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The Little Things in Yharnam: Oedon
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- Опубликовано: 19 янв 2016
- Thanks to ChwalebnyChlor for her awesome artwork, find more here:
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TerraMantis - 10 Things you Don't Know about Bloodborne:
• 10 Things You Don't Kn...
All images of items are taken from:
www.bloodborne-...
JSF's discussion on the thematic Kegare of Japanese Culture:
• Video
Douglas Allchin - The Poisoning of Minamata:
www1.umn.edu/sh...
My Biomagnification Chart:
imgur.com/hKLUVmL
Thanks for watching.
I'm about to frenzy from all this insight.
AIONBERSERKER TOO MUCH KNOWLEDGE!! *Has an aneurysm of great proportions*
*chugs sedatives*
Take a xanax quick before the meter fills up!!!
According to wikipedia, one of the symptoms of mercury poisoning is "...a sensation that resembles small insects crawling on or under the skin..." which correlates so much with the concept of vermin in the game. just thought id throw that out there. this video has just made the game make 100% more sense
3😅😅3😅w😅ee😅😅3😅😅e😅w😅😅😅w😅😅😅3😅😅😅
those eyebrows.. they're too perfect to look directly at
I personally think that Oedon is the blood echoes we collect throughout the game.
Oedon's associated runes talk about his inadvertent worshipers, and the low tier coldblood items say that Hunters have gratitude and reverence for their victims.
When I put those things together, that spawned this theory.
Oedon exists only in voice, and blood echoes are the lingering wishes of your victims.
This revelation is amazing.
In the Research Hall, with the patients/subjects throwing stuff and the booby-trapped shelves: The Healing Church was possibly using Mercury in their experiments. It explains why nearly all of them are mad and hostile.
I'm not sure if this has been mentioned, but the Victorian setting makes the Mercury theory even more fitting as it saw one of the earliest outbreaks of Mercury poisoning in the form of Mad Hatter's Disease. Hat makers (hatters) of the Victorian period worked mostly with felt, and the process involved in producing felt hats included soaking materials in Mercury. The hatters would contract Mercury poisoning, go insane and die.
Side note: Mad Hatter Disease was the inspiration for the Mad Hatter character in Through the Looking Glass and Alice in Wonderland.
And now for some tinfoil; the astrological sign for Mercury being included in the runes leads me to believe that there is a connection between Oedon and Mercury, the Roman equivalent to Hermes and Messanger of the Gods. If Oedon is represented by the element Mercury, and Mercury is the main source of power in all the rituals in Bloodborne, perhaps Oedon, in the form of elemental Mercury, could be seen as a kind of catalyst for communication with the Great Ones, and therefore as a Messanger between the Great Ones and mortals.
Absolutely correct Re: mad hatters!
I was just looking for this comment. There's also several things to be said about the Mercury/Hermes connection. Namely, Hermes being a messenger god, and the fact that Formless Oedon is said to communicate through _sound._ The 'echoes' of blood, the chiming of co-op bells, the ritual chanting done to summon the One Reborn in Yahar'gul, and, perhaps most blatantly, the patients in the Research Hall, whose brains were filled with _fluid_ because it facilitated hearing the plip-plop drip-drop sounds of the ocean, a medium which supposedly allowed communication with the Great Ones.
I also have several opinions about the use of mercury, in regards to its high content in many fish... fish and aquatic creatures, of course being associated with the Great Ones.
Pair that with the specifity of calling it _quicksilver._ Liquid silver, as it were. Because, as we know, silver in the real-world has often been associated with the slaying of 'unholy' things. In fact, the original reason vampires have no reflection is because a couple centuries ago, mirrors were primarily comprised of _silver._ And the association of silver to the killing of 'unholy' things possibly stems from silver's real-life antibacterial properties... preventing contagious diseases.
To tie it all in, recall the maddening effects of mercury poisoning. The confusion, the wailing, the loss of language and reason, the biting and scratching.
Add all this up, and you get what Bloodborne was already telling us; the mercury found in the fish-like Great Ones and Kin being used as a snake-oil miracle medicine. It is both the cause of the scratching, biting madness tormenting Yharnam, and, as with the proverbial silver bullet to the werewolf, its most potent cure.
The thing about the Church and Vileblood's both using the same source really brings the game back to Demon's Souls with the Old One being the source of both miracles and the soul arts.
Brilliant, brilliant work. I really hope you continue doing these, Redgrave. You've an inspiration to us all.
hey i love your vids homie
Love your vids!
I was watching some DLC gameplays(as I don't have a PS4), and I just noticed something about Ludwig, the Holy Blade: he has an attack in which, with his mouth that has "eyes on the inside", he vomits some kind of silver liquid, that could very, very well be pure mercury. Love your vids, keep up the good work!
+Alchmaster123 Well, the "Tiny beings of light" Ludwig sees, sound exactly like eye floaters which are a symptom of mercury poisoning
I noticed that puke too now I'm 100% going with that theory it makes too much sense
Alchmaster123 yeah thats actually really interesting, and might be why hes sane at the end of the fight. like say his head is kept alive by the specs of moonlight, but he doesnt have his body, which may be where all the mercury gathered and condensed
Anyone else play and listen at the same time? Really immerses you into the BB World
Nah, he needs to punctuate the end of his sentences with mad laughter to really nail the atmosphere.
Doing that right now. When he spewed his insights onto mercury I was in the research Hall. I saw how the students, trying to conduct their mensis *ritual* usually drop mercury bullets. Then I took a good look at the in game picture for quicksilver bullets and saw that they were sort of a liquid/solid form like mercury and my frenzy meter started to build up.
What if Arianna got paid, by her customers, in blood? That could explain her high mercury level and why she got pregnant. Blood flows in Yharnam, might as well be used as currency.
BlaQ That's a cool theory, but the city of Yharnam has an actual physical currency. The shining coins (most likely gold), used as consumables in the game, are explicity stated to function as money for Yharnamites during the day (not on nights of the hunt).
The True Random Gamer that is true BUT she might have been paid in it regardless of it being currency. the blood coctail states that a lot of yahrnamites are heavy users of blood, as its more intoxicating then alcohol. she might be just paid in blood and downing it after her works over
@@unholymalformationoffisto2131 that does make sense, and we never see fully how blood is used by the populace. We know its drank more then alcohol as its more intoxicating, but there arent any pubs for drinking blood so all we see is the way the healing church administered blood.
I was wondering this
@@TheTrueRandomGamer I mean that's cute and all, but you realize other things can be exchanged for varying value...right? Especially BLOOD in a city of VAMPIRE PEOPLE
6 years later this is still enlightening.
