Gas giant mythos: Good, Bad, or Neutral?
I decided a couple days ago that I wanted the planet my world orbit’s to be mythologically connected to the concept of the afterlife. I was thinking something along the lines of Hell – the bad place to go when you die. As opposed to the good place. Which… I dunno. Anyway, the thought of reversing up = good, down = bad caught my fancy.
I’ve been thinking about it some more, though, and now I’m not sure. Some basic, common and obvious visible events:
- Every “day”, the sun goes behind the planet for an extended period of time. How long depends on latitude and season.
- The planet goes through a complete phase cycle (think our moon) every “day”, with the fully lit phase at midnight and the fully dark phase at noon.
- Any moons inside the world’s orbit can be seen crossing in front of the planet, depending on size and magnification abilities.
- The world casts a clearly visible and circular shadow on the planet’s surface.
My first thought at the first point was “oh, it eats the sun, that is a Bad!” But then I remembered; high oxygen atmosphere. This means highly flammable. And the sun would undoubtedly be linked to heat/fire, as it has a variable and clear link to it via feeling sunlight as heat and suchlike.
This adds some more points:
- The sun is linked to fire.
- Fire is Bad.
- Eating the sun means anti-fire, which by rule of opposition would make it Good.
So one could say one goes to name-of-planet as your reward with all kinds of mythologies of its surface (probably influenced by appearances of creatures who happen to migrate over from the back continent and became immortalized in local then widespread legends), while punishment would be doomed to an eternity in the land of fire (probably also influenced by aforementioned appearances).
One could, in fact, even say that those who are sent to their eternal punishment after death are sent to the sun itself.
I like that idea.
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