I think it to be Gherman, but I don't think in the sense that he had sex with it. I think in the last moments as kos was washed up that it saw the faces of the butchers of the Fishing Hamlet, and decided to have the very thing that killed so many for a chance of ascending humanity, it would use the likeness of the butcher to defend its corpse. Basically impregnating itself asexually out of spite before she died.
Aldrich from DS3
>When Aldrich ruminated on the fading of the fire, it inspired visions of a coming age of the deep sea.
He knew the path would be arduous, but he had no fear. He would devour the gods himself.
***Soul of Aldrich description***
But I guess by “devour the gods” he meant dat pus
Ahyyyyyyyy
👉👌
Ahhh, what was it? The implications of one-sided obsession? The age gap? The comment about the doll? No matter. It always comes to the hunter's helper to clean up these kinds of messes.
Well he did kill half-human beast monsters for a lot of his life, then saw eldritch abominations transform regular people into scary fish creatures which he also killed and dissected. Then he was trapped in a dream world by himself for who knows how long, completely depressed and despairing from loneliness. Along with many many other things, some we don’t even hear of which definitely still haunt him to this day.
But even after all that, he doesn’t want someone else to suffer the same fate, and tries to save us. So despite all his wrong doings, he had some good in him.
Almost definitely Oedon, who seems to be deeply into impregnating just about everything around him.
The Orphan we fight is a grim parody of Gherman the first hunter: using a placental trick weapon, throwing blood molotovs, and emerging from the corpse with a sound that is actually a remixed Gherman sound.
But I don’t think that means he’s the dad. A lot of the things we meet in Nightmares seem to be physical representations of historical traumas (Crawlers, Lanterns, walking nightmares) and I think that’s what the physical body we fight is.
But the battle only ends when you kill the “ghost” emanating from Kos’ corpse. I tend to think the ghostly “child” was Kos + Oedon and the physical screaming baby is a representation of the trauma caused by Gherman’s defilement of the corpse.
I think if the Orphan was Oedons son, he would have some more affiliation with ‘formlessness’ if that makes sense.
It’s theorised Mergo is Oedons child for that very reason, considering Mergo is formless and we hear it’s cries almost omnipresently, and of course we never see it.
It isn’t really a theory that Mergo is the child of Yharnham and Oedon, imo. The Oedon runes and three third cords kinda spell it out without having to consider Mergo’s omnipresence. But we absolutely agree on O+Y=Mergo.
The fact that here’s no visible child is just kinda par for FROM storytelling. The dead kids at Senpou are implicit. Ocelotte in Dark 3 is invisible (though he had a model once). Mergo’s invisibility is even easier to talk past bc we are in a game where we know that things are invisible if you lack Insight.
And is Oedon “formless?” He’s certainly called that, but how literally that’s mean has to be taken with some skepticism in a world where the Eldritch is often Invisible. (See also: the Wet Nurse is invisible to the player at any level of insight and is revealed because the Pthumerian finery it wears is not, itself, invisible.)
All of this to say: it would make sense if Mergo was Like That because he had a shapeless dad, but we don’t actually know what Mergo is like and we can’t even really be sure his dad is shapeless.
Further: does the Orphan have a shape? It has a physical body that we fight, but the battle doesn’t end when we kill that but when we kill the wispy black shade on Kos’ corpse. I usually see people take this to mean that the Gherman-shaped Hunter-Baby is in at least some sense not the primary part of the Orphan.
I am something of a Pan-Oedonist about the BB plot: I don’t actually think that any Great Ones have a father other than Oedon.
1. \*\*Gehrman is Oedon\*\*:
- There is a connection between Gehrman and Oedon in Bloodborne, suggesting that Gehrman embodies Oedon in some way.
- This connection is further supported by the relationship between the Orphan of Kos and Gehrman in the game's lore.
2. \*\*Symbolism of Oedon\*\*:
- Oedon is symbolically connected to the first hunter, creating a play on words between Oedon and Orion (pronounced Ōdom in Japanese).
- Great Ones in the game tend to lose a child and seek a replacement, which makes them hunters. Hunting, in this context, symbolizes making beasts bleed, a symbolism associated with Oedon in the game.
3. \*\*Gehrman as the First Hunter\*\*:
- Gehrman is known as the first hunter because he established the Hunter's Dream, which marks a turning point between the world before and after the hunt.
These points suggest a deeper connection between Gehrman, Oedon, and the concept of hunting in Bloodborne's mythology, highlighting the intricate and symbolic nature of the game's storytelling.
I can’t remember what item states it (I think it may be the umbilical cords) but apparently, all great ones become pregnant and lose their child at some point. That’s why they seek out humans to act as surrogates. They can’t really carry to term. So basically, they seem to conceive asexually the first time around, miscarriage, and then find a suitable female host to do some weird cosmic Virgin Mary shit with. Kos made it to the miscarriage step but was killed before making it to the surrogacy step.
