Hi guys! I am Inotia King a youtuber, redditor and gamer who likes theorizing about the story. I actually cobbled together a list of some of my more important theories with respect to the game Genshin Impact and Star Rail that I have been basing all of my newer theories on. I'll be putting more of those up on Hive along with new stuff but if you're impatient I also archived all my theories here. I hope some of you guys are game theorists too. Let's try to figure out these great games together!

Wait Amphoreus? This isn't the Star Rail subreddit. Are you off your meds again, me? And me replies - I'm not making a good case for myself am I? - actually no. Amphoreus may refer to the specific container that was opened by Pandora, the one in which the gods had sealed all curses from impacting the world. Out of curiosity Pandora opens the box which dooms the world but sealed along with the curses was also hope. The idea of humanity unwittingly releasing plague upon itself due to its inherent curiosity is a core theme of Genshin and the wider Hoyoverse as well. It was why Celestia needed to create the false sky, establish its Heavenly Principles and ban anything it deemed to be "forbidden knowledge" which included legitimate curses like the Abyss. Hope or we Genshin players might be more familiar with "Tumaini" is what will help humanity overcome the curses and take back control of their world.

From a meta side of it, I've been noticing that Amphoreus plays out beat for beat with Genshin's setting. It was so much so I even memed about it ++on my youtube channel.++ But after v3.2 I think there's another side of it. After the disastrous ++Fontaine Archon Quest++ I played with a conspiracy theory that miHoYo had replaced the original dev team for Genshin with a new one and it was due to this new team not knowing all the facts of the original team's established lore, coupled with their own lack of experience that led to Fontaine's many storyline and pacing issues. And then in the ++v5.3 livestream++ we more or less got confirmation of this theory. Now that Natlan has managed to anger many players I think it's safe to say more players are willing to keep an open mind about this so we can now look into what the original team's intentions were for the Genshin story.

But how can we do this if I'm saying they're no longer working on it? That's where Amphoreus comes in. Because of how many similiarities it shares with Genshin I have a new conspiracy theory: What if the members of the old dev team are still working at miHoYo just not on Genshin? The replacement didn't seem like an abrupt move on miHoYo's part either. I had been saying that even as early as Sumeru's Archon Quest there was some amount of executive meddling which prevented the team from telling the story they wanted. And they weren't amenable to the forced changes. ++I believed that they instead took on a passive-aggressive approach to try raising awareness about it.++ Over time this animosity led to the entire team being replaced by Natlan's time so it stands to reason that while some might have been let go, at least some others may have just moved onto other projects like Star Rail.

The set up for Amphoreus already mirrors Genshin. At the very start of the game the Traveler siblings descend upon Teyvat but what we see next is their attempt to flee it as they encounter local hostilities under the Heavenly Principles. In Amphoreus this plays out when the Trailblazer and Dan Heng use one of the cars to reach Amphoreus but are brought down by Aquila the Titan who is sealing everyone in under its sky, thus making it more or less a false sky and the two Nameless our stand-ins for the Descender twins.

Once the Trailblazer comes to there's a new addition following them around, a flying mascot creature with an annoying voice. (she gets better) This Paimon-like creature is also not known to Amphoreans and she becomes a guide for the Trailblazer. It is a part of their new Path, the Remembrance and while this doesn't have to parallel Genshin, Remembrance means memories and the Traveler has since been tasked by Zhongli, Yae and most recently Neuvillette to be the Witness of Teyvat and remember as much about it as they can across their journey thus protecting it from destruction. This will come into play again for both games. In fact just the fact that the Trailblazer is knocked out by some antagonistic force and wakes up now trapped in this one world parallels the Descenders also having traversed multiple worlds before being trapped by the principles.

As we continue with the mission we learn how Amphoreus is structured. There are nations that are run under a protective Titan, a god-class being. A sub-class of godlike beings has never been heard of in Star Rail's previous lore but these would be the Archons of Teyvat in Genshin. And notice that the term Titan is used interchangeably with god just like how in Genshin ++Archon and god are the same thing as well.++ On top of this some of these Titans are antagonistic but we learn later on that this is not out of any pure malice but rather a deeper underlying purpose. This mirrors the other members of the Seven who each have an idealized method of protecting their nations to varying degrees of success. Some even bring their nation to the brink of destruction.

The final feature I want to bring up is the obvious Black Tide which is described and behaves effectively no differently than the Abyss in Genshin. It consumes, it corrupts and it can even appear in masses of black just like the Dark Mud seen in the Chasm or the Miasmic Tumors seen in Inazuma, Sumeru and Natlan.

Side Note: We can even connect the Titankin's manufacture as well. The Titankin are golems that are infused with Ichor just like how Remus used the "Ichor" he created from Fontainians to insert the humans into immortal stone bodies. Given what we learn about the Titans in v3.2 this became much more related.

So what does Amphoreus tell us about the original dev team's ideas for Genshin that were never realized? I think first that it can help us distinguish between what has remained consistent with their intentions and what was changed by the new team. For example I have had a theory since Act IV of the Natlan Archon Quest that the Dragon Sovereigns might actually not be dragons but ++primal representations of the original systems of the planet.++ In this interpretation they wouldn't actually have the powers of each of the seven elements in the game. Xiuhcoatl would actually hold dominion over all seven of them in their original form of Phlogiston. Similarly Neuvillette the "Hydro" Dragon Sovereign actually rules over the Primordial Sea, the source of all life on the planet. These might be named Primal Energy and Primal Lifeforce respectively. For the Electro Dragon Sovereign I suggested something I named Primal Discord, a primal force that pushes life to evolve through adversity. That's how the Titan Nikador's Coreflame of Strife is described during the mission. Strife is a synonym for Discord so we may be able to suggest that the original dev team was always intending to make these Dragon Sovereigns into a higher layer of creation, possibly created by the moon sisters who are so far the only beings to predate them.

