Bloodborne Story Explained: Yharnam, the Old Blood and the Great Ones

Bloodborne came out on the PlayStation 4 in March 2015. FromSoftware made it, Sony published it, and Hidetaka Miyazaki directed it. It's a single story told over one night in the Gothic city of Yharnam, and it tells that story sideways: through item descriptions, scraps of notes and a handful of strange conversations. This page walks through the plot in order, then explains what the game actually states and what fans have read into it. The Old Hunters expansion gets its own page, and the Bloodborne timeline puts the backstory in order. Full spoilers follow. (Bloodborne)

Before the story begins#

Long before the game, the scholars of Byrgenwerth, led by Master Willem, explored a Labyrinth beneath Yharnam built by the Pthumerians. There they met the Great Ones, beings the game describes as something like gods, and found the Old Blood. Willem warned his students to fear it. His student Laurence did not listen. He left and founded the Healing Church, which offered blood ministration to anyone who came. (Bloodborne)

The blood brought beasts. A sickness called ashen blood ravaged Old Yharnam, the district was burned, and the Church sent out hunters every time the scourge flared. The Church split into two elite circles, the Choir in the Upper Cathedral Ward and the School of Mensis in the village of Yahar'gul. Laurence himself became the first cleric beast. (Bloodborne; Bloodborne: The Old Hunters)

The transfusion and the Hunter's Dream#

The game opens in a clinic. An old Blood Minister tells the traveller that their homeland is plagued by sickness, that Yharnam's blood is special, and that they'll need to sign a contract first. The transfusion starts. A beast crawls out of a pool of blood, small figures climb over the bed, and the screen goes dark. (Bloodborne)

The hunter wakes in Iosefka's Clinic, beside a note telling them to seek paleblood if they want to rise above the hunt. Dying sends the hunter to the Hunter's Dream, a moonlit workshop above a sea of graves. Gehrman, an old man in a wheelchair, welcomes the new hunter and tells them to go out and kill a few beasts. The Doll comes to life and offers to help. A note in the house says that to escape the dream, the hunter must halt the source of the scourge, or the night will carry on forever. (Bloodborne)

Central Yharnam and the Cathedral Ward#

Yharnam is locked down. Residents hide behind their doors and refuse to help, while mobs with torches and pitchforks hunt in the streets, many of them half-turned already. Eileen the Crow, a hunter of hunters, tells the newcomer to hunt beasts and leave the hunting of hunters to her. At the cemetery the hunter fights Father Gascoigne, a hunter who had once served the Church who has lost himself to the blood and turns into a beast. His family's story plays out in the house nearby. (Bloodborne)

Past him lies the Cathedral Ward, the Church's home. Gehrman tells the hunter to ascend to Oedon Chapel. In the Grand Cathedral, the hunter kills Vicar Amelia, who prays over a beast skull and turns into a beast herself. Touching the skull shows a vision of Willem and Laurence and gives the hunter Willem's adage, "Fear the old blood", the password that opens the way to Byrgenwerth. (Bloodborne)

Along the way, side stories show what the Church left behind. A summons invites the hunter to Cainhurst, the ruined castle of the Vilebloods, where Queen Annalise waits behind a mask, a sworn enemy of the Church. The old hunter Djura guards the ruins of Old Yharnam and asks why hunters insist on killing beasts who were all once men. (Bloodborne)

Byrgenwerth and the red moon#

Through the Forbidden Woods, the hunter reaches Byrgenwerth College, a decaying building on a lake. Willem sits in his rocking chair on the balcony, more or less beyond speech. A key description says that in the end he left his secret with the lake. Dropping into the lake brings the hunter to Rom, the Vacuous Spider, a Great One. (Bloodborne)

Killing Rom changes everything. The moon turns red and huge, the townsfolk get worse, and the Doll says she senses ancient echoes in the hunter's blood. Notes appear that say the ritual secret is broken and urge the hunter to seek the nightmare newborn. The most common reading is that Rom was hiding the true state of the world, and that the red moon was always there. (Bloodborne)