I’m absolutely in love with your work on this game.
Ye, I listened to him back when and sometimes rewatch the videos because I love his interpretations and miss his work
This was absolutely fantastic and has clarified a lot in Bloodborne. As far as lore hunters go, you truly are a Great One. So happy I found your channel, man.
I love Redgrave's videos so much, I wish he made more.
Funny you should mention the Caduceus, because there's a non-hostile mob in the Chalice Dungeons called a Pilgrim (tall, white, and glowy). I got up close to one once--I was in a silly mood an fancied some eldritch vacay photos with my newest buddie--and I noticed that there's a little pendant that they hold in their hands as they clasp their staff. I looked real close at one of my screenshots and, shore 'nuff, it's a Caduceus. I don't have a screenshot right now, but I can upload one to imgur when I get home from work.
+Centimeterworm Neat! I'll have to take another look at a Pilgrim next time I run into one.
There's always one that spawns in the Pthumeru Chalice (the first one most players get) on layer three, after the big room with the Fluorescent Flowers.
+Centimeterworm Thanks for the info, the screenshots would be really appreciated!
+Redgrave +Centimeterworm I searched for "Caduceus Bloodborne" and such similar combinations of keywords and found this screenshot, it shows it clearly and doesn't require zooming in
i.imgur.com/gPe25ng.jpg
I think the heir tune kinda resembles the caduceus as well
bloodborne.wiki.fextralife.com/file/view/heir.jpg/544181606/heir.jpg
Just doing an image search of azathoth I was taken aback by the similarity to the winters lanterns - a spherical mass of eyes and mouthes filled with razor sharp teeth. I’m sure it has already been noticed before though.
Also thinking of the moon presence as an anti body makes me think of white blood cells and paleblood, maybe there is some connection?
These videos are so fascinating honestly. I watched them years ago and I’ve returned to them now just as I’ve started to get into bloodborne again this year, getting my first platinum trophy with this game and watching other playthroughs. Thank you for keeping these videos on your channel for people like me to come back to, to remember the ‘little things’ about this amazing piece of fiction.
Hiiii, I'm late to the party, sorry :D
Too long, won't read: Queen Yharnam and Queen Annelise achieved stagnation via a true "elixir of life" and thus became immortal, all the undead found in bloodborne imbibed an inferior elixir of life and did not stagnate/achieve immortality completely and thus "only" become undead.
One thing first, I'm terrible at lore and usually get stuff wrong, so please be kind.
Listening to this video made me remember a topic that I haven't seen covered much before: The Undead problem vs. the obvious fear of the undead in Bloodborne. When going through Yharnam (city), you see loads of wooden coffins which are just set aside, but also a lot of solid heavy coffins which have been secured with heavy chains. At least to me, it doesn't look like the chains' purpose is anything other than to keep the dead inside.
Then the chalice dungeons: One of the first things happening to the player in the first available chalice dungeon (from Bloodstarved Beast) is an Undead jumping at you out from his wooden coffin. In the chalice dungeons in general, there seem to be loads of undead Pthumerians. Also there is an layer boss called "Undead Giant" :D
So: Undead-ness is a thing in Bloodborne.
Also: People come from everywhere to receive Yharnam's blood ministration which is said to heal (almost) all diseases.
My useless common knowledge and also something Redgrave mentioned: Mercury was often used as a main ingredient for the elixir of life or the philosopher's stone. Which is said to cure all illnesses and even grant immortality.
Okay, so there is this similar function of the elixir of life and Yharnam's blood and apparently Oedon/mercury/stagnation plays an important part in that.
If you think about it, immortality isn't so much different from stagnation. A river flows - a child is born, matures, and dies. This is the course of the river. If you forcefully stagnate at a certain point, that person will stop maturing and won't die.
Long babbling for a rather easy assumption: Maybe thanks to Oedon/mercury, Pthumerians (or more specifically Queen Yharnam herself) have found and imbibed a true elixir of life. There is so much stagnation in Queen Yharnam, that she, in the "form" of her consciousness, becomes eternal. If this was "science" at the time, pretty sure other Pthumerian people tried to become immortal as well. But they did not stagnate to completion and instead of becoming immortal, they only became undead. So, they stagnated only a bit, but not enough.
Meanwhile, Yharnamites or the Church were only able to create an inferior version of the elixir of life. While they may have no conscious recollection of the Pthumerians, Yharnam was most likely named after Queen Yharnam. Meaning that there might have been some myths and legends passed down, which hint to a miracle thing that heals all illnesses and is able to grant immortality. Because of lacking info, they were only able to create an even worse version of the bad version the Pthumerians had. People not only don't die properly anymore, they also start turning into beasts.
And then there's Vileblood Queen Annelise. Cainhurst is confusing, so I won't dwell on here too much. I'd like to say that the Vileblood's had quite the time exploring the chalice dungeons and were thus able to trace down a good recipe for the elixir of life or some sort of instruction on how to become immortal, but Alfred says that it was forbidden blood stolen from the healing church which created the "first of the inhuman Vilebloods", so I rather shut up.
Also, is it just me or is the Cainhurst rune just a repetition of the inverted version of the vagina symbol Redgrave mentioned?
I'm sorry, this got way too long. Thanks for reading!
The Moon Presence seems to have an obsession with all the blood echoes that all the hunters gather up, it is most likely using the doll as a catalyst so that in exchange for power, the Moon Presence can have all the essence of Oedon it wants. I believe that maybe the Moon Presence is giving up its body so that Oedon can take over and have a form (it benefits the Moon Presence too because it will finally have a name.) So long as the hunts keep on happening over and over, Oedon will be one step closer to being reborn, however the Moon Presence has the hunters in the palm of his eldritch hand and that fucks things over with Oedon, this is clearly shown with Mergo. I am sure big daddy Oedon was pissed off with the Moon Presence's decision of guiding our hunter into killing his stillborn child but hey it counts as his own essence (fits in with the relationship between Azathoth and Nyarlothotep), all the MP needs to do is have Gehrman execute our hunter and absorb all of Oedon's essence for itself, or if Gehrman was killed in the process take the blood echoes by force. If the umbilical cords were used, the MP is in trouble, the body is not fully complete for Oedon, when the MP is killed our hunter gains the largest amount of blood echoes in the game, all of Oedon's essence writhing within alongside the insight from the umbilical cords, our hunter becomes a Great One, i'd like to think that we become Oedon reborn, in form and in name.
