Spoiler Alert:  In these posts, I will be discussing my character’s daily experiences in “Bloodborne”.  As such, please know that there will be spoilers.  I highly recommend avoiding them until you have played through the game yourself.

The Vacuous Spider is no more.  I returned to its great pool and did battle with it numerous times before I was able to plunge my blade into its hide for the last time.  My glee at its passing was greater than I have ever felt.  It was also to be short-lived.

Upon the spider’s defeat, the moon rose red and gigantic over the pool.  A woman appeared in the distance, bleeding as far as I could tell.  A baby began to wail and the sound filled my ears until I thought I might go deaf and then…

I awoke again in the chapel where the creature had captured me and swept me away to that nightmare realm, only now the door, previously locked, stood open before me.  Quickly, I ran through before the fiend could grab me again and I soon found myself in a strange city.  Yahar’gul, the place seems to be called.  I have never heard its name before and yet I am sure of it.  An unknown and unseen city.

In the distance, I could see the many armed creatures hanging lazily from the sides of buildings, waiting to snatch up unwary passengers.  Diseased villagers again roamed the streets but, unlike the others I have met, these seemed stronger, more fueled by their blood lust.  Worse still, not long after I cut them down they reappeared, forming from black puddles on the ground. Multiple times I had no sooner vanquished one group of villagers when I was attacked from behind and, turning, saw familiar faces back from the dead to exact their revenge.  Other times, in my attempts to fight the men, I was caught up by the creatures above.  They held me, gazed upon me as their grip squeezed tighter and tighter, and my mind was simply overcome by their alien nature.  Once, I made it past a group of the wretched men to find their master – a chime maiden calling them eternally back from the brink.  With her death, theirs finally became permanent.  I thought this might bring relief.

But there are more.  Everywhere I turn, I am beset upon by waves of these madmen.  How many of the women are there, endlessly calling forth their minions from their damnation to walk these streets for eternity?  I die and die and die again until I feel like one of them.  No rest.  No salvation.  Only endless battle and endless blood.

i do not know where to turn now.  I cannot defeat the creatures of the nightmare realm and I cannot seem to defeat the villagers of this cursed place.  One of these places will be my next victory.

Or my final defeat.

Total playtime:  37:32 (across 3-5 play sessions…I honestly can’t remember)

Deaths these sessions:  30!!!  (3 to Rom, 1 to Rom’s minions, 1 to Executioner, 1 to Witch, 3 to Rock-Throwing Giants, 14 to Unseen Villagers, 2 to Silver Nightmare Beasts, 4 to Lesser Amygdala, 1 to Poison Squids)

Total Deaths:  129

Spoiler Alert:  In these posts, I will be discussing my character’s daily experiences in “Bloodborne”.  As such, please know that there will be spoilers.  I highly recommend avoiding them until you have played through the game yourself.

I had thought that my enemies could become no more strange.  I had thought that my mind had already been stretched and strained to its limit.

I was wrong.

As I approached Brygenwerth, I was set upon by insectoid creatures.  They walked on two legs like men but had huge bulbous heads with numerous yellow eyes and wings on their backs.  One of them leapt on me from above and I felt its arms embrace me and its inhuman mouth opening to receive my head and I am ashamed to say that I began to panic.  My mind and my temper began to slip away from me.  I shook the thing away and killed it quickly before it could strike again.

Who am I without my mind?  Will I simply forfeit my will to live or, worse, will I retreat from my humanity to become the very beasts I have been fighting?  Is that part of their sad fate?  I must retain control.  That cannot be my end.

A building stood before me.  The halls of Brygenwerth.  I made my way around the building, fighting more of the insect-things and another of the monstrous ghostly centipedes.  On the opposite side of the building, I found a door unlocked.  I stepped inside.

A great gloom filled the hall, a sense of disregard.  I heard footsteps upstairs.  I made my way up a curved staircase and found another hunter studying the books along the wall.  Foreboding filled me and I instinctively knew her as an enemy.  I stabbed her in the back but resilient was she.  She rebounded and attacked with a threaded cane and some kind of spraying weapon that emitted a gray, toxic mist.  She also had some means of extending her limbs, transforming them into some kind of grasping tentacle.  We circled each other in that narrow space, a grim and clumsy dance, until I defeated her with a final stroke from my blade.

