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!
The new story's come and gone now and it seems to just be a reinforcement for what we've seen previously. We did already know that Remus tried to pull a Deshret but now we're seeing how far people go to achieve this flawed idea. Both Remus and Deshret before him realized just a little too late that preserved eternity was never going to work and dissolving everybody's consciousnesses into a collective goo was a bad idea. The Golden Slumber didn't save anybody and neither would melting people into Ichor, shoving their bodies into statues and then shoving them into a magical musical score. Ei lucked out in this sense. She had Yae pulling out all the stops to prevent it, using the Traveler to push Ei into place for Makoto to finally show her what she'd learned herself.
So while it isn't groundbreaking to know that Boethius was wrong just like Rene would also be wrong centuries later I think this quest series gave us a few more details and showcased more of the research the miHoYo devs do for these regions. Therefore just like I did last year with Farakhkert I want to discuss a few of them.
We've actually known about this city (town?) for a long time. I think it's actually the first Fontaine city we learn about, all the way back when Inazuma first released. I don't think anybody really thought too much about it either but now it's name really makes sense. Petrichor is made from the two Greek words petr and ichor so in terms of Genshin it's very on the nose. Remus literally turned his people into ichor by dissolving their Oceanid bodies with the Primordial Sea and then shoving the resulting goo into statues, the petr or stone. In real life petrichor is just the smell of rainwater on dirt and the word ichor is actually what the Greeks called the blood of gods. From a Genshin perspective it was in a way what Remus intended the Ichor to be, a way for humanity to break free from fate which they believed was the power the gods had over them.
But what is actually new is where Petrichor is. Previously we didn't even know that Fontaine was on an artificially raised platform so there was no reason to believe Petrichor would fall into some weirdly separated space yet still be called part of the region. Our oldest information about it was just that it's waters were very pure and it was beautiful. Yeah that's pretty much all of Fontaine though. In fact we knew so little about Petrichor back then that even by v4.3 Xavier, who is a local never talked about how it wasn't actually located on the Fontaine plateau but rather some separated area where even the drown-proof aspect of Fontaine's waters didn't reach. So what is this area of Fontaine called? Nostoi which is Greek for "return." In our world it was part of the story about the Trojan War, preceding Homer's the Odyssey and acts like a prologue for that part of the story, the return of the Greek heroes besides Odysseus back from the war. (There's an "Ajax" who dies in this story though he's not the same Ajax that Childe is based on.)
Side Note: This timeline placement might also be important but that's a topic for another day.
There's actually a French connection to Petrichor too probably to justify it's inclusion in a French region lol. If you talk to Xavier's childhood friend (and girl next door) Goldoni, her possessing Remurian tells you about Petrocorii a territory of Remuria that fell to barbarians. In our world the petrocorii were Gauls that opposed the Roman Republic during Caesar's time. Unlike petr-ichor, petro-corii is Gallic for four (petro) armies (corios) with corii acting as a common suffix for their tribes.
Actually this connection to Gauls keeps going. In the same dialogue that Goldoni tells us about Petrocorii she name drops Lucius Septimius Sebelius which is a reference to Emperor Lucius Septimius Severus. (Sebelius is likely just an intentional bastardization of Severus but Sebelius is a real surname too.) Severus is notable for being the founder of the last Roman Dynasty before the Crisis of the Third Century, when Rome was temporarily defeated by the Gallic Empire. I actually brought up this part of Roman history in another topic about something that should have been totally unrelated lol. It was about how religion was historically tied to currency on our side of the world.
Side Note: Goldoni herself may be a reference to the Italian playwright Carlo Goldoni. I bring this up because it's a common theme when it comes to Remuria but that's also a topic for another day.
Finally when possessed Goldoni calls Xavier, Xaverius. This is a reference to Franciscus Xaverius or Saint Francis Xavier, the first missionary that went to Japan before it went into Sakoku. The name Xavier is interesting by itself though. It actually predates most of these references because it's a Latinized version of the Paleo-European (Basque) surname Echevarria meaning new house. The Basques are the last surviving ethnic group native to Europe (current Europeans are all some form of Indo-European, including the Celts, Romans, Germanics) and their modern populations are located in Spain and France, influencing both nations over time. Who knew our engineer/filmmaker would be such an interesting reference to his hometown which also is a preceding ancient culture that heavily influenced the modern French-inspired one?