And what about those moon sisters? We've been slowly learning of this prehistoric period of Genshin. If my sovereign theory is correct that would make the planet's birth also the birth of the Geo Dragon Sovereign. However the sisters predate him. This is likely represented by the myth of Era Luminosa. In the beginning there was chaos which I have also theorized about for Genshin. The primordial god Chaos may be the localized name for the Sea of Quanta in Genshin while the Imaginary Tree would be Ananke the Goddess of Inevitable Fate. Janus seems to be the tree for Amphoreus though it may also be a conflation of it and Phanes the Primordial One. Phanes in Greek mythology was born from the primordial egg and that may be reflected by the Coreflame thus Janus should be the Amphoreus iteration of Phanes who was born of the Coreflame. After that we know Phanes created its Four Shining Shades but Amphoreus only gives us two, Talanton and Oronyx. However I've been theorizing that Paimon is one of the shades and she's now diminished. As of Paralogism we know another one Naberius is also diminished, its heart now merged with Rhinedottir. Therefore these two Titans may reflect the two that are still present. We already know them as well, Ronova and Istaroth. Istaroth is the easiest to see. She is the Goddess of Evernight Tokoyokoku and Ruler of Time just like Oronyx. Talanton governs law and order and created cause and effect. While it isn't quite the same we can suggest this relates to the rule of death that is enforced by Ronova.

Side Note: It's also funny to consider the Oronyx miracles function just like Zelda Skyward Sword's time stones. They create a limited area of the past for you to solve dungeon puzzles. At launch there was this belief that miHoYo had copied Breath of the Wild wholesale and so Genshin was merely a ripoff. The old dev team has made many jabs at this before so it wouldn't surprise me if these time stones were also part of it.

The birth of Georios coincides then with the Geo Dragon Sovereign as they both are born with their worlds, Amphoreus and the planet that Teyvat envelopes. After this we can skip ahead to where I think ++my old timeline++ comes into play. Back then I suggested that Phanes first descended but worked constructively with the sisters. He did reshape the world to be more accommodating to humanity but this wasn't challenged by the sovereigns or dragons. It was only after the arrival of the Second Who Came that Phanes feared losing control and thus committed to war against the Sovereigns and dragons who had sided with her. After defeating them it set up the false sky of Teyvat under the Heavenly Principles. This would be reflected by Aquila and this is where I'm curious about the story again. We seem to already have a Phanes in Janus, both beings born out of the primordial egg and being named the creators of the world. However Phanes should have also set up the principles but now that is represented by Aquila's actions. As described by Aglaea, when humanity sought to reach the heavens - building skyships instead of a tower - Aquila struck them down in divine punishment, even razing entire city-states which would be exactly how it worked in Teyvat with the Divine Nails destroying cities like Sal Vindagnyr and Ay Khanoum. We may find out in v3.3 that Aquila's reason for doing this is much like Phanes, to cut Amphoreus off from the meddling of the Aeons, specifically Nanook the Destruction and that Ravager Lygus warns Hertha about. On top of that we even seem to have a parallel to forbidden knowledge in the form it took in Sumeru as Divine Knowledge Capsules. Just like the mad scholars were affected by using them to gain knowledge from Rukkhadevata, the Grove scholar Phereseus ++went mad trying to glimpse Oronyx.++ So right now I think we can look at it in two ways. Either Aquila represents the Phanes after the Second Who Came who had a different goal than when it first arrived or the theories that Phanes isn't the same thing as Celestia might have been right all along.

I'll stop there because there's one last thing I think the old dev team was hoping to convey. Amphoreus isn't quite a planet. It takes on the outward appearance of an infinity symbol. As of v3.2 we also seem to be getting heavily hinted that the entire world cycles through the same periods leading to another Era Nova where the demigods remake the world again to try for a better outcome. There have been many theories that this is exactly how Teyvat functions as well, that it has been through many iterations. However I think we'll learn either in v3.3 or v3.4 (Phainon is set to release then so it could be there's more story to go) that this was the failsafe which was enacted by the Titan/humans once they reach the end. We already saw what they did the last cycle. Gnaeus set the stage for his soul to be split apart while Polyxia interfered with the new cycle by forcing her dead sister into it as the living end of Thanatos, herself then representing only the death half. In my theories this is called the Human Plan, named after the Human Realm of the Three Realms. The better solution which they haven't figured out yet will be to break the cycle and free Amphoreus (which according to other theories will actually happen in v3.7?) and that would be the Light Plan in Genshin. There are also two versions of this plan where one would be to challenge Phanes and replace it as the new principles but the better version would be for the Fourth Descender to course correct Phanes and enlighten humanity itself to become its own rulers. I have a feeling the roles will actually be reversed in Amphoreus where the Trailblazer is only a stand-in and set to challenge their principles, namely to defeat Aquila but that only leads to more problems so it'll be March 7th who will realize her true purpose and regain her memories. Just like Aether, she was encased in a dormant state until awoken without her memories and needing to travel and grow. We've already gotten an alternate Path for her which has so far only been something the Trailblazer experiences.

In This Human Age

By now it's become pretty clear that there are no "Titans" on Amphoreus or at least there hasn't been since the first iteration. Instead it's all about humanity and how it can maintain the world they live on.

