Ogdru Hem

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The Ogdru Hem are fictional supervillains in the Hellboy universe, the ancient Lovecraftian spawn of the series' ultimate antagonist, the Ogdru Jahad.

Contents

History

After awakening, the dragon Ogdru Jahad gave birth to the 369 Ogdru Hem, the first lifeforms on Earth. [1] The Ogdru Hem are essentially weaker versions of their parents (though they resemble invertebrates unlike their reptilian progenitor), but even so they wield unimaginable power. The Watcher spirits who had created the Ogdru Jahad were horrified at these creatures and waged war against them for ten thousand years, destroying two-thirds of the Hem's bodies and imprisoning the rest beneath the Earth. The spirits of the disembodied Ogdru Hem remained, waiting for an opportunity to return. When the goddess Hecate taught the First Race of Man the black magics, the Hyperboreans summoned forth the Ogdru spirits, who began to possess physical bodies in an attempt to restore themselves. Hyperborean shamans who maintained the true Right Hand path feared for the safety of the fledgling Second Race of Man, humanity, and taught a number of them to use Vril and defend themselves against the marauding Ogdru spirits. Thus, humanity was kept safe for the next couple thousand years for the most part, but worship in the Ogdru Hem never fully went away.

With the aid of Rasputin and other agents of the Ogdru Jahad, the Ogdru Hem have been attempting to make a resurgence. In a number of such cases, the mysterious alien visitor (known on Earth as Michael Mathers), stopped cult activity before a Hem spirit could be fully incarnated. Hellboy himself unknowingly encountered two Ogdru spirits over his many years of service, once in the Abbey of La Noe and the second as an ectoplasmic entity inadvertently summoned by the medium Mr. Tod, before the encounter with Sadu-Hem in the events of Seed of Destruction.

After Hellboy's departure from the B.P.R.D. in the wake of his encounter with the Conqueror Worm, other forces have begun to call for the emergence of more Ogdru Hem such as the frog monsters and the Black Flame. When Liz Sherman incinerated the Hollow Earth, it caused earthquakes that awakened many Ogdru spirits to attempt to retake their place in the world. When Von Krupt and Kroenen inadvertently brought back the Black Flame at Zinco headquarters, it reawakened the Ogdru Hem that were imprisoned in the Earth.

As the prophecies foretold, the Ogdru Hem did eventually have their time dominating over the ruined Earth. The Osiris Club used the power of the Right Hand of Doom to pull the crystal prison of the Ogdru Jahad out of deep space and slammed it into the Earth like an asteroid, wiping out the Ogdru Hem and their parents in one fell swoop.

Known Ogdru Hem

Sadu-Hem

Imprisoned on Earth so that the Ogdru Jahad would "always have a foothold in the world from which they were banished", [2] Physically, Sadu-Hem appeared as a gruesome fungal mass of tentacles and snapping claws, with a cluster of eyes and feelers serving as its head. Sadu-Hem was discovered by Rasputin in the Gorinium temple at the top of the Arctic Circle. Rasputin remained in a trance near the statue until he was awakened the arrival of Professor Trevor Bruttenholm and the Cavendish exploration party. The newly revived being devoured most of Bruttenholm's exploration party, turning the Cavendish brothers and Sven Olafssen into frog creatures. Bruttenholm was allowed, under heavy psychological compulsion, to return to America to enact Rasputin's scheme to bring Hellboy to Cavendish Hall, with Sadu-Hem installed in the caverns. Sadu-Hem was to act as the conduit between Rasputin and the Ogdru Jahad, but was destroyed after Abe Sapien speared Rasputin to death and Liz Sherman set the entire place on fire. [3]

Although Sadu-Hem was apparently destroyed, a small piece of the creature was discovered in the Cavendish Hall ruins over a decade later. Director Manning had the specimen of fungus preserved in a New Jersey lab, until Sadu-Hem grew strong enough to possess a human host and escape. Fleeing to Crab Point, Michigan, Sadu-Hem converted an entire town into vicious frog monsters before he was again immolated by Liz Sherman. [4]

At the end of the first Hellboy film, Rasputin releases from his body a giant monster simply referred to as the Behemoth, which Hellboy fights and destroys. The Behemoth's appearance is similar to Sadu-Hem.