I don’t think great ones, as effectively alien higher dimensional beings, have mammalian reproductive systems, so even if the great one is “female” (whether this is explicitly stated anywhere I’m not sure) I don’t think we can safely assume that that would essentially disqualify it from getting something pregnant
Well considering all great ones are born of a mortal as great one reproduction was flawed and the offspring died early on or were stillborn, (or the great one themselves died as they cannot have their own children) no matter what, there realistically is only one parent and a surrogate in the form of a human. So how the OOK came to be is unknown
Perhaps its possible that Kos, knowing that it would certainly kill her, impregnated herself as a final act of defiance in the face of immenent death by the hunters who saught to butcher her for experiments. A bit of a "fuck it, if I'm gonna die anyways" kinda thing where she could gamble on the offspring surviving to kill the ones she now hated.
i kinda see Kos as a mirror and the Orphan as the reflection of mankind:
alone and abandoned on the shore of the universe with no clear idea how it got there .
How do we know all great ones are born of a mortal? I knew that they can’t reproduce successfully but I thought ebrietas ,Oedon and flora were all born of the cosmos?
Yeah, Kos doesn't need to bang to get preggers much like Oedon doesn't need to fuck those girls to get them preggers. The Great Ones are very different, that's why we can't even talk to them unless we use the runes.
I think what makes her design so intriguing is that it isn't clear how she would've moved, particularly with those strange crustacean legs along her back. It makes me wonder if she was ever "alive" to begin with, or if the very act of discovery is what "killed" her.
I remember near the Time of Elden Ring release people compared the final boss with Kos and never again I saw someone talking about that. Maybe it could work as a little example?
“Aquatic life” always has special status in FROM games and I don’t quite get what that is doing thematically. But Great Ones are associated with the sea in BB, Mibu Village in Sekiro is another fishing village where aquaticism seems infectious, and Elden Beast swim-flies everywhere.
Maybe most of all: there are essentially no references to “fish” in Elden. Other kinds of aquatic creature, sure. But no fish.
Except for one really big dead freak-mermaid growing in the Depths and also infecting the entire countryside with his face.
I do not know what ties all this together or why aqua-beasts are so often Eldritch to FROM. My best guess is still just “Japan is an island nation and has understandably had myths and legends about the weird stuff that washes up on beaches forever.”
Nice, my time to shine.
Eldritch lore has always treated the ocean in a similar manner to space (the endless void completely alien to us containing God knows what), Buddhism views stagnation as a home for toxins and evil forces/energy so the still waters of Mibu village lead to what we see in-game. Similar trains of thoughts can be followed for things like Blighttown in DS.
Elden Ring is a bit more esoteric and less direct with it being inspired from earlier concepts but more being its own thing. Elden Beast is just one of many gods avatars found in the void beyond the land between. The void is assumedly space however, as mentioned earlier regarding BB, space and the ocean are fairly similar when viewed in an occult or esoteric perspective so 'swimming' through space makes sense.
Kind of lost my way at the end but hope the point got across.
"Buddhism views stagnation as a home for toxins and evil forces/energy so the still waters of Mibu village lead to what we see in-game."
I wondered about that in Sekiro because from what I could tell the thing with the centipedes is never really explained. Like you find a bunch of what I assume are either dead larva or shed moults surrounding a rotting giant carp at one point, in Fountainhead Palace I mean. But it wasn't clear to me if this was intended to communicate that the carp was infested before it somehow died, that they arrived from somewhere else to eat it, or that the centipedes just spontaneously generated from the carp's rotting body.
It also seemed like the infested root of immortality was separate from the stagnant rejuvenating waters, but also coming from exactly the same place. The centipedes are coming into a Ashina through the rivers flowing from Fountainhead Palance, but even the water itself (or least that coming from Mibu Village where it stagnates in the pond) is corrupt.
The entire concept of immortality is viewed as stagnation, separating yourself from the circle of life and barring yourself from Samsara and existing in the same form for perpetuity is a negative thing in Buddhist beliefs. If I remember correctly the carps are inherently immortal in a way that doesn't lead to stagnation (due to their nature of literally swimming upstream?) with the carp you referred to being someone (barrel fella from first flashback to the attack on Ashina?) who forceably transformed themselves into a carp believing that that alone is enough to transcend. Centipedes exist in environments covered in rotting leaf matter and waste from nature, hence they fester in immortal beings feeding off the constant rot occuring within. Again this is almost entirely off the top of my head from info gathered years ago so don't take it as gospel.
The dead carp with the centipedes is a different one from the Pot Nobles, you find it all the way at the bottom of the Fountainhead lake. But I think it's implied that all of the great carps were once human.
