[X] Go to
-[X] Byrgenwerth
--[X] "What does a man have ta do ta start an inquisition around here!"
-[X] Byrgenwerth
--[X] "What does a man have ta do ta start an inquisition around here!"
Anderson Quest: Killing Vampires and Werewolves and Leprechauns (Hellsing/Bloodborne)
- Thread starter Tricia
- Start date
NitroFumetsu
Blaze of Glory
Normally, he succumbs when the Blood Moon rises.
But that timeline means nothing here. Maybe he did, maybe he didn't. We haven't checked.
- Location
- somewhere over there.
- Pronouns
- They/It
Which would make us go "Well, you're boring, and your white lake place is boring. Beam me out
- Location
- Dayton, OH
- Pronouns
- He/Him
If Anderson doesn't kill Rom, he can't get into the Nightmare where Mergo, the source of everything, is.
How will he get to Mergo, the win condition that will stop the Nightmare, without killing Rom?
Honestly, anyone throw out suggestions because I've got nothing.
Ebrietas can't just rend a hole into the Nightmare Frontier, not while Rom lives. Even once it's dead, she shouldn't capable of doing that. Why would she have been left behind if she could get into the Dreamlands so easily? She still needs a focus to get people in and out of the Hunter's Nightmare and that's weaker than the entire Nightmare Frontier.
Strunkriidiisk
THE LEGEND
- Location
- Canada
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Or we take the potential Option B, where Ebrietas gets Rom off her vacuous ass by dint of their shared history, and Rom breaches the Nightmare for us.
- Location
- Dayton, OH
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Rom is vacuous because it has no mind. That's what "vacuous" means. That descriptor comes from the boss title. If we can't trust FromSoftware to be honest when they say things as clearly as the boss titles do, there is no point in following canon rather than just making the story up for ourselves.
There is nothing to engage with. There is no shared history to bond over. If Rom had a mind, it would have defended itself better than barely.
It's been described as a baby because it has no mind and can only wriggle. Anderson will kill it, he'll feel bad and the story will move on. Anything else just won't work.
- Location
- somewhere over there.
- Pronouns
- They/It
Do we know that IC? And even if we did, would Anderson kill the thing that actively holds back the shittiest parts of the eldritch fuckery?
- Location
- Dayton, OH
- Pronouns
- He/Him
In order to get to Mergo, you gotta get to Mergo's Loft, which is in the Nightmare Frontier.
In order to get to the Nightmare Frontier, you need to get to Micolash's corpse. It's the only canonical entrance point. As author, Tricia is free to create another or enable Ebrietas to get in anyways. But she's stuck with BB canon so far, I can't imagine she'd abandon it for the sake of a vacuous spider.
In order to get to Micolash, you need to get to Byrgenwerth, so you can kill Rom.
Rom's only purpose is keeping the Blood Moon at bay. A developer message mentions that "the Byrgenwerth Spider keeps the Blood Moon at bay and prevents the ritual of Mensis".
Unless he can get Rom to make an exception, which should not be possible because Rom's defining characteristic is mindlessness, Anderson cannot enter the Nightmare and stop Mergo as long as Rom is alive.
He already pulled off getting Ebrietas on his side, but Anderson really doesn't have another choice here. Either kill Rom or have him die at the hands of the School. There is no other canonical possibility.
Maybe bad shit will happen to everyone in the chapel. Maybe Anderson has already changed enough that the chapel faction stands a chance. Perhaps Ebrietas can shield them from the worst of the Blood Moon.
But Rom's gotta die. There's nothing else to do.
[X] Go to
-[X] Byrgenwerth
-- [X] "What does a man have ta do ta start an inquisition around here?"
- Location
- Dayton, OH
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Ebrietas got them into the Hunter's Nightmare because Anderson had the eyeball that acted as a connection point into that world. Additionally, there is no Vacuous Spider stopping anyone from coming and going from the Hunter's Nightmare. In-game, the Hunter's Nightmare can be accessed after killing Vicar Amelia, while Rom still lives.
The Nightmare Frontier is different. The only connection point is Micolash's corpse and that's because the School destroyed itself trying to get inside the Nightmare.
Rom's singular purpose is stopping the Nightmare Frontier from spilling over by preventing the Blood Moon from coming.
I've already explained why Rom shouldn't be capable of allowing them in. As long as the Spider lives, the Nightmare is off-limits.
NitroFumetsu
Blaze of Glory
Not precisely.
