#Ailing Loran

[amelia-the-last-vicar]

Y'know there's absolutely no reason I should've survived that but I looked damn cool while doing it

[bobbyzombiegg]

Could the Darkbeast be connected to Beast Patients?

I know I previously made a theory against Darkbeasts being the final expression of beasthood, and I still stand by that, but could Darkbeasts be an evolved form of the male beast patients? Beast Patients are the only beasts with a similar skull shape to the Darkbeast, a humanoid skull, and their hands line up too. Scourge beasts have fingers with joints on the underside/no joints at all, while Beast patients and Darkbeasts have joints like a human hand. Beast patients and Darkbeasts are also found together in the same areas. Darkbeasts only exist where Beast patients do. If the female patients turn into/are heavily related to Blood-Starved Beasts, why can't the male patients turn into/are heavily related to Darkbeasts? It would also explain how Yahar'gul got Paarl in the first place. It's much easier to lure a Darkbeast from a neighboring town than it is to capture one and bring it up from a labyrinth that's incredibly deep underground. The male patients are never associated with electricity though, so that's a hole in this theory. However, the silver beasts, which are associated with the patients due to their location in ailing loran, do have electrical powers and also have a similar skull and hand shape, although they do have claws coming out of the back of their palms.

[cayphuong]

[yharnamesque]

Bloodborne Observation Notes

Back in 2018 I had a very stupid idea: what if I went through my favourite game, Bloodborne (2015) by Fromsoft, and noted down every single thing I could see? Well that’s what I started doing. Did the main game, took a several year break, came back and did the chalices. I mean it when I say this is my favourite game, it is so stupidly important to me, and I wouldn’t have done this if it wasn’t

So I present to you, broken down into territories, all of my notes looking into every single detail I could come across in every single area of the game. I made these to be shared, for everyone to see and to use how they want. The only thing I ask for in return is you share them about, and give credit plus a link back if they end up influencing your own work. This is my contribution, my gift, to the community, and I hope it serves you well

The links below will go straight to the folders themselves rather than all the individual documents, but they’ll still be listed out here for easy reference as to what is where

-

Progression + Foreword

Yharnam

Iosefka’s Clinic

Central Yharnam

Old Yharnam

The Hunter’s Dreams

The Hunter’s Dream

The Hunter’s Nightmare

The Cathedral Ward

The Tomb of Oedon / Oedon Chapel

The Cathedral Ward / The Grand Cathedral

The Upper Cathedral Ward

Healing Church Workshop

The Abandoned Workshop

The Altar of Despair

The Forbidden Woods

Forbidden Woods

Byrgenwerth

Cainhurst

Hemwick Forest

Hemwick Charnel Lane

Castle Cainhurst

The Unseen Village

Hypogean Gaol

Yahar’Gul

The Graveyard of the Darkbeast

The Nightmares of Yharnam

The Lecture Hall

The Nightmare Frontier

The Nightmare of Mensis / Mergo’s Loft

Pthumeru

Pthumeru

Central Pthumeru

Lower Pthumeru

Cursed and Defiled

Great Pthumeru Ihyll

Hintertomb

Hintertomb

Lower Hintertomb

Loran

Ailing Loran

Lower Loran

Isz

Great Isz

Cut Chalices

Great One Beast

Alternate Moon Presence

[beesmygod]

"YOU HUNTED" IS A TERRIFYINGLY LONG WORK IN PROGRESS BLOODBORNE LORE GUIDE!

intended for:

the casual player

the bloodborne lore fanatic

people who can't play bloodborne but desperately want to understand it

people who want to see what mental illness REALLY looks like

and hopefully its FUNNY!!!

