Astrologian Seals?

[Local_Custard]

Hewwo!
Has there ever been any lore on the card seals and what they represent?
I decided to try researching this because knowing more astrologian lore wouldn't hurt. However, I found sparse information in the wikis and the official website. The information I could find was primarily some of the playing mechanics and history (example: used to be used for divination and determined the strength of its buff).

[Anonymoose]

Can I get a little more context for what you mean by "seal"? It's admittedly been a minute since I played AST, so apologies if my jargon recognition is slipping, lol.

Are we talking about the "astrosigns" on the Arcana Gauge? (Lunar / Solar / Celestial)?

When I first saw them, I had actually just assumed they were meant to mirror the idea of solar, lunar, and rising signs in astrology calculations, but I should really check to make sure...

[Iscah]

Sun, moon and stars are the three "big" things to draw on for celestial-themed symbolism, unless you want to include a generic planet in there as well – though the game avoids addressing whether there are other planets in the local solar system, so they probably wouldn't go for that particular one.

[Cleretic]

Sun, moon and stars are the three "big" things to draw on for celestial-themed symbolism, unless you want to include a generic planet in there as well – though the game avoids addressing whether there are other planets in the local solar system, so they probably wouldn't go for that particular one.

Yeah, there's not really lore about the seals per se, because they were added to AST after Heavensward when almost all its lore was written. The intention is pretty clearly 'this is the stuff that's in the sky that astrologians would divine by', though.

If I'm pressed to come up with a reason, it's probably like Moose said, a parallel to the signs used in astrology calculations. Or maybe the fact that it's always consistent means it's something more akin to the elements of astrological signs; the Balance just is a solar card, just like Cancer is a water sign.

[Anonymoose]

As a caveat we should probably also mention for completeness' sake that the lore for job-related abilities has gotten much thinner and vaguer since they started adding and removing them from the game every time bars got bloated or imbalanced. The first time they had to re-write a bunch of quest and flavor dialogue was a wake-up call on that front.

[Local_Custard]

Can I get a little more context for what you mean by "seal"? It's admittedly been a minute since I played AST, so apologies if my jargon recognition is slipping, lol.

Are we talking about the "astrosigns" on the Arcana Gauge? (Lunar / Solar / Celestial)?

When I first saw them, I had actually just assumed they were meant to mirror the idea of solar, lunar, and rising signs in astrology calculations, but I should really check to make sure...

Yeah, I was talking about astrosigns! I only recently found out seals were in fact called astrosigns. Mostly just heard the player slang for it being called seals up to this point

Sun, moon and stars are the three "big" things to draw on for celestial-themed symbolism, unless you want to include a generic planet in there as well – though the game avoids addressing whether there are other planets in the local solar system, so they probably wouldn't go for that particular one.

Makes sense- I'm mainly trying to figure out the lore- the story behind astrosigns in the game. I'll likely be looking into astrology as a whole to better understand astrologian as I have something cooking that is far far more detailed than I initially anticipated. I think having a fourth astrosign would be interesting. Only issue is there are 6 cards and after having charting out basic information on them I realize that each astrosign was purposely placed onto specific cards. Though, that's not to say there is always potential of reworking this aspect as it is still a bit poorly defined in a lore sense.

Yeah, there's not really lore about the seals per se, because they were added to AST after Heavensward when almost all its lore was written. The intention is pretty clearly 'this is the stuff that's in the sky that astrologians would divine by', though.

If I'm pressed to come up with a reason, it's probably like Moose said, a parallel to the signs used in astrology calculations. Or maybe the fact that it's always consistent means it's something more akin to the elements of astrological signs; the Balance just is a solar card, just like Cancer is a water sign.

Balance is indeed the fire card- I sort of figured solar is the sun. Maybe solar is also fire so balance is double fire? /hj

As a caveat we should probably also mention for completeness' sake that the lore for job-related abilities has gotten much thinner and vaguer since they started adding and removing them from the game every time bars got bloated or imbalanced. The first time they had to re-write a bunch of quest and flavor dialogue was a wake-up call on that front.

yeah it's kind of sad. Things do change, though for better or worse depends.
One thing I noticed when researching ast and some of their abilities and spells is how bare bones it can feel. I get that they want to make tooltips easier to read- but I feel like having a small blurb would give abilities and spells a bit more grounding in their own kit. There is more I want to say but I'm sleepy rn

[Ancalagon_Blacktalon]

As a caveat we should probably also mention for completeness' sake that the lore for job-related abilities has gotten much thinner and vaguer since they started adding and removing them from the game every time bars got bloated or imbalanced. The first time they had to re-write a bunch of quest and flavor dialogue was a wake-up call on that front.