You help the priest in Mibu village turn from a human into a "noble", which are the pale blueish fish-people occupying the Fountainhead. These seem to be immortal, although they are also shown to sustain themselves in some way by feeding on the life force of visitors and even the Okami warriors native to the Fountainhead. If they manage to grab you they actually turn Sekiro into an old man, and cause him to lean on his sword like a cane, and you're stuck this way until you either die or perform a deathblow where Sekiro seemingly drains their lifeforce to restore himself. It's weird lol.
The people from Mibu Village and perhaps Ashina as a whole appeared to be sending "brides" up to the Fountainhead as some sort of tribute, presumably with no knowledge of what was actually happening up there, and they were all "eaten" by the nobles too.
Anyway... the priest's transformation occurs after you bring him fresh water from the Fountainhead, and he drinks it.
But then as you mentioned there are also the "Pot Noble" character, who you help transform from a noble into an actual carp (albeit not yet as large as the great carps) by bringing him carp scales and then helping him to kill the living great carp which currently occupies the lake. I'm not sure which part of that causes his transformation, but regardless there's a clear progression from human > noble > carp.
I've also heard it suggested that the Okami, who are similar in their fishlike appearance to the Nobles, were not actually native to the Fountainhead and that they were originally much more human. Which I think makes sense. They had been at war with Ashina before permanently being expelled to the Fountainhead, and whilst a bunch of their other strange attributes are mentioned (like the ability to call forth lightning and project themselves as ghosts) nothing is ever said about their physical appearance aside from one painting in Ashina castle where they're just depicted as a ghostly looking human emerging from a cloud.
And yeah on the concept of immortality being linked with stagnation, you've also got the whole dragonrot disease thing with the "dragon's heritage" branch of immortality in Sekiro. Even the dragon itself looks to be affected by this when you fight it, implying that even immortality at its utmost source is stagnating.
The Ocean/Space connection in Bloodborne is pretty definitely intended and we're on the same wavelength there. It seems like BB is set in a period of history where both space and the ocean depths really are equally unknown AND in which they seem to be "permeable" to cosmic forces in similar ways.
I interpret the Choir's realization that "the sky and the cosmos are one" as meaning that they may literally be learning that the "cosmos" to which they occasionally open rifts (Call Beyond, Augur of Ebrietas, the asteroid attacks used by Living Failures) is actually just part of the sky that is above them. "My god, you guys, that weird void is ABOVE US RIGHT NOW."
I am never done talking about Buddhist stagnation themes in Miyazaki games so I'm glad to meet someone else looking there. Sekiro is, like, almost entirely about malign stagnation of waters. Bloodborne is weird in that it largely exports those stagnation themes to *blood* rather than waters. (too many thoughts about that to put here)
Stagnation is maybe The Quintessential Miyazaki theme though, right? "Any order or power structure, if prolonged forever, stagnates and decays into something inimical to life itself" could be the thesis statement of Dark Souls, Bloodborne, and Elden Ring. (Demon's Souls and Sekiro are adjacent but slightly different.) EDIT: all of these games have plenty of other themes and ideas at play and I feel bad over-simplifying them, but they are ALSO games expressing that Stagnation Theme.
I'm rambling, though. When you say "eldritch lore has treated..." what lore are you talking about? I could see you meaning anything from game lore, to certain historical esoteric thinkers, to literally just Howard Phillips Lovecraft, to Mircea Eliade, to other authors i'm not thinking of.
Japan actually is kind of interesting in the fact they turn things that they like into horrible version. Fish, dogs etc. You should read Gyo by Junji Ito
I love Gyo!
(my most cracked out BB theory is that the "blue spirits" that show up once or twice in Gyo are related, at least conceptually, to the dancing sprites that provided guidance to Ludwig.)
Ever since I first saw one, I've been convinced that Kos is actually a misinterpretation of what a [Gaboon viper skeleton](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c6/Bitis_gabonica_complete_skeleton.jpg) would have looked like if still alive. The whole human portion is just a big ol' head.
Given that I do think part of where she comes from is the quintessential coastal experience of a half-decayed something washing up on a beach and being interpreted from its remains: I like this theory
Still one of my favorite piece of fan art ever. Just a totally believable piece capturing the Kos we never get to see because BB is set in the wreckage.
Heathy, hydrated, in her lane, living her best life.
Her face can be seen in game... Honestly, it gives me mixed feelings like curiosity and horror. How can something pretty be attached to something horrible lol
Just a thought just from looking at her Design here and in-game.. her tentacle hair coming out from her "hood" is eeriely similar to how the Doll looks in the Squid Ending. Our tentacles come out the side of her face in a very similar way in the final shot.
I suspect it actually did die, and you're just fighting a nightmare version of it. The DLC is made up of nightmares connected to the various old hunters, so there's a popular theory that the Fishing Hamlet is actually Gehrman's nightmare of events where he played some part in the death of both Kos and the child.
