Ok, but something I just realised about Bloodborne lore after watching a DLC play-trough.

We’ve kinda taken it for granted that everything started from Mother Kos - Byrgenwerth found the village, slaughtered everyone and killed/used her remins to experiment. That’s where the Blood came from. 

But. 

But it was Maria and Gherman, and the Old Hunters, that slaughtered the village. It is specifically stated that Maria had thrown her beloved weapon into the well after that - which can suggest that this was the end of her hunter career, too. 

But, if that’s true, then the Workshop had to be already established.

If that’s true, then the Healing Church had to be already established.

If the Church was there, then Lawrence already left Byrgenwerth.

And that happened after Byrgenwerth already had the Blood figured out. 

So that leaves me with two options to consider. 

1. Byrgenwerth dug up old Pthumerians and gained the knowledge of Blood through them, and it was Pthumeru that was the actual source of the Scourge and so on. As it is stated that it happened to them and to Loran before them.

Kos was discovered much later - and she was only the gateway to Cosmos. She might have been the first Great One that either the scholars and the Church has ever seen with their own eyes, a proof that the Great Ones exist - and it was her that prompted the change in the Church’s research and the establishment of the Choir. Micolash seems obsessed with her, so it seems that she was a big thing. 

Which makes the timeline of the events in Yharnam  a bit less confusing: Byrgenwerth dug up the catacombs, started experimenting and gained the knowledge of Blood. Lawrence established the Church - and for a time the Church was just about the Blood, straight-forward and clean-cut. Then the scourge of beasts came and the Church closed ranks, trying to salvage whatever they could of their influence and hide the evidence of it being their fault - they’ve first established the Workshop, and the Hunters. 

Then Mother Kos was found in the fishing village. That was a breakthrough that had Byrgenwerth and the Church change their mindset completely - now they knew that there were Gods out there and their aim shifted to contacting them. Around that time they might have found/called Ebrietas. But the Hunters that slaughtered the village - once more erasing anyone who could get in the way of their plans - became disillusioned with their task. That’s when the Workshop was disbanded, the Church could not trust them anymore. Maybe, as witnesses, they became the hunted. 

I can even assume that Lady Maria wasn't ‘residing’ in the Research Hall out of her own will, but that’s just pure speculation. However, it is implied that she tried to care for the patients and in the end poisoned herself, so…

The Church established their own Hunters, their own Executioners and so on. And now the leash on Yharnam tightened, because it wasn’t only the Scourge that people feared, it was also Yahar’Ghul, it was people disappearing into the depths of the Research Hall, dying by the hands of the monsters that the Church pulled out of the catacombs to ‘guard’ the streets. I think Vaatividya in one of his videos on translations from Japanese stated that the nominal hunters were also spying on more prominent citizens to uncover their secrets/discover dissent early. 

So, for years Yharnam was existing in a state of constant terror, basically enslaved, because the Church needed bodies to work with.

Then either the Church, or Micolash, or both of them on their own, finally got the Gods to pay attention to them and everything went to fuck=__= Timelines crossed, separate dreams/dimensions exploded around each Great One, etc. 

Willem tried to stop it, via Rom, but could only manage so much.  

That’s when we arrive on the scene and fuck everything up even more by undoing his hard work.

2. There’s no such thing as a timeline in Bloodborne=___= 

So I’ve seen a lot of theories about the identity of the “runesmith of Byrgenwerth” behind the Caryll runes. Some say it’s the Forgotten Madman boss of the chapel dungeons, some say it’s the Oedon Chapel dweller, a secret conduit of Oedon, some the Blood Minister from the opening, and even the Witch of Hemwick.

Naw, it’s this lady

The statue behind the Memory Altar where you plug the Caryll runes in your brain? That’s Caryll’s domain, and this is our Caryll.

She is quite an old figure, as she was revered enough to have similar statues raised in the Pthumerian tombs (these were obviously a later addition, as she does not have the pronounced Pthumerian cheekbones and brow, nor does she have the desiccated face of the degenerate modern Pthumerian forms. The statues are also far fresher and less degraded looking than most Chalice architecture, so I assume it’s from Yharnamite culture, during its heights (you know, before everyone was a crazy beast monster).

She was also a contemporary or predecessor of the Ludwig phase of Yharnamite history, as he encountered her Guidance rune.