This point was only ever hinted about in Genshin as we hadn't gotten far enough into the game's story for it to be made apparent. And this lead to the new dev team upending it in later regions. However in the early days when the game's basis on Gnosticism was very overt, the terminology lent itself to the idea that it would fall onto humanity to succeed the gods. For example, the term allogene refers to beings with a higher understanding of reality than normal humans. Some interpretations even separate them from humanity though we can see in Genshin that this isn't the case. Genshin's allogenes are more philosophically distant from the average human, most easily seen from their ability to wield the power of one of the seven elements. Amphoreus took the physical route. In some interpretations the allogene is a demigod and what are the Chrysos Heirs on Amphoreus? They are the humans attempting to gain a Coreflame and will become demigods once they do.

When it comes to specifics I've always held onto the theory that ++Ei the Electro Archon was a human who defeated the former Archon and ascended to godhood.++ We can see this most clearly from how heavily her lore revolves around her human name. Consider all the other Archons pre-Natlan. What does Venti mean to Barbatos, Zhongli to Morax, Nahida to Buer or Furina to Focalors? They are just the human name. Buer might be the one that cares most about hers from this list but in the end all the Archons know her as Buer, including Scara when he had his delusions of grandeur. However conversely, Baal and Beelzebul mean nothing to Ei and Makoto. Ei or shadow in Japanese and Makoto or truth are what define their relationship. Makoto was the "true" Electro Archon that Ei helped establish and she was only the kagemusha, the shadow that operated behind her. (The new dev team has since changed the Archon names into titles so Haborym can bafflingly be shared between scores of human Archons and Bune claims his Ars Goetia name was given to him by humans....)

So with that in consideration, how did Ei ascend? Each Archon possesses a Gnosis and it was teased as far back as the Mondstadt Archon Quest by Venti that Gnoses are just more advanced forms of Visions. Therefore if you defeat an Archon and take their Gnosis you could ascend and replace that Archon. Venti himself is also the one to show us this as - while he was a wind elemental and not a human - he too had to defeat the previous Anemo Archon to replace it.

Side Note: I might as well bring this up here too. There is an ongoing belief that the English localization for Decarabian being the Anemo Archon was a mistake because there's also an ongoing belief that Archon and god aren't the same thing. ++They are.++ miHoYo approved multiple languages calling Decarabian the Anemo Archon ++including Turkish and Vietnamese which came later on.++ None of it has been "corrected." We do know that miHoYo has corrected mistranslations in the past. Nahida was once thought to be male for example. (That had led to some theories as well lol) Anyway it was not a mistranslation. Moving on.

Now to what end are they doing this? Again in Genshin we never got to know. ++I've made theories++ based around ++Gnosticism++ but who knows if the current dev team will continue this original storyline. Therefore we look at Amphoreus again. The Flame-Chase Journey is supposedly the only means of saving the people of Amphoreus. The Chrysos Heirs must defeat their corresponding Titan, collect their Coreflame and return it to the Vortex of Genesis. We'd find out in v3.2 that this will only reset Amphoreus into a new cycle where the demigods become the new Titans and the journey will resume with new Chrysos Heirs.

If At First You Don't Succeed

-keep dying over and over again in awful and heartbreaking ways until you figure it out.

This setup isn't unique to either Amphoreus or Genshin. All the way back in Honkai Impact 3rd we were already told about at least two of these cycles, the Previous Era and the playable era or current era. However late into the game we'd learn that there were many previous eras and the cycle kept repeating in exactly the same way until finally one change was made in the Previous Era. Their own Flamechasers along with Dr. MEI replaced the fate-directing Cocoon of Finality with Prometheus, an artificial construct that assumed the identity of "Will of the Honkai" and guided humanity into just enough of a different direction in the current era that Kiana was able to deviate from becoming the Cocoon's tool, the Herrscher of the End who was the cause of every previous era's destruction. She instead became the Herrscher of Finality who could defy the Cocoon. (in Chinese it's still Herrscher of the End so it's really just about Kiana gaining more faith in herself and her friends)

I have no doubt that that's also the ending for Star Rail's Version 3 series. I think the common theory right now is that March 7th is the true inheritor of Oronyx's Coreflame and that Mem is her memories. I brought this up last time already but there's another interpretation to the one I made then. Once March 7th becomes the new demigod of time it will free the Trailblazer to attain another Path and the Trailblazer will assume the role in Amphoreus that the Traveler will in Genshin, the Emissary of the Imaginary Tree or the final Aeon in Gnosticism. That way they don't have to repeat any more cycles. Just like in Honkai they can finally be free to live how they choose. And of course this is when the Nameless can finally leave Amphoreus and head off to their next destination. And in Genshin this will play out as it was already stated since the start of the game: The Traveler reunites with their sibling and departs for new worlds.

Side Note: What about that previous interpretation? Well what is the God of Time in Genshin and what has she done for humanity? It could go either way. After all it wasn't like the Trailblazer took out Aquila right? In the last topic I even brought up that Janus and Aquila could both reflect Phanes. So Amphoreus may not have to be 1:1 with Genshin even though the devs still want to convey their original intentions for Genshin through it.

So that was part 2 of this theory. We now have a similar setting and intention. This world is then given a story about humanity caught in a never-ending cycle and must find a way out. Thanks to visitors from beyond the skies they succeed and become free.

Next we can get even closer to the ground.

The People are the True Masters of this World

_Ok ok only if they inherit your compassion and acceptance! _

First we explored how ++Amphoreus had a world built in a very similar way to Genshin's Teyvat.++ Then we looked at how ++the story of this world also reflects where Genshin's overarching story seemed to be going.++ Now let's get even closer to the ground. Let's relate the Archon Quests to the different Titan's Trials.