Micolash's corpse does not connect to the Nightmare Frontier. Not directly. It connects to the Lecture Building's 2nd Floor, which is itself connected to the Nightmare of Mensis, where the Nightmare resides.
There is another entry point into the Lecuture Buidling. An Amygdala should be able to connect to it. It would be incredibly dangerous, but if Ebrietas needs a connection point to enter the Lecture Building, we could forcibly use an Amygdala.
Granted, we have no way of knowing this. Not yet, anyways.
This would also fall apart if Rom was choking out the path from the Lecture Building to the Nightmare of Mensis, but then it wouldn't need to bother with Micolash.
- Location
- Dayton, OH
- Pronouns
- He/Him
An Amygdala is not the same as a corpse or an eyeball. As a focus, it would fight back. Ebrietas would need to either take control over its power or force it to comply. They'd also have to avoid killing the Amygdala, which would leave them back with nothing or gets whoever was being transported stuck in the Nightmare, if not a worse fate.
Do you have faith that Ebrietas can overpower an Amygdala without killing it and seize its power? That seems unlikely. Other than Rom and the Brain of Mensis, she's the least aggressive Great One, in-game and in-story.
Tricia has not yet given Ebrietas abilities that stretch credibility. Everything she's done thus far (learn communication, fly, fail to heal Amelia, physically engage enemies, use focuses to reach Dreamlands that aren't specifically warded against) is something that feels like general Great One abilities. But having Ebrietas overpower the most directly hostile Great Ones and usurp their power for Anderson's use to break into a warded Dreamland, all in the name of sparing Rom, would be too much, in my opinion.
Admittedly, this quest already took its own direction rather than mindlessly follow BB. Tricia, as author, can make it so Ebrietas is capable of that. But it doesn't make for a good story to sidestep potential conflict and moral complication by enhancing the capacities of a single character.
As someone said earlier, this quest has been rather light on moral consequences. Or even, consequences of any sort. The worst thing I can recall happening was either the death of Gascoigne and the maiming of Djura.
As fun as it is to watch Abridged Anderson rip through Yharnam, it's gotten a bit stale.
Anderson is already a master combatant, so few enemies are even problematic. He can't die because if he did, the quest would end. He regenerates from anything, he has infinite bayonets and he's allied to a Great One as well as the Hunter's Dream.
The only sort of meaningful conflict here is moral. The best parts of this quest, in my opinion, have been Anderson burying several of his kills, converting Ebrietas and saving so many people from canon fates.
Rom is a good chance for more of that kind of conflict. It would unleash the Blood Moon, but I'd prefer making Ebrietas capable of guarding one chapel rather than her overwhelm an Amygdala.
- Location
- Pittsburgh, PA
See, as far as I can tell, the only thing Anderson needs to do is kill off the Order, gather up all the Yharnamites who haven't succumbed to beasthood, then evac them and let the damn city burn itself down. Ebrietas can watch over the survivors and do what she can to prevent degeneration, but entering the Nightmare of Mensis? Taking out Mergo, or the Moon Presence? These aren't necessary. Without any living servants to give him a foothold in the lower realm, Micolash is harmless to anyone who isn't already in the Nightmare - and the Moon Presence only seems to be a problem for Gehrman, so it's not like leaving it be will somehow doom the world.
There's an entire planet outside Yharnam that, to all apparent evidence, is relatively free of Great One fuckery. We can totally let Amygdala and Mergo and Oedon and whoever else wants to cause trouble sit around in the ashes of the "Healing City" and bitch at each other while Anderson leads everyone who actually matters far, far away.
There's an entire planet outside Yharnam that, to all apparent evidence, is relatively free of Great One fuckery. We can totally let Amygdala and Mergo and Oedon and whoever else wants to cause trouble sit around in the ashes of the "Healing City" and bitch at each other while Anderson leads everyone who actually matters far, far away.
- Location
- Dayton, OH
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Mergo is a target because it's an infant Great One. When it develops, it has the potential to be very dangerous, whatever its motivations end up being. That's the task that the Moon Presence gave the Good Hunter.
I can't recall if Mergo was the direct cause of BB's main story, but I can't imagine it did anything positive either.
The Moon Presence is a target because it is what maintains the existence of Hunters and it's imprisoning Gehrman to serve as the Hunters' Helper. I can't imagine Anderson just abandoning Gehrman to an eternity of suffering. Even if Anderson hated the man, he would not be so cruel.