This theory is...compelling. I always thought about the Moon Presence's connection to the plot and the Red Moon but now I think that it acted as an emissary for Oedon and the altar showing those figurines of people looking up at the sky in the Blood Starved Beast's arena may have denoted them looking up at the moon and Flora descending to bring a message from Oedon.
So Redgrave all your lore vids have been absolutely superb, but this one has far exceeded the others. The amount of insight I've gained was so over whelming. I just had to watch this one twice. I really have no comment on the lore other then your doing it right, and hope you crack the code that is Bloodbore. I was hoping with the release the old hunters dlc, Some light would've been shined on the Vilebloods and who the traitor of the healing church was. I would love it if there was gonna be more Bloodbore Dlc, but with DS3 on its way there's little to no chance with that. Well that is my little spiel, just wanted to say i really appreciate the great ones wisdom and hope the lore train doesn't stop here.
rare to see a fan [C] and a Bloodborne lore digger as well. I have to say I'm both of those as well. Praise be for our Lord and Saviour Redgrave and may his Lore Blessing descends upon you!
Bye Calvin we will miss you! He always has such great insight
That classic Yharnam madness is mercury poisoning then..
*Frienzied*
so would it make sense to say that the lake beneath Iosefka's clinic, the one you go through from the forbidden woods to get in her clinic, is actually a lake made of mercury ?
Yeah I was always wondering what that stuff was. It's not swampy like the hintertombs or Nightmare Frontier. As far as I remember that only shows up in the Forbidden Woods, below Iosefka's Clinic and she drops an Oeden ruin. Could be mercury. Hm never thought about that. Even if not what else should it be? The water up above looks way more dirty and tainted and rotten but yet does not cause poisen. The almost "clear" water down there causes poisening...
I wonder if the two symbols of the Oedon Writhe rune are actually Mercury and a vertical eye, with the circle from the mercury symbol forming the pupil/iris of the eye. This would tie in to the Greek root word "oiden" - "to see".
I feel like the parallels with minamata disease go even further into the description for Antidote since it's more than likely that the church, a trusted organisation, contaminated Yharnam's water supply and caused the ashen blood outbreak
All super-serious videos need an Interfering Kitty-Cat in them, it makes the experience so much better.
I didn't even know I could use Blood Dregs like insight. Thanks Redgrave, now my character has Bloody sperm on his hand. XD
When you talked about how the Moon Presence produces the Paleblood Hunters as antibodies against Oedon's poison I thought of how white blood cells (Paleblood) produce antibodies to fight off infection, so I thought maybe thats another possible origin of the term "Paleblood". Also if we accept the theory that the PC Hunter intended to seek the Paleblood before the game began does it mean that the PC Hunter already communed with the Moon Presence before the happenings of the game? Like maybe the Moon Presence already "employed" the Hunter as its agent to take down Oedon's children (and thus stop the spread of his infection)?
I just realised as I was typing this that this would be very much related to the three endings of the main game. In the first ending where we accept death at the hands of Gherman perhaps we "fail" to fulfil our contract with the Moon Presence and we just join the ranks of the other failures (other numerous Paleblood hunters that had once Dreamt such as Djura) and the Moon Presence goes off to "employ" another Paleblood Hunter to complete the task. In the second ending where we replace Gherman perhaps that was the Moon Presence's intention all along, to find another Hunter to replace Gherman's role and by doing so we complete the contract we owed to the Moon Presence. But then this raises many questions. (such as why does the Moon Presence want Gherman replaced and how does the PC Hunter replacing Gherman relate to the Moon Presence's goal of ridding the world of Oedon's corruption) In the third ending the PC Hunter becomes so powerful he is able to replace the Moon Presence altogether and does that mean we take up its role as an "antibody" against Oedon?
Also if we assume that the PC Hunter agreed to some contract with the Moon Presence it would be logical to assume that the PC Hunter expected to get something in return for being an agent of the Moon Presence, like the Moon Presence promised him something in return for becoming a Paleblood Hunter. And furthermore the note the PC hunter leaves for himself is "seek the paleblood to transcend the hunt" so is "transcending the hunt" what the PC Hunter expected in return? Like a way to end the vicious cycle of administration of poisoned blood and the resulting hunts?
It made much more sense in my head when I was thinking it, but just some interesting thoughts that crossed my mind. Amazing video by the way, insanely insightful.
Man, even 7 years later, this is by far the best Bloodborne deep-dive video and series on this site. The Oedon/Mercury/Corruption/Birth connection recontextualizes so much of the story.
Additionally, given the reveal of cut-content giving us the Lake of Mud Moon Presence with a very Nyarlathotep design, we can be certain of their thematic connection. I mean, it literally has His weird tentacle with a hole for a face head.
I keep cycling back to Lord Dunsany's Time and the Gods with Bloodborne with Oeden especially.
There is a short story called "the south wind" in which a guy called Ord goes into the desert to meditate and sees the gods, and behind the gods he sees something else. The gods are horrified and slowly, piece by piece they take from Ord everything, including the memory of what he saw, until he remains just a voice on the wind going "I have known", "I have known"
www.sacred-texts.com/neu/dun/tago/tago17.htm
the good thing about Dunsany is his stories are super short and bitesized and very good, also on project gutenberg for free, but yeah, Lovecraft was a huge fan, so people who love Lovecraft tend to find Dunsany through him. I've seen loads of references to Lovecraft (hard to miss with Ebrietas being that perfect form of Lovecraftian horror) but none to Dunsany who might be just as important.
Also,I miss your bloodborne videos.
This guy needs to get fucking paid, he's a genius.
Redgrave if you see this, can you tell me what you do for a living / majoring in school?
+Lidrian I'm a bartender.
Redgrave a fuckin epic bartender with eldritch insight. How more anime can that even be?
@@JohnSmith-op3qjprecisely so dude.
I’m super late to the party on bloodborne but have been practically obsessed since I got the chance to try it out earlier this year. I’ve been binging your bloodborne lore videos and my mind just got blown away by your theory of oedon’s essence being mercury. I just did a quick google search on some of the properties of mercury and turns it’s vapour conducts electricity! This could explain the bolt on the darkbeasts and the mini storms in the loran dungeon perhaps they’re closest to oedon or have the highest concentration of mercury in their bodies. Maybe even the kin’s weakness to bolt is its connection to the greatest of great ones?
I'm hella late to the bloodborne party, but thanks for the cool videos. I love that you do the extra work of going into themes & cultural context & literary inspirations instead of restricting your attention to just the in game lore, looking at the ideas that the game's story is about, not just the stuff that happens in the story. Some other lore channels might be better at the aesthetics of the video format itself, but the deeper analysis is a lot more interesting. This look at Oedon especially is especially illuminating.
