The Great Ones in Bloodborne: What They Are and What They Want

The Great Ones are the inhuman, god-like beings at the centre of Bloodborne's story. The Great One's Wisdom item calls them "beings that might be described as gods", and almost every disaster in Yharnam, from the beast plague to the endless night, traces back to people trying to reach them. For where they sit in the wider plot, see the story explained and the timeline. (Bloodborne)

What the game says the Great Ones are#

The plainest statements come from items. The Isz Root Chalice records the Choir's belief that the land of Isz "lies in contact with the cosmos, which allowed the Great Ones to function on transcendental planes of thought." The Lake rune is described as a transcription of "the Great Ones' inhuman voices", and the Moon rune says the Great Ones of the nightmare "are sympathetic in spirit, and often answer when called upon." (Bloodborne)

They are not untouchable. A note in the Lecture Building reads "Hunt the Great Ones, Hunt the Great Ones", and the hunter does exactly that. The Defiled Chalice adds that curses "are caused by inciting the anger of the Great Ones". (Bloodborne)

They also have a history on Earth. The Central Pthumeru Chalice says the Labyrinth was carved by the Pthumerians, "superhuman beings" said to have gained "the wisdom of the eldritch Truth." The Great Pthumeru Ihyll Chalice goes further: early Pthumerians "were mere humble guardians of the slumbering Great Ones." (Bloodborne)

The lost children#

The one motive the game states outright is about children. Every Third Umbilical Cord opens with the same lines: it is "also known as the Cord of the Eye", and "Every Great One loses its child, and then yearns for a surrogate." Each cord then ties that hunger to a different event: the birth of the Hunter's Dream, the formless Great One Oedon, and the School of Mensis's audience with Mergo. (Bloodborne)

A note at Byrgenwerth says: "When the red moon hangs low, the line between man and beast is blurred. And when the Great Ones descend, a womb will be blessed with child." The Old Hunters adds a dead Great One, Kos, whose orphaned child sits at the heart of the Hunter's Nightmare. (Bloodborne; Bloodborne: The Old Hunters)

Who counts as a Great One#

The game's own labels are the trophies. Six bosses carry the words "Defeat Great One": Rom, the Vacuous Spider; Amygdala; the Celestial Emissary; Ebrietas, Daughter of the Cosmos; Mergo's Wet Nurse; and the Orphan of Kos. The Living Failures trophy calls them "the failed attempts to become Great Ones." (Bloodborne; Bloodborne: The Old Hunters)

Others are named in text. The Formless Oedon rune says "The Great One Oedon, lacking form, exists only in voice", and calls blood "the essence of the formless Great One". The Living String calls the rotten brain Mensis pulled from the nightmare "a legitimate Great One". A Lecture Building note names "the nameless moon presence beckoned by Laurence", which is fought as the Moon Presence. (Bloodborne)

The game also has a word for creatures close to them. Kin Coldblood describes the "inhuman kin of the cosmos, brethren of the Great Ones." (Bloodborne)

Humans who reached for them#

Master Willem is the starting point. The Great One's Wisdom quotes his epiphany: "We are thinking on the basest of planes. What we need, are more eyes." The Eye rune says he "looked to beings from higher planes for guidance, and sought to line his brain with eyes". (Bloodborne)

His students split. The Healing Church built its blood ministration on what Byrgenwerth found, and its elite Choir used the Great Isz Chalice to gain audience with Ebrietas. The Brain Fluid item says that early in the Church's history "the Great Ones were linked to the ocean", so patients drank water and listened for the sea. The School of Mensis took another route, using iron cages as an antenna to reach "the Great Ones of the dream". (Bloodborne; Bloodborne: The Old Hunters)

Only the player succeeds. With three Third Umbilical Cords consumed, the hunter defeats the Moon Presence, and the Childhood's Beginning trophy reads: "You became an infant Great One, lifting humanity into its next childhood." See Bloodborne's endings explained. (Bloodborne)

What the game never confirms#

The biggest argument is over "true" Great Ones versus Kin. Many players read Rom, Ebrietas and the Celestial Emissary as humans or Kin who rose to that status, because the Orphanage experiments and Micolash's line about Kos granting eyes to "the vacuous Rom" point that way. The trophies still call them Great Ones, and the game never draws the line for you. (Bloodborne; Bloodborne: The Old Hunters)

Oedon's role is also open. The rune says Oedon and "his inadvertent worshippers" seek blood, and the popular reading is that anyone drinking blood in Yharnam is serving Oedon without knowing it. Why the Great Ones lose their children, and what being given "eyes on the inside" actually does, the game deliberately leaves unsaid. The Cord itself admits "no one remembers what that truly entails." (Bloodborne)

The name echoes the cosmic horror stories of H. P. Lovecraft, and the themes match: knowledge that breaks the mind, and gods that don't care about people. That comparison is a reading, though; the game never names its sources. (Bloodborne)