When Hunters get out of control, the Scourge is unleashed. Hunters are empowered by the Old Blood and, since the only way Yharnam had to counter the Beasts was to Hunt, it got out of control.
Yharnam was not the first Blood Moon. Heck, this night isn't even the first Blood Moon in Yharnam.
Back when the Powder Kegs torched Old Yharnam, the Blood Moon had descended then too. There's a dev message that says so.
Djura ought to be capable of explaining that, in-story. He participated in the clean up. It's why he retired from the Hunt and broke his connection to the Hunter's Dream.
There were entire civilizations in the past that succumbed to the Beast Scourge. The Pthumerians within the Catacombs are all that's left of one such civilization.
As long as there are Great Ones, there will be the Old Blood. Ebrietas is not the only source of it and it will get out of hand again.
Bloodborne happened because the Scholars of Byrgenwerth found the Old Blood and Insight within the Catacombs. They meant to use it to bring evolution to humanity.
Those that chose the Old Blood, which represents the Great Ones' power, went to Yharnam and became the Healing Church. Known members of this faction were Gehrman, Maria, Laurence and Micolash.
Those that chose Insight, which represented the Great Ones' knowledge, stayed at Byrgenwerth and worked on ascending, creating Rom through their efforts. Known members of this faction were Willem and Caryll.
The Moon Presence is what ensures that the Scourge never gets out of hand. It empowers humans to become Hunters and serves as master of the Hunter's Dream.
Why does it fight other Great Ones? It's unclear. Great Ones have unknowable motivations. It may want to kill potential rivals or it may genuinely want to protect humanity.
The last thing we know of BB is that, once the Good Hunter slays the Moon Presence, they become a Great One as well. Apparently, they "begin humanity's next childhood" (don't quote me on that, it's almost certainly wrong).
Leaving Yharnam will do nothing to stop the problems. The MP will keep Gehrman prisoner and empower humans to slay other Great Ones. Mergo will mature into a full Great One. The Old Blood will not go away.
Anderson can't walk away from this.
NitroFumetsu
Blaze of Glory
Well of course. That's why it's incredibly dangerous.
Or we just send Anderson. The guy who has access to the Hunter's Dream, which is more than capable of transporting him in and out of the Nightmare as soon as he finds one lantern, and there is a lantern at every access point to the Lecture Building. Setting up a return trip is not a problem.
I have faith that Ebrietas, with help from Anderson, Simon, Eileen, and our multitude of other allies could work together to incapacitate one long enough for Ebrietas to use the Amygdala itself as a focus to send one person and only one person through, and I have faith that Ebrietas can then finish off the Amygdala. She's already fought one, remember? She's also the toughest boss in the vanilla game, a challenge approaching Gehrman in difficulty. She's not aggressive, but she's strong as hell.
Either way, we really have no reason to attempt this until we've met Rom and have to decide whether or not to kill it. Making tough choices is a thing that happens, but third options is also a thing that happens, and whether or not we can take it depends solely on whether we can figure out that it is possible.
I was shouting from the rooftops ages ago that we would probably not be able to spare Ebrietas. I didn't think communication would be possible, considering the sheer effort the Healing Church went through and the desperate tactics they resorted to communicate with her unsuccessfully.
And then we entered the Altar of Despair and Ebrietas finally figured out how to do it right then and there.
I am no stranger to this sort of thing.
- Location
- Pittsburgh, PA
Actually, the Old Blood will go away. Ebrietas ain't handing it out anymore, and after getting a lengthy crash course in how Old Blood = Scourge of Beasts, I rather doubt that any of our allies are going to start handing it out after they leave.
Mergo is no threat to anyone unless we trust the lengthy and highly irregular headcanon you've laid out here, which seems hellbent on trying to weld the various elements of the setting into some grand unified cycle of the cosmos.
As far as I can tell, the Scourge of Beasts isn't some supernatural punishment on the world for daring to have "too many" Hunters, or "out of control" Hunters, or whatever you're trying to say. It's a possible long-term side effect of exposing oneself to the Old Blood that has happened precisely twice throughout recorded history - first in Loran, and then later on in Yharnam.
As for "not walking away from this"... well, to be blunt, my read on the Bloodborne situation is that Yharnam's problems are entirely geographical - something about this region of the world attracts the Great Ones' attentions, and idiots keep deciding to build their civilizations here. Walking away and going somewhere else is absolutely the way you avoid ongoing Great One bullshit.
