I only truly got the "forbidden candy" joke around the Convocation crystals when I made these, and held them in my hands, and understood everything.
For some reason the latter is not in this photo, but I made all fourteen crystals plus the red Hephaistos crystal! You can collect these stars here, if you want.
Note: this poll contains the Ascians who have not made onscreen appearances (although I understand Emmerololth is mentioned in Eureka). The remaining Ascians can be found here.
Astraeus, last holder of the seat of Deudalaphon. The watcher of the heavens and mapper of stars. His concern lay in the movement of the universe and Etheirys' place in it.
He supported the Zodiark plan in as far as buying them time while the cause of the Final Days was pursued, but felt the attempt to wish back those lost via their self-made god too much, too vain. However, he was adamantly against the creation of Hydaelyn, feeling that it was throwing fuel on a fire that was already getting out of hand.
As such, when his sundered soul was found and raised into the Deudalaphon seat once again, he stood beside his fellow Ascians in their plan. After centuries of feeling the original goal long warped, and knowing the road they'd chosen only led to countless deaths that he'd lamented in the beginning, he abandoned his seat, sealed his soul so he could be seen by neither the Ascians or Hydaelyn, and stepped back into the Aetherial Sea.
people speculating if the "glyph" on the Arcadion teaser pic is Altima's or Deudalaphon's or a combination gave me vivid mental image of them quitting the Ascians and starting a fucked up nightclub together
two people getting out of a death cult and deciding to become business partners or something
i drew a few things today, the first one (which is actually the last one but its my most 'finished' sketch of the day) is a redraw from 5 years ago kind of? i just drew yelena from aot again and what i got from it is that i didnt really improve that much fundamentally? esp looking at some of my other art from the past but i think that's okay because:
i think that what i DID improve with is not caring about everything being Highly Detailed And Perfect and having breakdowns every other hour about not being able to draw or paint or whatever to the standard of master artists despite drawing for like 10 years and now whenever i draw i have the ability to just say 'alright it's not the best, but i see issues that i can learn from and i'll apply it next time' instead of working myself into a multi-year burn out.
so i think this is a huge win, especially because the redraw itself only took 28 minutes whereas if i had tried to draw that same pose back in 2019 (which wouldn't have happened because i refused to be extremely ambitious back then out of fear but) it would have taken me more like 28 hours and i would have learned nothing
anyway the next two are 'challenges' that i drew alongside watching others do similar challenges on a yt video where they all have cursed brushes or cant undo etc. and i only gave myself the amount of time as they had, which was about 15-20 minutes (in terms of the video length itself which i think was cut down from the amount of time they actually had)
the first one was no undo / erasing and trying to limit how much i reshaped it by painting over it and the second one was with a mouse and without a sketch 😭 they're not the best ofc but i thought they were a fun experiment to mess with
eorzea encyclopedia vol 3 featuring the constellation stones with more specific verbiage for all seats / roles ................................... show us the convocation members, square!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
As a heads up, I do generally plan on posting through msq, I'll be using #dawntrail and #dawntrail spoilers, and probably be putting things under readmores as well as I feel necessary.
I don't, actually, anticipate much in the way of blowout lore bombs to worry about, if anything it'll probably be a lot of 'ooh pretty' gposes and idle thoughts.