Bloodbore Lore V1

Who are Great Ones?

I believe Great Ones are not gods, but merely beings that have gained so much power they can see across planes (they can live in dreams) and influence the world around them, but are not immortal by any means. I firmly believe that Great Ones are just creatures that have "evolved" to a greater form of life past the Humans/Beasts of the world. Nothing more. They are not gods or anything like that, just creatures of amazingly high power and presence. This explains a lot of why the game works out like it does if you break away from the thought that they are gods and are instead just incredibly powerful mortal creatures. The oldest and most powerful of these is the Moon Presence, who is the main Antagonist. Others are Odeon, Rom, Mergo, Amygdala, Celestial Emissary, Mother Brain, and Ebrietas.

Odeon, who has transcended to the point he doesn't have a physical body but instead is just whispers. He is very powerful and has become sort of "timeless", thus potentially making him the most powerful one, yet the most indirect. He is the most "lovecraftian" Great One.

Amygdala is a Great One of nightmares, lives only in nightmares, and is (to quote ABoxOfSpiders) "fear, anger, and nightmares personified."

Ebrietas is an ancient Great One that lived in the labyrinth for a long time and then came into working with the Church to creature a surrogate for himself.

Rom, Mergo, Celestial Emissary, and Mother Brain are "new" Great Ones, young and not developed in power. They were created by Humans through messing around with the blood of a dead Great One and Ebrietas.

All of the Great Ones are always looking to create offspring of themselves, like any living creature. They want surrogates when their offspring fail, which they always do. And then the surrogates fail. This is probably due to how much power it takes to be a Great One, a child is just overwhelmed by it and corrupted into nothing but a mass of goo.

On this note - The Great Ones do NOT work together. They will when it helps each other, but generally they are all selfish beings that want to make sure that their lineage is passed on while the others are now. This is important for the dynamic between the Moon Presence and the other Great Ones.


Blood

A blood borne disease is one that spreads through contact with blood. This the whole plot devise of this game. Blood. The Blood of a Great One is infused with such power it can cure illness, get you drunk on power, but corrupt you from the inside out... changing you in ways you can't comprehend and warping your mind to pure insanity. But this is also a place where Great Ones come from! If someone is able to be infused with enough power they can "evolve", as said in the game, to transcend to a Great One. They are still a young and weak Great One, but they are one none the less. Usually this does not happen naturally but instead a current Great One will "mold" the upcoming Great One into what they want it to be. Such as how Rom was molded into being what he is.

But to the average person, the blood of a Great One - even in small doses - is enough to drive you mad and eventually turn you into a beast if you keep taking it.

These are the Blood Echoes. The power of Great Ones alive in the blood of people that you can absorb.


Pthumerians

Pthumerians were ancient leaderless peaceful civilization that carved out the labyrinth. They were guardians of the Great One that they worshiped (Ebrietas), but did not let him control them since they didn't drink his blood. This lasts for a long time and slowly Ebrietas corrupted them to electing a leader and got them to be more violent. Eventually he got the leader to partake in his blood, which led to their downfall as all of them started to and they descended into madness and beasthood. Just as Yharnam is today. All that is left is Yharnam, the queen of the Pthumerians, and some of her old guard to protect her. She tries often to get pregnant with a baby from Ebrietas and eventually succeeds - but not before being found by the scholars of Byrgenwerth.


Byrgenwerth

These scholars were studying the labyrinth under the city and stumbled upon Great One parts and slugs and blood and eventually Yharnam herself. These scholars include Willem, Lawrence, Gherman, Rom, and Micolash. They work together to figure out what is going on with this blood and are not afraid to play around with it, experiment, and this leads to a fracture in them.

Willem is determined that they need more eyes, and together they end up transforming Rom into the Great One he becomes with the help of another Great One they contacted. He has done it! Become more than Human! Gained his eyes! But in the process still knows nothing. He is just a mindless body that has a lot of power. Willem is distraut and just wants more knowledge to understand it. He wants to use the power and communication to get more knowledge, but doesn't want to partake in the blood anymore given what happened to Rom (this is why he is proud of Caryll to not use blood for the runes). On top of this, their experimentation led to the blood being used outside of Byrgenwerth and the misuse of the blood started to cause problems in the city.

Lawrence and Gherman disagree with Willem and want to continue to use the blood, but control it's use heavily. They go back to Yharnam and Lawrence founds the church with the Choir, White Garbed healers, and Black Garbed killers. Gherman was one of these killers, but called himself a Hunter and wore different clothes. Due to the effeciency of his Hunts, eventually the black garb was phased out in favor of the Gherman-style garb and weapons. This is around the time Ludwig and Archibald were experimenting and creating things, becoming Hunters themselves.

Just as ABoxOfSpiders wrote, the White Garbed were in charge of disceminating blood healing to the masses. The Choir was doing private research at the top of the cathedral and eventually were able to summon Ebrietas there to assist them. They kept trying to contact the Moon Presence but it never answered, as it had bigger plans.

Somewhere alone this time Micolash goes off to found the School of Mensis in Yahar'Gul with the goal of embracing the Great Ones directly and worshiping them, as the Pthumerians did before.

From this fracture, several things happened.


Lawrence

The Church blocked off access to Byrgenwerth. Maybe due to the split? Maybe to just control the source of the blood? Either way, they get power through their Blood healing and use the influence to block off access. Eventually, Lawrence transformed into a Beast and was killed. His skull is worshiped still in the church (You interact with this to see his memory).


