norway,
to contest the English crown after King Edward succumbs to sickness and coma. King Edward, in his
previous negotiations with his enemies, had mentioned that the crown could be theirs for the taking after
his death, since he was childless. He was the most popular person in London however before he
succeeded the throne, so these wild promises were most likely a way to distance the House of Godwin
from the throne.
Harold, from the House of Godwin, was appointed protector and King of the English lands by
Edward before his death, according to the Bayeux Tapestry. Harold marched his troops hundreds of
miles in several days towards Northumbria to kick out the Norse that had made alliance with his brother
Tostig Godwinson, whom was banished after trying to install himself as the Earl of Northumbria.
Tostig had already exacted his revenge on the two brothers Morcar and Edwin of Mercia, whom
were originally supposed to control Northumbria to unite the English and Scottish regions. King Harold
faces the Norwegians and Flemish mercenaries at the Battle of Stamford Bridge. His men had a rough
time due to all of the energy they had spent marching there. An urban legend recalls a single elite Viking
warrior setting up a choke-point on the bridge. This warrior supposedly wounds or kills forty men with his
axe, until someone sneaks under the bridge and stabs him in the groin with a spear. King Harold's army
at last opposes the Vikings. It was September however and thanks to the summer heat, the Vikings had
left most of their heavy armor on their ships, so they were almost completely decimated by King Harold's
calvary. Hardrada is shot with an arrow to the neck and Tostig is shortly killed thereafter. Harold lets Olaf,
the son of Hardrada off without a ransom, if he promises never to return again. The Viking fleet was a
sliver of what it once was, after this battle.
William, the Duke of Normandy however had already prepped his forces for battle and sailed into
Hastings, since the English channel's Northernly Winds had died down. Several years earlier King
Edward had called upon him to become successor to the throne in a letter. This was around the same
time King Edward temporarily banished the House of Godwin and his family; Harold, Tostig, Gyrth,
Leofwine and Sweyn. Upon setting foot on land, King Wilhelm tumbles over, raising the superstitions of
his army. He picks himself back up with a handful of dirt and declares, "England is ours!"
King Harold's forces faced roughly 7000 men from atop a hill. The arrows hit the first line of shields
and flew over the army to no effect. Once the attack began they maintained their positions until one
portion of King William's forces fell apart. The Anglo-Saxons, in a mad frenzy, ignored their commanders
and chased after the retreating forces to get some easy kills in, but they found themselves separated from
the line and were crushed by incoming cavalry. King Harold in a last stand fought until dusk. His brothers
Gyrth and Leofwine had been slain, when Harold is said to have taken an arrow to the eye, before being
surrounded and killed by four knights on horseback.
'William the Great,' or 'William the Bastard's legacy, as the first Norman King of England, was sealed.

"The eye of a Blood-Drunk Hunter. Its pupil is collapsed and turned to mush, indicating the
onset of the scourge of beasts.

A hunter who goes drunk with blood is said to be taken by the Nightmare, destined to
wander forever, engaged in an endless hunt. It is a fate that no Hunter can escape"

"Once upon a time a troupe of foreign constables chased a beast all the way to Yahrnam,
and this is what they wore.
The constables became victims of the beast, except for one survivor, who in turn
devoured the creature whole, all by himself.
The fable is a favorite among Yahrnamites, who are partial to any stories of pompous,
intolerant foreigners, who suffer for their ignorance. It makes the blood taste that much
sweeter."

"An iron helm resembling an upside-down bucket.

A single hole allows one to peek out with a single eye, which is probably all that its original
owner had.
The iron helm is passed down among masters of the League. Valtr had in fact lost the
ability to see Vermin long ago." 16
 The Sense of Being a Yharnamite
How about the games currency blood echoes?
When you use a Hunters Mark you lose all blood echoes you've gained while
fighting. As your character holds their head in disbelief it seems they are tied to the curse or insight
somehow. Maybe they are tied to delusions as well, like the Caryll Runes. The Rune Workshop tool
looks a lot like a poker for a fire place and an upside down Communion rune.

"Runesmith Caryll, student of Byrgenwerth, transcribed the inhuman mutterings of the Great Ones into what are
now called Caryll Runes.
The hunter Who retrieves this workshop tool can etch Caryll Runes into the mind to attain their
wondrous strength.

Provost Willem would have been proud of Caryll's runes, as they do not rely upon blood in any
measure."
You only gain access to the level up system after you've beaten the Cleric Beast, that resembles
Laurence the First Vicar, who summoned a great one associated with blood leeching. The doll in the
Hunters Dream activates once the Cleric Beast is slain.
Thunder representing wrath, the Glory it brings... like the easily desirable fire in Dark Souls.
There is a statue of the Greek God of all Gods, Zeus by Cainhurst Queen Annalise, he was
represented by Jupiter and he would hurl lightning bolts. The statue also could be a reference to
Poseidon, God of the Sea; soil, storms, earthquakes and horses. Poseidon carries a trident, a sacred
labrys or battle-axe given to him by three cyclopes, as does Zeus in the form of lightning bolts.
Hercules, constellation and Greek demi-god, helps his father Zeus defeat two giants in battle,
Dercynus and Albion, sons of Poseidon.
Hercules was born from Zeus and a beautiful Greek woman named Alcmen. Zeus' wife Hera,
the Goddess of the Gods found out and becomes infuriated. Hera sends two snakes to Hercules' crib,
to get rid of the illegitimate child. Hercules overcomes them with his brute strength he inherited from
Zeus.
As Hercules gets older, Hera's grudge never fades. Hera purloins Hercules' plans once again.
She uses her powers to throw Hercules into a bout of madness and Hercules murders his wife and
two children. Hercules realizes what he has done in his temporary insanity and is thrown into
depression.
Apollo, the Sun God tells Hercules, through the Oracle of Delphi, he must complete a number
of labors to gain repentance for shedding his families blood, under Eurystheus the King of Tiryns and
Mycenae. If Hercules is successful he will become an immortal God, rather then sinking to Hades in
the afterlife, with the rest of humanity. Little does Hercules know, the Oracle of Delphi is friends with
Hera and the task she has given him are impossibly difficult or not meant to be completed, as King
Eurystheus is known to be mean spirited.
Hercules tries anyway and finds himself capturing mythical beast like boars, fighting hydra,
stealing a girdle from the Queen of the Amazons or cleaning the stables of an advance civilization in
one day. Another task sends Hercules on a mission to retrieve three golden apples. He wrestles with a
shape-shifter Nereus for information and later saves Prometheus from eternal punishment.
Prometheus had stolen the primeval fire from the Gods to aid mankind. His punishment involved being
chained to a boulder and having his liver picked apart by an eagle daily, while it rejuvenated by night.
Continuing on, Hercules stands in for Atlus, to hold up the world on his shoulders, while Atlus retrieves
the apples from his Nymph daughters. When the task is complete Athena, the Goddess of Wisdom
and Craft confiscates the apples (the golden apples grant God-like immortality and perpetual youth).
Hercules' final task is to kidnap the three headed dog Cerberus, that guards the gates of Hades
in the underworld, devouring the flesh of living trespassers. Hercules makes his way down through a
cave and gets consent from Pluto who watches over Hades, as long as Hercules captures Cerberus
with his own brute strength. Hercules wrestles the three headed dog and puts it's three heads in an
headlock, before dragging it out temporarily. 17
 Hercules, having completed the last trial, is ready to move on with his life. Deianira, his new
wife, greets him and gives him a cloak as a welcome-home present. She had woven the cloak herself
and applied a balm to it given to her by a centaur, which would make Hercules fall in love with her for
the rest of his life. Unfortunately she doesn't know the centaur was a trickster. Hercules puts on the
cloak and immediately the caustic balm singes to his skin. He is unable to take it off with out searing
and destroying his flesh even more. Hercules is ready to end his life, rather than go on in insufferable
pain. He tells his friends to erect a pyre at Mount Oeta. This would be his final resting place. As the
pyre is lit by torches and engulfed in flames, Zeus tells Hera that Hercules' suffering is enough. Hera
agrees and she ends her anger. Athena, in her chariot, flies down to Hercules and brings him to
Mount Olympus, where he can finally join the other immortal Gods.
Zeus was known for his Wrath, which people confuse with Ares the God of War, whom is
strong, brutal and a strategist.
Ares one day gets thrown, in chains, into a bronze urn by a pair of giants. Hermes hearing
what they've done rescues him on the 13th month or "Lunar Year." Ares is often seen with chains
around his arms to represent victory and martial law, a lot like the Pthumerian Descendant from
Central Pthumerian Labyrinth, whom has some sort of holy chain around his wrist. Ares had a
number of human sacrifices made to him in Sparta. Egyptians previously, ended the practice of
human sacrifice, when they noticed a trend in society of quality people killing themselves. There's
evidence that along with prisoners that were sacrificed to re-establish cosmic order, retainers of the
King were also sacrificed or volunteered. The bodies were found missing their heads or to have died
from strangulation.
Ancient Romans known as Haruspex studied the intestines of sacrificed animals like sheep
and chicken. Babylonians thought the liver was the source of blood and basis of all life. By inspecting
it's shape raw they thought it could yield you fortunes about someones life or the weather to come.
When Christians were meeting in secret still, they openly denounced sacrificing an animal to
worship the Emperor Septimius Severus' on his birthday, so they were put to death in coliseum-like
arenas that made even the Roman soldiers feel guilty. Perpetua wouldn't denounce Christianity for a
lesser sentence and was flogged until half naked. The males amongst them were set upon by a bear,
boar and a leopard and the women a wild cow.
"And immediately at the end of the spectacle, the leopard being released, with one bite of his, he was
covered with so much blood that the people (in witness to his second baptism) cried out to him
returning: 'Well washed, well washed.' Truly it was well with him who had washed in this wise. Then
said he to Pudens, the soldier, 'Farewell; remember the faith and me; and let not these things trouble
you, but strengthen you.' And there-with he took from Pudens' finger a little ring, and dipping it in his
wound gave it back again for an heirloom, leaving him a pledge and memorial of his blood."
The prisoners made a kiss of peace to each other before the sword was put to them. Perpetua
was stabbed in the bone and let out a shriek. Lastly she grabbed the edge of the blade from the
hesitant soldier and held it to her neck, ready to accept martyrdom.
In Norse Mythology there was another thunder God named Thor whom was red haired. He
wielded a hammer and was associated with hallowing or making holy. His name was originally Þórr
in the 12th century. Later on the Þ (thorn) symbol or 'th,' dating as far back as 200 A.D. was removed
from the alphabet. During the 15th century the Eastern Christian influence brought in the letter 'j'
instead, which is a flourished version of 'i.' By 1792 it was being used to refer to Jesus, instead of the
Afrikan Christ Yasha or even Joshua, the son of the Nun.
Water in this game is a substitute for darkness, water is deep, scatters light, it conceals you
and makes you feel surrounded, almost protected and it makes you buoyant. We are 70% water and
it purges us, keeping disease at bay. Are the references to blood through out the story because the
people were originally using water as a holy medium?
Yharnam blood represents the Chosen One instead of fire or dark, it keeps you alive in the
beginning of the game, but it also curses you. It is also used as blood arts by enemies like Maria or
Brador and with weapons it scales with bloodtinge. (Tinge means to have a slight color) 18
 A new status ailment is frenzy which is caused by unsettling eyes on fiendish creatures in the nightmare
realms like the winter lanterns or the Mensis brain, in other games this would be the bleed condition. The giant brain
inflicting frenzy in the Nightmare of Mensis is a lot like a monster from an H.P. Lovecraft 20th century horror novel,
named the Shoggoth. It is described in the At the Mountains of Madness, as "shapeless congeries of protoplasmic
bubbles, faintly self luminous and with myriads of temporary eyes forming and un-forming." The more insight you gain
the more susceptible you are to frenzy. But it is caused by eyes, I think this is suggestive of the paranoia that a
Yharnamite might have. The brain gives off light that drives you into a frenzy as you take damage. The werewolves of
Yharnam from Loran have an aversion to sun light.
Werewolves after all have a great sense of smell, not eyesight. The most popular superstition based
on a 1935 movie "Werewolf of London." They are dated back as early as 26 A.D. to Lycanthropy.
"Clawmark" rune
"A Caryll rune that transcribes inhuman sounds.
The "Clawmark" is an impulse to seek the warmth of blood like a beast. It strengthens visceral
attacks, one of the darker hunter techniques.
Although the difference is subtle, Runesmith Caryll describes the "Beast" as a horrific and unwelcome
instinct deep within the hearts of men, while "Clawmark" is an alluring invitation to accept this very
nature."
In Old Yharnam it was mentioned in the antidote description that ashen blood started the initial disease. This could be
referencing the plague or black death that surfaced in Europe during the Dark Ages. It spread by blood from mammals. They
used to think rats caused it, but in reality fleas were jumping from the rats to dogs, the popular Terriers unfortunately that people
in Britain owned. Dogs use to run amok until supper time, which in turn made the people come in contact with black death. The
most probable lane of infection was from body lice, that may have passed from person to person at home. To put it in perspective
though; when people's horses died in the street they were left there, because there was no sanitation department back then.
People also chucked their garbage out the window, so there were plenty of rats to go around. The plague was such a re-
occurring problem in the late middle ages it became widely known in a vulgar children's nursery rhyme, featuring the lyrics,
"Ring around the Rosie," (symptoms people displayed when it was too late) "Pocket full of posies," (bouquet of flowers) "Ashes to
ashes, we all fall down!" (Based off the funeral prayer, "Ashes to ashes, dust to dust," and maybe even referencing the ill effects
cremation had on the air).
During the middle ages, the plague got so bad, people would go on
processions through the streets with evangelicals,
"Thousands of citizens gathered in great processions, singing and with crosses
and banners, they marched throughout the city whipping themselves. It is
reported that surprising acts of charity and repentance accompanied the
marchers. However, one chronicler noted that anyone who did not join in the
flagellation (whipping thyself with a cat of nine tales) was accused of being in
league with the devil. They also killed Jews and priests who opposed them.
However enthusiasm for the movement diminished as suddenly as it
arose. When they preached that mere participation in their processions cleaned
sins, the Pope banned the movement in January 1261.
The German and Low Countries movement, the Brothers of the Cross, is particularly well documented. They wore white
robes and marched across Germany in 33.5 day campaigns (each day referred to a year of Jesus's earthly life) of penance, only
stopping in any one place for no more than a day. They established their camps in fields near towns and held their rituals twice a
day. The ritual began with the reading of a letter, claimed to have been delivered by an angel and justifying the Flagellants'
activities. Next the followers would fall to their knees and scourge themselves, gesturing with their free hands to indicate their sin
and striking themselves rhythmically to songs, known as Geisslerlieder, until blood flowed. Sometimes the blood was soaked up
in rags and treated as a holy relic."
Once in 1176 A.D. Henry II walked 3 miles barefooted, until his feet were muddied with horse manure and bloodied from
broken pottery in the street. He was flogged with birch whips for penance in Canterbury Cathedral over 300 times, after his
knights mistakenly killed Archbishop Becket for excommunicating the clergy that had crowned Henry's son in the Archbishop's
absence. It was all Henry could do to prevent his sons from taking over; with the dead hand of the Archbishop, the betrayal of his
wife Eleanor and the help of her ex-husband Louis VII.
"In ancient Rome, eunuch priests of the Phrygian goddess Cybele, the Galli, flogged themselves until they bled during
the annual festival called Dies sanguinis (Day of Blood). Women were flogged during the Roman Lupercalia to ensure fertility.
Particularly following the example of the Benedictine monk Peter Damian in the 11th century, flagellation became a form
of penance in the Catholic Church and its monastic orders. The 11th-century zealot Dominicus Loricatus repeated the entire
Psalter twenty times in one week, accompanying each psalm with a hundred lash-strokes to his back. The distinction of the
Flagellants was to take this self-mortification into the cities and other public spaces as a demonstration of piety. As well as
flagellation, the rituals were built around processions, hymns, distinct gestures, uniforms, and discipline. It was also said that
when singing a hymn and upon reaching the part about the passion of the Christ, one must drop to the ground, no matter how
dirty or painful the area may seem. Also one mustn't move if the ground has something on it that may cause an inconvenience..."
19
 In the Old Hunters Nightmare the scholars from Byrgenwerth hadn't split off into the Choir or the Unseen
Village yet. People started spreading rumors about what Byrgenwerth did in the fishing hamlet and snatchers were
making appearances on nights of the hunt. The Hunter Brador meanwhile sought asylum below the Research Hall,
perhaps due to his blood-tinge blood arts. Brador wears a lot of fur pelts, a lot like the Berserkers of Odin, that were
untouchable in battle. They fought with glee, showing off by biting their shields and fighting with spears.
Scandinavian folklore, originating from Sky burial times, recounted bouts and fits of rage between berserker
and demi-gods (whom were ordinary people with herculean strength). People being killed in mere scuffles and jaws
being ripped off of bullies in Egil's Saga or Grettir the Strongs lore, when they mistakingly bit their shields. Even
Husband and Wife were no stranger, once during an argument, a wife is thrown off a cliff into the ocean and a boulder
is hurled on top of her. Simple conflicts turned out much worse in the lore of those days.(1250 A.D.)
Long ago a tribal leader's wife, named Chiomara, was captured by a Roman centurion whom is known for his
pig-headedness. His love of money brings them to a nearby river to bid farewell to a contact. The wife spots Galatians
on the other side of the river and signals to them. In short time she regains her freedom. Chiomara returns home to
her husband and throws the centurion's head down at his feet. Ortiagon, her husband, was much amazed and said to
her, "Wife, it is important to deal honourably." She replied, "Yes, but it is more important that only one man, who has
slept with me, should remain alive."
Meanwhile the Oto's Workshop hunters took advantage of the werewolf Yharnamite's aversion to sunlight, by
proclaiming they were monsters when really they just couldn't contain themselves, slowly losing their place in civil
society. A similar thing happens in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein when the villagers find out about the Doctor's
monster, they gather together with their torches to get rid of the misunderstood conglomeration. The hunters saw
themselves superior to their furry cousins. Canines only see in black and white, but they are very good at detecting
moving objects and can compensate with their sense of smell, which supposedly smells objects in layers, rather than
the strongest or mix of smells we smell. Dogs also hear frequencies humans cannot hear, which is why seemingly
silent dog-whistles set off dogs. The description of the Underground Cell Inner Chamber Key relinquished by the
Harrowed Hunter reads, "The innermost chamber of the underground cell holds a lone madman. He wears a beast
hide, and rings a bell that emits no sound. Unending death awaits those who can hear the soundless bell."
In the old hunters nightmare you see the river filled with blood, the cleansing, the masked confederacy known
as The League reminds me a lot of the civil war! Valtr is one such member whom dresses in military uniform. The
League is only interested in squashing out Vermin found in corpse piles. If you summon Ludwig for battle he is titled
'The Beast Eater.' Soldiers during long sieges could run out of food, so they had to eat their horses to continue
fighting. Some of the most historic battles in the Civil War ended with blood being pooled at the bottom of hills or
gulches, just absolutely sick and disgusting to think about even today. What small advancements in fire power and
population led to. I think the movie Glory(1989) depicts pretty well where the spoils of war go.
There was also a centipede-like creature in Dark Souls that was connected to a ritual. Somehow over the
years I've come up with the idea that this 'Vermin,' (or something very close to it) was present before the events that
led to Mergo's Wet Nurse appearing. If you look in the picture, the vermin is so long it appears as if it's dangling. It is
the only item in the game with great detail being shown in the background. Centipedes are named with the prefix
centi- because they have 100 legs. They bite pretty hard for their size. They also don't have true eyes, instead they
can only tell the difference between light and dark. 'Vermin,' was also used as a racial epithet in the anti-semitic Nazi
press. Following Germany's elections in 1933, the first 'Aryan paragraph,' retired all non-Aryans in civil services.
"A centipede-like creature discovered on successful hunts by League hunters.

