The reading of the heavens. An astrologer observes the positions of the stars and the wandering lights, sets them against tables built up over generations, and casts from them a chart of the influences bearing on a person, a place, or an undertaking. It is the most learned of the divinatory arts and the least immediate: mathematics as much as mystery, and useless in a hurry.
What astrology reads is tendency over long spans — the cast of a life, the temper of a season, whether an enterprise is begun under influences that favour it. It will not say what waits around the next corner, and an astrologer asked for that answer will say so. The natal chart is its most characteristic work: the sign a character was born under is a standing birthsign they carry through their whole life, and reading such a sign — a stranger’s, or a newborn’s — is exactly what this art is for.
An astrologer needs a clear sky, their instruments, and their tables. For a natal chart they need the hour and place of the subject’s birth, which is precisely the thing most people cannot supply; working from an estimate is possible and is the usual cause of a confidently wrong horoscope.
- Medium — the night sky, observed and computed
- Requires — clear weather, instruments, tables, and for a natal chart the subject’s time and place of birth
- Time — a night’s observation and a day’s calculation
- Answers — influences over months and years; the shape of a life or a venture
Resolution and the reading of the result are as described in Divination. An astrologer working from an estimated birth-hour, or under broken cloud, is working at a penalty the gamemaster sets; one with a full night, good instruments, and an exact hour is not.