How they Compare: The Beldam

 

The Beldam's origins but what is known is that once it was a human witch before it found another world and changed overtime to shape that world to her designs. Now she is a spiderlike entity with buttons for eyes. She must eat human children to survive so she finds human children who are miserable and offers them a fun fantasy world of all their hearts' desires offering them to stay forever if they only let her sew the buttons in their eyes, posing as their loving "other mother."

Perhaps in her own way the Beldam does love the children...but only in so much as we may love a delicious meal. She showers them with affection and tasty food to fatten them up and make them delectable before she consumes them. She loves them as the book says "like a dragon loves it's hoard." As a prize, as a trophy, narcissistically and abusively. 

Through her dark magic the Beldam has an incredibly strong ability to shape reality. She did not create the other world, she found it empty, but she did fill it with things and maintain the existence of everything it. As she begins to die of hunger, everything in the dimension begins to fade to white. This dimension contains its own moon. To create a moon from nothing would inherently require an immense, small planetary level energy. However this is a lowball for the Beldam's power. The dimension also likely contains the distance to the Moon as it hangs in the sky. The distance from the Earth to the Moon is over 384 million meters, well large enough to fit a gas giant, and to be able to shape would be large planet level.

It is also thought that the well near the Pink Palace may be a portal to the Other World, a well said to be so deep that from its depths one can look up and see a sky full of stars in the middle of the day. For the light to take so long to reach down into the well's depths requires an absolutely supernatural depth only possible if it goes into another dimension. Assuming it takes the light 12 hours to reach the bottom would give the well a depth of around 13 trillion meters, 72 times the diameter of the supermassive black hole at the center of the galaxy, which would easily put the Other Mother at multi-stellar with her reality-warping. This is somewhat consistent as in the sky of the Other World at various points one can see lights, which may be stars or may be portals to the other world, it is unclear.

Beyond her reality-warping the Beldam also has illusory powers on a similar league to her reality-warping, able to disguise the reality of her horrid world of bugs and terrors as a fantasy world full of delights. She made a shadow of a button begin to cover the Moon, as an example. The reality of the Beldam's world is that it's a large spider-web literally meant to trap children.

While the Beldam generally disguises its form, its true form is a spider-like creature that can sense movement on her web via vibrations and seems a mild degree stronger and faster than might be expected of her stature already tall. Her body has universal animacy, with her cut off right hand being able to act independently to procure the key to her world. She can also make her body intangible, phasing her arms and Coraline to throw Coraline through a wall. 

The Beldam has many abilities. She sees through the eyes of anything that has button eyes, even in the other dimension, using dolls with button eyes as her spies. She also has some degree of precognition and clairvoyance, as she knew all about Coraline, creating a doll of her before she was even born, and knowing all about her real world troubles, using them to manipulate her. She is shown to manipulate objects in the real world from her Other World at numerous points, such as moving Coraline's doll, move one of the portals to her world to a wall in the Pink Palace where there was previously a brick wall, and most notably steal Coraline's parents from the other dimension and seal them in her snowglobe. I emphasize this point because it's an often miscited "weakness" of the Other Mother that her powers simply come from her world and she shouldn't be able to do anything outside it, but she regularly demonstrate the ability to affect the real world, even from her world. Neil Gaiman has also stated that should the Other Mother ever get out "that would be bad." Make no mistake, while the Beldam is locked in the other world, her powers aren't from the world she's in and should she be freed her powers would remain the same.

The Beldam creates everything in her world including weather effects, plants, animals, false people, and so forth. She uses a special sand to bring things to life. She can even manipulate the space within her world to do things such as teleportation or making a tent much bigger on the inside than on the outside. She has a form of soul manipulation where if she sews buttons in someone's eyes, their soul remains trapped so long as she possesses their eyes. She also possibly has a form of life manipulation that allows for instant death hax as she feeds off the lifeforce of children to survive, it being stated she "swallowed up their lives." This is consistent with the fact that when the eyes of the children were removed from their holding areas everything in that section of the Other World died. One thing she notably does NOT have is any mind manipulation, even of her created things. Most things in her world serve her, but out of fear or due to her using items like machines to control their bodies but Other Wybie and Other Father both still had the will to help Coraline and sacrificed themselves for her. 

The Beldam in addition to all these things is a fairly solid manipulator and has an immense stamina. While she feeds off the lifeforce of children to survive, in a timespan of over 150 years she has only needed to feed four times.