Vermin, found hidden within filth, are only seen by League confederates, and are the root of
man's impurity. The League has assumed the task of finding and crushing all vermin.

Perhaps there is some mercy in the madness. Those who wish to see vermin can, and those
who choose to are provided with boundless purpose."
20
 The effects of whatever happened in Old Yharnam can be seen in the Old Hunters
Nightmare by the collapsed gate, which is a reflection of what happened in the real world
when the Grand Cathedral closed off the gate on the bridge for anyone who didn't have
a Hunter Chief Emblem. People used to pull out their handkerchiefs when they took a low bow.
A white handkerchief is also seen as a symbol of surrender.
"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."
Other groups of old hunters that participated, the Powder Kegs and the Executioners
are both somewhat blinded by an article of head wear, but you are seeing them from a third
person perspective so it doesn't matter when you wear their head-pieces. The Powder Kegs
originated with the Oto's Workshop hunters to make weapons and protect the humans. Retired
Hunter Djura is one such odd member you can make peace with if you kill Darkbeast Paarl
before seeing him. If you choose to "spare the beast," instead of hunting them he gives you a
'powder keg badge' and the 'dust off' gesture.

Odin himself gave up an eye for insight. In front many supreme courts
across the world there is a statue of a woman blindfolded, holding up
weighted scales. You can say love or rather 'justice is blind,' but the
depiction of weighted scales is kind of ironic isn't it? The woman is most
surely the Greek figure of Lady Justice being depicted by a Roman. The
scales adjust to the weight of truth. After the Battle of Allia in 390 B.C. the
Romans agreed to pay up a thousand pounds of gold to the Gauls. One of
the Romans seeing the scales weighted with gold complains that the weights
are doctored, so the Gaul Leader gets up and throws his sword on his side
of the scale replying, "Vae Victis," meaning "Woe to the vanquished."
"Mesha was the King of Moab, tributary to Ahab, King of Israel. He was a sheepmaster, and paid
the King of Israel an annual tax consisting of the wool of 100,000 lambs and of 100,000 rams (II
Kings iii. 4). He rebelled against Israel and refused to pay tribute; whereupon Jehoram, King of
Israel, uniting his forces with those of Jehoshaphat, King of Judah, and of the King of Edom,
marched round the southern end of the Dead Sea and invaded the Moabitish territory. That route
was chosen, as is mentioned in the Moabite Stone, because the cities north of the Arnon were
fortified by Mesha.

The invading army was suffering from want of water, the prophet Elisha, who was present, was
consulted upon the suggestion of the King of Judah. He bade them dig trenches in the sandy soil,
which were speedily filled with water. The Moabite army, seeing the rays of the sun reflected in the
water, imagined that the enemies had quarreled and massacred one another; they made a
reckless rush to spoil the camp, only to be repelled, routed, and put to flight with great loss, the
few who escaped entering Kir-haraseth. The combined armies advanced into the land unopposed,
"marred" the fields with stones, stopped up the cisterns and fountains, felled the forests, and
beleaguered the fortress. With 700 warriors Mesha attempted to break through the enemy's
lines. Utterly failing in this, and reduced to desperation, he went to the top of the wall, and, in full
view of the invaders, offered his eldest son, who should have reigned in his stead, as a burnt
offering to propitiate the wrath of his god Chemosh. In consequence of this "there came great
wrath upon Israel"; and the Israelites, without pursuing their successes further, at once evacuated
the country, leaving Mesha in undisturbed possession of it." 21
 Vicar Laurence and Vicar Amelia of the Healing church both look like reindeer more than
wolves. Reindeer during full moons often act a little more agitated, not because there are more
predators out, but because the males grow new horn under the moonlight, as well as getting into fights
with each other on their territories and butting heads. Reindeer in Northern Europe commonly eat
Amanita Muscura and frolic & prance drunkenly in the wildlife. You might hear about them in Christmas
carols, helping out Santa or Jolly old Saint Nick dole out rewards or prank the children. It has come up
recently that Santa's generosity comes from stories of Saint Nicholas. Long ago a man and woman
feared being put into the slave class, because they didn't have enough money to get a marriage
license, so every mourning Saint Nicholas would stop by and drop off bags of gold, until they were able
to buy one. Santa's magical qualities are based off of the Koryak tribe that lives in Siberia.
The Koryak tribe live in Siberia and are a nomadic people that base
their life around reindeer and fishing. They call themselves, 'the last humans on
earth.' Their great deity of fertility and creation is a giant raven spirit known as
Kutkh, whom is sort of similar to the deities of the tribes in the Pacific North
West America. Kutkh has regurgitated, pecked and defecated most of the
earth. After creation he became an Old Man to walk the earth and mice were
created at his feet. He turned back into a bird and they crawled into his beak
where upon he sneezed and created mountains. Their subsequent scuffles
create the seasons, hot and cold.
Koryak shamans, dressed in red and white, gather mushrooms with a sack and enter the small tee-pee
through a hole in the top, because the outside was covered in snow during blizzards. They would hang the
mushrooms on pine trees to dry or in socks over the fire. During meditation the mushroom is partially chewed by
someone and then spit into another's mouth to be swallowed down whole. The compounds are so powerful that
reindeer, either used for sleigh riding or from the wild, venture close enough to get a taste of the urine. As a gag
sometimes males of the tribe drink the urine again to feel the effects, but there isn't much of a gross factor associated
with any of this. The mushroom itself isn't very dangerous raw, a lot of aches and a fever maybe, but there is a
chance of death when substituting for food or taken when sick (unfortunately with pneumonia). Not too long ago
however the mushroom being prepared wasn't chewed thoroughly and once it was spit up and swallowed by the
other person, the heat inside the mushroom caused the other person's throat to swell and they suffocated. The
Koryak aren't the only ones said to have encounters with the Amanita, some Scandinavian rumors hold that
berserkers deliberately went into a raging frenzy for 12 hours when they ate the mushroom.
The changing of seasons throughout humanity ended with a year end celebration of the years worth of hard
work. The joy that comes from the fruits of Harvest Season before six long cold and dark months in the north, that
could potentially kill off many people (mostly the very young and old due to pneumonia). This is why Christmas is at
the time of year it is, it is an adaptation of the Winter Harvest Festival. Today it coincides around the same time as the
Roman Saturnalia festival.
There were also festivals held at the end of summer in Celtic countries, such as Samhainn. A lot of customs
they observed dealt with appeasing the dead, because they thought that during this time of year the boundry between
this world and the otherworld was thin. They would set places for empty chairs at dinner tables, for the souls of the
dead and leave out food for the Aos Si or fairy spirits, from their old weakened pagan traditions. Younger people in
Scotland and Wales during the 16th century would often wear dark costumes and vegetable mask during this time of
year, before going house to house to ask for offerings. They threatened the people with trickery if they did not oblige,
much like we do on Halloween, that falls before All Saints Day. These people impersonated the Aos Si and
vegetables were also hollowed out, to put candles in them that scared away evil spirits. 22
 While celebrating they practiced bobbing for apples and scrying (fortune telling). They
also believed bonfires were sort of sacred during this time and they used the smoke and
ash in divinations. When they were criticized for being paganistic a Scottish Bishop replied,
"they keep the devil away."
Now going back to eyes, when people look into relics and see the cosmos they can use
these to cast spells, but what are these spells really, they are animated as comets, which are
celestial rocks made up of ice flying through space at thousands of miles per hour.
"Soft eye blessed by a phantasm. They were discovered
through Byrgenwerth's contact with the arcane, but in the
end revealed nothing.

