Main Characters | Secondary Characters | Enemies and Bosses | Great Ones | Covenants | The Old Hunters | Comic
This page details all the major enemies and bosses in Bloodborne. Head back through here for the other character pages. Warning: unmarked spoilers ahead.
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Central Yharnam
Huntsmen
Torches included, pitchforks optional.
Due to the infestation of the Scourge, this is what the mob that has risen for the Beast Hunt have become. The fever-like urge to hunt remains, but they themselves have already been infested with the Scourge of the Beast. Unaware of this fact, they continue to search for prey to hunt and kill. Perhaps through their murky eyes, humans are seen as the true beasts.
Voiced by: Ryan Gage, Ryan Morris
The most basic enemy in Bloodborne, mobs are found in areas all around Yharnam, hunting beasts in packs. They've been afflicted with the beast plague, however, and are no longer able to tell the difference between man and beast, yet are beginning to morph into the monsters they once hunted.
- Ax-Crazy: The Scourge has filled the afflicted Huntsmen with an insatiable bloodlust, driving them to stalk the streets in armed groups and kill anything they come across.
- Booby Trap: The Huntsmen in the Forbidden Woods have set up a few. There are two spiked logs on ropes that will swing down if you step in a certain spot that they've covered with planks. There's also a pitfall hidden by planks of wood that drops you into a pit full of hungry Crows. In Yharnam proper, they have an Indiana Jones-style rolling boulder trap set up on the far end of the Great Bridge, just before you fight Gascoigne. It's triggered by a torch-and-shield guy setting it on fire and a brick troll giving it a whack to set it rolling.
- Creepily Long Arms: One of the beginning traits of their mutation is their long arms and legs. The first limb to show this is the left arm. This is because this the limb closest to the heart, giving a glimpse of the tainted Old Blood in the works.
- Creepy Asymmetry: Their lefts arms are longer than the other and covered in beast fur.
- Glass Cannon: They’re easier to stagger and much weaker defensively than many later threats, but their attacks can still maim you.
- The Goomba: They are the most common enemies you will encounter in the game, but even if the player is at a reasonably high level they can be very dangerous in groups.
- Kill It with Fire: Some mob members carry torches as weapons, others throw Molotov Cocktails.
- Luckily, My Shield Will Protect Me: Some mob members carry crappy wooden shields, which take a free hit for them before they get stunned.
- Long-Range Fighter: Every fifth (or so) Huntsman carries a firearm. Usually it's breech-loading cartridge-based rifle.
- Never My Fault: When attacking you, they'll regularly blame you for all the beasts that roam Yharnam.
- Our Werewolves Are Different: The further along into the game you are, the more wolf like they will become.
- Our Zombies Are Different: Well, they're alive, to begin with, but they're the closest analogue to hollows we get in this game in terms of behavior; clumsy, malformed, violent, near-mindless animals that aren't too bad on their own but deadly in groups. Like Hollows, and unlike most portrayals of zombies, they're larger than regular humans and retain a fair deal of intelligence, still being able to speak, use weapons, tame animals, and set traps, among other things.
- Sanity Slippage: After being infected with the plague, they're off to kill all that they see, and it's only going to get worse.
- Talkative Loon: They talk at the player as they fight, telling them to get away and sadly blaming you for their troubles with their final breaths.
- Tomato in the Mirror: They're infected with the same plague they're supposed to be purging, but they apparently don't even realize it. Furthermore, they seem to think you are a beast.
- Torches and Pitchforks: Just two of the numerous weapons carried by the mob.
- Tragic Monster: As vicious as they are, it's a quite literally rabid, unnatural fury. They have moments of lucidity where they scream to God for help.Please god...
Help me! Oh god!
Please god, help me. I must live.
We're cursed. We're all cursed.
We're finished... there's no hope. - You Fight Like a Cow: Some of them will shout curses and insults as they attack.
Wheelchair Huntsman
Among the mob hunting the beasts, old men on wheelchairs can be found. Rich elderly men in wheelchairs are a common sight in Yharnam, and often are armed with firearms from the old wars. For those that can’t move well, there’s only one way to defend from the beasts, and the only mean they have left is violence.
Voiced by: Matthew Reeves
Geriatric, wheelchair-bound old men inflicted with the Scourge. Due to their lack of mobility, they provide support and defend themselves the only way they can: with firepower.
- Evil Old Folks: Just as batshit as the rest of the hunter mob.
- Gatling Good: One of the variants has a hand-cranked Gatling gun setup on their wheelchair.
- Handicapped Badass: They're all restricted to wheelchairs, but they can deal heavy damage.
- Hand Cannon: One variant comes equipped with a huge single-shot handgun; it takes a while to reload, but a shot from it it deals a lot of damage and kicks like a mule if it connects!
- Kill It with Fire: One variant all wield Flamesprayers.
- Laughing Mad: A VERY powerful one indeed! Both variants will do this frequently when attacking you, which makes them even more off-putting than usual.
- Our Werewolves Are Different: The same as regular huntsmen, the further you progress, the more the curse takes hold.
- Never My Fault: Like regular huntsmen, they'll place blame on you for the beasts that are attacking Yharnam.
- Plague Doctor: The ones that wield Flamesprayers wear crow masks that look similar to Eileen's.
- Sanity Slippage: After being infected with the plague, they're off to kill all that they see, and it's only going to get worse.
- Tomato in the Mirror: They're infected with the same plague they're supposed to be purging, but they don't seem to realize it.
Large Huntsman
And beasts arose like nightmare fiends, as eager as starved ticks; yet, reason, guilt and conscience were dwelling underneath.
The next step in the mutation for the hunter mob members, on their way to becoming Scourge Beasts. Their limbs become longer, they start becoming hairier, roar instead of speaking, and fight much more ferociously. The only things left that are human about them are walking on two legs and using weapons.
- Creepily Long Arms: Being further along in their beasthood than the other mob members, their limbs are even longer.
- Giant Mook: They're basically bigger, tougher versions of the hunter mob, using a lot of the same weapons and still working alongside them.
- Improbable Weapon User: Some of them carry a type of farming tool called a broadfork
. Because of their size, they can effectively swing it with one hand. Some wield Rifle-Spears instead. Others have those old-timesy two-man hacksaws (which they use as swords). - Kill It with Fire: Some carry torches as weapons.
- Lightning Bruiser: Much stronger and faster than the regular mob.
- Our Werewolves Are Different: They're not quite werebeasts yet, but they're not human anymore, either. They're the in-between stage.
- Torches and Pitchforks: Although unlike the regular hunter mob, the mutated hunters can swing their pitchfork with one arm.
- Wolf Man: These Huntsmen are still transitioning between human to full-on Scourge Beast, and so are a still-humanoid mishmash of both.
Scourge Beast
Taken and transformed by the plague at a very early stage, these beasts are extremely fast and powerful, capable of closing in on Hunters in the blink of an eye. They can easily take Hunters by surprise with their erratic and unpredictable movements. Extreme care is required when dealing with them, especially when encountered in pairs.
The final stage of the plague's mutation on the hunter mobs; they get down on all fours and fully transform into werewolf beasts.
- Achilles' Heel: Fire, first and foremost, like all others who have become beasts. Also, like others who became beasts, they’re also vulnerable to Serrating Damage as well, so weapons such as the Saw Cleaver or Saw Spear are ideal for facing them.
- Beef Gate: You find your first Scourge Beast alone, wounded and chewing on a corpse and blocking the way out of the clinic. You're intended to be killed by it, so you can acquire your weapons in the Hunters' Dream, but it's entirely possible to beat it down with your bare fists (eventually) or just dash past it and hope you reach the Central Yharnam lamp before it catches you.
- Body Horror: The Scourge Beasts that appear in Yahar'gul after the Blood Moon event have no skin. They're just walking piles of mismatched bones and organs. Most notably, their short tails have been replaced with what is clearly a human leg.
- Confusion Fu: Because of their bestial behavior, their attacks are more difficult to predict.
- Elite Mooks: They are usually some of the strongest respawning enemies in their area, with such high damage output they'd probably qualify as Boss in Mook's Clothing if not for their Glass Cannon status.
- Glass Cannon: They have high offense and good health, but they have fairly low defense, are easy to stunlock, are very, very, very, VERY vulnerable to fire and have a really obvious parry window.
- It Can Think: Although their humanity has been left behind, the beasts still demonstrate a sense of impressive cunning and strategizing.
- Jump Scare: There are a few instances throughout the story in which they will perform scripted ones towards The Hunter.
- One early instance is down in the lower parts of Old Yharnam in which one will burst out of a building to attack.
- Another Scourge Beast in Old Yharnam awaits atop the roof of a building for any unfortunate victim to take an item off of a nearby corpse out of curiosity before pouncing on them as well. This one's attempt however can be downplayed, as it can be spotted rather easily from a distance, giving one ample time to prepare or even simply bring it down themselves.
- One other instance is early on in the Upper Cathedral Ward, in which one will leap through a window upon claiming an item off of another corpse; the kicker here is that the beast will wait until the Hunter has already begun to walk away before making their presence known.
- In addition to the above, it's also entirely possible for Scourge Beasts to simply pounce on you without any warning or indicators, which means you must always be aware of your surroundings whenever one or more are nearby.
- Lightning Bruiser: These werewolves are fast, durable, and brutally ferocious, especially in comparison to the Large Huntsmen. Thankfully, they have a few telegraphed attacks that leave them open.
- Our Werewolves Are Different: They are unable to switch back to their human forms, with their transformations instead being the result of a progressive mutation into a half-human half-wolf hybrid. Their transformations and attacks also don't seem to be affected by the moon or its different phases either. Also, rather curiously, they are also far more vulnerable to fire-based attacks (traditionally a vampire or zombie weakness) than attacks from weapons such as The Kirkhammer or Ludwig's Holy Blade, which are both explicitly stated to be made with silver.
- Running on All Fours: Unlike the prior stages, they now run on all fours having achieved full beasthood, and naturally also use their fangs and claws instead of weapons.
Rabid Dog/Hunting Dog
On the night of the Hunt, it becomes impossible to distinguish the sounds of the hunter mob from the snarls and howls of their companion beasts.
The canine companions of the enemies. The Rabid Dogs mostly accompany the Huntsmen, and the Hunting Dogs are mostly found with the Hemwick Grave Women.
- Elite Mooks: The Hunting Dogs are more powerful, with lunging bites and swift dodging abilities.
- Expy: To the Undead Attack Dogs from Dark Souls.
- Fragile Speedster: They run fast and bite hard, but gunshots automatically knock them down, and they can only take a few hits before going down for good.
- Mix-and-Match Critter: The ones that appear in Mergo's Loft have had their heads switched with the Carrion Crows.
- Mythical Motifs: The Mix-and-Match versions that appear in Mergo's Loft may possibly be based on Tengu, what with the word itself meaning "sky dog".
- Right-Hand Attack Dog: They are often accompanying the Huntsmen on their patrol for beasts.
- Spikes of Doom: The Hunting Dogs have bony spikes tied onto their bodies and muzzle.
Huntsman's Minion
Don't let their slow and lumbering walk fool you. Despite their low mental capacity, when agitated they can deal devastating blows.
Voiced by: Ryan Morris
Another enemy found in numerous areas around Yharnam. Instead of turning into wolfmen, the Minions are former Yharnam residents that have transformed into huge, lumbering brutes that often carry concrete bricks as weapons (and are also wolfmen, to a lesser extent than the regular Huntsmen).
- Boulder Bludgeon: Many Minions carry concrete bricks
- Carry a Big Stick: The ones who don't carry bricks literally carry giant logs and statues like a battering ram.
- Dumb Muscle: They're slow mentally and physically, but they're still strong.
- Even Evil Has Loved Ones: Can be heard to say "So cold... dear sister" if you can get close enough to one without alerting them.
- Improvised Weapon: Some use statues or logs as battering rams or fight with just their bare fists.
- Mighty Glacier: They hit hard, but their attacks are often incredibly telegraphed and easily evaded.
- Never My Fault: Much like the Huntsmen, the Minions have still retained the ability to speak, so they can also blame you for the outbreak.
- Piñata Enemy: They commonly drop 2-4 Blood Vials. Combine that with how easy it is to parry or dodge them and they'll be an important source of health in the early and late game.
- Shout-Out: to The Hunchback of Notre Dame.
- Smash Mook: They have little strategy other than "close distance with enemy and smash them with blunt object".
Carrion Crows
Among the crows that eat rotting carrion, there are those that favor human meat. Those bloated, ugly monsters drag themselves between the corpses feasting on the once rich citizens of Yharnam. They are highly aggressive and are attracted by the smell of blood. They will attack humans if they get close, so that those that live will become carrion for them to eat.
Found in various areas around Yharnam, Carrion Crows are gigantic crows that have been mutated by the Scourge.
- Creepy Crows: They're crows almost as big as you, nearly flightless from gorging on the corpses left behind by the hunt.
- Eyeball-Plucking Birds: Referenced. They often drop items that are labeled "Pebbles", but whose graphic strongly resembles petrified eyeballs.
- Jump Scare: They often hide in patches of long grass, in corners where they are hard to see, or up on perches above you. Coupled with their loud screams, expect this to happen a lot.
- Mix-and-Match Critter: The ones that appear in Mergo's Loft have had their heads switched with the Rabid Dogs.
- Mythical Motifs: The Mix-and-Match versions that appear in Mergo's Loft may possibly be based on Tengu, what with the word itself meaning "sky dog".
- Screaming Warrior: Their monstrous screams are extremely fucking loud.
Labyrinth Rats
Scourge of the world, the pestilence bringer, ever-present yet hardly welcome. Hunters should fear rats, particularly when the unruly mischief is starved and blood thirsty.
Massive, mutated rats found in the aqueducts of Central Yharnam and in the Chalice Dungeons.
- Body Horror: They have missing patches of hair, and some display grotesque tumors and insect eyes.
- Poisonous Person: The some of ones found in the Chalice Dungeons exude toxic fumes.
- Rodents of Unusual Size: They're about as big as the Rabid Dogs.
Rotted Corpse
Nestled in the fetid, rotten broth of the sewers are rotten corpses, pathetic beings who pitifully grasp at some last semblance of life while slithering along in the malodorous slime.
The still-living remains of drowned Scourge victims, encountered in the sewers of Yharnam and the waters of the Forbidden Forest.
- Creepily Long Arms: Their arms seem even longer now that they're rotting corpses.
- Half the Man He Used to Be: They are missing their legs, and are forced to slowly crawl on the ground.
- Playing Possum: Some of them remain motionless on the ground waiting for you to take a step too close to them.
- Zombie Puke Attack: Vomit acid on the Hunter.
Maneater Boar
A beast of this size will find no trouble trampling an unsuspecting Hunter. If you hear a beastly squeal and it starts to charge, you have but one option: flee.
A pig that has been mutated by the Scourge.
- Ass Shove: Performing a Visceral attack from behind on one results in an unsettling sight of you appearing to be giving this little piggy a colonoscopy.
- Breath Weapon: They can breathe gas that inflicts Slow Poison. The ones in the Nightmare of Mensis inflict Frenzy instead.
- Bullfight Boss: It frequently charges toward you, leaving its back vulnerable to your visceral attack. However, it'll often land a back kick before or right after a visceral attack.
- Degraded Boss: Variant; the first Maneater Boar you will likely encounter is in the sewers of Central Yharnam. The same enemy appears in multiple locations outside of the Chalice Dungeons. As a layer boss, its attacks and strategies are the same as it is when it's a Mook.
- Eyes Do Not Belong There: The ones found in the Nightmare of Mensis have a cluster of eyes running across their forehead.
- Full-Boar Action: It's a hungry pig the size of a carriage, and as mean as, well, a hungry pig.
Executioner
There aren't many beings as imposing as the Executioner, patrolling Yharnam in search of new trophies.
Similar to the Huntsman's Minion, but far more intelligent, cloaked in black hoods that mask their faces, and carry large halberd axes. Their morality is as twisted as their bodies.
- Decapitation Presentation: While difficult to see from the front, they have several severed Beast heads hanging from their waist, implied trophies of hunts before they themselves succumbed to the Scourge.
- Early-Bird Cameo: One can be found in Central Yharnam in an area blocked by breakable boxes and coffins.
- In the Hood: They wear black hoods that completely obscure their faces.
- Non-Indicative Name: Even though they're called "Executioners" in the guide, they're completely unrelated to the Healing Church faction. Their Japanese name basically means "demolition man", and the main locations they're encountered at (Hemwick and the Forbidden Woods) could imply that their job is breaking down corpses.
- Parrying Bullets: They're able to easily block bullets with their axes.
- Use Your Head: Certainly isn't afraid of head butting Hunters.
Cleric Beast
Ludwig was the first of many Healing Church hunters to come, many of whom were clerics. As it was, clerics transformed into the most hideous beasts.
A massive Wendigo-like beast guarding the gate to the Cathedral Ward. The Old Hunters DLC introduces a fiery version of the normal boss.
- And Then John Was a Zombie: The Sword Hunter badge it drops implies it was once a Healing Church hunter who succumbed to beasthood.
- Creepy Asymmetry: It has a disproportionately massive left hand, a sign of how chaotic the Old Blood's effects on the body are.
- Degraded Boss: A Downplayed example through lore. While you don't really encounter more of them as common enemies, the appearance and Flavor Text of Brador's hide armor from The Old Hunters DLC heavily imply that the Cleric Beast form is a transformation template of rank-and-file Church Hunters, in the same way that the villager mobs all eventually turn into Scourge Beasts. Also, in the DLC, you'll find a manifestation of Laurence that is a near-identical Cleric Beast, except with fire powers.
