Hunters Dream

The Great Ones

Inside the college lies a blindfolded woman, wearing distinctive robes, which identify her as a member of the choir, the highest order of the Healing Church.

Though she may be blindfolded, she quickly proves a formidable enemy. She holds not only powers of the arcane, like those seen cast by the blue men earlier, but can summon some form of tentacled grasp to harm you. When you finally overcome her, you are able to take the key to the lunarium, a spot on the college's terrace overlooking the lake, with a view of the moon. Here, you meet Master Willem.
The Master Willem you see now is nothing like the man seen in your vision. This man is desiccated, and overgrown by some sort of lichen. As you attempt to speak with him, the man only has the strength to point to the moon over the lake, and groan. You step out onto the edge of the lunarium, and look out over the lake. The moon's reflection seems oddly strong, as if it were not a mere reflection, but a source of light itself. You take a deep breath, and step out, off the edge.

You fall for a long time, but land unharmed, upon the surface of a lake beneath the lake. A great creature crawls here. Rom, the Vacuous Spider, is not like the monsters you have faced before. He's much more powerful, much more ancient, and much more important. A mere human, or whatever you are now, is inconsequential to him at best, and he will not even pay you any mind until you attempt to harm him.

Rom is not the most powerful Great One, nor the oldest Great One, you will encounter, but he is a Great One. As you gain insight into this world, you understand it for what it truly is, and you begin to understand the scope of things. You understand the world better, but to understand the world better is to dive further and further into the depths of insanity. Your mind has been touched by the Great Ones, and there is no difference between insight and madness.

It is by the power of blood that you are able to slay Rom. You are awarded for your kill with the cold blood of the kin of the cosmos. After slaying him, you are granted with another vision, or perhaps for the first time you are seeing reality. A woman in white stares at the moon, now blood red, and taking up the entire sky.

Suddenly, you are back in the Cathedral Ward. A church to the right of the Grand Cathedral, the one you were told to visit back in the Forbidden Forest. Now, though, you have enough insight into the world you are in to see things you could not before. A creature— Another great one, lies before you. A humanoid creature, though its limbs mimic the posture of a spider. This Great One attempts to pick you up, as the door behind it swings open.

Should it pick you up, the voice of a worshiper begs it not to kill you, instead asking it to have some fun with you first. You are transported to another college. This is the School of Mensis, which branched off from Byrgenwerth, though its own experiments with the Great Ones have caused it to be lost in the Nightmare, a realm entirely apart from the one which Yharnam lies in.

Should you explore the Nightmare college, and see what has become of those poor fools trapped in the nightmare, you may find the door to the outside. Another portal leads you into the Nightmare Frontier, a vicious place filled with creatures that mimic the werewolves now seen in Yharnam, but which are notably distinct. Perhaps, instead, the beast plague mimics these creatures?

Other beings here are covered in eyes, and merely looking upon them may bring you to madness. The more you understand them, the more quickly this frenzy shall set in.
As you fight your way through masses of tentacles, faceless giants, and other eldritch beings, you finally meet, this time up close, Lord Amygdala, one of the spidery Great Ones seen before (or, perhaps all of those great ones are Lord Amygdala, or some extension of it).

After managing to slay Amygdala, you return to the church, and venture forth into the Unseen Village of Yahar'Gul. This is a city hidden within the very walls of Yharnam, and it is the stuff of nightmares. Great Ones as large as buildings hang off of steeples as far as the eye can see, watching, and guarding, the path onward. The poor fools unlucky enough to wander into the Unseen Village now fall under the spell of bell maidens, dying over and over, only to resurrect in an explosion of blood, and hunt on.

Deeper in, creatures made of human limbs and skulls patrol the streets. It is possible to come across a group of men, working with the monsters of Yahar'Gul, who have been blending into the Yharnam crowds, and abducting the weak to take them here for an amount of time that is impossible to determine.

At the end of this nightmare, the residents of Yahar'Gul make a last-ditch attempt to stop you, summoning a colossal thing made of a writhing mass of corpses. This is the One Reborn, and you fight this monstrosity while being assaulted by the residents of Yahar'Gul on all sides. You emerge victorious, and continue on.

During your travels in Yahar'Gul, you find a key to the Upper Cathedral Ward. There, you are greeted by bizarre slugs, whose bites bring insanity. You are also able to find a choir set of your own here, and as you learn more about the choir, you discover that they chose to continue the work being done in Byrgenwerth, though Master Willem, it would seem, began to have his own doubts. After diverging from Master Willem's path, they attempted to make contact with the cosmos not through means beneath the ground, in the labyrinth where the first Great One had been discovered, but by turning their eyes to the skies.

Now a Great One called the Celestial Emissary resides high in the Cathedral Ward, in Lumenflower Gardens. These beings not of our world, from the very cosmos, are the same as the ones seen in the canyon of the Forbidden Woods. Even they, though, are mere guardians for the true secret of the Healing Church. The source of the Healing Church's power, the one who granted them the ability to partially summon herself in a mass of tentacles, Ebrietas, Daughter of the Cosmos, resides beyond this, at the Altar of Despair. Much like Rom, Ebrietas pays you little attention until you attempt to lay hands on her. She's a much stronger threat than Rom was, however. The power of blood has hardened you enough to slay her too, and you continue on your journey.