As that little joke I started this off with suggests, there was something I left out of the last topic. Yes allogenes are enlightened humans and yes humanity is meant to take over as rulers of their own world and their own destinies but it's not as simple as that. There's still room for improvement. It's a running theme not just in Amphoreus or Teyvat that humanity is just the worst. If it wasn't just the worst then there wouldn't be a need for a Cocoon of Finality or a Descender and its principles. Left unchecked humans end up destroying their worlds 100% of the time. The cocoon was actually so sure about this that the whole Herrscher of the End destruction of the world thing was its solution to the problem. Before humanity could get so bad that it leads itself towards fulfilling the Sea of Quanta's desire for oblivion, the cocoon destroys humanity first and forces the world to reset. That slows down the degradation so the universe can last just a little longer. And we already see what happens when that fails: New Eridu in Zenless. Zenless is by far the worst universe we have in the Hoyoverse to date. Humanity has dwindled to a single city full of decadence and in-fighting. Their world is decorated in polkadots of Hollows aka Fragmentum aka Gosoythoths aka Honkai Eruptions (the sea's version of them) and usually one or two of these things is more than enough to ruin your day in the other universes.

So what was the original Genshin dev's solution? No not another Cocoon. Phanes is bad news just like Aquila was bad news. But we actually saw what that solution was in Amphoreus. Someone needs to inspire them so that one day, the heroes will outnumber the cowards. Hyacine the descendent of Seliose's people came back after 1000 years of the Skyfolk's soul searching to show her that the modern generation of Amphoreus had earned their chance. In each of the Archon Quests we've played through so far, that's pretty much been the story as well. We arrive. The nation isn't putting its best foot forward. Something big happens. We leave it in a much better place.

Besides making the humans better what other details from Amphoreus can we relate back to Genshin to see where the original devs might have wanted to go with the story that they ultimately weren't afforded.

I relate Inazuma to Castrum Kremnos. You may be thinking that a warlike city-state should relate to the Nation of War and Mydei does have a red motif that matches the Pyro there but let me explain why Inazuma is a better fit. At the surface level if we take a look at how the Star Rail wiki summarizes the Kremnoans, they are a battle-oriented society where death before dishonor is a virtue and individualism isn't valued. If we were to summarize Japan's society especially during the Sengoku and Shogunate eras what might we say about it? Battle-oriented warrior class society with samurai in high standing where death before dishonor is a virtue and the nail that sticks out gets hammered thus individualism pales in comparison to conformity.

Now let's look at Nikador and Mydei. The image I headered this section with comes from v3.2 where we learned what the Nikador we fought really was. He's the human Gnaeus from a previous cycle of Amphoreus. But by the time we confront him as Nikador he's mostly forgotten who he was. If it wasn't for us helping Castorice find Thanatos we wouldn't have known that the "Gnaeus" Nikador we met was actually the true Nikador inside of that boss enemy. And he's not the only one. Around the same time we'd find out that "Cerces" the Titan is just Calypso who was one of the Grove's Seven Sages in that same previous cycle. Aglaea constantly brought up how her humanity was getting stripped away little by little since becoming a demigod. Memory loss. Loss of humanity. Where have we seen this in Genshin? How about Azhdaha and the concept of erosion? He slowly forgot everything and even became antagonistic to the very people he wanted to protect. Ei was worried about erosion as well. She hid herself in the Plane of Euthymia just to prevent it. However according to Yae, ++"Sealing yourself away from the rest of the world may only serve to accelerate the effects of erosion..."++ And this we can see from several different points. Ei didn't know that Archons were linked with the distribution of Visions while both Zhongli and Neuvillette did. She also barely knew what was going on in her region while Furina believes just because of the feeling he gave her that Zhongli probably knew what happened all the way in Fontaine. Venti also knew we'd be looking for the Hexenzirkel's lamp during the second Windblume event and of course Yae herself just happened to arrive in Sumeru right after the events of the Sumeru Archon Quest and just in time to foil a follow-up Fatui plot by one of Dottore's goons.

But that stuff was covered by the story. What wasn't? One of the biggest issues people had with the Inazuma Archon Quest was that the Act III title, Omnipresence Over Mortals and Ei's Statue of the Thousand Armed Hundred Eyed God never really came into play in the story. So let's go back to Amphoreus. In v3.0 Nikador was immortal. It would turn out you couldn't kill him because he'd split his soul into several different fragments. During the Scara portion of Act III that's how Scara described what Ei was planning to do. ++"Eternity stretches things out over a long time. But each moment within it becomes all the more fragile."++ With a title like Omnipresence Over Mortals, this line reads that Ei's plan to force static eternity onto Inazuma was to split herself into moments spread out over the whole region in order to directly control it. This was something the devs had even hinted about in the v2.0 livestream. They brought up how lightning happens in a flash so why was Ei's ideal eternity? So how did Ei plan to achieve her omnipresence? That was the original purpose of the statue just like the statues that housed the pieces of Nikador's soul. Just as Ei's statue had a thousand arms (and based on its real world lore inspiration a thousand eyes, not just a hundred) Ei would split herself into "a thousand" instances of herself. The real world goddess used her thousand arms to assist humanity and her thousand eyes to watch over its development. However Scara said she'd be more fragile this way right? It may be that the "hundred eyes" in the statue's name was going to reflect this because unlike the real world goddess, she'd have her thousand arms to control her region but only a hundred eyes leaving her mostly blind and vulnerable to the Fatui. Scara explained that most of what Ei had committed to in the last year was a product of the Fatui's manipulations again a sign that erosion was affecting her normal Archon senses.

Side Note: I also believed that the hundred eyes might have been part of whatever spell or ritual she needed to get that omnipresence. Another thing that was mostly glossed over in the Archon Quest we got was the fanfare when Ei was about to claim Thoma's Vision. It was the hundredth Vision. (Vision is God's Eye in the original Chinese.) The Traveler prevented it from being taken and made themselves a more pressing matter for her to deal with thus delaying the acquisition of that hundredth Vision. This was likely meant to be part of Act III where we'd realize what Scara was saying and had to once again prevent a hundredth Vision from being taken in order to prevent Ei from achieving omnipresence.

