I think the most interesting thing is that the Hemwick Witches aren't Yharnamites, they're Pthumerians. Which is somewhat telling of why they're collecting organs and eyes, they're technically working with Yahar'Gul, which is also below Cathedral Ward and kind of locked off too. Basically both areas have been over-taken by the Pthumerians/School of Mensis, which is why they're locked off from the Choir led Cathedral Ward. My own theory on Cainhurst is that they used to be the rulers of three locations and maybe more, the Castle itself, which was their noble home. Hemwick, which as you've said was a farming village, and Old Yharnam which was a larger township further away. Laurence founds the Healing Church and begins to build Cathedral Ward. Then the Cainhurst Nobles become the Cainhurst Vilebloods and start preying on the people of Yharnam and Hemwick for Blood Dregs. The Healing Church uses this as their chance to get rid of the local rulers and instead take command, thus they attack through Hemwick with the Executioners before breaking the bridge on the way back. Basically everywhere we visit around Yharnam used to be land ruled by the Kings and Queens of Cainhurst, until the Healing Church overthrew them with the peoples support due to the Vileblood stuff.
You are getting better and better at making videos. Your edditing and narration has improved a lot. I personally like to believe the treory about them protecting themselves agains Yahrnam and secluding themselves.
+Epic Hamster Thank you! I'm investing in a good capture card and editing program after TOH releases too so the quality will get even better. Miyazaki really likes seclusion narratives and giving players the feeling of trespassing in a place where they don't belong. Valley of Defilement is probably still the strongest of these varations but I think Old Yharnam and this level do it really well as well.
i'd say your lore's approach i pretty unique, most of lore-related video focus on the "great lore", the choir the school of mensis and so on, this area to area focus ofr me is pretty damn intersting pls keep doing this
awesome video! Another possible reason for those impaled corpses: perhaps there was an uprising/revolution of sorts after the Executioners rolled through and took down Cainhurst. I'm thinking Cainhurst basically dominated... perhaps once the 'main' group fell, the villagers spiked any Cainhurst sympathizers (and any remaining nobles) and sealed the place up.
I love hemwick channel lane! Kinda makes me wish there was a soulslike game set in germanic and Slavic fairy tale themed environments. The witches and mad ones are some badass enemies.
I think Hemwick is the town that sat under the count that sat underneath the castle of Cainhurst. But when the church split from the church at Old Yahrnam, and went to war. The castle was eventually betrayed and started executing the traitors at Hemwick, and thus were overtaken by the executioners who were allowed to live if they helped out the church, which Micolash and the school believed William thus, the necessity of all the eyes and the bone ash for the silver bullets, they helped the hunters and church. Then the executioners went to kill those at the castle. I say this cause nothing at the castle suggests they took to anything besides blood, and the lack of eyes mean this all happened too long ago.
+Vicar Amelia WoWeeEEE!!!!! AAAAhhhhhhhhh you are always so nice an encouraging :') I actually think the best loretuber out there right now is Jerk Sans Frontieres or the guys at Bonfireside Chat, they go into a lot more detail than me, but I'm making my own niche by focusing on small and obscure details that I find obsessively interesting. Stick round though! I've got some really cool stuff coming up after TOH releases, including a literary reading of Bloodborne
+Brvtus I can't wait for the next set of videos!! And I need to check those guys out thanks!!! But seriously, these videos are amazing, I'm happy to support such a unique, dedicated and interesting and interesting person.
Could byrgenwerth have a connection to hemwick village? I mean, the gathering of eyes would definitely support master willem's research and goals. Since the school of mensis is an institution connected to willem and founded yhar'ghul, it would be interesting to note the small witches similar to the witches in hemwick are found there as well. The whole town might have been turned into one big eye-harvesting plant, whos inhabitants once driven mad by something or someone started harvesting from the living. I suspect the vilebloods having some sort of connection to mensis over something as simple as monetary gain, or support in the oncoming war on the church. Just spitballing here, and I am not a lore savvy person, so feel free to ignore pretty much all of that.
Maybe, but a more simple explanation would be that the whole town was harvesting eyeballs for a Chalice ritual, probably to help the Cainhurst Vilebloods or something.
Crows has to do something with the sky burial. Miyazaki wouldn't throw out another theme using the same assets, he would come up with a different enemy to summarize his thoughts, he wouldn't recycle the same enemy to point out some other meaning. My thoughts. Awesome work otherwise, can't get enough of these lore videos.
that's an inaccurate reading of game development tho. like the souls games are remarkable but they're also filled with recycled enemies and assets across the board
Brvtus Ok, true, like Smelter Demon. But he always adds some detail and it's all well thought through, what I meant be that was that he adds specific enemies to imply the story, and I think that impaled people in Hemwick were just left there for the crows to feast on. Reasonins behind that is unknown, I do tend to agree that it has something to do with the Vilebloods as you mentioned.
+much0J background details have lead to some of the souls series most enduring mysteries and red herrings, like who was the Madonna-like statue depicting in firelink shrine? who was the enormous sword statue in the nexus depicting? why are the coffins in yharnam chained up? its very fun to speculate on this and I obviously love it but realistically I still think most of these are just background assets without any intended meaning or particular intended lore significance. the fact that it's up to interpretation is most of the fun. in the case of Hemwick, we know for a fact that it was amongst the first levels designed in the game, most of the leaked Project Beast teaser took place in Hemwick and you could see some extreme pre-alpha content, like a double barreled shotgun with a reload animation, an axe that could block, blades of mercy prototypes that are just two straight knives, etc. the area was almost certainly Bloodborne's Painted World, a prototype, stand-alone level that developers could use to test the new graphics and combat engine and how it responds and interacts with the level design. the impaled bodies are also an asset present in the Painted World so IMHO most of Hemwick's assets are just for atmosphere building and any lore significance is retroactively mapped on. which doesn't discount it! and all theories are equally valid. I just think it's kind of a reach to say that because impaled bodies (a motif that miyazaki loves as atmospheric background) and crows (one of the earliest designed and most common enemies in the game) appear in the same level it points to an intended obscure lore connection.
Brvtus This is the longest and most interesting comment I've actually read. Interesting tidbits from a game I love so much, thank you. I've wrote a comment to TerraMantis to look on your videos so I hope that he will contact you to make some collab. 'cause you dude, you deserve it! Thanks for that mate, Cheers from Czech!
Amazing video, but one question did leap out at me. You said there’s no church presence in Hemwick. What about the big round fatty guys in armor wielding the huge battle axes? There’s about 4 or 5 of them if I remember. I thought those were part of the church subset of enemy types? I forget their name; I just call them executioner fatties.
The link to the podcast goes to a 404 error cannot be found page. Could you please update the link because I would be interested in listening to this podcast.
