DRAVSK

roleplay guide   —   A lore reference compilation for  Bloodborne  inspired Alternate Universe setting. Canon Divergent.
    contains  DARK & DD:DNE  themes   

• START HERE
• HISTORY
• LORE
• ROLES
• GALLERY
• GREY

oh, the taste of it

it calls, it calls, it calls to me

  001.   This is a canon divergent setting. Please don't contact me with your ten page essay about Bloodborne. Other people have gone on extensive lore dives about it, and this is simply fanfiction and a love letter to the franchise (RIP).  002.   You don't need to know everything about Bloodborne to play in this, but some basic knowledge helps. I especially recommend this essay, as it influenced a lot of my own interpretations.  003.   I build complicated and immersive settings because this is what I enjoy writing and playing in. If it's not your cup of tea, no hard feelings. If you have any questions about the lore, the world, or how to approach your story, I'm always happy to chat on discord.

  004.   I don't care if you use my settings for your D&D campaign, personal RP, art inspiration, or other non-commercial hobbies. I don't require credit, but I'd love to see anything you're inspired to make!  005.   I do care if you lift my characters, concepts, and plots wholesale and pass them off as your own. I will hunt you down the streets like the dog you are.  006.   I use Tensor, Photoshop, After Effects and Gemini/ChatGPT to make my graphics and images. I make my maps by hand in Wonderdraft. I have a background in graphic design and concept development. You can find more graphics and illustrations in the gallery section.

Dravsk (pop. 25,000 and declining) began as a coastal whaling village that grew into a fortified city-state, eventually reorganized around the Cathedral of the Ascendant as its spiritual and political center. Its modest maritime economy was slowly replaced with arcane research, pilgrimage, and the practice of blood ministration.The city's layout radiates outward from the cathedral, reflecting different economic strata and eventual decay of its population due to plummeting birth rates and increasing violence perpetuated by the Beastplague.We are in the last years of its existence.

HUNTERS are semi-independent contractors licensed by the Cathedral to patrol during the Great Hunt. They are paid per confirmed kill, captured beast, or completed "purge" of infected districts. They may also be hired specifically to hunt down other rogue, or feral hunters.Hunters are no longer human. Which are pretty good odds, considering that the whole population is slowly mutating into feral beasts.All hunters undergo limited Church-sanctioned rites and grafts that let them consume monster blood and other magical tissue without instant death. These changes harden the body, sharpen senses, and slow certain kinds of corruption, but erode ordinary human limits and instincts.In exchange for augmentation and a hunting license, Hunters surrender normal legal protections and most civil status. They live on Church stipends, bounties, and whatever they strip from the dead. They may use the blood of monsters they hunt to enhance their own abilities.The same augmentations that keep them alive also pull them toward bestial or eldritch transformation over time. Everyone understands — openly or not — that a Hunter's career ends in death, disappearance, or something worse, unless they found a cure or dismantled the system using them.

THE ASCENDANT CHURCH is the state religion and de facto government of Dravsk. The Church, officially, preaches salvation through obedience, purity, and sanctioned blood rites. The High Synod is the Church's visible ruling council. It is composed of senior clergy (cardinals, abbots, and bishops) who officially govern Dravsk.Generations ago, Church scholars secretly recovered a wounded Augur (a lesser cosmic entity, whose flesh is able to reshape reality) and entombed it beneath the Cathedral to study and exploit its body and blood. Rather than sharing its power widely, the clergy and aristocrats used the Augur to create human–cosmic hybrids, planting these children within elite families and interbreeding them to concentrate magical aptitude and authority in a narrow ruling class.As these hybrid bloodlines gained control, Dravsk's hegemony shifted toward eugenics: through Church rites and the practice of blood ministration, most of the populace was rendered magically sterile over generations, suppressing contact with eldritch forces while preserving the fertility and power of select lines.Thirteen years have passed since the last natural-born child. The Church has enacted a strict curfew and a monthly Great Hunt to maintain shaky control over the metaphysical catastrophe of their own making.

