An Agony of Effort, The True Story of Bloodborne - Part XII-A: The Great Ones

[@dflosounds]

Holy crap. I've always thought the Moon Presence's design was particularly...odd. Since I assumed the game was one big homage to Lovecraft (before watching this series), I expected the final boss to be unfathomably large and nearly incomprehensible in its form and movement. But the Moon Presence is one of the smaller bosses, and seemed strangely specific in its design. Now that you mention the heart and circulatory system, I can't unsee it. It makes so much sense.

[@Darmouthable]

Although we can't apply a visual design test to determine if Oedon represents an internal feature of the human body, I think the game is quite clear and explicit with what Oedon is supposed to represent. Considering how often you referenced the "Formless Oedon" rune, I'm surprised you missed this critical line: "oozing blood is...the essence of the formless Great One, Oedon." Oedon is meant to represent blood, which, like any liquid, is formless; formless here doesn't mean it's invisible or anything, just that it has no definite shape. Both of the Oedon runes deal with quicksilver bullets, which can be synthesized on the fly from the hunter's own blood. The only great one whose name is associated with the healing church, and all its heavy association with blood, is obviously Oedon. Mergo is a child granted by Oedon to Queen Yharnam; very interesting how the Great One that is meant to represent the circulatory system is drawn by the cries of Oedon's child, as though there is some connection between paleblood and Oedon. There's other clues I'm sure, but this is enough to convince me.

[@TodoroSuiyaki]

The description of Eye Pendant says "there are two cathedrals in the Hunter's Dream. One lies past the River of Blood, and another contains the private research hall of the Healing Church." If Nightmare is limbic system and Amygdaloid body, I guess it's also reasonable to think that these two cathedrals represent the cerebral hemisphere.

[@TheCharredThermos]

I'm not familiar with the theory that the Nightmare is a parallel for the limbic system. Is there a good essay or video about it?

[@TodoroSuiyaki]

@@TheCharredThermos I didn’t find any essay or video elaborated this idea yet. It just occurred to me when I saw an anatomy of the human brain. Besides the two symmetric cathedrals can be seen as the right and left hemispheres, I also saw the bridge as the corpus callosum which is the connection between the hemispheres. Furthermore, the sea runes and spider webs on the wall can be cerebrospinal fluid and meninges which both serve as protections to the brain. However, all these associations are purely based on that Amygdala is indeed the one in human being’s brain.

[@TheCharredThermos]

@@TodoroSuiyaki That's a clever idea. The presence of spiders as a representation of the "arachnoid mater" layer of the meninges would be brilliant.

[@RetroFuturist2501]

The fact that this channel has so few subscribers is criminal.

[@mizarddo]

It absolutely is. But I'm confident it'll take of,. Especially with current progress at emulating Bloodborne on PC. It's just not yet discovered.

[@vexthegreat9167]

@@mizarddo It did. Well, Charred Thermos’ original channel had tens of thousands of subscribers. But, a few years ago, he closed down his original KZbin channel, which had this content, so people just forgot about him. That’s why there are so many comments here saying that they are glad he’s okay and that he’s back. He’s starting all over again talking about a game a lot of people aren’t playing right now and, therefore, aren’t seeking out lore for right now. If Bloodborne gets a remaster or 60 fps update, this channel will blow up again. He’s Bloodborne’s equivalent of Elden Ring’s Tarnished Archeologist, and people are more into their lore videos than the more superficial ones.

[@spicec3613]

methinks rom is a great one. micolash says “kos” granted eyes to rom, and we know ebrietas was once named kos. like you said, rom is a caterpillar sort of thing/ a baby butterfly. ebrietas is an adult butterfly. i think at one point ebrietas was meant to serve as the grieving mother who curses all of man, but the idea was scrapped late in development and repurposed in the dlc. the name kos just carried over. lastly, i think “kos” and “successor to ebrietas” had their roles switched. successor became daughter. “of the cosmos” referring to the domain of the moon presence (the sky and the cosmos are one)

[@TheCharredThermos]

Yep, I think you’re right. It’s hard to make sense of things amid the cut or revised content, but these points are persuasive. And as I put in the description notes, I was mistaken that FromSoft was not involved in the drafting of the PS trophy notes, which refer to Rom as a Great One. They were in fact responsible for drafting the trophy text, so that helps clear things up.