Deep within the eye lies a vast stretch of dark sky that
rumbles with an endless meteor storm. The slightest rub of
the tiny orb, and the rock will tumble and soar."
Black Sky Eye

Byrgenwurth's Provost Willem, found by the Lake, is

obsessed with the cosmos and we can see he is slightly mad,
wearing an eye piece, with many looking glasses and he has some
sort of marine-life sensory organ growing out from behind his neck.
Sonar or static electricity might explain this appendage.
The culmination of Byrgenwerth is seen either in The Choir of the Upper Cathedral
Ward or Mensis, whom culminate around Yar'hargul. What about their family stone? It uses
elements of magic like Rom or Ebrietas, it's conjured in a dream like those of Amygdala and it
is somehow connected to the blood rituals of the chalices and kidnappings. It's moniker is the
Holy Moonlight Sword of Ludwig's Holy Blade from the early ages, whom regard chivalry and
honor in the highest regard.

" An arcane sword discovered long ago by Ludwig.

When blue moonlight dances around the sword, and it channels the
abyssal cosmos, its great blade will hurl a shadowy lightwave.

The Holy Moonlight Sword is synonymous with Ludwig, the Holy Blade,
but few have ever set eyes on the great blade, and whatever guidance it
has to offer, it seems to be of a very private, elusive sort."

Choir Intelligencer Edgar guards the lower bridge to Mergo's Loft in the Nightmare of
Mensis. He is dressed in the student uniform and he keeps a Rosmarinus, as a secondary
item. Holy or life in other games typically damages undead monsters.
Holy water, kept in Jesus' Holy Grail, heals Indiana Jones' father in The Last Crusade.(1989)

A special weapon used by the Choir, high-ranking members of the Healing Church.
Sprays a cloud of sacred mist, created by using blood-imbued Quicksilver Bullets as a
special medium. Arias are heard whenever sacred mist is seen, proving that the mist is a
heavenly blessing.
"Oh, fair maiden, why is it that you weep?"

23
 The people in the Research Hall with bags on their
heads, do you get the idea now that they were the result of
experiments on the poor, the mentally ill, criminals or mentally
handicapped? They mentioned the "plip plop" sound or
hallucination that may just be some form of epilepsy that has
been diagnosed for demonic possession.
Maybe the Byrgenwerth kidnappers wanted them and the women who were giving birth to the
Choir orphans or anyone who said anything suspicious.
A note in Yahar'gul reads,
"Madmen toil surreptitiously in rituals to beckon the moon. Uncover their secrets."
"In 333 B.C., Alexander the Great marched his army into the city of Gordion, where there was a
massive knot in desperate need of untying. Legend held that the hero who could undo this
exceedingly intricate Gordian Knot, as it was not-so-creatively called, would rule Asia. Alexander,
unable to unravel the knot, drew his sword and sliced right through it. Then, apparently with the
blessing of the eviscerated loops, he went on to conquer Asia minor.
This tall tale gives us the expression “to cut the Gordian Knot,” which means to solve a
seemingly insurmountable problem, by over-the-top means. It also lends its name to one of the animal
kingdom’s most clever parasites, the Gordian worm, which has solved the often insurmountable
problem of survival, with means that are horrifyingly over-the-top!"
This special breed of parasite in the waters is called the horse hair worm. In it's larva form it
gets eaten up by other worms like midges, mayflies, and mosquitoes. Once those metamorphosis they
live for a short time in the air and on land, until they die and their remains are eaten up by crickets.
The crickets now have a unknown hitchhiker traveling with them, which produces neurotransmitters
that make the cricket stop chirping and seek out water. Once the cricket jumps into the water, the
male horse hair worm burst out of the cricket, to go and find a mate. Sometimes they squeeze out in
groups of 3 or up to 32, making knots bigger than the host they invaded!
If you give %UDLQ)OXLG, found in WKHdisembodied head sacksRIWKH5HVHDUFK+DOO, to Saint
Adeline she will reward you with the 0LON:HHG5XQH. Eventually the bodies of the patients that have
fallen to the pool in the Research Hall re-animate and worm their way around the floor.
Saint Catherine of Sienna treated lepers during the late middle ages. She was among the other
womanly Saints of the time period that had performed such feats as levitation and revelation. It is
recorded that she had a spiritual union with Christ and was a virgin her entire life. She underwent
asceticism, fasting and is said to have undergone stigmata or the agony of Christ. People said she
was so holy, she could drink the pus of lepers as her own self-effacing Eucharist. When she died the
people of Sienna wanted her body back in their town, so they snatched her head from Rome in a
sack. On the way back a couple of Roman guards ordered them to reveal the contents of the sack and
they discovered rose petals instead. When they finally came back to Sienna they opened the sack
back up and there was Saint Catherine's head still, safe and sound.
7KH0LONZHHG5XQHDQG.RV3DUDVLWHZHDSRQWUDQVIRUPV\RXWKHKXQWHULQWRDVSHOOEDVHG
/XPHQZRRGWKDWFDQFDVWSRZHUIXOVWDUOLNHVSHOOVWKDWORRNVLPLODUWRWKHFRVPRV,QQDWXUHPRQDUFK
ODUYDHIHDVWRQPLONZHHGEHIRUHKLEHUQDWLQJLQFDFRRQVDQGWUDQVIRUPLQJLQWREXWWHUIOLHV
A famous mathematician named John Forbes Nash responsible for game theory once said,
"At the present time I seem to be thinking rationally again in the style that is characteristic of scientists.
However this is not entirely a matter of joy as if someone returned from physical disability to good
physical health. One aspect of this is that rationality of thought imposes a limit on a person's concept
of his relation to the cosmos."
John Nash himself battled with his delusional somewhat OCD-like thinking, but later on in life
formed meaningful relationships with people again and returned to normal on his own, rather than fall
into his own isolationism, comfort and absurdity. 24
 'Eyes on the inside,' a sign of transcendence to being closer to a Great One. It is written
in the description of the One-Third Umbilical Cord. Eyes on the inside makes me think of paranoia
or maybe the third eye cultures talk about, the sixth sense, the psychic sense that people use to
predict what is happening. Maybe dreams and visions as well.
Physically the phrase 'eyes on the inside' makes me think of ocean or parasitic
like creatures, worms etc. Slugs retracting their eyeballs, starfish with eyes all over the sides.
How about you? Someone who's still in their mothers womb, in the fetal position. Someone who's
senses are still blurred, but again eyes on the inside!
This is probably the most fascinating aspect, because there is an old Greek tragedy written
by Sophlocles about the mythical King Oedipus, who goes on a self-fulfilling prophecy. Oedipus'
Father King Laius had abandoned him to be exposed (infanticide) many years before, after
hearing a prophecy that his son would kill him and sleep with his wife.
Oedipus grows up, under the care of the Shepard who was supposed to kill him. Oedipus
receives a similar fortune from an Oracle in which he is the son. Oedipus decides to leave his
home city to prevent this prophecy from happening. On the way out he gets in an argument at a
crossroads and murders some people while drunk. Oedipus then moves to Thebes and becomes
King, soon after the previous King Laius has been confirmed dead. Oedipus eventually finds out
Laius was among the people he murdered at the crossroads and who his mother, now wife is.
She kills herself before he can cut out her womb with a sword. Oedipus then uses the pins
from her dress to poke out his own eyes. The chorus off to the side of the play commonly repeats
that, "no man is fortunate until his own death," or in todays terms, "don't count your chickens before
they hatch!"

I'll talk about an Oedipus complex at the end of this...

"Skull of a local from the violated fishing village. The inside of the skull was forcibly searched for eyes,
as evidenced by innumerable scratches and indentations.
No wonder the skull became stewed in curses.

They who offer baneful chants.

Weep with them, as one in trance"
The Accursed Brew formed from one of the creatures skulls in the fishing hamlet has it's
eye's dug out. We might say they wanted to use these in a ritual, but the more grounded
explanation would be they were forcibly removed in anger for what the creature saw or said.
Cultures historically punished people by removing body parts. Hammurabi's Code explicitly states
the 'eye for an eye,' rules.
The saying "see no evil, hear no evil speak no evil," originates in Japan's Shinto religion.
"Mizaru, kikazaru, iwazaru," means "see not, hear not, speak not." The word 'zaru' is similar to
'saru,' which is why this is represented as three wise monkeys at the Tōshō-gū shrine in Nikkō,
Japan. In western civilization the phrase means turning a blind eye to things that are undesirable
like improper language or character.
The skull also seems voo-doo like. In the most major cultures of the day up until the
1800's, people believed in alchemy or the ability to convert sand into gold. People also believed
life would just spontaneously appear, due to instances where they might have found maggots in a
dead tree trunk or a family of mice. Today we know that matter can not be chemically changed
from one element to another.

25
 Many machine gun turrets are
stationed around Old Yharnam's Nightmare.
They shoot infrared that bounces off the
target and reflects, causing the trap to fire.
Similar technology was used in the anti-
aircraft proximity missiles of Naval ships,
during World War 2 for bringing down fighter
planes...
Germany employed Maxim
machine guns too. Using mass assembly
they only needed a patent from the U.K.
for each machine gun used by their army.
This machine gun contraption looks
awfully reminiscent of something the Oto's
Workshop Hunters would use, (now the
Powder Kegs.) It's also similar to a vintage
folding camera and the legs of a carraige.

"Ah hah hah ha! Ooh! Majestic! A

hunter is a hunter, even in a
dream. But, alas, not too fast! The
nightmare swirls and churns
unending!"

"As you once did for the vacuous

Rom, grant us eyes, grant us
eyes. Plant eyes on our brains, to
cleanse our beastly idiocy,"
Micolash host of the Nightmare.

