Some amazing insights here. Fallen stars, star mountains, perhaps even the stone
cairns that mark the brow of a hill?
If there is relationship to the Far God cult in ED, the Thargoids are said to be heralds of this Far God, not the god-entity itself.
Consider that an angered Zeus threw lightning and stones from the sky as falling stars, and we are in the midst of a "battle of titans", could this be a parallel to the Titanomachy?
Speaking of Titans:
I recall the titan Atlas was punished to hold up the world for eternity. The "world" is often misrepresented as Earth on his shoulders, and he is more accurately holding up the celestial spheres of the cosmos - aka this pendent world.
Zeus condemned Atlas to stand at the western edge of "earth" and hold up the sky - sounds a lot like God casting out Satan from "that side of heaven".
Atlas is supposedly a doublet of Coeus - the celestial axis (omphalos??).
There is also the tale of Atlas who, in one version, was a king who had an orchard of golden apples (like Prester John? King? Gold? and also Avalon?).
Atlas was turned into a mountain by Perseus with his head as the peak (brow?).
Heracles was challenged to fetch the golden apples in Hera's garden tended by the Atlantides (Hesperides) and
guarded by the dragon Ladon.
Heracles (the
hero) slays Ladon (born from Echidna - a
Sin-like human serpent hybrid) guarding a paradise
garden (in which Altas was "
imprisoned" to hold up the world). This garden was in the far west and so, being the land of Atlas, you could say it was akin to
Atlantis (sunken as punishment by the gods).
Jason also heard the lament of Aegle (aka dazzling light) - one of the Hesperides. So you could say this daughter was a "siren" of the "deepest void" (aka Atlantis sunken in the Sea of Atlas).
There is also the opposing Church of the Eternal Void (a reference to PL's Chaos?) who worship the Guardians as saviours from the "demon" thargoids.
If humans are genetic descendants of Guardians, and if the AI Construct "angels" might still be out there, then could the test of TDW be symbolic of an induction into a pantheon of gods? Maybe the Dark Wheel possesses knowledge of the Construct, and this test is how they judge worthiness to access Raxxla?
If the Satan figure is represented as this fallen star imprisoned in Hell, and Hell's Gate is guarded by a form of
liminal deity /
being much like Sin was depicted in PL like Scylla (part woman and serpent) then this idea of a "threshold" gateway might also point us to a form of crossroads somewhere in the game. A point to access the Otherworld?
As the liminal being wiki mentions, the hybrid nature of liminal beings like the griffin / chiron / centaurs etc make them both a source of wisdom and mentorship, and also dangerous and uncanny.
Do we need to find a crossing of paths? to a place atop a sunken (far below?) mountain? the head of Atlas? with a jewelled cairn marking its peak? Is this where we encounter TDW's test?
inara.cz
Orion, a hunter god who was elevated to the heavens. The Christ-like Batty sacrificing himself for the sins of humanity. The legend of Tannhäuser the knight who fell from grace after finding the home of Venus.
The relics themselves are said to not quite align with Thargoid materials, so either the last surviving Guardians or some other race.
dictionary.cambridge.org
im at work so will have to wait till i get home… Well here wikipedia has it - but ya “fell” in english and scottish does have an old association with land forms - and it apparently does go back to the old scandinavian norse mountains - high places … but ya i agree modern usage is more likely associated with past tense of fall.
