#side-eying the Scadutree Avatar and the “Living Failures” courtyard (with that pale sunflower) and the Pleiades

[miirshroom]

"O Flora, of the moon, of the dream."

So I decided to explore what it could mean that the Doll in Bloodborne references a "Flora" in connection to the moon. Essentially tracing several connective threads down lines of inquiry related to the Flower Moon.

In a way, this is a follow up to my previous post "Elden Ring and Bloodborne - What do we Learn from the Dead". For context: under certain conditions the doll may kneel in front of one of the gravestones in the Hunter's Dream and say the following prayer:

"O Flora, of the moon, of the dream. O little ones, O fleeting will of the ancients. Let the hunter be safe, let her find comfort. And let this dream her captor, foretell a pleasant awakening. Be one day, a fond, distant memory." - Peculiar Doll

Data mining has confirmed that there are 2 conditions that may trigger this, so long as the Hunter's Nightmare has not yet been accessed but the blood moon has been triggered: 1) At Hunter's Nightmare gravestone, or 2) In a New Game + cycle, directed at the Hunter's Gravestone that appears only if the "Yharnam Sunrise" ending was previously selected (in which the player is beheaded by Gherman). Further, there are indications that "Flora" was the name of the Moon Presence in earlier versions of the game.

Xtha-cka Zhi-ga Tze-the, the Killer of the Flowers Moon

It is traditional among native people of Turtle Island (more commonly known as North America) to assign names to the moons of the year based around notable benchmarks in the changing of the seasons. There is no codified system that spans all peoples - it varies by region. The Farmer's Almanac adopted the system of naming moons as inspired by this practice and similar European traditions that pre-dates the Julian calendar. But this is both generalized to apply to a wider area and includes the biases of Colonial America that do not always harmonize with the origins of the tradition.

'Killers of the Flower Moon' is a 2023 movie based on a 2017 book that got its title from a 2009 poem by Elise Paschen about the 1921 murder of Anna Kyle Brown in the first of what would be known as the Osage Reign of Terror. A conspiracy generally masterminded by rancher William Hale to secure land and oil rights. This was considered to be the first major murder case of the FBI. Actually, the title of the book and movie muddle the intent of the poem in a subtle way (though the explanation is provided in the first few pages of the book). In Osage it's "Killer of the Flowers" Moon because this is the time of year when a late frost may arrive and kill young flowers.

So now I intend to suspend disbelief and consider the metanarrative. Because in my experience, FromSoft has been extremely attentive to the dates when their games are released. Some hints of this are in the ways that the phases of the moon in real life at date of release match the moon phases observed in game for Sekiro and Elden Ring. Recently much emphasis was placed on the number "621" in Armored Core VI and release day of Shadow of the Erdtree, considering that the only time they have ever released a game on the exact day of a solar eclipse was Forever Kingdom in 2001 on the June 21 summer solstice. In fact, before Shadow of the Erdtree, the only Fromsoft game ever released on the day of a full moon that I could find - out of 80+ games - was also on the day of a blood moon. This will come up later.

There have been 4 games in the history of FromSoftware that have been released during part of a Flower moon/Flower Killing Moon cycle. That is, when the May moon is either waxing or waning:

Lost Kingdoms (Rune) 2 - May 22, 2003 (Last Quarter - Aquarius)

Nanpure VOW (Sudoku) - April 26, 2007 (Waxing Gibbous - Virgo)

Iraroji VOW (Picross) - May 24, 2007 (First Quarter - Virgo)

Dark Souls Remastered - May 24, 2018 (Waxing Gibbous - Libra)

One notable observation is that May 24th appears twice. Another is that Nanpure VOW and Iraroji VOW actually are for two different May moons - the second one is a Blue moon. And it is an outlier in the FromSoft catalogue to be making these sudoku and picross games to begin with - a puzzle game genre that had not been touched before or since. A similar outliner is seen in 2009 with FromSoft publishing 2 visual novels playing through the cases of famous Japanese fictional detective Kosuke Kindaichi - The Inugami Curse and The Village of 8 Graves.