There were books everywhere, a great library of volumes.  I picked up a few, turning their yellowing pages.  They mentioned a Master Willem.  A red moon.  Odd prophesies that I do not yet understand.  But I feel I shall soon enough.  It is is an exciting but disturbing thought.

Up another flight of stairs I found another insectoid being and, more importantly, a key. I descended once more and found that it unlocked a door that led to an outside walkway.

I strode out into the moonlight and found a large man in a chair.  Master Willem, I presumed.  At first I thought him deceased, but when I attempted to speak with him he groaned and wheezed at me in reply and pointed me to the edge of the landing.  Approaching the edge, I looked down and saw only water below me and the reflection of the moon on its surface.  Trusting to fate, I plummeted over the edge and into the water.

Somehow, I landed on the surface of a vast, shallow ocean.  There was seemingly no end to it.  As I splashed onward, a large figure loomed in the distance and around it smaller, many legged figures fell from the sky.  As I drew closer, I saw that the figure was a great, corpulent arachnid, almost too fat to move and, around it, its spider minions (or perhaps its children).  One by one, I killed the spiders, and then I moved in on their master.  It barely responded as I cut at it and I had started to think my victory might, for once, come easily when suddenly the thing disappeared.  I searched the ocean for it and saw it materialize at a distance with more spiders around it.  I charged towards it but now the beast reared up and fired projectiles into the air.  I ran faster, breathlessly dodging, but a few of the projectiles found their mark.  As I drew near, the creature rolled onto its back and this time the projectiles emerged from below, smashing me backwards.  Foul coward of a thing!  Too fat to fight, I thought, it sends its minions to do its bidding and attacks me from afar.  Here too, however, I was fatally wrong, for as I drew alongside the great arachnid again, it exploded in a magical blast, knocking me backward and wounding me terribly.  One last time, I attempted to assault the thing and this time – insult of insults! – it began thrashing its body about and I was crushed beneath its awful girth.

I hate it.  I hate this creature more than almost any I have come across.  I will destroy it and I will revel in its destruction.  But it will, sadly, not be today.  I am not ready yet.  Soon…

                                                               _____________________________________________

Turning my attentions from my battle with the creature, I instead returned to the strange room in the abandoned chapel.  This time I stood before the locked door and allowed the vortex to grab me. As I was swept from the floor, I saw myself in the clutches of a horrible, many armed monster.  There is no earthly match for it.  Before I blacked out, I heard a man’s voice speaking a name.  Amygdala…

When I awoke, I found myself in a darkened college.  A place of learning.  What lessons awaited me here.

I approached a door and heard a man’s voice from within. It was the same voice I heard while in the clutches of the monster and – I am sure of it – the voice of the man who handed me the stone and advised me to come here.  He spoke again of a gift – the ability to see the gods of this realm in person.  Why he would consider this a gift is beyond reason.  He is mad.  He must be.

As I stalked the gloomy halls of the college, I found it was not as empty as I believed.  Ghostly figures, still clad in the caps and gowns they wore in life, assailed me and melted away as I defeated them.  Room by room, I met them until I stood before yet another door and, making my way through, found myself in yet another realm.

Rocks surrounded me everywhere.  Broken tombstones.  Beasts with sideways mouths and poisonous squid-like creatures.  Figures with grotesque, bulbous heads like infected brains that cause my mind to fail at the mere sight of them.  Huge creatures that hurl boulders at me from afar.  A living nightmare.  It is too much.  It is too much…

                                                             _______________________________________________

I returned to the Chalice Dungeon and made my way through its halls until I stood in a round chamber.  A goat-like creature walked toward me on two legs, breathing fire and swiping at me in a frenzy.  The beast claimed my life a few times before I had my vengeance.  The next layer of the dungeon is open.  It is victory enough for today.

Total playtime:  32:45

Deaths this session:  14 (4 to Rom the Vacuous Spider, 1 to the Insectoid men, 1 to the Ghost Graduates, 1 to Enemy Hunter, 1 to Poison Squids, 4 to Rock-throwing Giants, 2 to Beast-Possessed Soul)

Total Deaths:  99

Spoiler Alert:  In these posts, I will be discussing my character’s daily experiences in “Bloodborne”.  As such, please know that there will be spoilers.  I highly recommend avoiding them until you have played through the game yourself.

