Dark Jack

Night of the Hunt - a Bloodborne RP

Victor is a relatively new Hunter, yes, but then so are most Hunters in Yharnam; in fact I'd say a majority are even newer than Victor, as the church has been trying to replenish their Hunters from losses not only to the scourge of beasts, but also to other factions, who kill or convert their Hunters.
Even the ones counted as the absolute elite, like Dietrich and Moira, have only been Hunters for about four years; remember, nearly all the Hunters of Yharnam were killed during the Night of the Blood Moon. Hunters like Raine from before then are extremely rare.

Night of the Hunt - a Bloodborne RP

What Ashgan said; I prefer to manage them in the OOC tab, but you can put them in the Characters tab if you want. The reason for this, by the way, is that players tend to come and go in RPs that go on for a long time. With CSs posted in the OOC and linked in the OP, I can simply change the OP to either mark a character as inactive or remove it from the list if that happens, as I have full control over the OP. If a player leaves with their character in the Characters tab, however, I can't do anything about that. That player's character will remain there forever unless the player themselves decide to mark it as inactive, potentially confusing people.
It's a relatively small inconvenience - I will still keep the list in the OP, after all - but it's just a small measure to avoid potential confusion. If you do keep more than one CS, by the way, please do tell which one you want linked in the OP.

As for Victor, he has been a Hunter for about two years.

Night of the Hunt - a Bloodborne RP

Always good to hear! I'm looking forward it.

It was Ashgan who brought it up, I'm pretty sure, though I have to admit that I was familiar with it already from listening to a bunch of Aviators' songs (I think I was introduced to him through one of his Dark Souls-songs). He's made some pretty nice songs, and No one will save you now is one of my mainstays I listen to while writing. I'm also a huge fan of Remains and a few others, but those two in particular feel like they fit the Bloodborne-theme really well. (I would say that No one will save you now would obviously fit the game since it was directly inspired by it, but Wake me when its over and Here come the ravens are both Bloodborne-inspired as well, yet I would never associate the mood in them with Bloodborne).
EDIT: May be wrong, actually... have searched the thread, and it seems the song hasn't been mentioned at all...?

Night of the Hunt - a Bloodborne RP

Humans become wolf-like? What about bloodlickers? Brick trolls? Rotted corpses? And of course, the already IC relevant church giants and servants? These are all humans corrupted by the scourge of beasts, yet none of them are particularly wolf-like.

Point being, the scourge of beasts can have many and varied ways of manifesting itself; lycantrophy just so happens to be the most common for humans. For animals, all signs point to them defaulting to gigantism by becoming unusually large and bulky.

Night of the Hunt - a Bloodborne RP

I'm going to play devil's advocate here if you'll indulge me, as I cannot really overcome my bias against blood echoes. The first point I want to make is that Rom's defeat is a game state trigger for a metric ton of things. The Doll's voice line being just one of them, I don't know that we can necessarily say that it is directly aimed at making commentary on Rom's blood echoes. It's easily imaginable that the designers figured "Okay, it's the halfway point in the game, player probably has a bunch of blood echoes by now. Seems appropriate to put the line in here", and they used Rom's death as the trigger to make it appear. In other words, the Doll doesn't so much say it in response to Rom's death as she does to the passage of time that has elapsed so far. To support my point, I would also point toward how killing Gascoigne makes the sun descend, and how killing Amelia turns dusk into night. Surely nobody would argue that it is their deaths that caused this, but simply a gameplay contrivance to advance the time of day in relation to the player's progress in the game. In a similar vein, I think Rom's death is simply the trigger for a bunch of new things in the game. Maybe I'm selling From short but for all their genius in world building, I think they frequently do make gameplay concessions; Souls titles are not story-driven games, so I feel that much of the things we are presented with have to be taken with a grain of salt.

