The last thing the Good Hunter remembers before waking up was the slash of a sickle across the abdomen. The hunter does not remember dozing off. The housebound Gilbert had been detailing the routes to Cathedral Ward, and the Good Hunter recalled following the invalid’s instructions.
With a foggy shake of the head, the Good Hunter walks around Gilbert’s house to the only open path into the city. A wave of recollection hits the hunter around the corner. On the other side of a small overpass the hunter approaches a stack of boxes warily. Somehow, the Good Hunter knows that one of the infected Yharnamites is hiding behind that stack. Furthermore, the hunter knows the distance from the boxes the Yharnamite will attack, how it will swing, the sound it will make, and even what clothes it is wearing. It is as if the Good Hunter had lived through this moment a dozen times before…
As is the case with “Soulsborne” games, death and revival is more than just a game-play mechanic. It also provides insight into the lore of the world. In Dark Souls, hallowed players are revived after the passing of a substantial amount of time. During this time, the hallowed enemies the player has defeated have also been revived. With no other purpose to their existence they have returned to the habitual routines of their previous lives, only to be hewn down by the player yet again.
This essay explores the lore behind the death and revival cycle of Bloodborne. It delves further into the Eldritch Truth, and presents arguments for the Great Ones manipulation of time. It is shown how this power is essential to the success of the Good Hunter on the Night of the Hunt.
The Ebrietas Paradox
Making contact with eldritch wisdom is a blessing, for even if it drives on mad, it allows one to serve a grander purpose, for posterity. Madman’s Knowledge
Lorehunt assumes the theory that all Great Ones in Bloodborne are unique to their respective realities. For example, Rom the Vacuous Spider is encountered within the Chalice Dungeons as well as under the lake at Byrgenwerth. Unlike bosses like the Watchdog or the Undead Giant, Rom has a proper name, suggesting there is only one Rom that exist in that reality, and it is encountered multiple times. This paradigm will be explored in future essays, but assuming this theory is true presents lore hunters with a paradox.
While in the Altar of Despair, a hunter can use the Augur of Ebrietas to cause The Daughter of the Cosmos to attack herself. However, as the tentacles reach out of a wormhole emanating from the hunter’s hand, there is no ingress portal through which Ebrietas is thrusting her limbs. If Ebrietas is not actively reaching through a portal at the moment her tentacles are reaching out of another portal, where are these tentacles coming from? Furthermore, after Ebrietas is defeated, the Augur of Ebrietas can still be used as effectively as it was while Ebrietas was alive.
These seemingly paradoxical phenomena may be written off as a game play mechanic that simply requires the suspension of disbelief to accept. But what if – like many mechanics in Soulsborne games – there is an explanation for this seeming discrepancy?
It would be simplest to conclude that the Ebrietas summoned by the hunter is from a different reality. However, this argument would contradict the Other Worlds essay, which argues that Great Ones cannot traverse realities.
Therefore, there is only one Ebrietas that can interact with the hunter’s reality, but she must be reaching through the portal from somewhere else. As explained in the Eldritch Truth, because Great Ones reside in higher dimensions of space, they are capable of folding our three dimensional space. However, as we are not seeing Ebriatas being split in two across space, we must assume that the tentacles we are seeing are from a different time. Because Great Ones also live in higher temporal dimensions, they can fold and reach across time just as easily as they can space.
The Death of Sleep
Wouldn’t it be good if we all had a chance at a true new beginning, one not bound by circles of time and follies of the church? Djura, The Death of Sleep
One popular theory among lore hunters is that the Good Hunter is on an unknown assignment from the Moon Presence. The purpose of the Hunter’s Dream is to sustain and strengthen this assignment while the hunter is in pursuit of the Presence’s goals. It is only after Mergo is executed that the Doll proclaims “Dawn will soon break… This night, and this dream, will end.” However, before the hunter could accomplish this goal, they had to first enter the nightmare, reveal the hidden city of Yahar’gul, expose the veiling Rom’s secret, root out the hidden passphrase to the forbidden Byrgenwerth, and survive the night in which an entire city is hunting down outsiders.
The outsider turned hunter is hardly prepared for such a task. They did not bring weapon nor armor with them to Yharnam. They posses no super-human strength. They are given no instruction to help them in their task. When Ghernam does eventually show up to guide the hunter, his only guidance is “Just go out and kill a few beasts. It’s for your own good. You know, it’s just what hunters do! You’ll get used to it…”
As the Good Hunter exits the Dream to kill beasts, they do begin to channel the power of the Great Ones into strength. But this is not the hunter’s greatest asset. The hunter would not be able to accomplish their assignment without the Moon Presence’s control over the flow of time.
When the hunter dies, the Moon Presence resets time to the last point in which the hunter entered the waking world. In Dark Souls, enemies return because after a set amount of time, they revive and go about their duties. In Bloodborne, time is reset, and the enemies wander Yharnam as if they were never defeated, because, in a sense, they never were.
Like a horrific Groundhog’s Day, the Good Hunter is revived again and again into the nightmarish streets of Yharnam. As the Good Hunter gets closer to accomplishing the Moon Presence’s designs, time continues to pass as normal. However, the night is long for the hunter as time is consistently reset upon failure.
A fond distant memory
Use to gain Insight and, so they say, eyes on the inside, although no one remembers what that truly entails. One Third of Umbilical Chord
It is interesting to note that NPCs and bosses are not affected by the resetting of time. For example, if the Good Hunter attacks Eileen and is defeated by her, she will continue to be hostile the next time the hunter approaches her. Additionally, NPCs and bosses do not re-spawn after being defeated by the Good Hunter.
For bosses and hunters, this may be explained by the amount of blood echoes they have within their system. It might be argued that with enough power of the Great One’s surging within its blood, a being adopts part of this atemporal power and cannot fully be reset in time. Because Great Ones exist beyond time, resetting time will not bring them back. It would seem this is also true for hunters that have consumed enough of Oedon’s essence. This gives them the minor advantage of not being fully reset when the hunter dies. However, it also means that when they do die, they can no longer be brought back through a time reset.
By reseting time when the hunter fails in their task, the Moon Presence does not need to condescend to the waking world to explain its purposes. It does not need to provide it’s unwilling minions with guidance or instruction. The reward for the hunter who fulfills their mission is the ability to live a life after the Night of the Hunt, and the solace of experiencing only one final death.