It is as though the poison still runs through my veins.  The pounding of my heart is doing nothing to lessen the effect.  They are dead.  The masters of these serpentine beasts, the Shadows of Yharnam, are finally dead.

I am getting ahead of myself again.

I pushed further into the Forbidden Woods, returning to the town with its traps and its diseased citizens.  But this time, I did not enter that wasted place.  Instead, I pushed farther to the left, up a slight incline, past the man in the house who gave me the strange stone, past the dogs barking fiercely in their cages and to a path that led down to a dark cave.  I descended and soon I was walking on a floor of bones.  They were everywhere – animal and human – a dreadful portent of what might lie deeper in the cave, a dire warning to turn back.  Undeterred, I pressed on.

The path opened to a cavern.  Rocky islands with strange monuments stood as sanctuaries in the midst of a great pool of shallow water.  And – sanctuaries indeed! – for as soon as I set foot in the water I began to feel weaker, a slow toxic vapor creeping into my lungs, the tainted water seeping through my pores.  Worse still, there are poisonous worms in the pools.  Foul things, they leap at me with venomous mouths, trying to latch on to my bare skin.  And there are giants here, their large feet splashing through the water, seemingly unaffected by its corruption.

Antidote by antidote, enemy by enemy, I slogged through this poison cave, finding what supplies I could on the nearby corpses, trying desperately to stay on the islands or narrow beaches at the cave’s edge until, at last, I found a passage out of the cavern.  At its end, a long ladder leading upward.  I climbed and climbed for what seemed like an eternity until I finally emerged from a hatch to find myself once more on the street outside Iosefka’s Clinic, only this time I am on the opposite side of the courtyard gate.  I opened the gate and so found myself returning to the very spot from which my quest began.  So long ago it seems to me now and as though I am thinking of a different man entirely.  Perhaps I am.  Perhaps I am.

I returned to the forest and this time found my way to the wooden platforms above the town. The snipers and molotov throwers perched here, looking down into the water for travelers to prey upon; I rushed them before they could ready their weapons.  The corpses groaned in the water below.  I jumped down and silenced them permanently.  Onward  I marched past more snipers and townsmen, past a cannoneer foolish enough to fire his weapon upon me.  Eventually, I found myself inside  a darkened mill.  A single enemy stood guard in the gloom inside.  I was able to sneak behind him and slay him before he could detect my presence.  Still, something seemed strange about the man.  Something not quite human.

Atop the mill I found a ragged beggar rummaging through some corpses.  At first I was horrified by his behavior, but of course was I any different?  Does my profession excuse such defilement?  Hard times require hard solutions for all, it seems.  The man asked for a safe shelter and I sent him to Oedon Chapel.  It is the best I can do for him.

Upon exiting the mill, I encountered another lone man approaching across a stone bridge.  He hobbled towards me, dragging his weapon behind him and I thought this to be familiar prey when suddenly he stopped and began clutching his head.  Horror beyond horror!  His head erupted in a bloody spray and a horde of serpents sprung forth from his neck!  He staggered toward me, the snakeheads biting at the air with venomous fangs.  I managed to kill him before they could sink those fangs into my flesh but I understood now the inhumanity I sensed in the man inside the mill.  If I am truthful, I am stating to question if there is much humanity left anywhere in this world.

To describe every terrifying step in those twisted woods would be too draining, too terrible.  I watched numerous men change to the snake-headed things and it is never less than horrifying.  I stumbled upon broods of snakes that crept toward me en masse, the hatchlings moving in a tangled, hissing mass of gnashing teeth.  Nearby, i encountered the parents of these broods – great, muscular coils that spat venom from afar and lashed out with their many heads when I drew near.  Each snake that I killed seemed to be replaced by ten more until I felt I might find my end on this forest floor, my final sensation their scaled bodies crawling over my flesh.  At last, I found a small crevice to drop into, away from the worst of the serpents.

And here, yet another surprise! Strange alien things roam this area, humanoids with great blue heads.  Surely, they are not of this earth. Any doubts I may have had in this conclusion were dispelled when some of them fired bright beams of energy at me.  At the end of this tunnel I found a pool of sparkling water and beyond this a building with an elevator back to the mill.  But now is not the time to turn back.  Not when I am so close to the source of this beastly madness.