Also, my read on the Moon Presence is that it responded to the Great Ones' inability to stay in contact with their offspring by "adopting" lesser creatures in the form of its Hunters, and started going after the other Great Ones because their actions, directly or indirectly, were harming its pets.
tl;dr - your post is predicated on your own subjective interpretation of a very vague game's setting and backstory being correct, which isn't really going to convince anyone who doesn't already share your precise headcanon that your argument is valid enough to justify making 90% of our allies go insane and unleashing Great Not-Thulhu by murdering a mutated coma patient.
- Location
- Dayton, OH
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Are the Catacombs gone? Then the Old Blood still has potential sources.
Any idiot who wanders down there risks unleashing it and the sheer extent of the Catacombs makes them impossible to destroy. We don't know how Byrgenwerth got down there to begin with, so nothing can be done to stop that.
Is that how you interpreted my response? Then I apologize, I appear to have miscomunnicated.
Here's the thing about Mergo:
- Mergo is an infant Great One. He will get stronger. His mother was, almost certainly, Queen Yharnam. When Mergo's Wet Nurse dies and the "Nightmare Slain" message appears, it's not referring to the Wet Nurse. Notice that it only appears once Mergo stops crying. Just like it only appears once the shadow Orphan is hit, not when it's killed. He is the "Nightmare Slain", a message that only appears for two other bossed, the MP and the Orphan. It's already Host of a Nightmare. When he matures, he becomes a potential threat that could have been eliminated early.
The Hunters exist to combat the consequences of using the Old Blood. As the Healing Church performs Blood Ministration, the Old Blood spreads. More Hunters are needed, also spreading the Old Blood.
More Beasts appear, necessitating more Hunters, further spreading the Old Blood, producing more Beasts.
B leads to H leads to OB leads to B.
My interpretation of BB's story is actually quite simple.
Two in-game resources, Blood Echoes and Insight, represent the power and knowledge of the Great Ones that Byrgenwerth coveted for the sake of evolving humanity.
Everything else spirals out of that theme: evolution, either through blood or Insight.
Blood evolution resulted in the Scourge. The Healing Church tried to bring the Old Blood to the people of Yharnam (for various reasons, healing them and researching the OB further, amongst them) and they failed. Their evolution resulted in the Beasts and the MP had to empower the Good Hunter to clean up their mess.
Insight evolution resulted in the in-game Byrgenwerth, inhabited by Gardens of Eyes, the nearly comatose Willem and the Vacuous Spider. They took in too much Insight for their bodies to handle and ended up in that state.
The GH combines Insight and Blood. Even if one were to go through BB without ever leveling up, the Old Blood is already in their veins from the infusion at the beginning. Even if one faces the MP without any Insight, there's a divide between BB's story and game, as there was in the Souls games. In-game Insight doesn't accurately represent the amount of story Insight the GH has, as evidenced by the fact that, even with no Insight, beating the MP ascends the GH to Great One levels. Only by combining power and knowledge can they achieve ascension.
The MP ending has the Good Hunter ascend to a Great One and mentions "beginning humanity's next childhood" (still don't quote me on that, don't know the exact words).
If the Great Ones descended twice in recorded history, it was because of the Beast Scourge.
"When the Blood Moon hangs low, the line between beast and man is blurred".
It's not as simple as geography. Kos showed up in the waters of a fishing village, wherever that was. In Valdr's backstory, presented in the Constable Gear, he came to Yharnam chasing a Beast, indicating that there are Beasts beyond Yharnam, which means there's OB beyond Yharnam. Castle Cainhurst is full of creatures, neither Beast nor Kin as evidenced by their resistance to Fire and Bolt attacks, tainted by Queen Yharnam's blood. The Forbidden Forest is full of critters tainted by Old Blood.
Your read on the MP is interesting. I don't think I've encountered it before. That's probable.
Miyazaki games only have subjective interpretations. Their stories are delivered through item descriptions with short excerpts and dialogue that's cryptic and vague at best. There's a surprising amount of lore hidden in the environments, but even piecing together every scrap of certain information leaves one with an incomplete story, prompting speculation.
Your perspective is also speculation. You believe that Mergo can't affect the Waking World, you believe the Great Ones will remain in a particular territory, you believe that burning down Yharnam will solve the problem, you believe leaving will be enough to escape the OB, you believe that the MP cares enough about humanity to protect it from other Great Ones.