[@spicec3613]

@@TheCharredThermos omg thank you for the response! i really love this series the historical detail is incredible and too on the nose to be a coincidence. i’m obsessed with this game and it just hits all the right marks

[@dillonqaphsiel7977]

I always thought of rom as being the middle stage of a great one. Same with the alter of desperate being a faild child of ebrietas

[@PaszerDye]

Actually, while it is a non-specific & haphazard mish-mash, the One Reborn could possibly be representative of non-hematopoietic connective tissues, such as bones, muscles, and tendons as well as (taking into account the nature of some of its attacks) the fluids produced by the rest of the organs not represented by the other great ones..

[@antoinewilliams1358]

All great ones are eldritch horrors but not all eldritch horrors are great ones.. the concept that Rom and in the end ourselves can be elevated to infant great one which resembles a glorified tube worm are far different than the innards theory. I think the designs are more closely related to the attributes of those they represent.. for instance, Ebriatus design is that of a larynx because a Choir traditionally uses it's voice, a school.. a place of learning uses a brain, ect.. it is said that know one knows the will of the great ones but they are sympathetic in nature.. it would seem that their effect on the world is the direct result of strong emotion from influential people. Take Gehrman, his passion, desire, his sadness.. all strong. The moon presence immulated all of these things for him in the hunters dream and drew us in to find more of these passions.. or maybe it's just some coincidence

[@Oblivion420]

When you slay the Wet Nurse, just like when you slay The Moon Presence, the game says, "Nightmare Slain" This would equate the two to both being Great Ones. There's always an exception to the rules somewhere lol I love the anatomy concept of identifying them, blew my mind with that.

[@nigeltownley7472]

Id say Rom's a kidney. Her head is the adrenal gland and her tail represents the ureters. The stone head could be a kidney stone joke too.

[@richiecastle460]

I'd have to disagree. Although I do have to give some ornaments for the shape as. The other great ones do have some bearings and where things are exactly comma rome lacks the "bean" shape that makes it recognizable. Aside from the ureters, you also have the artery and vein which don't come out at the tail, but rather in the "crease". Finally, the adrenaline gland does not look like a small Stone, but rather like a flat cap or possibly a Mushroom. I have a hard time finding rom to look like any organ aside from her head, which is similar but not identical to the amygdals's head. If I were to propose something, it might be cancer, or a encapsulated infection, at which point the classification is way too broad since those things have far less consistency in shape

[@mistyazaleski6542]

I think Rom is supposed to be an ovary. The tail is the ovarian ligament, the body is the ovary and the head is a ruptured follicle (liberated ovum).

[@AralucarD]

Still, when you get your trophy, when you beat the Celestial Emissary it says "Beat the great one: Celestial Emissary"

[@hurdygurdyhurdygurdy6390]

Trophy’s are not actually created by from soft though…not admissible

[@QuadManX]

Just came across this wonderful series and I love it! When you spoke of Rom, one of the images that you showed (the one where she is on her back) reminded me of two organs; the first being the stomach, and the second, a kidney. I think that her body resembles a diseased kidney with her head resembling the adrenal gland, with her nails either representing the renal artery/vein or perhaps the ureter, the tube that leads to the bladder. Or maybe I'm just seeing things. What do you think?