Ashgan

I will start out by saying that, in theorizing about Bloodborne (and a lot of other games, for that matter), I try to avoid the meta-angle as much as possible due to how insanely difficult it makes theorizing. If I were to comment on the meta-reality of blood echoes, yes, I fully agree that their presence in Bloodborne is most likely just to mimic souls from Dark Souls mechanically (which, in turn, mimicked souls from Demon's Souls; I'd argue that if we get technical, souls (aside from Lord Souls and the like, which actually do have lore significance) didn't make sense contextually in Dark Souls either and most likely only were there because they were in Demon's Souls and still sort of made sense thematically in Dark Souls).
In isolation I would probably dismiss blood echoes in a heartbeat, but they don't exist in isolation, and dismissing them would create a problematic precedence. If blood echoes aren't real, but just there for the sake of mechanical gameplay, what else can we just discard on that basis? Parrying in Bloodborne, I'd say, is probably something added solely for the sake of gameplay. The follow-up visceral attack (that is also doable in other, non-parry situations) might have/most likely has lore implications, but parrying with guns is almost certainly just for gameplay. Bloodtinge, too, probably just exists to have a stat for blood-damage to mechanically scale with. Arcane? Doesn't make a lick of sense.
And once we start, where do we stop? People have spent huge amounts of time pouring over the details of visual design of so many things in the game, down to particular similarities in design and recurrence of certain colors, trying to find meaning in it all. Who says it means anything, though? Could just be to clue in the player of certain behaviors and strengths/weaknesses, or just to make things look cool/scary/disturbing. Everything but specifically written-down lore comes into question and different theorists can pretty much just pick and choose what they want to take into consideration, because anything can be there solely for gameplay or aesthetic reasons.
Considering things I know are most likely there just for the game rather than being "true canon" is a choice, yes, but not one I've made idly. It's a matter of framing one's assumptions, because if you alter the frame for one particular thing, you have to alter it for everything... that, or you pretty much make the lore-equivalent to invoking deus ex machina to resolve narrative problems you don't know what to do with. To me it's everything or nothing.
Likewise, saying "killing Rom is the trigger for lots of things, so they probably just did it because it felt like a convenient time" is the same sort of selective reasoning, hand-waving the situation because... well, honestly it's probably true, at least partially. But once again, once we start, when do we stop?
There's also just the matter of Rom's death generally just being that much more significant an event than anything else in the game up to that point. With Gascoigne and Amelia, yes, I fully agree, the changing of the time of day was almost certainly just as a convenient demonstration/reminder of the passage of time. What happens after killing Rom, however, I just can't accept as being nothing but it getting a bit later in the night. Too many things happen too suddenly and too unnaturally. Besides, we pretty much witness the blood moon being called after the fight; it doesn't happen on its own, but is actively being caused by someone or something.

I also wonder what the line is like in the original Japanese script, and whether it would have a different implication.

Ashgan

I undertook the search for this and actually managed to find a quite interesting compilation of retranslations from the game. Here is the translation of the Doll's equivalent line in Japanese:

"Hunter-sama... I feel *familiarity coming from you... It's because Hunters are inheritors of the old **wills as I expected..."
"*懐かしさ doesn't translate well. It's a fondness for something in the past, like nostalgia.
**意志 - ishi - Oddly enough, this isn't the same ishi used to describe blood echoes. This form of ishi is used to describe volition, will, etc."

The Doll (Japanese)

So it does actually seem to reference something else than blood echoes, but also reinforces my assumption that there is something more at play here. "Inheritors of the old wills"... Ah, can mean many things. I would have said that it could be the will of past Hunters, but she seems to reference that Hunters collectively are inheritors of these old wills, so I don't know... It still feels like it references some kind of originator or progenitor. Interesting.

As for dogs and crows (and animals in general, I guess), no, they almost certainly haven't received blood treatment... but it's probably not too outlandish to figure that they could have gotten Old Blood, and possibly associated blood echoes, from feeding on corpses.
Will think on it some more, but generally take the details of my prior theory with a grain of salt; it was pretty much a flow of consciousness-kind of thing. I practically made it up as I went. I'll most likely change my mind about some things as well in time, it was just what I thought of in the moment.

Night of the Hunt - a Bloodborne RP

You know, I was just going about my business after writing that quick snippet for the clinic-scene, but for whatever reason something kept nagging me and I kept thinking about Bloodborne. The (false) Paleblood Hunters reminded me of the Hunter's Dream and the Doll, and something that really stood out to me from the Doll's dialogue when I heard it on my recent playthrough of the game came back to me:

Good hunter... Your presence somehow soothes... I sense the ancient echoes, they course your veins...

The Doll

This was remarkable because I wondered at the time what had triggered her to say this, as I realized that she had made no such comment after me killing Amygdala, despite it being undeniably ancient. So I looked it up, and the trigger for this line is apparently to have killed Rom.
But that doesn't make sense; Rom is explicitly referenced as a Byrgenwerth scholar, which would make her, at most, a human lifetime older than the Healing Church, if she happened to be basically about to die of old age when she ascended. There is very little means of determining how long ago it was, but Redgrave (author of The Paleblood Hunt) estimated that Gehrman had been held in the Hunter's Dream for about a hundred years. We also know that Master Willem was alive at the time of her ascension, and that he remains so at the time of the game; Willem (despite surprisingly having more HP than most of the huntsmen found in the game) also seems to be almost entirely human (aside from a bit of weirdness on the back of his neck), and he seems both very weak and very old. His research/Rom might have extended Willem's life past its natural span, but still, it sort of sets some parameters on how old Rom might reasonably be.

