Insight.07: Gehrman, the First Hunter - The Sorrow of the Man Captivated by the Moon Presence and Made Overseer of the Hunter's Dream

From the darkness of the Pthumerian Labyrinth slumbering deep beneath the ancient city of Yharnam, to the spires of Victorian Gothic architecture, and up to the pale sky where stars twinkle with madness, the history of this world is constantly colored by two curses: “blood” and “Insight.” And at every singularity in this blood-stained history, there exists a single man who lingers like a shadow. Gehrman, the First Hunter.

This report aims to unravel the causality and hidden sins lurking in the depths of Gehrman—a scholar of Byrgenwerth, the predecessor to the Healing Church, the world’s first “Hunter,” and a prisoner of the “Moon Presence,” a Great One transcending human comprehension, wandering through an eternal night. Through the insignificance of humanity bowing before the unknown Cosmic Horror, the maddening human experiments reminiscent of Victorian eugenics, and the dark metaphors of “blood and motherhood,” this article will discuss, through thorough analysis and the synthesis of facts, why he fell to become a slave under the guise of the host of the “Hunter’s Dream.”

1. The Arrogance of the Forefather of Hunters Who Sought to Cleave the Mysteries of the Cosmos

The “Scourge of the Beast” in Yharnam originated when the scholars of Byrgenwerth delved deep into the Pthumerian Labyrinth and discovered the “Old Blood” of the Great Ones. The scholars, who had been exploring unknown dimensions and the wisdom of the Great Ones under Provost Willem, eventually became captivated by their ambitious thirst for knowledge. However, the exploration of the underground ruins was always fraught with the peril of death. To secretly dispose of the grotesque monsters crawling out of the labyrinth’s darkness and the early victims of Beasthood caused by the effects of the Old Blood, a violent means of resolution was required.

Gehrman took on the role of the scholars’ task force, or rather, their secret executioner. To reliably dismantle the bodies of beasts that had grown massive and ferocious, he devised unique weapons equipped with transforming mechanisms and a combat style utilizing inhuman agility. This was the origin of the “Hunter,” which would later engulf the entirety of Yharnam.

The structure and material of the “Burial Blade,” his favored weapon and the very first trick weapon, symbolize the unfathomable arrogance of Gehrman as an individual, and by extension, that of early Byrgenwerth. The blade of this weapon is forged from siderite, a rare meteoric iron that fell from the distant heavens. This fact harbors an extremely profound philosophical significance.

Gehrman’s hunt was never merely the “culling of beasts afflicted with rabies.” The act of using a blade forged from meteoric iron of cosmic origin indicates that, from the very beginning, he intended for his blade to reach even the “gods of the distant cosmos (Great Ones)” and physically cleave their mysteries. Furthermore, the “Hunter Blunderbuss” he uses employs “the Hunter’s own blood” as a catalyst alongside special quicksilver. In his stance of consuming his own flesh and blood while wielding heavenly minerals to slaughter monsters belonging to the divine realm, one can glimpse the terrifying hubris of the insignificant human race attempting to dominate cosmic truths through violence.

However, as the absolute laws of Cosmic Horror dictate, those who gaze into the abyss and attempt to touch the stars are, without exception, gazed back upon by that abyss and destined to be ruined by madness. The violence Gehrman wielded would eventually transform into heavy chains that bound his own soul to an eternal hell.

2. The Tragedy of the Fishing Hamlet: Blasphemous Interference with Kos and Her Infant, and Eugenic Madness

The greatest singularity that bound Gehrman’s soul to eternal guilt and madness was the “Tragedy of the Fishing Hamlet” that occurred on the remote seaside. This incident was the very beginning of all causality and the direct cause that later birthed the “Hunter’s Nightmare,” where Blood-drunk Hunters suffer eternal torment.

During the Victorian era, behind the rapid development of medicine and anatomy, grave robbing, body snatching, and unethical human experiments were rampant. The actions of the scholars of Byrgenwerth, and Gehrman who acted as their blade, can be said to be an act of madness that expanded the dark side of this era to a cosmic scale.