- He Who Fights Monsters: As with anyone in Yharnam. The Sword Hunter Badge he drops shows that he was once a Healing Church Hunter.
- Mythology Gag: His appearances seems to be a remodeled version of Manus, and serves much the same purpose as the Vanguard and Asylum Demon — a loud, enormous, imposing introductory boss that will probably make you eat dirt the first time you fight him.
- One-Hit Kill: When he throws you into a Bottomless Pit via clipping through layers.
- Playing with Fire: The DLC has Laurence, The First Vicar as the fire-breathing variant as an optional boss in the DLC, which by extension negates its normal weakness.
- The Right Hand of Doom: His left arm is much larger and hairier than his right.
- Screaming Warrior: The first instant of his cry heard is when you are climbing a ladder to the Central Yharnam lamp post.
- Skippable Boss: Chances are that he'll be the first boss you encounter. However, he doesn't block any story-related path, so he can be completely ignored and you can skip straight to Father Gascoigne instead. Although he does have the Sword Hunter Badge that unlocks the Kirkhammer, Repeater Pistol, and Hunter Chief's Emblem (which allows you to skip the Blood-starved Beast), so it's more of a reward for defeating the boss to compensate.
- Was Once a Man: As his name indicates, he was once a cleric of the Healing Church, though special mention goes to him being so far removed from being a person that it's hard to believe this thing ever wasn't an animal.
Father Gascoigne
"Beasts all over the shop... You'll be one of them, sooner or later."
Voiced by: Connor Byrne (English), Fumihiko Tachiki (Japanese)
An outsider who journeyed to Yharnam and a former clergyman, though not part of Yharnam's Healing Church. He can be summoned as a Non-Player Character for the fight against the Cleric Beast. Upon reaching the Old Oedon Graveyard, his lacking sanity and bloodlust have clearly taken over, causing him to attack. The Old Hunters update reveals he's also one of the few remaining Old Hunters of Yharnam, carrying an Old Hunter Bell.
- Action Dad: A sadly villainous take on this (although he wasn't always like that). He has two daughters, one of which gives you a music box that you can use to fight against him.
- Ambiguously Christian: He holds the title of 'Father', which his set's description very explicitly points out that it's the title of clerics from a foreign land and not the Healing Church - this implies that Gascoigne himself comes from a religion that if it's not outright Christianity, it strongly resembles it.
- And Then John Was a Zombie: Once you cut him down to one-third health, he turns into one of the very beasts he fights against.
- Ax-Crazy: In addition to his Beast Transformation induced Sanity Slippage, he's incredibly aggressive and literally wields an axe.
- Assist Character: If you haven't encountered him as a boss yet, he can be summoned for assistance against the Cleric Beast.
- Badass Longcoat: Wears a unique one that seems to be a cross between the Hunter's Grab and a priest robe.
- Badass Preacher: "Father" is a religious title, but one that doesn't exist in the Healing Church.
- Beard of Evil: He sports a goatee.
- The Big Guy: Even before he transforms into a beast, Gascoigne is pretty damn big, being at least a head and a half taller than you.
- Boss-Altering Consequence: If you obtain the music box from his daughter, you can use it to momentarily stun him. Use it too many times, however, and he'll turn into his beast form much sooner than he normally would.
- The Dark Side Will Make You Forget: Gascoigne is a very good example of how relying on blood will eventually make people lose their humanity. His daughter mentions that her family had to play the music box just to make him remember that they were his kin before the latest Hunt. When you come across him, he's essentially on the edge of becoming a feral beast and is obsessively hacking into a fallen Huntsman corpse. If he actually killed his wife, he displays no awareness of having killed her before you show up, and doesn't know how to stop slaughtering everyone in his path any more.
- Duel Boss: Part of what makes him so difficult is just how much like a player he acts. This trope especially holds true if you are also using the Hunter's Axe and Pistol.
- Easy Level Trick: By running up the stairs in his arena, and then running back down once he's followed you and immediately hugging the wall by the side of the stairs, you can trick Father Gascoigne into relentlessly attacking the railing... but he'll never be able to hit you. You, on the other hand, can easily hit him by switching your weapon to two-handed. This continues to work even after his beast-form transformation (although you'll still be hit by the blow-back effect of the transformation itself).
- Evil Counterpart: In a way, he's this to the Player Character; they are both outsiders that joined in on the Hunt and they even have a similar "fighting style".
- Easter Egg: Normally, you can use the music box to stagger him during the boss fight (and accelerate his transformation if you abuse it). However, if you use the music box while Gascoigne is summoned as an ally, he'll let out a bemused chuckle.
- Face-Revealing Turn: His back is to you before he turns around to reveal that he's not quite human any more, baring his abnormally-large fangs.
- Face–Heel Turn: It's possible to summon him to help you fight the Cleric Beast. You'll still have to fight him at the cemetery.
- Fangs Are Evil: Right before the battle commences, he bares his teeth to show that he's growing fangs, indicating his transition into becoming a beast.
- Fighting Irish: He speaks with an Southern Irish accent.
- Foreshadowing: Gascoigne can be summoned with the Old Hunters Bell to help you fight the Cleric Beast. However, he has a particular quirk: he will refuse to go into the sewers with you. If you try to go down there, he will bail on you by shooting the Silencing Blank. This shows that he's well-aware of the dangers down there... the same dangers that kill his daughter when she tries to go looking for her sister or to go to Oedon Chapel.
- Hand Cannon: His pistol fires like a shotgun.
- Hidden Eyes: He has bandages covering his eyes.
- Mirror Boss: This can be invoked by The Hunter themselves should they choose to wield a Hunter's Axe and Blunderbuss the first time around, at least for the first two parts of the fight. Even if they don't have those equipped, he still fights like a Hunter and the player shares moves with him.
- Non-Standard Character Design: When summoned using the Old Hunter Bell, unlike other summonable NPCs, who use the player character model, he uses his boss character model, so he stands much taller than you.
- Recurring Element: He's this game's Paladin Leeroy/Jester Thomas in that he's an NPC that can be summoned for a fight before eventually fighting you himself. As he's a proper boss rather than a mere invader, however, he's far more difficult than the other two... and fought far earlier.
- Roaring Rampage of Revenge: Implied, considering that when you find him, he's apparently finishing up with slaughtering a group of Huntsmen, and you can find the dead body of his wife nearby.
- Sanity Slippage: Was once a Hunter much like you, but the plague has long since taken him (going by how his family had to jog his memory that they're his family by using a music box), and now he's slowly turning into one of the beasts he once hunted.
- Screaming Warrior: He roars along with every swing of his axe.
- Secret A.I. Moves: Unlike the player, Gascoigne is able to fire his pistol while using the fully-extended Hunter's Axe.
- Sequential Boss: Gascoigne gets progressively more aggressive as the fight continues. Initially, he uses the standard form of the Hunter's Axe and his Hunter Pistol. When he loses one-third of his health, he extends the handle of the Hunter's Axe, wielding it in its poleaxe form. Upon losing two-thirds of his health, he hunches over and turns into a werewolf, remaining that way for the rest of the fight.
- Shotguns Are Just Better: His pistol behaves more like a blunderbuss than a proper pistol. Could be justified in it being a dragoon — a more compact, pistol-sized version of a blunderbuss.
- Shout-Out: He has few character traits cribbed from Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.
- Sliding Scale of Gameplay and Story Integration: The description of his attire mentions that the pungent smell of beasts clings to his clothes and eats away at his sanity. Appropriately, his attire set has the second lowest frenzy resistance of all the sets. Of course, the set with the lowest frenzy resistance is the Madman Set.
- Song Style Shift: His theme, "Father Gascoigne, The Hunter", starts off more somber and slow during the initial two parts of the fight, where he's still human. After he turns into a werewolf, however, the song becomes much faster and more aggressive, with vocals kicking in, signifying how much more dangerous he is as a beast.
- There Is No Kill Like Overkill: He's introduced wailing on a long-dead beast with his axe, only stopping when he realizes you're there.
- Tragic Villain: Like many Hunters before him, Gascoigne was eventually driven mad after years of slaying beasts. His wife being in the Tomb possibly implies that she went looking for her husband and was murdered by the beasts. Gascoigne finds her body and snaps, killing the mob that butchered Viola and anyone who comes near. Unfortunately, his descent into madness also leaves his two young daughters without either parent to care for or protect them in the hellhole that is Yharnam, too.
- Turns Red: Upon his health being reduced down to more than two-thirds is where Gascoigne enters his most dangerous phase by turning into a beast. His attacks become far more faster, aggressive, and unpredictable and can quickly crush unprepared players.
- Villainous BSoD: One tactic for defeating Gascoigne more easily is to get the music box from his daughter. The song it plays is possibly the last thing he remembers from his past life, and playing it causes him to clutch his head in pain, leaving him open to attack. However, playing it three times has the reverse effect, causing him to change into his bestial form early, which is something that you don't want happening.
- Wake-Up Call Boss: Have you used your firearm much yet? No? Well, have you at least gotten the hang of combat, with dodging, timing strikes and the new parry system? No, as well? Have fun with Gascoigne, as this fight practically forces players to have a handle on how the combat of Bloodborne works, lest they be crushed beneath his might.
- White Hair, Black Heart: Although he was a good man before the plague took him.
- Worthy Opponent: If he kills you, he'll praise you for giving him a "sporting hunt."
Henryk the Old Hunter
The taciturn old hunter Henryk was once partners with Father Gascoigne, and though they were a fierce and gallant duo, their partnership led to Henryk's tragically long life.
Father Gascoigne's friend, said to have lived a tragically long life, who has gone insane. He's also a Confederate of the League, and can be summoned for the Shadows of Yharnam and Rom, the Vacuous Spider boss fights.
- Assist Character: After you kill him, he can be summoned for assistance against the Shadows of Yharnam and Rom the Vacuous Spider.
- Badass Family: If he is indeed Viola's father. Neither this nor the alternative has been confirmed in-game or otherwise, as per Bloodborne policy.
- Boring, but Practical: While Boring is used rather loosely considering the nature of trick weapons, Henryk prefers to wield the Saw Cleaver and Hunter Pistol, along with some throwing knives.
- Evil Old Folks: Incredibly old and dangerously insane.
- Heel–Face Turn: Can fight alongside you against the Shadows of Yharnam and Rom the Vacuous Spider.
- Honorary Uncle: He was an old (literally) friend of Gascoigne, whose daughter mentions a Hunter she calls "granddad", who she mentions being really old.
- Mini-Boss: He's a Hunter like you, so fighting him is more akin to fighting an NPC red phantom in prior Souls games, but like them, he can be tough to beat. He's optional, and only appears if you play through Eileen's quest line.
- Old Soldier: He's mentioned to have had an unnaturally long, traumatic life, but he's still capable of cutting down unwary whippersnappers.
- Optional Boss: He only has to be fought if you choose to follow along with Eileen the Crow's quest line. Otherwise, he won't even show up. He's also very powerful for the level you're going to be facing him at. Most of the fight will be you sneaking in a few gunshots and heavy attacks while Eileen does the heavy lifting.
- Roar Before Beating: Uses the 'Roar' gesture shortly before the fight begins.
- Roaring Rampage of Revenge: One interpretation of why he appears where Gascoigne died is that he wants to take revenge on the Hunter.
- Sanity Slippage: He's going the way of Gascoigne, according to Eileen, though he doesn't transform.
- Who Wants to Live Forever?: It's mentioned that he had a "tragically" long life, and the healing blood heals all ailments and injury apart from the Scourge of the Beast. It may have allowed Henryk to have a longer lifespan, but he would also be heavily tainted with the Scourge and traumatized from his work. And that's assuming no other problems would arise.
Cathedral Ward
Church Servants
Their origins unknown, they stand stoically, ready to pounce on any unwelcome visitor. Their ghostly pale visage and sluggish movements can instill fear into the bravest Hunter, while they stomp their cane threateningly, their face a yawning horror.
Pthumerians in service to the Healing Church. They patrol the Cathedral Ward, keeping out intruders with a variety of weapons.
- Black Eyes of Evil: As is standard for Pthumerians.
- Cane Fu: The most common type of Church Servant carries a cane that he uses as a weapon.
- Elite Mook: The variants in Upper Cathedral Ward are always equipped with eye-covered lanterns and flaming scythes regardless of your Insight.
- Eyes Do Not Belong There: If you have 15 or more Insight, the lanterns that some of them carry become covered in eyes, which allow them to fire Arcane projectiles.
- Giving Someone the Pointer Finger: If they see you, they'll point at you and give a threatening moan.
- Improbable Weapon User: One of the more unusual weapons the Church Servants use are large crucifix-like wooden poles, shaped somewhat like the Hunter's Mark. When they hit you, it induces frenzy. This weapon only appears to be used by two Church Servants that stand outside Vicar Amelia's boss arena.
- Kill It with Fire: Some carry flamesprayers.
- The Men in Black: Seem to be this for the Healing Church: a mysterious, separate Church Militant branch from the Church Hunters, maintaining the lockdown of the Cathedral Ward and guarding the secrets deeper within it. The Church's use of Pthumerians for this role also evokes the versions of the MIB mythos where the MIBs are suggested to be either aliens themselves or Half-Human Hybrids.
- Piñata Enemy: They give a decent amount of echoes, frequently drop Blood Vials or Quicksilver Bullets, are extremely easy to parry note , and a large amount of them can be found right outside a Lantern.
- Sinister Scythe: A few carry scythes. If you have 15 or more Insight, the scythe blades become wreathed in blue flames and inflict additional Fire damage.
- Weaksauce Weakness: They can be parried with alarming ease compared to most other humanoid enemies. Meaning, if you shoot them at literally any point during their attack animation, they will be parried. It's so easy to do compared to every other enemy that it almost seems like a bug of some kind.
Church Giants
The Church controls treatment of the disease, but it hunts with this large servant. Half terrifying legend, its expression is vacant, its skin pallid, its huge form oddly thin. It screams as it swings its silver weapon. A bell hangs from its neck, and when the citizens of Yharnam hear its ring, they close their doors and stay within.
Giant mummy-like beings wearing black hats, white mantles and bells around their necks. They carry either large axes, ball-and-chain sets, and sometimes fight with their bare hands.
- Attack Its Weak Point: After a powerful attack, a bone juts out of the Church Giant's leg. Strike the bone, and the Giant becomes open to a Visceral Attack.
- Body Horror: The damn things are emaciated, white-skinned messes that are starting to fall apart. Whenever they perform their stomp attack, they land so hard that they break their leg and the shinbone comes out through their fucking knee. Naturally, they have to spend an extra couple seconds making sure to get up so it slides back in place right, and it's a somewhat convenient weak point.
- Epic Flail: Some carry ball-and-chain sets.
- Lightning Bruiser: The unarmed few that appear in a shortcut between the Forbidden Woods and Iosefka's Clinic/Central Yharnam are noticeably faster than their axe/flail carrying counterparts, and the one that appears in the Lecture Hall is even faster than them.
- Lean and Mean: Despite their Mighty Glacier status, they are extremely thin.
- Mighty Glacier: Very, very slow, but they hit incredibly hard and cannot be parried.
- Playing with Fire: A Church Giant in the lecture hall has flaming hands.
- Sleepyhead: Later on in the night after Vicar Amelia is defeated, all the Church Giants in the Cathedral Ward will be sleeping, only waking up if you attack them or run past them.
- Too Dumb to Live: Stomps so hard that the shin bone pops out, making them an easier target.
- Unique Enemy: The Giant in the Lecture Hall, who fights with a pair of flaming fists, is the only one of its kind in the entire game.
Wandering Madness
Ragged, malformed beasts found on most areas of the game. They come in two sizes: small and large. While the small version will run away, the large version will actually fight back.
- Body of Bodies: They're basically clumps of human heads that run around like crabs.
- Expy: The small version are this to the Crystal Lizards in Dark Souls. The more aggressive large version would receive its own expy in the Ravenous Crystal Lizards in Dark Souls 3.
- Metal Slime: The small ones will run away as soon as they see you, and will eventually disappear unless killed. Slaying them will net you more Blood Stone pieces.
Brainsucker
Driven mad by wisdom not of this world, these fiends will seek to bind you in place and steal what is in your very head. But who is to say this is not a good thing?
Tentacle-faced creatures that use an ethereal tentacle to drain Insight. Appear in great numbers in the Upper Cathedral Ward, and in the Chalice Dungeons as a boss.
- Bandit Mook: Brainsuckers are infamously unique for being able to drain the Insight count of anyone unlucky enough to get caught in their feeding attack.
- Brain Food: They have a grab attack where they use a large tentacle to bash through your skull and suck out your eldritch knowledge, which drains Insight as well as health.
- Cthulhumanoid: They have tentacles for a face, but are otherwise humanoid.
- Degraded Boss: Inverted. You'll enounter them outside the Chalice Dungeons as regular enemies long before you encounter one inside the Dungeons as a boss. Unless for some reason you decide to obsessively do nothing but Chalice Dungeons all the way down to Lower Hintertomb immediately after getting the first chalice, in which case you could probably stand to have a few dozen points of Insight sucked out of you.
- Early-Bird Cameo: There are a few tucked away in the Cathedral Ward, meaning you can encounter one way before the game has added Cosmic Horror to its Gothic Horror.
- Expy: Emaciated creatures with tentacle faces that suck out your brain? Yep, they're essentially Illithids.
- Gasshole: They'll actually burp after they suck out your brains.
- Hell Is That Noise: You know one is nearby by the loud dripping and squishing noises it makes.
- In the Hood: Tend to wear large hoods, until they use their grab attack, when it falls back to reveal the tentacle.