Micolash

Through study and a lot of communication with the Great Ones, he ends up going completely insane and taking his whole school with him. When he reaches the peak of his insanity, he is able to create a dream state that other people from Mensis are able to inhabit. He dreams a fractured world with a huge stronghold. Think of it like an "open server" that anyone could join. And Margo joined.

Mergo is the child of Yharnam but is already so very powerful since it's the first child that was not aborted or a failure that was born from a Great One. Mergo is evil at the core, even if just a child. Even though the child is not born yet, it is able to move through the dream worlds and uses Micolash as a host for a new Nightmare. Micolash, while this was against his will, is so far gone into insanity that he embraces it totally as a Great One communicating with him on the deepest level.

He is obsessed with getting eyes like how back when he was a scholar - Rom got eyes. He doesn't understand that it made Rom just an empty shell and desires the same treatment. From the warped Nightmare of Margo that he is hosting he pulls the Mother Brain - and finds something new to worship that has eyes. The brain is evil and just drives everyone that it sees to Insanity. You can see the other people from the School of Mensis laying dead anywhere that you can see the Mother Brain - it just killed everyone in the dream it could - a true nightmare.


Gherman

I agree with ABoxOfSpiders that Gherman's wife gets pregnant with a Great One and when it births the monster, he kills it but she dies in the process. Gherman retreats to his workshop within the church's workshop and creates the doll there, a mimic of his wife that is so perfect it's borderline insanity.

He is distraut and turns to the Moon for answers as he dies. The Great Ones, being apt to helping those who truly call to them (says so in an item), lead to the Moon Presence descending from the cosmos to grant him "peace". And by that we know that means it did the same thing to him that it does to you if you kill Gherman - it converts you into it's personal assistant in a way, injecting it's blood directly into him.

Gherman dies and passes into his own dream (See Dream Worlds below)

Gherman's role is to teach Hunters who are able to get into the dream how to fight and kill the monsters, hoping to push them towards killing Mergo since it is a direct threat against the Moon Presence.


Rom and Willem

Around the time of Mergo taking over the dream of Micolash and creates a VERY powerful Nightmare, Willem figures out how to get the eyes he wants and sees the reality of the situation. He understands that if he doesn't stop Mergo's dream then the baby will be born on a blood moon and come into full power. This will consume the real world when the Nightmare Mergo is in explodes out of the Nightmare of Mensis.

To stop it, he uses Rom and a keystone in a way. He is able to lock the Blood Moon under the lake through a Secret Ritual with Rom as the guardian. This is why Rom is not aggressive against you when you first show up. He is guarding the Blood Moon, which he doesn't think you would ever want to do. Willem points you to Rom to tell you that the lake holds the secret, not to kill Rom. He doesn't know we are being controlled by Gherman and the Moon Presence, so he inadvertently dooms the world when he points out Rom to us.

When we kill Rom, we get the message that: "Secret Ritual Broken. Seek the Nightmare Newborn." This means that the Secret Ritual that was stopping the blood moon is gone, which makes the blood moon instantly descend and the child is born, making the Nightmare spill out of Mensis into the real world. It floods the Hidden Village immediately, turning it into the insane nightmare we see.


Dream Worlds

There are three worlds in this game, and the edges between them have become quite blurred. During the game, one of them basically cascades into another! The Hunter's Dream, the real world of Yharnam, and the Nightmare Frontier/Nightmare of Mensis.

Dreams worlds in this game are very lovecraftian in how they blur the lines between reality and fantasy quickly, yet we are not in control of them. The evil monsters are. Both dreams have a "Great One", a powerful being that took control of a person's dream and transformed it into a true Nightmare, and a "Host", whom dreamed the dream in the first place and created the world that the Great One can live in safely.

Gherman dreamed of his old Workshop when he died, which because the Hunter's Dream. He is the Host of this dream and the Moon Presence is the Great One that possesses it, turning it into a Nightmare. Gherman dreams up the Messengers as surrogates for his old teammates/fallen hunters in the past. This dream bleeds over into reality in the form of the Lamps and the Messengers - and obviously the Hunters who can move between it.

Why is it a Nightmare? Because anyone who gets there cannot escape. Ever. As long as the Hunt continues they can't get out.

Nightmare Frontier/Nightmare of Mensis is dreamed up by the College of Mensis with Micolash as the Host. Mergo invades this dream and twists it into the evil Nightmare it is, waiting till the red moon and his birth so it spills out of the College and consumes the world in an endless Nightmare. This is why the game drastically changes after you kill Rom, the Nightmare is released.


Yharnam

Around the time when Gherman goes insane... Yharnam, without Gherman leading the hunters, goes to crap very quickly. The draw of the Hunt and the promise of Blood that can cure any ailment still draw people to the city as outsiders, but they generally either go mad quickly or die. At this point Old Yharman is lost to the beasts and the Ashen Curse, so it is sealed and burned.

Eventually Mergo takes over the Dream of Mensis and Willem locks the moon under the lake with Rom as the key - this causes an endless night. And endless Hunt. The start of the game. Hunters come to the city looking for Paleblood, which was rumored to heal any ailment.

You are one of those people. You are sick and looking for the Paleblood to cure you. You are injected directly with the blood of the Moon Presence at the start of the game, which means you share the same fate as Gherman in a way - when you die you do not die, you instead show up in the Hunter's Dream. You are locked in the cycle of the Dream and directed by Gherman to kill Mergo and end the endless night.

Or go mad trying.