Hi Redgrave, long time watcher, first time commenter here, and firstly can I just say between yourself, JSF, and Aegon you have enhanced my appreciation of Bloodborne beyond what I thought possible, and has made one of my favourite games ever made into something even more, and for that I am eternally grateful.
One of the added joys of these videos is being able to go away and look at the tangential info you give, and one of the things I wanted to pick up on was the reference to Minamata. Initially I found the aside very interesting in and of itself, but then you said something about the cause of the poisoning that struck a chord with me as an English major. Henrik Ibsen's 1882 play 'An Enemy of the People' has, at the heart of it, the literal exact same quandary as the Minamata case. Simply put, the water supply of a town has been contaminated is poisoning the locals and tourists alike. The town relies heavily on the water and its natural springs and baths to draw tourists to help it prosper, and the play deals with the burden one man shares upon discovering this, and whether he should make the information available to the public at large. I realise this is all just flavour text really, but as soon as you started talking about the cause of Minamata disease this immediately sprang to mind as a very, very, oddly specific example of life imitating art, considering Minamata disease occurred in its first instance 50 years after the play was written and performed. As an additional aside, this is also the plot of the film 'Jaws', except, you know, the thing in the water is a shark.
Don't know if you still read these anymore, being six months after the fact and all, but just thought I'd drop in what I thought was an interesting, and oddly distemporal, link.
I don't know what impresses me more, the amount of detail / storywriting in bloodborne or the people who get all this and are able to link it. Bloodborne truly is a MASTERPIECE and it's only growing bigger still in 2020. Thank you for putting all the time and effort into the creation of the videos for dummies like me :D
I was going to make a pithy comment about how the story of Minamata might be too much for Calvin, but as an elderly cat he's no doubt seen and heard it all.
But! Absolutely incredible video, Redgrave. I'd always been left scratching my head at the whole "Quicksilver Bullet" thing, and while the alchemy connection to that was relatively evident, making the step to "mercury poisoning--quicksilver--bullets as power--bullets from blood--quicksilver in the blood = Oedon is the manifestation of Azoth, the source of quicksilver. And taking that a step further--if Oedon is "the Cosmos" in that sense, then Ebritas's name as "Daughter of the Cosmos" makes perfect sense. In a sense, the "Kin" are a "race" (an imperfect term, obviously, especially since it's possible to become Kin via metamorphosis as the Choir has experimented with) of beings descended from Oedon, as the power of Oedon suffuses their very biology. (The whole Oedon=quicksilver idea further explains the gray-white blood of the Kin in a literal fashion as well.)
So then, would you compare the "true" Great Ones (Oedon, Kos, Moon Presence that you name in the video, perhaps Amygdala as well) as the equivalent of the Outer Gods of the Cthulhu Mythos and "Kin" Great Ones like Ebrietas as similar to the Great Old Ones? (Also, this comparison finally explains Rom's status in a way that makes sense--she's a lesser "Great Old One" type, but she bleeds red because the origin of her ascension is Kos, not Oedon, and thus she drops "Kin Coldblood" despite not being "Kin" in the "descended from Oedon" sense, but because it's the closest analogy the game can make to distinguish her from the True Great One types?)
I gained Insight the mercury connection explains a lot. Good work sir.
Hi Red. i was watching this video right after the darkbeast's one and when i saw your diagram with the fishes eating each other and your explanation about how much powerful a being can be accumulating the blood of oedon that this idea popped in my mind. Can It be that the reason for the beggar eating corpses of the yarnamites is that he Needs the corrupted blood of oedon in order to gain power to control the beasthood until he can manage the transformation without losing control (and that could be the reason why he's returned from the chalice to the surface, we found him half naked, acting compulsively and in an alterated mental state, like an heroin addict and the blood in yarnham is known for be more addictive than the alcool.)?? That also could answer to the fact that the beggar is the only (i really don't remember anyone else having that behavior) one we found in game acting like this.
Then you came out with the thing of centipede that is a strong japanese rappresentation of corruption. ??? Beast (i never remember his name) in chalice dungeon in 2nd phase expels a giant centipede from his chopped neck and that fits with the theory for me. Another fact to reinforce my thesis is the difference between the transformations of gascoigne and the beggar: gascoigne doesn't harvest corrupted blood and when is weak his beast side come out and he lose control, the beggar does so the results are slightly different. The beasthood can be much close to oedon than we thought.
P.S. you're great :D
First of all, give me a dollar for everytime he says, mercury (i dare you). Second, this was amazing.
Oedipus’ name means “swollen foot”. His adoptive parents found him abandoned on a mountainside with a metal spike driven through his heels.
This was because his birth parents abandoned him to die upon hearing the terrible prophecy of his future sins. Since killing family was a Divine Smiting Offense, they left him to die on the mountain. It didn’t work.
Well, you've done it again Redgrave. This is absolutely fantastic. This could very well be the major breakthrough that will blow this whole thing wide open. Thank you so very much for your continued dedication to bloodborne, the deep lore, and this community.
"Let us sit about, and speak feverishly. Chatting into the wee hours of...new ideas, of the higher plane!"
About Azoth's symbol being a caduceus, something came to mind. In Roman mythology, the god Mercury wields a caduceus when he's being portrayed as the god of collecting souls. As the messenger of the gods, he needs to be quick. And so when it comes time to collect the souls of the dead, he is said to run up to the body and tap them on the head with the Caduceus, thus releasing their soul which he then delivers to Mors (though some say Pluto).
I just find it interesting that mercury in Bloodborne is a "medium of the highest grade and the essence of the formless Great One" and is also needed to kill beasts. Meanwhile, in the Roman mythos, Mercury is a god used as a medium of communication between the gods and is also needed to kill humans. A parallel can also be drawn between Mercury's mercy when taking souls and the mercy of killing beasts.
Hi Redgrave, amazing content as usual. I'm a little late to the lore, but I have a question and a comment to offer.
First, I noticed you mentioned Oedon as comparable to the cosmos. What does that make Mother Kos? I've come to sort of accept that Kos was the Cosmos itself, while other Great Ones represent other things. Am I just confused here?
Second, when you discuss the blood, Oedon manifesting in the physical world, your comparison of mercury poisoning is amazing. I have one thing to add that might be useful, and that is that we should imagine the impurity of blood from the perspective of the game AS WELL as the perspective of the culture that created it. That is, Bloodborne takes place in a realistic-ish setting... and we don't see anyone dying from Mercury poisoning, or the effects of the Mercury replicated in behavior, despite the undeniably high levels of mercury in everybody's blood. This, for me, is an inescapable point, because it means that either everyone in Bloodborne has some level of immunity to mercury (which would make sense, they've been taking it for thousands of years), or something magical is going on. One might say that the beast scourge is a reflection of the awful things that happen to a person with mercury poisoning. . . but I believe that's too much of a surface level reading of the effects of blood.