Now to solve this problem of an immortal god who had lost his mind, Amphoreus gave us King Mydei. He took on Nikador and then replaced him as Titan. However we know that's not the right answer. All replacing the Titan achieves is making a new Titan for the next cycle. Instead we need a human solution and originally we would have had it. But first let's get it wrong. Mydei is also an immortal and simply defeats Nikador to replace him. This fulfills his destiny where he's trapped endlessly battling and dying and reviving which we see him still doing even up to the end of v3.3. Mydei's origin story was that he was discarded by his parent. While Eurypon did far worse parenting than Ei, "abandoned and left for dead" is likely an accurate description for what Scara felt so we might be able to connect them that way. Additionally Scara is an artificial lifeform and therefore functionally immortal. I had jokingly named my Wanderer the Raiden Kuge (Kuge equates to noble and is technically higher in rank than the Shogun but in a Shogunate government it's expectedly powerless) and if the Fatui's scheme had succeeded, Ei would have lost her Gnosis to Signora and still be split into so many weakened instances that Scara might have been installed as a puppet leader under the organization. He would be "king" but the title wouldn't mean much with him under the thumb of someone else. Mydei was often accused of being subservient to Aglaea so Scara here would be subservient to the Tsaritsa. Finally when Mydei said he was dissolving the crown, Krateros argued that he was destroying Kremnos as well. Well Scara's self-appointed name was Kunikuzushi, nation destroyer. We might even be able to suggest that his previous destruction of the Gokaden was a prelude where he harmed Inazuma to the benefit of Snezhnaya's Fatui.

Now let's do better. Kamisato Ayato released at the same time as the Hues of the Violet Garden. In the event, Yae set up the Irodori Festival which finally reopened Inazuma to the outside world. Just like in real life Japan, this opening up would have followed the fall of the Shogunate and brought the nation into the modern age. Just like the Irodori Festival, Japan ran the Cool Japan Strategy which brought Japanese culture to the rest of the world. Ayato was the one Yae appointed to run the festival. During the event, Ayato had noticed a future threat to Inazuma (Scara) and set up a team to one day face it. Therefore in this human age where the people must find a way to overcome crises on their strength alone, who better to lead than Ayato? (of course if you've checked out ++my recent Albedo topic++, we didn't get that)

After Inazuma we had Sumeru. This one's much easier to see isn't it? The most prominent academic facility of the nation that is located inside of a giant tree? The Grove. However right off the bat we already have a notable change don't we? In Sumeru there are Six Darshans in the Academia. In the Grove of Epiphany though there are seven. Well actually there should have been a seventh Darshan. While Darshan is a Hindu term, the actual schools are named after the Amesha Spenta of Zoroastrianism. The Seven Amesha Spenta. The one that's missing from the Sumeru we got was Spenta Mainyu and probably the most important of the Amesha Spenta as it's essentially to Zoroastrianism what the Holy Ghost is to the Holy Trinity in Christianity.

This is where I think the original story heavily deviates from what we ended up getting. Back then I had come up with theories about how the academics there would behave given the information miHoYo was providing us. Unlike the story we got ++I thought the sages were part of a single Darshan++ and because of what Lisa said, they'd be silenced by the raving scholars of another Darshan. These opposing Darshans were the enlightened sages of Rtawahist (which comes from Ardwahist for Truth) and the Vahumana (which comes from Wahman for Intelligence) which would be represented in Amphoreus by the Venerationists and Nousporists of the Grove. Of course my prediction got it backwards. I thought the truth-seekers of Ardwahist would be the forward thinking ones while the Wahman were chomping at the bit for useless information because of their uninhibited erudition. Instead I think Amphoreus shows the Darshans would have gone the other way, with Rtawahist being far too traditional and therefore sitting in underutilized advisory councils and the Vahumana... well still pushing for uninhibited erudition. But as a good thing! Well a good and bad thing. From v3.1 we learned what the Nousporists were about. Yes they opposed tradition (which would just be to venerate the Titans and their established order, hence Venerationists) but they also did things like Anaxa plucking out his own eye for an equivalent exchange spell as depicted above. Equivalent exchange as all FMA fans know is a rule of alchemy and in Genshin that'd be Khemia and Khemia is a Khaenri'ahn art derived from the Abyss. Not good.

Under that kind of setting I think the story might have broken up into three parts. Instead of the sages working with the Fatui it might have been these destructive Vahumana scholars, an outlier. They'd be the easy part since it's easy to see that they are the enemy. However after that we still have the rivalry between the traditionalists and those seeking knowledge at all costs. In that case I think we'd end up with what Cerces chooses to do which is to die in order to pass her divine power to humanity. In other words, Rukkhadevata's death and the Akasha System were likely still part of the story but not as part of Dottore's Scara plan. Rukkhadevata had faith that humanity would find the right path.

And that path was not Nahida. In keeping with the theme of humanity needs to stand on its own feet we'd need to look at Anaxagoras. I think Nahida - as a proxy for Rukkhadevata - would take interest in the character Anaxa reflects. Through his maniacal schemes, he'd use Rukkhadevata's death to put an end to the debate between the traditional sages and the pugnacious scholars just like Anaxa resolved the debate between the Council of Elders and the Chrysos Heirs. (which led Caenis to another point in the story for this topic series) Of course, I mean Alhaitham. Unlike in the story we got, I think Alhaitham would have remained the new sage or rather that he'd be the leader of a new system in Sumeru. What that system might have been, would Alhaitham revive or establish the Spenta Mainyu Darshan to oversee such a system, if the Akasha would have remained active in this version of the story, what role Nahida would serve in this version, that's all up in the air. We didn't get that story and Amphoreus can only tell us so much while still being able to tell its part in Star Rail's lore.

