In-game rationales for armor designs?

A bit of a silly question, but I was just wondering if there was ever any explanation for who or what some of the new suits of armor introduced with the various expansions were supposed to represent. Celestial armor, for example–is it supposed to be armor worn by gods? What is the significance of the Ascension pieces? What do those funky symbols mean?

And there have been some pretty funky suits of armor introduced over the last little while. What sort of person or group would use the Alpha armor, or the Omega? Does the spider motif of the Sinister armor mean it is supposed to have some specific connection with Arachnos?

I realize that there probably aren't any answers to those questions. It's just a little frustrating when trying to come up with in-character rationales for these suits of armor not to know what they are supposed to mean.

They're not supposed to mean anything - or, more accurately, they are supposed to mean whatever you think fits best for your character.

Your character is an inventor who designed and built their own suit of armor? Sure. Stolen Crey/Malta/Longbow prototype? Go for it. Uniform of your planet's peacekeeping force? Works. That's how your skeleton mutated after you fell into the radioactive goo? Why not.

It's probably best that we don't have "official" explanations, because some people would insist any other use of the costumes was Doing It Wrong, and we'd have yet another topic to add to the usual causes for forum flame wars. (Seriously, just look at "Kheldians should not be RP'd as anything beside Kheldians" and "we need to restrict Natural origin to only weapon sets and Willpower" threads.)

Exactly.

I see so much creativity applied to costume creation that I never think about or question the in-game story intent behind any particular piece or set of pieces. A lot of the time I don't even recognize which pieces are being used because the player has so artfully crafted an overall, integrated look that the sum is far, far greater than the parts.

Some are obvious (Like medieval, the jackets), some are based off in-game groups (IDF Defense, the "PPD"-esque one), and others are just a name that might of been given as a concept or one that the artist thinks ties it together after they've made it.

Celestial Armor has a sort of Indian or Eastern Gods look to me -- as opposed to Norse or Greek Gods. Sort of what Shiva and Kali might wear into a battle as drawn by Marvel/DC I think.

Ascension Armor is a more general, "You're a powerful incarnate now, you gotta wear cool armor" thing. All spiky and flashy and intricate, but I couldn't say what the inspiration for it was.

Sinister Armor came with the CoV expansion, so it was clearly designed not just for evil-evil bad-bad villain types, but ones who did business in the Rogue Isles. So I think the spider theme is pretty deliberate. Besides, spiders = bad, we all know that, right? Dunno what Spiderman's thinking.

Alpha and Omega Armors -- I got no clue. To me they seem like, "We got to do two new armor sets, but we can't use any of our really cool ideas because these ones are free. Come up with something today, go!"

The Sinister pieces have a spider theme because at the time that set was released Villains were pretty inextricably tied to Arachnos (i.e. you were an Arachnos flunky whether you liked it or not)

The Justice pieces are a much more "generally heroic" set because Heroes weren't tied so closely to a particular group.

Alpha and Omega are sort of a more generalized good guy/bad guy set that don't seem to be particularly tied to anything.

Most of the armors, unless they are specifically something like PPD or IDF, are named whatever the artist thinks would make a cool name for them. And that is pretty much it for them. I think they are deliberately trying not to shoehorn characters using those costumes into belonging to any certain group.