Side Note 1: After completing the Remuria World Quest it's discovered that Petrichor is stagnating. The elderly are increasingly closed off and the young find the town boring and are starting to leave. This might be a reference to the Vatican which has the world's oldest median age. As the headquarters of Catholicism it's also very traditional and young people have been leaving it too, though part of the reason is disillusionment of religion over the many scandals plaguing the church. (That said the young Petrichorians might wanna stick around. If Mecantre and Babisse are brainstorming what I think they are then Petrichor might become really interesting one day.)
Side Note 2: Geographically Petrichor would more likely be based on Corsica but there is no shortage of self-importance as a stereotype of the Corsicans. No young people are going to ditch that town anytime soon. It was the birthplace of Napoleon after all. However that could actually be the link to Petrichor, to the pre-World Quest version where everybody is a proud Remurian. According to a friend I have who is part French, as arrogant as the rest of the world see the French, the French see the Corsicans. And certainly that was the vibe we got upon speaking to all of the Remurians.
Yes the previous section was just the name of the region and all the stuff we can gather from just that. That's how miHoYo's devs do things haha
Now for a speed round. Hortus is the Proto-Indo-European for garden while euergetis is Greek for a worker who does good work. Together it probably means Garden of the Good Worker. However Euergetis can also be a title applied to good leaders specifically female leaders of the Hellenistic world. (Euergetes is the masculine form) Cleopatra III was also called Cleopatra Euergetis for example. The "garden" can only be reached by doing the World Quest so it's likely this garden honors Sybilla who does have the merits to justify the title.
With Caesareum Palace I'm pretty sure miHoYo was going for the specific Caesareum of Alexandria so they mean a temple but that's not was Caesareum actually means. It just means Julius Caesar who of course doesn't exist in Genshin. (although going off of Rene's Root Cycle stuff he's supposed to show up sooner or later lol)
Collegium Phonascorum is probably the easiest to match with the theme. It's just a group of music teachers. Since the whole thing was getting people ready for the Grand Symphony it makes sense to have some teachers teaching the music stuff. That said it's not actually a group at all. It's the name of a place and that makes sense with its real name 谐律院 or Courtyard of Harmony. Actually 谐律 is really fitting. The term does mean harmony but in both the sense of being united in peace and in terms of musical harmony, being in tune with each other. It's a very nice allusion to what the Grand Symphony was meant to do.
That said Phobos is such a red flag lol! Phobos aka phobia is the God of Fear. (alongside brother Deimos) No wonder this genius plan failed.
Wasn't Fortuna the man's boat? Can't have a physical device double as an abstract concept my friends. That said if Fortuna actually means fate then it fits even better with the Stella Fortuna thing Ashikai came up with before, but she'd have to forego the connection with sun gods.
Sebastos is the Greek version of Augustus. But I don't think Sebastos Remus is correct syntax. If this was Latin then honorifics come after the name so Remus Augustus. It would be just like the Guuji Yae issue. In English the localization team went with Guuji Yae but Raiden Shogun. Raiden Shogun is correct but because of that the correct syntax would be Yae Guuji, surnames followed by titles. In Greek we have Oedipus Rex or Oedipus Tyrannus so the titles do come after the name and therefore it should be Remus Sebastos. But I read somewhere that modern Greek puts the titles first like keerie Remus would be Mr. Remus and not Remus keerie. If there are Greeks reading this please advise thanks!
Osse the cat first named himself Ouranides of Ouranopolis. Ouranides is just the name for the first generation of Titans because they were the children of Ouranos. I'm not sure what that was trying to reference for the game. Ouranos would be Saturn so he's one of the Classical Planets that have come up before. It is interesting to note that the children of the sea, the Oceanides were the second generation of Titans. Maybe Osse was trying to suggest that Remurians were the first generation of Fontainians while the ones we know of today (the former Oceanid humans) are the second?
Anyway Ouranopolis is a real place or it was. It's just south of Macedonia. Today there's a small town there called Ouranopoli with a very lovely beach. Pretty sure that's not what Remus was going for when he called it the city of the future.
And of course we learn that our keerie Ouranides is really Cassiodor based on Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus who was born in Scylletium. Probably just a cute reference. Scylla himself is a reference to a monster from the Odyssey sometimes described like a hydra. (S)he was the lesser of two evils because the seemingly weaker Charybdis sucked up water and anything that happens to be floating on it. We have a reference to Charybdis too all the way back in the Narzissenkreuz World Quest when we go to Fort Charybdis Ruins.