BLOOD MINISTRATION is a process through which Church-sanctioned blood may be administered to the human body. It may be done via injection of a single vial, or a full drainage for the purpose of drip-assisted blood replacement.It is the main economic export of Dravsk, advertised as holy medicine that purges sickness, mends wounds, and stabilizes the soul. Distributed through Church clinics and a few licensed infirmaries, it is strictly controlled, selectively distributed, and always conditional.Unknown to all but the very high ranking members of the Church and the Institute, all sanctioned blood comes from the entombed Augur beneath the Cathedral. It is diluted, treated, and blended with human blood or alchemical buffers to make it survivable. Smaller doses and transfusions heal grave injuries and chronic illness. Larger ones administered over a period of time grant the ability to perform remarkable feats of strength and mental aptitude.The human body was not meant to process such volumes of cosmic infection. Over time, the consumption of Augur blood and flesh has mutated the unfortified population.The suffering of an elder god bleeding beneath the Cathedral has resulted in the emergence of the Beastplague.

children of the augur.

PART HUMAN, PART CELESTIAL BEING. Whereupon the birth rates plummeted after the ongoing consumption of the God-Flesh, fertile women were confined to the aqueduct waterbells to observe the production of the new Augur brood. Every new fertile cycle, or roughly once a year at the spring equinox, they would tend to the fresh polyp clutch released from the dreaming being and nurse them with blood and milk so that the resulting offspring may be taken in by the noble houses and raised alongside their own children for the purpose of interbreeding, strengthening their bloodlines and enforcing the rule of the magical elite over Dravsk.The resulting offspring, if they survived, carried similar traits: pale skin, white hair, and an ethereal, otherworldly beauty. Through a closer connection with the cosmos, they were able to observe and even reshape reality on several planes of existence at once.Their celestial heritage afforded longer lifespans, fortification against most diseases, and warded against deterioration of the mind caused by time. As generations passed, the traits became recessive, and one could carry the cosmic heritage within them despite looking nothing like the painted icons of their fair ancestors.Now, these powers are mostly diminished, safe for one: the augur-borne are completely immune to the Beastplague.

the glubinsky institute.

THE GLUBINSKY MARITIME INSTITUTE is located on the edge of Dravsk's jagged coast.Official records say Dravsk's miracles began when the Church received a divine sign at sea, "where the stars touched upon the horizon of the water". In truth, during a deep-water expedition 180 years prior, researchers of the Institute located something immense sheltering in the coastal shallows: an Augur, an eldritch being wounded and attempting to hide. Senior figures in the Institute, Church, and a handful of wealthy patrons formed a closed council to exploit the find.Using modified whaling equipment, chains, and winches, they subdued the creature. Over several nights, engineers and laborers (most of whom were later "relocated" or disappeared from public life) extended and reinforced existing sluice tunnels beneath the city.The Augur was dragged inland through these flooded channels and anchored in a purpose-built chamber directly beneath the central cathedral. Its presence, nature, and location were locked behind multiple layers of classification; only the highest ranks of Church and Institute knew that all later miracles came from a single, captive source.The Institute exists as the chief researching body of Dravsk's arcane secrets and the main site of advancements in the field of blood ministration.

the fall.

THE RISE OF MIRACLES. Shortly after the Augur's confinement, the Church announced a new age of grace: inexplicable healings, prophetic dreams, and "blessed recoveries" began to cluster around Dravsk. In secret, alchemists and theologians were harvesting fragments of the Augur and refining them into ingestible sacramental flesh.Controlled doses of this God-Flesh produced undeniable results: oracles who spoke in fractured but accurate glimpses of the future, saints and healers capable of reversing previously incurable illnesses, disorders of memory, mood, and cognition.Word spread. Pilgrims and supplicants arrived from distant ports and inland estates, seeking cures and blessings unavailable anywhere else. Tithes, offerings, and patronage swelled; the Church financed new chapels, hospitals, and expansions to the harbor and merchant quarters.A quiet hierarchy of access emerged.Occasional, heavily supervised miracles were afforded to common petitioners. Regular, private communion was reserved for wealthy families and officials who could "support the work." For the upper classes, consumption of sacrament became routine — first as emergency treatment, then as a prophylactic for clarity, vigor, and longevity.By the time the oldest generation that had known Dravsk before miracles began to die out, most citizens simply took it as truth that the city had always been chosen, and that the Church's favor was the only thing holding the world together.

the beastplague.

