Scorpius- Greek CreatureCreature · Monster

The Earth's Avenger

Orion was a son of Poseidon, a giant who strode through forests and waded across seas. He boasted he would kill every wild creature on earth, and Gaia heard him. The primordial earth goddess split the ground open and from the rift sent a scorpion vast enough to face a giant — armored in dark plates, its curved stinger dripping venom that could kill even a son of Poseidon. The beast found Orion and would not be turned. No arrow pierced its shell, no spear drove it back. When the stinger struck, the hunter who had overwhelmed every creature he had ever faced fell to one that had crawled from the dirt beneath his feet.

Other traditions give the scorpion a different master. Apollo sent it in one, fearing that Orion's closeness to Artemis would lead his sister to abandon her virginity. In another, Artemis herself dispatched the beast, angered that Orion had claimed to surpass her in the hunt. But all versions end the same way: a scorpion's sting, and Orion dead.

The Eternal Chase

Zeus set both the hunter and his killer among the stars, but placed them on opposite sides of the celestial sphere so the enmity would never end. As the constellation Scorpius rises in the east, Orion sets in the west; when Orion climbs into the winter sky, the scorpion sinks below the horizon. On a summer night, Scorpius blazes overhead and Orion is nowhere to be seen. The hunt has never ended.