Because, and this has always been important to me, WHO calls the blood corrupt? Who labels the blood impure? Sure, as you and JSF and others have pointed out, the corruption is related or at least can be seen through shinto beliefs about "kegare", and so on one level the game designers deem the blood corrupt. However, in the game itself, the blood makes supernatural things happen -- but they are not all bad or good. The blood is a catalyst through which humans can KNOW the World of Forms, but it also can turn them into beasts. Oedon's effect on the world could be seen as an inadvertent one, and his corruption be seen as not an inherently evil thing, because it does not by itself kill, but only when it is misused.
Holy shit, my mind is being blown right now! 13 minutes in and my brain can't help swell! *FRENZY*
That revelation about how bloodborne is all about this power struggle between oedin and paleblood almost blew my mind. The story in bloodborne is so layered and complex, that if you break it down you can come with like 8 huge stories or plots, each with its own twists and subplots. Its absolutely incredible the fact that all the events that take place in the game, including the hunt, and the hunter himself are so fucking small and insignificant in the main plot of the game. I honestly have no idea how they managed to write such a story, and more importantly make a fucking game out of it, and manage to pull it off so damn perfectly. Thank you so much for the video. You are so fucking awesome.
Bloodborne was the first game that brought me into YT and you, Aegon and JSF were the first three guys I followed 👍🏻
every couple minutes into this, my mind keeps getting blown away. So much fun to deep dive into the lore! Thank you for this vid!!
Wow this is really the main thing I finally needed to hear to start to pull things together for me with the lore of bloodborne. There is just so much going on and the whole Mercury thing really makes a lot of sense and ties is mostly together for me. WOW just Wow how did no one come up with that yet. You're amazing man. Now I'd love to see a Bloodborne timeline of major events that brought us to the beginning of the game, or at least your version of it. That would be amazing ;c)
It's like religion: the same thing, the same spiritual need, taking a different form, and everyone disagreeing/killing each other over what they perceive to be the only correct form of worship.
Silver Surfer pickup line... "Got any mercury in you? Do you want some?"
i know i'm late but in the alpha the "Souls" of the bosses where called Liver
Quote "In addition to evidence of mercury effects on various organs, some animal studies have suggested that acute mercury exposure can damage the liver" End Quote
And the backstab dont use any weapon coz its attacking the Liver,
you are not aiming for the heart, but specificaly for the liver
Thank you again
Utterly wicked vid. My theory on Oedon folded when the statue in the Tomb of Oedon's face didn't match the king statues' in Cainhurst. I'd settled on ''Formless'' being a play on words: Blood is a liquid, and liquid lacks form.
Edit: My cat lived to 23 btw
Did you know bloodrock is hematite? At least in Finnish hematite is also known as verikivi which means bloodrock.
Hi! You raised an excellent point!
Hematite is the main constituent of "Red Ochre", a pigment that aboriginal cultures have been known to use to mimic menstrual blood in funerary rituals.
(A common misconception was that menstrual blood was 'used up' during a pregnancy to nurture the child; hence the use in funerary ritual to suggest rebirth)
Something that I found interesting is that your retelling of the poisoning of the Japanese village reminded me about the ashen blood theory you had as well. The theory that the church wittingly poisoned the populace of old Yharnam to gain cache with the populace. Mercury poisoning has to happen over time to accumulate the amounts that affect you and you have to continuously expose yourself to mercury. Ashen Blood wasn't gotten ride of by the antidote tablets, only lessened for the moment in the game.
"Used to treat ashen blood, the baffling sickness that ravaged Old Yharnam long ago.
These tablets only provide short-term relief. The ashen blood ailment eventually triggered the spread of the beastly scourge."
The exact quote for clarity. The mercury that must have been put in the water supply for years before it accumulated enough to start affecting large animals and it must have continued for some time for the symptoms and victims to keep appearing. It makes me think that the Church must have continuously dosed the populace so that their symptoms would not decrease and that their victim rate would rise as well.
Nice video redgrave!
This does not add any significant insights but are fun facts and possible connections:
Odin, the scandinavian god actually sacrificed an eye to a well (with the god Mimer inside it) to gain universal knowledge which I like to think kind of resonates again lore-wise. Also, blood pressure is widely indicated in millimetres of mercury (mmHg). Hg stands for hydragyrum or "watersilver", water seems to resonate with the lore as well quite a bit.
Now that I think about it, one could draw similarities between the Healing Church versus Vileblood conflict - how they are killing eachother because they essentially disagree with how the other is using the blood - and the various real world religions that fall into conflict with one another, most notably Christianity and Islam (and to a semi-lesser extent Judaism; or you can chop it down further and point out how every one of these religions has various branches that differ in views), who believe in the same God but follow His belief, and interpret the various scriptures, in different ways. Oedon, as you said, can be seen as a parallel to the Judeo-Christian God and the Blood can be paralleled as His Word, though this last bit *may* be stretching it a bit
This analysis on Oedon is now the central plank of my own analysis of Bloodborne. What a revelation. Thanks so much for it! It's a significant departure from Pale Blood Hunt, but a most welcome one.
This is the face of a man who truly has eyes on the inside. Love the videos, looking forward to the next ones!
It makes sense that Oedon is linked with the removal of one's eyes, since removing sight from a person will hopefully make one hear Oedon better.
I just saw this in 2020, and love you, and love Calvin
Good stuff man! You made me realize that minamata disease was referenced in the manga Parasyte, which ran around when the Japanese government would have admitted the disease's source.
Oedon makes me think of Odin and Eden. Odin according to wiki loosely means faith, prophet, possessed, mad and seer. If oedon has a Temple and tomb built for him he must've been of importance. Whether a priest, a prophet a seer or strait mad, any description would not fail to fit in with bloodbornes universe, where everyone is either mislead by their greed, a personal mission for greatness or manipulation by the blood of the old gods or insight or some other thing. Edden kinda means paradise, a garden, fertile area on a plain/field. All the main characters in bloodborne were striving for some sort of paradise, or what they imagined, deluded themselves into or were tricked into believing was paradise in a sense. I'm in no way a credible person in regards to anything I've just wrote, just wanted to share some insight of mine :) Keep doing what You do man. Much respected work
That is some very interesting insight. I would have never actually though of Oedon as a platonic ideal and I study philosophy. So I suppose I dropped the ball on that one. Or maybe it's just that I don't own the PS4 so all my knowledge of the lore comes from subredit and videos like yours.