- Lean and Mean: Their bodies are emaciated. They're also one of the nastier mooks.
- The Paralyzer: They are capable of casting a spell that will bind anyone it hits, giving them plenty of time to dine.
- Recurring Element: They strongly resemble the Mind Flayers that infested the Tower of Latria in Demon's Souls. Gameplay-wise, their special attack is similar to that of the one used by Darkwraiths, only with Insight being siphoned off rather than Humanity.
- Was Once a Man: It's implied that they are infested by the "phantasms", small cosmic invertebrates, found within the Chalice Dungeons.
- You Will Not Evade Me: They have a close-range and long-range attack that immobilizes you, most likely ensuring you will be grabbed.
Kidnappers
Of all the beasts you may encounter on the night of the Hunt, beware the Snatchers. For to them, it is not enough to take your life, they wish to drag you into their vile kingdom and subject you to their abhorrent rituals.
Hunters in name only, the Kidnappers are Pthumerians who answer to the School of Mensis. On their order, the Kidnappers wander Yharnam's streets looking for subjects for the School's sinister rituals.
- Achilles' Heel: When they power up and briefly flash with red Arcane power they present a very open window to reach behind them to deliver a backstab and visceral attack, which will very likely kill them at this point of the fight. They also have virtually no poison resistance with one poison dagger being enough to inflict poison status on them. Given how slow they are, it's entirely possible to poison one and leave him to succumb to it without landing any attacks.
- Bag of Kidnapping: They carry a large sack that they presumably use to kidnap their victims, which they also swing at you as a weapon.
- Boss in Mook Clothing: Do not be fooled by how early these guys appear, they will kill any low and mid-level Hunter in one or two blows. Even late game Hunters struggle with them.
- Call-Back: Their role in traveling around to different locations and kidnapping various individuals for the purpose for subjecting them to rituals and experiments is reminiscent of The Channelers from Dark Souls.
- Fission Mailed: The first time you are killed by a Kidnapper, you'll respawn in Yahar'gul instead.
- I Have Many Names: The guide calls them Kidnappers, but the game calls them Snatchers.
- Kung-Fu Wizard: Their main method of attacking are surprisingly skilled, and very powerful, punches, kicks, or just hitting you over the head with their bags. However, their Pthumerian nature gives them access to more unusual arcane powers, mainly used to stagger the Hunter will pulling them in for a beating.
- Mighty Glacier: They hit hard enough to kill low-level Hunters in one strike, but they aren't very fast. That is, until their health is reduced by a third.
- Ominous Walk: Perhaps your first sign on how dangerous these figures are may be just how slowly they walk towards you, with complete purpose and confidence.
- Turns Red: When they lose enough health, they'll empowered themselves to become faster and more powerful.
- The Worf Effect: The Kidnappers are among the most dangerous enemies for about the first half of the game. But after the Red Moon event, the Hypogean Gaol and the streets around it will from then onward be littered with their corpses as new and more powerful creatures move in.
Beast-possessed Soul
Dimly lit by pale moonlight, unscorned by human pity, lie things unseen by curious eyes, blood-thirsty and lithy. Hunter! Fear the possessed beast, fangs sharp as Ludwig's nerve, for it will feast upon your limbs, no mercy nor reserve.
A strange Scourge Beast with horns growing from its head.
- Degraded Boss: These Beasts can be encountered as standard enemies in the Chalice dungeons. One even appears in Yharnam, at the bottom of the Healing Church Workshop.
- Four Legs Good, Two Legs Better: Unlike most beast-based bosses, this particular one stands upright and doesn't crawl on its four limbs.
- Helpful Mook: You'll wish to run into them whenever there are tougher enemies around you, as it will often fight alongside you. Furthermore, you can even bring it into a boss room provided you haven't opened the boss room's door, thus allowing it to go through the fog wall.
- Mêlée à Trois: As a regular enemy, it is hostile to the rest of the creatures. Naturally, you can set it into attacking other enemies.
- Meaningful Name: This is not a regular Scourge Beast, its use of magic and apparent intelligence imply that it's some kind of higher being or host of something and not just another ordinary victim of the plague.
- Playing with Fire: This boss has pyromancy techniques, which is notable as most other beasts are said to be deathly afraid of fire.
- Our Werewolves Are Different: Emphasis on different, because even among Beasts this thing is weird.
- First of all, it stands on two legs. Not unheard of because of Cleric Beasts, but still odd.
- Secondly, it has horns, and not elk/moose horns like the Cleric Beasts or Vicar Amelia. It has weird ram-like horns jutting out of its head, both perfectly symmetrical.
- It's disturbingly skinny for a fully transformed beast.
- Finally, and most strangely of all, it's a Beast with the ability to create and shoot fire from its hands. This should be impossible for several reasons, not least of which is that Beasts fear and are weak to fire.
- Unique Enemy: Outside of the Chalice Dungeons, there's only one that appears, outside a well-hidden area in the Healing Church Workshop. What's more is that it does not respawn upon being killed.
Yahar'gul Hunters
A pair of School of Mensis Hunters keeping watch over the path between the Cathedral Ward and Unseen Yahar'gul.
- BFG: One of them wields a Ludwig's Holy Rifle, alongside a Rifle Spear.
- Luckily, My Shield Will Protect Me: One of the hunters has, of all things, a Wooden Shield.
- Shock and Awe: One of them wields a Tonitrus.
Vicar Amelia
"Seek the Old Blood. Let us pray...let us wish...to partake in communion. Let us partake in communion...and feast upon the Old Blood. Our thirst for blood satiates us, soothes our fears. Seek the Old Blood...but beware the frailty of men. Their wills are weak, minds young. The foul beasts will dangle nectar and lure the meek into the depths. Remain wary of the frailty of men. Their wills are weak, minds young. Were it not for fear, death would go unlamented."
Voiced by: Lucy Briggs (English), Shizuka Itō (Japanese)
The last known Vicar of The Healing Church, she is encountered in the Grand Cathedral in the Cathedral Ward reciting a prayer, but before The Hunter can speak with her, she succumbs to the plague and transforms into a colossal, horned beast. Still clutching onto the Gold Pendant that has been passed down from Vicar to Vicar starting with Laurence, she then turns to engage the Hunter.
- Damage-Sponge Boss: She's notable for being one of the most durable bosses in the game, but her attacks can easily kill the player in one or two blows—making her one of the most time-consuming bosses to defeat. (It doesn't hurt that she can also heal herself, erasing the damage that the player does inflict)
- Distaff Counterpart: Of the Cleric Beast. They even have the same music during their respective battles.
- Easy Level Trick: Well, "easy" is a relative term, but if you have a good serrated weapon like the Saw Cleaver or Saw Spear, you can wail away on her while she pauses her attacks to heal, and you can do enough damage this way to completely negate it.
- The Faceless: Her face is only shown after she transforms into a beast. What she looked like as a human is a mystery. Although attempts to view her field model reveal that since you're not supposed to see her, From used an altered version of the Bell Maiden model. Her model in the pre-fight cutscene is clearly human, though.
- Fate Worse than Death: There's a cleric fought in the Hunter's Nightmare in the DLC wearing her white clothing and praying in the same place as her in the waking world, implied to be her. Seems not even the Vicar could escape the Nightmare.
- Hidden Eyes: Her cowl completely covers her eyes, even in beast form.
- Honor Before Reason: Downplayed. Amelia clings to her pendant throughout the boss fight, even though that limits her to using only one hand to attack with, despite the pendant itself seemingly having no value beyond its signifying her status (and later by becoming a unique Blood Gem if the player chooses). It may, however, be the source of her Healing Factor, unless Religion is Magic is in play instead.
- Interface Screw: Her long hair has a rather annoying tendency to obstruct the player's view when they approach her from behind, making it rather difficult to know when their attacks are landing. All the more frustrating, since her back is one of her main weak points.
- It Can Think: Doesn't look human at all after her transformation but she's still rather protective of her Gold Pendant, clinging onto it with one hand while relying more on her free hand to fight despite it seemingly limiting her combat options. She can also heal herself either through prayer or by channeling the power of said pendant or some combination of the two, looking surprisingly calm and serene while doing so.
- Light Is Not Good: Wears white clothes prior to her transformation, has white fur afterwards, and can heal herself with some sort of bright glowing magic. She's still a huge savage beast that needs to be put down to progress.
- Madness Mantra: Her prayer, as seen above, which she chants until you trigger the boss fight.
- Minor Major Character: According to the Gold Pendant, Vicars lead the Healing Church. This implies she enjoyed sizable political power and either led the Choir or acted as its figurehead and spokesperson. She's also only the second mandatory boss and the in-game Lore notes don't mention her once.
- Mix-and-Match Critters: Her beast form has the features of a bear, a wolf, and a stag.
- More Teeth than the Osmond Family: She has a wolf-like snout lined with razor-sharp teeth.
- No Cure for Evil: Completely averted. She can heal herself at low health by clutching her gold pendant to her chest with both hands in some sort of prayer, even glowing brightly as she does so. Better have some Numbing Mist for this fight. She also has a separate form of healing in which she'll roar loudly while glowing in a similar manner. It doesn't restore her health bar like the prayer does but it does repair injuries dealt to her body mid-combat that could have been exploited for a Visceral Attack.
- Painful Transformation: It involves both a Shadow Discretion Shot and Gory Discretion Shot, and anything that causes that much blood to spray like that is probably going to be painful. The way she shrieks moments before transforming (and continues doing so throughout the battle) doesn't help.
- Prayer Is a Last Resort: When her health starts getting low, she'll start praying to heal herself. Subverted with one of her attacks which looks like she's praying to the sky, raising her clasped hands high towards the ceiling before bring them down into a double axe handle swing. Technically inverted too as she's in the middle of prayer when you first encounter her.
- Sinister Minister: Since she's the leader of the Healing Church (as far as the public is aware), she had been this by default prior to transforming.
- Screaming Warrior: Her agonized howling is almost as bad as the Cleric Beast's.
- Shows Damage: Repeatedly attacking her arms and legs will actually cause them to start bleeding badly, staining her fur and stunning her more. Targeting her legs in particular can stagger her so her head lowers, opening her up to a Visceral Attack to the face.
- Transformation Trauma: Her transformation into a beast, from what little can be seen of it, can only really be described as her convulsing and violently swelling up as she screams in agony before her new form explodes out from within, bathing the area around her in blood.
- Was Once a Man: Her boss introductory cut-scene has her transform quite violently into the beast you fight.
Bloody Crow of Cainhurst
The last of Eileen's targets, should you do her sidequest, Cainhurst's Bloody Crow retreats into the Grand Cathedral after giving Eileen a sound thrashing.
- Achilles' Heel: Poison knives. Three poison knives will cause him to be poisoned dealing about a quarter of his health, before factoring in the Chikage’s trick form. Bringing a Numbing Mist to prevent him from using his blood vials will also speed up how fast he'll die.
- Animal Motifs: Crows, by extension of the fact that he wears the Crowfeather Garb chest piece. As this is part of the Hunter of Hunters' set, it stands to reason that this Hunter either was a colleague or apprentice of Eileen gone rogue, or that he killed another Hunter of Hunters and scavenged the garb off their corpse...
- Anti-Regeneration: One of the few Hunters to use Numbing Mist.
- Audience Surrogate: A rather common interpretation of the Crow is that he represents a min-maxing powergamer. Given that you're the one who cuts down Eileen if you botch up her quest, meaning that you could've been in the Bloody Crow's place he may provide some implications on what, exactly, the role of the Hunter of Hunters actually really is.
- Boss in Mook Clothing: Like Yurie, he's got maxed-out stats and +10 weapons, and it sure shows. Even more noticeable since the Bloody Crow is the only NPC Hunter to get stronger with each New Game Plus run.
- Cast from Hit Points: Just like it does for you, the Chikage will steadily drain the Bloody Crow's health when he transforms it. In return, his melee attacks hit even harder and he gains some new, incredibly powerful moves with it.
- Confusion Fu: His specialty. He Teleport Spams in unpredictable ways, charges forward only to unexpectedly jump back, frequently baits the player into a position where they'll be vulnerable to a gunshot and a follow-up Visceral Attack, has a slightly wider spread on their shots than most pistols do, and uses an under-utilized but effective Hunter Tool.
- Creepy Crows: Apart from his name, he wears the Crowfeather Garb chest piece. He's also one of the deadliest and most malicious hunters in the game
- Flash Step: He uses the Old Hunter's Bone, which enables them to use the Art of Quickening, making him even faster than they already were.
- Inexplicably Awesome: He has no lines, no unique garb, and no backstory. There's absolutely no hint as to who he was, how he became a hunter, how he got so ridiculously strong, or why Eileen is hunting him (aside from the obvious). All there is is a nasty miniboss fight. The most likely explanation is that it's due to his Cainhurst training (if the cleaning staff of Cainhurst Castle being so deadly is any indication).
- Hand Cannon: Wields the double-barrelled Repeating Pistol as his sidearm. Shot-by-shot, it's the strongest firearm in the game — excluding the actual cannons, of course — and is more than capable of putting a severe dent in your health pool.
- Hoist by His Own Petard: It's possible to kill him, or at least drain a substantial portion of his health, by simply running around the arena while his Chikage's trick-form drains his own health. No longer the case in later patches, where he averts Too Dumb to Live and will automatically stop using the transformation if his health gets low enough.
- Katanas Are Just Better: He wields the Chikage trick weapon with deadly precision.
- Lightning Bruiser: Fast, hard-hitting, and very durable, with three of their four armor pieces being the Cainhurst Set, which has some the highest raw defenses in the game. Even more noticeable on New Game Plus runs, as the Bloody Crow is the only Hunter to get stronger with each consecutive playthrough, going from 3000 HP if you're playing a New Game, to a whopping 9000 on a NG+ run and capping off at 13000 on an NG+7 run... There's a reason you find Eileen heavily wounded outside the Grand Cathedral.
- My Rules Are Not Your Rules: Aside from having infinite access to the Old Hunter's Bone, his pistol hits like a fucking truck, doing WAY more damage than the player can possibly do with it. And naturally, he also has infinite bullets. Fortunately, he is susceptible to the Chikage's health drain when in 2 hand mode.
- Silent Antagonist: Doesn't have a single word to say.
Old Yharnam
Beast Patients
The damned remnants of a Hunt from long ago, the burns and scars from the Healing Church's purge are still fresh in the mangled minds of these beasts.
The remaining residents of Old Yharnam. They fight bestially like the Scourge Beasts, but walk on two legs like the Huntsmen, and are closer to the size of you than they are the Scourge Beasts. There are two variants: male and female. The male variant is naked except for their bandages, while the female variant is shrouded in a hooded cloak. The female variant also has a stronger version: Ashen Blood Beast Patients.
- Enemy Summoner: The females in the lower areas of Old Yharnam will let out a sharp screech when they spot you, summoning nearby beasts to your location and making them more aggressive. The alerted beasts sport pale red eyes for a short time.
- In the Hood: The female variants walk around draped in shrouds.A slow death awaits those caught by the beast who hides its face. For who knows what awful mixture of human and animal sulks beneath that veil?
- Kill It with Fire: Fire attacks, such as the torch or Flamesprayer, are particularly effective against them. The male variant will actually recoil in fear if you have a torch equipped.
- More Deadly Than the Male: The females are undoubtedly more dangerous. They can potentially dwarf the hunter in size, their attacks inflict poison, some are able to call other beast patients to them, and they do not cower at the sight of a lit torch.
- Poisonous Person: The scratch and bite attacks from the female beasts poison you. The larger ones can even attempt to tackle you and puke their poisoned blood onto your face. Luckily, these enemies also tend to drop Antidotes when slain.
- Red Eyes, Take Warning: If you can catch a glimpse of the hooded beasts' faces as they attack, you'll notice that their eyes are glowing red. These are the ones that can poison you.
- Religion of Evil: There is a small horde of beasts gathered inside the church below Djura's Gatling gun nest, and they appear to be performing some kind of ritual around the corpse of a larger version of the area's boss, the Blood-starved Beast. Thankfully, nothing seems to come of this.
- Tragic Monster: Their outcome as unwitting citizens that were involuntarily turned into beasts is what motivates hunters like Djura and his allies to protect them as victims of the plague, rather than to scapegoat them as a possible source of it.
Djura's Ally
A Hunter who has joined Djura's crusade in defending the beasts of Old Yharnam. He is one of three apprentices, one of which is encountered in the Hunter's Nightmare.
- A.I. Breaker: While he's smart enough to avoid the ladder to Djura (so you can't lure him up and let knockback and gravity do the rest), it's only because his aggro-range doesn't extend beyond the raised platform he starts on. If you're just outside it he'll repeatedly run off and back on again, and it's easy to put yourself in his way.
- Badass Cape: He wears the Charred Hunter Set.
- In the Hood: He wears the Black Hood.
Blood-starved Beast
A horrifying monster found within the Church of the Good Chalice, down in the lowest part of Old Yharnam.
- Achilles' Heel: Its great lust for blood means that a thrown pungent blood cocktail will distract it, allowing you to get several good hits in. Its great aggression also means that a skilled player can parry it fairly reliably or dodge it without much difficulty, as its desperation keeps it from attacking you swiftly and precisely. It also doesn't have a whole lot of health and will die very quickly to an untransformed saw cleaver/spear+fire paper+beast blood pellet combo.
- Ax-Crazy: The Blood-starved Beast is one of most aggressive bosses in the entire game.
- Blood Lust: It's called the Blood-starved Beast for a reason. Throwing pungent blood cocktails will distract it from attacking you so it can go lick up the blood.