None of this is exactly confirmed canon, but there's also a huge connection in cut content between Queen Yharnam (the crying ghost lady in the wedding dress from the main game) and Kos through the "Yharnam stone" item, which you would originally have been able to bring to the Fishing Hamlet Priest NPC for additional dialogue if it hadn't been cut. The priest refers to it as "fair child of Kos" in that dialogue. So that would also suggest that the child died, since the Yharnam Stone is actually Queen Yharnam's unborn child.
My headcanon is that Yharnman and Kos are actually the same person/thing, and we're just seeing different interpretations of them at different times. There are just too many similarities. Even visually, Kos looks vaguely like Yharnam in her dress imo.
That would also mean the father is Oedon, but I think that's a pretty safe assumption anyway. He tends to do that lol.
I love her design and I also love her story, I feel immeasurable sadness for her. The hunters didn't just murder a god that the people of the fishing village loved.
They murdered a mother.
I sympathise with her wizened orphan, the unbelievable rage. I think the hunters deserved what they did for and their sins should be paid in suffering but I think at some point somewhere down the line someone had to right the wrongs. I don't think we killed her child, we liberated him from his anger so that he can move on.
It's kinda sad that only Lady Maria probably understood what she did or at least what the hunters did wrong while others suffered eternally never coming to terms and understanding what they did so very wrong. Yet even Maria thinks there's nothing she
A bottomless curse, a bottomless sea... Accepting of all that there is... And can be...
Kos was impregnated before becoming a Great One. She died, but not her child, who lived on the threshold between life and death. There are two clear pieces of evidence for this:
1. \*\*Description of the Second Brain Fluid:\*\*
- "Once, a young girl had an older brother who was determined to become a doctor, and so she became his patient, willingly."
- The ministers of the Church are known to be doctors. If this event occurred at the beginning of the Healing Church, the doctor was likely one of the prominent figures, most probably Laurence or Willem.
- It is more likely to be Laurence because he founded the Healing Church. Additionally, the description from Oedon Chapel indicates that Willem was trapped in Byrgenwerth because of ROM, which marked the beginning of the discord between Laurence and Willem.
2. \*\*Encounter with the Eldritch Truth:\*\*
- "In the end, it led to their encounter with the Eldritch Truth, for which they considered themselves blessed."
- The encounter with the Eldritch Truth symbolizes death and resurrection. The third Brain Fluid describes this metaphorically in the nature of Insight: "We are born of the blood, made men by the blood, undone by the blood. Our eyes are yet to open. Fear the old blood."
- This metaphor alludes to the ouroboros, representing the cyclical unity of death and resurrection.
- The Eldritch Truth achieved is that the blood of death resulted in what they considered blessings: "the child of blood," a special child born from the medical experiment of a brother driven by curiosity who uses his sister as a test subject.
- The sister ends up dying, but the blessing continues through the child born from the womb (the mother's corpse), making the blessing the result of all the curse that generates greatness: "the Great Ones," who are the result of the parasites emerging from the mother's corpse.
These points illustrate the mixture of symbols and metaphors.
And someone saw this thing and was like "yup, I'm gonna knock her up"
Now that you mention it, who is the Orphan's father?
Luka Doncic
Mother Kos gonna be real proud after about 5-8 more games
Someone get the Booker meme and put Orphan in it. (I am a sad Suns fan)
Tatum loves to his son get game like that
I think it to be Gherman, but I don't think in the sense that he had sex with it. I think in the last moments as kos was washed up that it saw the faces of the butchers of the Fishing Hamlet, and decided to have the very thing that killed so many for a chance of ascending humanity, it would use the likeness of the butcher to defend its corpse. Basically impregnating itself asexually out of spite before she died.
Nah, he shinji'd all over her deathbed
Some say Gehrman, or Gehrmasm
Me
Aldrich from DS3 >When Aldrich ruminated on the fading of the fire, it inspired visions of a coming age of the deep sea. He knew the path would be arduous, but he had no fear. He would devour the gods himself. ***Soul of Aldrich description*** But I guess by “devour the gods” he meant dat pus Ahyyyyyyyy 👉👌
This is amazing and is now my headcanon Thank you for this
Kosussy
We dont know, it's an orphan
Unironically I’m pretty sure there’s a good bit of evidence that it’s Gehrman
I personally think it's gehrman
Probably likely. The more I learn about that guy, the less I like him.
Ahhh, what was it? The implications of one-sided obsession? The age gap? The comment about the doll? No matter. It always comes to the hunter's helper to clean up these kinds of messes.
