The 'Great Bulwark of Water'

Rom, and the definition of water

Throughout the haunting history of Yhranam and all factions within, a common theme has become utterably prevalent. Lakes, great lakes: 'bulwarks of water', as multiple sources account. But what is a bulwark? A defensive wall or a person, or a thing that acts in defence. How can a lake, or any body of water act as a bulwark? Through this question we will uncover what significance these 'lakes' hold, and how the terse wording of such entities veils their true nature.

'Great volumes of water serve as a bulwark guarding sleep, and an augur of the eldritch truth' - all variants of the Lake rune.

With this quote we procure both a definition of these lakes and two strange adjectives - the bulwark and the augur. Firstly, however, we tackle the phrase 'guarding sleep'. In Bloodborne, sleep may reference the Dream, or Dreamworlds as a concept. Sleep, notwithstanding its incorrigible relation to dreaming as a concept, has been explicitly referenced as an access point to a dream. In the alpha, grand chairs replaced the lamps - transporting you to the dream once your character has dozed off, not unlike how we find Micolash. 'Lullaby for Mergo' - a lullaby: sing to (someone) to get them to sleep, Megro - the perpetrator and possible creator of the Nightmare of Mensis; this lullaby in turn could be a means to sustain the nightmare, or access a new one. So in effect, these lakes may be halting either mankind achieving the wanted ascension to a dream (guarding sleep), or possibly acting as a barrier to protect those insightful from what horrors lie within.

But to be able to bar access to something, mustn't the place be a point of passing by default? Well, that is for later down the line - but to answer a previous question, I believe that these 'bulwarks of water' act as both the barrier and the protector at the same time. To evidence this we look at the first reference to lakes acting as a bulwark, which can be traced back to Byrgenwerth where coincidentally we find Rom deep down beneath a lake. But who is Rom, and what is her purpose?

Rom is not a great one, she is a kin - and owing the in-game description of 'the Byrgenwerth spider', she can be assumed to have a strong tie to the place, as no disciple of either the college of Byrgenwerth or later the Church would assume a great one to be produced or associated with anything man had built out of sheer religious reverence. There is also the fact of scientific progress to 'line a brain with eyes' that haunts the old college in the form of Gardens of Eyes. Micolash also refers to Rom as being blessed with eyes, by the great Kos (or some say Kosm) no less - of which we have no doubt is a certified great one.

So Byrgenwerth achieved partial ascension and created Rom, but what purpose does she serve? Once Rom is defeated the Blood moon rises, and the veil is finally lifted for those not insightful enough to ponder. Rom was halting the progress of the blood moon, and in turn either protecting or slowing whatever practices were happening in Yahar’gul. She was created for the sheer purpose of blanketing out the Moon Presence's influence from Yharnam and considering that Byrgenwerth was the closest faction to actually obtaining ascension - maybe contacting the great ones wasn't such a good idea after all. 

Perhaps it was a mistake, perhaps they were scared; Provost Willem himself points you towards his creation, knowing you will dispose of her. Maybe it wasn't meant to be, and Rom was the outlier. But notwithstanding the outcome, she was originally created to protect, to be a shield against the wall of dreams. That is the definition of a bulwark, and what ties the nature of the 'lake' has to the purpose of Rom seem eerily coincidental.

Maybe the bulwark isn't the lake itself but what lies within, as all other examples of 'lake' seem to less of directly halt passage instead of coincide with a separate being or event that serves the job instead. There is also the fact of Japanese translation, whereas the original text describing the 'lake' could refer to it as more of a wall, or a barrier than a defensive measure; this theory coincides well to the logic of how they operate. More examples of the 'lake' will be noted later on.

That brings us to the augur: a religious official that translates the signs of the gods and talks their will to man. Bloodborne likes the augur, and in its case the gods are the great ones of the officials are whatever they want to be. The augur of Ebrietas for example - a slimy phantasm that opens up cosmic portals to allow Ebrietas partially through, thus 'translating' the great ones presence to a physical form. The lakes act similarly: they allow contact with the dreamworlds and the great ones who reside - the means of which will be explained later.

So now we understand that lakes are indeed simultaneously a bulwark and an augur, but what is there to be said about the true nature of these 'great volumes of water' - how can a simple lake provide access to the realm of the gods? Are the great ones in fact sea creatures, are dreamworlds Atlantean cities which lie at the bottom of the ocean?

Well, yes, if you are the Church.

