#theres also the fact the very name 'outer god' is so entwined with cosmic horror entities but

[wraith-caller]

I wanted to work out some thoughts about the outer gods and their nature. Are they 'outer' as in simply being ascended people 'outside' of Marika's Order, and therefore no different in nature than her? Or are they closer in kind to the Greater Will, being somewhat abstract, unknowable cosmic entities vying for influence over the world? Is the Greater Will a type of outer god, or something distinct altogether?

I. Outer God of Rot

I don't think outer gods are simply alternate gods in competition with Marika, and the primary reason for that is her own daughter, Malenia. She is, of course, tightly connected to an outer god of rot. The Scarlet Aeonia incantation specifies that she will become "a true goddess" upon her third bloom. I believe this rot god acts towards Malenia the way the Greater Will has towards Marika, and that it is in the interest, or simply the nature, of an outer god to have a sort of 'steward' in this world. If the god of rot was simply another person like Marika, why would it need or even want Malenia to bloom? And why simply seal them away, rather than killing them? For all Gideon's bluster about how a man can not kill a god, we know that is not a problem for Empyreans - the Gloam Eyed Queen practically made a sport of it. Not to mention, the Tarnished ends up doing just that, so it's simply untrue. It requires some special tools for the job which aren't easy to come by, but it can be done. But if an outer god may be a force beyond man's reckoning, then it becomes more questionable whether such a thing could be killed, while it is known their influence can be subdued(Miquella's Needle, possibly the Nox Mirrorhelm).

We know that the god of rot is specifically an outer god, as the map of the Lake of Rot says, "It is said that the divine essence of an outer god is sealed away in this land."

Gowry gives us a little more insight into Malenia's curse, explaining:

In the age of the Elden Ring, and Queen Marika, the precious Empyrean was born. A new god to forge a new Order. Since Malenia fought Radahn, and the great scarlet flower blossomed in Aeonia, I have dedicated myself to her. And to the resplendence of the Order of Rot. The cycle of decay and rebirth.

In this way, the Rot is to Malenia as the Greater Will is to Marika. Malenia the god forges the new Order(specifically a new order, not simply a new age of the old order), and the power behind that Order is the Outer God of Rot. There is even a parallel between the god and consort dynamic in that Gowry asks us to kill Millicent so that she may be reborn in tandem with Malenia's ascension to godhood. He says, "When Malenia ascends to godhood, Millicent too shall be reborn. As a scarlet valkyrie." This continues the idea that for a god to ascend, another person must be sacrificed and reborn alongside them. Malenia becomes a goddess, but she is a goddess OF the Rot God, in the same way that Marika is a goddess OF the Greater Will. Whereas Marika claimed her godhood through the Sacred Rite and the passage through the Divine Gates atop Enir-Ilim, it may be that different gods offer different paths to divinity. But, that divinity may always require a sacrifice and rebirth, something of the old order dying and being reborn alongside the god of the new one.

But that's just one example, right? Can we find more info to strengthen this idea of outer gods being entities seeking heralds in the lands between for some reason?

II. The Formless Mother

Another specified outer god is the Formless Mother. Mohgwyn's Sacred Spear says, "As well as serving as a weapon, it is an instrument of communion with an outer god who bestows power upon accursed blood." The "communion" in question involves stabbing the spear skyward, wounding some invisible body(she is, after all, the Formless Mother), and spilling her blood.

Once again, there is a dynamic of a consort/partner and the god to be ascended. But in this instance, Mohg is the servant of the outer god while the Empyrean remains unresponsive to the attempts at a forced ascension, and no valid sacrifice is rendered alongside that god(yes blood is offered to Miquella/the FM, but these are random people, not someone closely linked to the would-be god as is the case of Marika, Malenia, and DLC Miquella). Why this ritual did not work is unknown. It could be that because Mohg made the wrong kind of offering, Miquella could not be ascended. It could also be a matter of Miquella's own curse, which some believe is to blame for his plans never coming to fruition. There is a third option, however, and that is the needle he himself crafted in an attempt to ward off the influence of outer gods.

With the DLC, we were introduced to a new group of beings who were transformed after contact with the Formless Mother. The Bloodfiend Hexer Ashes tell us, "Long ago, a subjugated tribe discovered a twisted deity amongst the ravages of war, and they were transformed into bloodfiends." This is not unlike Romina's discovery and interaction with the rot. For more info about this parallel, which is more difficult to parse in the English, check out pages 11-17 of this document).

Outer gods appear to be the source of certain 'divine elements'(see: Hefty Rot Pot and Remembrance of the Saint of the Bud), and these elements can be deeply transformative. This is another distinction between these outer gods and Marika, who has not proven to be capable of something like this. While she can imbue and detract Grace at will, there is no distortion of one's being which mirrors the degree of change seen in Romina, and possibly the Bloodfiends. (Given we do not see the before state of the latter, I'm conceding it's possible they didn't look radically different after their transformation. However, Romina's case is indisputable, and given the parallel language between her and the Bloodfiends, it seems reasonable to assume their change could have also been significant.)

III. The Frenzied Flame

The Frenzied Flame is an implicit outer god, per Miquella's Needle:

One of the unalloyed gold needles that Miquella crafted to ward away the meddling of outer gods. Capable of subduing the flame of frenzy if inherited, allowing one to cheat fate and avoid becoming Lord of Frenzied Flame.