Molotov Cocktail
"Since the tragedy that struck Old Yharnam, fire has become a staple in beast hunts,
and is thought to cleanse impurity.
Certain types of beasts have an abnormal fear of flame."
Whenever they talk about the cleansing fire for the curse. I think about the Great Fire of
London in 1666. It was started when Thomas Farrinor, the King’s baker, failed to properly extinguish his
oven. This kitchen fire ended up burning down the whole city once it spread to the stables filled with
straw and a warehouse filled with combustible materials, such as lamp oils and coal. Also the houses in
London were built next to each other, so-much-so that your wall was shared with your neighbor even
though you lived in completely different buildings. The fire took up almost 80 percent of the city and
burned down 80 churches. Samuel Pepys, a Naval figure and record keeper wrote, "So near the fire as
we could for smoke; and all over the Thames, with one's face in the wind, you were almost burned with
a shower of fire-drops."
Although London during that time period wasn't as big as it is today, almost eighty-thousand
people lost their homes. While it was called a great fire only a few people actually died during the fire.
More people would've died in the coming months from pneumonia if they had trouble moving into
Thames or from starvation if they lost their belongings. During the fire itself people either died in the
initial stampede from the lack of breathing room if they were older or maybe from heat stroke trying to
carry their luggage away from the fire, which is funny, because medical science wasn't an all too sure
thing back then, so in the obituaries you may have read, "succumbed to heat death," of which there is
no such thing. "Died of fright," occurred more than once. In other circumstances the papers might've
said "from an affair." Not that they used the word "affair," because today that would be a harsher tone,
but it was enough to convey the idea of what had happened without being shocking (mistress' back
then weren't as uncommon either). 26
 The fire burned down major sections of the city, but after it a more advanced looking
London came about, in almost the same way rotted wood is cleared away by brush fires that
gives way to new growth in the next Spring. New buildings were built with brick and the open
sewers and tight alleyways were replaced with an iron grid-lock pattern like ancient cities; a
piazza (or town square) was envisioned for St. Paul's Cathedral.
They also say that London is built in layers, with much older buildings from 12th
century and earlier buried underneath. The Chalice Dungeons are also a lot like the
catacombs under France, they are found underground below the sewers and house tons of
skulls, they are un-ending, they drive you mad if you stay in them for long enough, because
it is so claustrophobic and the air is so stale.
Flamesprayer
"A special weapon used by certain members of the Healing Church.
Spits searing flames by using blood-imbued Quicksilver Bullets as a special medium.
Not the most efficient weapon by any stretch, but sometimes a sea of flames is just what
the doctor ordered.
Besides, the beasts of Yharnam can always use a good cleansing."

"Special blood used in ministration. Restores HP.

Once a patient has had their blood ministered, a unique but common treatment in Yharnam, successive
infusions recall the first, and are all the more invigorating for it.

No surprise that most Yharnamites are heavy users of blood."

Then there is the ties to alcoholism in the description of the Bloodvials, with the use of the
word 'invigorating.' Alcohol is an inebriate that builds up toxicity in the body. People would often get
out of work in the industrial factories after a long tiresome day and connect by hanging out at the
bar while their wives took care of the kids at home. For the Upper class it was different. They used
alcohol to sanitize their food originally like most people did, but they also could bottle it. They would
age their alcohol in wine cellars and judge it by it's bouquet or smell.
In public the community would go to church on Sunday's and every time hold communion,
which is a ceremony inside the church that happens every time it meets, when there isn't a baptism,
wedding or funeral going on. On a wedding day two bells ring together in harmony, on a funeral day
it's usually one bill ringing with long gaps in between the sound. During a baptism a baby is anointed
with holy water that people pray before. There's also ash Wednesday which was conceived from an
old tale of Jesus rubbing holy oils on people to reduce inflammation and cast out demons or
sickness. The communion is the partaking of the body and blood of Christ symbolized as bread and
wine in the real world. Bread comes from grain seed and can broken up easily while wine can go in
a goblet or chalice and it is cleaner to share with other people.
Most people throughout history sanitized drinking water by boiling it in a kiln or dumping hot
rocks into it. When people came together and lived in communities they fermented fruits and drank
wine, but the wine was pretty disgusting by todays standards. Grain beer really took off after about
1000 A.D. and was still America's earliest settlers select drink at every meal. (Though it probably
didn't have enough alcohol content to downright kill the generations passively.)
How about the Healing Church orphans in the base of the church in the old hunters
nightmare? Were they bastards, bastards of royalties sexual affairs, mutated offspring or something
more sinister like an alien invasion? (like the Choir Orphans found in the Upper Cathedral Ward)
Maybe the people who went there were unknowingly offering up their newborns for the experiments.
People say the blood comes from menstrual blood, because of the School of Mensis, but the tongs
suggest child birth was taking place. The lines between good and bad are really blurred. It's as if the
only chance of karma we have is if the bad guys kill each other.

27
 The Great Ones & their Kin
They are mentioned in another story by H.P. Lovecraft's The Call of Cthulu, "They worshiped, so they
said, the Great Old Ones who lived ages before there were any men, and who came to the young world out of
the sky. Those Old Ones were gone now, inside the earth and under the sea; but their dead bodies had told
their secrets in dreams to the first men, who formed a cult which had never died."
The relic to summon these beings is the Necronomicon, a fictional grimoire or textbook of magic.

Choronzon is a demon or devil that originated in writing with the 16th-century occultists
Edward Kelley and John Dee within the latter's occult system of Enochian magic. He is the Dweller
in the Abyss, believed to be the last great obstacle between the adept and enlightenment. Met with
proper preparation his function is to destroy the ego, which allows the adept to move beyond the
abyss into occult cosmology.
"The name of the Dweller in the Abyss is Choronzon, but he is not really an individual. The
Abyss is empty of being; it is filled with all possible forms, each equally inane, each therefore evil in
the only true sense of the word—that is, meaningless but malignant, in so far as it craves to become
real. These forms swirl senselessly into haphazard heaps like dust devils, and each such chance
aggregation asserts itself to be an individual and shrieks, "I am I!" though aware all the time that its
elements have no true bond; so that the slightest disturbance dissipates the delusion just as a
horseman, meeting a dust devil, brings it in showers of sand to the earth."
Rom, the Vacuous Spider of Byrgenwerth - has eyes all over, is slow, dimwitted, nothing at
all like a normal spider. Her real body is found petrified in the upper cathedral ward's Altar of
Despair and it can be used to resurrect Cainhurst Annalise (As they say, 'Beauty is wasted on the
young'). Rom is the product of a female Byrgenwerth scholar being experimented on. Who knows
whether or not it is the scholar themselves or a spider that was close-by during the ritual. She isn't
considered a Great one, because she drops a Kin Coldblood instead.
A note reads, "The Byrgenwerth spider hides all manner of rituals, and keeps our lost master
from us. A terrible shame. It makes my head shudder uncontrollably."
Lake Byrgenwerth that Rom is in is empty and goes on as far as you can see like the abyss
in dark souls, "The sky and the cosmos are one," whatever was there is in another place now.
"If you gaze long into the abyss, the abyss also gazes into you."-Friedrich Nietzsche

28
 The abyss was a word used by the Scottish for valleys. During the mid-18th century battles
were often fought between the Royal Scottish establishment and other tribes of bandits. They also
had to control mutinies. The law of the land was the Black Watch whom marched bare feet into
battle (to avoid gangrene during the summer & winter). They wore plaid wool kilts mostly, walking
behind people playing bagpipes, wind instruments made of pipes and animal stomach lining. As
victors of these battles they became known as 'highlanders.'
The Black Watch brought order to the mountainous and vast region, because of this they
gained a reputation in England and were invited South. The Royal Scottish commanded them to go.
The army consisting of hundreds of men marched South to make contact with the British Forces.
Many people along the way praised them for culling the wild North. When they arrived things had
gone as they expected, the British wanted to use them as mercenaries for wars with other nations
like France.
They quickly backed out of this offer in favor of defending their own land and made their way
out in three different groups to confuse the army. One of the groups was stopped by a British
Commander before leaving the country and they were forced to drop their swords remove their
apparel down to nothing, but bedtime trousers. A couple men were lead away and they pleaded that
they be let go and pardoned. The British pardoned the two and told them to tell more men to meet
with them. One by one each one was pardoned and they made their way back across the country
line.
When they returned though their suspicions were as they expected. Two corporals and a
private from the party were charged with abandoning their duties and were quartered. Being
quartered meant being drawn up by rope in a public square and questioned, most of the time until
death through either extreme pain, hanging or literally being quartered. The rest of the party was
also quartered, but only the two deaths of the commanders was recorded, the others most likely
wouldn't have been able to fight afterwards and would have had a very hard life there-after
The members of Black Watch left Scotland again to join the Brits and fought in some odd
battles with the French, as enforcers with swords, pistols and dirks. Most of their swords were cut
down to less than 20 inches in length, because of an uprising in 1745. Most of the armies knew
them as barbaric savages, however during this time they became known to the Brits for being pretty
straight laced, never acting rambunctious or drinking heavily. In battle they fought bravely. Some of
the wilder accounts tell of a Highlander ignoring gunfire and killing 9 men with his broadsword
before walking away with a crippled arm that had been shot off. They were known sometimes for
killing 3 or 4 times their number in battles against the French, ducking to the ground and then
springing up to charge again against people who were always in formation and lined up one behind
another.
While routed from their sides front after a retreat outside of Hulst in May, 1747, about a
couple hundred men or so found themselves surrounded by the enemy, cut off from reinforcements.
All except four or five men miraculously survived unscathed. Soon later they united as a group of
3000 men under Lord Loudon in a fortress in the Netherlands. After two months of a siege by the
French at Bergen op Zoom, an attack unfolded by the some odd 25,000 men. Two battalions of
Scottish men met the force from within the corners of four buildings, rather than retreating. With
barely any room to breathe they crammed themselves together, for half a day, fighting every inch
against an enemy that was almost four times their number and disputed every inch of ground, so
that the governor could escape. They lost two-thirds of their men that day.
After a decade they finished their world tour with the allies. They returned to Scotland one
night and in a sort of nostalgia noticed signs posted on billboards everywhere, asking for the Black
Watch to return to defend their country.
29
 The endless space of Lake Byrgenwerth represents humanities core in a way. Peering out into the
stars or into a magnifying lens there is a vast complexity to this world. Like the Abyss from Dark Souls that
seeks to envelop us all, at our core we are nothing, but space dust. We are a product of our environment.
This undiscovered truth that if we look inside ourselves or up in the sky we are held together by
nothingness. This vast darkness brings to light the allegory of Plato's cave. There we are infantile and
subservient to the voice in the back of the room, but outside we no longer fear the shadows on the wall. We
have overcome the trek up the cave; pity is what we might feel, but had we been caught they would have
remembered us falling back down without eyes.
Maybe this is the real reason Rom's body and spirit is hidden in two different places, as Rom isn't
actually aggressive when we first see her fat body walking on the surface of the water at Byrgenwerth. Her
body has been either petrified or sucked dry of blood, from a blood ritual and now her job is to hide the true
form of the blood moon, for the Moon Presence.
I originally thought that atheism was some sort of 1950's hipster deal, where people openly blasted
squares and listened to crazy Jazz music. My more wild imaginings that it was polytheism, people were
posting bumper stickers of, was also incorrect.
Some of Hinduism's earliest iterations suggested that there was no supernatural being watching over all
of us. Hinduism taught it's disciples, there was a perfect way to go through life to become a supreme being. If
you didn't do this your soul would reincarnate or 'samsara' and you would have to start all over again or choose
a different path. One that stuck with me was most similar to 'fortitude.' By taking everything in stride you were
essentially like an unmoving stone in a riverbed and even you, yourself, could become a supreme being this
way.
Kapila was adopted as the author of the Samkhya school. Kapila was a mystical sage, the word
translates to seer, as well as "tawny" or "reddish brown." There was also a breed of cow going by that name in
this time period. Kapila linked Hiranyagarbha, the universal germ, into the school,
"After Mahāprālaya, the great dissolution of the Universe, there was darkness everywhere. Everything was in a
state of sleep. There was nothing, either moving or static. Then Svayambhu, self-manifested Being arose,
which is a form beyond senses. It created the primordial waters first and established the seed of creation into it.
The seed turned into a golden womb, Hiraṇyagarbha. Then Svayambhu entered in the egg."
A Greek philosopher Prodicus protest, "the gods of popular belief do not exist nor do they know, but
primitive man, the fruits of the earth and virtually everything that contributed to his existence."
"If I be a diviner and full of the divining spirit which wandereth on
high mountain-ridges, ‘twixt two seas, Wandereth ‘twixt the past
and the future as a heavy cloud—hostile to sultry plains, and to all
that is weary and can neither die nor live:
Ready for lightning in its dark bosom, and for the
redeeming flash of light, charged with lightnings which say Yea!
which laugh Yea! ready for divining flashes of lightning. Blessed,
however, is he who is thus charged! And verily, long must he hang
like a heavy tempest on the mountain, who shall one day kindle the
light of the future!
Oh, how could I not be ardent for Eternity and for the marriage-ring
of rings—the ring of the return?
Never yet have I found the woman by whom I should like
to have children, unless it be this woman whom I love: for I love
thee, O Eternity!FOR I LOVE THEE, O ETERNITY!"-Übermensch,
Thus Spake Zarathustra

Nothingness also has ties to nihilism, as a reaction to World War 2 and the socialist
nationalist or Nazi times, during the eugenics period of the 1940's when Hitler wanted to create a
blonde Aryan master race. The Nazi army used Perviten to stay awake during the blitzkrieg
invasion, since then uppers or 'go-pills' have been a staple of modern transportation & delivery.