Now, even if I'm super generous with this and presume Rom to be in excess of two hundred years old (which would make Willem... surprisingly youthful for his age), it's still somewhat arguable whether this would make her "ancient". Still, it probably wouldn't be wrong to label her as such... but then I considered that Rom is the only one to elicit this response. Bypassing her, it is possible to kill Amygdala, Ebrietas and Queen Yharnam, not to mention various other, obviously and undeniably ancient creatures in the old labyrinth; all of which are are definitely much older than Rom. (Not to mention that you can literally kill Rom in the old labyrinth before encountering her in the lake, and still not get that dialogue.)
But even if we disregard the old labyrinth for being extra optional, and Amygdala for being optional as well - if we consider only the things one needs to kill before getting to Rom - we still encounter a problem: the Shadows of Yharnam. Even these guys, being Pthumerians, are much older than Rom, and the player needs to kill them to reach Rom.
So... how does that line make sense? It could just be that Rom possesses and passes on the blood echoes of Kos, but even that brings up new questions, like why Rom would have Kos' blood echoes (unless Rom killed Kos?) and why Kos is apparently more ancient than Amygdala?

So I looked up the lore on blood echoes yet again, one of the things that has always sort of been that throwaway, manga-esque bit that was just an excuse to have "souls, but in Bloodborne". It confirmed what I remembered (and wrote for the OP):

Blood Echoes are the echo of someone's will. Like a ghost is the lingering image of a person, Blood Echoes are the lingering presence of their will that stays long after the person has passed away.

Bloodborne Fandom Wiki

But then I read on, looking specifically for something that would explain Rom triggering that dialogue, and I read a trivia line about them that I have read before, but which now hit me a whole lot harder:

In the Japanese version, it is called "Dying Wishes of the Blood".

Bloodborne Fandom Wiki

Not just "dying wish" or "dying will", as I remembered, but specifically the dying wishes "of the Blood". Then I read it all again. And again.
"Blood Echoes are the echo of someone's will. Like a ghost is the lingering image of a person, Blood Echoes are the lingering presence of their will that stays long after the person has passed away."
Nowhere in that does it say that the dying will passed on is that of the creature slain in that moment, nor does it say that it is echoes of those slain by that creature. It occurred to be that with the Orphan of Kos, the player actually witness the orphan being born before the battle; it only became active once approached by the player, and has thus not killed anyone to accumulate blood echoes from... yet one receives a substantial amount of them for slaying it.

My theory, then, is this: all blood echoes, from the measly amount received from huntsmen and crows to those from the strongest bosses, are echoes of the Great Ones; specifically, given their name in Japanese, dead Great Ones. The fact that the Doll only sense the soothing "ancient echoes" after killing Rom, then, is not because Rom's blood echoes were especially ancient, but rather because killing her has lowered the barrier separating the waking world from the Great Ones.
In other words, it is not that the player comes into possession of new echoes that are ancient, but that something ancient now echoes strongly and palpably inside of the player... perhaps the same thing that seems to drive everyone else mad after killing Rom? Something now echoing strongly in their blood? And if so... it is very interesting that something that drives everyone else (except the especially powerful, namely Hunters and Queen Annalise) mad is "soothing" to the Doll.

Night of the Hunt - a Bloodborne RP

Just half a second after Marcus threw the axe to Joseph, a distant cry, muffled by the walls and door surrounding them yet still easily audible,could be heard. To a native Yharnamite like Marcus, the horrid shriek would likely be easily recognizable as the voice of a beast, though he might not have the experience to determine which one, especially since the church tries to limit the knowledge of the public regarding beasts.
The Messengers also seem to get a little agitated. The little ones crowding on top of the dead suddenly fall off their cots entirely, either scattering on the floor or disappearing into tiny portals. Within a couple of seconds, the number of Messengers in the room has halved.
Approximately twenty seconds after the shriek, the cry of a corvid followed.

Night of the Hunt - a Bloodborne RP

Eastern Yharnam, relatively near the Hunter's clinic, bottom of the elevator

So says the ex-Hunter of the Harrow, Victor thought grimly, inspecting Raine's eyes more closely than ever before for signs of the scourge as a fit of paranoia overwhelmed him. For a moment he actually fully expected his fellow Hunter to abruptly sprout fangs, fur and claws, and Victor realized with mild displeasure that if this was to happen with the current formation of their little group, Raine would be able to disembowel Adelicia, or rip her head off, or brutally murder her in other bestially imaginative ways long before anyone could do anything to stop him. Well, aside from Adelicia herself, but there was no way she could stand against a Hunter turned beast.
Somewhere, far to the west nearer the city center, a piercing, high-pitched wail echoed through the streets of Yharnam, inhuman yet unlike the howls of regular scourge beasts, causing Victor to offer silent thanks to the gods for having placed him so far away from it. That sound was unmistakably the cry of a cleric beast, and Victor, for one, had no desire to face off against something like that. Other Hunters might have suicidal aspirations to fight ever-stronger opponents to increase their own power, but not him. Victor was quite satisfied slaking his bloodthirst on the weaker critters.