- Body Horror: All of the skin on its back is flayed off and draped over its head and front limbs like a cloak. Its skull appears to be split in half, causing it to snap its jaws like a set of scissors. It isn't the first one, either. Another much larger one is found in the ritual hall right behind Djura's lookout tower, strung up by chains and already dead.
- Degraded Boss: Bs B occasionally appears as a regular mob in the Depth 5 Loran Root Chalice. One also appears in The Old Hunters DLC in the cave where you can get the Gatling Gun weapon.
- "Instant Death" Radius: Heavily downplayed, but it bleeds poison during the last leg of the fight, which will steadily drain your health just by being too close to it; this obviously makes melee combat a questionable proposition even if you have plenty of Vitality, or completely suicidal if you don't.
- Kill It with Fire: Its weakest to fire damage, being a beast and all.
- King Mook: A larger, meaner version of the female Beast Patient. In a similar manner, it rapidly attacks with long, poisoned claws and wears a cape, of a sort. The resemblance makes sense, since the Patients appear to be worshipping the Blood-starved Beasts in some fashion.
- Lightning Bruiser: Is deceptively fast and will knock unsuspecting players flat the first time they meet him.
- Poisonous Person: Its attacks begin to poison you after the first part of the battle. Towards the end, it begins bleeding poison at all times, which makes getting near it extremely dangerous.
- Skippable Boss: Defeating the Blood-starved Beast opens the door near the lamp in Cathedral Ward, which provides a way around the gate blocking your path to Vicar Amelia. If you have defeated the Cleric Beast and purchased the Hunter Chief's Emblem (which is prohibitively expensive for the early game, so it's unlikely you will), then you can open another way around and don't need to defeat the Blood-starved Beast. That said, killing it also lets you get to the elevator that leads to the room with the Radiant Sword Hunter Badge, letting you buy Ludwig's Holy Sword, Ludwig's Rifle, and other useful things from the Bath Messengers, which may be worth your while even if you do have the Hunter Chief's Emblem.
- Super-Persistent Predator: Not in the game, where it never leaves that Cathedral in Old Yharnam, but definitely in the comic. For whatever reason, it stalks The Hunter and The Child, out of Old Yharnam, through Central Yharnam, into Iosefka's Clinic, and even out of the city.
- Sword Sparks: Its fangs and claws spark against the cobblestones as it attacks.
- Tragic Monster: as with most of the beast-turned enemies in Old Yharnam, the Blood-starved Beast is implied to be the final result of a particularly unfortunate victim to the city's plague.
Hemwick Charnel Lane
Hemwick Grave Woman
Their mumblings give away their presence from a distance, but their screams can be deafening. They wield a variety of weapons, but what they lack in dexterity they more than make up for with intensity and tenacity.
Voiced by: Kierston Wearing
Old crones that inhabit the Hemwick Charnel Lane, carrying a wide variety of improvised weapons. They are implicitly the ones making Bone Marrow Ash for the Healing Church, working cremation furnaces hidden underneath Hemwick. The collapse of society means that they are not even trying to hide their occult nature any longer.
- Evil All Along: There's a single house with a lit window and an incense container, signifying an NPC you can converse with. If you arive before nightfall, the woman inside the house will talk about the women in the graveyard... then excitedly proclaim that it's almost time for the ritual, cackling maniacally.
- Eye Scream: All of the corpses in Hemwick have had their eyes harvested, even the dead horses.
- Hot Blade: One of the weapons they carry are fire irons with blades that are still red-hot.
- Improvised Weapon: Everything they wield are used in their implied work: sickles to strip the corpses of flesh, fire irons to stoke the cremation furnaces, sledge hammers to grind the ashes finer, and firebombs made from the oil they use in the furnaces.
- Laughing Mad: When you first enter Hemwick Graveyard, you can hear their cackles.
- Magic Dance: A number of them appear to be performing some sort of ritualistic dance in front of the graves.
- Never Mess with Granny: They're all elderly women who can kill you, and will do so if given the chance.
- Religion of Evil: They're collecting eyeballs as part of a ritual.
- Wicked Witch: They fit all of the old stereotypes, even holding what appears to be a sabbath when you enter the village. All of them seem to be subservient to the Witch of Hemwick.
Mad One
But what rose out of the ground was never human. Born of the trembling blood with a scream that pierced your very heart, the wraith began its chase.
The summoned minions of the Witch of Hemwick. Tall, skinny creatures with long hair and glowing eyes that carry sickles.
- Glowing Eyes of Doom: Their eyes glow a piercing white, making them visible in the darkest of areas.
- No Ontological Inertia: Any Mad Ones still standing will perish mere moments after the Witch of Hemwick is defeated.
- Ominous Walk: They walk very slowly. Even if they see you, they'll rarely run towards you. Especially creepy in the boss fight with The Witch of Hemwick, where there are multiple Mad Ones in the room, all slowly walking towards you.
- Optional Boss: You can avoid fighting these entirely if you have practically no insight, as they won't spawn. This makes traversing Hemwick and the subsequent battle with the witches much easier.
- Rise from Your Grave: The creatures are summoned from the ground by The Witch of Hemwick.
- You Cannot Grasp the True Form: Implied, due to needing insight to even see them on the surface. In the Chalice Dungeons, they're much more quick and violent, implying they're more native to there and likely being some form of spirit like many other enemies within the Labyrinth. The Witches likely are just summoning them by some means.
The Witch of Hemwick
An old witch residing in the outskirts of Yharnam, the hamlet of gravekeeper witches carved by the sunlight, Hemwick. In its depths, an old, gigantic structure, she lies in wait. Holding suspicious rituals in the deepest of the night, for that very purpose it is said that she gathers the eyeballs of the living. In the city where unwanted corpses would be gathered and disposed of, her outfit might just be befitting of one such place.
- Back from the Dead: Take too long to finish the second Witch and she'll resurrect the first one.
- Degraded Boss: The Witches of Hemwick can appear in Rotted Root Chalice Dungeons as regular enemies, and they summon Mad Ones and cast binding spells just like the two encountered in Witch's Abode. Unusually for the trope, they are actually harder there, as they summon three Mad Ones the second you get near them, summon replacements as fast as you can kill them, can still summon Mad Ones even if you have 0 Insight, tend to show up in cramped spaces where the Mad Ones can gang up on you, and killing them does not kill the Mad Ones that are left.
- Dual Boss: There are actually two witches — one remains hidden from the beginning and makes her appearance upon defeating the first Witch.
- Eyes Do Not Belong There: Her robe and spell catalyst are covered in eyeballs that she plucked from corpses. Defeating her nets you four of them.
- Eye Scream: One of her grab attacks involves her taking you and stabbing you through your eyes, attempting to tear them out.
- Enemy Summoner: They tend to summon Mad Ones to surround you unless you have 0 insight during the boss fight. The mob counterpart in the Chalice Dungeon, on the other hand, always summons Mad Ones, regardless of your insight.
- Flunky Boss: The Witch has a couple of Mad Ones who ominously stalk you around the arena. They keep respawning until the Witch has been killed.
- Jump Scare: The Mad Ones they summon don't appear if you have zero Insight, but you gain Insight the instant you kill the Witches. This causes them to all appear with no warning, most likely all around you.
- King Mook: She is this to the Eye Collectors found in the Hypogean Gaol.
- Leitmotif: The Witch of Hemwick.
- Laser-Guided Karma: She and many of the enemies in the game have a fixation on the removal of eyes - your eyes, specifically, as many of her attacks involve stabbing and tearing at them. Defeat the witch and her sister rewards you with several of the Bloodshot Eyeball item, with the implication being that you plucked them from her corpse. Eye for an eye, indeed.
- Optional Boss: She doesn't need to be fought for story completion, but defeating her lets you equip highly beneficial Caryll Runes.
- Teleport Spam: The Witch will constantly teleport away when approached.
- Turns Red: Once the second Witch comes into play, the Witch begins using a spell that freezes you in place. She also starts using a lunge attack that, if it hits (and if you get frozen too close to the Witch it will), lets her inflict the hideously damaging eye-gouge attack the Eye Collectors use, which is very likely to be a One-Hit Kill.
- Wicked Witch: Definitely fits the classic image of a hunchbacked old crone, and appears to be responsible for all the atrocities you find in Hemwick.
Hypogean Gaol
Eye Collectors
Something lurks in the shadows of the Unseen Village: a misshapen creature that might once have been a woman, but who now lies in wait to prey on the unsuspecting, and bathe in their blood.
Decrepit old women who like to ambush people from behind. They're apparently what the Hemwick Grave Women hope to become.
- Degraded Boss: They're all identical to Witch of Hemwick herself, but lack her magical powers.
- Eyeless Face: Their eyes are crusted over with tumorous growths.
- Eye Scream: Their primary method of attack, of which they will immobilize you and use their tools to brutally rip out any poor victim's eyes as well as dealing incredible damage.
- Slashed Throat: Well, slashed eyes in this case. What they do if they successfully grab you.
Darkbeast Paarl
A monstrous electrified reanimated werewolf skeleton residing in the yard of the Hypogean Gaol. It comes to life when you approach it, and attacks with a combination of strong electrial bursts and lightning-quick swipes. A stronger version, called the Loran Darkbeast, appears in Lower Loran Chalice Dungeon as the boss of the bottom layer. The Beast Claw of Irreverent Izzy reveals that the lifeforce of darkbeasts and silverbeasts is tied to their bones, rather than their blood.
- Beast with a Human Face: One of the most disturbing things about Paarl is that, despite its feral-looking, quadrupedal form, somewhat reminiscent of an undead werewolf, its empty skull face is eerily human, lacking a muzzle or even curved fangs.
- Body Horror: Most of it has rotten away, leaving nothing but the skeleton, a mostly decomposed face, and clumps of fur. It's noteworthy that it's far smaller than it appears, due to the electricity making the fur stand on end and making it seem much taller and more imposing.
- Bragging Rights Reward: Truly, all of the benefits of killing Paarl are incredibly beneficial and prove to be worth the effort, however, some have also shown to come a little easier from other places. You see, once Paarl is gone, you can open a back route through Old Yharnam that allows you to befriend Djura, but you can also get the same results by killing the much easier Blood-starved Beast and backtracking from its lantern and killing Djura yourself. Paarl also leaves behind the Spark Hunter Badge, which permanently adds the Tonitrus weapon and Bolt Paper to the shop, however it should be noted that there is indeed a free Tonitrus that is available on the other side of the Yahar'Ghul opposite to the main street, and the weapon generates its own electricity as its "trick." In addition to the above, certain enemies in other areas of the game will also drop blood gems that will apply persistent bolt-elemental damage to a weapon.
- Although granted, this can be subverted as not everybody will necessarily prefer the Tonitrus as a weapon in the first place and finding bolt-based Blood Gems and the enemies that drop them can often take some time! With that in mind, buying Bolt Paper with either Blood Echoes or Insight sounds like a much more immediately beneficial proposition, as it gives one ready access to the element at any time, which can often prove to be a lifesaver if one doesn't have any elemental Blood Gems to use.
- Fragile Speedster: Not exactly that fragile, he's still a boss; but Paarl is insanely fast, dashes around all the place, and is much more aggressive than other bosses, yet he is also a lot easier to knock down and temporarily suppress, after which you can perform a visceral attack that takes out one third of his health (for other bosses, it is usually 1/6 to 1/8), making this fight a contest of who can kill the other guy first.
- King Mook: Can be seen as this to the generic blood-werewolf enemies that litter the city, albeit electrified and a skeleton.
- Leitmotif: Darkbeast. This music is also shared with The Loran Darkbeast in The Chalice Dungeons, which may possibly hint a relation between the two.
- Nightmare Face: Good God does it ever brandish one. That gray and rotten skin pulled back into a wide grimace, coupled with a lack of eyes, is sure to leave chills in players that spot it.
- Optional Boss: Serving as an optional encounter in Yahar'gul both during one's first visit and even later afterwards. There are benefits to killing Paarl, and they prove to be quite beneficial when fighting Kin-type enemies.
- Shock and Awe: Uses bolt magic in a number of its attacks.
- Undead Abomination: Even after its flesh had rotted away, the beast is still thirsty for blood.
Forbidden Woods
Snake Ball/Greater Viper Pit
Though certainly not as threatening as their mature counterparts, these snakes are no less deadly. For these silent predators make up in stealth what they lack in size.
What appears to be a clump of dozens of snakes is actually a hydra-like creature. They appear in great numbers in the Forbidden Woods, in both young and adult forms.
- Animalistic Abomination: Hydras in a FromSoft game... minus the Hydra Problem, thank goodness, but with additional unpleasant tricks up to their teeth.
- Body Horror: It resembles snakes in pile, but upon closer inspection, they're all sharing the same body. And the numerous bumps found on their bodies are actually massively engorged ticks.
- Mighty Glacier: The adults can cause great damage with their poison attacks, but their mobility is pretty awful, though this is to be expected from what is essentially a bunch of snakes sloppily connected to each other. The children, however, are rather easily killed.
- Reptiles Are Abhorrent: They're poisonous, they're numerous, and apparently parasitic.Venomous, ravenous, and cold-hearted as the pale moon. Each fang is another reason to stay out of the Forbidden Wood.
- Super Spit: The adults can spit poison great distances.
Snake Parasite
These adolescent snakes have sacrificed stealth and raw power for speed. Pray they find something else to sink their teeth into.
The result of Snake Balls having their kids inside of Huntsmen. They lay dormant inside, until suddenly the huntsman's head explodes to reveal about a dozen snakes coming out of the neck.
- Body Horror: The head of the Huntsman explodes to reveal dozens of snakes.
- Chest Burster: Only instead of the chest, it's the head that bursts.
- The Dreaded: While the first half of the Forbidden Woods is chock full of Huntsmen, large Huntsmen, and their dogs, they all stop appearing as soon as you meet these enemies. This implies that even the Scourge-crazed hunter mob fear going too deep into the woods.
- Enemy Summoner: Upon noticing you, they'll let out an ear-piercing "whistle" and several baby Snake Balls will rise from the ground. There are only a couple that actually use this move, though.
- Expy: Compare the Snake Parasites to the Las Plagas-infected Ganados when the sun goes down... which were themselves inspired by the manga Parasyte.
- Parasite Zombie
- Rubber Man: They can apparently stretch their hands to attack at a distance, though in actuality it's a snake lunging out of his robe with his weapon in its jaws.
- Your Head Asplode: Some Snake Parasites walk around looking normal, but with a bit of a Zombie Gait to their walk. After noticing you, the head will explode to reveal the snakes.
Celestial Minion
Who could look up and not be overcome by wonder, fascination, and curiosity? But the pursuit of knowledge is a dangerous thing, and the man who returns may not be the man who left.
Mysterious humanoid creatures with blue luminescent skin and large bulbous craniums, akin to the head of a jellyfish or an octopus. They are later revealed to have been humans who have, "ascended," due to the Healing Church's sick experiments, having now become Kin to the Great Ones.
- Ambiguous Situation: With the reveal of finding the partially transformed victim in Iosefka's Clinic, one has to wonder if, like those victims afflicted with the Beast Plague, if this transformation (at least in this stage) is reversible in some way. We aren't given any further explanations on the matter, so whether or not these victims can be restored to normal is the subject of debate.
- Bioluminescence Is Cool: They resemble gray aliens with translucent jellyfish-like heads, dotted with pulsing lights.
- Combat Tentacles: Their more advanced forms have tendrils (possibly antennae?) sprouting from their heads, and in this state, they have the ability to fire high-speed and powerful Arcane projectiles.
- The Greys: Out of all the creatures related to the Great Ones, they have various traits that are the most stereotypically alien as characterized in various depictions in media.
- Glass Cannon: Most Celestial Emissaries will go down in a few hits, but their laser attack can be quite deadly if it lands.
- Mini Mook: Of the Celestial Emissary boss.
- Was Once a Man: They are all implied to have once been human by the fact that they are the final result of the Impostor Iosefka's experiments on her potential subjects, as evidence by a dead body found in the clinic with what are unmistakably untransformed human limbs.
- Wham Shot: Finding gray aliens in either the Forbidden Woods or Iosefka's Clinic is quite a surprise as they certainly stand out against all other enemies encountered thus far, and seem to be incredibly out of place give the Gothic Horror nature of the story... at least they seem out of place at first...
- Zerg Rush: The boss fight against the Celestial Emissary involves a whole crowd of lesser minions constantly spawning in to attack you. Even when the Emissary grows, the lesser ones continue to swarm you.
The Younger Madaras Twin
The younger of twin brothers who were born in the Forbidden Woods and raised alongside a poisonous snake, with whom they forged an inhuman kinship. The brothers eventually became Hunters, bringing back prey to dissect for their village's forbidden research and feeding their snake beast the entrails. Eventually, the twins found Vermin within their snake, killing it and then turning on one another. The Younger Twin appears as a summonable NPC and a Confederate of The League. However, he later appears in person after either gaining the highest rank in The League or killing Valtr, and killing him makes him unavailable to summon ever again, though it also grants the player his unique whistle tool.
- Artificial Stupidity: He can't tell the height difference between you and him, so if you go to the elevator and head to the lower floor, he will keep chasing you until he plummets to his death.
- Assist Character: If you have the Impurity rune equipped, you can summon him for assistance against the Shadows of Yharnam, Rom the Vacuous Spider, and Ludwig the Accursed.
- Cain and Abel: After killing their beloved snake friend because they found Vermin in it, the twins turned on one another, with the younger twin murdering the elder.
- Glass Cannon: In contrast to the other "butcher" allies, while he's still rather weak, he makes up for it with his special whistle.