So why emphasize May 24?

Q. How do you Solve a Problem like Maria?

A. With the Sound of Music

There could be multiple reasons. In Canada May 24 is Queen Victoria Day (French: Fête de la Reine, lit. 'Celebration of the Queen'), as it was Queen Victoria's birthday and she was the Mother of Confederation for Canada.

But there is an odd pull that I want to dig into because it ties in quite well with the musical themes of Bloodborne: On May 24, 1982 the funk/art band Blondie released their 6th album titled "The Hunter" under label Chrysalis and recorded at New York studio "The Hit Factory". The 11th song on this album is a cover song titled "The Hunter is Captured by the Game". Studio not to be confused with "The Hit House", which is the indie publisher who collaborated with Ruby Friedman to create the song "Cut You Down" that appears to have been commissioned for the Bloodborne trailer released March 19, 2015.

The two best known Blondie songs otherwise are "Heart of Glass" (from 3rd album Parallel Lines) and "Rapture" (from 5th album Autoamerican). Heart of Glass is about being in a fragile emotional state that is easily left broken hearted, and also I note that for all of the various organs represented in Bloodborne not one of them is a heart. Rapture is about, well, I don't think paraphrasing does it justice:

"And you drive all night and then you see a light And it comes right down and lands on the ground And out comes a man from Mars And you try to run but he's got a gun And he shoots you dead and he eats your head Then you're in the man from Mars You go out at night eatin' cars You eat Cadillacs, Lincolns too Mercurys and Subarus And you don't stop, you keep on eatin' cars Then when there's no more cars You go out at night and eat up bars Where the people meet"

Which upon doing linguistics translates to a hit list for: the founder of Detroit in Michigan (Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac), a Village of Lake People (Lincolns), Quicksilver (Mercurys), and the 7 Sisters Pleiades Constellation (Subarus). Blondie's 7th album is called 'No Exit' inspired by the Sartre play of the same name ("L'enfer, c'est les autres") and was released in 1999, of which the hit single is titled 'Maria'.

The City of Detroit is itself on the traditional lands of the Potawatomi and Miami native peoples, among others. It was founded in the early 1700's and one of the first structures constructed was a chapel to St. Anne. The land upon which Fort Detroit was built was reluctantly ceded by the coalition of Native American tribes known as the Western Confederacy (led by Little Turtle) in 1795. Fort Detroit later burned to the ground on June 11 1805, with the fire rumored to be started by hot pipe ashes that a baker has dropped in his stable. On the other hand, the Treaty of Detroit later acquired more land rights for additional territory in the Michigan basin and on the US side was signed by a William Hull.

I'll address the "man from Mars" later but what stands out for me here is that Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac may be correlated to the founding of Yharnam (which would later burn down in a fire as a consequence of an ashen disease), Village of Lake People to the Fishing Village, Quicksilver to the creation of bullets that can repel the beasts. The 7 sisters is something I'm still picking over - I suspect that cross-referencing other FromSoft games may help with this one. And I've also noted that quite a lot of the female characters in the game share fragments of their names with each other and with Annalise.

For Annalise herself, I suspect that the connection to the brutal Osage killings might be relevant, partially because of the specific use of the term "Reign of Terror". This was previously used for the period of time when Queen Marie Antoinette was beheaded. According to this article, Cainhurst Castle may have been inspired by Bran Castle in modern day Romania, former Transylvania. Marie Antoinette's mother was Maria Theresa, who was sovereign of the Hapsburg domains for 40 years - including Transylvania - and the only woman to have held this title in her own right.

The Greater "Will"?

And another thing: multiple significant "Williams" have been coming up in these historical dives tangentially connected to Bloodborne. I suspect that Master Willem in the nexus for these especially after considering this next one: Sir William Gull, a physician active between 1842 and 1887.