Between having Ebrietas shield a single building from the effects of the Blood Moon or having her overwhelm and usurp the powers of an Amygdala, the most directly hostile Great One in-game and in-story, to get Anderson past Rom's interference, I'd believe the former was more plausible than the latter. Great Ones inhabit the Dreamlands, the Amygdalas can enter and leave if they want and Rom can't do shit about it. Heck, Rom already failed to stop the Greater Amygdala from coming down to throw down with Anderson.
But Anderson is a human, not native to the Dreamlands and not truly bound to the Hunter's Dream. I would expect his existence to be shredded if he tried to force his way past Rom's barrier, via a hostile Amygdala being controlled by Ebrietas.
But hey, I'm not QM. Tricia can take either path or even make third and fourth options. It's up to her, but she'll need to use BB canon to do it.
If you have further doubts or questions as to why I reach certain conclsuions, feel free to ask. I don't mind defending my perspective or being corrected for saying something stupid.
AnonymousRabbit
Rabbit Faced
[X] Go to
-[X] Byrgenwerth
-- [X] "What does a man have ta do ta start an inquisition around here?"
Let's pet a Spider.
-[X] Byrgenwerth
-- [X] "What does a man have ta do ta start an inquisition around here?"
Let's pet a Spider.
- Location
- Dayton, OH
- Pronouns
- He/Him
There's a complication.
The reason the GH gets to Cainhurst is because their name was on the invitation, presumably through some magic because they've just arrived in Yharnam.
Anderson might not even have an invite, considering his method of arrival at Yharnam.
Assuming he does have an invite, he'll either need to contrive a reason to return to the clinic or have it brought to him.
Alfred's dropped off the radar. Perhaps he's found it and will head to Anderson for either a confrontation or a request for assistance, depending on how he interprets seeing Anderson's name on a Cainhurst invitation.
- Location
- Pittsburgh, PA
Er.
Okay, my interpretation of Bloodborne is pretty much incompatible with yours, but I try to take the stance that the game doesn't really have a single "correct" interpretation and would like to not make this an ongoing argument, so I'll drop it right here. Still...
Amygdala divided himself in the hope that he could thus have companionship, but all of his selves were alike, and so it was no better than talking to himself.
Oedon fathered a child with Queen Yharnam in the hope that Mergo would be dissimilar enough to escape this racial isolation, but still enough like him for them to speak with one another. Unfortunately, Mergo was stillborn, and the shock of the failure drove the Pthumerians to forsake the lower realm entirely.
Ebrietas tried to find a way of making other creatures able to converse with her, and thus inadvertently gave rise to Byrgenwerth and the Healing Church.
There's actually a bunch of stuff I wrote speculating on Bloodborne in another thread, which I'll link here. The SB thread for Hunter is a gold mine for that sort of thing, and you might want to check it out even if you don't like the crossover itself.
Okay, my interpretation of Bloodborne is pretty much incompatible with yours, but I try to take the stance that the game doesn't really have a single "correct" interpretation and would like to not make this an ongoing argument, so I'll drop it right here. Still...
I actually borrowed it from someone else's theory - they argued that the Great Ones "lose their children" because something about their metaphysical nature makes it hard/impossible for multiple mature Great Ones to interact face-to-face (or the equivalent, I suppose); thus, they tended to develop different ways of trying to cope with (or overcome) the tragedy.
Amygdala divided himself in the hope that he could thus have companionship, but all of his selves were alike, and so it was no better than talking to himself.
Oedon fathered a child with Queen Yharnam in the hope that Mergo would be dissimilar enough to escape this racial isolation, but still enough like him for them to speak with one another. Unfortunately, Mergo was stillborn, and the shock of the failure drove the Pthumerians to forsake the lower realm entirely.
Ebrietas tried to find a way of making other creatures able to converse with her, and thus inadvertently gave rise to Byrgenwerth and the Healing Church.
There's actually a bunch of stuff I wrote speculating on Bloodborne in another thread, which I'll link here. The SB thread for Hunter is a gold mine for that sort of thing, and you might want to check it out even if you don't like the crossover itself.
- Location
- Dayton, OH
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Fair enough. The argument is dropped.
Interesting theory about the Great Ones. I've never considered why exactly "Great Ones tend to lose their children". It makes sense that such powerful beings can't properly interact without causing bad shit to happen.
Would you link to the SB thread for Hunter? I don't seem to be finding it.