Does the FFXIV Solar System Have Planets?

[Anonymoose]

Tangentially related by virtue of where the thread has been steered so far...

Though [Hydaelyn] is the name of the entire planet, the term is very rarely used by its inhabitants, for to understand the concept of a planet, one must first know of other worlds, and most on Hydaelyn do not.

Back when humanity was as ignorant of the cosmos as most on Hydaelyn are, lights in the sky were mysterious fixed objects ... aside from the seven that weren't. It cemented the number seven in history as a divine and useful number and became enmeshed with the gods themselves.

See the seven day week: Sun Day, Moon Day, Tyr's Day (Mars), Woden's Day (Mercury), Thor's Day (Jupiter), Frea's Day (Venus), Saturn's day.

The Seven Luminaries were known as the asteres planetai. "Planet" is literally short for "wandering star".

[uvuvwevwevweonyetenyevweugwemu]

See the seven day week: Sun Day, Moon Day, Tyr's Day (Mars), Woden's Day (Mercury), Thor's Day (Jupiter), Frea's Day (Venus), Saturn's day.

5 major planets (or atleast visible clearly). If we want to take that reference, we could take example from eorzean calendar 8 days for 6 major planets other than Hydaelyn. Or is it based on 6 elements + 2 aspects?

[RomildaRayne]

5 major planets (or atleast visible clearly). If we want to take that reference, we could take example from eorzean calendar 8 days for 6 major planets other than Hydaelyn. Or is it based on 6 elements + 2 aspects?

Given how neatly everything usually fits, it's probably both, but we only know of the elements and polarities to be definitively true.

[Anonymoose]

If we want to take that reference, we could take example from eorzean calendar 8 days for 6 major planets other than Hydaelyn. Or is it based on 6 elements + 2 aspects?

6 elements + 2 polarities. When aether is acting within the Elemental energy spectrum, there are three dimensions that determine its behavior: aspect (what "direction" from neutral the imbalance is; i.e. ice, water, a mix) , elemental charge (how strong of a concentration that energy is), and polar charge (a tilt towards an active or passive manifestation of that element). Most of the time you only hear about the energy from the elemental aspect, but a deep polar charge manifests unique properties, as well, and thus they get the same consideration. I consider astral and umbral the "up and down" relative to the "12 / 2 / 4 / 6 / 8 / 10 o'clock" positions of the elements and how "far from center" that line goes. Aetherology is weird.

The night sky has something far more obvious than wandering stars, however - it has six constellations of (what are believed to be) stars that line up perfectly with the elements. These are tied into Eorzean myth as the six elemental heavens into which the Twelve retreated (causing the six elemental hells to come into being). A seventh "polar" heaven and hell star is said to exist in the skies, as well, but these are less well-defined ... perhaps because Final Fantasy XIV folklore states that it was only supposed to be the six until it was brought to the developers' attention that shouting "SIX HELLS!" sounds dumb, but "SEVEN HELLS!" is just right.

Still 6+2 with constellations seems to be the origin of the 8 day week. The best suggestions I know of for believing that other planets exist are: the "Dragon Star" which might be where Midgardsormr came from, the fact Allag built interstellar starships at all in the first place, and Midgardsormr's comments on Omega's origin, which are ambiguous as to whether Omega came from another planet in our dimension, our planet in another dimension, or another planet in another dimension, lol. Please look forward to 4.4...?

Just a minor clarification: It wasn't so much that stars were "fixed" as they were travelling on a "fixed" route across the night sky, from east to west.

"Fixed" to the great crystal sphere was the implied reference. Apologies

[TinyRedLeaf]

Back when humanity was as ignorant of the cosmos as most on Hydaelyn are, lights in the sky were mysterious fixed objects ... aside from the seven that weren't.

Just a minor clarification: It wasn't so much that stars were "fixed" as they were travelling on a "fixed" route across the night sky, from east to west. The five inner planets became known as the "wanderers" because, unlike the stars, their paths across the sky weren't fixed, but were varied instead.

Moreover, I suspect that, for the longest time, humanity did in fact believe that the "wanderers" were just special stars (hence the propensity to name them after gods and goddesses). Venus, for example, was known as the "Evening (or Morning, as the case may be) Star".

I'm not entirely sure when humanity first realised that the planets weren't special tiny lights in the firmament, but were actually other spherical objects like the Moon. I would guess it was most likely after the invention of telescopes and, even more likely, only after Galileo broke the Copernican model, by establishing that the Earth orbited the Sun, and not the other way round.

Lest we get trapped in a eurocentric, Anglo-Saxon worldview, bear in mind that, even today, there are cultures that explicitly name the planets as "stars". Mars, for example, is known in Chinese as 火星 (huo3 xing1), or literally, the "Fire Star". In fact, the Chinese named the planets after elements, hence: Mercury 水星 (sui3 xing1) "Water Star"; Venus 金星 (jin1 xing1) "(Gold) Metal Star"; Jupiter 木星 (mu4xing1) "Wood Star"; and Saturn 土星 (tu3 xing1) "Earth Star".

And guess what? Given the fact that the Japanese language borrowed heavily from Chinese, the people of Japan know the planets by the same names as the Chinese.

Hence: Mercury is すいせい (sui-sei, or water star); Venus is きんせい (kin-sei, metal star); Mars is かせい (ka-sei, or fire star); Jupiter is もくせい (moku-sei, earth star); and Saturn is どせい (dou-sei, or earth star).

In short, the recognition of planets as spherical objects in orbit around a burning star is fairly recent phenomenon in human history. So, it doesn't break immersion by any measure for a faux mediaeval society like Eorzea's to refer to planets as "stars".

To be sure, Eorzeans may not even understand planets the same way we do, as we have no real idea of how the firmaments actually work, what with Zodiark being the moon, and the Hydaelyn being a giant crystal (both of which is not even likely to be common knowledge among smallfolk, who, as far as I can tell, still associate the moon with Menphina, and remember Dalamud as Menphina's Hound).