2.1 The Abandoned Corpse of a God and Stolen Motherhood

Once, the corpse of a massive Great One, “Kos,” washed ashore on the coast of the remote Fishing Hamlet. Countless parasites squirmed within Kos’s body, suggesting that she had lost her life long before reaching the hamlet. However, the concepts of life and death for Great Ones are fundamentally different from those of humans. Even in death, Kos harbored a living infant within her womb—the “Orphan of Kos.”

Under the orders of Provost Willem of Byrgenwerth, or perhaps to fulfill the ambitions of Laurence just before their parting of ways, the early Hunters led by Gehrman raided this Fishing Hamlet. Among them was his beloved pupil, Lady Maria of the Astral Clocktower, a distant relative of Cainhurst. The Hunters mercilessly trampled and massacred the villagers, who worshipped the corpse of Kos and were mutating into fish-man-like aberrations due to the parasites. A gruesome scene unfolded there, as they drilled holes into the villagers’ skulls in search of physical “eyes.”

Their true objective was to acquire the “eyes” of a Great One and the “umbilical cord” possessed by the divine infant. Gehrman and his cohorts blasphemously dissected the abandoned corpse of the god and violently dragged out the infant, who had yet to even cry its first breath, from the womb. According to deep community analysis and the accumulation of circumstantial evidence, it is highly probable that Gehrman himself was the central figure among the perpetrators who carved open the corpse of Kos, murdered (or dissected) the orphan, and plundered “One Third of Umbilical Cord.”

This was not mere slaughter or the collection of specimens. In the context of Cosmic Horror, Great Ones are divine beings with a sorrowful nature, as they “always lose their children, and then yearn for a surrogate.” The act of violently tearing away a still-living infant from such a Great One and consuming it as experimental material for human evolution (the acquisition of Insight) was the ultimate blasphemy against divine motherhood.

Just as Victorian medicine often dissected the bodies of destitute paupers and prostitutes without consent, attempting to uncover the mysteries of the human body through unethical approaches, Gehrman and the scholars of Byrgenwerth attempted to pry open the mysteries of the cosmos through violent surgery. The price of this overwhelming arrogance would be paid with their own souls and the collapse of the city of Yharnam itself.

3. Spiritual Resonance Between the Orphan of Kos and Gehrman: Imitated Terror

The blow that the tragedy at the Fishing Hamlet dealt to Gehrman’s psyche is deeply engraved into the very structure of the subsequent “Hunter’s Nightmare.” In the deepest part of the “Hunter’s Nightmare,” the behavior and voice of the boss “Orphan of Kos,” who crawls out of the corpse of Kos washed up on the shore, conceal a terrifying resemblance to Gehrman.

The audio files of the Orphan of Kos’s cries or screams are strikingly similar to, or intentionally identical to, the audio of Gehrman’s weeping. While there is a meta-perspective of saving resources in game production, in the context of FromSoftware’s meticulous environmental storytelling, this functions as a metaphor with profound meaning.

Furthermore, the behavior the Orphan of Kos exhibits during combat—fluid steps, slamming down from great leaps, and a fighting style that extends its reach by transforming its weapon (the placenta)—imitates Gehrman’s motions when wielding the Burial Blade in an extremely cruel manner. The “Orphan of Kos” manifested in the nightmare is not the infant itself as it was in life, but a conceptual entity formed by memories of slaughter and grudges. The infant, brutally murdered the moment it was born, imitates and projects the figure, voice, and execution techniques of Gehrman—the very embodiment of the “terror of death” it saw last—as its most powerful defensive instinct.

Conversely, there is even a heretical theory that Byrgenwerth used Gehrman’s bodily tissues as a “genetic donor” to create a Great One’s infant. In any case, the fact that the Orphan attacks the player while letting out Gehrman’s cries indicates that the souls of the victim, the Orphan, and the perpetrator, Gehrman, are deeply and spiritually resonant and connected through sin and trauma.