[@TheCharredThermos]

I've seen some other people say stomach, too. Something I realized later is that there's very likely a connection with each Great One to pregnancy or childbirth. The Moon Presence seems to be the circulatory system, and its face is actually a bisected umbilical cord (hence why it plants its face on the stomach of the player-character in its intro cutscene). Kos and Orphan obviously speak for themselves in terms of this pregnancy/childbirth connection while still sticking to the internal bodily feature. Although it's not something found within the body, the head of Rom might be the male glans. Someone mentioned this to me about a year ago, and I found it really convincing. Celestial Emissary is in fact a Great One according to the trophy descriptions, which are official, and there are several interesting physiological possibilities there. When the emissaries (either the small enemies or the boss) use their call beyond attack, it looks like their heads might be eggs being fertilized by sperm cells. Fascinating stuff.

[@mistyazaleski6542]

Rom could also be an ovary

[@thisisnttaken]

You are most likely already aware, but what I find fascinating is that the sperm's of the Blood Dreg's really resemble Moon Presence's face. And even more interesting, Yharnam and Logarius both share the same OST, along with MP also sharing an extremely similar OST.

[@TheCharredThermos]

Thanks for pointing those out. I'll have to take a closer look at them.

[@thisisnttaken]

@@TheCharredThermos cool let me know what you think!

[@theredcenturion2029]

In the cutscene before the fight the one reborn almost looks like a Frankenstein Amygdala almst like the School of Mensis tried to build their own. Considering that the story of Frankenstein is also very heavily based in medical science that would make a connection but with your classification not make the thing a great one.

[@miirshroom]

I wonder if one of the conceits of Mergo's Wet Nurse is that she's invisible for the same reason that the Amygdala's were invisible: insight not high enough but in this case you'd need over 99 for Mergo's Wet Nurse. Like the interstitium which is the fluid filled space in between the organs of the body and would have escaped notice or classification during dissection, because its purpose is only possible to see on a microscopic level (and even somewhat escaped notice by microscope as usually tissue samples would be dehydrated before examination).

[@joaomatheus6222]

10:04 I definitely need more insight to see the similarities between ebrietas and trachea/thyroid

[@giuseppepugliatti4009]

Since the first time i've seen mergo wet nurse i've imagined that the wet nurse is like an armor of mergo, because it seams to drop on mergo lifeless, and gain life only few instant after, someting like the skin for mergo thet is shapless, like oedon

[@gg2fan]

Not sure if it's relevant, but I always thought it was interesting that Ebrietas seemed to have had her face cut open. Her eyes were originally inside and now are out, and the macaroni tubes on her face seem to be bisected.

[@TheCharredThermos]

Yeah, I thought so too. The next episode gets into this a bit more (why the Great Ones look like they do), but I never went down this specific path with Ebrietas, even though I'm right there with you. I do think there's a possible explanation as to why she looks like her face has been chopped off, which also ties into the Great Ones as a whole (or, more accurately, as a collection), but I still haven't put that project together. Anyway, good observation.

[@TheHi-NoteFunClub-BeatsByMike]

RE: Rom Given the appearance of her mouth, only internal association that occurs to me is the, ah, end of the line of the lower intestine... Complete with that orifice that leads to the external. That said - given the pupae design, and the translation discussion I've heard regarding the importance of the "unclean" themes present in FromSoft works, I'm really only half joking. Maybe Rom couldn't complete her metamorphosis into a true great one, serves the purpose she does (mitigating the potency and duration of hunt nights and the spread of man's beastly idiocy, this keeping Flora from being pruned by Mensis), and whether from the "either incomplete or ongoing transformative birth out of a pupae" view or the slightly different angle of "last bit of large intestine, slow and cranky due to constipation from some sort of blockage (see what I did there 😁)" kind of appearance... It, I mean, kind of fits... Right? P.S. Having been binging a bunch of Elden Ring vids lately, the following was a random thought I had recently (as also informed by your analysis): So, great ones are body organs - who we see as their own entities. But given we are in the realms of trancendental thought, maybe the "truth" goes beyond that. Let's assume as fact that these "organ" great ones are in fact their "own" entities - however, what if they are also aspects of, pieces of a (for lack of a better term) biological machine that is, in and of itself, seperate from them. Just as humans have a body, seperate organs (including a brain), and a WILL that can choose and act seperately from its constituant pieces - perhaps so do "great ones" (maybe Oedon factors in here, though I'm leaning towards "not exactly"... Because) - and just like a human's constituent pieces are governed by both a reflexive/autonomic and a concious will... Maybe a good question is: which is the, uh, greater one? OR - are those two aspects of will themselves both independent yet constituent parts of what is, essentially, the GREATEST will/consciousness...? (Faint echo of the foghorn from the Scooby Doo theme song).

