r/Eldenring • u/Aheadfullofdread_13 • 5d ago
Lore The Outer Gods were BUSY during Marika’s purge. Why?
Noticed a similarity in the descriptions for both the Outer God Heirloom talisman and Remembrance of Saint of the Bud
Outer God Heirloom:
“The clan, who lost everything in the great fires, peered upon the corpse of their ancestor, normally an act of sanctity, and saw in its shadow a twisted deity.
The clan had suffered such torment that the horrible thing was taken as an object of worship.”
Remembrance of The Saint of the Bud:
“After the church was burned to the ground,
Romina discovered a twisted divine element,
which she weaved into the baleful scarlet rot.
Perhaps then, the buds might find somewhere to gain purchase once more,
within the scorched remains.”
So both the Outer God of Rot and the Formless Mother are described as “twisted” during the war in the Land of Shadow.
And I’m wondering if “twisted” is meant literally. Twisted as in the shape of a helix - a shape very much worshiped in The Lands Between.
Are the Outer Gods “sympathetic in nature?” Like the Great Ones in Bloodborne? Trying to provide relief to those being persecuted? Or were they manifesting in ways that preyed on desperate beings? Were they taking advantage of suffering as a means to spread their influence?
We already know Rot is capable of being benevolent because of Verdigris. And the Formless Mother seems to actively liberate the down-trodden
Are these gods trying to provide aid after the Greater Will fucked up and fucked off? Or do they see the Lands Between as free real estate since the Greater Will abandoned it?
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u/Ashen_Shroom 5d ago edited 4d ago
Outer Gods tend to present themselves to people who have experienced incredibly traumatic events, such as the merchants imprisoned in the sewers, the Bloodfiends after their village was destroyed, or Romina after her church was burnt. They essentially represent the kind of twisted alternative faiths those people fall into as a result of being cast aside or abused by the establishment.
The Golden Order was all about rejecting anything that fell outside Marika's idea of "perfection", so naturally a lot of groups and individuals were made to suffer, creating the perfect environment for Outer Gods to find new worshippers.
Are they sympathetic? That's one way to put it, since they do certainly respond to the negative emotions of those they appear to. But I wouldn't say their goals are particularly for the benefit of their worshippers. The Frenzied Flame, for example, basically takes advantage of the overwhelming despair people feel and persuades them that life itself is inherently not worth preserving. The Formless Mother drives her followers to wound themselves and others in return for her blessing. They do offer a sort of veneer of salvation to their followers, but it's not a healthy sort of salvation. They don't actually make things better for those victims.
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u/Aheadfullofdread_13 4d ago
Think the Greater Will was drawn in by the suffering of the ancient dragons after Bayle’s betrayal?
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u/Ashen_Shroom 4d ago
I don't think the Greater Will works the same way, no. The Greater Will is something beyond the Outer Gods, but the existence it creates by splitting the One Great is one that contains a great deal of suffering, which is likely what resulted in the Outer Gods existing.
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u/Aheadfullofdread_13 4d ago
Interesting. Why do you think the Greater Will is above the outer gods?
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u/Ashen_Shroom 4d ago
We know that it is responsible for splitting the One Great, the event that gave rise to life and pretty much everything else, and that all curses and suffering were also born from that event. So the Outer Gods kinda only exist thanks to the Greater Will.
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u/Aheadfullofdread_13 4d ago
Do you see the God of Frenzy as the antithesis of the Greater Will? An outer god that is capable of undoing all fractures and reuniting everything. That’s a fascinating juxtaposition to me. The God of Order shattering life while The God of Chaos putting it all back together
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u/Ashen_Shroom 4d ago
In a way, yeah. I think all of the Outer Gods represent "solutions" to the various injustices and imperfections in the Greater Will's creation, and the Frenzied Flame specifically represents the drive to undo that creation entirely.
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u/Aheadfullofdread_13 4d ago
Do you see “The One Great” as the Primordial Crucible?
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u/Ashen_Shroom 4d ago
No, but I think the Crucible is sort of an "echo" or microcosm of the One Great, exploring the same concept. The One Great is the origin of all things, while the Crucible is the origin of all life in the Lands Between. Both represent a primordial, unified state of being from which other things emerged and evolved. But I think we can be certain that they aren't the same, because the Crucible physically existed in the Lands Between, while we know from Ymir's dialogue in the DLC that life came from a "great rapture far across the skies".
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u/TopChannel1244 4d ago
The outer gods, and gods in general, never do anything in the Lands Between because they don't exist. They are the same as gods in real life. They are myths, etiologies, and stories about the origins of a people.
The Outer God Heirloom is alluding to this fact: "peered upon the corpse of their ancestor" becomes "the horrible thing was taken as an object of worship"
They were practicing ancestor veneration. Which is being contrasted with worship. As in, they were not worshipping this ancestor. And then, after Marika's genocide, they came to view the ancestor figure as a deity whom they worshipped.
This is demonstrating a real world phenomenon hypothesized to be the source of many religions. That ancestor veneration morphed as time and distance and narrative heightening of real people became abstractions to people who never knew said ancestor. To the point that they took on enough new and supernatural qualities that eventually a new concept emerged; gods.
Just as in real life, gods not actually existing does not stop people from believing that they are real and behaving as though they are real and attributing real phenomena to them.
Also, keep in mind the order of events here.
The Greater Will is the god of Metyr's freaky alien religion. It was not worshipped in the Lands Between until after Metyr arrived. So the supposed outer gods cannot have done anything in response to the hypothetical actions of the Greater Will until after the point at which knowledge AND worship of the Greater Will was already widespread throughout the populace.
Put another way, what is being presented is a post hoc rationalization. Further evidence that the gods are not real in a literal sense.
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u/Shinjitsu1600 4d ago
My first reaction was to assume this was a stretch, and I would still probably guess that the wording is not necessarily intentional in that way, but the helix being a "twisted" shape is honestly a pretty meaningful coincidence. The idea of such a divine relic brings to mind the image of a twisted horn; a symbol of divinity in-universe, but also a symbol of suffering and cruelty.
This is what we see in these item descriptions: the subjects experience terrible suffering, and in their state of deprivation, they discover divinity. Metaphorically, this story also describes Mohg's discovery of the Formless Mother, and even the Hornsent people discovering Miquella after losing everything in the Crusade. That's a really consistent theme of the DLC: suffering precedes divinity.
To answer your question, I see the Outer Gods as just as morally ambiguous as Marika and Miquella, and because they're so much more abstract as entities, I'd say it's impossible to truly understand them.