Sir William Gull was a court physician for the Prince of Wales and received his knighthood for curing the prince of typhoid fever (typically contracted by eating food contaminated by feces - sanitation was pretty rough in the 1800's). His best known work includes investigation into the spinal cord and causes of paraplegia, being the first to describe anorexia nervosa and identify it as a psychological condition, and investigation into the effects of atrophied thyroid gland in women (cessation of periods, roundness of face, sleepiness, and indifferent attitude).

The association with the spinal cord is of particular relevance to Bloodborne considering 3 factors: 1) the Yellow Backbone item that can be used to modify chalice dungeons and is also dropped by "The One Reborn" 2) the prevalence of wheelchair-bound enemies, and 3) collecting and consuming umbilical cords allows the player to become immune to the fate of being placed in a wheelchair bound state by the Moon Presence - umbilical cord blood is rich in stem cells and the use of stem cell therapy is proposed as a means of repairing spinal cord damage. Alongside the topic of human cloning (which was partially covered in this BobbyBroccoli video), the ethics of stem cell research was a topic of debate in the early 2000's. There's a 2002 Dream Theatre song about this zeitgeist.

Also here are some of my favourite quotes from Sir William Gull which seem topical:

"Fools and savages explain; wise men investigate." William Withey Gull – A Biographical Sketch (T. D. Acland), Memoir II.

"The foundation of the study of Medicine, as of all scientific inquiry, lies in the belief that every natural phenomenon, trifling as it may seem, has a fixed and invariable meaning" Published Writings, "Study of Medicine"

"Realize, if you can, what a paralyzing influence on all scientific inquiry the ancient belief must have had which attributed the operations of nature to the caprice not of one divinity, but of many. There still remains vestiges of this in most of our minds, and the more distinct in proportion to our weakness and ignorance." British Medical Journal, 1874, 2: 425.

The fictionalized (and unjustly defamatory) version of Sir William Gull is suspected of being Jack the Ripper based on a conspiracy theory. The most popular version of which is in the Alan Moore comic "From Hell". This is the 4th time the concept of "Hell" has come up in connection with Bloodborne. Another as previously mentioned was in the Sartre play No Exit through a Blondie album, where "Hell is other people". What I did not mention at the time is that this is the opening lyric to the song "Cut you Down" from the Bloodborne trailer:

Your blood's gone bad I knew it would The devil killed And yet you're back for good

And fourthly, Bloodborne released in the year 2015. In tarot, the 15th major arcana is The Devil, and I have extensively deconstructed the way that Elden Ring exposes FromSoftware's use of tarot.

"If you show someone their future, they have no future. You take away the mystery, you take away hope." - Paycheck, 2003

And if this seems to be bouncing around a lot and grasping for barely connected straws, it gets more complicated. Because there is the astral clock-as-time machine to consider. On December 25, 2003 the movie 'Paycheck' released on the exact same day as a FromSoft game called Ootogi, Myth of Demons 2: Immortal Warriors. The movie was based on a Phillip K. Dick novel of the same name so from the perspective of intentional release date matching it would have been easy to guess the plot ahead of time.

Essentially what happens in the movie is that a programmer is contracted for a 2 year job after which his memory will be deleted to preserve confidentiality. But instead of payment or the personal effects he remembers submitting he receives a package of random objects that his more knowledgeable pre-memory-loss self had left for him, which he soon finds out are exactly what he needs to evade various situations that happen.

And now he needs to solve both the mystery of what exactly he has been doing for the past couple years and why people want him dead. Turns out he was building a machine that predicts the future and realized at about the end of the project that this was a pretty bad idea:

"The machine predicts a war - and we go to war to avert it. It predicts a plague - we herd all the sick together, create a plague. Whatever future this predicts, we make happen. We give over control of our lives completely. I did this… Seeing the future will destroy us."

