Episode 77: The Nightmare of Mensis and Mergo's Loft

The following podcasts were produced by Gary Butterfield and Kole Ross of Duckfeed.tv as part of the Bloodborne season of their show Bonfireside Chat. Gary Butterfield, Kole Ross, Davin Pavlas, and Scott Benson talk about the Nightmare of Mensis and Mergo's Loft.

Pre-Release: Dreams of the Deceased

This post examines the idea that the game worlds are dreams or memories of deceased people and the entire game takes place in the past.

Nightmares, The Scourge, and Night

The Major Themes

With the information released so far, some recurring themes have come forth: Nightmares/Dreams, Disease/Transformation, and Day/Night.

These themes will inform and direct the story, and figuring out how they play into the world and how they connect to each other is the key to understanding the game as a whole.

Now this is ultimately idle speculation, as I'm sure the game will outright answer and lot of this, but as someone who is invested in solving the lore of this game I think there is value in thinking about it now. That way, when the game is released I have an idea of what I'm looking for.

The big question is: How do these themes connect? On their own I can get a relatively clear picture, but I am coming up short when I try and imagine how they form a cohesive story.

Night meshes well with both Nightmares and Transformation; Nightmares happen at night typically and Transformation in Gothic horror is certainly linked to night. But how do Dreams/Nightmares and Disease/Transformation connect?

Disease can be linked to hallucinations and disconnecting from reality, but I do think the Nightmare World/Dream Refuge are connected to dreaming, and not just a symbol for psychoses or horrors of the mind (you can find out why in this article). This basically becomes a question of how are the Nightmare World and the Scourge of the Beast related?

Without understanding what the Nightmare World is, my pursuit to answer how the major themes connect ends, and speculation begins.

Speculation

My personal thought is that perhaps the Nightmare World is the manifestation of people's fears. Similar to the Fade in Dragon Age, there is a connection to the Nightmare World when humans sleep.

Following that line of thinking, The Scourge of the Beast then could be a disease that literally transforms people into the monsters of their nightmares. Could this mean the plague came from the Nightmare World? Maybe someone tries to access the Nightmare World through a ritual involving blood, and thus the plague began.

This isn't a great answer, but it's a theory. Unfortunately it creates more questions, and there is enough unknown already, I don't need to try and answers created by my own speculation.

Questions

• How do the themes of Dreams/Nightmares, Disease/Transformation, and Day/Night connect to one another?
• How are the Nightmare World and The Scourge of the Beast related?
• What is the Nightmare World?
• What do you guys think? Am I over thinking things? What are your thoughts on these questions?

To see the full list of questions, visit this page.

Nightmare and Dream References

Dream imagery in Bloodborne is about as prevalent as blood imagery, making it a major theme. But what is the significance of all of this? First, let’s look at the current references.

References

The first reference is The Nightmare World. Yharnam is a real, physical place set in the world that the PC exists in prior to the beginning of the game. Not much is known beyond its name, but The Nightmare world is a separate world that the messengers come from using portals that link the two. These creatures of the Nightmare World can only be seen by Hunters.

Next we have the Dream Refuge, also referred to as the hunter’s dream. I would like to clarify that “hunter’s dream”, as it is written on the menu when the first lamp is lit is not capitalized, signifying that it is not a name for the place, which we know to be the Dream Refuge, but a description of the place. Update: This has been effectively disproved by the Masaaki Yamagiwa Developer walkthrough video that was posted, in which the tranlation text refers to it as the "Hunter's Dream".

Next, we have a quote from Iosefka just before giving the PC the “Yharnam blood” transfusion:

Oh, don’t you worry. Whatever happens, you may think it all a mere bad dream.

The last reference is not to dreams, but sleeping. In the description of the Protector Ritual Masters, it says:

Whether in a graveyard or in the bedroom, there will always be humans that are sleeping. Among the the hunters survives the knowledge of individuals who pray for those resting, a unique ritualist.

I would like to highlight the fact that humans in a graveyard are referred to as sleeping. Resting or sleeping is sometimes used as a euphemism for death, but given how prevalent dream imagery is it is worth noting.

Speculation

So, what is there to take from all of this? I don’t think there are any real conclusions to draw, so instead I will just follow a line of reasoning and see what questions are generated from that.

To start, is the Dream Refuge part of the Nightmare World?

Based upon the presence of messengers, and the fact that it is reached by the lamppost portal, I would tentatively say that it is. In this context, could the Dream Refuge be a place of good inside a world of bad dreams? Even if it is, it might not be able withstand the terrors that await…

What is the nature of the Nightmare World/Dream Refuge?

I don’t there is enough evidence to create any real theories. I do think, however, that the Nightmare World does have something to do with dreams/dreaming versus being a creative term to describe an unpleasant place. There isn’t any strong evidence to support this, it just seems more likely because of the prevalence of dream imagery

Is this all a dream?

No. Once again, there is no evidence to suggest this, and I’m sure it will be a recurring theme throughout the game, but everything being a dream is lazy storytelling. Miyazaki thrives on uncertainty, so I think it is more likely that parts of the story will be questionable in their validity and reality, but not the events of the game wholesale. The idea that we might have an unreliable narrator in our PC is very interesting though, and it will be interesting to see how that unfolds.

How do the Ritual Masters fit into the Hunters/Nightmare World?

The biggest connections they have are that they pray for those resting (people who might be dreaming) and the fact that it is the Hunters who have knowledge of these individuals. Otherwise, I don’t believe that they have a huge part to play with the Hunters and the Nightmare World, but there isn’t much evidence either way.

Summary

There are plenty of references to dreams and nightmares already, and while how it all comes together is unknown, I am willing to make these informed guesses:

• The Dream Refuge is in the NIghtmare World 
• The NIghtmare World has something to do with dreaming
• The story of Bloodborne will not be just a dream.

Directory - Areas (Cont.)

Abandoned Old Workshop

Altar of Despair

Byrgenwerth

Cathedral Ward

Cathedral Ward, Upper

Central Yharnam -Iosefka's Clinic

Forbidden Woods

Forsaken Cainhurst Castle

Healing Church Workshop

Hemwick Charnel Lane

Hunter's Dream

Lecture Building

Moonside Lake

Nightmare Frontier

Nightmare of Mensis

Old Yharnam

Underground Ruins

Yahar'gul, Unseen Village

Yharnam - Overview