30
 I think it bears mentioning that the Leader of Nazi Germany's Sturmabteilung or 'Strom Troopers' was
named Rohm. Rohm was a homosexual, but a close friend of Hitler, often referring to him as, "Adi,' rather then
"Mein Fuhrer." Hitler was appointed chancellor of Germany on January 30th, 1933, by President Hidenburg. The
Sturmabteilung had arose from the Freikorps, post Word War 1, whom felt betrayed during the November
Revolution when the country changed from an Imperial Empire to the Weimar Republic. They, having a liaison with
Rohm and the Reichswehr, were in direct opposition to social democrats and often had street battles with
communist, disrupting their political meetings. During those first few months of 1933 the storm troopers murdered
many of Hitlers opposition gangster-style in cold blood. The Nationalist Social movement had suppressed all other
political parties, yet still sometimes the storm troopers or 'brown shirts,' while drunk, would become rowdy and
attack passerby's in the streets and even the police sent in.
Within a year Hitler wanted to reign in his power so he made a deal with the German military to give them
authority when President Hidenburg passed. On June 21st, 1934 Hidenburg suggested the storm troopers be
brought down, else martial law be declared and the army take control.
On June 30th, Hitler with his bodyguards the Shutzstaffel raided the village of Bad Wiesse. They snuck into
the hotel where the storm troopers were staying and dragged them out from their beds to be executed on the spot.
This became known as the Night of the Long Knives. The SS brought Rohm back to Munich. Hitler produced a
revolver for Rohm to shoot himself with. Rohm denied it and told Hitler to do it himself, if he wanted it done so
badly. Rohm was Hitlers old friend, so Hitler left the building and a minion came in and shot Rohm point-blank in
the stomach.
Here Hitler is standing with the Storm troopers in 1928. He was opposed by the
Centre party of Catholics for a long time and even Prussian Lutherans, but intimidation of
the SA and threats of communism made politicians fall in line. As appointed chancellor
Hitler gained most of his power from the Enabling Acts of 1933. The cathedral in the
background belongs to Nuremburg. The Nuremburg Laws of 1933 called into question
the Germanic people's citizenship based on their blood relations and forbade marriage
with 'Juden' or Hebrew people. The cathedral began construction in 1352 under Charles
IV of Luxemburg, King of Bohemia under the Holy Roman Empire. Another similar
Cathedral belongs to Cologne, which was built in 1248 to house the relics of the Three
Kings, biblical magi of great foreign importance whom brought Jesus' parents gold,
frankincense (“franc encens,” means quality in latin, an oil derived from a tree native to
Somalia) and myrrh (an analgesic made of the gum of a thistle tree). Cologne's cathedral
is based off of another cathedral in Amiens, France which housed the head of John the
Baptist, brought back from Constantinople during the 4th crusade. You may have also
heard about the children's crusades that happened in the early 13th century...
Stephen of Cloyes, a twelve year old boy, wanted to deliver a letter to the King of France, Phillip II
written by Jesus. He amassed a following of fifteen to thirty thousand adults and children to go on a pilgrimage.
The King implored them to go home, but they arrived in Saint Denis anyway. Phillip himself did not appear
impressed, especially since his unexpected visitors were led by a mere child. He refused to take them
seriously. Afterwards Stephan began preaching at a nearby abbey, before the movement dissipated and the
congregation returned home to their families. The juveniles had survived by begging for food.
In the early 9th and 10th century the body parts of Saints were revered as family heirlooms and
indications of power, passed down from generation to generation. They were quite popular with the upper
class, which is a far cry from the H.P. Lovecrafteon voo-doo people .
Your quest for more power begins after you kill The Cleric Beast, that looks similar to Laurence the First
Vicar in the Old Nightmare. With the Cleric beast gone the Moon Presence needs a new surrogate to collect
blood echoes and the doll finally channels blood echoes in the hunters dream. "We are born of the blood, made
men by the blood, undone by the blood. 'Fear the Old Blood'," Master Williams speaking with Laurence the First
Vicar.

"Skull of Laurence, first vicar of the Healing Church. In reality he became the first cleric
beast, and his human skull only exists within the Nightmare.

The skull is a symbol of Laurence's past, and what he failed to protect. He is destined to seek
his skull, but even if he found it, it could never restore his memories."
31
 "Material used in a Holy Chalice ritual.

Of the all the strange lifeforms that reside in the nooks and crannies of the old
labyrinth, the slugs are clear signs of the left-behind Great Ones."

Ebrietas summoned by the choir. (A group

that sung church hymns, typically male) Ebrietas is
foreshadowed by the gathering of infant orphans in
front of the Upper Cathedral Ward. You can access
this area with a key found by Yahar'gul Chapel
lamp, if you maneuver off a ledge by a broken fence
during the blood moon. Once you get the key and
open up the Upper Cathedral Ward, jump through a
pane glass window to access her area.
Ebrieta's has features on her lower body and eyes of a slug/snail - she is the souls
series new enemy type - a giant monster that charges at you and fires off magic spells. I used
to think she was abandoned because she has the powers of the Cosmo's, but when we find
her she is clearly mourning Rom's Petrified body.
I think Rom and Ebrietas were both female scholars at Byrgenwerth at some point, that
got past the living failures stage or maybe perhaps Ebrietas was born that way. It's impossible
to tell what came first. Ebrietas also drops a Kin Coldblood. Ebrietas finds herself lonely, out
of place in the world and has sort of given up. When raising her head to fight us we notice she
has eyes that protrude out of her head like a snail, enabling her to fire off magic spells in all
directions.

Then we have Amygdalia worshiped by Menis - missing an arm due to battle, with no
eyes and a brain contained by its skull, really Amygdalia is a false idol, she tried to gain her
power in the past and only ended up in the nightmare realm. She shares a common trait with
a demi-god named Morpheaus the God of Dreams who sends dreams through either an ivory
or horned gate. The shape of her skull matches the shape of a fungi. It also bears
resemblance to an almond organ in the brain that process' emotion called the amygdala.

32
 Reality- Dreams-Nightmares
The Unseen Village has been spit out of the nightmare as The One Reborn. They are the
lowliest of the low, in terms of being as close to a Castlevania monster as you can get, called Legion.

"Mantorok ," Eternal Darkness

We find the bodies of Mensis all dried out after death has visited their prying eyes, their heads
surrounded by cages. The cages themselves look like antennae, their heads like satellite receivers absorbing the
knowledge from above. The madness in this is that if their heads somehow mutated they would fill the space
above, like by having a space that funnels their skull upward means their brains will get bigger. "The Mensis ritual
must be stopped, lest we all become beasts." What they thought would be the next step in human evolution or are
the cages symbolic of their positions? Scientist used to look for differences in the cranium sizes of people to
justify racism. This is mockingly suggested in The Heart of Darkness. It is based on the time period when the
King Leopold II of Belgium made the Congo region his private property and the turned the natives into slaves,
irregardless off their status. The natives living there had to farm rubber for his quota or risk having their hands cut
off. Bull whips were used for punishment during slavery to scare everyone. Slaves got branded with symbols too,
but they were much harder to trade, so it wasn't that common. They lost most of their heritage living in America if
they even made it over on the ship. Slaves in America used to sing work songs to pass the time, like Po' Lazarus
in Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?

"The conical gold

helmet,
symbol of the
executioners,
represents luminosity,
ambition, and an
unflagging resolve to
face impurity, staring it down with stern
golden spirit."
'Losing' is a study of philosophy.
The School of Mensis is held up in some sort of parliamentary building. The Mensis Cage sort of
resembles a stove pipe hat, like the one Abe Lincoln used to wear, whom was the President during the Civil War.
There is a strong supernatural feeling here. I want to say that probably post 18th century people started having
a fascination with ghost stories and supernatural phenomena. So they would organize a gathering
at night with some sort of spirit medium or someone who can make contact with the dead.
In the time spent they would often try to witness supernatural events like levitation and ghost, specters or
eidolons (a shade or phantom look-alike in the human form, you may have spotted looking in a mirror or hidden
in a window). They might also put on blind folds or separate into different rooms and try remote viewing, which
involves guessing which tarot card the other person chose or what word they may have scribbled down on
paper. On T.V. you might see people play with a cursed object or hypnotism, crystal balls to speak with long lost
relatives, but people, like Cambridge Professor Aleister Crowley, did have a fascination with the occult or at least
the stories for a long long time.
Aleisters' Gold Ardeo is a reference to the all seeing eye of Horus, an Egyptian deity featured at the
pyramidion of a temple in many symbols, like on the dollar bill; It also is connected to 'Metatron,' the 'angel of
Recording,' featured in the Book of Parables or Enoch, whom mistakingly views the seat on the right hand of God
as someone else's. Also referenced as the "Cause of causes,' or the more familiar Primordial Metatron, 33 he is the
last or tenth Emanation of the Body, before resurrecting in the divine palace, as the 'Prince of Countenance.'
 A certified hypnotist, Rosemary Guiley describes remote viewing as, "seeing remote or hidden
objects clairvoyantly with the inner eye, or in alleged out-of-body travel," also known as clairvoyance or an
out of body experience These gatherings were recorded in ghost story books as viewing parties, because
they wanted to view or talk about supernatural phenomena.
The lines between reality and fantasy often get blurred in the wee hours of the night and early
mourning don't they? 3 am is called the devil's hour. It is the time when nocturnal creatures are probably
most cunning, while others are the most tired and unaware. It's also called the witching hour, because
people believe devils, witches and ghost are most powerful at this hour.
The devil in Christianity is represented by the Snake in the Garden of Eden story and is associated
with worldly temptation. He punishes people who have sinned for eternity in hell, in ironic ways. 'Sin' in
Latin means missing the mark, like with an arrow. During the 15th century he was depicted as a red haired
man in armor, because people were suspicious of strangers with red hair. Corinthians 11:14 reads, "And
no wonder, for Satan himself masquerades as an angel of light." His wings had been singed black upon
being rejected and crashing into hell, during the creation of the universe by God. The number of the beast,
'666' refers to the Latin spelling of Roman Emperor Nero Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus, whom
persecuted Christians.
The day Nero committed suicide he had just fled from Rome. The governor of Germania Superior
had just put down Vindex' rebellion against their tax policies, but the cries to put Galba, governer of
Hispania Tarraconensis, in charge continued from Germania and Spain. The prefect of the Praetorian
Guard, Gaius Nymphidius Sabinus, also abandoned his allegiance to the Emperor and came out in support
for Galba. Nero intended on fleeing Rome, but his officers would not obey jesting, "Is it so dreadful a thing
then to die?" Nero later awoke and found himself in a deserted palace. He exclaimed, "Have I neither
friend or foe?" A courier arrived informing him that he was a public enemy and was to be publicly executed
and beaten to death. The senate however was reluctant to do this and favored instead returning him to the
senate so he could produce a new heir in the Julio-Claudian Family. Nero was not aware of this.
Nero paced back and forth, muttering, "What an artist in me dies?" Nero lost his composure and
begged one of his companions to kill themselves to build up some nerve. As the sound of horses
approached he lost it and had his private secretary to do it. By the time the horseman entered Nero was
almost done bleeding out. Nero's final words were, "Too late! This is fidelity!" and he died.
"How you have fallen from heaven, morning star,
son of the dawn! You have been cast down to the
earth, you who once laid low the nations! You said
in your heart, 'I will ascend to the heavens; I will
raise my throne above the stars of God; I will sit
enthroned on the mount of assembly, on the
utmost heights of Mount Zaphon. I will ascend
above the tops of the clouds; I will make myself
like the Most High.' But you are brought down to
the realm of the dead, to the depths of the pit.
Those who see you stare at you, they ponder your
fate: 'Is this the man who shook the earth and
made kingdoms tremble, the man who made the
world a wilderness, who overthrew its cities and
would not let his captives go home?'"-The Oracle
One of the Chaos Witches referencing Nebuchadnezzar II's son Belshazzar,
in Dark Souls who tried to who ruled as regent for the Babylonian King.
recreate the First Flame Nebuchadnezzar II was gripped by a spiritual
with a Lord Soul. fervor to build a temple to the moon god Sin.
"And do not fear those who kill the body, but cannot kill the soul. "And no wonder, for Satan himself masquerades
Rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell." as an angel of light." - 2 Corinthians 11
Book of Matthew 10:28
"In addition to sexual rituals, Moloch worship included child sacrifice, or “passing children through the fire.” It is believed
that idols of Moloch were giant metal statues of a man with a bull’s head. Each image had a hole in the abdomen and possibly
outstretched forearms that made a kind of ramp to the hole. A fire was lit in or around the statue. Babies were placed in the
statue’s arms or in the hole. When a couple sacrificed their firstborn, they believed that Moloch would ensure financial prosperity
for the family and future children. However this is Roman propaganda, since it was actually just a funeral practice.
In North Africa, Moloch was renamed “Kronos.” Kronos migrated to Carthage in Greece, and his mythology grew to
include his becoming a Titan and the father of Zeus." 34
 Many places all across the world have similar beliefs about the boogey-man who
does things to you in the dark, actually south of the equator they have one such
mischievous figure. The Tokolash of South Africa manages to make you forget where you
put your items or molest you at night, sleep with your wife, eat your crops, anything you
can imagine the people there will attribute to this tall dark figure lurking about when we're
most vulnerable.

