Bloodborne: The Lore of The Old Hunters DLC

In the expansion of the main game, players must face new horrors in a different Yharnam, where hunters from other eras live trapped in a nightmare, an endless hunt, consumed by the frenzy of blood.

New enemies and new bosses bring more challenge and depth to the Bloodborne universe, and in this article I’ll discuss the game's plot, analyzing the descriptions of the characters Ludwig, Lady Maria, and Kos, and filling in the gaps in the lore.

The Hunters' Nightmare

After defeating Vicar Amelia in the Cathedral Quarter, players can interact with the skull on the altar in the boss arena to trigger a cutscene. Then simply return to Oedon Chapel and allow yourself to be caught by Amygdala outside to be transported to the Hunter's Nightmare (you need to purchase the DLC beforehand).

Like the Hunter's Dream, the Hunter's Nightmare is a parallel dimension to Yharnam where hunters from the past were imprisoned to be punished for their crimes, whether for succumbing to frenzy or for committing inhuman atrocities at some point in history.

Here, players encounter other hunters, now with a bestial appearance, out of control, in an eternal battle against the beasts and the protagonist.

In Bloodborne, dreams and nightmares can be transformed into physical dimensions, where reality and cosmic terror intertwine. All this is orchestrated by the Ancients, beings like the Moon Presence and Kos, whom I’ll talk about later.

The central plot point in the DLC is to end the Hunter's Nightmare and free the souls trapped within, just as happens in the base game with the Nightmare of Mensis.

However, before escaping the nightmare, it's necessary to understand what’s causing it and who its host is. The host of the nightmare is the individual who serves as a pillar of the reality created through the power of an Ancient. Micolash was the host of the Nightmare of Mensis and used the power of the childlike entity called Mergo to succeed in this.

The Hunter's Dream was created by the Moon Presence and is hosted by the retired hunter, Gehrman.

The Hunter's Nightmare is somewhat different from the other two, as it appears to be the only case where such an event originated naturally, without depending on a pact with cosmic entities or the manipulation of one's power.

Ludwig, the Cursed

Among the prisoners of the Nightmare—beasts and hunters—there’s one in particular whom all fear and avoid. His name is Ludwig the Cursed, the first boss of the DLC and one of the most memorable characters ever created by FromSoftware.

Ludwig is mentioned throughout the base game's campaign with several items, being described as the first Hunter of the Healing Church (Gehrman is the first Independent Hunter. After he emerged, the Healing Church decided to create its own warriors, based on Gehrman).

Ludwig is an unparalleled warrior who trained the first hunters of his order and molded them in his image as honorable, disciplined, and deadly men and women. He was a very devout man and, at some point during his career as a hunter, discovered a sacred sword, a divine weapon that revealed itself to Ludwig to guide him on his path. The Moonlight Sword.

Ludwig had rivals who defamed him, and eventually he fell from grace and succumbed to the blood of the hunt. Trapped in the nightmare after his death as punishment for his crimes, Ludwig continued to succumb to the blood, accumulating body after body in his path, creating a veritable river of blood that flows through the nightmare. Now deformed and completely transformed into a hideous beast, he no longer resembles the honorable warrior he once was.

When we find him, we’re forced to confront him. The Cursed One fights like any other uncontrolled beast, but as the battle nears its climax, something surprising happens: the Moonlight Sword reveals itself before the beast, and the sword's mystical glow awakens the hunter within the monster. Ludwig rises one last time, wielding his sacred blade, to fight once more and die as a hunter.

Laurence, the First Vicar

In Bloodborne, everything begins with the discovery of the ancient blood, and Laurence, alongside Micolash and Master Willem, is one of the main figures responsible for spreading blood healing and founding the Healing Church. Despite being warned about the risks of using ancient blood, Laurence pursued his plan to heal Yharnam using blood therapy, which quickly proved extremely effective. However, side effects soon appeared, and beasts began to spread, with Laurence becoming one of the victims of the disease and becoming the first Beast Cleric.

After being shot down and killed like a beast, Laurence ends up in the Hunters' Nightmare, where he remains trapped and condemned, just like all the other souls in that dimension.

After discovering ancient blood and its healing properties, the Healing Church began administering blood therapy to the inhabitants of Yharnam, which soon caused the beast plague and led to the catastrophe in Old Yharnam, an area we explore in the base game.

In Bloodborne, blood and knowledge are extremely important aspects of the lore, so important that they become mechanics. In the case of the hunters, the more killing they did, the more blood-drunk they became, eventually triggering the beast plague.

Furthermore, the Church began conducting experiments involving ancient blood, creating Church hunters to combat the advancing scourge of beasts and, secretly, creating various aberrations in an attempt to get closer to the Great Ones.

The Great Ones, or Ancients, are beings from another world endowed with powers and knowledge beyond human comprehension, knowledge that the Church seeks at all costs. It was in this search that Laurence and Willem sent their best hunters to the Fishing Village, where the inhabitants had made contact with a Great One, known as Kos or Kosm, a creature similar to a giant squid that provided food to the fishermen and, through this food, granted them transcendence.

The Church desired this knowledge at any cost and therefore devastated the village, causing the death of the fishermen, Kos herself, and consequently, the child she carried in her womb, an imminent baby.

However, the Ancients don’t die when their physical form is destroyed, and Kos's consciousness remained alive. To punish her attackers and the sins committed in the village by the hunters and scholars of the Healing Church, she created the Hunter's Nightmare, placing the spirit of her dead son at the epicenter of this prison, forever cursing the souls of all involved and any hunter who succumbed to the blood frenzy.

Lady Maria of the Astral Tower

Among those involved in the massacre at the Fishing Village was a renowned huntress known as Lady Maria, a descendant of the Cainhurst lineage and a user of the art of blood manipulation.

Maria was trained by Gehrman himself, the first hunter, who harbored a kind of fascination for her. Gehrman's fascination with Maria is strangely reinforced by the appearance of the Doll we meet in the Hunter's Dream, which serves as our assistant throughout the game. The doll is identical to Maria and was created by Gehrman himself.

Lady Maria, like others involved in the massacre and the violation of Kos's corpse, was scarred and haunted by her own actions. This isn't explicitly stated in the game, but everything indicates that Maria took her own life after the events in the village, and her death marked Gehrman, who ended up creating the doll to remember his favorite student.

After her suicide, Maria is imprisoned in the Hunter's Nightmare, where we face her as another boss, the last one before the final boss of the DLC.

Orphan of Kos

When we arrive at the beach, in the Fisherman's Village area, we find Kos's discarded body, and from his entrails emerges the host of the Nightmare, the Orphan, the final boss of the DLC.

The Orphan of Kos is a humanoid creature, with the umbilical cord still connecting its body to the placenta, which it uses as its weapon.

The death of Kos's son ends the nightmare, and here the question remains whether the Great One cursed her son on purpose or if this was merely a consequence of the curse imposed on the hunters, since at the end of the battle a voice declares relief at the liberation of the unborn baby's spirit, indicating that the Orphan was trapped in the nightmare and its death allowed its spirit to reunite with its mother in the cosmos.

The Old Hunters is the pinnacle of what Bloodborne has to offer, both in terms of narrative and gameplay. The music here features real Latin lyrics and tells part of the characters' stories. The setting, the weapons, everything contributes to the lore, and yet there's still plenty of room for theories and interpretations. The DLC still holds many mysteries, and all that remains is to dream of the impossible return of this franchise in a new game or a remaster.

I conclude this article here. Leave your questions, suggestions, criticisms, and/or compliments in the comments. Thank you for reading, and until next time.