In true chaotic fashion, the path to godhood and lordship of the Frenzied Flame upends the notion of a single sacrifice, and the rebirth it promises is an endless, maddening chaos. Where other gods may rise to their throne with their reborn sacrifice at their heel, the Flame doesn't ask for such offerings, because it wants to consume everything. Shabriri tells us not to throw our maiden into the fire, that we can burn instead, and in doing so tear down life itself. There will be no god, nor even an Order of Frenzy. Incinerate all that divides and distinguishes, it says. It is a return to a singularity, to a primitive state of being predating existence itself. Hyetta tells us of the world before the world:

I have touched them. The words of the Three Fingers. As your maiden, allow me to divine them. All that there is came from the One Great. Then came fractures, and births, and souls. But the Greater Will made a mistake. Torment, despair, affliction. Every sin, every curse. Every one, born of the mistake. And so, what was borrowed must be returned. Melt it all away, with the yellow chaos flame. Until all is One again.

This is further supported by the DLC where Count Ymir tells us, "We began as stardust, born of a great rupture far across the skies." Life is a result of this schism, and multiple entities erupted from it. The Greater Will and Frenzied Flame are of that schism, a link we will examine below.

V. The Greater Will

What of the Greater Will itself? Is it acting on this world with careful, calculated intent, or is it wholly disinterested, a remote entity without concern for this Order founded in its name? I personally suppose it is a bit of both - The Greater Will has interacted with the world enough times that it becomes difficult to write it off as some unimportant happenstance. But the DLC has made it fairly clear that whatever interest the Will may have once had has faded. At the end of the day, it is still some unknowable cosmic force which is perhaps too strange for the human mind to comprehend.

On the subject of the Greater Will's intentions, we get a few bits of info on the matter. From the Elden Stars incantation we learn, "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."

Various armors of the Nox state, "Long ago, the Nox invoked the ire of the Greater Will, and were banished deep underground." It could be tempting to ascribe this event to being mythologized, however, the Remembrance of the Naturalborn elaborates on the event:

A malformed star born in the lightless void far away. Once destroyed an Eternal City and took away their sky. A falling star of ill omen.

Just like the Elden Beast, another star is sent from the heavens with intent to act upon this world. The "lightless void" terminology is picked up again in the DLC, with the High Priest Hat mentioning, "The circular design at the top represents the Greater Will and its lightless abyss," strengthening the notion that this thing is directly affiliated with the Greater Will in some way.

And in case you were under the impression these are just coincidences, the DLC provided us with a third example of the Greater Will sending a star to the earth. The Remembrance of Metyr:

The mother of all Two Fingers and Fingercreepers was in turn a magnificently gleaming daughter of the Greater Will, and the first shooting star to fall upon the Lands Between.

While a lot of conversation is had around the reveal that the Will has stopped interacting with Metyr, it is worth remembering that it did, once, communicate with her, and must have been doing so for a long time. The Staff of the Great Beyond says:

The Mother received signs from the Greater Will from the beyond of the microcosm. Despite being broken and abandoned, she kept waiting for another message to come.

It's erroneous to state that she and the Two Fingers have no idea of the Greater Will's intentions, or that they've simply always rambled nonsensically, posing as if they were in communication with a force that has never contacted them. Metyr did receive messages directly from the Greater Will as some point. It is simply that she no longer does, and the world has been without that guidance for an unknown period of time. The opening cinematic of the game claims that the Shattering has led to abandonment by the Greater Will, and the wording in the Staff's description of Metyr being "broken" and "abandoned" coincides quite nicely with the Elden Ring itself being a broken thing abandoned by its keeper. That could be taken as an indication of when this communication was disrupted. We know that the Will has, at some point in history, still been in contact with this world, robbing the Nox of their sky. It also sent Metyr before the Elden Beast which became the Elden Ring, and the Ring itself has been around before even Marika's era, with Dragonlord Placidusax once being an Elden Lord in the time before the Erdtree(see: Remembrance of the Dragonlord). So it's possible that Metyr has been receiving messages for a very, very long time.

At any rate, it seems very clear that the Greater Will has, well, a will of some kind. What its intentions are, or why it acts in the way it does, we won't ever know, but there are those who resist it. In a sort of parallel to Miquella's Needle, the Nox have also crafted an item to ward off the influence of this entity and its minions. The Nox Mirrorhelm says, "Worn by those committed to high treason, it wards off the intervention of the Greater Will and its vassal Fingers." The descriptions both use the same term of warding something away, strengthening the notion of the Greater Will being of a kind with the outer gods - a meddling force from beyond the world which, with the proper implements, may be kept at bay for a time. There's also unmistakable relations between the Greater Will and the Flame of Frenzy which highlight them as being of a kind. The most obvious are the Fingers, envoys of their respective entities. The Will has the Two Fingers, the Frenzy has Three, and when combined you have a whole hand. They have diametric natures, one half begetting order, the other chaos. There's also the fact that the origin of all things is called the One Great, which Hyetta tells us was fractured. The Flame seeks the return of all to unity, that all divisions are erased so that there is only a one. So even here we can poke at this notion that the One Great is a schism between these two forces - the One(Frenzy) and the Great(Greater Will). If the Frenzy is an outer god as so heavily implied by Miquella's Needle, then it is likely the Greater Will is one, too, as they are two beings of the same nature.

As is the case with most things in the game, we aren't getting any solid answers. These are just my thoughts, and some reasons why I think them. :]