So Caryll seems to have been a member of the faculty or student body of Byrgenwerth who first received the inhuman utterances of the great ones. Statues tend to capture the iconic likeness of someone, so I assume she was a faculty member due to the apparent age of the woman depicted in the statue, a figure with some authority and respect, despite being a college professor.

Due to several rune’s statement that Willem would have been proud of her work due to their lack of blood-use, many place Caryll in a post-Willem era, but that conflicts with other rune lore (such as Ludwig’s discovery of what was identified as a Caryll rune), and the fact that Willem’s current state of feebleness is probably fairly recent, too narrow a time frame. I instead believe that he and Caryll’s work was fairly parallel, with two branches of discourse created at Byrgenwerth; she sought enlightenment via runic transcription, he sought enlightenment via…well, see the entire fucking game. She was however, respected enough and probably incorporated into the Church’s mythos as a saint - see the nearly Marian iconography of her statue.

There is also a likely cultural divide; due to the memory altar’s runic tools being hidden behind the custodianship of the Witch of Hemwick, I believe she was from this subculture of the…whatever you call the Yharnamite’s ethno-cultural group… it’s mostly due to the tool’s location, Caryll’s assumed gender, and the statue’s rather shawl-heavy, grandmotherly appearance, but I believe that she was the matriarch of the Hemwick Charnel Lane culture, just as Willem is the patriarch of the mainstream Yharnamite culture.

I believe she did not survive past the early phases of Byrgenwerth’s cultural take-over, possibly while tomb prospecting or in her experiments. Not much evidence for this, other than that her work could not have had an overlap with Willem’s in his intellectual prime and peak of influence, as he was fairly ignorant of it. She may have been one of the first to venture into the tombs, perhaps driven by what seems to be the call of Oedon or a similar entity (Oedon is the only Great One actually namechecked by multiple runes).

She heard the utterances of the great ones and had their runes literally burnt into her skull, just as we learned that Willem’s goal of lining brains with eyes was in no way metaphorical. She heard these arcane utterances, and it literally left marks in her skull. Same with the hunter’s mark - it is actually in the head of our hunter and Gherman, which is why a release from the Moon Presence contract involves the First Hunter lobbing off our dreamland’s head with his scythe. It’s severing us from the rune, and likely only a rune-marked hunter can perform such a releasing decapitation. Highlander rules, baby.

Her experiments involved her undergoing a craniotomy (or, gods forbid, performing one on herself) and having the runes carved into her skull transcribed. She then formulated a process for these runes to be efficiently and routinely transcribed in the skulls of others. Thus, the obvious, Frankenstein’s Monster style scarification on the statue. Also nice to have a little Frankenstein shout out in a game of pseudo-vampires and werewolves. This repeated craniotomy might have even been what killed her, leading to her semi-sainthood as a martyr to progress.

Also, the focus on a skull, rather than a bone, might have been the reason Laurence’s skull is on display in the Grand Cathedral, and the focus on bone and bone ash seen in Hemwick, but this is just speculation. Perhaps the Witches of Hemwick began collecting and processing human bodies during the crisis, harvesting eyes and ripping open heads, in an attempt to find more runes. Yet another purely scientific pursuit degraded into a mad religious ritual over time.

Addendum: @darksouschef: I don’t think it’s a statue of the doll; both women are tall, but nothing else about them really resembles each other, at least to me; aparent age, hairline, eyebrows, nasal structure, and general facial structure simply don’t match. Also, we know the doll is based on Maria, which would be a fun Marian statue shout-out but simply doesn’t fit the timeline or craniotomy scars. Also, I believe that the doll isn’t an old one, but one of two dreamlands counterparts of the real Maria (the Doll is her idealized, maternal side, while the Clocktower Maria is a shade of her merciless, desparing hunting aspect). The doll does not seem to have an ulterior motive; you can even catch her praying for your safety to Flora of the Moon. I also believe that the Craniotomy Statues were once more important, as they resemble the waystones or checkpoints from the Project Beast trailers.

So I’ve seen a lot of theories about the identity of the “runesmith of Byrgenwerth” behind the Caryll runes. Some say it’s the Forgotten Madman boss of the chapel dungeons, some say it’s the Oedon Chapel dweller, a secret conduit of Oedon, some the Blood Minister from the opening, and even the Witch of Hemwick.

Naw, it’s this lady

The statue behind the Memory Altar where you plug the Caryll runes in your brain? That’s Caryll’s domain, and this is our Caryll.