- Go Mad from the Revelation: Both twins faithfully joined the League's crusade against Vermin, but finding Vermin within their beloved snake drove them to madness and violence. Gaining Valtr's helmet, and learning that the whole crusade against Vermin is a sham, causes the Younger Madaras Twin to attack the player, implying that, similarly, learning that his terrible acts were All for Nothing plunges him even deeper into insanity.
- Kill It with Fire: Occasionally buffs his Axe with Fire Paper.
- Recurring Element: He's a unique enemy NPC wearing "butcher" gear whom the player can summon for bosses. However, while all of those NPCs needed to be beaten to be summoned by the player, the Younger Madaras Twin can be summoned to help the player until they attack them and need to be killed.
- Snake Charmer: In a sense. The twins had a special whistle that they used to call their snake to them. The player can claim it after killing him. It is the only Hunter's tool that uses Bloodtinge instead of Arcane, though it can sometimes hit the player too.
- Sore Loser: Unlike many other From Software "butcher" enemies, the Younger Madaras Twin will refuse to let you summon him ever again, even into the NG+, if you kill him. Then again, there may be another explanation at work.
Shadows of Yharnam
The unmistakable robed figure of a Shadow instills fear into the once fearless. Nimble and expertly trained, they often strike unseen and as lethally as discipline calls.
Three Keepers of the Old Lords who have somehow left the Chalice Dungeons and escaped out to the physical plane. Clad in obscuring black robes, the Shadows of Yharnam now walk in the world above. The trio of Shadows found in the Forbidden Woods have been infected with the snake parasites, but have gained control of them themselves.
- Big Entrance: Their boss area, The Forbidden Grave, is initially shrouded in a mysterious fog, unlike other parts of the woods. Once The Hunter is close enough, the three will emerge out from the fog, side-by-side, in a very ghostly fashion, perfectly setting the atmosphere for the impending battle at hand.
- Black Cloak: All three wear one. Later on during the battle, snakes emerge from underneath them.
- Dark Is Evil: Their black robes really do give off some Star Wars vibes and they are very evil.
- Degraded Boss: All three variants of the Shadows reappear in the upper floors of Mergo's Loft as regular Mooks for the area with significantly lower health and less powerful moves.
- Elite Mook: The versions in the Forbidden Woods are this to the ones in the Nightmare Frontier.
- Expy: Freakier Nazgûl, for all intents and purposes. Yes, freakier. When was the last time you saw snakes coming out of a Ringwraith's face?
- Meaningful Name: Two of the less common meanings of "shadow" is "protection or shelter" and "an inseparable attendant or companion". They always make an appearance before Pthumerian Queen Yharnam makes an appearance.
- One-Winged Angel: The boss versions have been infested with the parasites that can be encountered in the Forbidden Woods. Midway through the fight, snakes burst from the cloaks of all three Shadows, which gives them new abilities. If you let them live for too long after that, they can morph again.
- Painful Transformation: During the boss fight with them, once at least ONE of them is close to death, all three will suddenly stop fighting and writhe in agony; the three will all let out cries of pain as Snake Parasites burst out of their chests! Although they don't seem too traumatized by this occurrence, as they quickly regain their composure and continue the fight.
- Playing with Fire: Two of the Shadows hold sources of fire that they can use to manifest flame-based attacks with, with one of them using their candle to blow streams of fire in conjunction with their sword while the other constantly uses their flame medium to lob fire balls from a safe distance.
- Rubber Man: After their transformation, the sword-wielding Shadows can stretch their arms to attack The Hunter from a distance. Although like the standard Snake Parasite enemies, it's really a snake emerging from its body and taking hold of its weapon.
- Sinister Scimitar: The swords that two of them wield (and by extension others who wield them) seem to be a type of curved sword in both appearance and handling.
- Summon Magic: Once they reach the third phase of their fight, the remaining survivor gains the ability to summon massive snakes from the ground to attack you.
- Wolfpack Boss: There are three of them, and they come at you all at once.
Byrgenwerth College
Garden of Eyes
Among the moonlit terraces and exotic Byrgenwerth gardens lie treacherous and vile creatures, spying on unsuspecting Hunters with their malice-filled, jaundiced eyes.
The former test subjects encountered at Byrgenwerth, used by Provost Willem as living vessels for the cultivation of eyes. They resemble humans with spider-flies for heads.
- Expy: Bears a striking resemblance to the Mi-Gos.
- Extra Eyes: It has twenty-seven! It seems these creatures were bred for their extra eyes for Byrgenwerth to harvest.
- Lightning Bruiser: They run fast and hit hard, and have a deadly grab attack that induces frenzy.
- Multi-Armed and Dangerous: In addition to their two regular arms, they have six spider-like appendages coming out of their heads.
- Was Once a Man: They were the initial test subjects of Insight experiments, before the goal went from "growing eyes" to "Growing eyes within".
- Winged Humanoid: They have wings on their back, which they use in their deadly grab attack.
Fluorescent Flower
Brilliant yet fatal, these overgrown arthropods boast high defense and powerful magic. Hunters must be both light-footed if they are to dodge their deadly spells.
Giant centipede-like creatures. They have very high health and can attack from a great range with explosive attacks. Also appear in the Chalice Dungeons.
- Attack Its Weak Point: The flower on their heads. Aim for it with a powerful ranged weapon and you can kill them in one shot.
- Big Creepy-Crawlies: The best way to describe them is "eldritch cosmic house-centipede."
- Eldritch Abomination: Giant, ethereal centipede-like creatures with lures on their heads, able to command some kind of cosmic magic. Get too close and you'll see their many teeth.
- More Teeth than the Osmond Family: They have leech-like mouths filled to the brim with razor sharp teeth.
- Super Spit: At close range, the creatures will spit a torrent of acidic saliva.
- Technicolor Death: Collapse into a singularity when killed.
- Unique Enemy: Only one of these appear in the game outside of the Chalice Dungeons. Given that it appears on the grounds of Byrgenwerth, its appearance may allude to the College's proximity to the tomb of the gods.
Yurie, the Last Scholar
Members of the Choir are both the highest-ranking clerics of the Healing Church, and scholars who continue the work that began at Byrgenwerth. The eye covering indicates their debt to the teachings of Master Willem, even though their paths diverged.
One of the very few sane Healing Church Choir members left, she searches Byrgenwerth for unknown reasons.
- Beam Spam: She will use the Call Beyond item quite liberally, which sends out a torrent of beams that do a lot of damage. This is a big reason why she's so ridiculously hard. To make matters worse, she is fought in rather tight quarters with little room to evade.
- Boss in Mook Clothing: There are actual bosses that are easier than Yurie. A German Spy reveals that she has maxed out stats, which is due to the fact that all the (human) enemy Hunters are created the same way that the player character is made.
- Combat Tentacles: She uses the Augur of Ebrietas.
- Dark Action Girl: She's capable of killing you with ease if you aren't careful. Since she's also a member of the Healing Church Choir, she's most definitely not good.
- Deadly Gas: She wields the Rosmarinus, which is apparently standard-issue for members of the Choir.
- Mad Scientist: The Choir as a whole are this.
- Sword Cane: She wields the Threaded Cane.
Forsaken Cainhurst Castle
Bloodlicker
With no host left to defend Cainhurst Castle from the beastly siege, these deadly, vile creatures prowl the grounds, gorging themselves on the tainted fluid of the fallen.
Vaguely humanoid creatures that prowl the outside of Cainhurst Castle in search of blood. They crawl like spiders and have large, bloated red stomachs filled with blood.
- Balloon Belly: Their stomachs are severely bloated and look like they're about to explode, spraying the blood they've collected everywhere... and sure enough, upon their death they will pop and absolutely drench the player character in the blood. There are even the odd few of them that are full enough that they can't even attack or move.
- Blood Lust: In the Chalice Dungeons, these enemies have a tendency to show up in areas where you've used a visceral attack, licking up the blood left behind, making areas you've already cleared of threats dangerous again.
- Lightning Bruiser: They are fast and hit extremely hard and have a lot of health. They are not to be messed with.
- Logical Weakness: As deadly as their pouncing attacks are, they make it easy for skilled players to roll behind them mid-leap and tear them apart.
- Overly-Long Tongue: They use their long tongues to slurp up any blood spilled on the ground.
- Super Spit: The ones encountered in the Hunter's Nightmare can spit poisonous blood at you.
- Visual Pun: They're enemies that resemble gigantic ticks, in a world where other strains of the Old Blood turn them into wolves. Talk about a flea infestation.
- Youkai: They're a perverse mix of fleas, ticks, akaname, and gaki. Fleas for their limbs and movement style; ticks for their distended stomachs which grow as they feed; the akaname for their absurd tongues; and finally, both the akaname and the gaki due to the fact that they "clean" up filth (spilled blood in this case).
Parasite Larva
Blindly vicious, these creatures will leap from the ground to bury their curved mandibles into flesh.
Large parasitic maggots with sharp pincers.
- Big Creepy-Crawlies: They're the smallest enemies in the game, but they're certainly bigger than most bugs.
- The Symbiote: In the Nightmare of Mensis, killing a Silverbeast will cause a couple of Parasite Larva to emerge from the corpse. The headless Bloodletting Beast found in the Chalice Dungeons also appears to be the host of a positively gigantic specimen which will emerge from the Beast's neck once enough damage has been inflicted.
Bound Widows
All the nobles of Cainhurst Castle are long since dead, except... One feels that a presence remains, a subtle, terrible pain etched into the very walls.
The restless spirits of deceased noblewomen from Cainhurst Castle, who were victims of a terrible slaughter at the hands of the Executioners of the Healing Church. They now wander the derelict halls of their former home as vengeful ghosts. A majority of them carry daggers, but a select few carry their own heads.
- Ambiguous Situation: Although the story is an example of both Gothic Horror and Cosmic Horror at the same time, the presence of the Widows does indeed raise a few questions as to how things in Yharnam work. For one, the presence of sincere ghosts does indeed confirm that humans have spirits as well as the afterlife, but how these revelations effect The Great Ones and the various Nightmares/Dreams and their mechanics is unclear.
- Barred from the Afterlife: As it would seem due to the tragedy that took place at Cainhurst, these noblewomen aren't at peace and they're unable to move on, instead lashing out any anyone who enters the Castle, perhaps in an attempt to enact vengeance on those who attacked them in the first place.
- Blind Weaponmaster: They are blindfolded and will not detect you unless you run and make a lot of noise or get marked by the Servants.
- Body Horror: A close examination will reveal terrible wounds on their throats, indicating that they were slit open when they were alive, in addition to being decapitated as well. Even more horrible, if the Widows are alerted to The Hunter's presence, they will let out piercing screams and blood will violently flow from their wounded throats or from their headless necks!
- Ethereal White Dress: Seemingly based upon the, "Gray Lady," ghost archetype from European/American folklore.
- Girl with Psycho Weapon: Either long daggers or their own severed heads. Their bloodcurdling screams and frenzied attacks tell you a lot about their mental state after death.
- Invisibility: Well, at least mostly invisible. They're very hard to see when they're unaware of your presence, but once they hear you coming, they start moving and become fully visible.
- Losing Your Head: Some widows carry their severed heads. These spirits cannot attack, but instead unleash a bloodcurdling scream that paralyzes you, and leaves you open to be attacked by the other Widows.
- Ominous Walk: Unless they're alerted to your location, they almost never run toward you, instead preferring to walk extremely slowly towards you. This reasoning might be justified by their blindness.
- Screaming Warrior: The headless ones.
- Stringy-Haired Ghost Girl: Older than the usual examples, but they still count.
- With My Hands Tied: Their hands are bound in front of them, which doesn’t stop them from wielding their daggers or heads effectively.
Cain's Servants
What keeps them here? Loyalty? Fear? Denial? None could answer, save the servants themselves if only they spoke.
The servants of Cainhurst Castle. Despite their appearance, they are surprisingly skillful.
- Battle Butler: They're the ones who relentlessly clean the castle, but they're also the castle's fighting force.
- Blow Gun: Some carry golden canes that double as blow guns, which stagger you and create a beacon for the Bound Widows to follow.
- Extreme Doormat: Implied to have been tortured by the Cainhurst nobility back before the raid by the Church, yet will put their lives on the line to protect the now abandoned castle.
- Pint-Sized Powerhouse: Kinda. They're skinny and around your height, but they mainly stay in a very hunched-over stance. They can also turn you into a Hunter fillet if you're not careful.
- Royal Rapier: There are a few that carry these, and they've got some fancy fencing skills.
- Slave Mooks: It's hard to imagine that the Cainhurst nobility treated them humanely, and their continued service is implied to be something like Stockholm Syndrome.
- Undying Loyalty: Their masters are all dead and the castle is fallen into ruin, but they continue to dutifully look after it.
Lost Child of Antiquity
The castle yields neither to weather nor foe, and these stone guardians act as a symbol of Cainhurst's fortitude.
Gargoyle-like creatures that inhabit the ramparts and roof of Cainhurst Castle.
- Blood Lust: Their grab attack involves them tackling you and sucking blood from your neck for considerable damage.
- Golem: Implied to be animate stone constructs created by the castle's denizens as guard animals. Their clumsy, awkward movements would imply that their construction is rather imperfect.
- Jump Scare: They just love to drop down from above and exsanguinate you when you aren't looking, and tend to hide amongst the stone statues in wait for you to walk by.
- Mix-and-Match Critter: They have bat-like bodies with human heads.
- Nobody Here but Us Statues: Some of them stand completely motionless pretending to be just another of the many sculptures in the castle, only to start moving once you get too close.
- Our Gargoyles Rock: Their origins bear parallels to classic gargoyles, albeit with the faces of withered old men, and they'll often pretend to be statues, however...
- Our Vampires Are Different: Their bat-like appearances and their grab attacks, which involves wrapping their arms/wings around you and biting down on your neck, also bear resemblance to portrayals of vampires in both folklore and various media.
- Screaming Warrior: Their screech attack, signified by a piercing ringing sound and unleashing a wind projectile.
Martyr Logarius
"Acts of goodness are not always wise, and acts of evil are not always foolish, but regardless, we shall always strive to be good."
The great Logarius was once the leader of the Executioners, a group of fanatics who stormed Cainhurst Castle in order to purge the unclean blood of the Cainhurst nobility. However, he donned the Crown of Illusions, one of Cainhurst's most precious secrets, to prevent a vile secret from ever being exposed. All that remains of him is his frozen corpse, still sitting on his throne.
- Achilles' Heel: Interrupting the buffing ritual that signals the point where he Turns Red makes it so that you can parry his melee attacks in the second half of the battle, making him especially vulnerable to Visceral Attacks, and the wind-up makes it possible to run up behind him for a backstab that makes interrupting it relatively easy, assuming you don't get very unlucky with your positioning.
- And I Must Scream: He was stuck in the frozen cold, keeping a watchful eye on Cainhurst Castle, but unable to leave as a result. If his corpse is able to reanimate itself whenever somebody gets close, then it's possible that he was conscious while watching his own body decay.
- Beef Gate: He made himself one in order to keep people away from Vileblood Queen Annalise. He also functions as one to players who want a Bloodtinge build, since he can be accessed fairly early and guards the Chikage, the best bloodtinge weapon in the base game.
- Cruel and Unusual Death: Death by exposure to the freezing elements is a slow, horrible death. Small wonder he's so cranky when he wakes up...
- Contractual Boss Immunity: Cannot be knocked off the roof of the castle that he is fought at.
- Cool Crown: The Crown of Illusions, which is said to reveal illusions.
- Cool Sword: The blade he wields bears a striking resemblance to the Brandt swords from Demon's Souls and the Drake Sword from Dark Souls, and has an array of mystical powers.
- Dark Is Not Evil: He volunteered to stay behind and keep Cainhurst Castle from being discovered, indicating that he was once a good warrior.
- Dual Wielding: He wields a scythe catalyst in one hand and a Soulbrandt look-alike in the other.
- "Get Back Here!" Boss: Plays this straight for the first part of the battle, dashing away every time the player gets close to cast spells from afar. Once his health gets whittled down enough, he pulls out his sword and goes more on the offensive.
- Knight Templar: He and his Executioners were a secret cabal of fanatics within the Healing Church Workshop who made it their mission to completely eliminate the Cainhurst nobility after the Church found out that they were practicing "unsanctioned" blood ministration with "unclean" blood.
- Large and in Charge: Like many human soulsborne bosses, he is inexplicably a giant. This can actually work against him, since positioning yourself below him on the roof means some of his swings will go over your head.
- Lean and Mean: He's very tall and skinny, and that doesn't stop him from bringing the hurt.
- Magic Knight: Equally skilled at both melee combat and magic.
- Mummy: Logarius looks like little more than a desiccated, frozen corpse. "Looks" being the key word here.
- Non-Malicious Monster: Downplayed: Logarius was a fanatic in life and a deadly blood-wielding lich in death, but he's just desperate to keep the secret of Cainhurst Castle hidden.
- Optional Boss: His boss arena is very secluded and in an area that requires a special item in order to access.
- Our Liches Are Different: A frozen, undead wizard with impressive blood magic. The only thing missing is a phylactery: wailing on him enough is sufficient to put him down for good.
- Pragmatic Hero: For a given definition of "hero". Logarious believed that acts of good are not always wise, and acts of evil are not always foolish. He did insist that one should always strive to do good, at least.
- Recurring Element: If the beard doesn't sell it, his backstory is oddly reminiscent of Gwyn's. Both were driven to achieve their goals (continuing the Age of Fire for Gwyn, destroying the Vilebloods for Logarius), yet they mysteriously never returned.
- Rooftop Confrontation: The battle with him is this.
- Serrated Blade of Pain: His sword's blade features a wavy, undulating design. It appears to be a scaled up Malaysian Kris dagger, a weapon infamous for the large, fast-bleeding wounds it would cause.
