Eris - What is she, and what does she want?

[zerodemon]

She’s constantly surrounded by black smoke, her eyes glow red, and sometimes blue, she’s probably the source of Fenix’s power, she wants Abe either dead or transformed, and she directed Fenix to the grave. Her name may be short for Erishigal.

Is she a herald like the Flame, Hecate and the Ogdru-Jahad, is she the real deal, or is she just Fenix’s dead sister?

[Kees_L]

Is she a herald like the Flame, Hecate and the Ogdru-Jahad, is she the real deal, or is she just Fenix’s dead sister?

I think there'd be room in the storytelling enough for her to being all of those things, at least for the reader to be supposing, although the one thing I do feel quite strongly is that if Eris does indeed stand for Erishigal then there'd be a distinct difference between her and the Ogdru Jahad and its heralds.

Since I think if the Ogdru Jahad created Earth or wields power over its existence thus also over its rebirths or endings, I imagine Erishigal to being chaos as in the most primary surroundings in which the Earth or universe'd have been created, like a totally separate thing.
Like the Ogdru Jahad and Erishigal would be different powers, different entities, side by side.

Then again I'm still not sure whether Hecate and therefor Rasputin as well would have been heeding only the Ogdru Jahad or possibly Erishigal in some way as well. I don't feel sure the creation would be opposing chaos as a power. My own take is that as a self-proclaimed Goddess Hecate would have been serving or dedicating herself to Chaos, to Erishigal, more rather than the Ogdru Jahad.
But then I feel quite uncertain about how mr Mike is meaning this, like I've never heard Hecate pray to chaos in mr Mike's stories but also never to the Ogdru Jahad, but it seems to me existing lore would have Hecate be a herald of Chaos and I'm not sure Hecate even distinguishes or acknowledges the Ogdru Jahad as independent in the stories at all. Rasputin did but Hecate, not so much I'd think?
It seems to me that for Hecate Rasputin and Eddy Grey or Hellboy will have been just minions whom she hardly ever would have dignified with instructing them on any of their purpose or her own deeper meanings towards such all that much.

It seems to me Chaos would be primal and old and impulsive and totally without sense of responsibility since it would have none whereas creation or the Ogdru Jahad would be clinical / purposeful and without feeling altogether.

I'm really hoping Eris would be short for Erishigal. It would really fit.

You also mention the Flame which I sense to being a significance of the dark variant of Vril basically, but I also sense it as being not as primary or godlike as the Ogdru or Erishigal would seem. To me the Flame seems more like just a manifestion of the Ogdru's if not potentially Erishigal's power. My two cents.

[zerodemon]

Maybe herald is the wrong word. I’d maybe say that they are more akin to siblings.

The Ogdru Jahad had life breathed into them by Ereshigal.
The Black Flame in what we’re assuming is his first incarnation was created by Ereshigal in Rise of the Black Flame (which I believe is a transferable mantle of power now that it exists.)
Hecate/Heca-Emem-Ra/The Black Goddess has been described as a sister of the Ogdru Jahad. I think this is quite literal, as in they share a parent, and I think this parent is Ereshigal, who used a Wolf to gestate a child to walk the earth in her image.

The thing about all three of these entities is that they don’t seem to serve Ereshigal or inact Her will. I think the nature of Ereshigal is that she creates these beings without a grander design.

The Ogdru Jahad seemingly exist just to propagate life in terrifying abundance. They have consciousness, and designs of their own, but they seemingly only reflect their own desires.

The Black Flame has been deeply flawed in each of its incarnations exhibiting very human flaws, and in each of their cases sentimentality, weak will, and self aggrandizement.

And speaking of self-aggrandizement, Hecate is the most self-centered character in the entire saga. She creates a religion around herself, loves to be worshipped, and styles herself as an actual goddess, when the truth is she’s just a very powerful, but very containable creature of myth. Is it any wonder she ended up imprisoned like her sibling(s).

So what of Fenix and Eris? There is some evidence for the connection. In the final mega-arc of Hell on Earth, the Ogdru and the Black Flame are connected by the network of power that Ereshigal granted. There is only one other named character who is also connected to it. Fenix. Remember when the Ogdru arrives and she seizures and falls into a coma, while Panya doesn’t feel anything. Remember how the Black Flame was connected to her immediately with no real reason. He wasn’t bonded to any of the other extra sensory powered characters, so why Fenix?

I have a theory on that too. Eris is Ereshigal. She wants to reclaim the power she has distributed for some reason, and wants an agent in the world that will enact her actual will. When the Black Flame dies, his power flows back to the Ogdru Jahad. When the Ogdru Jahad dies, where would that power go? Back through the network to the next link. Hecate and the other Ogdru are all imprisoned, and so it goes to Fenix/Eris. To what end? No idea.

Perhaps if she reclaims all of the power she has put into the world, then the flame of darkness in the hearts of all living things will be extinguished and she can take all of creation back to a state of nothingness.