On my FromSoftware timeline the release of Armored Core Nexus on March 18, 2004 is basically the last date before observations go non-linear and fragmented. The backbone of the whole thing remains consistent - Armored Core games follow astrology like clockwork. That's the problem I assume: one revolution of a clock lands you right back where you started. The tragedy at the end of the procession of stars (see: Shadow of the Erdtree) is that the future is the same as the past and there is no hope for change.

"Attention all Planets of the Solar Federation.

We have Assumed Control." - 2112, Part VII

March 18 is also the release date of the 1st album of progressive rock band "Rush", under the label Moon records. This is surrounded by two other instances in extremely tight timeframe that I find very difficult to believe a coincidence: 1) January 14, 2004 is the release of King's Field mobile and the anniversary of the 7th album Permanent Waves (some standout songs: Entre Nous "we are planets to each other", and Closer to the Heart), 2) April 1, 2004 is the release day of Kuon and the anniversary of the 4th album 2112 ("The Twin Moons, just two pale orbs as they trace their way across the steely sky....We have had peace since 2062, when the surviving planets were banded together under the Red Star of the Solar Federation. The less fortunate gave us a few new moons.").

Points to note: the cover for 2112 would establish a red star as the symbol of the Solar Federation - Mars is the "red star". Mars is also likely associated with Formless Oedon as described briefly in this previous post. This album also generated the "Starman" logo for Rush which features "the abstract man against the masses". Second, Rush's international label for their first 4 albums was Mercury Records - perhaps sufficing as the Mercurys eaten by the man from Mars. Which is setting up a conflict in which the band Rush is eaten by the Man from Mars but also fighting from within. And who else would they be fighting on behalf of but the Man Woman in the Iron Mask: Queen Annalise. Rush as a band is a trio, and sometimes talked of themselves as "The Three Musketeers" as said by Geddy Lee himself in his auto-biography "My Effin Life" (and it also is the headline of a 1984 interview).

This whole extended reference does get more complex, as these matches suggest a pattern. Albums 7, 1, and 4 are seen here, albums 3 and 6 will turn up matching the dates of other games, and two compilation albums will match other dates for 7 total. The calendar date match with the 3rd Rush album is Armored Core V Verdict Day on September 24, 2013 - it features the song "Bastille Day" about cutting off heads. And that's it. A heavy skew towards the 1st 7 of 19 Rush albums.

It is at this point in time that I find it necessary to address the Blood Moon. Because the next released FromSoft game is Armored Core Nine Breaker on October 28, 2004, which happens to be the day of a lunar eclipse, a.k.a. a Blood Moon. Which is made more significant by the way that FromSoft basically never releases games on the day of even normal full moons. I imagine there is a reason for this: You're not supposed to do bloodletting or surgery on the day of a full moon. Especially not for the body part associated with that moon according to a complicated system of arithmatic. This particular moon was in the phase of Taurus, which governs neck, throat, and vocal chords.

And I know a few other details about the release of Bloodborne on March 24, 2015. It falls 4 days after a solar eclipse which looked like this as seen from the UK (i.e. the general setting of Bloodborne).

And 11 days before a blood moon - which again was governed by Taurus. Not just any blood moon, but the third in a tetrad that some religious folks were very weird about according to the google image search.

Back to the flower moons and/or killing flower moons. I don't know what's up with April 26th. After searching the discographies of a dozen or so bands based on vibes, nothing has come up yet for that date. Some potentials came up in a "this day in history" search but that's not something I want to work through right now. I do have a pretty strong opinion about May 22, 2003 - this is the anniversary of the Paul Simon song St. Judy's Comet from the album There Goes Rhymin' Simon. It's a lullaby. It's about a saint. Mergo = "Me ergo" = I think, therefore I am the 3rd tone of a musical scale. Mergo has some themes of "St. TRIna". The "Third Umbilical Cord" is itself a musical reference. In one musical theory the circle of thirds helps to organize pitches. However, "umbilical" is a word that can also be applied to the end caps of a scroll, which are rolled up in a spiral. A more complex musical theory follows the spiral array model as an algorithmic process for using ascending spirals to select musical chords made of 3 notes. Also as a context note, St. Judy's Comet is basically the reason that I'm looking into musical references at all after stumbling upon it in the search for 'Comet Judy'.