- Sinister Scythe: Wields one. It also doubles as a catalyst.
- Storm of Blades: In his second phase, he may ram a spectral sword into the ground above which dozens of blades are summoned and fire off in every direction every few seconds.
- Sword Beam: A passive trait of his second phase is that his sword creates delayed slashes that explode.
- Turns Red: After losing about a third of his health, he switches tactics big time, forgoing his long-range spells for more aggressive close-range attacks.
Yahar'gul, Unseen Village
Bell Ringers
One of Yharnam's sinister urban legends, this crazed woman dressed in black carries with her a special bell. It is said that the sound of her bell brings out all sorts of unsavory creatures.
Emaciated Pthumerian madwomen, clad in withered black cloaks and carrying Pthumerian ritual bells that they use to cast Arcane spells to attack with and summon enemies. There is a portrait in Cainhurst depicting a woman wearing the same necklace as the Bell Ringers, apparently linking the Cainhurst bloodline to the Pthumerians.
- Black Cloak: Although the ones that aid The One Reborn wear red.
- Combat Medic: The ones who appear in the boss fight with The One Reborn stay up on the second floor powering up the boss with their bell rings. Killing them makes the boss fight a lot easier.
- Enemy Summoner: They use their bells to create endlessly-respawning enemies, and the ones in Yahar'gul also buff their summons with additional health. Killing the Bell Ringer will cause the remaining summoned enemies to stagger and lose their buffs in Yahar'gul, and outright die in the Chalice Dungeons.
- They also play part this part in online mode, spawning to summon enemy players when you use the Beckoning Bell. They also show up in the Nightmare areas by default, requiring you to hunt them down if you don't want to worry about being invaded.
- For Doom the Bell Tolls: Unusually for this trope, their infamous bells are little handbells, not booming church bells. But the ringing of these bells certainly spells trouble.
- In the Hood: They wear black hoods. The ones who aid The One Reborn wear red ones.
- Necromancer: The red-clad ones are responsible for summoning The One Reborn.
- No Body Left Behind: Enemies summoned by the Bell Ringer that would normally leave behind ragdolls instead vanish upon death.
- Power Glows: The enemies that are summoned by Bell Ringers will glow a blood red. They also look like blood is constantly dripping down their faces.
Cramped Casket
This hideous aberration can be found writhing among the oblique corners of Yahar'gul, twisting and contorting as if to escape its own tortured existence. Behold, as the blasphemous shapes shift and reassemble bewitchingly, as a sudden darkness envelops our Hunter; alas, by then it is too late.
Giant clumps of corpses attached to wooden coffins crawling around the Yahar'gul chapel area.
- Achilles' Heel: Caskets are very strong and much faster then they look... until they touch one of the glowing yellow pools surrounding bodies on the Yahar'gul streets. They will catch on fire, slow down considerably, and be easier to fight.
- Body of Bodies: They're giant corpse blobs coming out of coffins.
- Dem Bones: The corpses that make up its body are almost entirely rotted away.
- Mighty Glacier: The things can hit pretty damn hard for a slow, unwieldy mass of corpses.
- The Undead: And they are a cluster of it.
Hypogean Gaol Hunters
A trio of School of Mensis Hunters that appear in the abandoned Hypogean Gaol after the defeat of Rom and the Blood Moon occurs.
- Bayonet Ya: One of them wields the Rifle Spear, which can easily be turned into a rifle with a bayonet that he'll slice you with if you get too close.
- BFG: One of them uses one of the Powder Keg's Cannons as their sidearm. He can fire it more than twice.
- Kill It with Fire: One of them wields a Flamesprayer.
- Roar Before Beating: When one is spotted, The Beast Claw wielding Hunter will always pause to perform the "Roar" gesture before engaging The Hunter.
- Sword Cane: The one wielding the Flamesprayer uses a Threaded Cane.
- Walking Shirtless Scene: The third one goes around in just the Iron Yahar'gul Helm and his skivvies.
- Wolf Pack Boss: They all come at you at once, and they absolutely refuse to be drawn away one-by-one by a canny Hunter; you attract the attention of one, the other two will follow.
- Wolverine Claws: The shirtless one wields a Beast Claw.
The One Reborn
A horrible amalgamation of corpses gathered and animated by the Great Ones and the Nightmare, the One Reborn is sustained by Bell Ringers.
- Black Speech: It's not mindless, and it appears to be be saying something meaningful whenever it casts a spell, but good luck figuring out what the meaning behind that horrible guttural language is.
- Body of Bodies: It is composed of innumerable skeletons and decaying flesh fused together into a centaur-like being.
- Creepy Asymmetry: The bodies that compose this creature are mashed together with a complete disregard for evenness; neither side resembles the other.
- Dem Bones: Owing to its nature as a collection of skeletons.
- Eldritch Abomination: A man-made one at that, a result of the School of Mensis's rituals.
- Flunky Boss: Bell Ringers are present on the second level of the arena and pelt you with fireballs.
- Giant Space Flea from Nowhere: There's no written lore to contextualize just what this thing is. It's simply summoned from the cosmos by the Bell Ringers and has to be killed. It's heavily implied by the lack of people in this town and Yahar'gul's Kidnappers' modus operandi that it is what remains of the people taken by said kidnappers to become the vessel for a man-made Great One.
- King Mook: A bigger version of the Cramped Caskets, and shaped more like a centaur.
- Mix-and-Match Critters: It is made from an amalgamation of different creatures.
- Mythology Gag: Is guarded by smaller skeletal minions, in the same vein as Gravelord Nito.
- The arrangement of the fight, with the large boss monster in the middle with a number of ranged minions attacking from the balconies, is also extremely similar to the Tower Knight.
- The concept of an amalgamation of corpses serving as a boss was also done for the Rotten, and like that boss the One Reborn is considered fairly easy by the fanbase (although this depends on the person in question).
- Undead Abomination: A grotesque attempt at creating a Great One from the bodies of the dead.
Upper Cathedral Ward
Celestial Child
In any form, new life demands a caretaker. Be wary you are not selected for this role, as it may yet drive you mad.
Strange, child-like entities found throughout the Upper Cathedral Ward. Mostly nonviolent, they prostrate themselves towards the Grand Cathedral, seeking Ebrietas.
- Enfant Terrible:
- The larva versions of the Celestial Child in the Upper Cathedral Ward have low health but can inflict frenzy.
- Arianna gives birth to one of these things after defeating Mergo’s Wet Nurse.
- Expy: of Demonic Child from Berserk, which Casca gave birth to after being corrupted by Griffith.
- Strong Family Resemblance: Their physical features are very similar to Ebrietas. Possibly they are meant to be her surrogate children.
- Was Once a Man: It's heavily implied that they are children taken by the Healing Church to the Choir Orphanage. They're also the end result of Great Ones impregnating human women.
Nightmare Frontier
Slime Scholar
Historians firmly believe that pious scholars of Mensis stood tall among erudite men, yet these deplorable beings are all that remains.
Former students of Byrgenwerth College, trapped within the Byrgenwerth Lecture Hall when it was thrown into the Nightmare. They have transformed during their time there, becoming half-human amorphous blobs, still clad in their student uniforms.
- Blob Monster: They've retained a humanoid upper half, but the lower half of their bodies is simply goo.
- Eyeless Face: They just have empty sockets where their eyes used to be.
- Kill It with Fire: Or electricity. They heavily resist physical and arcane damage.
- Making a Splash: There are a couple scholars that carry beakers or flasks and splash you with a liquid that hinders your stamina as well as causing damage.
- Rubber Man: Because they are made of slime, they can stretch their arms to great lengths, giving their attacks quite a bit of range.
- Wall Crawl: Some of them hang from the ceiling, waiting for you to pass by and jump on you.
- Was Once a Man: Were all once students of Byrgenwerth, but being trapped in the Nightmare for so long has changed them drastically.
Loran Silverbeast
While at rest, these horrors seem innocuous, but as they stand, one soon discovers how feral they are and their eagerness to kill.
A deformed Scourge Beast that wields a torch. One of the remaining infected residents of the Scourge of Beasts that wiped out Loran.
- Ambiguous Situation: They're called Loran Silverbeasts, which implies they're Beasts from Loran. They're also impossible creatures that are emaciated, full up of giant parasites and have lightning attacks. So did they originate in the Nightmare or in the lost city?
- Body Horror: Their heads are turned by 90 degrees so that their mouth is vertical, their ribs grow through their chest, and they have a trio of claws coming out of their wrist that they can grow and shrink at will.
- Degraded Boss: You find them as normal mooks in the Nightmare Frontier and the Nightmare of Mensis, and you can also find them guarding chests and levers in other Chalice Dungeons.
- Expy: Of the Gug, of H.P. Lovecraft fame, complete with lanky arms and sideways face.
- Nightmare Face: Unlike the other werewolf-like creatures in the game, these things don't have wolf-like faces. Instead, they resemble horribly deformed nightmarish Muppets.
- Playing with Fire: They wield torches, and can use them for either blunt attacks or to blow fire at you.
- Turns Red: It gets down on all fours and starts attacking faster when at half HP.
- Wolverine Claws: One of their attacks is to make their claws grow almost six feet long and swipe them at you. Needless to say, it has a lot of range.
Giant Lost Child
Of gentle giants in these lands none dwell. Yet, an oaf remains such, and one can't but feel pity in the face of childish innocence.
Large creatures with white fur that throw large boulders from a distance.
- Bigfoot, Sasquatch, and Yeti: They certainly resemble yetis, but they don't live in a frozen tundra.
- Body Horror: They have slash marks on their backs and chests, their ribs are showing, and there are strange growths on their arms and legs.
- Death from Above: They hang out in areas above you in order to throw boulders at you, and unless you've got some serious health and defense, it's an instant death.
- Nightmare Face: Their faces are squat and fused into their neck, while their eyes are beady and bulging out of their sockets.
- One-Hit Kill: A direct hit from their boulders will spell the end of all but the very beefiest Hunters.
Crawler
This cephalopod-like creature dwells in the poisonous bogs of the Nightmare, bathing in noxious fumes as if they were a fresh water stream.
Giant slug-like creatures with powerful tentacles that reside in poisonous waters. They come in both small and large sizes.
- Body of Bodies: They have amalgamated masses of Messengers inside their mouths that they use to grab opponents.
- Combat Tentacles: They have large, powerful tentacles they can use to attack.
- Deadly Gas: The large slugs have an attack in which they release a slow-moving cloud of noxious purple gas.
- Super Spit: At close distances, they release acidic spit.
Winter Lantern
There it stood, uttering a warbled cry, a litany so dissonant it pierced a warrior's eardrums, driving him to an otherworldly insanity.
Humanoid eldritch abominations with large, eye-lined brains for heads.
- Big Bad: One of them serves as the titular antagonist of the Lady of the Lantern mini-series.
- Boss in Mook's Clothing: They're tough, they have a nasty grab attack and they inflict Frenzy just by being near you, so you don't even have to actually fight them for them to One-Hit Kill you. They also happen to be a very rare type of enemy.
- Brown Note: If your insight is high enough (i.e. any amount), they'll sing in an off-key tone that causes the frenzy meter to rise.
- Eldritch Abomination: Their horrifying forms are not meant for human eyes. Merely looking at them causes one to go into a frenzy.
- Evil Knockoff: Due to their resemblance to the Doll of the Hunter's Dream and their proximity to the Nightmares tied to Mensis, it can be implied that the Winter Lanterns are the School of Mensis' attempt at duplicating the Doll.
- Extra Eyes: She has eyes all around her head, which means no sneaking up on her.
- Go Mad from the Revelation: Merely looking at them while standing too close will cause the frenzy meter to rise rapidly.
- Humanoid Abomination: That said, they also look fairly human-shaped for their brain-breaking nature... They also bear a disturbing resemblance◊ to the Doll.
- Lost in Translation: Their original Japanese name is Hozuki, a type of flowering plant in the Nightshade family. The English name comes from Hozuki flowers also being referred to as Chinese Lanterns (which they vaguely resemble) and winter cherries, with the name's kanji also meaning 'Demon Lantern'.
- My Brain Is Big: Played with. Their entire head is a mass of dead Messengers in the form of a brain.
- One-Hit Kill: Being able to inflict frenzy just by looking at them alone qualifies them for this position, but if you get grabbed by them it plays an incredibly long animation of them embracing you while the countless mouths on the underside of its head bite you. Even if you survive the attack, you're likely edging close to a full frenzy bar.
- Uncanny Valley: They're very...difficult to look at because their giant "brains" are actually a pile of dead messengers. Which are constantly shifting along with some eyes. They're just as likely to break the players brain as the Hunters.
Hunters of Despair
A pair of Hunters trapped in the Nightmare Frontier. One is dressed in the Yharnam Hunter set, the other is dressed in the Black Church set.
- Kill It with Fire: The axe-wielding Hunter also possesses a Hunter Torch.
- Let's Fight Like Gentlemen: The Yharnam Hunter will bow upon killing you.
- Shotguns Are Just Better The Black Church Hunter uses a Hunter Blunderbuss.
- Sword Cane: The one in the Black Church set wields a Threaded Cane.
The Nightmare of Mensis and Mergo's Loft
Mergo's Attendant
Some say academics from the faculty of the School of Mensis still reside in the Nightmare, dictating dream logic within its warped fabric. Could these masked horrors be the very same?
Strange creatures clad in plate and mail that inhabit Mergo's Loft.
- Pint-Sized Powerhouse: They're shorter in stature, but they will attack by ramming themselves into you, and judging by the sounds made make it sound like they're pretty strong.
- Savage Setpiece: You'll first encounter a floor full of them that don't attack unless you attack them first. The ones after that attack you on sight.
Mergo's Chief Attendant
In the dusty corners of the Mensis nightmare lurk Mergo's chief attendants, presiding over the nightmare with a caretaker's diligence.
The overseer of the regular Attendants. While most of the Attendants are content to leave you be for the most part, their Chiefs will attack you head on.
- The Butcher: Carry large cleavers.
- Chain Pain: In addition to their cleavers, they have chains that inflict rapid poisoning.
- Unique Enemy: There are only three of them in the entire game, and they all appear in one area.
Nightmare Apostle
Of nightmarish creatures there are many in Mensis, yet few are as sly and as cunning as spiders, scuttling unperturbed along the loft's rafters.
Former humans who were transformed into spiders while within the Nightmare of Mensis and Mergo's Loft. There are three variants: standard spiders, ones that still have human faces, and a "large" version within Mergo's Loft.
- Beast with a Human Face: One variant can be found that have human heads.
- Confusion Fu: The giant variants sweep the floor repeatedly while using their bellies for support.
- Giant Spider: Indeed. They are also very detailed in appearance. And one of them is gigantic even by their standards.A larger variant of the more common apostle spiders, watching over matters with motherly concern.
- Spider Swarm: A common tactic used by the red spiders against you.
- Super-Persistent Predator: The red spiders are infamous for making a beeline towards the player as soon as they spawn, which combined with their massive aggro range (about as large as the entire layer that they spawned in) can lead to situations like being assaulted by spiders as soon as one enters the layer. They can even see the player through solid walls and doors – meaning that, in Chalice Dungeons, it's not a rare occurence to
open an unassuming-looking door and immediately get Zerg Rushed by a horde of spiders that have been waiting on the other side. - Unique Enemy: The giant version of this enemy is the only one of its kind, although you may occasionally find it in the Chalice Dungeons.
Choir Intelligencer Edgar
Choir Intelligencer Edgar
A mysterious sort fought in the lowest parts of Mergo's Loft, judgin by his name, he is a Choir member who apparently was sent to spy on Mensis.
- BFS: He wields Ludwig's Holy Blade, which is odd for a Choir member.
- Deadly Gas: Like other Choir members, he uses the Rosmarinus.
- Evil Gloating: Makes the "Joy" gesture every time he kills you.
- Four Eyes, Zero Soul: He's the only Hunter enemy in the game to wear glasses and he's a member of the Choir.
- The Mole: One for the Choir within the School of Mensis, as evidenced by his usage of their unique equipment.
Skeleton Puppet
Keeper, keeper is that you? Whose whispers fill the forlorn loft? Where acrid mists drive Hunters aft, alas, turning grown men soft?
Skeleton-like creatures who wield daggers. They appear to be the minions of Micolash, as they only appear in his boss arena.
- Dem Bones: They are piles of bones that come together to form skeletons. Hitting them causes them to temporarily fall apart.
- Marionette Motion: Unsurprisingly, given the name.
Micolash, Host of the Nightmare
"Grant us eyes, grant us eyes! Plant eyes on our brains to cleanse our beastly idiocy!"
Voiced by: Steven Elliot / Ryan Gage (English), Yutaka Aoyama (Japanese)
A former Byrgenwerth student, leader of the School of Mensis, and the overseer of the Nightmare of Mensis. His real body is found mummified within a small building in the bottom of Yahar'gul, surrounded by the mummies of other School members, all of them wearing Mensis Cages.
- All for Nothing: It isn't apparent at first, but come The Old Hunters, we learn that (unfortunately for him) Kos hasn't been alive for quite some time now. So all of those accursed rituals that Micolash and his school performed and died for? Well, if any part of them had involved trying to garner some kind of attention from her, we're afraid that things didn't quite work out the way that he had wanted them to.
- Ax-Crazy: He is fucking insane when you meet him. He wasn't always like this, though; the scholars of Mensis were once some of the brightest minds in Yharnam, trying their best to make sense of the Great Ones, but were all driven to utter madness after finally managing to encounter Mergo by using his Cord, an event which resulted in what is ominously described as the "stillbirth of their brains".
