The Outer Gods are Stars
The Outer Gods are Stars
Art by @SneakyBroArt on X (image 1)
In Elden Ring, stars are more than inanimate gas balls illuminating the night sky. In many cases they are living beings, but not all of them are created equally. Astel for example is considered a “malformed star” and can relatively easily be defeated by the Tarnished, while the Frigid Sun of Sol has the ability to resurrect the dead and keep destined death at bay, and is completely out of our reach.
I think there’s good evidence to suggest that the Outer Gods are capable of taking on multiple forms, or at the very least can be perceived in multiple different forms, but for the sake of brevity I’ll be omitting this and focusing purely on how each Outer God has a very strong connection to a real star.
The Outer God of Rot. I’m sure all of you have seen Malenias form after she ascends to Godhood. I don’t think her taking the form of a butterfly is an accident. In fact her shape, and the nature of rot, perfectly mirrors that of a young star.
We can see quite clearly that rot in Elden Ring consumes life in order to strengthen its influence. A young star does exactly that, it consumes the atmospheres and matter of anything around it in order to grow. There are countless photos you can find of young stars taking the form of a butterfly, and a few different theories as to why this happens. I’m not here to give my opinion on things I don’t understand, so I’ll just show you my favorite image of a young star: https://imgur.com/a/xD0WIsL (image 2)
The Fell God. There is a bit of a debate on whether we can classify the Fell God as a true Outer God, and I think that’s a fair assessment, but I think it’s at least generally agreed upon that its powers come from an Outer God. This is just how divinity works in Elden Ring. I think Miquella might be the only one who doesn’t have a clear influence from an Outer God, but given his curse, and how he has to visit the divine realm to ascend and receive a Great Rune adjacent item similar to the Nightlords, I suspect that there is an unknown influence.
Getting back to the Fell God, the obvious connection we can make is to the sun. But I don’t think that’s the most fitting. There’s another Outer God that embodies the sun much more closely. I think the Fell Gods closest real life celestial counterpart is a failed star. And there just so happens to be one in our own solar system that has very strong connections to the Fell God. Jupiter.
Jupiter is classified as a gas giant but it’s also called a failed star because it was unable to acquire enough mass to ignite nuclear fusion. Essentially it had the potential to become a true star but for various debated reasons, was unable to.
Jupiter is the largest planet in our solar system, even considered a giant planet. As we know the Fell God manifests mainly on Fire Giants, which are the largest living beings in the Lands Between. Jupiter is also an extremely cold planet. Its surface temperature is around -160 degrees Fahrenheit, except for the storm on the South Pole which reaches temperatures of up to 2,400 degrees Fahrenheit. To mirror this, Fire Giants occupy a frozen wasteland. Now why is this important? Because the solar storm on the South Pole of Jupiter is a perfect 1:1 to the Fell Gods eye, here’s the image: https://imgur.com/a/WSE5raE (image 3)
The next Outer God I want to look at is the Formless Mother. While there aren’t any real stars that we can draw a connection to, at least not one I could find, there is one that Fromsoft created for us, and that is the Blood Star.
It’s still debated as to whether the Blood Star is the Formless Mother, as there’s no lore directly stating them to be the same entity. I think it’s a rather obvious connection for a few reasons, the most in your face being their shared connection to blood. Some less obvious connections are that the Blood Star worshippers have an affinity with fire like the Formless Mother worshippers do, both the Formless Mother and the Blood Star require a wound, and they both manifest in the discarded members of society.
Of course without any lore directly stating them to be the same entity you will always have people opposing this idea, but I can’t think of any good reason for Fromsoft to create 2 identical Outer Gods if they didn’t want us to make the connection between them.
The Frenzied Flame is the most obvious of them all, with its star counterpart being a black hole. If you aren’t aware, a black hole is formed by the gravitational collapse of a massive star.
Whats most of us know about black holes is that they consume and destroy everything in their path. Whats lesser known is that they can also redistribute gas far across the universe which can lead to the formation of new celestial bodies. Theres a relatively popular theory that black holes lead to new universes. Connecting this to the Frenzied Flame, it consumes everything around it, but it doesn’t just consume things. Similarly to how black holes redistribute matter, the Frenzied Flame consumes things specifically to return them to the One Great. Returning things to the One Great would inevitably lead to the creation of a new universe. It’s a pretty fascinating take on the concept in my opinion, and the connections aren’t just thematic, they’re also visual: https://imgur.com/a/MzFM1kE (image 4, 5, and 6)
Last but not least is the Outer God whose star form that I believe represents a golden sun, and that is the Greater Will.
The Greater Wills influence is overwhelmingly golden. You’ll be hard pressed to find anything related to the Greater Will that doesn’t have at least some gold on it. Next we have to look to our own world and what the sun actually does for us. It gives us life and order. It’s is the reason that life on earth is possible, and it’s the order of our solar system. The Greater Will is what gives the Lands Between life and order.
I know what you’re thinking, the Greater Will is described as a lightless abyss, how can it be a golden sun? One theory is that when Ymir attempted to view the Greater Will, he saw nothing because TLB was already abandoned by it, and couldn’t perceive it.
Alternatively, and the theory I much prefer, is that the Greater Will ceased to exist. Maybe it died, maybe it returned itself to the One Great, or maybe the Frenzied Flame did. Nobody really knows, but I think there’s some pretty strong evidence to suggest that the Greater Wills physical body may have died, and we see it in Metyr’s microcosm.
Metyr’s microcosm is her physical connection to the Greater Will. Through it she could receive messages, and from what we can see she was viewing a star on the other side of it, albeit a now collapsed star. This is evident by Metyr’s pulsar beam attack. A pulsar beam is energy being emitted by a neutron star, and a neutron star is the core of massive star that exploded into a supernova. To back this up with some visual evidence, here are a few images of collapsed stars compared to her microcosm: https://imgur.com/a/5FSf3qp (image 7, 8, and 9)
When Lusat and Azur peered into the primeval current, one witnessed the death of a great star cluster, the other witnessed the abyss left behind. Ymir would later witness this same abyss and recognized it as the Greater Will, but I don’t think that the Greater Will was always a lightless abyss. A lightless abyss is the antithesis of the Greater Will. Something that represents absolute order, existing as absolute nothingness? I think there’s enough evidence to conclude that something happened to the Greater Wills celestial form, which I believe to be a massive golden star.
My last bit of evidence for this is Goldmasks helmet. Visually it represents a golden star, and the item description reads: “Its striking design represents both the brilliant inspiration that once shone upon him, and the vision of a ring that he will surely find at the end of his pursuit.”
Dung Eaters armor has a similar description: Worn by the Dung Eater. The heavy, sun-shaped medallion represents both the guidance he once saw, and the ring to which it will one day lead.
A sun is representative of the Elden Ring. This is important because the Elden Ring is the microcosm of the Greater Will. Just like the Crucible is the microcosm of the One Great. The Elden Ring and the Crucible are just an emulation of the creation of the universe, as above so below. So the microcosm of the Greater Will is being represented by a Sun.
It’s also worth noting that the Elden Ring was sent to the Lands Between on a golden star: “It is said that long ago, the Greater Will sent a golden star bearing a beast into the Lands Between, which would later become the Elden Ring.” -Elden Stars
Was the Greater Will ever actually a golden star itself? We will probably never know the answer to this question, but I think there’s more than enough evidence to connect it to one nonetheless.
I couldn’t find anything for the Outer God of Night, but I’m certain it has a celestial body form because of the bone-like stone item which claims that it’s the bone of an Outer God.
That’s all I have for this post, thanks for reading!