But in any case, just to point a few things out, in the spirit of platonic philosophy. First of, the way you portray Oedon as this omnipresent force fits better the Aristotle's idea of the prime mover which, yes, was the basis for the medival idea of the way the judeo-christian god works. Platon was still very heavilly influenced by paganism and having the experience of his own teacher sentenced to death for atheism (Socrates), he was very certain not to steer the pot as it where and tried to stay clear of the discussion on gods. Aristotle was, well one could say more brazen about the metaphyscial implications of the whole idea of immaterial ideals giving form to the physical things. He was also more influenced by the jewish... Well let's be charitable and call them philosophers, then Plato.
Secondly, the idea of Oedon bestowing pregnancy is very interesting from the perspective of pretty much most of the oldest religions having some version of the myth of "immaculate conception" that is a woman getting pregnant without having prior intercourse with a man. Obviously in our cultural context jesus christ comes to mind, but Hindu had the version of the myth and so did Babylonians, Egyptians, Asyrians aaaand so on. It does seem to be a very, shall we say, middle eastern idea, which also happens to be the birth-place of alchemy.
And on the note of alchemy, which you pointed to when discussing mercury, alchemy has very strong buddhist connotations in Japan, since it was mainly performed by buddhist monks. Which is interesting because obviously buddhist influence can be seen throughout Bloodborne, as you yourself point out, for example in the rivier of blood in the dlc, in the portrayal of Logarius and Ludwig and interestingly in the way Hemwick village is arranged, the way they treat bodies is somewhat of a buddhist anathema. Which might actually explain why the Yarhanm burials are considered "blaspehmous".
Also, on the mercury, let's not forget about Loran Silverbeasts- creatures seemingly twisted and capable of some form of reshaping their bones, much like mercury can easily traistion between shapes, that are native to the Dreamlands, where the influence of Oedon is felt throughout and also the students in the Lecture Hall of Mensis castle in the Nightmare are likwise transformed into pure mercury, possibly in some form of experiment.
Oh and on a finnal note? The japanese word for blood is "chi". And although the stand-alone Kanji for it is unique, it CAN be wirtten in the same fashion as the first part of the name of the company responsible for the mercury poisoning in Minamata- Chisso. Which I found interesting. I don't think it's anything more then a coincidence, but it's curious how language works isn't it?
+Arrakiz666 You're correct about the metaphysical judeo-christian god-being as the First Cause coming more from Aristotelian ideas rather than Platonic and Socratic. I didn't want to really get into a long lecture on Post-Socratic Greek Philosophy though, so I really just decided to simplify everything to an almost criminal extent.
Very interesting comparison to Minamata, I had no idea. Bloodborne in general is very mercurial, in multiple senses of the word.
The theme of tragic childbirth (Mergo, the Orphan, etc) reminds me a lot of the Shinto goddess Izanami, whose first child was stillborn, and whose second burned her to death as he was born. The father Izanagi chopped up that son in anger, but later rejected his wife too after visiting her in the underworld and witnessing her decayed body. She sent a horde of demons after him in retaliation.
You sir are a genius.
I watched lore videos like vatis, silvermond etc. and i thought their stuff is deep.
But now I stumbled over your channel and videos and my mind is blown away!
You got it. I wish you has some videocutting skills caus then you would be the unfought master on youtube which in my opinion you would totally deserve.
Thank you man!
I'm here. 4 years later. Playing bloodborne again and again. Learning the lore again and again. I have read the paleblood hunt so many times by now. What a genius you are. I hope you are doing amazing. I hope you return if Elden Ring is good enough to tickle that magnificent mind of yours.
SO. MUCH. INSIGHT!
There's so much revelations I get from this video that I can't possible mention it one by one. Hell, I haven't even started playing Bloodborne yet!
I really like how you portray the Moon Presence in the end, though. Acknowledging that, as you said, that the Moon Presence is maybe inspired by Nyarlathotep (probably butchered the spelling there...), who is the child of Azathoth, then is there a possibility that the Moon Presence itself is a child of a Great One once?
If so, the Moon Presence is much like Ebrietas by virtue of its origin. An infant Great One who grew up to be a Great One with a name for itself, much like what we became in one of the endings. That actually answers a lot of things for me. I've always thought that the Moon Presence was a weird Great One, in that it's not very secretive. Unlike Oedon, and to an extent perhaps Mergo, the Moon Presence actually shows its physical presence to humans. Ebrietas is the same case, so now I really think that those two share closer relations than the Moon Presence do with Oedon. Then again, this can be refuted by pointing towards Rom and Mensis...
I would have never thought of the Moon Presence being the good guy! Its also interesting to examine Salt aswell as an element of Alchemy, as it symbolises "form" ( because its Crystallized), Wisdom because salt is bitter and self-knowledge is bitter, and finally Impurity because it has to be disolved in holy water ( quicksilver ) to be purified. I'm saying all of this because Kos was a Great One that lived underwater in an ocean. Also "οίδεν" is pronounced "ethen", just to point that out being greek myself :P. Anyway, great work as always Redgrave! Keep it up!
+John Perl I wouldn't rally call him the 'good guy'. He acts as an antithesis to Oedon, but he manifests the Scourge of the Beast and turns people into monsters, drives people insane, and captures Hunters to use as his servants.
+Redgrave So I'm a big confused, sorry I'm slow with things. it's just so much information lol so Basically you're saying that the Mercury within Bloodbornes blood is all from Oedon? Are those poison pits in The Forbidden Woods Mercury? And that high concentration of this Mercury is what created the Vermin in a sense? So the Moon Presence started the beast plague? like manipulated the Blood?
Goodness, your videos and the comments spawned from it are very thoughtful and enlightening.
I luv your cat
Hi Redgrave, great video. I disagree about one thing though. I don't believe that we are killing Mergo at the end of the game, I believe that we are releasing it from the captivity of the Wet Nurse. This would make the Moon Presence an agent of Oedon, rather than antagonistic towards it.
I think that what's going on is this. The Wet Nurse, or another great one that it serves, is trying to stop Oedon from breeding. "Every great one loses it's child, and yearns for a surrogate." But what does this mean? It can't literally mean "No new great ones can be created, ever." because this is demonstrably not the case. I believe it is referring to the natural life-cycle of the great ones.
