Bloodborne's Most Heartbreaking Secret You Totally Missed
A truly kind soul lost amongst the chaos of Yharnam.
In a game where even the main storyline is shrouded in mystery and hidden amidst various item descriptions and obscure dialogue, the tale of Bloodborne’s character Iosefka is one that many more casual players will not recognise.
She could be one of the very first characters you interact with, or she could easily have slipped past you entirely. It's a tragic, little-known tale lost amongst this lovecraftian action RPG, and all centred on a gentle doctor, Iosefka.
In the beginning, we awaken inside a dark, hygienically questionable clinic.
This is actually Iosefka’s clinic, however at this point she is nowhere to be seen. After exploring somewhat, dying somewhat, and making your way back, you will find it locked, with a gentle voice on the other side of the door. Iosefka pleads with you, please, don’t attack her, she cannot open the door to a hunter, lest her patients be exposed to the infection from outside.
Some time passes, and you move from place to place, defeating great beasts as you go, then you decide to speak with Iosefka’s faceless voice once more.
Suddenly her tone seems… different. She requests that you direct any human survivors that you find to her clinic so that she may treat them.
More and more survivors are sent to the safety of the clinic to be treated in safety, and each time the ominous voice of doctor Iosefka urges us to send more patients. She begins to make less and less sense, talking of old blood and kinship, and trailing off into sinister laughter.
Later on in the game, if you explore enough, you can find your way through the back door of her clinic. On this journey through the large building, you'll pass several strange, alien-like blue creatures, called Celestials. Some are docile, some attack us, and some lay dead on operating tables, but there are no signs of human life anywhere.
What happened to all of the survivors we sent here? We really should have investigated this place sooner...
We find eventually ourselves in the room we first woke up in, at the very beginning of our journey, and on the other side of the door where we first spoke Iosefka all that time ago.
By the door, there stands a single celestial. It is passive, and doesn’t seem to notice you. Through blood thirst or curiosity, we strike the creature down and it is slain effortlessly. The strange thing is, it leaves behind a vial of Iosefka’s blood; the same vials the kind doctor offers to us at the start of the game, to help with our hunt.
This thing was Iosefka. The real Iosefka, so who have we been sending patients to all this time?
Investigating further, we find the imposter upstairs, bent over in extreme pain, mumbling of visions in her head and writhing pain in her body. She appears to be pregnant, and makes no attempt to stop you when you end her misery.
Ultimately, we never even really met Iosefka. She was the timid, polite woman at the beginning of the game, who ran her clinic, attempting to treat and cure beasthood. While we were out adventuring, Iosefka was beset upon by an unnamed imposter. A member of the Healing Church.
The Healing Church is a religious organisation who first discovered the "Old Blood" - something that could cure all diseases. Believing the blood to be a miracle, they used it for all manner of transfusions and operations. Little did they know that it would be responsible for the entire scourge outbreak - the same mutation that Iosefka works tirelessly to treat.
The imposter set up residence in the clinic, experimenting on the real doctor using old blood taken from ancient kin, attempting to elevate humanity to a higher state of being. For every survivor you sent to the clinic, the Imposter experimented on them and transformed them into these blue celestial beings.
Every single one we struck down in ignorance was once a human being that placed their trust in us... and we failed them.
As the blood moon rises, and the nightmare draws to an end, the Imposter grew desperate and turned her experimentation on herself. She became impregnated by a Great One, and the intoxication causes her a great deal of pain. One comfort is that, as she drops a Third of Umbilical Cord, an ancient relic which contributes towards the hunter's ascension at the end of the game, her experimentation was not all in vain, as far as our hunter is concerned.
However, when killed, the Imposter bleeds red, not white, meaning that after all that obsessing, suffering, and pain, she died a mere human, rather than the ascended kin that she sought to become.
The perfect karma after committing such heinous crimes.