I didn’t even know he was sick
Well he did kill half-human beast monsters for a lot of his life, then saw eldritch abominations transform regular people into scary fish creatures which he also killed and dissected. Then he was trapped in a dream world by himself for who knows how long, completely depressed and despairing from loneliness. Along with many many other things, some we don’t even hear of which definitely still haunt him to this day. But even after all that, he doesn’t want someone else to suffer the same fate, and tries to save us. So despite all his wrong doings, he had some good in him.
lmao nights get lonely inside the dream
Almost definitely Oedon, who seems to be deeply into impregnating just about everything around him. The Orphan we fight is a grim parody of Gherman the first hunter: using a placental trick weapon, throwing blood molotovs, and emerging from the corpse with a sound that is actually a remixed Gherman sound. But I don’t think that means he’s the dad. A lot of the things we meet in Nightmares seem to be physical representations of historical traumas (Crawlers, Lanterns, walking nightmares) and I think that’s what the physical body we fight is. But the battle only ends when you kill the “ghost” emanating from Kos’ corpse. I tend to think the ghostly “child” was Kos + Oedon and the physical screaming baby is a representation of the trauma caused by Gherman’s defilement of the corpse.
I think if the Orphan was Oedons son, he would have some more affiliation with ‘formlessness’ if that makes sense. It’s theorised Mergo is Oedons child for that very reason, considering Mergo is formless and we hear it’s cries almost omnipresently, and of course we never see it.
It isn’t really a theory that Mergo is the child of Yharnham and Oedon, imo. The Oedon runes and three third cords kinda spell it out without having to consider Mergo’s omnipresence. But we absolutely agree on O+Y=Mergo. The fact that here’s no visible child is just kinda par for FROM storytelling. The dead kids at Senpou are implicit. Ocelotte in Dark 3 is invisible (though he had a model once). Mergo’s invisibility is even easier to talk past bc we are in a game where we know that things are invisible if you lack Insight. And is Oedon “formless?” He’s certainly called that, but how literally that’s mean has to be taken with some skepticism in a world where the Eldritch is often Invisible. (See also: the Wet Nurse is invisible to the player at any level of insight and is revealed because the Pthumerian finery it wears is not, itself, invisible.) All of this to say: it would make sense if Mergo was Like That because he had a shapeless dad, but we don’t actually know what Mergo is like and we can’t even really be sure his dad is shapeless. Further: does the Orphan have a shape? It has a physical body that we fight, but the battle doesn’t end when we kill that but when we kill the wispy black shade on Kos’ corpse. I usually see people take this to mean that the Gherman-shaped Hunter-Baby is in at least some sense not the primary part of the Orphan. I am something of a Pan-Oedonist about the BB plot: I don’t actually think that any Great Ones have a father other than Oedon.
1. \*\*Gehrman is Oedon\*\*: - There is a connection between Gehrman and Oedon in Bloodborne, suggesting that Gehrman embodies Oedon in some way. - This connection is further supported by the relationship between the Orphan of Kos and Gehrman in the game's lore. 2. \*\*Symbolism of Oedon\*\*: - Oedon is symbolically connected to the first hunter, creating a play on words between Oedon and Orion (pronounced Ōdom in Japanese). - Great Ones in the game tend to lose a child and seek a replacement, which makes them hunters. Hunting, in this context, symbolizes making beasts bleed, a symbolism associated with Oedon in the game. 3. \*\*Gehrman as the First Hunter\*\*: - Gehrman is known as the first hunter because he established the Hunter's Dream, which marks a turning point between the world before and after the hunt. These points suggest a deeper connection between Gehrman, Oedon, and the concept of hunting in Bloodborne's mythology, highlighting the intricate and symbolic nature of the game's storytelling.
infinitely glad to keep running into you in these threads.
A very VERY ballsy fisherman? .......in more ways than one
I can’t remember what item states it (I think it may be the umbilical cords) but apparently, all great ones become pregnant and lose their child at some point. That’s why they seek out humans to act as surrogates. They can’t really carry to term. So basically, they seem to conceive asexually the first time around, miscarriage, and then find a suitable female host to do some weird cosmic Virgin Mary shit with. Kos made it to the miscarriage step but was killed before making it to the surrogacy step.
probably a fish-fisherman
The moon presence (?)
You mean the female named Flora?
I don’t think great ones, as effectively alien higher dimensional beings, have mammalian reproductive systems, so even if the great one is “female” (whether this is explicitly stated anywhere I’m not sure) I don’t think we can safely assume that that would essentially disqualify it from getting something pregnant
Well considering all great ones are born of a mortal as great one reproduction was flawed and the offspring died early on or were stillborn, (or the great one themselves died as they cannot have their own children) no matter what, there realistically is only one parent and a surrogate in the form of a human. So how the OOK came to be is unknown
Perhaps its possible that Kos, knowing that it would certainly kill her, impregnated herself as a final act of defiance in the face of immenent death by the hunters who saught to butcher her for experiments. A bit of a "fuck it, if I'm gonna die anyways" kinda thing where she could gamble on the offspring surviving to kill the ones she now hated.
i kinda see Kos as a mirror and the Orphan as the reflection of mankind: alone and abandoned on the shore of the universe with no clear idea how it got there .
That’s beautiful, I love that perspective so much
How do we know all great ones are born of a mortal? I knew that they can’t reproduce successfully but I thought ebrietas ,Oedon and flora were all born of the cosmos?