“Yeah,” he said out loud, holding up his silver sword to let it gleam in the subtle light of the nearby lampposts. “This is the only cure for the scourge.” He reached for his belt with his left hand, retrieving the blunderbuss hanging from his belt there and grasping the firearm properly, hooking his fingers in the trigger to be ready to fire. “Just so you're prepared, we're going to kill these people. It's going to get bloody.”
The sound of the elevator descending was getting much louder, and Victor was suddenly assailed by an urgent sense of dread, causing him to spin around and stare intensely at the elevator coming down the last few yards, teeth bared and sword grasped tightly. He was certain that something was riding the elevator down to them, ready to ambush him while his back was turned, before Raine could do more than yell in warning.
The elevator – a twelve-by-twelve feet metal platform with a very obvious button in the middle floor – arrived at the bottom, and the folding door slid aside. Aside from a worn, dirty-brown hat in the near-leftmost corner, it was empty.

Victor allowed himself a sigh of relief, trying to slow his heartbeat back down to its resting pace now that he was no longer fearing for his life. Somewhere in the distance, possibly to the northwest, he heard a noise the likes of which he had never heard before, sounding vaguely like the cry of a corvid. Could possibly be an unusually large corrupted crow. So... cleric beast to the west, crows to the northwest, and mad Yharnamites on the plateau east of them. This Night of the Hunt was escalating much quicker than expected, especially considering that beasts tended to get more active later in the night, and the sun had not even fully set yet.
Frowning at the threshold of the elevator, Victor shot a glance at the snoring giant to his right, his eyes going from its axe to the bell around its neck. He was not sure why he kept looking at the bell, only that it felt important somehow... until he suddenly, not even knowing why, turned to look at the corpse of the church servant again. Giants were former servants. Servants wore bells too. This servant did not have a bell.
Why? That the Yharnamites had taken his staff was one thing – at least a staff could be of some use – but why would they have stolen the bell? A bell was useless; the only reason giants and servants wore them was so that citizens were warned that one of their kind was near, since they were undeniably carriers of the scourge and a little dangerous to be near.
He turned back to the giant again, looking at its peacefully resting face. Then he turned to the others.
“Should we just leave the giant here?” he asked, being mostly interested in Raine's opinion. “He might be useful... or dangerous. We could wake him up and try to bring him along, or kill him in his sleep.”

Night of the Hunt - a Bloodborne RP

Just in case you aren't one to take silence/lack of objection as agreement, you're free to go ahead, Habibi.

Night of the Hunt - a Bloodborne RP

Hmm... arguable whether I'd say that the left hand doesn't look like a human hand; the lack of details and general stylization of the motif makes it hard to tell. My assumption was that it was just a hand with fingers outstretched and turned sideways relative to the perspective of the viewer/artist, and the rest being the feather/fin wrapping around the arm and hand. Still... it hadn't even occurred to me that the thing might not be something on or in her arm, but could be an actual part of her arm. At first I thought it might be an early stage of a lost child of antiquity, but it just doesn't look right for that. Then I thought maybe it was actually a fin, like with the fishmen from the fishing village... but why would Cainhurst venerate those?
Then, playing some more Bloodborne yesterday and finding a certain rune, it hit me: I was thinking too narrowly. I don't think its a feather or a fin anymore; I think it's a leaf. I think the arm bears a striking resemblance to the arms of a cauliflower Hunter (otherwise known as Lumenwood Kin) that you get from equipping the Milkweed rune, only possibly even further along since it has grown a leaf. If so, the implications are quite interesting... It's as if she has somehow limited the transformation to just part of herself, becoming kin while retaining her humanity... not unlike Hunters. (EDIT: In fact it's a striking parallel to Hunters being able to beastify just one hand to perform visceral attacks.)
I still have no clue what the doughnut is supposed to be, though. There's nothing in the game I'd say really looks anything like it.

And yeah, I'd spotted the connection to the tidbit from the Old Hunter Trousers myself (rather, I remembered that it was mentioned somewhere, but not specifically which piece of legwear had the lore attached to it). What fascinates me so much about the knights, however, is that they predate the old Hunters, meaning that this superstition existed even before Byrgenwerth discovered their medium of blood healing... which meant that they knew beasts were people even long before the Healing Church.
And the fact that these one-legged statues are found specifically at Cainhurst, along with carvings of a maybe-not-quite-human woman... I must admit, I kind of feel the idea of the Vilebloods having been different even before the Healing Church galvanize with this.

Also, happy New Year whenever you hit midnight!