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The Church Servant is an enemy in Bloodborne.

Description

Church Servants are humanoid but stand almost twice as tall as a human, with pale white skin and blank black eyes. They wear long black jackets unbuttoned at the bottom underneath trenchcoats with short capes similar to the caped variation of the Hunter Garb. The trenchcoats and trousers are normally grey, but the two Servants outside the Grand Cathedral wear black and those in Upper Cathedral Ward wear white. They wear hoods over their heads, often with a hat on top. Like Church Giants they wear bells around their necks.

Most Church Servants carry a cane in their right hand. The basic variant, wearing no hat atop their hood, carries only the cane. Of the hat-wearing Servants, the more common type carries a lantern in their left hand and cane in their right, and less commonly carry a large scythe wielded with both hands. A handful of them wear a hat with a much wider rim; these ones carry ranged weapons in addition to the cane, wielding either a Flamesprayer or a Repeating Pistol in their left hand. On the steps outside the Grand Cathedral, the two black-clad Church Servants guarding the door wield large crucifixes as two-handed weapons.

Strategy

Church servants move slowly, making their attacks generally easy to avoid, but they dish out a good deal of damage. Hatless and lantern-carrying Servants will attack by swinging or smashing their canes and the scythe variant will use a long-ranged downward strike. Servants with wide-rimmed hats still strike with their canes but tend to favour their guns. Crucifix-wielding Servants have both a downward strike similar to the scythe and a forward thrusting attack, both of which case a small amount of Frenzy to build up in addition to dealing damage.

If the player has more than 15 insight some of the Servants' attacks will change - perhaps indicating that the player is seeing the true form of these creatures' weapons, which manifest eyes, tendrils or flames like most things influenced by the Great Ones. Lantern Servants have their lamps covered in eyes allowing them to shoot arcane projectiles in bursts of three or create an AoE arcane blast around them; Scythe Servants will have dark flames surrounding their blades signifying additional fire damage; Crucifix Servants have dark auras surrounding the top of their weapon and the amount of Frenzy they inflict is increased.

One way of dealing with all variations of this enemy is to move behind them and attack from there, though in the case of a higher-insight Lantern Servant it's best to be mindful of the AoE attack they'll sometimes use to counter. Unlike most enemies they can be staggered by a gunshot at any time during their attack animations; most of their melee attacks are obviously telegraphed, which combined with their sluggishness makes parrying and visceral attacks highly effective.

Notes

  • Church Servants are extremely easy to parry, as shooting them at any point during their attack animation will stagger them.

Trivia

  • The giant crucifix wielded by the black-clad Servants resembles the Blood Echo symbol.
  • Upon spotting the player a Church Servant will either point a finger at the Hunter or raise their cane in his/her direction, scowl open-mouthed and groan to show their displeasure.
  • Church Servants can only be found in the two Cathedral Ward areas in the main game, and in the Research Hall in the DLC.
  • Their bells maybe a reference to the leper bell. In medieval times, people with leprosy were often required to wear clothing that identified them as such or carry a bell announcing their presence. Because of the moral stigma of the disease, methods of treatment were both physical and spiritual, and leprosariums were established under the purview of the church.

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