Unable to endure this overly unethical and blasphemous atrocity, his beloved pupil Maria threw her weapon into a well and retired as a Hunter. She then fell into mental illness and eventually took her own life by slitting her throat within the Astral Clocktower. Gehrman killed the child of a god, and as a result, indirectly killed his most beloved pupil as well. The original sin he bore was far too heavy, enough to completely destroy his own humanity.

4. Clinging to the Moon Presence and the Genesis of the “Hunter’s Dream”: An Eternal Prisoner

Following the tragedy at the Fishing Hamlet and the loss of Maria, Gehrman was driven to the brink of despair. Around the same time, the young Laurence, the First Vicar, having parted ways with Provost Willem of Byrgenwerth, established his own Healing Church and sought supernatural backing to promote “Blood Ministration” on a grand scale.

An old Hunter sinking into despair, and a young cleric burning with ambition. Using “One Third of Umbilical Cord” stolen from the Orphan of Kos, they beckoned another Great One beyond human comprehension, the “Moon Presence (Flora),” from beyond the paleblood sky.

4.1 The “Hunter’s Dream” as a Reality Marble and the Essence of Cosmic Horror

The Moon Presence answered the call of humans. However, the thoughts of Great Ones exist on a different dimension from those of humans and are completely incomprehensible. The Moon Presence captivated Gehrman as an “advisor,” or a “surrogate” to manage the hunt, severing him from the Waking World and creating a closed space known as the “Hunter’s Dream.”

This “Hunter’s Dream” is a Reality Marble created in the image of the memories of the old workshop that existed in the real Yharnam, a supernatural space that rejects any physical or temporal interference from the outside world. Hunters trapped in this dream acquire an immortality where they resurrect within the dream even if they die, but this is a curse, not a blessing. Unless they fulfill the role of “The Hunt” imposed by the Moon Presence, they can never escape this dream eternally, and once they outlive their usefulness, they are stripped of their memories and discarded.

Gehrman might have escaped imprisonment in the “Hunter’s Nightmare,” where other Hunters fall due to the sins at the Fishing Hamlet. However, what he obtained was not “salvation” but “eternal servitude.” From the perspective of an entity on the Cosmic Horror dimension like the Moon Presence, the strongest Hunter of the human realm is nothing more than a convenient pawn to achieve its own goals (such as having them hunt the infants of other Great Ones, though various theories exist), or a pet kept in a cage.

Bound to a wheelchair, cursed to manage an endless night for decades or centuries until the next Hunter appears to sever his head, or until the day the Moon Presence is satisfied. As the price for the violence he wielded and his godless arrogance, Gehrman was forced to offer his own mind and body as a seedbed or surrogate mother for a Great One. The man who attempted to cleave a god with human power was ultimately reduced to a gardener in the god’s garden. This is the most cruel consequence of the “insignificance of humanity” in Cosmic Horror.

5. The Plain Doll and the Obsession Mocked by a False Soul

What most vividly symbolizes the loneliness and madness of Gehrman, trapped in the “Hunter’s Dream,” is the existence of the “Plain Doll” he created at the end of his madness.

Tormented by the sorrow of losing his beloved pupil Maria and an irrevocable sense of guilt, Gehrman crafted a life-sized, exquisite doll in a corner of the old workshop, meticulously capturing her likeness. The spherical joints, fair skin, and intricate clothing. It was an expression of extremely perverted affection and atonement, where the Victorian view of life and death, “memento mori (remember death),” and the Pygmalion complex (infatuation with one’s own creation) were mixed in an extreme form.

However, no matter how much he made its appearance resemble Maria, a doll is a doll. Gehrman’s heart could not possibly be comforted by a mere lump of wood, cloth, and mechanisms devoid of a soul; rather, he was only more cruelly confronted with the absolute absence of the lost Maria.

Yet, here the logic of Cosmic Horror intervenes once again. The Great One, the Moon Presence, sensing Gehrman’s madness and obsession, or perhaps as a device to bind him to the dream and nurture new Hunters, breathed “life (or an imitation of a soul)” into that doll.