READ IT NOWWWWW!!!

foreword: explaining the fromsoft game design ethos and the perils of taking shit too seriously

common misconceptions

history of yharnam:

history of yharnam part 1: the founding of pthumeru, cainhurst and the labyrinth, the discovery by byrgenwerth

history of yharnam part 2: fishing hamlet, caryll and the runes, leaving byrgenwerth

history of yharnam part 3: research hall, maria, and gehrman

history of yharnam part 4: the raid on castle cainhurst, logarius, and ludwig

history of yharnam part 5: lower pthumeru, rom, and the bloodletting beast

history of yharnam part 6: the choir, kin, and ebrietas

history of yharnam part 7: the school of mensis, ailing loran, and yahar’gul

INTERMISSION: is ebrietas the source of the healing church blood?

history of yharnam part 8: silver, black, and white

history of yharnam part 9: laurence, djura, and brador

history of yharnam part 10: the night unfurls

contemporary yharnam history (wip, each section is named after the soundtrack associated with it):

the hunter’s dream

cleric beast (NEW!)

the hunter (NEW!)

appendix:

significant colors in bloodborne

iceberg posts:

justifying my bloodborne iceberg part 1

justifying my bloodborne iceberg part 2

justifying my bloodborne iceberg part 3

the current word count is ‭29,833‬. we have just defeated gascoigne. this might take a while. please feel free to link to various places and people

[beheadable]

Just lost like 500,000+ blood echoes in Ailing Loran root chalice. Fucking RIP

[katyspersonal]

Honestly this is also such a neat detail in Hunters Nightmare when the beasts there cover in fear if there is an Old Hunter nearby raging. Feels like very "who is the REAL beast here?" moment.

Also, interesting how the only beasts in the Hunters Nightmare are Ludwig and Laurence (the clerics), beastly patients and blood-starved beast (if Old Yharnam and Ailing Loran are any indication, one of the way to consume the holy blood is to crucify a blood-starved beast in a weird ritual) and blood-lickers (Cainhurst nobles that imbibed the blood regularly). Basically, all the beasts that somewhat committed a 'sin', but no regular scourge beast or anything.

What it tells me is that for this nightmare, it does matter how beasthood found you, as a beast you are spared if you was just caught in the circumstances, but not if you indulged in some sort of blasphemy (???) willingly. That's pretty smart ngl

[headcanontheshitoutofsoulsborne]

Irreverent Izzy was descended from those fleeing from Ailing Loran, as was Henryk and a few other Hunters.

[wingsfromwhere]

Minor context: i have only done one chalice dungeon before in bloodborne and didnt like it so this is all 100% new to me

I just booted up an ailing loran chalice and WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS GUY

[organ-crab]

i suddenly felt an urge to write a bloodborne essay so here:

Ok so there are higher beings called great ones. They have physical forms, but even if their physical body dies, their consciousness remains alive. They are unable to produce children themselves, and many "yearn for a surrogate". Many civilizations have attempted to communicate with them in the past to gain eldritch knowledge and attempt to ascend. There are a variety of known great ones, and also unknown ones, such as The moon presence (Flora), Formless Oedon and Mergo (Oedon's child), Ebrietas, Kos, and an unknown Great one who produced the Vileblood. There were a variety of civilizations that attempted contact with them: Pthumeru, Isz, Loran, and the current civilization.

Pthumeru was an ancient civilization of superhumans who had accessed the eldritch truth of the great ones and showed a close involvement with them. They had a large social structure, and were ruled by a King and Queen. The Queens entered formal contracts with great ones to bear their children. However, a Queen failed to bear the child of a great one, Formless Oedon, and resulted in a stillbirth.

Oedon was probably angry. This is where the fall of the Pthumeru civilization began, and probably the beginning of the beast plague's existence, contaminating the blood and probably being sent by the Great Ones. They evacuated to their underground labryinths to hide from the blood moons, before dying out, leaving only a small amount of Pthumerians alive. Yharnam, the city where Bloodborne is set, was actually built directly on top of the Pthumeru labyrinth, and even named after the Pthumeru Queen, Yharnam.

