The Third Umbilical Cords in Bloodborne: Where They Are and What They Mean

The Third Umbilical Cords are four relics in Bloodborne, listed in the inventory as One Third of Umbilical Cord. Consume three of them before beating Gehrman, and the Moon Presence can no longer claim you, which opens the secret Childhood's Beginning ending. Each cord has its own description, and together they hold some of the clearest lore in the game. (Bloodborne)

Where are all four Third Umbilical Cords?#

There's one in each of four places, and you can collect them in any order. (Bloodborne)

1. The Abandoned Old Workshop, near the Cathedral Ward. The cord lies on the altar. The workshop's trophy calls it "the abandoned old workshop, the source of the Hunter's Dream." (Bloodborne)
2. Iosefka's Clinic. The woman who has taken the real Iosefka's place carries a cord. She's reached through the clinic's back entrance, not the front door the hunter knocks on early in the night. (Bloodborne)
3. Arianna's child. Send Arianna, the Cathedral Ward woman of pleasure, to Oedon Chapel. After Micolash dies, she's found in the Tomb of Oedon beside a small, eyeless infant, the Celestial Child. Killing it gives the cord. (Bloodborne)
4. Mergo's Wet Nurse. The last required boss drops it when the nightmare is slain. (Bloodborne)

You only need three, so the usual route skips Arianna's child: workshop, impostor, Wet Nurse. All four count if you want them. What matters is that three are eaten before Gehrman is beaten, and the details of each ending are in all three endings explained. (Bloodborne)

What each cord's description says#

Every cord opens the same way: "A great relic, also known as the Cord of the Eye. Every infant Great One has this precursor to the umbilical cord." The second paragraph is where they differ. (Bloodborne)

The workshop cord: "Every Great One loses its child, and then yearns for a surrogate. The Third Umbilical Cord precipitated the encounter with the pale moon, which beckoned the hunters and conceived the Hunter's Dream." This is the origin of the Hunter's Dream. (Bloodborne)

The impostor Iosefka's cord says Provost Willem sought the Cord to raise his being and thoughts to those of a Great One by lining his brain with eyes. "The only choice, he knew, if man were to ever match Their greatness." It ties the relic to Master Willem and Byrgenwerth. (Bloodborne)

Arianna's cord: "Every Great One loses its child, and then yearns for a surrogate, and Oedon, the formless Great One, is no different. To think, it was corrupted blood that began this eldritch liaison." Arianna's own blood, the Blood of Arianna says, is similar to what the old Healing Church once forbade. (Bloodborne)

Mergo's cord: "Every Great One loses its child, and then yearns for a surrogate. This Cord granted Mensis audience with Mergo, but resulted in the stillbirth of their brains." That's the end of the School of Mensis and the reason Mergo sits in a nightmare. (Bloodborne)

The workshop, Arianna and Mergo cords also close with a line on using them: "Use to gain Insight and, so they say, eyes on the inside, although no one remembers what that truly entails." (Bloodborne)

What the cords do#

Using a cord grants Insight, the game's measure of forbidden knowledge. Three consumed changes the ending. Gehrman offers release, the hunter refuses and beats him, and the Moon Presence descends. Without the cords it wraps itself around the hunter and the Honoring Wishes trophy follows. With them the embrace fails, the Moon Presence fights, and when it dies the Doll lifts a small tentacled creature from the ground. The Childhood's Beginning trophy reads: "You became an infant Great One, lifting humanity into its next childhood." (Bloodborne)

The game hints at the number too. A note in the Lecture Building reads "Three third cords", near another that names "the nameless moon presence beckoned by Laurence and his associates." (Bloodborne)

What the cords mean#

What follows is interpretation. The game states the descriptions above and the ending, and nothing about the mechanism. (Bloodborne)

• The most common reading is that the cords give the hunter the "eyes on the inside" that Willem wanted, and that three is enough to turn a human into a Great One. Willem, the Choir and Mensis all tried and failed. The hunter succeeds by eating relics. (Bloodborne)
• Many players link the surrogate line to the Moon Presence. It lost a child, so the reading goes, and took Gehrman and then each hunter as a stand-in. Once the hunter is becoming a Great One, it can't hold them. The game never states this. (Bloodborne)
• The workshop cord is usually tied to Laurence's circle, because the note names them as the ones who beckoned the moon presence. No line says which cord they used, or where the infant it came from went. (Bloodborne)
• Arianna's cord points to a birth during the night. Her infant appears only after the moon turns red, and a note at Byrgenwerth says that when the Great Ones descend, "a womb will be blessed with child." Most players read Oedon as the father. The cord says only that Oedon yearns for a surrogate and that corrupted blood began the liaison. (Bloodborne)
• The name invites the question of why there are four "thirds". There's no in-game answer. Some players think each cord is a third of what it takes, others that the English name is a translation quirk. Neither is confirmed. (Bloodborne)

For the beings the cords come from, see the Great Ones and the Kin. The lore summary puts the cords in the context of the whole story. (Bloodborne)