The “Plain Doll” strengthens Hunters using blood as a medium and envelops the player with maternal affection. However, Gehrman himself is extremely cold toward this animated doll, clearly avoiding interaction with it. Behind his dismissive remark to the player, “Even the doll, should it please you,” lies a profound despair that transcends mere misogyny or perversion.

This is because Gehrman himself understood better than anyone that the animated doll was not a “resurrection of Maria,” but an “alien counterfeit” created by the incomprehensible interference of a Great One. As a result of toying with the corpse of a god with arrogant human hands (the dissection and blasphemy of Kos), he now had the “corpse (doll)” he created toyed with by a god, forced to play out a false motherhood. Gehrman fell into an Avici hell where he was eternally forced to witness his own creation driven by unknown cosmic principles, made to ruminate on his own powerlessness and the depth of his sins.

6. Loneliness in the Nightmare: The Old Hunter’s Sleep-talking and Sense of Loss

As the host of the dream, Gehrman acts as an aloof “advisor” to Hunters who newly wander into the dream. Teaching them about the transforming mechanisms of weapons and the workshop’s systems, and sometimes urging them to “enjoy the blood-soaked hunt,” his attitude at first glance makes him appear as a seasoned master who has transcended madness.

But his mind had long ago surpassed its limits and continued to collapse from the inside. His true form is that of a pitiful old man, cowering in a wheelchair in the empty backyard of the workshop, shedding tears and clinging to unseen ghosts.

6.1 Pleas to Laurence and Willem, and the Fear of Becoming “Useless”

Under specific circumstances, the player can hear the heartbreaking “sleep-talking” that Gehrman mutters in his slumber.

“Oh, Laurence… Master Willem… Somebody help me… Unshackle me please, anybody…”

“I’m of no use anymore… I’ve had enough of this dream…”

This monologue condenses the sorrow at the root of his soul. The “First Hunter,” who once dashed through the nights of Yharnam and made a bloodbath of all beasts and aberrations, has now lost one leg (or had it taken by the Moon Presence) and cannot even go out on a hunt on his own two feet. As deep community analysis points out, the greatest agony tormenting him is not the curse of eternal life itself, but the sense of powerlessness and loss that he “cannot fulfill his role as a Hunter and is no longer of use to anyone (useless).”

Stripped of “The Hunt,” which was the entirety of his reason for existence, he was reduced to a mere bystander, sitting in a wheelchair and sending young people off to deadly grounds. He continued to wait, believing that his mentor Willem, with whom he sought the truth, or his sworn friend Laurence, who beckoned the Moon Presence, would one day rescue him from this maddening dream.

However, Provost Willem remained seated in a wheelchair by the lakeside of Byrgenwerth in a state akin to dementia, and Laurence, at the end of his ambitions as the First Vicar, was reduced to a beast clad in the most hideous flames, burning eternally within the Hunter’s Nightmare. There was no one left in the outside world who could save him. Clinging to the ghosts of a past that had perished long ago, Gehrman continued to let out voiceless screams for decades, or perhaps centuries, within a Reality Marble with no exit.

As this table shows, Hunters who have left the dream, like Eileen the Crow, state, “I no longer dream. If I die, that’s it,” gaining the rest of a natural death in exchange for losing their immortality. However, for Gehrman, the host, even that “liberation through death” is not permitted. Envying the deaths of the Hunters he guided and then freed from the dream, he can do nothing but watch the dawn break all alone.

6.2 Fleeting Peace Through the Defeat of the Orphan of Kos

There is a moment in the game where his endless agony is eased just once. That is the night when the player Hunter defeats the “Orphan of Kos,” the grudge of the tragedy at the Fishing Hamlet, in the deepest part of the “Hunter’s Nightmare,” and returns the black shadow (the true spirit of the Orphan) to the sea.

Upon returning to the dream after accomplishing this event, the Plain Doll speaks to the player as follows: “Gehrman sleeps peacefully. On most nights he tosses and turns, but tonight, he is very calm… Perhaps something has eased his suffering.”