Isz was another civilization. Isz is a strange place as it is partially transcended into the planes of the great ones, showing a strange cosmic mist in a variety of locations, and was the location where Ebrietas was discovered, showing Great ones can live there. Ebrietas seemed to be neutral to humans, and tried helping them in their goals. Isz focused on transcending through eldritch knowledge, which clearly hit a dead end before they died out, creating a variety of Kin (servants of great ones) and beasts that probably caused the downfall of Isz.

Ailing Loran was the final civilization of the known first 3. This may have been Pthumerians who had migrated to a desert, or just normal humans. Either way it was deserty. They focused on transcending by using beast blood, which they had probably taken from Pthumeru or even directly from Great ones idk. Experimentation with the beast plague resulted in them creating the Darkbeasts, which were giant beasts which survived even if their body rotted away and left only their skeleton and they harnessed the power of blue lightning, which is the Great One and their Kin's natural weakness, making the Darkbeasts a natural predator of the Great Ones.

There were a variety of Organizations which studied these things and wished to bring about human transcendence in a variety of ways, and these organizations led to the current outbreak of the beast plague and the blood moon. These were Brygenwerth, The school of Mensis, The Healing Church, and The Choir.

The original one was Byrgenwerth, founded by Master Willem. This school discovered The Pthumeru Labyrinth, hidden deep under Yharnam. They realised that the "Old Blood" from the Labryinth had supernatural healing properties, and could even cause physical improvements. However, Master Willem realised that the Old Blood was completely mysterious, and it's origin was unknown, so it wasnt very safe to consume because it might give u really bad diarrhea or make u shoot lasers out ur butt or something. Important students here include Laurence, Maria, Micolash, Gehrman and probably more that i forgot about.

The School of Mensis was founded by a variety of Brygenwerth Scholars and random Tomb prospectors. They started off normal but they kind of went fucking insane later on and caused the blood moon. They discovered the Loran Labryinth and the Darkbeasts and decided to study these things. To experiment, they sent out hunters to kidnap people to be used as test subjects. They seemed to have encountered Kin called Amygdalas (not much is known about these), and worshipped them. I will mention what they did later.

The Choir was another organisation and it's members consisted mostly of the higherups of Mensis. They discovered Isz and kidnapped Ebrietas who had been chilling there for a pretty long time and locked her in their attic in a big tower. However, to communicate with Ebrietas to find the solution to human evolution, they needed to create something to communicate with Ebrietas. They attempted to create the MEGAMIND ALIENS (Celestial Emissaries) by creating a totally ethical orphanage where they made kids drink water which contained microorganisms which turned your brain to mush, and told them to listen for a sticky sound, which they said was the sound of the ocean, as they believed the ocean was related to the knowledge of the Great Ones. In reality, the Choir was cultivating ALIEN SLUGS called phantasms in their brains, and there were so many phantasms that their heads grew in size massively. The test subjects begged for mercy from Lady Maria, and many were left insane and wandered around the research halls saying drip drop slip slop etc constantly listening for the sticky sound of the sea.

The Healing Church was founded by Laurence and Mensis. Laurence was someone who Master Willem thought was very important, however he decided to leave Brygenwerth, which Willem saw as a betrayal. He warned Laurence not to spread the Old Blood, telling him to "Fear the old Blood". However the bitch Laurence decided to do it anyway. He went to Yharnam with Gehrman, Maria and Micolash and started spreading the Old Blood everywhere. It was labelled as a miracle treatment that could cure even the most severe of injuries and disease. He popularized blood transfusions with the old blood and before long he founded the healing Church which specialized in "healing" using the Old Blood. The Old Blood became so popular that it essentially became an every day item which people probably drank with their tea. Obviously this eventually lead to the beast plague, and Laurence himself became the first ever Cleric Beast (large beasts created by drinking way too much Old Blood which were usually members of the Church). The Church dispatched Church Hunters to deal with the plague, who themselves ended up turning into even stronger beasts after becoming blood-drunk. The Church made sure that hunters did not fight in any way that brought them closer to being beastlike, banning beast blood pellets and beast claws, to stop transformation.

