Agreed, yes. Every time I see the "Umbral Wind" weather in various zones, I always wonder what that actually means. The immediate thought is that it's a still air, but surely that's a lack of wind. In practice, "Umbral Wind" appears to just mean "adds a green filter".
Since Astral Wind would be random gusts and the like, maybe Umbral Wind is just a steady wind that doesn't die down? Like instead of random speeds, it's steady, like a fan.
I'd say Astral Wind would be hurricanes and tornados, while Umbral Wind would probably be like, smog, or straight up suffocation from a lack of oxygen. The smog angle would definitely match up with the 'just adds a green filter' comment above.
My guesses on the astral/umbral divide for each element...
Fire: As stated in the Encyclopedia Eorzea, wildfires vs. basically a heat wave.
Earth: Astral is definitely landslides and earthquakes. For umbral, the best thing that's coming to mind for me is, like... quicksand, bogs, and mud.
Wind: Tornadoes and hurricanes for astral, and umbral... smog fits pretty well, actually, I like that.
Water: Tidal waves, whirlpools and basically everything Leviathan chucked at us for astral. Umbral could be the 'rotted seas' described in Bravely Default (which people guess was something like it turning dangerously acidic and rotting anything in it), or possibly just extreme humidity.
Lightning: Astral is thunderstorms, obviously. Umbral is hard, since electricity is by nature very active; one of the weathers in the Churning Mists says 'umbral static', though, so maybe that's the one to go with. Just a REALLY static-y environmment.
Ice: Also very hard, since ice is by nature very still and passive. I guess astral would be blizzards and umbral would be... well, Ishgard's permament winter?
You guys are a little too fixated with umbral and astral stuff when it's not that relevant for most things. And Shadowbringer already proven Astral is stasis, and umbral is active. You don't have to switch terminologies, nothing has changed in the Source from that expansion. Astral is still light oriented coded with bright colors and umbral is still darkness oriented coded with dark or sinister colors. There's still dark crystal and light crystal enemies and such in roulettes, they're not suddenly each other's existence. The world knowledge had mostly operated on light vs darkness nonsense anyway. The most relevant thing about calamities we know of is that the 7th calamity is intense umbral energies of probably all six elements, and the The First's calamity is intense astral of all six elements
No it isn't. You have it backwards. That's the whole point of the lectures on elemental aspects we get in Shadowbringers: what the Source calls "umbral" energy is the force that drives the Flood of Light (extreme state of passivity) in the First, while "astral" is Darkness (activity).
Even before this concept flip in Shadowbringers, the Seventh Calamity has always been described as one involving "all elements charged astrally".
The order of the elemental aspect of the calamities is not a coincident.
It goes from Wind to Water clockwise according to the elemental wheel.
The seventh calamity (of the seventh reflection) was only astrally aligned, but I believe this is another way to say that it was aspected with darkness.
It is also possible to derive the astral and umbral alignment of the six first calamities by taking into consideration the circumstances of the calamities themselves.
The circumstamces for each calamity was artificially created by the Ascians, to anger a specific god of the Twelve forcing them to intervene and create a huge imbalance of elemental aspected aether corresponding to the Twelve god that intervened.
For example, the first calamity was of Wind, where there were huge tornadoes and storms. This was according to the moogles a war between the gods (which gods I wonder). This would be astrally aligned, and most likely Llymlaen was responsible for triggering this, as she is the Twelve god that is elementally aspected with astral wind.
The second calamity was of lightning. This calamity was due to mans endless ingenuity and need to build at the cost of nature. Their building of weapons caused a volcano to erupt covering the world in darkness.
To balance nature, Rhalgr intervened and caused a thunderstorm that lasted for a year.
So the second calamity was umbrally aligned with lightning.
The third calamity was of fire, where a bunch of people had learned magic and became corrupt with power, thought of themselves as gods and controlled people with religions. This spurred genocides and sacking of entire kingdoms. Such a violation of men was confronted by Azeyma, where she displayed the true power of a god by enlargening the sun.
The third calamity was astrally aligned with fire.
And this continues.
If we consider the number of reflections, and the seventh reflection (the one exactly opposite to the source) being rejoined with darkness (only astral). It is very likely that the source is the one to be umbrally aligned at the end. And that the First and the Thirteenth should actually not have been rejoined by light or darkness at all.
And luckily they weren't either.
I believe the remaining six reflections are supposed to be rejoined with the remaining six elements and then sealed with umbral aspect.
How the six remaining reflections could/will be rejoined remains to be seen. But we have options here.
The six first ones were rejoined by following the outer ring of the elemental wheel.
The last six could be rejoined three at a time, as it is described in the elemental wheel (the three conquests and the three submissions).
"But that would mean a lot of people would die!"
Luckily Y'shtola is "coincidentally" working on travel between reflections then![]()
Last edited by Tetsujin13; 03-22-2023 at 11:22 PM.
You've made this assertion before, both times with nothing but dramatically-stated baseless claims, and it was roundly rejected both here and on Reddit for not making any sense then either. This time it might actually be even less comprehensible.
Not exactly a hard thing to "believe" when the game devotes an entire scene to spelling out that astral alignment and Darkness are two terms for the same phenomenon.
And after you present this fact as your personal theory, you seem to spend the rest of your post presenting your personal theory as fact.
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