THE BEASTPLAGUE is not a disease in the conventional sense; it is a mutation condition caused by prolonged exposure to unprocessed astral contamination as unfortified (human) flesh struggles to maintain its form.For generations, the population's enforced magical sterility acted as a buffer, suppressing symptoms and slowing transmission. When sterilization programs faltered, the population — already saturated with diluted Augur blood from ministrations — became fully vulnerable.Beastplague spreads through coughing, bodily fluids, close contact, and spilled blood. It is highly contagious in late-stage victims; the infected become walking outbreak zones.The plague progresses through stages reminiscent of heavy cold or flu. Starting with fever and night sweats, it begins to physically warp the human body, elongating limbs, forcing bone through thickening skin, eventually turning the person into a fully transformed, feral beast driven by mindless violence and territorial rage.
There is no known cure. Once transformation begins, it cannot be undone. Celestial blood (pure Augur blood) can slow or suppress symptoms.Infected individuals are quarantined, exiled, or killed during Hunts. The Beastplague became the Church's justification for total control: curfews, rationing, mass surveillance, and sanctioned slaughter.

the hunt.

THE GREAT HUNT is a monthly state-sanctioned purge where the moon is high and the beasts are at their most active and violent.The bells ring at dusk. Everyone knows what comes next.The Church would like you to believe that there is method to the slaughter, but that has long since ceased to be the case. The lower streets are a cacophony of terror. The plazas are turned to butcher shops. Hunters fight with silver bullets, flintlock, and gunfire, sawing off pieces of monsters large enough to swallow them whole.The Augur's dream has become a nightmare.

  THE HUNTER    — 
You are a Hunter sanctioned by the church. Your augmentations have rendered you immune to beastly transformation, and you have hidden this secret well, until now. You are trapped within an ecosystem which rewards the ruthless execution of anyone who stands in your way. The Great Hunt closes in, the bounties are rising in price, and comrades become prey. So hunt.

  THE VENERATED SAINT    — 
You are one of Augur's celestial offspring. Your blood contains trace elements of fallen stars. You may be a lone survivor from a noble family, a member of the Church, or a secret stolen and hidden away by the Institute. You are sought after by hunters to stabilize their affliction, by the aristocracy to tie up loose ends, or by the Institute to be cut open and studied. Escape.

  THE MINISTRATORY VESSEL    — 
You possess one of the rarest things in this wretched spiral of human negligence: a functioning womb. You carry the potential to conceive children where 98% of the population has been rendered sterile. You menstruate, which has flushed out the eldritch blood and kept you immune from the Beastplague. You're human, and you have no advantages. Survive.

  HIGH VICAR ANIRA KONSTANTIN    — 
The pious architect of Dravsk's destruction and the Church's current structure. She wrote key doctrines on sterilization, breeding programs, and Blood Ministration. As proof of her devotion, she has consumed more God-Flesh and blood than any member of the High Synod. Cathedral District.

  THE PORECELAIN ACOLYTE    — 
A Church-made homunculus, a living doll assembled from porcelain and granted a sliver of sanctioned flesh to animate it. Taught to comfort, soothe, and heal. Delegated to the Hunter Workshop once he's outspent his usefulness, he looks perfectly human, until he is not. Lower Spiral.

  DR. OSKAR LINDEN    — 
One of the lead researchers of the Glubinsky Institute. Coming from an Upper Spiral family, he was recruited young and spent decades in aquarium levels refining Blood Ministration and cataloguing mutations. Still has authority, knowledge, and access to the lower levels of The Institute.