These 3 organizations ended up becoming rivals. The Choir dispatched spies to spy on Mensis, The school of Mensis Kidnapped members of the Choir and The Healing Church.

(Less important but read if you want)

A member of the Choir was Archibald, he got Mensis to capture a whole Darkbeast so that he could study their blue lightning and attempt to recreate it. After dedicating his life to this research, he created the tonitrus, the tiny tonitrus, and lightning paper. The first two inventions were less popular and barely used, as many did not like the eccentricity of these weapons, however lightning paper was very popular among hunters.

Cainhurst Castle was an area which had a lot of inhabitants. Since Willem forbade the use of Old Blood, he got very angry when he was betrayed by his scholars who brought Old Blood to Cainhurst. He said that the blood was contaminated, and called Cainhurst citizens "Vilebloods". The vilebloods were unique in the way they handled blood, and had a unique style of fighting which usually utilized their own blood. The healing Church themselves created a branch called The Executioners, whose sole purpose was to massacre all of Cainhurst, which they succeeded in, apart from Queen Annalise, the Queen of the Vilebloods, who Logarius, the leader of the Executioners, had decided to guard after discovering a "vile secret", probably that Annalise was a direct descendant of Queen Yharnam. The executioners forced a mask on Annalise which she cannot remove.

(Explaining the other characters now)

Gehrman was the first hunter ever, and the teacher of Maria. However, Gehrman was unhealthily obsessed with Maria, and even created a doll of her upon her death, which the moon presence later reanimated in the hunter's dream upon Gehrman becoming her surrogate. Gehrman probably agreed to this under pressure, and expected Laurence to come save him, but Laurence turned into a Cleric Beast.

Lady Maria was a citizen of Cainhurst, so she is able to fight using her blood. I basically already explained everything about her.

Micolash was the leader of the School of Mensis.

Ludwig was the first Church Hunter and had found a magic glowing talking sword in a Labyrinth which taught him how to fight but he got fused with his horse when he turned into a beast.

Gascoigne and Henryk were hunters, however Gascoigne started being affected by the beast plague, and his family managed to ward it off temporarily with a music box which made him remember to stop turning into a beast. However he runs off on the night of the hunt and finally goes past the point of no return, unable to discern person from beast. His wife tries helping, but forgets the music box and gets killed by him. His children die off in a variety of ways later on, such as being eaten by a pig and suicide. His hunting partner, Henryk, goes berserk after his death, attacking everything on sight.

Eileen the Crow was a "Hunter of Hunters", who killed hunters who had gone mad before they could succumb to beasthood.

Somewhere in a fishing village, the corpse of Kos had washed up on the coast, probably killed by the schools and Church in order to harvest her blood. The corpse of Kos caused the villagers of the fishing Hamlet to mutate into fish people. Willem sent the Scholars of Brygenwerth to massacre the village and pry open their skulls to see if eyes really did grow on the inside of their heads, a common belief that was believed to happen as people gained eldritch knowledge. Gehrman, Maria, Laurence and a variety of other notable figures decided to massacre the village, despite not posing much harm and a lot of villagers still remaining sane. Maria felt so guilty of her actions that she threw her weapon, the Rakuyo, down a drain and decided never to fight again. Because Kos was pretty pissed, she cursed all hunters to be sent to the hunter's nightmare upon death, where they suffered for all eternity. Kos was actually pregnant, so her child lived on in the nightmare.

Ok now i can actually get to the events that happen before the start of the game!

The School of Mensis had attempted to create an artificial great one by sacrificing a lot of people, and they succeeded, but did not get the kind of Great one they wanted, being mostly an aggressive mushy amalgamation of bodies that probably didnt want to leak eldritch knowledge. Instead, led by Micolash, they decided to communicate with Mergo, the stillborn Great One. They conducted a large ritual where they all sat in one room wearing mensis cages and attempted to created the nightmare to communicate with Mergo in, using Mergo's own umbilical cord. Not all of the scholars wanted to enter the ritual, but they were forced to anyway and handcuffed and tied to chairs. However, since there was only one cord, only Micolash survived. This link with Mergo created another blood moon once again, like during Pthumeru times.