In terms of weaknesses, the Beldam has 3 notable ones. Firstly, her physical body is not much stronger than a human's in power or speed. Coraline kicking her and the Cat scratching at her actually caused some effect on her and Coraline while slower than her was not massively outpaced by her. Secondly, she has an insatiable love of games. The Beldam does not like conflict and would rather make a wager over a game she is confident she will win to get a child to give herself willingly. She will even give hints for the game, though she also cheats. Finally the Beldam must feed on the lives of children, as she starved in the story her powers all began to fade, the illusions gave way to horrid reality, though given her feats all take place near the point of her starvation it gives further credence to her power. Though "having to eat" is not much of a weakness, I suppose. It's also implied that the Beldam lacks the power of imagination, and can only make warped versions of things in the real world as opposed to new things.

Name: The Beldam, The Other Mother

Origin: Coraline

Powers and Abilities: Magic, Reality-Warping, Creation, Illusions, Precognition, Clairvoyance, Can sense vibrations in her web, Universal Animacy, BFR, Sealing, Phasing, Soul Manipulation, Potentially Life-Draining, Immortality

Weaknesses: Loves games and gambling, must feed off the lives of children, lacks a strong imagination

Destructive Capacity: Human Level Physically, at least Small Planet Level with reality-warping, potentially much higher

Range: Cosmic and Interdimensional

Speed: Human Level

Durability: Human Level

Stamina: Superhuman (can go decades without feeding)

Standard Equipment: Dolls, Buttons and Needles, the Souls of Children

Intelligence: Clever

So how would she do in other verses?

In Marvel Comics, the Beldam would have incredibly low physical stats, but her reality-warping would be on the range of high meta so low heralds, and the fact that she can seal people away from another dimension would be incredibly strong. 

The Beldam would be a massive problem for a while as there would be no easy way of finding the placement of her dimension in the infinite multiverse for the Heroes of the Earth. However as soon as she is found, inter-dimensional technology is common enough that they could launch an incursion into the other world, or use time travel technology to attack the Beldam back when she was a "mere" witch. 

Her powers are somewhat unusual for the verse, and cosmic scale illusions might prove a serious problem for most high meta, but by the herald tiers there usually is some level of cosmic-sensing or anti-illusion powers that would be able to scout her out.

In DC Comics, the Beldam would basically just be a Justice League Dark villain, she fits that type and level of power pretty clearly. At her normal level of power, she wouldn't be as big a threat as there are plenty of characters in DC that can mystically discern locations either with things like crystal balls or if need be the Helmet of Fate which lays bare all creation.

The real threat of the Beldam in DC Comics is if she can absorb the power of a soul. Souls in DC are powerful enough to create their own afterlives, entire universes and if the Beldam absorbs the power within a human soul she would become cosmically amped, at which point it would require one of the bigger name DC magical heroes to stop her. 

In Changeling: The Lost, the Beldam would be a very interesting foe for the Changelings and the Hunters, somewhat similar to a Title, the avatars of the true fae. The Beldam through her precognition and clairvoyance would quickly learn the Changelings weakness to cold iron which negates their magical abilities. The Changelings have their own magical abilities including outright warping reality based on their contracts but against any one Changeling the Beldam would have a massive advantage in terms of raw magical potency and scope (Changelings usually have contracts dealing with a single aspect of nature, and city level powers are considered potent), to the point that the Changeling would be forgiven for mistaking her as one of the True Fae's titles even ignoring that she acts rather similar to the True Fae. 

The Changeling's best chance against her is to defeat her the way they defeat the True Fae on the extremely rare instance, which is to challenge her to a game and outwit her. This should be easier to do against the Beldam given the difference in power although the Beldam will actually cheat during the game. The more physical Changelings such as Beasts or Ogres can also physically overwhelm her, though unless a Changeling tries to blitz her, that may not be very helpful. Against a Hunter, the Beldam would do fairly similarly. Cold Iron does nothing against her magic, and she can easily seal them or take their souls and there's nothing really do about it. The Hunters would actually probably do even worse than the Changelings since they're not used to outwitting massively stronger opponents. A group of Changelings and Hunters may be able to stop her, but I think the Beldam could pretty cleanly defeat a single Changeling or Hunter in most situations. 