"Every great one loses it's child". We look at this sentence from a human perspective and assume it means death. But death is not really a word or concept that can accurately be applied to the great ones, who exist on multiple planes of existence simultaneously. The corporeal or physical manifestation of the infant great one dies, but it's 'essence' or 'consciousness' lives on in the dream-lands. But the infant cannot mature in this state. This can be inferred from the fact that Mergo - who was born hundreds or thousands of years before the events of the game - is still clearly an infant at the end. In order to mature, the infant first has to fuse with a corporeal entity of great enough strength to survive the process.
But, in the case of Mergo, this did not happen. The infant Mergo was born and "died" - as intended - but it's essence was taken and locked away in a part of the dream-lands controlled by the Wet Nurse or it's masters, unable to mature further to become a true great one. The Moon Presence wants you to kill The Wet Nurse in order to free Mergo. Once this objective is achieved, the Moon Presence is done with you and it's agent (slave) - Gehrman - allows you to leave. BUT, if you refuse to submit to leave, and have become powerful enough to resist the will of the Moon Presence and then defeat it in battle, then you......just BECOME a great one? Why? This didn't make any sense to me until I thought of all of this and realised - if you defeat the Moon Presence, YOU become a powerful enough corporeal entity to host the essence of Mergo. In the ending cinematic, you ARE Mergo.
As a side note, I also feel that this explains nicely what happened to cause what looks like an apocalypse in Yahar'Gul and the School of Mensis. They conducted a ritual to make contact with a Great One and open the veil between Yahar'Gul and it's realm. And they totally succeeded. But the great one they made contact with was Mergo, and it's 'realm' was the Great One equivalent of a maximum security prison or even something like purgatory or hell. This did not go well for Mensis. The bell maidens may possibly act as a security measure for the 'prison', and came through the rift to try and stop the incursion.
Anyway, thanks for reading my rambling thoughts, I hope they were of interest to someone, somewhere :)
It’s actually crazy how close you were to uncovering the medical metaphor with some of your observations here. I wouldn’t be surprised if much of Charred Thermos’s observations came with inspiration from your work.
Some wheelchair hunters also drop quicksilver bullets every time
Redgrave, I think you gonna love this, I'm at the 41 minutes mark and I decided to google "Mercury and semen mythology" and such keywords and I found this en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enki I'm still reading through, but I think from what I've read, it might have some real significance to this, there's sea and sleep and impregnation and, and, and ....etc, it might just link well with Oedon
First Name Last Name This is a great connection.
About the Caduceus, I think it looks more similar to the "Heir" rune, not the "Formless Oedon". The "Heir" rune has two lines crossing about a central line, looks like two snakes winding around a staff.
Great video +Redgrave, lots of good stuff in here. Something to note about Oedon Writhe rune is that it looks a bit like a double helix, which is the shape of DNA. In DNA, the "writhe" is the number of times the double helix crosses over on itself. Also an aside here as well is that red blood cells don't hold DNA, it's the white blood cells that hold the DNA, the "pale blood" if you will.
The oedon writhe rune also has the oedon rune symbol flipped upside down at the bottom! The three dots are just covered by extra lines but it’s there!
Calvin is so cute, I like how it seemed like he got mad at you for swearing XD
I don't have time to watch this right now, but damn, 50 minutes? I'm gonna watch and love every second of it once I get back (btw, I'm the guy called Abraham Link in twitch)
hey redgrave, first of all i love all your videos on bloodborne. anyways, i have notice that the mergo's wet nurse is formless or i should rather say she is invisible and her head has a shape or the "form" of a snake's head. which means that mergo's wet nurse has a great relationship with odeon and this also suggest that maybe mergo is not dead. since it is probably odeon's child which suggests that mergo the child itself is also formless (invisible) so that we can still hear its crying and we cant see it however, it is actually there. let's get back to the point about her hood has a form of snake's head, here caduceus the symbol for medicine all around ambulance, hospitals w/e, has 2 helix formed snakes on it. so here i can conclude that maybe, just maybe odeon is a formless snake. I hope you like this theory. i really enjoy watching your videos :D
Heck yeah Darkest Dungeon! Just started it up for the first time Monday and I'm not too far yet but it's been scratching my Eldritch itch pretty well. Love the art style.
+Quadraxis14 I've been supporting it ever since the Kickstarter, the art style is amazing.
+Redgrave Very nice, I think I first saw them at PAX East a year or two ago, the banner they had set up was really striking.
Anyways, was a little off-topic about Darkest Dungeon, but I really enjoyed this episode, you really do a hell of a lot of solid research; I like most of all how much you pull from real instances of events and the influence of cultural traditions. Whether or not From meant it to or not in every case, there's a chilling fascination about how the lore all ties together so well; the idea that we create, sometimes without realizing it, from what we comprehend in the world around us.
But yeah, you brought up a lot of small details I had never thought about, like quicksilver bullets coming from mercury in the blood, really blows my mind and makes me want to jump right back into that universe just to appreciate the little things, so you're certainly doing great work if that's the plan. ;)
I always had an interest in Lovecraft's writing, inspired documentaries, films, and adaptations of his stories, and cosmic horror in general, but I think Bloodborne, bolstered with this series and discussion of Miyazaki's inspirations have put me over the edge of delving into the stuff. What I really want to start into is the Dream Cycle and related writing on The Dreamlands, but despite it being the collection I'd most like to read, I haven't had much luck finding a physical copy.
Insight combats effects of Mercury. Main hint i take for this is the Eye object from DLC, which says that Pupil turns into mush from beasthood in progress. Also in gameplay mechanics higher insight counters beasthood.
I think this Willien got right. Church doesn't seem to have wish for gaining insight even if they block their own eyes, and we know what happened with them. School of Mensis in nightmare of Mensis they have lots of eyes (with legs) pierced into floors and walls + the brain of Mensis full of eyes. With Choir i don't see any interest in gaining Insight but more to turn themselves into Kin. Did some scholars of Byrgenwerth ending up in Choir leave it to start School of Mensis? As they saw importance of Insight, but Choir as whole didn't ankowledge it.
Both knights/hunters/fiends of Cainhurst and Church both seemed to protect themselves from blood of their opponents. And as you say Blood Dreg gives insight. Is Annalise seeking for insight, and is his iron helmet of same function as is Iron Cages of Mensis? Did Schools of Mensis learn that from Annalise? Or is the effect even reverse? Annalise protects herself from Great Ones, while Mesis seeks contact with them? Annalise seems pretty sane. Did Cainhurst doom itself into beasthood in seeking insight only for Annalise? Which is bit of a stretch.
And was Church + Choir aware of Insight but refused to use it in fear of contact to Great ones?
Doll has White Blood. Most pure in game.