- Big Bad: The closest thing to the main villain of the game. Micolash is the leader of the School of Mensis and is responsible for the deaths of countless Yharnamites via kidnapping civilians and hunters both to then use them as sacrifices to power the Nightmare and The One Reborn, and if he and the School are also behind pulling the moon closer to the earth as part of their plan to get Mergo to give them cosmic knowledge, they can also claim dubious credit for much of the devastation caused by the latest Scourge outbreak.
- Big Bad Wannabe: The lore indicates that he was responsible for the Nightmare. However, not a soul mentions him before you find the Nightmare of Mensis and by the time you run into him he has become way less relevant to ongoing events than he imagines himself to be. The Hunter is basically just passing through the School to undo the ritual concerning Mergo, and is forced to fight the madman since he's blocking their way. Micolash constantly raves on about his knowledge and power, but when backed into a corner, he is a weak, cowardly threat with only two (three if you count the Skeleton Puppets) combat spells to his name.
- Bullying a Dragon: Sure, Micolash. Go taunt the Hunter while you’re unarmed. That’s going to end nicely...
- Boss Banter: He starts taunting you when he hits half-health.
- Cloud Cuckoolander: Spends most of the battle babbling to you about the Great Ones and the cosmos as well as howling like a wolf.
- The Cuckoolander Was Right: To his credit, he seems to have a geniune (albeit partial) understanding of what he's rambling about, seeing as it was this exact knowledge that drove him to insanity to begin with. Good luck making much sense out of it through his non-sequitur rants and animal howlings, though.
- Cool Helmet: Wears the Mensis Cage, which is a long cage that's twice the length of his head. According to its description, it gives the wearer True Sight and "serves as an antenna that facilitates contact with the Great Ones of the dream." No wonder the guy's insane.
- Combat Tentacles: If you get too close, Micolash uses an Augur of Ebrietas to open a portal in front of his hand, from which the Great One's tentacles extend and lash out to knock you back. note
- Cowardly Boss: At 50% of his health, he vanishes, and taunts you as he dashes through the hallways to another room.
- Cryptic Conversation: Makes cryptic references to things that happened at Byrgenwerth during the fight.
- Dead All Along: While Micolah himself has apparently transcended his mortal flesh, his body is found in the back-most building within Yahar'gul, mummified and surrounded by many other School of Mensis members. Fitting, since the DLC reveals Kos has been dead all along, too. Killing him in the Nightmare ensures his destruction by shooting him back into a dead body.
- Early-Bird Cameo: A note written by him - or, at the absolute least, a fellow Mensis scholar - shows up just before reaching Cathedral Ward, alluding to how the 'Byrgenwerth spider' was getting in the way of their ritual and keeping them from their 'lost masters' - way before the player can know what is written there even means.
- Evil Gloating: Does this all throughout the fight. Even his howling makes sense when you realize he's doing it to mock you, a Hunter of the werewolf-like Beasts.
- Evil Laugh: He has no problem laughing at you during the fight, especially after you reduce his health by half.
- Evil Sorcerer: Micolash is extremely skilled with magic, and will happily spam some of the most powerful spells in the game if given the opportunity.
- Flunky Boss: Various mannequin-like enemies rise up from the floors and assault you while you pursue Micolash. One of the hallways he flees through also has a group of Mergo's Attendants who fire poison darts at you.
- "Get Back Here!" Boss: He runs through various hallways, and has to be chased and corralled into rooms to be fought.
- Go Mad from the Revelation: This guy gained too much eldritch knowledge for his own good.
- Hoist by His Own Petard: During the second phase of his fight, he locks himself in a room to prevent you from reaching him. Shame he didn't know about the hole in the ceiling, and is now locked in a room with the Hunter.
- I Choose to Stay: He has enough eldritch knowledge to know that he is in a dream world, and he doesn't want to wake up.
- Last Words: The game puts particular focus on his, and they serve to further the dream vs. reality problem:"Now I'm waking up! I'll forget everything...!"
- Macross Missile Massacre: He casts A Call Beyond to summon swarms of shooting stars, which is an almost-guaranteed one-hit-kill.
- Madness Mantra: "Ahh, Kos, or some say Kosm... grant us eyes, grant us eyes".
- Marionette Master: Micolash is initially flanked by 2 regenerating puppets, and his maze is littered with them as you try to chase him. They all disappear when he is defeated.
- Mirror Monster: In the second phase, he teleports around by leaping through enchanted mirrors.
- Necromancer: Being the leader of the School of Mensis makes him one; he's the one behind the Mensis Ritual and the creation of The One Reborn. It doesn't help that he has Skeleton Puppets as his escorts.
- Pre-Final Boss: Fought halfway through The Very Definitely Final Dungeon, and all three remaining story bosses are potential candidates for being the Final Boss.
- Skewed Priorities: After defeating him, he laments that, since dying in the Nightmare means waking up in the real world, he'll forget all the cosmic wisdom he's learned there. It doesn't even occur to him that, having not taken care of his body for a very long time, it's dead, and that waking up will be the end of him now.
- Slasher Smile: He has a big, crazy grin on his face in his boss battle introduction.
- Squishy Wizard: Commands formidable magics as well as an army of skeletal minions, but once you actually corner him, he's not particularly tough. Just hope he doesn't use A Call Beyond on you.
- Talkative Loon: Once his fight starts, he does not shut up.
- Unskilled, but Strong: He has no physical weapons to fight you with, only his bare fists which do little damage as he is clearly more of a scholarly type than a fighter. However, he does have two spells that hurt a lot. Augur of Ebrietas, which launches tentacles from his hands in a straight line which is pretty powerful but highly telegraphed and easy to avoid. His most dangerous skill is A Call Beyond which summons a swarm of orbs that will quickly home in on you, and can easily kill you from full health if too many connect. However, he only tends to use it when you aren't right next to him.
Chalice Dungeons
Labyrinth Watchers
Roaming the surface of the Pthumerian labyrinths, watchers will do their utmost to protect the central chambers.
The basic mooks of the Chalice Dungeons. They are emaciated Pthumerians that carry sharp weapons like cleavers and daggers.
- Hot Blade: Some of them have flaming weapons.
- In the Hood: The more powerful Watchers wear hoods.
- Poisoned Weapons: Some of them also throw poisonous daggers.
Merciless Watchers and Watcher Chieftains
Protectors roam the depths, keeping guard over the quiet. Born in the depths and living off of blood and rotting flesh, they are cold and damp, with bluish-white skin that has never been touched by sunlight, and devolved eyes that are pitch black and sunk deep into their sockets.
Pthumerians that have somehow maintained a rotund build after spending no telling how long trapped underground. Higher ups of the grunts who keep watch over the Chalice Dungeons.
- Acrofatic: The naked variant rolls surprisingly fast for a mook his size.
- Barbie Doll Anatomy: Mercifully, the naked Watchers are devoid of genitals.
- Carry a Big Stick: Their standard weapon is a club. There is also a naked variant that attacks with a giant mace.
- Degraded Boss: Merciless Watchers appear throughout the Chalice Dungeons as regular Mooks often guarding the switch leading to the boss of a dungeon layer.
- Fat Bastard: They're all surprisingly rotund for beings that have been trapped underground for an untold number of years. The naked variant has no trouble rolling around like a ball.
- Full-Frontal Assault: The ones that carry maces are stark naked apart from a pair of boots.
- Giant Mook: On top of being very fat, they're also over eight feet tall.
- Stout Strength: They can jump and roll easily and swing around their giant machetes like wiffle bats.
- Unnecessary Combat Roll: The naked variant with the maces do this constantly. It's very hard to take a fat naked zombie-like creature rolling at you seriously.
- Wolfpack Boss: Like the Shadows of Yharnam, there is a boss variant with three of them attacking you at once. Two of them use melee attacks and one stays behind firing at you with a blunderbuss.
Watcher's Gravediggers
Entities lifelessly working in the deepest, dankest layers of Pthumerian Labyrinths. They remain docile unless approached, mindlessly swinging at rock. How long have they been down there?
Pthumerian residents who are still single-mindedly expanding the Hintertombs.
- Ghostly Gape: Presumably a non-undead variant. And, well, just look at it. Its face would've made a perfect mold for Ghostface's mask.
- Sinister Scythe: A second variant wields hooked, scythe-like swords.
Gravekeeper Scorpion
Whether as fast as a shadow's chikage, or as stealthy as stalkers, scorpions pose threats to all manners of Hunters so come prepared with antidotes.
Mutated scorpions found within the lower Pthumeru dungeons.
- Defeat Equals Explosion: Killing them causes their stinger to burst with an explosion of poison, which hurts you if you don't back away after killing one.
- Glass Cannon: Zig-Zagged; they don't have much health, but they've got high defense against physical attacks. They also hit fast and hard.
- No-Sell: They're completely immune to visceral attacks.
- Scary Scorpions: duh.
- Was Once a Man: The strange growths on their backs above their heads sometimes resemble human faces.
Gel
Located on the tops of the underground labyrinth caves, it waits for its next unsuspecting Hunter to consume whole.
Still-living beings made of sludge and the bones of the fallen.
- Cruel and Unusual Death: If you're killed by one, your body is eaten.
- Dem Bones: They appear to be made of human bones and tar.
- Kill It with Fire: The only way to kill them efficiently is with either fire or lightning.
- Wall Crawl: They hang from ceilings waiting for you to walk under them, so they can drop down and unleash a devastating grab attack.
Labyrinth Ritekeeper
Whether the ruins are tombs or a mere resting place for something dark and foul, one thing is true: Someone or something lies asleep here. The Protectors also worship what lies beneath, and among the Protectors are a special class of ritual masters that carry out horrific and detestable ritual rites.
Feeble Pthumarians cloaked in black and carrying skulls, which they use to cast spells.
- Ghostly Gape: They look much like the above Gravediggers.
- Kill It with Fire: They have no melee attacks whatsoever and only attack with slow-moving fireballs. That said, those fireballs do a lot of damage.
- Magic Missile Storm: The variant found in the Izs Chalice Dungeons doesn't cast fireballs, but instead fire even slower-moving, homing spheres of arcane energy. They can curve well enough to catch you after you've hidden behind a piece of cover and, due to their slow speed, a Ritekeeper can throw out 4-5 projectiles before the first has even reached you.
- Noodle People: Despite their very squat stature, they have ludicrously long legs underneath their cloaks. Hiding behind a pillar after one of their volleys makes them stand up to try and see you. While in higher depths, a variant can be seen standing up all the time; they spray a purple mist which invigorates their allies.
- Painfully Slow Projectile: Both the fireballs and arcane spheres move so slowly, and are fired so frequently, that they can easily end up completely swamping you.
- Squishy Wizard: Their projectiles are some of the most damaging attacks in the game and they can fire them off very rapidly, but once you close the distance they won't last long. Just make sure they don't conjure an attack right on top of you...
Labyrinth Madman
The Healing Church holds no regards for pious men nor saints; in their avid lust for knowledge, they turned the once holy into the utterly abominable.
Wild and unpredictable enemies that wield sickles.
- The Berserker: They are incredibly aggressive. Fortunately, this makes them pretty easy to parry.
- Eyeless Face: They just have empty sockets where their eyes once were.
- Grievous Harm with a Body: Less commonly, they'll use a corpse as a weapon.
- Lean and Mean: They might be skinny, but they're durable and strong.
- Lightning Bruiser: They're fast, tough, and if you're not careful, easily capable of killing you in a mad flurry of blades.
- Screaming Warrior: They howl like banshees when they attack.
- Sinister Scythe: They're most commonly seen carrying either one or two sickles.
Labyrinth Warriors
Warriors stand tall in the lower depths of Pthumeru, guarding riches, treasure rooms, and central chambers from trespassers and defilers.
The last remnants of the Pthumerian knights, still clad in ancient mail armor and wielding the weapons they used before they fell.
- BFS: They most commonly carry greatswords.
- Epic Flail: A morning star, to be precise.
- Luckily, My Shield Will Protect Me: One type of Labyrinth Warrior carries a shield that isn't completely useless.
Pilgrim
It meanders in the seemingly endless depths of the labyrinth, mourning in front of the remains of graves in the darkness. What binds such a pitiful soul to this world?
Harmless spirits who just want to be left alone. Then again, they drop a lot of blood vials and quicksilver bullets when killed.
- Actual Pacifist: They'll never attack you unless provoked. If attacked, they'll unleash a magical blast to push you away, and then go back to their non-hostile state.
- In the Hood: They wear white hoods that obscure their faces.
Evil Labyrinth Spirit
A spectral minion of sorts, tormented by bitter regret in a previous life and, as such, unable to find peace.
Knife-wielding ghosts who make their presence known by their evil laughter.
- Evil Counterpart: To the harmless Pilgrim spirits.
- Laughing Mad: Their sinister laughter is how they make their presence known.
- Villain Teleportation: They'll teleport to attack you and to another part of the room if they take too much damage.
Loran Cleric
A surviving member of the Ailing Loran clergy. Beast-possessed Souls of a past age, horns are visibly poking out of their shawl and masks.
- Barrier-Busting Blow: Their fireballs can shatter pillars when they hit.
- Boss in Mook Clothing: Inverted; several of them are fought as layer bosses, and aside from slightly upgraded health, they behave about the same as their Elite Mook counterparts.
- Horned Humanoid: Though their bodies are more werewolf than human.
- It Can Think: Despite being obviously a Beast, it does not act feral at all and is more than capable of casting spells.
- Mix-and-Match Critter: They have werewolf-like bodies, human faces, snake-like tongues, and misshapen horns.
- Overly-Long Tongue: Much like a snake's tongue.
- Playing with Fire: They like to hide in corners and assault you with fireballs.
- Slasher Smile: If you can get a good look at their face without getting torched, you'll see that they have creepy open-mouthed grins.
Keeper's Hunting Dogs
Ever-faithful, even when grotesquely transformed and succumbed to the Scourge. These dogs continue to hunt their masters' prey, fueled by a voracious thirst for blood.
Usually found in pairs alongside the non-boss variant of the Keeper of the Old Lords, these beasts are significantly larger than the rabid dogs and hunting dogs encountered outside the dungeons.
- Hellhound: They're certainly the most demon-like of the various attack dogs in the game. They're much larger, have burning red eyes, very long tongues and weird horns poking out of their bodies.
- Overly-Long Tongue: Their long tongues flap around outside their mouths.
- Red Eyes, Take Warning: Their red eyes bulge from their skulls.
Hole Digger
An extremely rare and mysterious enemy resembling a star-nosed mole that appears in Chalice Dungeons.
- Body Horror: It seems it can push its face through its body and have it come out of its anus so it doesn't have to turn around to attack you.
- Brick Joke: Future Press forgot to put an entry for them in the original guide, as even they didn't find it even with access to debug builds of the game. Come the guide for The Old Hunters, they finally included an entry for the damn thing.
- Expy:
- They greatly resemble the bull-squids from Half-Life.
- Although much less round in appearance, their passive behavior, method of attack and rarity are reminiscient of the Primeval Demons from Demon's Souls. As seen below under Foreshadowing, there are some similarities in their possible significance in the story as well.
- Foreshadowing: It somewhat resembles a grown-up version of what you become in the "Childhood's Beginning" ending of the game.
- Unique Enemy: To say that the enemy is uncommon is an understatement. Nobody on the Future Press team writing the official guide ever found it, meaning it doesn't have an entry in the guide for the base game, and it took months before it was even found by the fanbase. See it here.
Nameless Tomb Prospector
A pair of tomb prospectors encountered in the Chalice Dungeons. One appears in the Isz Gravestone dungeon, while the other appears in the Pthumeru Ihyll dungeon.
- BFS: The Isz prospector wields a Ludwig's Holy Blade.
- Kill It with Fire: They both have a Hunter Torch.
- Weapons of Their Trade: The Ihyll prospector wields a Kirkhammer.
Izzy's Admirer
A Hunter hiding out in the Ailing Loran Chalice Dungeon who wishes to follow in the footsteps of the Hunter Irreverent Izzy.
- Badass Cape: He wears the Charred Hunter Set with the Tomb Prospector Hood.
- Wolverine Claws: The only thing he wields is the Beast Claw.
Undead Giant
These undead monstrosities will likely be encountered several times while exploring the ancient Labyrinth, and can be found bearing blades, cannons, and flails, depending on one's luck.
- Achilles' Heel: All varieties have a large clot on their legs that can be burst to deal a huge amount of damage and cause stagger.
- Arm Cannon: Another variety bears one of these, which is more than capable of a One-Hit Kill upon players unfortunate enough to be hit by it.
- Blade Below the Shoulder: The first type of Undead Giant one will likely encounter has blades in places of hands. A very rare variant of this type found in the Root Chalices has the blade on their left arm heated up so it's red hot.
- Body Horror: The damn things have a number of candles and spikes implanted into their back, their abdominal muscles are nonexistent, revealing their guts for all to see, and their legs are riddled with massive clots. They all have weapons clumsily implanted where their hands would be.
- Degraded Boss: All three of the variants are found as Elite Mooks in later Chalice Dungeons.
- Epic Flail: One variety that can be encountered has several flails stuck into its back.
- Hooks and Crooks: Some of the flails of the flail variant appear to be oversized meat hooks.
- Mighty Glacier: Very slow, and they can bring the pain.
- One-Hit Kill: The cannon variant's cannon and the flail variant's spin attack.
- No-Sell: You absolutely cannot stagger it with ordinary gunfire. The only thing that can stagger them is the Cannon.
- Unique Enemy: The variant with the flaming blades on its arms. It's so rare that it took players three years to discover it was even in the game, and not just cut content from the early builds.