A note left at Byrgenwerth had already warned what the red moon means: when it hangs low, the line between man and beast blurs, and when the Great Ones descend, a womb will be blessed with child. (Bloodborne)

Later in the night the hunter also reaches Yahar'gul, the Unseen Village of Mensis, and the Upper Cathedral Ward, home of the Choir. In the Choir's gardens the hunter fights the Celestial Emissary, which the game counts as a Great One. Below them, in the Altar of Despair, lies Ebrietas, Daughter of the Cosmos, whom the Choir's garb calls the left behind Great One. (Bloodborne)

The nightmares#

From here the hunter crosses into the nightmare itself. The Lecture Building of Byrgenwerth drifts there now, its lecture halls still full of slime-covered scholars in their seats. Its notes give the clearest answer the game offers to the "paleblood" riddle: "The nameless moon presence beckoned by Laurence and his associates. Paleblood." A second note just says "Three third cords". (Bloodborne)

The last stretch is the Nightmare of Mensis. The School's scholars wanted to reach the Great Ones by caging their own heads, and a Third Umbilical Cord gave them an audience with the infant Great One Mergo, at the cost of their minds. The hunter climbs Mergo's Loft, past the dead Mensis members and their great rotten brain, and fights Micolash, Host of the Nightmare, who prays to Kos to grant them eyes "as you once did for the vacuous Rom". He dies saying he is waking up and will forget everything. (Bloodborne)

At the top waits Mergo's Wet Nurse, a many-armed figure in black that guards a crying infant. When she dies, the game reports the nightmare slain. Back in the dream, the workshop is on fire. The Doll says dawn will soon break, and that Gehrman waits at the foot of the great tree. (Bloodborne)

The ending explained#

Gehrman thanks the hunter and offers mercy: die in the dream, forget it, and wake under the morning sun. What the hunter does next decides the ending. (Bloodborne)

• Yharnam Sunrise: Accept, and Gehrman kills the hunter with his scythe. The hunter wakes in Yharnam as the sun rises, and the Doll prays at a grave in the dream. (Bloodborne)
• Honoring Wishes: Refuse, and Gehrman fights the hunter. Beat him and the Moon Presence descends and takes the hunter. In the last scene the Doll pushes the hunter around the workshop in Gehrman's old wheelchair, and the hunt goes on without them. (Bloodborne)
• Childhood's Beginning: Refuse after consuming three Third Umbilical Cords, and the hunter resists the Moon Presence, kills it, and becomes an infant Great One, which the Doll picks up and comforts. (Bloodborne)

The game states what happens in each, but not why. The most common reading is that the Moon Presence, the "Paleblood" Laurence's circle beckoned, is the Great One behind the Hunter's Dream, and Gehrman is its unwilling keeper. Gehrman's sleep talk backs this up, as he begs Laurence and Willem to unshackle him. Each ending is covered in detail in all three Bloodborne endings explained. (Bloodborne)

Where The Old Hunters fits#

After Vicar Amelia's death, a messenger in the dream gives the hunter the Eye of a Blood-drunk Hunter, and a creature outside Oedon Chapel carries them into the Hunter's Nightmare. There the hunter meets the people who started it all, including Ludwig, Lady Maria and Laurence, and learns about the massacre at the Fishing Hamlet and the curse of the Great One Kos. It doesn't change the ending, but it explains the crime at the root of the hunt. The full plot is in The Old Hunters story explained. (Bloodborne: The Old Hunters)

What the game leaves open#

Bloodborne never names its hunter, never says who wrote the paleblood note, and never says outright where the Old Blood came from. Fans read the blood as coming from the Great Ones in the Labyrinth, read Queen Yharnam's phantom in the Nightmare of Mensis as Mergo's mother, and read the Doll as Gehrman's memory of Maria. These are good readings with real support in the item text, but they're readings. There has been no sequel, so the story ends with the hunter's last choice. For the people behind it all, see the Great Ones and the Moon Presence. (Bloodborne)