Urgo-Hem

Urgo-Hem was freed from imprisonment through the blood of a 16th-century Spanish priest. The priest had spent time in Tenochtitlan before it burned, and had learned the history of the Ogdru Hem there. After being persecuted by the inquisition for his knowledge, the priest was eventually squirrelled away by a secret order dedicated to preserving treasures of the ancient world. When Hellboy stumbled across him, the priest's blood released Urgo-Hem. Apparently an aquatic beast, this child of the Ogdru Jahad resembled an eyeless serpent with sharp crustacean legs lining its pale underbelly. After a bloody conflict, Urgo Hem impaled itself on the mast of a nearby shipwreck, and Hellboy escaped. [5]

A creature similar in appearance to Urgo-Hem appears in "The Sword of Storms" animated film, where Liz immolates it, after a prolonged battle near the ocean.

Katha-Hem

Katha-Hem was the third of the Ogdru Hem to be set loose upon the world, and by far the most powerful. While Sadu-Hem was foretold to bring about the plague of frogs, the arrival of Katha-Hem was an indication that the world would begin to change.

Summoned out of the depths of the Earth by the occult rituals of the frog monsters and the Zinco Corporation's Mr. Pope, (also known as the Black Flame) Katha-Hem towered as large as a mountain and began marching across the Midwestern United States. Atop a tripod of spidery legs, Katha-Hem resembled a twisted, tentacled tree, its canopy an inferno of hellish blue fire, and numerous green-toothed maws lining its trunk. American artillery failed to make a dent in the mammoth creature, while any humans who ventured too close were turned into flaming-headed frog monsters by a strange green gas emitted from its body. Just as the President was about to resort to a nuclear strike, the BPRD's Liz Sherman managed to burn Katha-Hem to ashes, using an ancient artifact that mysteriously amplified her powers a thousand times. [6]

The Conqueror Worm

The Conqueror Worm from the graphic novel Hellboy: Conqueror Worm was one of the Ogdru spirits that floated adrift in space, facetiously referred to as 'space ghosts' by Hellboy.

The Nazis lured mystics, astrologers and other sensitive psychic minds to Hunte Castle in the 1930s, beheading them and fusing their heads to radio equipment to make contact with the Ogdru spirits, who told them to prepare a vessel. The Nazis used the body of Dr. Ernst Oeming, one of their top scientists, and launched him into space using a rocket despite a raid by American forces led by Lobster Johnson. Sixty-one years after the rocket was launched, Herman Von Klempt called for the vessel to return and it landed back at Hunte Castle. The Worm constructed a new body for itself using the available matter around it and emerged from the pod incarnated. The worm possessed abilities similar to the Ogdru Hem such as turning people into frog monsters (like Sadu-Hem and Katha Hem) with its otherworldly breath, though it devoured its own creations to feed its hunger and growth. Unlike the other Ogdru Hem, the Worm was highly averse to electricity, keeping Roger the Homunculus safe from being devoured. Ultimately, Roger willingly absorbed the Worm's spirit into itself, allowing the ghost of Lobster Johnson to stab a metal pole into his chest and shock the Worm out of him with a bolt of lightning.

Herman Von Klempt was told that once the Worm had destroyed all life on earth, it would call out to the rest of its brethren who would then use their power to restore the Ogdru Hem, who would then release the Ogdru Jahad from their prison to complete the destruction of the Earth. [7]

The Salton Sea Monster

This creature emerges from the Salton Sea during the worldwide upheaval seemingly caused by Liz Sherman. It has a reptilian/crustacean body with a long neck and arthropod-like head, from which emit scarlet-coloured vapours that cause humans who inhale them (such as the crew and passengers of a passing airliner) to mutate into grey, arthropod-like monsters.

When the Black Flame is returned to Earth, the Monster begins to walk off in an unspecified direction, leaving some eggs in its wake. One of these eggs hatches and goes into the Salton Sea, where it dies (as discovered by Abe Sapien during his visit to the Sea), and another is destroyed by Fenix to undermine a cult that has formed around it.

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References

  1. Hellboy: The Island #2 p. 11
  2. Hellboy: Seed of Destruction #3 p. 18
  3. Hellboy: Seed of Destruction
  4. B.P.R.D.: Plague of Frogs
  5. Hellboy: The Island
  6. B.P.R.D.: The Black Flame
  7. Mignola, Mike (2002). Hellboy: Conqueror Worm. Dark Horse Comics. ISBN   978-1-56971-699-1.