We are told to 'Seek paleblood to transcend the hunt!' But what else is similar?

"Coldblood Flowerbud
Material used in a Holy Chalice ritual.

Pale vegetation that commonly grows on

coldblood in a place long ago abandoned."

How about the Cold Blood Flower Bud - which is in many scenes like the astral tower or
the fishing hamlet. It is a stand in for a ceremonious flower to mourn death and passing into the
next life, appearing in areas were blood is plentiful or at a grave site in the Fishing hamlet or on
the coffin in the Astral Tower. A note reads, under the full moon, "Behold, a paleblood sky!"
Papaver rhoeas is a red flower that grew by the battlefields shaped by World War I. Today they
are recognized for remembrance of soldiers that died in combat. Canadian physician
Lieutenant-Colonel John McCrae wrote the poem "In Flanders Fields," for his friend's funeral.
The friend died in combat, in the Second Battle of Ypres in the Flanders region of upper
Belgium. McCrae's poem mentions the field poppy, which comes in during the Spring near
cultivated corn fields.
In Flanders' fields the poppies blow There's a certain anemone flower, who's one of
Between the crosses, row on row, many varieties is an 'alpine pasque-flower' or 'white' in
That mark our place: and in the sky this instance. In an old Hellenistic story a red anemone
The larks, still bravely singing, fly grows out of the ground after a Greek God dies.
Scarce heard amid the guns below. Cinyras was born from Paphos, a woman made of
We are the dead. Short days ago ivory touched by Venus. One day Cinyras has himself a
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
beautiful daughter named Myrrha. One day Myrrha tricks
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
her father into sexual relations and flees. When he learns
In Flanders' fields.
Take up our quarrel with the foe;
that he has been deceived by his daughter, he pursues
To you from failing hands we throw her with a sword and, being overtaken, she prays to the
The torch; be yours to hold it high, gods that she might be invisible; so the gods in
If ye break faith with us who die compassion turned her into the tree called smyrna
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow (myrrh). Nine months later, the tree twist and turns and
groans and Adonis is born.
Aphrodite took Adonis in as a newborn. Cupid had mistakenly scratched Venus with his
arrow, while Adonis was breast feeding, causing her to fall in love again. Adonis is handed off to
Persephone and so she becomes captivated by Adonis' beauty and she wants him to herself.
Zeus breaks up the dispute between Aphrodite and Persephone and grants Adonis one-third of
every year with each goddess and the last third with whomever he chooses. Adonis chooses
Aphrodite both times.

35
 'Aphrodite' or 'Cytherea' notices Adonis run off in a speedy bluster and advises, “Be bold when
they run, but bravery is unsafe when faced with the brave. Do not be foolish, beware of endangering
me, and do not provoke the creatures nature has armed, lest your glory is to my great cost. Neither
youth nor beauty, nor the charms that affect Venus, affect lions or bristling boars or the eyes and minds
of other wild creatures."
One day Adonis goes hunting with his dogs. Cythereas goes after him to warn him of his haste,
by harnessing Swans. Adonis' hunting dogs stir up a wild boar that charges forward and glances Adonis
with it's horn. Adonis spills blood and starts running away from the boar, when it turns around to chase
after him and gores him in the groin; flinging him up into the air, to fall back down again and collapse in
a mess, from the mortal wound.
‘Cytherea, carried in her light chariot through the midst of the heavens, by her swans’ swiftness, had not
yet reached Cyprus: she heard from afar the groans of the dying boy, and turned the white birds
towards him. When, from the heights, she saw the lifeless body, lying in its own blood, she leapt down,
tearing her clothes, and tearing at her hair, as well, and beat at her breasts with fierce hands,
complaining to the fates, “And yet not everything is in your power,” she said.
“Adonis, there shall be an everlasting token of my grief, and every year an imitation of your death will
complete a re-enactment of my mourning. But your blood will be changed into a flower. Persephone,
you were allowed to alter a woman’s body, Menthe’s, to fragrant mint: shall the transformation of my
hero, of the blood of Cinyras, be grudged to me?” So saying, she sprinkled the blood with odorous
nectar: and, at the touch, it swelled up, as bubbles emerge in yellow mud. In less than an hour, a flower,
of the colour of blood, was created such as pomegranates carry, that hide their seeds under a tough
rind. But enjoyment of it is brief; for, lightly clinging, and too easily fallen, the winds deflower it, which
are likewise responsible for its name, windflower: anemone.’
This pale blood really that the hunter is seeking should rather be his own human death. As
waking up on the same day of catastrophe or going insane, being stuck in the nightmare, would be
pretty awful.
Pale blood for all intents and purposes may also be referencing the pale blood of the doll in the
Hunters Dream, which is suggestive of how the curse may have spread and how the doll may have
denied it. It also may reference the Pthumerian Queen's pregnant belly. People suggest it's as if the
moon is pale and then turns blood red, but I don't know, reproduction does involve the sharing of the
parents chromosomes to create a new child. If no babies are being born then the doll can have no
family, it has no flesh and no blood essentially (and it is pale).
The Hunter's Dream - located in an Inter-dimensional space kind of like Ashe Lake from dark
souls, but instead of fog obscuring it we have obelisk or phallus' everywhere and there are bird baths in
the garden.
"The assembled crowd of anxious medical students dutifully check their pocket watches, as two of Liston’s
surgical assistants – ‘dressers’ as they are called – take firm hold of the struggling patient’s shoulders...
The fully conscious man, already racked with pain
from the badly broken leg he suffered by falling
between a train and the platform at nearby King’s
Cross, looks in total horror at the collection of knives,
saws and needles that lie alongside him. Liston
clamps his left hand across the patient’s thigh, picks
up his favorite knife and in one rapid movement makes
his incision. A dresser immediately tightens a
tourniquet to stem the blood. As the patient screams
with pain, Liston puts the knife away and grabs the
saw. With an assistant exposing the bone, Liston
begins to cut. Suddenly, the nervous student who has
been volunteered to steady the injured leg realizes he
is supporting its full weight. With a shudder he drops
the severed limb into a waiting box of sawdust."
36
 A statue inside the house depicts a maiden, probably the pale doll. Many sailors in olden days
wouldn't step on a ship if there was a female on-board, because there wasn't a lot of room as it was and
they were there to work, so they could feed their families. They may have instead referred to the ship itself
as a female, judging by its name. They also wouldn't board the ship if it didn't have some homage to a
patron saint, else they thought their voyage would be cursed. Saint Erasmus was one whom had a near
death experience with lightning on a ship deck, during weekly Sunday prayer. Also a black cat would've
worked for good luck as well, being the ships cat. On land a black cat crossing your path was bad luck, but
on the sea it was a companion that kept the ship clear of mice.
The navy included salted pork or bacon in a sailor’s rations alongside beef, one pound of biscuits and
a gallon of beer each day. That's why people say eating 'pork by the barrel,' it was heavily salted and
composed of different parts of the animal. Barrels weren't anything new. They were associated with Athena,
who was still widely recognized as the Goddess of Craft.
In 43 A.D. the Romans came to Britain on their boats wearing sandals, while everyone else was still
walking around in bare feet. The people of Ireland even lived in trees. The Romans during Ceaser's reign
had tried subjugating the Celts. They were ferocious in battle like lions, numerous and on average five
inches taller. They had blonde hair from washing it in lime-water, colorful plaid patterns and their tribal
leaders had long mustaches. They fought hard believing after death you would re-incarnate into another
world and then when you died there you would re-incarnate back into this world. Among the various tribes,
one tribe didn't harbor any hostilities.
A British tribal leader named Verica befriended the Romans. Roman styled mosaics, coins and
pottery were adopted. A temple in Bath was built around an ancient spring that had been used for religious
practices for over thousands of years. A Gorgon head built into the building faced the East at the front. The
South side wall, by the hot spring, was dedicated to the Sun God Sol featuring a spiky crown. On the North
side the Moon Goddess Luna is depicted riding her chariot across the night sky.
Abbey in years earlier featured long catwalks directly over the Thames river. In the story of King
Arthur he draws the Sword in the Stone. Swords were crafted by dripping melting iron into a stone mold.
After creating the Knights of the Round Table he is given the Excalibur by a Lake Goddess. At the end of
King Arthur's life, the Excalibur eventually finds it's resting place in the lake. Many weapons were found by
these abbeys. People gave up their weapons to these bodies of water as offerings to the Water Goddess'.
The Witham Shield is a decorative bronze shield that was found, dating back to 400 B.C during the Iron age.
Swords used on the high seas by bucaneers were painted black to prevent oxidation.
Lady Maria of the Astral Tower abandoned her Katana the Rakuyo in a well,
after the fishing hamlet incident. It is the only other Katana in the game besides the
Chikage. The Katana commonly appears in the other games as a cursed sword,
connected to the Satsuki sidequest from Demon Souls in which he attacks you for
holding a magic "Makoto." Samurai kept a Katana and short-sword called a Wakizashi
on either side, so they were immediately recognizable (being the only people allowed
to carry swords). There wasn't a lot of iron in the area that formed over volcanoes,
over long stretches of time, but the Katana was a sleek and quick sword, used
throughout the centuries.
After three days of heat in a furnace, the Tamahagane steel came out and was covered in holy
scripture, clay and ash. The act of forging was a sacred ordeal in which the smith would abstain from drink
and sex. Katanas were made by hammering and folding the metal dozens of times, which gave it
thousands of layers. The Katana was formed with two different densities of iron, a soft layer on the inside
to give it flexibility and a hard layer on the outside to maintain it's quality. The final act of smithing involves
polishing the blade to reveal the grains underneath. The smith left a unique signature on their swords, so
some were famous enough to be emulated as counterfeits. Samurai slept with the swords on mantles, near
their heads. The Katana was popularly regarded as having some sort of blood seeking characteristics in
itself, like the Muramasa sword which beget murder and seppuku or hari-kiri, inherited from it's mad smith.
The Claymore used in the west was much stronger and not only slashed, but could be used to hack
at things like some sort of fire-Axe. It also had hand guards coming out of the sides making it's notable
shape. This t-shape was associated with Christianity and the curves of Scimitars with Islam. 37
 Another phrase references the outside 2nd story balcony of a house, sometimes roof, 'the
widows walk,' is said to have originated with the wives of mariners, whom would watch for their
spouses' return there, oft' in vain, as the ocean was known to take the lives of the mariners from
time to time; leaving the women widows, dressed in black.

Such stories appeared in the press as that

of a civil servant who saw himself on the
other side of Tavistock Square every
evening as he walked home from work:

‘He tried to give pursuit, but once his double

turned a corner he was gone.’
Ain't she a beaut?
Another woman saw a vision of her sister across Russell Square at the precise
moment the woman was dying. Princess Marie Lichtenstein, who occupied the grand
Jacobean mansion of Holland House (in Holland Park) wrote a history of the building in
which she recorded that,
‘Whether we respect tradition or not, it is as a received fact, that whenever the mistress
of Holland House meets herself, Death is hovering about her.’-19th century Victorian
London
Many sailors know about the sirens from the Greek stories. Sirens would start singing
when people ventured too close to their island and sailors would jump off the ship to go meet
them, never be seen again or eventually be led to ship wreck. Odysseus knew about this and
so had his men plug their ears with bees wax, while he himself was tied to the mast of the ship.
As they got closer he heard their song and changed his mind, but his men just ignored him and
made the rope tighter.