Anyway Cassiodorus was a contemporary of Boethius and actually replaced him as magister officiorum when he was accused and executed for conspiracy against Rome. Gee if only Remus had let Romulus run things huh? The Romurian Empire would've seen Boe-boe coming a mile away. That said his charges were trumped up. Real life Boethius was a good guy. He was trying to reunite the Western and Eastern Roman Empires. (albeit it probably wasn't going to happen since the "Western Roman Empire" we're talking about is Germanic Rome and even today we have trouble accepting that Rome.) Cassiodorus himself lasted much longer probably because he was stationed in the Eastern Roman Empire and became more focused on education than politics. Finally, he would retire to Castellum not a golden castellum but a monastery where he continued supporting education.
Before we dive into the Faded Castle part there are NPCs that are also significant. First you have Contarini Tiepolo a cop whose name is actually made up of two surnames from important Venetian families. She interpreted some of her lingering memories from being possessed as the Liliacruces Ordo. This is another fiction actually. The Liliacruces Ordo is based on the Narzissenkreuz Ordo and was popularized in Fontaine's mystery novels that Paimon likes so much.
Her father Tiepolo is the Doge. It's not bit currency but Italian for the Latin Dux or leader. It was a title used in the Republic of Venice and he's actually based on the first Duke of the city-state, Jacopo Tiepolo. Duke is also a form of Dux.
Once we dive down it turns out that the little harp thing we grabbed was part of a series that tells Remuria's history in the Ancient Autoharmonic Music Box.
The first piece of this melody is the Locus Amoenus or lovely place in Latin. The rest though are actually part of the Sequentia section of Mozart's Requiem which is of course a musical piece to honor the dead and also how we stop the Phobos. Sequentia is followed by the sinners being saved and brought to salvation in Offertorium, Sanctus, Benedictus and Agnus Dei. (Agnus Dei is an allusion to Jesus and there's another really obvious one in this quest too.) Mozart actually didn't complete his Requiem and died while only completing the introduction. Joseph von Eybler is the one that actually finished the Sequentia parts and then a guy by the name of Franz Xaver Süssmayr finished the salvation portions. Franz Xaver. Hmmmm. Yes Franz is Germanic for Franciscus or Francis and Xaver is the Germanic for Xavier. Cute that one of our first Fontainian NPCs and also a native to Petrichor has such a large role in its history, at least in real world references.
Before heading into the painting portal thing to get to memory world Remuria we can find a few choice books in this castle. I'll get more into them later but for now there was one term that's interesting. Cunicoricus is the predecessor to Erinnyes of Aremorica. In real life he's Welsh and the adoptive father of King Arthur in local legends. About a month ago I brought up Clervie and Crucabena who are also Welsh (and Irish) characters and King Arthur has been referenced a few times now with relation to Khaenri'ah.
We already knew Cassiodor was a Harmost but now these Remurians are calling him Dominus. Harmost is Greek, specifically Spartan for a military leader. As it relates to what Remus did during his conquests the Spartans used the Harmosts to undermine Athens push for democracy with the Delian League. Similarly Dominus is a title used by Roman Emperors only after the Crisis of the Third Century when it started declining and becoming more authoritarian. Dominus actually translates to head or master like that of a household. For instance Roman slaves addressed their masters as Dominus.
And it's the household thing that plays out in the next term: Domus Aurea or the Golden House. (A dominus is the head of the domus.) It's cute to think this is some kind of link between Remuria and Liyue. Ashikai would love this kind of detail for her God King theory. But I don't think it's what it is. The Golden House in Liyue is literally just the Golden House 黄金屋 whereas Domus Aurea was 黄金的大宫. 大宫 is much more glamorous than 屋. For example the White House is 白宫 and 故宫 is the Imperial Palace. The real Domus Aurea relates more to that latter example. It was Nero's second home after he supposedly burned down Rome in 64AD just to have it built. Sounds about right with who we're dealing with in Genshin's version.
Side Note: Actually could that be why there's a Caesareum Palace? I mean Caesar did burn down Alexandria. And then after he died Cleopatra built the Caesareum to commemorate him. So it could relate to Nero and then our Remus. What do you guys think?
To get to Domus Aurea we're told we need to breach the Initium Iani. Initium means entrance and in the original Chinese it's door which actually works really amusingly with Iani or the Roman god Ianus because he's the God of Doors. Well pretty much all definitions for initium parallel what Ianus was so we could translate Initium Iani as the Doorway of the God of Doorways, Entrance of the God of Entrances, Transition of the God of Transitions, etc. The point was that Ianus represented a change in something like when you change rooms by going through a door, the changes in season every year or changing of the guard between historical periods. It's like the miHoYo devs just wanted to throw in a cute easter egg only nerds would get, the doorway to end all doorways lol
Side Note: Also because their names are so close to each other apparently Janus (alt spelling for Ianus) got mistaken for Juno (Iuno is the more accurate spelling*) sometimes confusing which god represented which month. It's funny because I had previously brought up Juno (and the Golden House actually) in that totally unrelated topic about the Gauls and the history of currency. Again this is all probably just coincidental. I just found it funny.