I cannot say I agree with this, unless they had indeed in the past gutted Paladin to be completely, 100% incomprehensible at some point. A class ostensibly about faith and loyalty has you gain resource when you *auto-attack*, not when you *block* (say, protecting others with your shield), and that is not even going into how the ARR and SB quests *don't* go very in-depth into paladin lore or how the HW quest is outright nonsense when it tries. Machinist's kit is aesthetically and lore-wise incoherent - its quests seem entirely divorced from the practical implications of your weaponskills unless it's something explicitly stated (Wildfire). Warrior's quests repeat the same story beats over and over again so you get very little insight into what any of it actually means. Gunbreaker was more about the personal drama of the characters involved than the class, except for "so yeah it comes from occupied garlean territories".

[Cleretic]

I cannot say I agree with this, unless they had indeed in the past gutted Paladin to be completely, 100% incomprehensible at some point. A class ostensibly about faith and loyalty has you gain resource when you *auto-attack*, not when you *block* (say, protecting others with your shield), and that is not even going into how the ARR and SB quests *don't* go very in-depth into paladin lore or how the HW quest is outright nonsense when it tries. Machinist's kit is aesthetically and lore-wise incoherent - its quests seem entirely divorced from the practical implications of your weaponskills unless it's something explicitly stated (Wildfire). Warrior's quests repeat the same story beats over and over again so you get very little insight into what any of it actually means. Gunbreaker was more about the personal drama of the characters involved than the class, except for "so yeah it comes from occupied garlean territories".

Your post is the first mention of the word 'Paladin' in this thread; we can safely assume that Anonymoose was not mentioning Paladin, and this is instead just you wanting to pick a fight about something you're mad about for some reason. Moose was probably thinking about the actual subject of the thread, Astrologian--a job so heavily retooled by revamps that the questline has several stretches trying to reference spells that don't even exist anymore. They do their best, but god damn, there just isn't a way to retool a spiel about time magic to effectively describe Redraw.

If anything, Machinist is something of a gallant to its goofus; it also got a pretty hefty revamp at the same time AST did, but MCH actually does manage to do a pretty decent job of converting what used to be the surroundings of largely gun-centric skills into being 'I've invented a new gadget, 007'. And while having flying turrets and the like is a little weird for the largely grounded story that early MCH is, the story always had those.

Balance is indeed the fire card- I sort of figured solar is the sun. Maybe solar is also fire so balance is double fire? /hj

Picking Balance and Cancer as my off-the-dome examples was probably a bad choice, because those actually do track completely as relating to the sun and water respectively, but both AST cards and the real-life zodiac's elemental affinities have some weirdos. One of the other water signs is Scorpio for some reason; meanwhile in FFXIV, The Spear is apparently a celestial card, despite it being partially for the god of the moon.

[Supersnow845]

The seals really don’t seem to have any meaning beyond generic “things in the sky”

The 8 cards each relate to an element or an alignment
-balance- fire
-spear- ice
-arrow- wind
-ewer- water
-spire- lightning
-bole- earth
-lady- light
-lord- darkness

And each have some form of representation of both of their members of the 12

The cards also when they swapped effects in ShB still retain their alignment effect as the umbral cards are the melee cards (balance/fire, arrow/wind and spear/ice) and the astral cards are the ranged cards

The seals meanwhile have zero connection to anything, the sun seal sits on the fire card but the moon symbol doesn’t sit on the ice card, the seals don’t necessarily sit next to each other in the months either (as spear and spire or ice and lightning share a seal) when the lighting months are in early summer while the ice months are in early winter

The seals are a gameplay mechanic that has no actual relevance to AST’s lore

[Local_Custard]

Picking Balance and Cancer as my off-the-dome examples was probably a bad choice, because those actually do track completely as relating to the sun and water respectively, but both AST cards and the real-life zodiac's elemental affinities have some weirdos. One of the other water signs is Scorpio for some reason; meanwhile in FFXIV, The Spear is apparently a celestial card, despite it being partially for the god of the moon.

Ah, yeah that is odd- I did indeed write something about that on a chart I made but didn't really think about it too much. I think I'll take another look at the chart after reading up on the lore for 12. Maybe I should do a particular set of alliance raids when I finally get to log back on- I do know there is lore there too.

The seals really don’t seem to have any meaning beyond generic “things in the sky”

The 8 cards each relate to an element or an alignment
-balance- fire
-spear- ice
-arrow- wind
-ewer- water
-spire- lightning
-bole- earth
-lady- light
-lord- darkness

And each have some form of representation of both of their members of the 12

The cards also when they swapped effects in ShB still retain their alignment effect as the umbral cards are the melee cards (balance/fire, arrow/wind and spear/ice) and the astral cards are the ranged cards

The seals meanwhile have zero connection to anything, the sun seal sits on the fire card but the moon symbol doesn’t sit on the ice card, the seals don’t necessarily sit next to each other in the months either (as spear and spire or ice and lightning share a seal) when the lighting months are in early summer while the ice months are in early winter

The seals are a gameplay mechanic that has no actual relevance to AST’s lore

Oh right- I should definitely consider which months the cards are associated with and write that down on the chart I made. The more I learn the more I realize ast seals probably weren't that carefully made on the lore side of things