The Kin in Bloodborne: Children of the Cosmos

The Kin are the inhuman creatures of the cosmos in Bloodborne, beings close to the Great Ones but not quite the same. The only real definition comes from one item. Kin Coldblood, dropped by Rom, is "Coldblood of inhuman kin of the cosmos, brethren of the Great Ones." Players use the word for the pale, slimy, often glowing creatures tied to the Choir and its search for the cosmos. (Bloodborne)

How the game uses the word#

There are only a few uses, and every one is short. (Bloodborne)

• Kin Coldblood. Rom drops it, and it calls its source "inhuman kin of the cosmos, brethren of the Great Ones." Its last line warns against going into the world beyond humanity, "the eldritch Truth touched upon long ago at Byrgenwerth." (Bloodborne)
• The trophy for the Great Isz Chalice: "Acquire the Great Chalice of Isz that seals the home of the cosmic kin." The Isz Root Chalice adds the Choir's belief that Isz "lies in contact with the cosmos, which allowed the Great Ones to function on transcendental planes of thought." (Bloodborne)
• Kinhunter's Blood Gems. Their descriptions are generic, but the name, and the bonus they give against kin, tell you the game treats Kin as their own kind of prey, separate from beasts. (Bloodborne)

The word also turns up in its everyday sense, which can confuse searches. Queen Annalise greets a sworn Vileblood as "Closest of kin, last of our kind." That's blood relation in Cainhurst, with nothing cosmic about it. (Bloodborne)

Which creatures are Kin?#

The game doesn't say. What players have is a mechanic: Kinhunter gems do extra damage to some enemies and not others, and the ones they hit are counted as Kin. This is community testing, not item text. (Bloodborne)

The usual list includes the Celestial Emissary and the small blue creatures of the Upper Cathedral Ward, the Brainsuckers that grab hunters, the Winter Lanterns of the nightmares, Rom and its children, Ebrietas and, in The Old Hunters, the Living Failures. Most share a look: pale or blue skin, swollen heads, slime, a glow. (Bloodborne; Bloodborne: The Old Hunters)

That list throws up an obvious problem. Rom, Ebrietas and the Celestial Emissary all carry trophies that say "Defeat Great One". So either some Kin rose to become Great Ones, or the word "brethren" covers more than it seems to. The game never draws the line. (Bloodborne)

Where did the Kin come from?#

No item says "this creature was once human." But the places the Kin turn up all belong to the Healing Church's efforts to reach the Great Ones. (Bloodborne; Bloodborne: The Old Hunters)

• The Orphanage Key calls the Orphanage "birthplace of the Choir", a place of "scholarship and experimentation, where young orphans became potent unseen thinkers for the Healing Church." The Celestial Emissary and its companions wait in the gardens nearby. (Bloodborne)
• In the Research Hall, the Brain Fluid says patients drank water and listened for "the howl of the sea", and that brain fluid grew in their heads as "the initial makings of internal eyes." The Living Failures in the garden above carry a trophy that calls them "the failed attempts to become Great Ones." (Bloodborne: The Old Hunters)
• The Milkweed rune, envisioned by the patient Adeline, transcribes whispers "that reveal the nature of a celestial attendant." Its oath turns the hunter into "a lumenwood that peers toward the sky". (Bloodborne: The Old Hunters)
• Micolash prays to Kos: "As you once did for the vacuous Rom, grant us eyes, grant us eyes." That's the strongest hint that Rom, the best-known Kin, was once a scholar. (Bloodborne)

Put together, the most common reading is that Kin are what humans become when the Church's work goes partly right: changed by contact with the Great Ones, no longer human, but not gods either. It's a strong reading. It's still a reading. (Bloodborne; Bloodborne: The Old Hunters)

The League's "freakish slugs"#

Valtr, master of the League, asks if you haven't seen enough of "these wretched beasts, freakish slugs and mad doctors". Many players take the slugs to mean Kin. It fits the look, and the Pearl Slug calls the slugs of the old Labyrinth "clear signs of the left-behind Great Ones." Valtr never names them, though. (Bloodborne)

Where to find them#

Most Kin live where the Church reached highest: the Choir's gardens in the Upper Cathedral Ward, the nightmare, including the Nightmare Frontier, and the Isz Gravestone of the Chalice Dungeons, whose Great Isz Chalice gave the Choir its audience with Ebrietas. For how they fit the bigger story, see the lore summary and the Third Umbilical Cords, the relics of infant Great Ones. (Bloodborne)