I just think it’s telling that Eris likely either told or influenced Fenix into shooting Abe, and also into finding Hellboy. I think Hellboy’s destiny serves Ereshigal’s needs, while Abe’s runs counter to them. Perhaps sparking the next incarnation of life would prevent Her from getting what she wants, or maybe he needed to be shot so his metamorphosis would begin.

[Kees_L]

Interesting. I think all this godly stuff is more or less what people seem to call "the Lovecraftian" bit to mr Mike's storytelling design, being about indifferent alien deities moreso than what people normally associate with religion or such.

I think Eris(k)higal is an indifferent pre-Greek ancient deity who isn't about creation or humanity or life in the slightest but instead was in the world more early than anything else. I think any of her meddling with humanity or existence is due to life in itself being a disturbance or invasion to her. She is not like a creation God because she is Chaos, she is Dischord and acts like it. And she wouldn't tolerate life or "others" since besides Chaos nothing else would need to exist.

The part of that mechanic of the Ogrdu Jahad and Hellboy as being the world's initial catalyst as well as reset button I see as being to escape Erishigal's own attention span fully, even if powers of her would have been used or misused for the sake of it - or either she wouldn't be indifferent or Chaotic enough - and I think she is, as in that she really couldn't care less about Creation aside from it (minorly) disturbing her.
I can't see the Black Flame or even Hecate as anything other than proving a result of their own individual strife for power more rather than them being the result of Erishigal's careful planning, because Chaos wouldn't plan anything.

Eventhough out of Hecate or the Flame becoming powerful you can discern Erishigal's existence. Even if she doesn't plan or care, Chaos is present within and around Creation very much, if only because she was and is still here, in everything, as the first thing ever!

Other than that I basically agree with your theories, with the governing stipulation that I feel the main goal of this "Lovecraftian" writing is, that the deeper questions or machinations to these strange deities is something that needs or lends to being puzzled from out of all that organical or imaginable storytelling potential!

Like the Questions to Life or Existence wouldn't and shouldn't be clear cut or explainable like a right-versus-wrong construct, since instead it would be down to aeons of organic different and indifferent intrigue and conspiring if not warfare among the weirdest alien powers. Proving alien to normal humans because specifically humans would due to their frailness be burdened with such plights as caring or feeling responsible.

A potential grimness or bleakness to Lovecraftian or in this case Mignolaean deities wouldn't really be bleakness at all, but organicalness more rather, like the depiction of such (actual) mythological entities as Gods like enraged three-year-old children. As if gods wouldn't know true care or reponsibility the way humans would, because for Gods anything that breaks within Creation can or could be replaced without a thought - for Gods but not for humans especially responsible ones.
Plus the alienness to any such would lend itself to storytelling really well, far better than a clear-cut construct where stuff would be just plain evil or good would. At least that's what I'd be to think.

[zerodemon]

I was fully with you of Ereshigal being above all human concerns until she manifested in Rise of the Black Flame. All previous indication had her as above such things, aloof and distant, but then she spoke to Raimund Dietzel, and is maybe speaking directly to Fenix. Now I’m not so sure she’s quite as beyond such petty concerns as the whole of existence.

My new question is what is her purpose? All living things carry a spark of her inside them. Is it possible that she seeks to sustain existence because she views all living things as her offspring?

[Kees_L]

My best answer is I'm not sure yet.

On the whole B.P.R.D. storyline I feel I'm confident until Guy Davis left, so that's way back.

Other than the supervague backdrop of Erishigal and Hecate and the Ogdru Jahad I'm totally stumped on Fenix or Eris, because obviously they're so in the now.

Panya I can't figure because after arriving and residing with the Bureau she appears to have remained mostly silent for so long that to me she seems still unfinished pretty much - which is my own fault as I just fail to click with her correctly.

Now that Hellboy in Hell appears done I'd like Mignola-made Mignola-drawn epilogues or stints on where the BPRD would be standing lately on all that kind of stuff, but

I guess we might be on the brink of it all coming together so that such concerns would be a little premature.

To get back to your new question: my best shot is that Eris would indeed be a reflection or personification of the vague and distant ancient Chaos entity, but she'd be something newly manifested all the same. As if in the form among the agents or with Fenix she'd be acting and coming to regard things not necessarily similar as in her state as Chaos residing in everything since before the beginning of time?

So... I think if all the chess pieces would be on the table: earth on the virge of destruction, Hellboy potentially back but also potentially free from his destiny, Fenix and Abe and Howards and the Baba Yaga and every other player as standing committed to some final showdown?

In such a situation (albeit in my imagination only) I'm feeling Eris would be experiencing such only really for a first time, because she would never have in her Chaos entity state of her own accord.

Hecate isn't gonna be among the players I'd feel, because she's been slain and ended by Hellboy long time ago. Rasputin would only be an acorn. But Varvara might be there, the Ogdru Jahad would only be able to show as the seven-counted-down-to-one-headed dragon thing - and my guess is that in this scenario they would prove to being their own entities much moreso than Eris's offspring or such.
For which Eris couldn't be feeling responsibility or care in a true sense, or could she? It would be a first if she could, it would be a first for her to even consider such, so any of it would still prove wide open - that's what I'd be to think.