Onward, past giant boars.  Onward, past more drowned corpses.  Onward, until I found myself striding into an open field with large tombstones in the middle and, advancing from the other side, three cloaked figures.  The Shadows of Yharnam.

One wielded a sword.  He moved rapidly, constantly pressing his advantage. The second held a scimitar and a candle that spat tongues of flame.  The third kept his distance and hurled fireballs at me.  Round and round I moved, dodging the swordsman while I attacked the mage and candle-holder, using the tombstones as cover.  Just as the mage was about to fall, all three shrieked and now their true natures were revealed.  Snake heads burst from their robes.  Their limbs extended quickly towards me, striking like the vipers they were.  The one with the candle set his sword on fire.  Frantically, I rolled aside as they struck, countering as I could, making every strike of my sword count.  When at last the second shadow fell, one final treachery emerged.  The swordsman folded his hands in prayer and suddenly great snake heads struck from below the ground.  I managed to escape their bite just in time and charged towards the swordsman, eager to end our contest.  At last, the killing stroke fell and the last of the shadows vanished.

Quiet then, and I rested, the ill-effects of the poisons and my exertions finally subsiding.  I lit the nearby lamp and made my way back to the Hunter’s Dream, triumphant.

Beyond the lamp lies Brygenwerth.  What secrets does it hide?  What dangers?  Alfred has said it is a forbidden place now.

Perhaps for some.  Not for me.

______________________________________

When I returned to the Dream, I could not rest.  My triumph had given my quest momentum.  My hands itched for battle.
Emboldened and exhilarated, I returned to the Chalice Dungeon.

I fought through familiar foes – the undead, the ogres and the chime maidens.  I fought new foes – a large ghostly centipede-like creature that shot beams of light at me.  All were swept aside until at last I stood before the master of this dungeon.

A great flaming dog-beast.  The watchdog of some old gods.  Its heat baked my skin as it approached, its breath came like the smoke of an inferno.  An awesome thing, I felt some small measure of sadness that I need dispatch it from this world, but even such a marvelous creature as this cannot be permitted to draw further breath.  If nothing else, its death shall serve as a message to its masters, should they still exist, that there will be no mercy, no quarter. Not from me.

I rolled from its fiery maw and slashed at its tail and flanks until the beast fell dead.  This dungeon is finished.  There is no exit, save a lamp back to the Dream.  No exit, but a new door of sorts.  Another chalice has appeared and I suspect it will convey me to a new labyrinth with new challenges should I choose to perform the ritual again and accept these trials.

My cup is ready, as is my will.

Total Playtime: 28:39

Deaths over three sessions:  9 (1 to Yharnamite, 2 to Snake Men, 1 to Blobs, 4 to Shadows of Yharnam)

Total deaths:  85

Spoiler Alert:  In these posts, I will be discussing my character’s daily experiences in “Bloodborne”.  As such, please know that there will be spoilers.  I highly recommend avoiding them until you have played through the game yourself.

I was resolved that upon my return to Hemwick I would ferret out the source of the dark magic there.  Somewhere in that mad place was a corrupted core and I intended to cut it out.

I sharpened my weapon – a sword modeled after the fabled Ludwig – and its edge soon reddened with the blood of the residents of Charnel Lane.  The witches with their torches, the brick trolls, the shadow beasts.  All fell before me as I made my way back through the town, through the abandoned barn, over the rooftops again and back to flat ground where I found a small squad of the hulking executioners with their giant axes.  How long has it been since meeting my first of these villains in that alley in Central Yharnam?  How insurmountable he seemed!  What an impossible triumph to bring him down at last!  Now I face two, three, four and they are just another obstacle to be swept aside by my blade.

I opened a gate that would lead back to my starting place and then began trudging up a hill toward a house at its summit.  Into the building and a room that appeared consumed by flame or some other devilry, the bodies of the damned still lying about like so much flotsam.  I walked down the stairs to a basement below and I found the evil I had been searching for.

At first I saw nothing until one of the shadow beasts appeared.  Confused, I destroyed the thing and saw something odd – a red ball floating in the air.  I approached it and a deformed old woman appeared.  The Witch of Hemwick.  My blade cut through the air and I felt it land on the old hag before the coward disappeared again and more of the shadow beasts were summoned.  Again I defeated her minions and again I found her and wounded her before she vanished.  On and on we went like this until, at last, I felt the killing blow land.