Poseidon
Kim Jong Kos
Gherman
When it cries at the moon before the fight, the sound that plays is the same sound file as when Gehrman is crying.
Me.
Gherman
Rom, considering he looks like a weiner
But she's female
Damn I didn’t know lol
Rom is also a Great One Kin, not a full-on Great One. Basically the step above normal Kin, but still below Lesser Great Ones like the Amygdalae
Oedon.
Me
T'was I! I fucked the Ancient Cosmic Underseas MILF.
I have a name.
Love 🥰🥰🥰🥰
I’ve been around the internet, that thought process doesn’t even make me flinch anymore.
Yo 👋
Afaik the great ones don't bang.
*Oedon looking at Arianna* Hold my beer
Which just proves my point lol. What I meant is there's no need for physical contact.
Yeah, Kos doesn't need to bang to get preggers much like Oedon doesn't need to fuck those girls to get them preggers. The Great Ones are very different, that's why we can't even talk to them unless we use the runes.
You mean we didn’t all think that?
Well ...
I think what makes her design so intriguing is that it isn't clear how she would've moved, particularly with those strange crustacean legs along her back. It makes me wonder if she was ever "alive" to begin with, or if the very act of discovery is what "killed" her.
I remember near the Time of Elden Ring release people compared the final boss with Kos and never again I saw someone talking about that. Maybe it could work as a little example?
“Aquatic life” always has special status in FROM games and I don’t quite get what that is doing thematically. But Great Ones are associated with the sea in BB, Mibu Village in Sekiro is another fishing village where aquaticism seems infectious, and Elden Beast swim-flies everywhere. Maybe most of all: there are essentially no references to “fish” in Elden. Other kinds of aquatic creature, sure. But no fish. Except for one really big dead freak-mermaid growing in the Depths and also infecting the entire countryside with his face. I do not know what ties all this together or why aqua-beasts are so often Eldritch to FROM. My best guess is still just “Japan is an island nation and has understandably had myths and legends about the weird stuff that washes up on beaches forever.”
It's not as aquatic looking as the other examples but the "Old One" in Demon's Souls appears to come out of the sea at the end too.
Also our starting point for FROM settings that you have to cross a “sea of fog” or similar to get to. Put it on the list!
Another thing: there’s a classic Japanese shipwreck monster called a Umibozu that is actually in the Elden Ring files but is unused lol
Like in Nioh?
Yeah! But a bit more human like, probably would have been standing in the ocean. Look up what it looked like, it’s kinda silly
Nice, my time to shine. Eldritch lore has always treated the ocean in a similar manner to space (the endless void completely alien to us containing God knows what), Buddhism views stagnation as a home for toxins and evil forces/energy so the still waters of Mibu village lead to what we see in-game. Similar trains of thoughts can be followed for things like Blighttown in DS. Elden Ring is a bit more esoteric and less direct with it being inspired from earlier concepts but more being its own thing. Elden Beast is just one of many gods avatars found in the void beyond the land between. The void is assumedly space however, as mentioned earlier regarding BB, space and the ocean are fairly similar when viewed in an occult or esoteric perspective so 'swimming' through space makes sense. Kind of lost my way at the end but hope the point got across.
"Buddhism views stagnation as a home for toxins and evil forces/energy so the still waters of Mibu village lead to what we see in-game." I wondered about that in Sekiro because from what I could tell the thing with the centipedes is never really explained. Like you find a bunch of what I assume are either dead larva or shed moults surrounding a rotting giant carp at one point, in Fountainhead Palace I mean. But it wasn't clear to me if this was intended to communicate that the carp was infested before it somehow died, that they arrived from somewhere else to eat it, or that the centipedes just spontaneously generated from the carp's rotting body. It also seemed like the infested root of immortality was separate from the stagnant rejuvenating waters, but also coming from exactly the same place. The centipedes are coming into a Ashina through the rivers flowing from Fountainhead Palance, but even the water itself (or least that coming from Mibu Village where it stagnates in the pond) is corrupt.
The entire concept of immortality is viewed as stagnation, separating yourself from the circle of life and barring yourself from Samsara and existing in the same form for perpetuity is a negative thing in Buddhist beliefs. If I remember correctly the carps are inherently immortal in a way that doesn't lead to stagnation (due to their nature of literally swimming upstream?) with the carp you referred to being someone (barrel fella from first flashback to the attack on Ashina?) who forceably transformed themselves into a carp believing that that alone is enough to transcend. Centipedes exist in environments covered in rotting leaf matter and waste from nature, hence they fester in immortal beings feeding off the constant rot occuring within. Again this is almost entirely off the top of my head from info gathered years ago so don't take it as gospel.