[@TheCharredThermos]

Ha, I never reached that conclusion (or end of the line, so to speak). Someone messaged me on reddit after seeing this video and said Rom's head reminded them of the glans, and now I can't un-see it. Given all the pregnancy/impregnation imagery and language in the game, it would make a ton of sense. I **love** the idea that the Great Ones, individual organs or systems as they might be, are parts of a greater whole. I think I got the Moon Presence partly wrong in this episode. Redgrave had a brilliant finding that the face of the MP is a cross-section of an umbilical cord, which is why it plants its face in the player-character's abdomen in the cutscene. The rest of its body, as I argued in this video, is the circulatory system, which I still think is accurate. Is it possible that the Great Ones are all body parts associated with pregnancy? I think there's a compelling argument that Ebrietas could be the female reproductive system. She has a very rare strafe move in which she pops up into the air and floats to the side. She looks *very* similar to the uterus when she does that. The Great One Oedon is blood, but it also seems to impregnate Arianna in some form of divine conception. Again, pregnancy and Great Ones.

[@TheHi-NoteFunClub-BeatsByMike]

I've listened to Jay Britton's reading of The Pale blood Hunt quite a few times - the good news is, you're both right given the IRL Hunter brother's discovery. I know it's fanciful, but RE: the greater whole - currently, my head canon is the game is about the birth of Jack the Ripper. It would tie into your concept of "addiction to blood lust" (and if you manage to find that other comment of mine , I would term "surgical addiction"). How the brutality and de-humanization of your main theme, combined with the "profession of surgeon/anatomist" being a lure for those human deviations with an even more twisted sense of "research" in mind - what if, and... dream with me here - the "good" ending could be something different than a positive metaphor for "human transcendence"/saying something far worse than "the horrid work of these men led to the birth of modern medicine and it's lessened de-humanization, less invasive procedures, etc...". Serial killers may have existed before Jack the Ripper, but the, for lack of better terms, fascination and sensation with serial killers that came along with him was also birthed alongside that bloody and unthinkable but necessary path of medical research. What if the "greater than it's parts" figure is whoever it was that first had the idea "hey - the only way I'm gonna know what's in there, how it works, and what can be done to fix it when that needs doing" - call him the greatest one. And what if, somehow, impossibly, the beginning of the game sees the blood minister applying the ether-like healing blood into a pregnant woman... And the game is the "ether dream" of her fetus, now being born, maybe prematurely, due to his mother's treatment... And given the circumstances - that child, having developed in both the "in-between" realms of life and death in the womb, while also, at least in part, inhabiting an analog world of Victorian England, complete with both medical pioneers and madmen getting their hands dirty, that child grows up warped and, uh, carves his own mark on the world? He becomes another kind of "great one" - one not so much great, as only great in his own mind, having learned all the WRONG lessons of what came before? Again, fanciful, a dream... But the time period is right, a stage production of "The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" is associated with Ripper lore, and Dear Boss himself was surely a madman who toiled surreptitiously committing all manner of rituals... Well - I, mean... much like a good horror story... I like it. 😁

[@TheCharredThermos]

@@TheHi-NoteFunClub-BeatsByMike There does seem to be an element of infancy in the opening cutscene. The Blood Minister's hat is shaped like a giant pacifier (check it out, it's crazy) and he dips his head forward the whole time. We end the game (the "good" ending) as a newborn Great One, so it's almost as though the game is bookended with newborns.