But treachery of treachery!  The vile witch duplicated herself!  An illusion or an ally?  I took turns attacking both.  More and more of the minions were summoned until I was surrounded and I feared the hag may have gotten the last laugh in our battle, but I would not be denied this victory.  Finally, I was able to slay the witch and her clone and the beasts vanished with them.

She is dead but I fear the damage done to Hemwick is too extensive to be cured.  In the room beyond, I found a body with a workshop tool for memorizing runes.  This should be useful.

My next journey was deeper into the Forbidden Woods.  I pressed on, finding another destroyed town and more traps – pits covered with boards, spiked logs that swung down once activated by concealed triggers.  These will not keep me from my targets.

Halfway through the town, I found a small waterway slick with oil.  From platforms above, Yharnamites tossed molotovs that ignited the water.  From below, drowned corpses clawed their way toward me.   Not seeing a way through yet that would not lead to my immolation, I turned back.

In a nearby house, I found a single living resident.  He offered me aid, telling me that to the right of the Grand Cathedral I should find a shrouded church and that the “Gift of the Godhead” should grant me strength. He passed to me a pitted stone, something seemingly unearthly.

I returned to the Cathedral and followed the man’s directions.  I am now strong enough to vanquish the hunter with the electrified rod as well as his shotgun wielding friend.  I felt no small satisfaction at their dying screams.  Through a path in the rocks, I found another of the tall cloaked demons.  For the first time, I noticed the sack he carried over his back.  Is this for me?  If I am captured, where would I find myself when the bag opened?  I shivered at the thought and destroyed the thing before I could find such answers for myself.

At the bottom of the path, two executioners and behind them an old church, just as the man had said.  Inside, I found a large circular room with a small dish in the middle.  A door stood in the opposite wall.  Upon approaching the door, a loud sound began reverberating from the hall and a blue cloud almost swept me away.  I leapt back just in time but not before I tried the door.  It is locked.  Perhaps the man was lying.  Or perhaps the “door” is something quite else?  Perhaps the blue vortex is my entry to this “Gift”?  I decided to leave these questions for another day.  For now, the Forbidden Woods awaits.

Total Playtime:  23:37

Deaths this session:  3 (1 to Shadow Beasts in Hemwick, 1 to Molotov-throwing Yharnamite, 1 to Witch of Hemwick)

Total Deaths:  76

Spoiler Alert:  In these posts, I will be discussing my character’s daily experiences in “Bloodborne”.  As such, please know that there will be spoilers.  I highly recommend avoiding them until you have played through the game yourself.

Today my path diverged.  I began by exploring Hemwick Charnel Lane.  The town is a literal descent into madness.  Hags dance in circles, laughing wildly, holding aloft torches and sharp blades.  Dogs with metallic spikes jutting from their bodies charge, teeth gnashing.  A single inhabited home is all I have found, and its owner simply groans and mutters, no more sane than the rest.  It is a terrible place, the sickness hanging heavy over all.

Up stone pathways I walked, past more of the black creatures with their unnatural white eyes, past molotov-hurling townsfolk, past brick trolls and carrion crows until I found an elevator that led back to my lamp and the town entrance.  Nearby, a small bridge crossed a chasm and led to a dilapidated farmhouse.  Another troll stood guard outside.  I was able to bait the troll into charging and calmly stepped aside as he fell into the chasm.  I laughed as he plummeted to his doom.

The farmhouse seemed abandoned but was, of course, merely a place for the witches to hide and ambush any unwary travelers they wished to sacrifice to their dark rituals. I made my way through its dark interior and the enemies within, and soon found myself outside and traversing the battered rooftops of the town.  As I passed beyond the peak of one roof, another of the brick trolls attacked.   I stood by the edge of the roof but this one, sadly, was too smart to fall for my trap.  I cursed his meager intelligence as he bludgeoned me with his concrete block.

Arising from death once more, I decided to return to the Cathedral Ward.  I vaguely remembered an unexplored path behind the tendril-faced monster.  I intended to uncover its secrets, tendrilled horror or no.

One of those secrets turned out to be an old acquaintance – Alfred, my fellow hunter.  We spoke again, this time about a group known as the Vilebloods and their battle with his Master Logarius.  It seems that Logarius pursued the Vilebloods to Cainhurst Castle and became stranded there.  Alfred has sworn to infiltrate the castle, assaulting the Vilebloods and freeing his master. I may help him in this noble struggle, if only to satisfy my curiosity.