So why single out these three musical acts in relation to Bloodborne - Blondie, Rush, and Paul Simon? Is there a common connection between them? Yes, actually. All three performed at the Hammersmith Odeon in England. Oedon = scrambled Odeon = scrambled "singing place". With "hammersmith' showing that even in a game without a blacksmith somehow there is a blacksmith after all.

And on the topic of hammers, Oscar Hammerstein II - son of theatre owner William Hammerstein - was the lyricist for the Sound of Music musical referenced briefly above. Something to put a pin in for future reference is that this was his last major work - he was afflicted with stomach cancer and died less than a year after the premier.

So is the Moon Presence Really Named Flora?

Yes and No.

"O Flora, of the moon, of the dream. O little ones, O fleeting will of the ancients. Let the hunter be safe, let her find comfort. And let this dream her captor, foretell a pleasant awakening. Be one day, a fond, distant memory." - Peculiar Doll

I would imagine that the moon that the doll is referencing is either the May "Flower Moon" of the Farmer's Almanac or the August "Yellow Flowers Blossom Moon" of the Osage. Or both is possible. Lumenflowers in Bloodborne have the form of the typically-yellow sunflower, but their colour is instead a pale blue. One of the other blue moon matches occurs in August, with the release of Dark Souls Prepare to Die edition in 2012. So that would make it another blue moon: "Blue-Yellow Flowers Blossom Moon".

"Flora" is mentioned by the Doll, Lumenflowers (pale blue sunflowers) are placed in front of the astral clock, Nanpure VOW and Iraroji VOW are twin games with different moons, Lady Maria and the Doll are twins. That would seem to make the Doll a proxy of the "Blue Killer of Flowers Moon", and that Lady Maria has a link with the Killer of Flowers moon as frost is what kills the flowers and she is distantly related to the frost-covered Castle Cainhurst. But the doll will only say the prayer after the blood moon rises, as if it was that occurence that caused the Moon Presence to shed a former identity and adopt a new one.

For the antagonistic Moon Presence the answer may be deceptively simple: The Hunter's Moon. That one time in the history of FromSoftware that a game was released on the day of a blood moon on October 28, 2004 it would have been a Hunter's Moon according to the Farmer's Almanac. The day that a bloodletting operation gone wrong resulted in damage to vocal chords, and the ensuing discordant noise led to confusion among the Hunters as to what they were even seeking to hunt for. And the only Flower moon before this would have been attached to Lost Kingdoms 2 on May 22, 2003.

There is no Great One in Bloodborne which resembles a heart, but the Moon Presence has the appearance of a circulatory system forming a lion's mane, gaping open ribcage, and prominent exposed spine. The Hunter Moon is likely seeking the same thing that the Hunters have lost: a "heart". And the player acts to fill the void of that missing heart for as long as they continue to play the game through new cycles - which is what is conveyed in the ending where the Moon presence presses the player to its face and then they take the place of Gherman. The dream is the game is the captor. "The Hunter is Captured by the Game".

Where to Go Next?

I have seen speculation that the stories of Yharnam, Kos, and Annalise are connected. I suspect that this is correct but the mechanics of "how" probably involve digging even deeper into the stacked layers of history/chalice dungeons/umbilical chords which is too big of a task for now. At a guess it builds on the concept of "Hell is other people" in such a way that a lot of the monsters have a specific human elsewhere in the game who is an alternate version of them (or are there multiple versions of some, with the chalice levels being the key?). Ultimately, within the conceit of the game the act of becoming an infant Great One is to not simply collect the four "third umbilical cords" but to understand what they mean.