If you did survive an encounter with a siren after hearing their

song, it was said you would have bad luck and eventually die.
The Winter Lanterns are the most similar and they are dangerous
enemies; causing frenzy when you hear their singing and are within
their gaze.
Another creature is called the Giant Lost Child. It hurls
giant boulders at the player. It has beast-like limbs, but it is
covered in white fur. It has a sunken face and eyes like that of a
human. It bears close resemblance to the Yeti, an urban legend in
Nepal, also known as the abominable snowman. Abominable
means unpleasant, it was used in the papers as a substitution for
the word 'metoh' or filthy. The bipedal creature was described on
a hike down from Mount Everest one day. Some people recall a
mysterious humanoid figure seen in white-out conditions that
leaves behind giant foot steps. The Lepcha hail it as the
'Glacier Being' or the 'God of the Hunt.' They thought he carried a
boulder as a weapon, which made a whistling whoosh sound and
that his blood had mystical properties.

38
 In the Hunters Dream there is...

Gherman who is in retirement, he appears feeble, somewhat

delusional about where he is and who's in control, but he is still
mostly human, when he is asleep he whimpers about Vicar
Laurence and Provost Willem. During his fight he makes some
beast like sounds
(Kind of like the sounds Turok the Dinosaur hunter makes when he's attacked!
Another Lovecrafteon genre which features a female navigator and mission updater named Aedon)

Gherman is the first hunter, helping others to participate in the hunt, which put him down in the
first place. His right leg is a peg-leg. Instead of blood he may have succumb to the Hunters Dream
through the studies of Williams and the Choir who revere dreams. During the fight in the garden though,
the music is tragic, the ultimate truth is that you are there to replace him. This fighting between you two,
that ends in one of your deaths, is a lot like the past-time of catch between father and son.
"A great relic, also known as the Cord of the Eye. Every infant Great One has this precursor to the umbilical cord."
"Every Great One loses its child, and then yearns for a surrogate.
The Third Umbilical Cord precipitated the encounter with the pale moon, which beckoned the hunters and conceived the
hunter's dream." - Abandoned Workshop
"Every Great One loses its child, and then yearns for a surrogate, and Oedon, the formless
Great One, is no different. To think, it was corrupted blood that began this eldritch liaison." -
Arianna's Child

"Every Great One loses its child, and then yearns for a surrogate. This Cord granted Mensis
audience with Mergo, but resulted in the stillbirth of their brains." - Mergo's Wet Nurse

"Provost William sought the Cord in order to elevate his being and thoughts to those of a
Great One, by lining his brain with eyes. The only choice, he knew, if man were to ever match
Their greatness." - Iosefka (imposter)
"Use to gain Insight and, so they say, eyes on the inside, although no one remembers what that truly entails."
One Third Umbilical Cord**Sticky Tri-force

With 3 One-Third Umbilical Cords you can fight the Moon Presence in combat after
defeating Gherman.

The Moon Presence is hidden behind the moon

in the hunters dream. She is female, she has a
faceless unformed chasm for collecting peoples
thoughts so they become like Gherman
themselves, dummies in her lecherous world.
She has Medusa-like hair, as well.
Medusa was a monster from Greek mythology, known as one of the three Gorgon sisters
among Stheno and Euryale. A Gorgon was a dreadful woman often with snakes for hair and a
visage that put so much fear into people they turned to stone. Perseus' mother is forced into
marriage by a deity, so to stop it he has to undergo some trials one of which involves going to an
island and slaying the Gorgon, Medusa. He does so by averting his eyes from her gaze and
showing her a mirror shield, which petrifies her immediately. What else can we say about the
Moon Presence other than that she observes us from afar, like a mother!
By using the umbilical cords we've essentially mutated ourselves one step further into the
madness of it all, until we become a traitorous looking squid. A lot of animals, mammals for sure,
eat their own after birth; placenta is filled with nutrients.
39
 The doll is a reserved servant in the hunters dream that channels blood echoes, shame of her
gender represented by her dark clothing covering her up. She's actually dressed a lot like a female from an
old western. Her role to aid the player character is similar to the half-Elf, half-Titan Norns who tended the
Yggdrasill tree in Norse Mythology. They were also bearers of great wisdom and aided early man.
The statues of women in Yharnam are also covered up, but i think that is more of a misogynist idea
of a womans shameful body (temptation mixed with concealment of the Pthumerians in the population).
Pthumerians are very tall, like giants from previous games. In Norse Mythology during the creation of
the earth, the giant Ymir was formed in the primordial chaos Ginnungagap or 'the Yawning Void,' where the
frigid Niflheim and sweltering Muspelheim meet in effulgence, as a dazzling brightness.
Also the chains around the statues are based on something Draugrs did to their corpses. The corpse
was more likely to come back if it wasn't in a horizontal position, in that lore. The doll in the Hunter's Dream
is also very tall and slender, almost like a Pthumerian. She channels your blood echoes and is protective,
since she watches over the little ones!
"Moon" rune.
"A secret symbol left by Caryll, runesmith of Byrgenwerth.

A transcription of "moon", as spoken by the Great Ones inhabiting the nightmare.

Gain more Blood Echoes.

The Great Ones that inhabit the nightmare are sympathetic in spirit, and often answer when
called upon."

Are the little one's the Doll mentions a reference to the other human character's
height? Maybe, I think really they are there to sell merchandise and their closest cousins
would be the skeletons on the bottom of Nashandra's dress in Dark Souls 2 or what the
winter lanterns textures are made up of funnily enough.
"Whoever welcomes a prophet as a prophet will receive a prophet’s reward, and
whoever welcomes a righteous person as a righteous person will receive a righteous
person’s reward. And if anyone gives even a cup of cold water to one of these little ones who
is my disciple, truly I tell you, that person will certainly not lose their reward.” Matthew 10:40
Are the lanterns scattered about Yharnam references to the light house where we
fight the Orphan of Kos? If you use the Beast Cutter as a mace it sure looks like a lantern a
hunter might have used to smack some sense into the Orphan. Show him the light. Maybe
Amygdalia doesn't like the orphan either, since he could be there to replace him.

The dolls nightmare counter part

Lady Maria however looks to be a naval
explorer or world conqueror. She is very
bad-ass looking, undoubtedly because a
woman with that sort of power is unheard
of and would have been an anomaly in
recorded history.
A little bit of electro shock therapy never hurt anyone

40
 She slyly starts out the encounter by playing dead, but she is also covered in her own blood
from the neck down. The drinking chalice next to her is filled with someones blood, maybe her own.
When the philosopher Socrates was excommunicated, for corrupting the youth, he instead cut
his own life short by drinking from a chalice filled with a poisonous hemlock mixture. He chose to go
out at his peak, rather then fade into nothing.
Lady Maria may have knowledge of how to use Rom's petrified body to resurrect herself being
so close to Byrgenwerth, but the only way she can do this is if someone has prior knowledge.
When she sees you aren't the person she thought you were, what was she expecting you to do
exactly? Her interest peaks at your foolishness and inquisitiveness. Would the person she expected to
find her have brought her somewhere else? My intuition with these things is that usually we go off the
rails in terms of psychological problems with our characters and after Dark Souls 2 lacking antagonist,
I'm sure Miyazake the creator wanted a truly fleshed out psycho female arch-nemesis..
The coffin's craftsmanship is like that of a captains bed made of polished wood and high off the
ground. This could be Gherman's final resting place. Maybe people in the Hunters Dream were
somehow tied to Gherman, which is why the Doll exist in the real world. Gherman awoke one day in
the Hunter's Dream unable to leave.

"Sooner or later, we'll all be pushing up daisies."

Another side of the pale doll we see this time in the real world as Annalise of the
Vilebloods. We can't tell if it's her real body or a relative of the doll, because she wears a helmet
to fully protect herself, but if you make it to the last Pthumerian Chalice dungeon going in
order...

 Pthumeru Chalice (3 layers)

 Central Pthumeru Chalice (3 layers)

 Lower Pthumeru Chalice (4 layers)

 Defiled Chalice (3 layers)

You will unlock the final dungeon where you can face the Yharnam Pthumerian Queen
and inside it eventually a chest contains the Ring of Betrothal. This ring can be brought to
Annalise of the Vilebloods to open up a dating-sim dialogue that ultimately ends in failure.
"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."
Guess you don't need this, huh?

41
 In the astral tower Lady Maria has a goblet next to her, like the estus flask a Dark Souls
player might be used to. In many soul games there is a Lord vessel or some sort to contain
souls and use them as an offering to transgress dimensions, time, etc. What we have here is
the common motif of life after death, but she has become death itself, she has lost her human
touch with the world, just like Annalise of the Vilebloods, who is more like some upper class
illuminati figure that collects art and surrounds herself with eccentric undead people or ghost in
this case!(yar-har-har!)
"Silver-shining tear stone.

Use to change into a droplet blood

gem that fortifies any weapon.
A doll sheds neither blood nor tears and thus
its nature remains unknown. Whoever thinks
this is precious must be troubled by severe
naiveté."

A Pthumerian descendant does just fine in this story when talking about immortality,
secrets and such. But here we have a doll in the hunters dream that Gherman offers up as a sex
device and in the background we can here sexual breathing if we listen close enough at the right
times. It makes it seem like the Doll is emotionally distant from Gherman, as if she isn't real or
whole.
Mysticism is a word to describe the spiritual union with God. It is the ecstasy or rapture
one feels after prayer. It is something spiritual that intellect can't comprehend, when one thinks
about the grandeur of God. In the Hellenistic world it meant 'secret', as in a ritual to initiate.
'In the 19th century, under the influence of Romanticism, this "union" was interpreted as a
"religious experience," which provides certainty about God or a transcendental reality.' In Latin
this might be recognized as 'illuminatio,' which compares to enlightenment.
The Colorless Tear Stone, similar to an Opal, we find in the doll in the Hunters
Workshop, below the Upper Cathedral Ward during the blood moon, represents this emotion
that has been cut off. Maria's soul is in the doll, while her emotion splits off as Maria in the Old
Hunters Nightmare, where her sins weigh her down.
The Doll really just yearns to be able to have emotions again, but can't because she is an
autonomous concept and servant in and of the hunters dream. As they say, "there are worse
things then death." Your ultimate goal is to uncover the secrets of pale blood and end the
nightmare. A book titled The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath by H.P. Lovecraft portrays a
protagonist who has to overcome certain obstacles on his way to a majestic city in the
Dreamlands. He discovers that his dream masters snatched away his dream each time,
because they fear the monsters he may come face to face with if he ventures to the city.

"Causes shall not be multiplied beyond necessity,”

42
Occam’s Razor. William of Occam
 This imagery pops up as the submerged Yharnam in the Fishing Hamlet, doesn't the
Fishing Hamlet remind you of wrath and the submerged Yharnam give you a feeling of the
misery that ultimately followed? This bears close resemblance to the story of Noah and the
Ark, when God flooded the Earth to purge the wicked.
The story of Noah goes back thousands of years before Christ in the Mesopotamia
region and is found in various other regions. Noah one day is given the prophecy that within
forty years the earth will be purged of it's wickedness with a great flood. If Noah is to
survive he must bring his immediate family and two of each animal aboard an ark. The
towns-people make fun of him for being a prophet and then becoming a carpenter, after he
builds his boat deep into dry land.
The deluge does indeed come, flooding the earth up to the highest mountain tops.
Noah sends out a raven from the ark after a week and it flies back and forth. A week later
he sends out a dove and it returns after not having found an adequate place to rest.
Another week passes and again he sends the dove out. The dove returns and this time it is
holding onto an olive branch. The waters start receding after 150 days and then 220 days
later the earth is back to normal.
Noah, back on dry land, makes a burnt offering to the Lord and the Lord says, that
never again will the earth be drowned; for the imagination of man's heart is evil from his
youth; nor will he smite every living thing as he has done before. Also every plant and
moving thing is theirs, except for the beast blood. Whomever sheds man's blood will have
their blood shed by man. With this a covenant is established and a rainbow appears.
Noah lives another 350 before he dies at 950, the last of the antediluvian patriarchs.
During the rest of his life he establishes the first vineyard and curses his son Ham, after
Ham makes an uncomfortable observation at his drunken stupor and nakedness. Ham
castrates Noah and has the other brothers, Shem and Japheth, cover him up, 'so that Noah
may not have another cursed son.' With that Ham's son Canaan is cursed. Shem
meanwhile lives in Japheth's lands.
The Isrealite's one day move into Shechem lands. Dinah, the daughter of Jacob,
makes tender love to Hamor's son Shechem. One day Ham visits Jacob and ask for Dinah,
for his own son, offering his daughters in marriage in return for theirs. Jacob and his sons
agree only if Ham and Shechem are circumcised. Three days later while they are still sore,
Jacobs brothers and his sons come to the city and kill all the males, taking away their riches
and wives. Jacob exclaims he is now foreign to the Canaanites and Perizzites, but the
brothers Simon and Levi reply, 'Should he treat our sister like a harlot?'