At the bottom of the stairs, i found a closed gate.  From the other side, a  voice asked me for the password.  The vision from the Grand Cathedral returned to me.  “Fear the Old Blood” echoed in my head and so I spoke the words.  The gate opened and I stepped through, prepared to meet its keeper.  And so I found him but not how I expected.  He is long dead, a mere shell now and far beyond the capacity for speech.  Whose voice then did I hear through the gate?  Has my own descent into madness begun already?

Trees and more trees.  The forbidden woods, they are called.  I remember Alfred telling me about an institution that lies beyond the woods, a place once grand but now a sinister place about which few speak.  Brygenwerth, I believe it was called.

How many more diseased townsmen must I purge from the world?  When this night of the hunt finally comes to its blessed end, what will be left of this city?  These thoughts plagued me as I made my way through the gloom of the woods.

I found a new lamp to take me “home” or at least what passes as a home these days.  Across a wooden bridge, more Yharnamites patrolling, more dogs, more death…theirs or mine.  They have set crude traps for trespassers.  i must watch my step.

I fell asleep dreaming of laughter.  Torches.  Witches.  Sharp edges gleaming in the moonlight.

And blood.  So much blood.

Total playtime:  21:06

Deaths this session:  3 (all to Brick Trolls…I really hate Brick Trolls now.)

Total deaths:  73

Spoiler Alert:  In these posts, I will be discussing my character’s daily experiences in “Bloodborne”.  As such, please know that there will be spoilers.  I highly recommend avoiding them until you have played through the game yourself.

For the last few days, I have felt an invisible wall in my way, a barrier preventing me from seeing and moving further.  Today that wall fell…in more ways than one.

I returned to Old Yharnam for training, sharpening my attacks, my timing, and my defense against familiar foes.  At first, I felt frustration that I should tread this old ground rather than pushing onward, but each time I returned to the Doll to convert my collected blood into new power my purpose became clearer and my resolve stiffened.  It seems this “old ground” is not without its secrets either, as I found my way into a new building via a window ledge high above the ground and inside found a new outfit (defended of course by a hoard of the cloaked demons and their dark pets).  The charred clothes of a hunter, I do not know why he fell but it seems he was well-protected against flame, at least.

And there is another invisible wall slowly crumbling as well.  For days, I have seen notes scrawled on the ground that I assumed were the work of the messengers.  I have seen red specters rising from the ground, naught more than memories of another hunter’s death.  Again, I assumed this to be the work of my small, ghastly friends.  But I have also seen white specters and these seem…alive somehow.  Not memories at all but beings in the midst of combat just like I.  What is their purpose?  If they are truly spirits, why is their nature so like my own?  I wondered…

Returning to the hall where I fought the blood-starved beast, I rang a small bell that I had received from the messengers.  Its chime resonated in the halls and in my ears and was soon answered by another chime.  What happened next is difficult to explain, for I felt my body dissolve until I reappeared outside the hall, greeted by another hunter.  We drew our blades and charged back inside to find the beast alive again!  Once more I did battle with the beast but this time not alone, and when it fell the hunter and I shared a great triumphant salute before I disappeared yet again and returned to my world.

Criss-crossing paths.  Overlapping worlds.  How many are there?  How many hunters just like me have taken this journey? Suddenly I understood the notes, the phantoms, the sounds of the bells, and I felt emboldened.  Empowered.  I am no longer alone. There is help to be had and help to give in turn in this struggle.

Am I, however, confident that all other hunters are of the same mind?

At last, I felt ready to return to the cathedral and resume my battle with the monstrosity that was once woman. Confidently, I entered the halls.  My first attempt failed again, but suddenly the battle did not seem quite so insurmountable.  I could avoid her swiping claws, her powerful leaps and I could draw blood from her flanks.  Little by little, I had come to understand my adversary and I persisted until, at last, the beast was flailing in vain, the life flowing freely from her.  I lit my cleaver on fire and her great white fur ignited.  I heard her screech and I moved in for the killing blow.  The vicar is no more.