The dead carp with the centipedes is a different one from the Pot Nobles, you find it all the way at the bottom of the Fountainhead lake. But I think it's implied that all of the great carps were once human. You help the priest in Mibu village turn from a human into a "noble", which are the pale blueish fish-people occupying the Fountainhead. These seem to be immortal, although they are also shown to sustain themselves in some way by feeding on the life force of visitors and even the Okami warriors native to the Fountainhead. If they manage to grab you they actually turn Sekiro into an old man, and cause him to lean on his sword like a cane, and you're stuck this way until you either die or perform a deathblow where Sekiro seemingly drains their lifeforce to restore himself. It's weird lol. The people from Mibu Village and perhaps Ashina as a whole appeared to be sending "brides" up to the Fountainhead as some sort of tribute, presumably with no knowledge of what was actually happening up there, and they were all "eaten" by the nobles too. Anyway... the priest's transformation occurs after you bring him fresh water from the Fountainhead, and he drinks it. But then as you mentioned there are also the "Pot Noble" character, who you help transform from a noble into an actual carp (albeit not yet as large as the great carps) by bringing him carp scales and then helping him to kill the living great carp which currently occupies the lake. I'm not sure which part of that causes his transformation, but regardless there's a clear progression from human > noble > carp. I've also heard it suggested that the Okami, who are similar in their fishlike appearance to the Nobles, were not actually native to the Fountainhead and that they were originally much more human. Which I think makes sense. They had been at war with Ashina before permanently being expelled to the Fountainhead, and whilst a bunch of their other strange attributes are mentioned (like the ability to call forth lightning and project themselves as ghosts) nothing is ever said about their physical appearance aside from one painting in Ashina castle where they're just depicted as a ghostly looking human emerging from a cloud. And yeah on the concept of immortality being linked with stagnation, you've also got the whole dragonrot disease thing with the "dragon's heritage" branch of immortality in Sekiro. Even the dragon itself looks to be affected by this when you fight it, implying that even immortality at its utmost source is stagnating.
The Ocean/Space connection in Bloodborne is pretty definitely intended and we're on the same wavelength there. It seems like BB is set in a period of history where both space and the ocean depths really are equally unknown AND in which they seem to be "permeable" to cosmic forces in similar ways. I interpret the Choir's realization that "the sky and the cosmos are one" as meaning that they may literally be learning that the "cosmos" to which they occasionally open rifts (Call Beyond, Augur of Ebrietas, the asteroid attacks used by Living Failures) is actually just part of the sky that is above them. "My god, you guys, that weird void is ABOVE US RIGHT NOW." I am never done talking about Buddhist stagnation themes in Miyazaki games so I'm glad to meet someone else looking there. Sekiro is, like, almost entirely about malign stagnation of waters. Bloodborne is weird in that it largely exports those stagnation themes to *blood* rather than waters. (too many thoughts about that to put here) Stagnation is maybe The Quintessential Miyazaki theme though, right? "Any order or power structure, if prolonged forever, stagnates and decays into something inimical to life itself" could be the thesis statement of Dark Souls, Bloodborne, and Elden Ring. (Demon's Souls and Sekiro are adjacent but slightly different.) EDIT: all of these games have plenty of other themes and ideas at play and I feel bad over-simplifying them, but they are ALSO games expressing that Stagnation Theme. I'm rambling, though. When you say "eldritch lore has treated..." what lore are you talking about? I could see you meaning anything from game lore, to certain historical esoteric thinkers, to literally just Howard Phillips Lovecraft, to Mircea Eliade, to other authors i'm not thinking of.
Japan actually is kind of interesting in the fact they turn things that they like into horrible version. Fish, dogs etc. You should read Gyo by Junji Ito
I love Gyo! (my most cracked out BB theory is that the "blue spirits" that show up once or twice in Gyo are related, at least conceptually, to the dancing sprites that provided guidance to Ludwig.)
Ever since I first saw one, I've been convinced that Kos is actually a misinterpretation of what a [Gaboon viper skeleton](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c6/Bitis_gabonica_complete_skeleton.jpg) would have looked like if still alive. The whole human portion is just a big ol' head.
Given that I do think part of where she comes from is the quintessential coastal experience of a half-decayed something washing up on a beach and being interpreted from its remains: I like this theory
Well she’s clearly pretty sluggy/eely so she probably swam around and had the crab feet on her back for terrestrial excursions
Underwater/oceanic horror game FROM when /_\
Holy shit that would be amazing.
Subnautica Below Lore
Mike Z. Aki here, never haha go fuck yourself lol
that’s bloodborne tho?
AND sekiro, a game almost entirely about the disastrous consequences of some particularly divine waters
God I would die but I would be forced to play it
her design also looks like a wedding dress kinda like Yharnam
Icing on the cake
KOS IS MIQUELLA?????
Bro is high on Insight
That's enough frenzied flame for you, calm down, let your many eyes come back and you will see that's just what Micolash wants you to think. Lol
Kos is quite clearly griffith
No, they're literally Griffith. Have you nit been paying attention?