This extremely delicate and quiet depiction corroborates that the trauma and original sin Gehrman harbored were directly linked to the existence of the Orphan of Kos. While the Orphan wandered the nightmare letting out cries of anger and hatred (imitations of Gehrman’s own voice), Gehrman’s soul was also being carved up by the reverberations of his own sins.

With the Orphan freed from the eternal memories of slaughter and returned to the mother ocean, the chains of the “original sin” that Gehrman had continued to bear loosened just a little. It was an extremely rare moment of “salvation of the soul” in the history of Yharnam, colored by madness and blood. However, it was merely a temporary painkiller, and the fundamental despair that he was a prisoner of the Moon Presence remained entirely unchanged.

7. A Merciful Beheading and the Thirst for Dawn: The Terminus of Sorrow

When the long Night of the Hunt is about to announce its end, dawn approaches Yharnam. At that time, Gehrman rises from his wheelchair and stands before the protagonist, holding his weapon, the “Burial Blade” forged from cosmic meteoric iron.

He proposes to the protagonist that they “be beheaded by his own hand and awaken from the dream.”

“You have done well. The night is near its end. Now I will show you mercy.”

These words contain absolutely no hostility or murderous intent. It is his greatest form of “mercy.”

Gehrman understood more deeply and cruelly than anyone else just how tremendous the despair and madness brought upon the mind by remaining trapped in a Great One’s dream could be. Just as he had yearned for Laurence and Willem and withered away in the eternal night, he knew that the capable young Hunter before him was also destined to eventually become a prisoner of the Moon Presence, lose their sense of self, and sit in a wheelchair if things remained as they were.

He would never be saved from this Avici hell. If so, then at the very least, he would liberate this new Hunter with his own hands. Rather than clinging to life in the Waking World, he whips his aged body and fights a desperate battle with all his might to “awaken the junior Hunter from the dream (allow them to greet the morning in reality).”

All of the “hunting techniques” he once devised by whittling away his own life, which had cleaved many beasts and gods, are wielded at the very end as a “Blade of Mercy” to save a single human from the nightmare. If the player accepts this proposal, the Hunter awakens from the dream and is illuminated by the morning sun of Yharnam. However, behind that, Gehrman is left behind once again, all alone in the eternal night.

Conversely, if the player refuses the beheading and defeats Gehrman, he fades away, leaving the words, “Finally, the nightmare ends…” It signifies true liberation (death) for him, but immediately afterward, the Moon Presence descends, and this time the player themselves is bound to the wheelchair as the new host of the dream, completing a perfect circular structure of Cosmic Horror. Gehrman’s tragedy is not his alone, but a structural punishment imposed on all of humanity that attempts to touch the unknown.

Conclusion: The Prisoner of Original Sin and the Pinnacle of Cosmic Horror

Gehrman, the First Hunter. His existence embodies the most tragic conclusion when the Victorian “blind faith in knowledge and evolution” confronts the Cosmic Horror of the “ruthless truths of the cosmos.”

The endless arrogance of humans who sought eyes, explored the Old Blood, and attempted to violently expose even the womb of a god. The strongest Hunter, who wielded his blade at the forefront and stained his hands with blood, was consequently reduced to the most insignificant slave. Though he was the forefather of Hunters, he may have been the prey that continued to be hunted longer than anyone else.

The pupil he loved took her own life out of gruesome guilt, and his former brethren and mentor turned into beasts or sank into madness. The Plain Doll he created for comfort was infused with a false soul, mocking his despair. Wielding a blade forged from meteoric iron of cosmic origin, his life of single-mindedly continuing to shed the blood of his brethren as a surrogate for an unseen god can truly be summed up in a single word: sorrow.

The host of the “Hunter’s Dream.” It was an all too cruel throne given to a man burdened with eternal crime and punishment. When we unravel the blood-stained history of Yharnam and explore the lore of the abyss, the figure of an old Hunter, looking up at the moon in the night sky and weeping, is always engraved at its foundation. As a symbol of humanity’s thirst for evolution and the indelible original sin that accompanies it, he continues to slumber eternally at the center of the Hunter’s Dream.