I lit the nearby lamp but noticed something else alight in the hall.  A beast’s skull resting upon the altar.  Perhaps I should have left it there but my curiosity got the better of me, and when my hand touched it I had a vision.  An old man.  A young man.  The young man leaving the old one.  The old man’s warning.  “We are of the blood,” he says.  “Fear the old blood,” he says.  The young man’s name is Laurence.  More i cannot say.

I found myself back in the cathedral, disoriented and confused by the vision.  Gathering my wits, I left the solving of this puzzle for another time and moved back outside.

I made my way down the foreboding path to the side of the cathedral and soon found myself in darkened woods, set upon by dogs more beastly than before and woodland beasts, black with glowing white eyes.  Snipers took aim at me from the shadows of trees.  The battle raged across the forest floor until, at last, I found myself opening the gate of what seems to be a new town.  Hemwick Charnel Lane, a sign proclaimed.  Nearby, I can hear voices. They are laughing and screaming.  They do not sound sane.

Enough progress for one day.  Hemwick Charnel Lane is tomorrow’s victory.  I am satisfied with today’s.

Total playtime:  18:25

Deaths this session:  6 (2 to Cathedral Guardians with poles, 2 to Vicar Amelia, 1 to the Shock-rod hunter, 1 to Shotgun hunter)

Total deaths:  70

Spoiler Alert:  In these posts, I will be discussing my character’s daily experiences in “Bloodborne”.  As such, please know that there will be spoilers.  I highly recommend avoiding them until you have played through the game yourself.

I descended anew into the Chalice Dungeon and this time found myself in ancient halls, the walls engraved with strange designs and figures.  Again, I found myself set upon by numerous skeletal creatures sent forth at the command of a Chime Maiden.  Again, I found an ogre guarding the lever at the center of the labyrinth, this one agile, pale and mostly naked. But this time behind the now unlocked door leading forward, I found not one but three giants.  One wielded a shotgun while the other two flailed at me with heavy blades. With great patience, I managed to isolate each one and when they swung their weapons, I fired my pistol in their faces and dropped them to their knees, leaving them vulnerable to my blade.  When all three had fallen, I lit the nearby lamp and made my way back to the Hunter’s Dream.

If only the rest of this day had been so successful.

I returned to Oedon’s Tower and thrice more tried to make my way down its interior, only to fall to my death each time.

My return to the Cathedral Ward was more fruitful, as I was able to find my way through its foggy streets and diseased denizens and back to the gate at the top of the stairs near my starting lamp.  The way is now clear from my lamp to the Grand Cathedral.  But a woeful path it is, choked with cathedral guardians and Church Giants carrying all manner of weaponry, from scythes to wooden poles.  At the door of the Grand Cathedral, three directions presented themselves and I first turned right and down a set of wooden steps.  I soon encountered a cloaked figure wielding a wooden shield and an electrified rod.  He charged up the stairs at me.  My blade fell with little effect and I soon felt the sting of his rod as the electricity coursed through my body.

The second time I made it to the Cathedral door I briefly contemplated turning to the ground on my left, but that way seemed wild and foreboding, and so I chose to enter the Cathedral.  Perhaps I was hoping for sanctuary within its hallowed walls but there is nothing sanctified here now.

A women prayed over a gold medallion, mournfully whispering vows to the blood, when she suddenly changed.  I watched in horror as her body enlarged and twisted, white hair erupting from her skin, antlers from her brow.  Her feet extended into great claws, sinews crackling, and she turned to me and I saw a snout full of sharp teeth.  She shrieked, her claws sweeping the floor of the cathedral in great violent gusts.  I dodged and swiped and I am ashamed to say that I have no idea how to wound the beast.  She is every bit my master at this time.  Reluctantly, I left my blood echoes lying in the cathedral with the beast.

My power is no match for her.  I struggle with even far lesser enemies.  I dare not explore further and yet I cannot go back.  The way forward is blocked and until I can smash the obstacles in my way, further struggle is futile.

I will train.  I will feed on the blood of my lessers until I have grown drunk on their power.  And I will bide my time.

Total Playtime:  16:37

Deaths this session:  14 (1 to Merciless Watcher, 2 to Brick Trolls, 4 to Cathedral Guardians, 1 to Tall Cloaked Creature (?), 1 to Shock-stick man, 2 to Vicar Amelia and 3 falls to death…just for good measure)

Total deaths:  64