She is quite an old figure, as she was revered enough to have similar statues raised in the Pthumerian tombs (these were obviously a later addition, as she does not have the pronounced Pthumerian cheekbones and brow, nor does she have the desiccated face of the degenerate modern Pthumerian forms. The statues are also far fresher and less degraded looking than most Chalice architecture, so I assume it’s from Yharnamite culture, during its heights (you know, before everyone was a crazy beast monster).

She was also a contemporary or predecessor of the Ludwig phase of Yharnamite history, as he encountered her Guidance rune.

So Caryll seems to have been a member of the faculty or student body of Byrgenwerth who first received the inhuman utterances of the great ones. Statues tend to capture the iconic likeness of someone, so I assume she was a faculty member due to the apparent age of the woman depicted in the statue, a figure with some authority and respect, despite being a college professor.

Due to several rune’s statement that Willem would have been proud of her work due to their lack of blood-use, many place Caryll in a post-Willem era, but that conflicts with other rune lore (such as Ludwig’s discovery of what was identified as a Caryll rune), and the fact that Willem’s current state of feebleness is probably fairly recent, too narrow a time frame. I instead believe that he and Caryll’s work was fairly parallel, with two branches of discourse created at Byrgenwerth; she sought enlightenment via runic transcription, he sought enlightenment via…well, see the entire fucking game. She was however, respected enough and probably incorporated into the Church’s mythos as a saint - see the nearly Marian iconography of her statue.

There is also a likely cultural divide; due to the memory altar’s runic tools being hidden behind the custodianship of the Witch of Hemwick, I believe she was from this subculture of the…whatever you call the Yharnamite’s ethno-cultural group… it’s mostly due to the tool’s location, Caryll’s assumed gender, and the statue’s rather shawl-heavy, grandmotherly appearance, but I believe that she was the matriarch of the Hemwick Charnel Lane culture, just as Willem is the patriarch of the mainstream Yharnamite culture.

I believe she did not survive past the early phases of Byrgenwerth’s cultural take-over, possibly while tomb prospecting or in her experiments. Not much evidence for this, other than that her work could not have had an overlap with Willem’s in his intellectual prime and peak of influence, as he was fairly ignorant of it. She may have been one of the first to venture into the tombs, perhaps driven by what seems to be the call of Oedon or a similar entity (Oedon is the only Great One actually namechecked by multiple runes).

She heard the utterances of the great ones and had their runes literally burnt into her skull, just as we learned that Willem’s goal of lining brains with eyes was in no way metaphorical. She heard these arcane utterances, and it literally left marks in her skull. Same with the hunter’s mark - it is actually in the head of our hunter and Gherman, which is why a release from the Moon Presence contract involves the First Hunter lobbing off our dreamland’s head with his scythe. It’s severing us from the rune, and likely only a rune-marked hunter can perform such a releasing decapitation. Highlander rules, baby.

Her experiments involved her undergoing a craniotomy (or, gods forbid, performing one on herself) and having the runes carved into her skull transcribed. She then formulated a process for these runes to be efficiently and routinely transcribed in the skulls of others. Thus, the obvious, Frankenstein’s Monster style scarification on the statue. Also nice to have a little Frankenstein shout out in a game of pseudo-vampires and werewolves. This repeated craniotomy might have even been what killed her, leading to her semi-sainthood as a martyr to progress.

Also, the focus on a skull, rather than a bone, might have been the reason Laurence’s skull is on display in the Grand Cathedral, and the focus on bone and bone ash seen in Hemwick, but this is just speculation. Perhaps the Witches of Hemwick began collecting and processing human bodies during the crisis, harvesting eyes and ripping open heads, in an attempt to find more runes. Yet another purely scientific pursuit degraded into a mad religious ritual over time.

Addendum: @darksouschef: I don’t think it’s a statue of the doll; both women are tall, but nothing else about them really resembles each other, at least to me; aparent age, hairline, eyebrows, nasal structure, and general facial structure simply don’t match. Also, we know the doll is based on Maria, which would be a fun Marian statue shout-out but simply doesn’t fit the timeline or craniotomy scars. Also, I believe that the doll isn’t an old one, but one of two dreamlands counterparts of the real Maria (the Doll is her idealized, maternal side, while the Clocktower Maria is a shade of her merciless, desparing hunting aspect). The doll does not seem to have an ulterior motive; you can even catch her praying for your safety to Flora of the Moon. I also believe that the Craniotomy Statues were once more important, as they resemble the waystones or checkpoints from the Project Beast trailers.