Old yharnam was where a lot of Church experiments happened, like skinning and hanging beasts upside down to harvest their blood for study. This was where the beast plague began first, and the gates of Old Yharnam were closed, forbidding entry and exit. In order to exterminate the beasts, they set old yharnam on fire on the same night as the ritual that Mensis did to communicate with mergo.

In order to create a barrier in reality between Great Ones and humans, rom decided to ascend herself to Kinship by seeking help from Kos. It worked, however Rom was simply left as an empty husk incapable of thought, and became a giant spider which lived in the boundary between these dimensions. This barrier locked the Mensis Scholars in the nightmare, unable to escape. This made the Blood Moon invisible to normal people and Amygdalas could not be seen.

In order to end the nightmare, The Moon Presence decided to create another "Hunter" which could be resurrected an infinite number of times, until Mergo dies, ending the nightmare.

[eattheball]

Thinking about how the ailing Loran chalice drops random lore nobody discusses then hits you with the most insufficiently edited paragraph ever. "dreaded extrapolation". Just telling you the land is tragic because it barely shows up elsewhere. no notes

[bobbyzombiegg]

Bobby! For the bloodborne ask game :

2.Favorite chalice dungeon? 3.Favorite clothing set? 6.League or Vilebloods?

35.Do you like to do chalice dungeons? Why or why not?

2. I don't know... The Ailing Loran ones were pretty cool with the bridges in the giant ravine in the cliffside, but the bosses were kinda eh. It's honestly been over a year since I did all the dungeons... I'll have to come back to this later. Probably soon, since I plan to do the dungeons in my current playthrough so I can get extra echoes and maybe a lost or uncanny Chikage... maybe Churchpick too, if I decide to switch to it.

3. Good question... Gotta say the base hunter set is great. Right now for my current playthrough, I got Gascoigne's trousers, Henryk's gloves, Djura's shirt, and Hunter cap. I know when I did the chalice dungeons on my first playthrough I changed to a mix of the Yahar'gul hooded set and a few other things since it just felt fitting for the slog.

6. The League. I think the Chikage and Cainhurst set are cool, but I love Valtr's set (still working on getting the vermin for it....) and the Whirligig Saw is just a lot cooler to me than the Chikage, though I haven't used the Whirligig Saw myself... Plus, I like Valtr as a character a lot. I also prefer the coop mechanics over pvp, since I suck at pvp and I like helping other people.

35. They're pretty eh in my opinion. Can be really fun, but I hate the spider-summoning bell-ringing women. Just doesn't seem fair to put 3 of them in a room accessible through only a tight chokepoint. Defiled Amygdala also sucks. I'm actually fine with Defiled Watchdog, that was pretty fun. The enemies are actually pretty fun otherwise though. I don't like having to grind in them for materials for future chalices though, and sometimes the difficulty spikes extremely high. Uh. As of typing I pressed something on my keyboard and now the text is white and the box is black, like some sort of night mode. How did I do that? Anyway, I also did them all back to back in an extremely long marathon, which probably killed some of my enjoyment due to the repetition. I actually started enjoying it towards the end though.

[dhavaer]

Bloodborne, cont.

Making a new post because the old one was getting unwieldy.

Killed Rom, two tries. Flamer then skulls worked fine. I'm really blazing through my bullets though; good thing the lecture hall is such a good farming location.

Finally opened the Ailing Loran chalice and got a top-tier fire gem pretty much immediately. The bolt gem from Yahar'gul is better than what I can get here, though, so no need to grind further.

Next, back to lower Pthumeru for some better fire radials. Hoping for some less crappy curses.

[runesmithquin]

I am once again thinking about ailing loran

[death-rebirth-senshi]

So nice that they got to turn Ailing Loran into a full area