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The research hall and how they got it all wrong

I previously stated that the first reference point for the lake as an eldritch concept was found at Byrgenwerth, and that is correct - but we see in the Old Hunters expansion that this science is only a reflection of their first contact, or a study on what conditions those old Byrgenwerth Scholars found

the original great one: Kos.

'When the carcass of Kos washed up on the coast, its insides were teeming with tiny parasites, unlike any found in humans.' - Kos Parasite

We know that somewhere down the line Provost Willem heard of a giant sea beast washing up on the shore of a faraway fishing hamlet - and in their curiosity for ascension they sent Gehrman, Maria and other old hunters in search for eyes or any evidence of contact with their proposed 'higher lifeforms' at the location. Now, we aren't exactly sure what happened to Kos, but we know she was dead before the hunters arrived. Theories exist that she was actually killed by the fishing hamlet off in the water as most residents carry spears and there are numerous whaling boats around the ocean line, but that is not relevant. What is relevant is the host of parasites that lay inside Kos, and what happened to the residents that came into contact with them.

Phantasms, as they are sometimes called - 'augurs' of the great ones. It was true that these parasites carried a bit of otherworldly power within them, as before the hunters even arrived the town was overtaken. Men were twisted into strange fish-folk and women became entombed in snail shells. They all suffered, yet universally throughout they revered the great Kos - treated her like a mother, prayed at her corpse. It may have been fear, or even the same understanding that the church will once procure - but they wept when the hunters came and took her child. The Orphan of Kos may have been dead when the hunters found Kos (after massacring the villagers for eyes) or they may have killed him themselves. But they took whatever remained, left Kos on the beach and founded one of the core beliefs that would one day run in circles through the Healing Church and its twisted corridors.

The ocean, a universal starting point for higher understanding; the knowledge of 'lake' was presumably formed from Kos, and her sea-like form. Byrgenwerth may have discovered the use of 'great volumes of water' as one of these augurs, but the Healing Church positively obsessed over it later down the line. They created the Research Hall, a subsection of the church dedicated purely to the study of water. Patients were dragged off the streets in a manner not unlike the later developed orphanage and tested on. They were to listen to the drip-drop of water and translate inhuman mutterings of the great ones through the medium of 'lake'. And they were so close, but so far from the truth. Both Provost Willem and the Healing Church had misinterpreted Kos, and the truth was never to be properly understood.

To see the truth that they could not, we must find the medium. The Choir looked to the cosmos; the Research Hall looked to the sea. The Choir succeeded in contacting the higher plane, yet... so did the Research Hall, in a less evolved way. But how can they both be right, if their areas of study were so differentiated?

The Choir, even in their twisted understanding, almost, almost reached the proper conclusion, but Yharnam fell to the beasts before any truth came out of it.

'The sky and the Cosmos are one' - The Choir

Each faction held a facet of the truth, but not the whole. The sea, and the cosmos - are one: these 'bulwarks' 'great volumes of water' the 'lake', inexplicably intertwined with the cosmos, the sky. 

Dreamworlds, the true meaning of 'lake', it is found in the clouds.

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Evidence for madness

Our main example of this is obviously what we can see in the fishing hamlet: Yharnam, or the Hunter's Nightmare (which in of itself is simply a past state of Yharnam), lies beneath the sea. You can also see a snail lady fall from the sky while in the Hunter's Nightmare, and the fishing hamlet is quite literally accessed by ascending a tower and exiting at cloud level. But this new truth is not only found in the Old Hunters but evidenced all throughout all dreamworlds. 

The Hunter's Dream - what lies beneath, and partially above? Clouds, an all-encompassing layer. In the Nightmare Frontier you see the same, except even the masts from the Fishing Hamlet, as well as the Nightmare of Mensis can be seen at different levels. You see a parallel from Mensis, looking back towards the Frontier. And Rom, who lives on a lake beneath a lake: what do you see once you fall through the upper surface? Clouds, one whole layer with no sky. A lake in the sky, there is no real ground. This understanding of the metaphysical dream existing as different layers of clouds ties to the exactness of 'lake', and explains a simple misunderstanding of 'great volumes of water'. The bulwark, the passing point and the land of the gods, are the clouds - in any volume or place they may reside. That is the true meaning, and with it we see so much that could have been achieved, but never was in the world of Yharnam.

Tells you something of purpose, and false goals. 

Thank you for reading, I hope you enjoyed.

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