43
 Simon in the old hunters dream- his realization or eldritch truth is his own death,
he passes on once he's done all he can for you and realizes the truth that perhaps he
never made it back to Old Yharnam, as the assassin Brador is willfully locked away
safe and sound. Ringing his bell to carry out assassination, like its some sort of supper
time
Did the sun in the nightmare disappear as symbolism for the curse
disappearing? Was it a symbol of the werewolves fear of the hunters, as well as the
orphans parent's fears of his irregularity? The nightmare sun itself actually has the
makings of a human iris. It's appearance marks the beginning of the nightmare. It
appears as a glowing eye, similar to what happens when staring through a looking
glass. The refracted light cast a glare on the onlooker's side of the Monocular, which
magnifies things that are far away.

"Monocular used to view things

up close.

Not a hunter's tool, but a simple

Micolash would be happy. antique, to be used as one sees
fit."

"Shrouded by night, but with steady stride. Colored by

blood, but always clear of mind.
Proud hunter of the church.
Beasts are a curse, and a curse is a shackle.
Only ye are the true blades of the church." -Yamamura
Yamamura is locked away in the Research Hall.
Hailing from an eastern land, he is the original
owner of the Chikage, the Bloody Crow uses.
After having joined the League, he is locked
away for his supposed impurity.
Harrowed Hunter, Simon "Soul of the lost, withdrawn from its vessel.
Let strength be granted so the world might be mended.
so the world might be mended."-Maiden in Black, Demon's Souls

Does the hunter's workshop on fire in the hunters dream, after you've beaten
Mergo's Wet Nurse, suggest that you and the other characters have stumbled upon some
secret?
In Dark Souls there is an item called humanity. It is a empty remnant of a soul you
find in Lordran, among the other Lord Souls and Dark Souls. The word 'humanity' is also
famous from when a famous German blimp, the LZ Zepplin, caught fire and burned down
in 1936. Air ships were held up by pockets of air. Once an airship's balloons reached 95%
capacity it took off. The light gas hydrogen enabled it to reach the upper atmosphere.
Once there it had to let air out of the valves to keep the light-gas bags from rupturing. The
Hindenburg class flying ship had gone on many trips from Germany, but this time after
only four minutes it became engulfed in flames. Supposedly this may have been after a
storm. The Hindenburg exploded in a fiery chaos before it even hit the ground. Hydrogen
when exposed to air ignited and somehow made it's way through the ship's balloon vents
and ultimately the cabin. The New Jersey news announcer was recorded screaming "The
humanity, oh the humanity!" News at that time was not allowed to use recorded music, so
you might've felt some existential dread.
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Why does the same sound effect play when you reawaken in the Research Hall?
Something that comes to mind is a huge panic that happened long ago on Halloween in 1939.
H.G. Wells had just finished writing his novel 'War of the Worlds," and radios were at an all time
popularity. So Orsen Wells created his own broadcast that introduced the first part of the book, while
simultaneously playing out like a real broadcast. Everything was going well, the commentator was
narrating the Martian tripods being found and the war planes flying in to break up the space aliens
with sound effects. Then the CBS supervisor burst in the room, "pale as death." The lobby was being
filled with police one by one and there was a real struggle going on between the police, page boys
and execs. By this time actor Ray Collins was choking on his lines, on the roof of the building.
A minute later it is sign-off and the producer John Houseman picks up the phone. He's being
told there's an angry mob outside. The employees are confined to a small room, while the
manuscripts are torn up by the employees below. The doors burst open and the press pour in
asking, "'How many deaths had we heard of?' (Implying they knew of thousands.) 'What did we know
of the fatal stampede in a Jersey hall?' (Implying it was one of many.) 'What traffic deaths?' (The
ditches must be choked with corpses.) 'The suicides?' (Haven't you heard about the one on Riverside
Drive?) It is all quite vague in my memory and quite terrible."
Paul White, head of CBS News, was quickly summoned to the office – "and there bedlam
reigned", he wrote:
"The telephone switchboard, a vast sea of light, could handle only a fraction of incoming calls. The
haggard Welles sat alone and despondent. 'I'm through,' he lamented, 'washed up.' I didn't bother to
reply to this highly inaccurate self-appraisal. I was too busy writing explanations to put on the air,
reassuring the audience that it was safe. I also answered my share of incessant telephone calls,
many of them from as far away as the Pacific Coast."
Reportedly only a few people had actually called the police and they never so much as ran out their
front doors, but the scene was immortalized in the New York Times the next day on Halloween.
So besides the changes in scenery we see in the Hunters Dream and the sounds we hear
haunting the various landscapes. We also have the Pthumerians from the Chalice Dungeons who are
the closest contact we have with the Great Ones, since they keep all of their ritual materials. The
Pthumerian's immortality and the hive mind of the dream-scapes lastly brings us to...

45
"A secret symbol left by Caryll, runesmith of Byrgenwerth.
A transcription of "Eye," as spoken by left-behind Great Ones.
Allows one to make additional discoveries.

Eyes symbolize the truth Master Willem sought in his research.

Disillusioned by the limits of human intellect, Master Willem looked to beings from
higher planes for guidance, and sought to line his brain with eyes in order to elevate
his thoughts."
"A Caryll Rune that transcribes inhuman sounds.

This red-smudged rune means "Hunter", and has been adopted by those who have
taken the Hunter of Hunters oath.

These watchmen admonish those who have become addled with blood. Be they men
or beasts, anyone who has threatened the pledgers of the "Hunter" oath surely has
an issue with blood."

"A Caryll rune envisioned by Adeline, patient of the Research Hall.

A translation of the inhumane, sticky whispers that reveal the nature of a celestial
attendant. The 'Milk Weed' rune.
Those who swear this oath become a Lumenwood that peers towards the sky,
feeding phantasms in its luscious bed. Phantasms guide us and lead us to further
discoveries."

"A secret symbol left by Caryll, runesmith of Byrgenwerth.

The "Heir" sees sentimentality in the warmth of blood, acknowledging this as one of the
darker hunter techniques.
More Blood Echoes gained from visceral attacks.
Perhaps the "Heir" is a hunter who bears the echoing will of those before him.

"A secret symbol left by Caryll, runesmith of Byrgenwerth.

This transcription of the Great Ones' inhuman voices depicts downreaching currents.

This rune means "Deep Sea" and grants augmented resistance.

Great volumes of water serve as a bulwark guarding sleep, and an augur of the eldritch Truth.
Overcome this hindrance, and seek what is yours."

A Caryll rune discovered by the old hunter Ludwig along with the Holy Moonlight Sword.

Boosts amount of life recovered by rallying.

When Ludwig closed his eyes, he saw darkness, or perhaps nothingness,

and that is where he discovered the tiny beings of light.
Ludwig was certain that these playful dancing sprites offered "guidance"
They could empty Ludwig of his fears at least in the midst of a hunt."

46
 Distortion
Other area's of the nightmare are clearly taken from the real world but merged with something
sinister like gravestones that are cracked open and bleeding, basalt rocks covering the walls or winter
lanterns wandering about. Werewolves heads splitting open with parasites, such and such...
The Orphan of Kos summons thunder - abandoned after his mothers death, but he also doesn't
resemble any of the other creatures. He is otherworldly. The word 'eldritch' can also be used as a
substitute for otherworldy, taken from Scottish poems, eldritch means ghastly or uncanny.
Kos is also a Greek island in the Aegean Sea. It is said a statue of the Greek Goddess Aphrodite
was created by a Greek sculptor named Praxiteles, but the people of Kos upon seeing the statue were
horrified and wouldn't accept it, because nude sculptures of females or Goddess' were taboo. They were
given a new version of the statue covered in garbs and the original was given to Knidos. Unclothed male
statues however were historically acceptable.
The orphan of Kos' origin's distorted. The area he is located in is sort of an elephant graveyard for
ships, the cliffs surrounding him are are pent up and it's as if some whirlpool in the ocean opened up and
sunk these ships to the bottom of the sea, like with the Bermuda Triangle or the fictional Land of the Lost.
Kos itself looks like a squid from 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, a science fiction novel from 1870, by
Jules Verne. 'League,' is a unit of measurement for distance traveled.
In the book a giant Narwhal wale is spotted. The nations fearing the whale send out an expedition
team to explore the ocean. Their ship rams into it where upon they discover it's an underwater submarine,
far more advanced then they've ever seen. Captain Nemo onboard captures them and they head off on a
futuristic science adventure. At one point they're attacked by a giant squid. They visit many real life under-
sea land marks including ship wrecks, the Atlantic telegraph line, ice shelves and the lost city of Atlantis.
"Throughout the story Captain Nemo is suggested to have exiled himself from the world after an
encounter with the forces that occupied his country that had devastating effects on his family. Not long after
the incident of the poulpes (Giant Squid), Nemo suddenly changes his behavior toward Aronnax, avoiding
him. Aronnax no longer feels the same and begins to sympathize with Ned Land. Near the end of the book,
the Nautilus is attacked by a warship of some nation that made Nemo suffer. Filled with hatred and
revenge, Nemo ignores Aronnax's pleas for mercy. Nemo—nicknamed angel of hatred by Aronnax—
destroys the ship; ramming the Nautilus into it just below the waterline, sinking it into the bottom of the sea,
much to Aronnax's horror, as he watches the ship plunge into the abyss. Nemo bows before the pictures of
his wife and children and is plunged into deep depression."
Another book called Moby Dick, that came out 20 years earlier, features a white whale that the
whaler's wreck their ships trying to capture. The ocean holds many tales about sea monsters that lurk
below. The Kraken is one such leviathan that is shaped like a crab, but is the size of a mountain. When
shipwrecked sailors regained consciousness it is said they may have found themselves on a mysterious
uncharted island, as if it appeared from nowhere. In the 18th century the Kraken took the form of a giant
octopus.
"A bottomless sea, a bottomless curse..."
"Listen for the baneful chants. A call to the bloodless, wherever they be. A call to the bloodless, wherever
they be. Fix your ears, to hear our call."

We get a sense of fear standing next to the other Kosm before his fog gate, as if the orphan has
it's own sacred territory that they don't just respect but fear. Kosm is supposed to be plural, but the way
Micolash says, "Ah yes, Kos or some would say Kosm," makes me believe they are all somehow tied
together in more than just their appearance. 47
 I still can't tell if Kos protected or digested the orphan, but I mean look at it, Kos is a squid-
like creature with a motherly face and bug-like limbs, the kosm are sea snails with human bodies
and the orphan has a male human body with fins. This type of biology isn't natural! A squid doesn't
have umbilical cords or two faces, snails don't have arms, orphans don't summon thunder, I think
this represents the orphans ties whether by blood or the formless to the Pthumerian queens
newborn and at the very least Chaos or Kos. Blood echoes to his harrowing cry. Micolash
mentions Kosm, similar to the word chasm and cosmos. The Pthumerian Queen perhaps gave up
the new born and it somehow interacted with Lady Maria of the Astral Tower, inflicting the curse of
ashen blood, from the source of Old Blood.
"The bone of an old hunter whose name is lost.

It is said that he was an apprentice to old Gehrman,

and a practitioner of the art of Quickening,
a technique particular to the first hunters.

It is most appropriate that hunters,

carriers of the torch who are sustained by the dream,
would tease an old art from his remains. "
"In pregnancy terms, quickening is the moment in
pregnancy when the pregnant woman starts to feel or perceive
fetal movements in the uterus."

But hey, hear me out. Remember that guy Oedipus I mentioned earlier, that removed his
eyes after killing his own mother? Well an Oedipus complex is described as someone who wants to
have extra-marital relations with their parent of the opposite sex. This is similar to Gherman's
condition and your ascension to a Great One. This may be why the Orphan of Kos is so upset in the
Fishing Hamlet, which is hidden behind Lady Maria's Astral Tower in the Old Hunters Nightmare.
I believe Lady Maria one day eventually wanted to have a baby, even though she couldn't
pass on, so when the Wet Nurse carried off Oedon's cursed son and the Pthumerian Queen's child
into nothingness, it appeared again as the orphan in the Fishing Hamlet, as the original source of
the curse, so what we have is a false interpretation of reality crossing into our own, like some sort of
space-time distortion based on what Lady Maria genuinely wanted ('Lady' meaning noble
superiority). Oedon or Gherman as Loki & Odin. Annalise, Lady Maria or the Ptumerian Queen as
Hel of Helheim.
Nightmares indeed represent realizations or discoveries, with the ultimate understanding
being death and the feelings we harbor, unsurprising for the Captain of this story Lady Maria.

Happy Hunting! 48