Watchdog of the Old Lords
An enormous fire-elemental beast residing in the Chalice Dungeons.
- Breath Weapon: It spits blasts of flame and lava.
- Expy: Bears a striking resemblance to the Beast of Darkness from Berserk.
- Hellhound: It's a massive flaming dog-like monster that acts as the watchdog for the Great Ones.
- More Teeth than the Osmond Family: It has a massive set of jaws lined with fangs.
- Playing with Fire: It can breathe fire and release a fiery explosion from its body.
- Use Your Head: One of its attacks is a powerful headbutt.
- Wake-Up Call Boss: Acts as one in the Defiled Chalice Dungeon. In this dungeon, your health is cut in half, but physical attacks against you do halved damage as well... but arcane damage, like fire, does a lot of damage. Basically, the Watchdog of the Old Lords goes from a challenging-but-fair boss into one that can easily kill you in a single hit.
- Wreathed in Flames: Its body is wreathed in flames. Its legs will also catch on fire after you break them, signifying that they will start taking extra damage.
Keeper of the Old Lords
The keepers, who mind the slumbering Great Ones, gained eternal life, preserved in ashen form in a ceremony of flame that cremated body and soul.
Pthumerian pyromancers that were granted eternal life so they may forever guard the Labyrinth for the Great Ones: their bodies were incinerated and their souls fused into suits of armor made from their ashes.
- And Your Reward Is Clothes: Defeating the boss version of this enemy allows you to purchase its skeletal armor at the insight messenger bath. As it has both very high physical and elemental defenses, it's actually a great reward.
- Animated Armor: It's all that they are anymore.
- Degraded Boss: There's a non-boss variant that travels through dungeons with a pair of attack dogs.Lithe, graceful and ruthlessly efficient when dealing with foes, these agile Hunters wield the scorching power of fire to effectively eliminate their targets.
- Genre Refugee: Like many other enemies you encounter in the Chalice Dungeons, the Keepers are a bit out of place for a Gothic Cosmic Horror game. With their bizarre sense of fashion, unique fire spells and non-trick weapon curved sword they'd be much more at home in a Dark Fantasy setting like Dark Souls.
- Playing with Fire: They have various fire-based spells that pack a serious punch.
- Robe and Wizard Hat: Though not quite a "robe," the set still invokes this imagery.The long, pointed hat is a symbol of the old keepers and is considered evidence of their companionship, forged in a certain sin.
- Supermodel Strut: The boss variant walks with a feminine strut, leading many to believe that it's female. The Bone Ash Hunter variants also all have female voices, so they may, in fact, all be women.
Forgotten Madman
Most tomb prospectors, members of the Healing Church chosen to explore the old labyrinth, are unable to withstand the weight of the old knowledge, and go mad.
A member of the Healing Church tomb prospectors who has gone mad within the Labyrinths.
- BFS: Uses Ludwig's Holy Blade.
- Dual Boss: He's joined in battle by an escort wielding a Kirkhammer.
- Evil Is Visceral: Appears to have pale guts, or possibly eldritch tentacles or parasites of some kind, wrapped around his body.The appendages draped across them are said to be a kind of protective charm, or at least, that is what these lost souls believe with all their hearts.
- Evil Sorcerer: Employs the Augur of Ebrietas and A Call from Beyond, much like Micolash, implying he has connections to the upper echelons of the Healing Church.
- Go Mad from the Revelation: The description of the Madman Set, quoted above, says that they are former Healing Church prospectors who have gone insane.Truth oft ensembles madness, inaccessible to the dull of mind. Those who go mad are merely thoughtful souls who failed to reach any conclusions.
- I Shall Taunt You: If they kill you, the Forgotten Madman will perform the Conviction gesture, while the Escort will perform the Approval gesture.
- Sinister Minister: Even before he went mad, he worked for the Healing Church.
Pthumerian Descendant
One of the few remaining members of the Pthumerian nobility.
- Achilles' Heel: Several of his attacks are fairly easy to parry, leaving him wide open for visceral attacks. In fact, killing him exclusively by parrying him is a very viable strategy.
- In a Single Bound: Gains a very damaging leap attack in his second phase.
- Lightning Bruiser: Don't let his decrepit appearance fool you — the Descendant is agile and strikes fast, and can leap across the room to strike you in his second phase.
- Precision-Guided Boomerang: One of his attacks is to hurl his sickle, which then flies back to his hand. If you're unlucky, it will hit you on its way back as well.
- Sinister Scythe: Uses an exceptionally long sickle. When he Turns Red, the Descendant takes out another sickle and wields it with the other hand.
- White Hair, Black Heart: He has long white hair and is dead-set on murdering you.
Pthumerian Elder
One of the few remaining elders of the Pthumerian nobility.
- Degraded Boss: They can occasionally appear as regular enemies in Depth 5 dungeons.
- Energy Bow: Can generate a crossbow and shoot fire-based bolts.
- Morph Weapon: His staff can change into about five weapons through his fire magic: crossbow, morning star, lance, scythe, and a spear. They, naturally, acquire deadlier attacks when the Elder's low on health.
- Playing with Fire: Most of the Elder's magic is fire-based.
- Sword Beam: The second half of his fight mainly consists of dodging these, along with him causing his spear to stab from the ground.
- Turns Red: Reaching a certain level of health makes the Elder pause and increase the power of his staff. Might be him deciding that you need to die now.
- Villain Teleportation: He's not that mobile due to his age. He makes up for it through teleporting through his cane.
Bloodletting Beast
A massive Beast that can be encountered multiple times throughout the Chalice Dungeons. The last and most difficult variety has a shredded open back and a decapitated neck, from which a parasitic worm emerges.
- Body Horror: As if its very nature as a Beast wasn't enough, one variety has a back that is torn open, and a decapitated neck, from which a monstrous worm can emerge.
- Lightning Bruiser: Despite its massive size, it's actually quite agile, and has a lightning-fast jab more than capable of one-shotting those unfortunate enough to be hit by it.
- Lost in Translation: Its name in Japanese translates to "Host of the Beast Blood", which has rather interesting lore implications. Unfortunately, due to the name change, most players won't take notice.
- Macross Missile Massacre: The aforementioned variety with the shredded back can release pellets of blood that home in on you and cause Fast Poison if they connect.
- Minor Major Character: It's strongly implied to be the reanimated corpse of Laurence, the First Vicar, whose skull is found in the main cathedral. Nevertheless, it is an optional boss only available through grinding.
- Parasite Zombie: Unless it's undead like Darkbeast Paarl, the headless variant is almost definitely being controlled by that gigantic parasitic worm in its neck.
- Recurring Boss: The Bloodletting Beast will be encountered several times throughout the non-randomized dungeons, becoming progressively more mutilated with each encounter.
Abhorrent Beast
A powerful Darkbeast, more humanoid in appearance than the Scourge Beasts and wreathed in electricity.
- Blow You Away: Has a dual palm strike attack that also shoots brief whirlwinds from his arms with considerable range.
- Degraded Boss: It is a more powerful version of the Darkbeast the Transformed Man turns into. It can also appear as a non-boss enemy in Chalice Dungeons.
- Our Werewolves Are Different: Unlike the standard Scourge Beasts, this one is massive and wreathed in electricity.
- Rubber Man: It actually stretches its arms for certain attacks, making it tricky to tell its exact range.
- Shock and Awe: As with all darkbeasts, it can generate an electric field.
Yharnam, Pthumerian Queen
Titled "The Blood Queen of the Old Labyrinth", she is seen throughout the game as a unresponsive Non-Player Character. She resides in the final Chalice Dungeon, where she can be fought.
- Anti-Villain: The Pthumerian presence found throughout the city and surrounding lands is presumably due to her, but it appears the Queen's only goal is to silence the cries of her child. Which just so happens to be your goal as well.
- Black Eyes of Evil: Her eyes, as with the eyes of every Pthumerian encountered in the game, are completely black.
- Blood-Splattered Wedding Dress: Not initially, but it becomes so the more damage she takes.
- Blood Magic: Can shoot bolts of blood, spray it in a variety of ways, use it to cause an explosion, make it take the form of a spear and jut out of the ground, and to enchant her weapon.
- Bloody Murder: Overlaps with Blood Magic, considering her blood magic consists of shooting more blood at you.
- Early-Bird Cameo:
- She appears in a brief cutscene after Rom is defeated.
- She's also found crying immediately before Mergo's Wet Nurse. You can even hit her, and she'll disappear.
- Ethereal White Dress: She appears to be dressed in a bright white wedding dress, with blood around her abdomen, and she's definitely ethereal enough to qualify for this trope. The white contrasts the darkness of the environment you find her in, and also makes the blood easier to see.
- Evil Laugh: She lets one out every time she uses her blood spray attack on you.
- Egopolis: Pthumeru Ihyll, the Pthumerian capital Yharnam was seemingly built on top of, was also the title of the Pthumerian monarch; for what it's worth, this tradition seems to predate Yharnam's reign. It's unclear how the present day city of Yharnam acquired its name, but it seems to have been named in her honor by humans who moved into the area after the Pthumerians declined.
- Ghostly Goals: Is implied by her reaction upon you slaying Mergo — giving you a deep, respectful bow before vanishing — that Mergo's spirit lingering in the world(s) of the living has kept her from being able to move on.
- Gravity Master: Has the ability to magically levitate you.
- Living Macguffin: She's the original source of Old Blood.
- Marriage to a God: Per the description of the Ring of Betrothal, the only marriages that existed in Pthumeru's golden age were the blood oaths sworn to a Great One by the mortal who they sought to conceive a child with. Judging from Yharnam's bound wrists, this was not necessarily seen as an honor by the mortal party...
- Menstrual Menace: Her arrival signifies the beginning of the cosmic horror; she also weaponizes her blood and her unborn child's cry against you.
- Optional Boss: She's fought in the deepest Pthumerian Chalice Dungeon.
- Palm Bloodletting: She stabs herself with her dagger, causing spears to shoot from the ground.
- Pregnant Badass: During the boss fight against her, she is visibly heavily pregnant. You can hear the baby crying every time you hit her.
- Self-Duplication: Can create two extra copies of herself. They are just as powerful as the real thing, but can only take one hit before vanishing.
- Screaming Warrior: She never utters a single coherent sentence — it's all hoarse screaming.
- Touched by Vorlons: She is implied to be the first source of Old Blood that Byrgenwerth found, because she was impregnated by Oedon with the stillborn child Mergo.
- Villainous Cheekbones: They make her face look like a skull.
- Wight in a Wedding Dress: Invoked by her attire, which looks like a Blood-Splattered Wedding Dress, symbolizing her backstory as the "wife" of a Great One and the failed mother of its child, the stillborn god Mergo. Given how this happened a very long time ago, many years before the Byrgenwerth scholars started exploring the tombs of the gods, it is also pretty clear that she is not alive anymore in the conventional sense — not that it makes any difference with the world's cosmology.
- With My Hands Tied: Like the Bound Widows, her wrists are cuffed together. And like them, it doesn't prevent her from very effectively using a dagger.
- Youkai: She is based on an ubume, a spirit of a woman who died around childbirth.
- You Have Failed Me: Was supposed to produce an heir for the Great Ones. Instead, she miscarried, leading the Pthumerian people as a whole to fall out of favor with the Great Ones, and without their support, Pthumeru fell to tatters and the Pthumerians were reduced back to the custodians of the Labyrinth.
Final Bosses
The Final Boss
Gehrman, the First Hunter
"You must accept your death. Be freed from the night..."
Voiced by: Allan Corduner (English), Yosuke Akimoto (Japanese)
You think you'd learn by now to never underestimate your enemies with this franchise. If you refuse Gehrman, he will show you why he's the First Hunter.
- The Atoner: The (since changed) note description of the Abandoned Workshop Umbilical Cord states that the Hunters signed a contract upon the first encounter with the Paleblood Moon, beginning the Hunt and the Hunter's Dream. Gehrman, being the first Hunter, is presumably the one who signed this contract, and now watches over and guides other Hunters who become entangled in the dreadful nightmare.
- Also, given the implications mentioned The Death of Sleep comic, one could potentially interpret his actions as a means of atoning for being involved in Iosefka's murder, although this is unclear, as he never mentions Iosefka when The Hunter interacts with him, not even when he is caught sleeping.
- Badass Boast: "Tonight, Gehrman joins the Hunt".
- Badass Cape: Wears a long, tattered cape, which appears to be the same cape from the Charred Hunter set.
- Battle Aura: Once he's down to half health, he'll get a white aura and become even faster.
- Duel Boss: He was the first Hunter, after all.
- Expy: The nature of his fight (a reluctant Anti-Villain who was your character's mentor dueling you in the middle of a field of white flowers) seems to be heavily inspired by the fight with The Boss in Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater.
- Final Boss: If you haven't found and consumed the three umbilical cords, and you refuse to submit your life to him.
- Flash Step: Once he gets his Battle Aura, he moves so fast that it looks like he's teleporting. Reading the description of the Old Hunter Bone reveals that the first Hunters used a technique called the "Art of Quickening".
- Friendly Enemy: He really bears you no ill will, and the only reason he's attacking you at all is because it's his duty to.
- Gameplay and Story Segregation: As the host of the Hunter's Dream, he's the only entity in the game (except maybe the Moon Presence) capable of severing your connection to the Dream and removing your Resurrective Immortality. He only does this if you accept his proposal, and if you die from him during his boss fight you're simply sent back like any other boss.
- Good Versus Good: Gehrman is only attacking you so you can be freed from the Dream and avoid suffering the same fate he did. Meanwhile, you're attacking Gehrman to free him from the Dream so he doesn't have to bear the burden of the Hunt anymore. The final battle of the game is essentially two people fighting each other for each other's sake.
- Handicapped Badass: He lost his right foot at some point and has a peg-leg. Judging from what happens to you in the "Honoring Wishes" ending, the most likely explanation is that the Moon Presence tore it off when he became its slave, as the same thing happens to you when you take Gehrman's place.
- Instant Costume Change: Whether you submit or refuse, he'll change out his unique hat for a top hat and don a tattered cloak and gauntlets.
- Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Despite his faults, he cares for you and wants you to be free of the horrors of the Hunt.
- Large and in Charge: He's about two feet taller than you, hidden by him sitting in that chair of his for most of the game.
- The Last Dance: The final battle is basically this for him, being the final time that he fights as a true Hunter.
- Last of His Kind: The man was/is the first Hunter period, or at least the first modern Hunter, and he's also the last of his generation. It's right there in the name.
- Lightning Bruiser: You know that old one-legged geezer in the wheelchair? Yeah... he ain't so crippled. Gehrman moves with blinding speed and hits like a truck with his Burial Blade. And his Battle Aura makes him even more of a Lightning Bruiser, giving him the ability to literally teleport.
- Mercy Kill: What he's trying to do to you. Should you refuse, you eventually end up doing this to him.
- Mirror Boss: Like Gascoigne, he uses all the same tricks that you do, plus a few extra.
- Obfuscating Disability: He is usually seen sitting in his wheelchair and holding a cane. Should you refuse his offer, he gets up and proves that the loss of his foot and old age haven't slowed him down.
- Old Master: Despite his prodigious age, he is one of the most formidable bosses in the game due to having more experience than any other Hunter (and buffs from the Moon).
- Pre-Asskicking One-Liner: A very simple but awesome one before the final battle."Tonight... Gehrman joins the Hunt."
- Red and Black and Evil All Over: His normal attire is already very dark, but it resembles the Charred Hunter Set, but is red inside and black outside, along with a Top Hat instead of his unique hat. He may not necessarily be evil, but he's a lot more menacing now.
- Sad Battle Music: As is usual for final bosses in this series, his theme has a much more somber feel than any other boss theme, emphasizing the tragic nature of the fight.
- Secret A.I. Moves: He wields a unique firearm that acts as both a blunderbuss and a pistol.
- Sequential Boss: He starts the fight just using his scythe, then switches to a Sword and Gun setup, then begins channeling the moon and teleporting around while switching back and forth between the two forms of his weapon.
- Signature Move: A wide step out followed by an insanely fast dash in and swipe with his Burial Blade. Lady Maria also uses this move when you fight her, which makes sense given that she used to be Gehrman's pupil.
- Sinister Scythe: His Burial Blade, which he can convert into a sword.
- Sword Beam: He can leap into the air and slash his scythe to create a gust of Razor Wind that deals massive amounts of damage.
- This Is Something He's Got to Do Himself: Gehrman apparently views overseeing the Hunt as a personal responsibility, given his readiness to kill you and expel you from the Dream.
- Throwing Off the Disability: He slowly stands up from his wheelchair in the cutscene preceding the fight, right before drawing his Burial Blade and charging at you.
- Tragic Villain: Gehrman only attacks you because he doesn't want you to suffer the same fate he did, even though after years of being trapped in the Dream, he wants nothing more than to escape himself.
- Turns Red: After losing about a third of his health, he begins channeling the power of the moon to start teleporting around the arena, as well as making his attacks more damaging.
- What Happened to the Mouse?: What happens to Gehrman after you defeat him? If you haven't completed the DLC, presumably he's trapped in the Hunter's Nightmare like the rest of the Old Hunters, but if you have... is he freed from the Dream to awaken to real life again, like it's implied happens to you if you submit to his offer? Does he just pass on to the peace of death? Hell if we know, as the game doesn't elaborate.
- What the Hell, Hero?: His speech to you, should you refuse his offer. And can you really blame him? It's hard to imagine why any sane person would want to stay in a place that is quite literally an endless nightmare."Dear oh dear... what was it? The Hunt, the blood, or the horrible dream? Oh, it doesn't matter. [sighs], It always comes down to the Hunter's helper to clean up after these sorts of messes."
