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!
With Petrichor and the Remuria Aftermath story out I thought it'd be fun to review some details from the famed Narzissenkreuz quest.
Let's start off with that image above. As we all know this game is heavily inspired by Gnosticism and one of the central stories that miHoYo used was the Demiurge. We've all heard it before. Most of us probably smash the skip button as soon as we can. In the Gnostic Chorus, Venti tells us about a kingdom of light and then a kingdom of darkness. This parallels the Ogdoad, the wider world of divinity and the physical world created by something called the Demiurge. In Gnosticism the Demiurge is God or rather more inflammatory, the Jewish God YHVH. Now I've already brought up how that works so you can just refer to those old theories by clicking on the links in my intro but the image shows another detail from this story. The Demiurge itself is an Aeon though a failed version. As an Aeon it possesses a piece of true divinity and just like Caterpillar is postulating, the Demiurge placed fragments of this divinity into all humans. It's this spark that allows humans to have the potential to attain gnosis. You just have to nurture it and find the truth of the world.
There's a small detail about all the information we've gotten so far when it comes to stories like this. They treat these notions positively. While the Demiurge wasn't trying to be malicious when it bestowed pieces of divinity into humanity, the act of placing divine elements into physical forms actually works against gnosis. In other words it's more like it trapped humanity's divine souls in physical cages. This came up again in the new Remuria stuff which I'll discuss next time.
Anyway the positive perspective about this is where I can bring up my Eighth Element theory again. So far none of the characters in game have figured out what's really going on. Characters like Dainsleif, Albedo, Rhinedottir, the Tsaritsa, her Fatui are all missing crucial details that will come back on them once they take their ideas too far. Well
Here's Narzissenkreuz's. We already know how his operation came back to bite him. He turned himself into sludge and then became this black corrupted Hydro Tulpa thing only thanks to Jakob's haphazard cobbling which just delayed the inevitable. Here, his statement claims that the Traveler should turn themselves into a being of light to then be able to guide humanity into the "eternal kingdom of light after death."
Sounds great on paper right? In fact, we also had earlier information claiming that the Khvarena was also some kind of light. But it's not quite "light" either. Light already exists. We had the Light Sigils down in Enkanomiya. Light is just the divine element that encompasses all elements including the seven currently present on Teyvat. It's the power the Descenders naturally have, the white accents our Traveler and their sibling used to have before being depowered by the Sustainer. The actual "light" the Traveler needs to become is Imaginary, the power from the Imaginary Tree itself aka enlightenment or gnosis. Taken from a Gnostic perspective, the Demiurge is light. Attaining gnosis allows humanity to surpass it and return to the Ogdoad.
So what Narzissenkreuz said is entirely true. He's just missing that last detail. If we just exchange light for something like truth or Logos then nothing else needs to change. The Traveler will become a being with the powers of the Imaginary Tree itself which will bring hope in the form of gnosis to those living in the darkened world, the Kingdom of Darkness and once they've achieved that gnosis they will be able to enter the eternal kingdom, the Imaginary Tree upon freeing themselves of their physical bodies or "death." This is the endgame for Genshin.
Now all of this goes right back to the importance placed on the Traveler right? The Witness.
Yeah, it gets repeated over and over at this point. Zhongli has told us to remember. Yae has told us to write our journey down. Neuvillette has told us to also be his witness. We're the only record left of Rukkhadevata's existence. And since Sumeru we've been owning the title ourselves.
This is btw why I believe whenever miHoYo intends to give us Furina's Second Character Quest, that it'll finally reveal the truth behind what really happened at the climax of the Archon Quest. Remember we followed Neuvillette and listened in on his conversation with "Focalors' Divinity." The Traveler didn't see this and they're meant to see it all. But they did see something, something we didn't see. So that crucial detail is what is still to be revealed. It's great storytelling by miHoYo if they follow through.
This line actually precedes the previous image I had but I thought to separate them because the purpose of this part is also reflected by basically all Hoyoverse Main Protagonists. I'd say it would even expand to all Main Protagonists in general, the power to change the current circumstances. Over in Star Rail, we've been beaten over the head at this point with lines like this about how the Trailblazer can change how their universe works using the power of the Stellaron inside of them. That role went to Aventurine in Penacony's story for example. I've noted this similarity to Genshin but in terms of Star Rail, the basis is on Buddhism not Gnosticism. (it's similar and Gnosticism takes inspiration from Buddhism, but the ultimate goal is different)
And for a small preview of the power of the Traveler we were given this little dialogue in the Narzissenkreuz quest. I found it really interesting how many different stories miHoYo can create to converge on the same idea. Just like Mary-Ann here didn't want to face reality so too did Remus and Deshret in Sumeru and Ei in Inazuma. And all of them wound up doing the same thing to push the truth away: they tried to preserve the world they preferred in an unchanging eternity, trapping themselves in the past.
No major revelations this time. It was just nice to revisit one of miHoYo's fantastically told World Quests. With all of this information on hand, we'll move to the new stuff next, another story to converge on the Traveler's role: Figure out gnosis first, attain the Eighth Element of Imaginary, guide Teyvat to the same enlightenment and bring them to a brighter future beyond Celestia and its smothering principles.
Topic originally created on April 28th, 2024.