[@TheHi-NoteFunClub-BeatsByMike]

BTW - I'm not sold on Odeon representing blood. Odeon is certainly something that exists within the body, and liquid is "formless"... But Odeon exists only in voice... Odeon is thought/the phenomenon of consciousness... And the rune... Looks like a body posed with arms raised, ascending... As in, your thoughts are the vehicle that allow you to rise beyond the limits of your current form/material body.

[@flavianampoicean7997]

Also the legs of ebrietas look like lungs 🤯

[@michaelwinningham8644]

I always have trouble understanding why From isn't extended a bit of good faith that the content and ideas they cut or change in their games is an intentional, artistic choice. You wouldn't listen to a demo of a song and then use it to undercut the meaning of the official release. Or use the differences between a sketch and the final painting to undercut the message of the artist. I love that there's a community that digs in to the game files and recreates lost quests or unfinished zones, but at the end of the day they aren't in the game. They're beautiful curiosities and they give us a peek behind the curtain, but I don't think they should really carry much weight in regard to how we interpret the lore. That being said, I'm loving the depth of the research presented in these videos and I wish more lore hunters took the more academic approach to analysis. It feels like listening to a true crime podcast about an unsolved murder from the Victorian era.

[@ishnoll]

I would speculate that roms head is similar in appearance to the tonsil stone item. Not truely part of the body, but formed within it. I would wonder if living failures lack of the main organs of the confirmed great ones is an indication of their status as failures, as they lack a head and neck entirely. Yet the living failures as well as the celestials emissaries share the potential of representing fluid that forms in the brain as hinted at in the research halls experiments.

[@peanutbutterjelly5861]

I would say the Living Failures could be lymph nodes maybe?

[@coconutspring8701]

My personal view is that the Moon Presence actually represents sperm. Its head/face is really one giant sperm, and bears a close resemblance to the "sperm" depicted in the Blood Dreg item. I mean, just go take a look and compare their aesthetic similarities. Also, think about the word paleblood. Sperm, or ejaculate, is a white liquid. A "pale blood", so to speak. Oedon could also just be blood itself. Blood, as a liquid, does not necessarily have a form of its own. And while it is not a "body part", or organ, it is within the body and essential to its function. Liquid takes the shape, or form, of whatever container it is in, a kind of formlessness. And the connection between blood and Oedon has already been established.

[@Baeta_QQ]

I also had a similar association, but with oedon. Its connection with mercury, mercury being almost white and the sexual implications that gherman gives about the doll, which cries a silver tear and bleeds white symbolizing sperm. The fact that blood in Bloodborne also contains mercury and Oedon impregnates women with blood suggests that blood dregs are his sperm.

[@TheHi-NoteFunClub-BeatsByMike]

Alternate take on Odeon. Yes, Odeon is formless, and blood is the "essence" of Odeon, but it is specified Odeon ONLY EXISTS in voice. Odeon is thought/consciousness. Or, possibly, the emotion of fear... Given that's THE emotion that leads to blood being spilled. Also, there are certainly parallels between Odeon and Odin - but a quick look at the definition of "Odeon" we find: (especially in ancient Greece or Rome) a building used for musical performances. I've always thought music was the true language of emotion - it gives voice to feelings we consciousnesses sometimes can't adequately convey with words... Food for, uh, thought, as it were.

[@cathoderayguns]

sorry if you said this already and i missed it, but maybe Oedon is meant to represent the soul?

[@jeffb-c]

Why do trophies not count but data mining does when it comes to gathering relevant information?

[@se7enwonders]

Isn’t Ebby, Kin? Ebby and Rom Both Ascended.

[@James_Wisniewski]

I think I said this on a prior upload, but to me, Oedon, in terms of the medical metaphor, is likely meant to represent the human voice, a product of an organ found in the body.

[@T34RG45]

Kos' face is cute

[@ElizabethJackson-w7f]

rom is a pancreas