Ok and off of Sumeru we reach Fontaine. Now Fontaine was a mess. I already did a ++full rewrite of that Archon Quest++ because the one we got was pretty much filler for 90% of the story and then way overblown drama that left several characters without any agency. Also, by that time most of the original dev team had likely been replaced so there's really no telling what that story would have been save for the information we'd gotten early on meaning a story based on the French Revolution using a technologically advanced steampunk theme. French Revolution and steampunk really go hand in hand since the revolution took place during the Industrial Revolution that steampunk romanticizes and its core story centers around corruption which was the major focus of the revolution.

What Amphoreus does explain to us though is the original story behind the Archon. One big issue with the Fontaine we got was that it left us so many unanswered questions about Focalors. Egeria supposedly predated her but if she died only 500 years ago (Sumeru's Vourukasha Oasis established that Egeria died during the Cataclysm) and then Furina took over Fontaine as the stand-in Archon for exactly 500 years (we're shown the number of days she was Archon and you can calculate that to 500 years if Teyvat's yearly cycle matches our own) then how long was "Focalors" in charge? She claimed to have been working on the prophecy until she was "growing barnacles" but at best the established lore seems to suggest she went into the Oratrice like a minute into her reign right after making Furina and getting her set up for her plan. My solution to this was that Focalors was never called Focalors at all in the whole quest. Instead she was always called "Focalors' Divinity" and what is an Archon's divinity if not the Gnosis? So "Focalors" was really just the remaining consciousness of Egeria that was housed in the Gnosis while the rest of her had become the Amrita. Furina is the rest, a depowered Archon. Then at the end of the quest Furina becomes the only Fontaine character capable of using both Pneuma and Ousia and this is also never explained. Theories suggested that she had stronger powers because it was Neuvillette's power that gave her her Vision. (her Vision is the only one to have four prongs holding the elemental gem in place) But that's not how Visions work. As both Zhongli and Neuvillette (and technically Yae) had explained, the only part that the Archon plays is providing the energy. The allogenes gain their powers based on their qualifications so Neuvillette only set aside some required amount of his power in order to keep that system going. My answer to Furina's unique ability was simple: she's both halves of Focalors and so she has both sets of powers. Egeria's benevolence is her healing side and Pneuma-based. Her base abilities are Ousia-based and deal damage while draining health.

Side Note: If you guys think I read too much into it because miHoYo only used Focalors' Divinity for her dialogue, keep in mind they also consistently called Capitano the "Captain" with the quotes. I used that detail to justify a theory that he probably housed multiple souls inside of his body hence not being just the Captain. That was then proven true in Act V. These subtle details are classic moves by miHoYo and in this case both would have come from the new dev team.

How can Amphoreus help us figure this out? Let's check out Castorice. While Star Rail already has a Seele and Veliona expy, I think Castorice and her twin sister Polyxia also work as well. They are two halves of a whole. Literally. Castorice is named after Castor and Polyxia was literally Pollux the dragon. These are the twins of the constellation Gemini and they are also the two Chrysos Heirs of Thanatos. On top of that, Seele/Veliona represent rebirth and death respectively and that's exactly what Castorice and her sister also represent as the hands of Thanatos. In the previous cycle Castorice sacrificed herself (death) so that her sister could become the new Titan and her first act as Titan was to resurrect her sister. (rebirth) That led to Polyxia becoming the new sister representing death (she dies) and Castorice using her power to revive the Trailblazer. (rebirth) And also, what weapon does Castorice use? A scythe. What about Star Rail's Seele? A scythe. And original HI3 Seele? A scythe. Anyway you can then link this back to Furina who was a new human life Focalors had wanted to live (rebirth) after she died as Egeria. (death, well you can also count Focalors' Divinity killing herself to resolve the prophecy which also freed Furina to live her life)

Side Note: To Furina's dismay I think the devs (not sure which team) wanted to be funny and so Arlecchino is the one wielding a scythe in Genshin. Arlecchino traumatized Furina and she's been terrified of the Harbinger ever since but they have very intertwined stories. Both (considering Archon Furina) loved the people under their care and sought to save them by any means necessary. In her boss fight, you more or less need Furina because you'll need her consistent healing to stave off the effects of Bond of Life. Back when we were still theorizing about Fontaine's Archon Quest, I had actually come up with a different boss fight against Arlecchino with a mechanic that ended up being exactly Furina's combat style, switching between damaging and healing. I also theorized that Arlecchino is the expy of Honkai's Herrscher of Sentience and around that time Senti just happened to meet with Veliona to berate her which ultimately led Seele to awaken as Herrscher of Rebirth.

I think the old dev team even wanted the parallels here to be really in our faces because where did Polyxia resurrect her sister? Styxia. What was the Titan that they worshiped? Phagousa the Ocean Titan, the one that controls the waters that Mr. Dragon Boy Dan Heng ends up using. All you have to ask is if the devs needed that connection to Phagousa at all. What did it add to the story? So we can at least consider that maybe it was a hint about Fontaine instead. And if the connection to Fontaine and Furina is still not strong enough let me just talk about Castorice's gameplay. She drains her party's health to power herself up. This allows her to summon Polyxia who drains her own health to deal damage. And then once Polyxia's health is fully depleted she heals the party. Her damage scales based around a mechanic of fluctuating HP. Furina's damage scales based around a mechanic of fluctuating HP.