Against the True Fae themselves....it's a bit odd. In a fair fight the True Fae would absolutely godstomp, being an infinitely powered magical reality-warping godlike entity. That said the True Fae are less then idiots, they are non-sapient, they are extensions of Arcadia playing out stories. It's possible that being so brainless, the Beldam could actually control a True Fae which would be......VERY bad. Otherwise and more realistically it is entirely plausible the two might play a game and the Beldam may outwit a True Fae. Ironically if she plays the game fair, she can probably outwit at least some of the True Fae, but if she tries to cheat she's done for. The True Fae despise breaking one's vow more than anything, and would instantly use infinite conceptual reality-warping on her if she did so, something she'd probably know to avoid via her clairvoyance and precognition.

In the American Gods-verse, another novel written by Neil Gaiman, the Beldam statwise would fit in very well. She might be a bit outclassed physically by most of the verse's magical characters, but not to the extent she couldn't physically fight them. The reality-warping of the gods in American Gods depends on interpretation but the relativistic moon feat would put them in the same range as the Other Mother's Earth-Moon distance feat, and the Zorya Sisters trapping Simgari in the Big Dipper constellation would be comparable to the multi-stellar interpretation. This means the Beldam would be similar statwise to the gods, putting her immediatly far above anyone but the Gods of the verse.

The American Gods-verse is filled with the Gods, Aristolean Concepts. The Beldam's reality-warping is actually probably strong enough to kill one of the Gods, though because she can't control people's minds, this would be difficult for her as she would have to destroy every believer in that God, either implicitly or explicitly. That said in a straight up fight with one of the Gods, the Beldam would probably not do so well. Not only do the Gods passively time-stop with their true presence, but overall the Gods have similar haxes as well as defensively protection against most of their abilities while the Beldam doesn't really have many defenses. 

Most likely the Beldam as a witch of ancient folklore would become an extremely powerful aid to one of the old gods, a more dark one like Baba Yaga perhaps, similar to how Shadow aids Odin. While Shadow does have some strong abilities he doesn't have the same level of defenses as the Gods do and I think without any prep or prior knowledge he probably wouldn't defeat the Beldam in a direct fight.

In the Good Omens-verse, a series written by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett, the Beldam would be rather interestingly placed. The series is full of angels and demons who are normal human level physically, but have reality-warping "miracles." If you take Crowley's statement of finishing a Nebula, this would be potentially on a very similar level to the Beldam in all stats, save for reaction speed. The Beldam vs an Angel or a Demon would be a really interesting fight. While the Beldam lacks a powerful imagination, she still has more than the average Good Omens Angel or Demon which they infamously lack. Physical damage to an Angel or Demon is irrelevant but the Beldam could stop one by soul manipulation of if truly need be, by sealing them which does work on Demons. Beyond that however, both have incredibly versatile reality-warping on a similar scale. While I think the Good Omens-verse Miracles are stronger, I think Beldam's trickiness with her illusions would allow her to maybe beat an Angel or a Demon in a fight. That said if she goes up against Aziraphale or especially Crowley who actually HAVE imaginations from extended familiary with humans, I think they would be able to outwit her.

The Beldam fighting Adam would also be really interesting, as Adam always looked for the fantasical as befitting his secret nature of the Anti-Christ, and he has an absolutely cosmically immense Aura engulfing a large section of the Earth that the Beldam would absolutely want to absorb. For the Other Mother, Adam would be an immensely dangerous but potentially VERY lucrative catch, as his Antichrist powers would be a constant threat to her being vastly stronger then Demons, but in a form of power she could manipulate and maybe absorb. I actually see her as likely to succeed with the possible exception of the fact that Adam had befriended the witch Anathema who benefited from her anscestor Agnes Nutter's precognition stronger by feats than the Beldam. Anathema via her knowledge of witchcraft may be able to guide Adam to defeating or avoiding the Beldam.

The Beldam, if she was freed, may even be able to fight most of the Horsemen of the Apocalypse. As the Beldam wants to create a dreamy idyllic fantasy world to ensnare victims such unpleasent things as War, Famine, and Pollution would be barred and with her level of reality-warping it would be possible to do that on Earth killing, at least temporarily, the Horsemen. However if she did so, it would doom her. Such would call the attention of the final Horsemen DEATH, a cosmic being far far more powerful then the others, and one of the strongest characters in the setting, far stronger than a witch even as strong as she. Not only is the Beldam a being staving off dying naturally who in this scenario would have messed with DEATH's buddies, but the Beldam hates cats. And if you know Gaiman's DEATH, he loves cats.