What am i getting with this? You can combat Moon Presence only by consuming Umbical cords, which gives insight. I think Moon Presense infact feeds of from Mercury/blood whichi high insight can prevent. Then there's thing about Moon presence impreganting Good Hunter in this case (as player is close to being Great One). And the Slug-thing in the end is their Stillbirth, which Doll calls Good Hunter. Or it could be that three thirds of umbical cords impregant Good Hunter and that is why Moon Presence can't absord Good Hunter. They duke it out and as result Stillbirth happens, resulting in Slug-thing.
Oh boy. It's off from my chest. In RUclips comment section... I question my sanity.
How does this only have 480 likes? Fucking, brilliant, mate. Your knowledge of various cultures and mythologies is inspiring.
I never saw Mercury as being this relevant in the lore until now, but it all makes sense given it's context in Japan.
Ayn Sof means the "infinite". Also Azathot may as well be astaroth (astarte).
Your knowledge of occultism is quite formidable I must say.
“Hermes the god is the herald who carries messages from the gods to humankind. In psychological alchemy, Mercurius is that part of our psyche through which insight and knowledge come from the “higher” (divine, transpersonal) realms to the human, personal realms. He is the prince who awakens Sleeping Beauty; he is the archetype of the Awakener.”
~ Ralph Metzner
I like how you brought up the Caduceus in regards to medicine and mercury, seeing as the Caduceus was the staff of Hermes and Mercury from Greek/Roman mythology. That got me thinking about how interconnected Mercury and mercury must have been before people realized mercury was poisonous.
Its kind of creepy how we have always used the Symbol for the planet Mercury to represent the element mercury, well before they were linked by name.
Man, of all the stuff you've done this has blown my mind completely, I can finally make "some" sense of Bloodborne with the Mercury analog. Thank you for sharing this!!
The points you raised about the Executioners and the Vilebloods over the "correct" way to use the blood of Oedon also reminded me a bit of Demon's Souls and the conflict between Saint Urbain and Sage Freke and their followers, where Miracles and Magic were all drawing upon the power of the Old One in the end...
as a newcomer to bloodborne, these videos are amazing and made the lore make so much more sense
Absolutely mindblowing , the mercury wow. Soo great . In episode 10 of lets talk lore , i had made a comment about the moon presence being a nod to nyalathotep .that nyala has over 1,000 forms, loves manipulation, chaos , and propaganda . That it was my belief that oedon and the moon presence may indeed be the same entity . When you said that azathoth was nyala's father , it further reinforced my theory .
Just recently got into Bloodborne at the behest of some friends who wanted to Co-op...I quickly quit caring about the actual gameplay and fell down the lore rabbit hole. Such a rich and wonderful story that isn't actually written anywhere. So many viewpoints, and opinions of lore, and not a one is "wrong or right". This video though...there are head cannons, and then there are head thermonuclear warheads...damn
❤️❤️❤️ 🙏 thanks even after all this year your work is a masterpiece
I've learned so much more about this game by watching your videos I love how in depth the lore is in bloodborne, it still is one of if not my favorite games of all time.
Just caught this video. Excellent work. I was wondering however if the third ending does not imply something different about the moon presence. It would seem that the hunter, having devoured enough formless essence through blood echoes and specifically umiblical cords becomes potent enough to thwart the moon presence, who it seems feeds off the hunters, in much the same way as a big fish eating a smaller fish (As you point out). It suggests then that the entire "dream" is little more than a trap set by the moon presence, in which oedon is bound and which the MP uses to devour Oedon piece by piece.
Until, that is, the Hunter becomes a bigger fish and after defeating the moon presence essence transforms into The child reborn, oedon reformed. Think of it as a really complex way of gestating an old one since normal means and subsequent experiments failed disasterously.
I think the Caduceus is pretty clearly the Corruption rune rather than the Formless Oedon rune, it even has the same amount of loops created by the interlocking squiggly lines with the tip of the staff hanging just below them. Though rather than being circular they're conspicuously vagina-shaped, and you get the rune from the Annalise who we know is associated with Oedon through the nuances of blood in her rune. Maybe the descending loops that become smaller with each addition is supposed to represent the descendants of Oedon's forbidden strain and that's why there are so many similarities between Yharnam and Annalise? You can ignore the last bit 'cos that's just my incomprehensible musings, but I'm positive the Caduceus is a fit for the Corruption rune.
This is really cool, and to tie in a small detail, I guess the top hats were intended as a sort of hint towards the whole mercury poisoning theme.
Beautifully explained. It's similar to one of the more esoteric and hard to understand ideas of the Ying yang. One of the dualities of the universe is form and formless, things existing and slowly dissolving and things that don't exist yet coming into existence and moving towards form.
The part about the Yharnam stone being her "solified unborn child" made me think about the concept of blood/flesh turning into stone (which is particulary evident in the conformation of the Mensis' Nightmare gravestone you use to travel and the whole Mensis environment, which is pretty much full of blood turned into rocks. The same about the upgrade stones (in particular the blood rock) and the bloodgems. What I find interesting is some real life event about the topic of unborn children, in particular the "stone fetus" cases like the one of Huang Yijun, who didn't give birth to her child in 1948 and kept it inside her womb until she was 92 years old. When doctors removed it from her, it was a calcified fetus (Lithopedion phenomenon). Probably it's a stretch, but I thought it was a curious coincidence conceptually speaking.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithopedion#/media/File:Lithopedion_(calcified_foetus).jpg
(source www.weirdasianews.com/2009/05/02/weirder-weird-chinese-stone-pregnancy/) and other cases of Lithopedion en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithopedion
The discussion of Oeden here has been huge for me, I always thought Oeden was sort of representative of the endless, ever present bodies of water, like oceans, and things related to Oeden are often surrounded by water, such as Ebrietas and to some degree Rom. Water can also be solid, liquid and gas, and takes any form given infinite volume. I felt like the enlarged brain patients in the DLC who, in their heightened state, would say "splish splash, plish plosh" were referencing being in connection with Oeden, at the surface of an infinitely spanning body of water.
I also sort of speculated that the Orphan of Kos was unique in the sense that it is the only child of two Great Ones, being Kos obviously and, in my theory, Oeden. I kind of imagined that Oeden procreated with the corpse of Kos, so as it washed up on the shore, it was actually pregnant. The lore does strictly say that the child of Great Ones will always be born dead, but I thought perhaps this was circumvented by the mother herself being dead at the time of procreation. Idk just a weird thought that is probably nonsense.
It's just me or the battle against the moon presence is literally "what the moon brings" from Lovecraft?
Not really. What the moon brings is more about worms. They're what I picture inspired those white worms.