Side Note 1: I'd say my rewrite back then even provided that same heartbreaking separation we saw between Castorice and Polyxia. Fate means to keep them apart. One must always die to allow the other to become the new Titan. In my rewrite there was no way to prevent the remains of Egeria in the Gnosis from being expended. Just like Castorice, Furina knew and had to accept the reality for the sake of everyone. Now seeing it play out in Amphoreus, I wonder how close I got to what the original devs had wanted. It's a shame we'll never get to see what their Fontaine would've been.

Side Note 2: In fact there was another detail from my version. What was the fate of the people of Styxia? They were killed by an evil dragon and then became the River of Souls. Put into Fontaine terms this is the story of Remuria but in my version it was Neuvillette's original form that convinced Remus to convert all his people into the Ichor which we know is actually dissolving the Oceanid humans into the Primordial Sea. Back in those days the Hydro Dragon was a follower of the Abyssal dragon Nibelung and therefore it wouldn't be wrong to classify him as an evil dragon.

And that's really all I can say at this point. I haven't noticed any Chrysos Heir that feels reminiscent of Natlan's story or Archon. I suppose Tribios and her many counterparts could match up to the long line of human Pyro Archons but not much else does. Also by the time of Natlan there was already no more input from the original devs. The biggest issue Natlan had was that it was the sole region we had zero information for. There were no NPCs to work off of and the most we got was something about the Mare Jivari being on the other side of the continent from Mondstadt and that Natlan has natural hot springs. I had even pointed out that we didn't even know the Archon's name because ++"Murata" was a mistranslation.++

Predicting the Original Intent?

Can you really make predictions on a story that's not going to happen anymore? Well let's go for it anyway! This is Part 4! So right now we have maybe what the original Genshin dev team was going for. However by as early as Sumeru their vision was already being undermined and by the time of Natlan they were no longer part of the project and the story had shifted into uncharted (and plot hole riddled) territory. That means we never got to the finish line with these guys. Still, they were the ones to come up with the Travail Trailer that had provided hints about the story all the way to the very end. Do we know - can we know - what these guys were planning for that?

One thing that seems to be a direct connection is Oronyx and Istaroth. Both are female higher gods with power over time. Oronyx is called the Veil of Evernight while Istaroth is called Tokoyo with Enkanomiya also calling itself Tokoyonokoku, the Land of Evernight. (Actual Translation: Nation of Tokoyo, the Okinawan Underworld) It is also looking more and more likely that the power of Oronyx will play an important role in the rest of the Amphoreus story, specifically that it likely relates to March 7th who is the true Chrysos Heir of Time.

Until we get more information from v3.4 all we know about Oronyx in the story is that she was killed by the Flame Reaver. The Flame Reaver is a representative of the Black Tide which might relate it to the Vinster King of the Abyss Order or at least one of the sinners. This may mean that because we don't know where Istaroth is in Genshin, she may also have been killed by the Abyss Order at some point. Since gods can't actually die in Genshin, this means she may be in a diminished state and will also need something like a March 7th successor later on in the Genshin story. My prediction had been that she and Paimon would turn out to be shades that turned on Phanes in favor of humanity and, in terms of Amphoreus both are aspects of March 7th. The Paimon of Amphoreus would be Mem and is likely March 7th's memories. Whatever role she has once she enters the story should reflect the roles of Paimon and Istaroth at some point when Istaroth would have been revealed. However for now Mem and Oronyx are both with the Trailblazer who might be acting as the proxy. In Genshin Paimon has been with the Traveler since the beginning so it could be that they will also serve that role. In that case could the sibling represent the successor?

Also to be revealed in v3.4 is Phainon. Up until this point I hadn't brought him up despite how prominent he is in the Amphoreus story. Why is that? So far I'd only tried relating Amphoreus to the parts of the game we already had. Now let's talk about what we might have gotten in Snezhnaya.

Phainon is sadly the Amphoreus version of Childe. They are both idealists who seem to only provide their role as a strong warrior that loves to fight. Therefore they are mostly a follower of someone else's plan. And at the end of the day the most important plan they follow are Aglaea's plan to collect all of the Coreflames and the Tsaritsa's plan to collect all of the Gnoses. This therefore also means Aglaea is the Tsaritsa. Aglaea was the Chrysos Heir of Mnestia whose Coreflame was Romance. This reflects the Tsaritsa who has been hinted many times to be the God of Love. Aglaea's story is one plagued by her loss of humanity and she fears she will no longer care about anyone one day. That is reflected by how the Tsaritsa has been known since the Travail Trailer as a "god with no love left for her people nor do they have love left for her." However both of them actually do still care very much for humanity. Aglaea chose to die to keep the plan going which eventually succeeded. She wanted to die a human despite how much humanity she'd already lost. Childe had said that the Tsaritsa is actually soft but she forced herself to harden her heart in order to achieve her goals in the service of humanity.

This is why it's upsetting that Phainon is who Childe was going to be. We see through the story how much Phainon has been through. That is likely what Childe would have been put through in Snezhnaya. A long time ago I used the character archetypes of the commedia dell'arte that the Harbingers are named after to figure out that Tartaglia is one version of the lovers or innamorati. They are the main characters of the commedia and considering the Tsaritsa is herself the God of Love, she may just be the other lover, the one who Tartaglia is absolutely loyal to. And that's going to be rough. We knew from as far back as his release that Pulcinella has Childe's family in his grasp. We also know that the other Harbingers aren't loyal to the Tsaritsa and are instead more concerned with their own goals. Given what Skirk had said about the Gnoses and how 6 out of 7 of them are now in the possession of the Tsaritsa (originally it was likely Mavuika wasn't meant to keep hers since originally it was likely Mavuika wasn't meant to be a human Archon thus reliant on her Gnosis to have any Archon powers at all) it isn't likely she'd make it out of her Archon Quest unscathed. In terms of Aglaea, for all her trouble of protecting Okhema and committing to the Flame-Chase Journey, the Council of Elders had her assassinated. Caenis had a shadowy group which pretty much looks like the Fatui of Amphoreus so it is possible that as the Snezhnaya Archon Quest wound down and it was looking more grim for the Tsaritsa's side, her Fatui would turn on her. Given Caenis is part of the group that runs Okhema it is likely the Caenis of Genshin would be Pulcinella, Snezhnaya's mayor.