*or Yuno for us anime fans. Rome's version was probably more stable though. Then again she is based on Hera so....
The "great plains beyond the north wind" huh? I've talked about this before but Fontaine being based on France means its history extends back to the Frankish Kingdom following the fall of Rome. This kingdom was also the birthplace of Germany and these two seemingly different countries in the modern day share an origin story that miHoYo has referenced a few times. The north wind is likely talking about Andrius the King of the North Wind and Mondstadt is located in the plains of the north. The silver tree is then talking about the Frostbearing Tree of Dragonspine seeing how that's the only tree we know of smashed into frozen soil. However that's also east of Remuria not north so if we go off of just that it could mean the icy plains of Russia which could also have its own buried Ley Line tree. While not nearly as connected to France as Germany, Russia also shares a few historical cues. I do think though that if anything Snezhnaya can only be linked with Fontaine and Mondstadt through Scandinavian aka Khaenri'ahn ties. France was invaded several times by the Vikings so much so they eventually gave them a region to call their own and then influenced them to convert to Christianity and learn French. Yes I'm speaking of the French Normans which I thought we'd have gotten a shoutout by now in the new Dainsleif quest. (topic coming soon) These Normans then conquered England which is why we have British characters like Wriothesley and nods to UK mythology like Clervie and (Mount) Esus. But even before that the Scandinavians are themselves Germanic people. Finally they also kickstarted Slavic migrations into Ukraine and eventually Russia, heavily influencing them while they were under their control. It's my belief that these references tie the three nations together similar to how Sumeru, Liyue and Inazuma are tied together through China's massive influence on the ancient world. 
Seriously? A Jesus reference? And the gizmo that did it is related to the guy our Traveler daydreamed. Therefore it's likely once again we're getting a Jesus shoutout about the Traveler.
Side Note: And the first of two actually just in this World Quest. Earlier I brought up how the music box has tunes based on Mozart's Requiem and one section of Requiem is the Agnus Dei or Lamb of God.
However I should point out that the Gnostic Christ isn't the same thing as the Jesus we're all more likely familiar with. In Gnosticism he's just another Aeon though he was created through all of the other Aeons not just a dyad. He was meant to become the replacement pair for Sophia after she rejected her original pair thereby creating the abomination Demiurge. Jesus is sent to help her right her wrongs which I have likened to our Fourth Descender completing the mission started by our "Sophia" aka Nicole the Second Who Came. In this way I still maintain that our MC isn't meant to be a true Jesus reference just a stand-in just as our Second Who Came clearly didn't create Phanes.
See I take issue with that. Not the part where Scylla is just a larger Bathysmal Vishap. It's a really weird mutant of one but I can see the relation if I squint at it. I mean it's not like we saw the original Scylla anyway just a conscious memory of it saved in the Phobos. No the weird part is why no new Hydro Dragon could be born if Egeria wasn't freed. It just felt odd right?
Some of you guys know what's coming lol. It's odd unless you had read my theory and then it just feels like a slip of the tongue for miHoYo. A deliberate one though since you wouldn't really put these pieces together unless you knew about the theory and there's still so much in the air that it confirms practically nothing. Anyway in the theory I proposed that Neuvillette was never going to resurrect at all but Zhongli decided to intervene because he wanted to plan ahead in a very long game of his. To that end, he set up another prophecy, the reincarnation of the Hydro Dragon in human form. He then required Egeria to help nurture a love of humanity into the guy just as Guizhong had done for him. Therefore it would stand to reason that this resurrection couldn't happen until such a time when Egeria could be freed so she could then put the pieces in place.
That's really it for direct lore. The rest of the quest was focused solely on stopping Phobos which while fun, didn't really play a role in understanding the greater lore. I suppose if anything it showed that the theories about music having anything to do with the wider world of Teyvat were incorrect. Yes we learned more about the Loom of Fate in Dainsleif's quest but it expectedly didn't have anything to do with Remus and his Grand Symphony or even music in general. It was just another in the long list of misguided attempts at preserving static eternity.
Speaking of Egeria, we're all likely familiar with the nymph but did you guys know Egeria is also the name of a Christian pilgrim?