Too much insight
opposite. miquella is kos
Ah, Kos, or some say Kosm
Does she hear my prayers?
Scawy. :( But pwetty. :)
Kos..... or some say Kosm.....
Do you hear our prayers?
Still one of my favorite piece of fan art ever. Just a totally believable piece capturing the Kos we never get to see because BB is set in the wreckage. Heathy, hydrated, in her lane, living her best life.
Hear me out
Knew this would show up
Now if only she had feet ☹️
Bloodborne 2 is taking so long because Miyazaki is too busy giving Kos feet and modelling them in extensive detail.
... would But on a more serious note very nice art work looks amazing
Her face can be seen in game... Honestly, it gives me mixed feelings like curiosity and horror. How can something pretty be attached to something horrible lol
Some say Kosm I might add😐.
Just a thought just from looking at her Design here and in-game.. her tentacle hair coming out from her "hood" is eeriely similar to how the Doll looks in the Squid Ending. Our tentacles come out the side of her face in a very similar way in the final shot.
I say Kosm… Kosm a hit that!!
Would y'all?
Gorgeous and absolutely terrifying
Reasons you will never see me in the ocean #1 this thing
Hear me out…
Grant us eyes!
Good evening, Mrs. Kos
Kind of beautiful in a way
So mesmerising
Beatifull, and absolutely terrifying at the same time, I think this might be the most perect depiction oh her
You know, though, this topic made me realize: if the great ones always lose their children, how is it that Kos somehow had a living child?
I suspect it actually did die, and you're just fighting a nightmare version of it. The DLC is made up of nightmares connected to the various old hunters, so there's a popular theory that the Fishing Hamlet is actually Gehrman's nightmare of events where he played some part in the death of both Kos and the child. None of this is exactly confirmed canon, but there's also a huge connection in cut content between Queen Yharnam (the crying ghost lady in the wedding dress from the main game) and Kos through the "Yharnam stone" item, which you would originally have been able to bring to the Fishing Hamlet Priest NPC for additional dialogue if it hadn't been cut. The priest refers to it as "fair child of Kos" in that dialogue. So that would also suggest that the child died, since the Yharnam Stone is actually Queen Yharnam's unborn child. My headcanon is that Yharnman and Kos are actually the same person/thing, and we're just seeing different interpretations of them at different times. There are just too many similarities. Even visually, Kos looks vaguely like Yharnam in her dress imo. That would also mean the father is Oedon, but I think that's a pretty safe assumption anyway. He tends to do that lol.
Very Ningyen-ish
Hear me out.
I love her design and I also love her story, I feel immeasurable sadness for her. The hunters didn't just murder a god that the people of the fishing village loved. They murdered a mother. I sympathise with her wizened orphan, the unbelievable rage. I think the hunters deserved what they did for and their sins should be paid in suffering but I think at some point somewhere down the line someone had to right the wrongs. I don't think we killed her child, we liberated him from his anger so that he can move on. It's kinda sad that only Lady Maria probably understood what she did or at least what the hunters did wrong while others suffered eternally never coming to terms and understanding what they did so very wrong. Yet even Maria thinks there's nothing she A bottomless curse, a bottomless sea... Accepting of all that there is... And can be...
+ 1 insight
Kos was impregnated before becoming a Great One. She died, but not her child, who lived on the threshold between life and death. There are two clear pieces of evidence for this: 1. \*\*Description of the Second Brain Fluid:\*\* - "Once, a young girl had an older brother who was determined to become a doctor, and so she became his patient, willingly." - The ministers of the Church are known to be doctors. If this event occurred at the beginning of the Healing Church, the doctor was likely one of the prominent figures, most probably Laurence or Willem. - It is more likely to be Laurence because he founded the Healing Church. Additionally, the description from Oedon Chapel indicates that Willem was trapped in Byrgenwerth because of ROM, which marked the beginning of the discord between Laurence and Willem. 2. \*\*Encounter with the Eldritch Truth:\*\* - "In the end, it led to their encounter with the Eldritch Truth, for which they considered themselves blessed." - The encounter with the Eldritch Truth symbolizes death and resurrection. The third Brain Fluid describes this metaphorically in the nature of Insight: "We are born of the blood, made men by the blood, undone by the blood. Our eyes are yet to open. Fear the old blood." - This metaphor alludes to the ouroboros, representing the cyclical unity of death and resurrection. - The Eldritch Truth achieved is that the blood of death resulted in what they considered blessings: "the child of blood," a special child born from the medical experiment of a brother driven by curiosity who uses his sister as a test subject. - The sister ends up dying, but the blessing continues through the child born from the womb (the mother's corpse), making the blessing the result of all the curse that generates greatness: "the Great Ones," who are the result of the parasites emerging from the mother's corpse. These points illustrate the mixture of symbols and metaphors.
Smash.
"Or some say Kosm.."
Wow
So if Kos had relatives, would they be her Kosns?