After the dust settled and the smoke cleared, the Human Age side of the story would take place and Childe would have to step up and become the human leader that the broken Snezhnaya would have needed. This would have reflected Snezhnaya's story's basis on the Russian Revolution where Tsar Nicholai was deposed then murdered and Lenin eventually took over a shattered Russia and had to make do. We can already see the toll that took on Phainon, having to go from a soldier following orders into a charismatic leader while the rest of the world keeps falling apart around him. When it comes to Snezhnaya, I had a theory that we would actually get the region backwards, ending on the Archon Quest in v6.6-v6.7 instead of starting it at v6.0. If that was to be the case (it still seems like that's what they're doing since we're getting the "final expansion" Nod-Krai in v6.0) then Khaenri'ah would start not long after and there'd likely be an introduction into that next part of the story right at the end of the Snezhnaya Archon Quest. My prediction had been that the Traveler's sibling would be the one to kill the Tsaritsa and then with their original body restored (the Gnoses were made from the body of the Third Descender) they'd immediately open the gates to Khaenri'ah and unleash all of the Abyss forces that had been sealed down there since the Cataclysm. Teyvat would enter a dark era just like we see Amphoreus entering at the end of v3.3.

Side Note: On top of that, it seems Phainon's going to take the reality of his situation very hard. His playable character has gnarly light and dark powers. Who else has a light and dark fusion of power? Foul Legacy? Vision on one side, Delusion on the other? Foul Legacy was taught to him by the Abyss-empowered Skirk? Perhaps Childe would have gotten his own angelic battle mode as well, some advanced form of the Foul Legacy.

However eventually the Khaenri'ah Chapter will end. How devastating it will be is for the section after this though so lets get the good parts out of the way first. The rainbow bridge that Hyacine brings up sounds similar to how humanity had tried to build essentially the Tower of Babel in the past before it angered Phanes who destroyed it along with the unified era of humanity. However that still seems to be the only way to get to Celestia so that'll be the endgame just like we saw in v3.3. There have been many suggestions on some kind of connection from Teyvat up to Celestia. My theory about it was that during the final part of the Khaenri'ah Chapter, we'd get the section of Khaenri'ah that served as its innermost kingdom and that would turn out to be right underneath Celestia. While originally the "bridge" would have been used by the Abyss Order to attack Celestia, we'd defeat them so we'd use it instead and start the final arc of the game.

Side Note: Originally I thought Celestia would be hovering over the borders between Sumeru, Fontaine and Liyue and created from a missing piece of the ground in the Chasm thus the bridge would have come from the Chasm Bed. You know, the part of the Chasm where that black Eldritch Abomination from Perilous Trail is.

That push against Aquila serves as both the culmination and continuation of the Genshin story which would take it back into the wider lore of the Hoyoverse. It's the overarching theme I brought up before, that humans are weak and are prone to self-destruction. We would learn just like the group does while ascending the tower that humans are always short-sighted and more intent on quibbling about trivialities instead of working towards a better long-term future. This is why Honkai has the Cocoon of Finality and why Teyvat has Phanes. Looking back over the game up to that point, they aren't wrong. At the start of each Archon Quest the humans we encounter in each region are carefree and indulgent. Fontaine was very overt about this. There was a well-known prophecy about their eventual destruction and all the people seemed to care about was what fun trial they'd get to see next. Even by the climax of Act V they were more concerned with the trial to prove that Furina wasn't a real Archon than their own lives considering both Meropide and Poisson had had to deal with the flooding Primordial Sea by that point. It wouldn't be until the literal space whale threatening to devour them erupted out from a tear in space-time right in front of them that they seemed to care about the prophecy at all.

Side Note: In my version of Fontaine the humans weren't any better though at least they were worried about the prophecy. Instead of being carefree the French Revolution basis for Fontaine meant there was animosity between the classes which we get a tiny glimpse at with the Fontaine we did get. The lower class is literally living in the sewers of Fontaine. So rather than focusing on resolving the prophecy, the aristocrats were in denial of it while the lower class hoped the flood would actually only kill the rich and they'd be spared by seeking shelter in Meropide. (yes the sluice gate is still there in my version just to further emphasize how foolish the humans are) I bring this up because last time, I pondered if maybe this version might have gotten closer to what the original devs had wanted.

And that's the point. Left on their own, humanity is decadent. However the few can inspire. That's what the Chrysos Heirs represent in Amphoreus and what the allogenes represent in Teyvat. They just need a helping hand and that's where the Nameless and Traveler come in. By interacting with these modern era humans who had all done something extraordinary to gain Celestia's attention and thus a Vision (my theory about this is that humanity is still capable of their elemental powers but left unchecked, Celestia believes they'd abuse their powers and so a Vision locks them into a single element) it would be these humans just like the Chrysos Heirs that can prove humanity deserves a chance to forge their own path without the intervention of the Titans, gods or Descenders.

Side Note: Also I'm not sure if "Aglaea are you still protecting us" might be hinting that the Tsaritsa, even in failure would have used the Gnoses to give us some form of protection just like Aglaea's bracelet.

Topic originally created on May 11th, 2025.