Originally named Itinerarium Egeriae, this book is an account of Egeria's pilgrimage to Jerusalem back in 381AD which wasn't too long before the final division of East and West Rome. Egeria herself is believed to be from Galicia, Spain but there is another suggestion that she may have come from Gallia Narbonensis which is part of Southern France today. She actually converted to Christianity which is why she has the name Egeria. The name would have been seen as pagan at that time. I wouldn't be surprised that this little tidbit of early Christian history made it into miHoYo's research notes as they were figuring out Fontaine's backstory, inspiring the pilgrimage of the Oceanids to her deathbed which could be likened to their "holy land."
Now my theory for Remus was that he was influenced by the fallen Hydro Dragon who convinced him of his Ichor plan, stripping the souls out of humans and mixing them into the Primordial Sea. In my original predictions for Fontaine, this was the start of it, why Fontaine doesn't have normal humans. Unfortunately as we all saw, miHoYo decided that the Oceanids just happened to want to be humans one day and Egeria just stuffed them full of Primordial Seawater which somehow allowed them to mimic humans in a more believable way than the Hydro Mimics could. I think I pointed out the issues with this already. Sadly miHoYo doubled down on this with the new Artifact Set Fragment of Harmonic Whimsy.
In the Grand Jape piece the story goes that Remus never actually encountered the Hydro Dragon at all but rather Egeria and it was Egeria that gave him the idea to use the Ichor. Now granted I'm usually the first to point out that the older lore starts out with "legend says" which means it never had to be factual. However there are serious implications with this version of events that miHoYo is now committed to. Previously if it was the Hydro Dragon that did this then it fits with what the dragons were trying to accomplish. The dragons under Nibelung hated the Heavenly Principles and as Apep had said, it was Phanes that adored the humans and not the dragons of the old order. In other words a dragon convincing a usurper to screw up the humans is only natural. Remus was a fool for trusting one. However Egeria was supposed to love the humans and especially these humans who she created herself out of her own familiars. For her to have given Remus the idea to essentially kill her humans and then subject them to the torture of the Ichor, lore which is canon as the Sublime Dewdrop mat does not include the words "legends say" in its lore, it hilariously paints her in a very malevolent way lol. This wouldn't be the first time. Neuvillette as I had pointed out before was implicated in creating sick and dying Fontainians because all current Fontainians only started being truly human at the end of the Archon Quest and therefore couldn't have long-standing human illnesses while they were still Oceanids. Even if they had Oceanid illnesses those would have been removed once they were remade into humans. The only way they could have chronic illnesses is if Neuvillette directly gave them those illnesses for some reason. So now miHoYo's essentially vilified a supposedly reformed, human loving dragon and even the kind and loving Fontaine Archon lol
On top of this the new lore still doesn't answer the plothole created by the Archon Quest's explanation. Where are all the non-Oceanid Fontainians?
With the current story, we were told that after the Hydro Dragon fell one of the shining shades created Egeria. Egeria created the Oceanids but one day the Oceanids pined for a human life so she pumped Primordial Seawater into their elemental bodies which somehow allowed them to assume human form. This angered Celestia for some reason and they imprisoned her under the sea and her Fontaine fell to ruin with the combined populations of human and Oceanid human Fontainians forming scattered tribes. Some time later Remus would arrive and conquer the region to create Remuria, continuing the conquest of all the tribes. He was then informed of the prophecy Celestia had cursed Fontaine with and sought Egeria to figure out a solution. For some reason Egeria went maniacal for a second and suggested that he use Primordial Seawater on the Fontainians knowing full well some of them would dissolve. Remus enacts his plan and either somehow the normal humans were also dissolved when Remus did it or they were all already dead by then for some reason. Either way Remus turned most of the Oceanid humans into Ichor and then combined them into the Phobos. In this form they were able to freely inhabit golem bodies. (They also sometimes felt torturous pain of varyingly tolerable degrees? They didn't seem too distraught about it even though Cassiodor did mention it.) Phobos ends up failing because duh and Remuria is destroyed in flood that sends it to the bottom of the sea. Phobos survived and generated a version of Remuria accessed through a painting found in the Faded Castle, the only part of Remuria that survived. The fall of Remuria for some reason convinces Celestia to free Egeria who rebuilds Fontaine with rebels that opposed Remus. Then she sacrifices herself during the Cataclysm, sets in motion Neuvillette's reincarnation and also creates another Oceanid human named Furina to take on her Gnosis in a convoluted plan to fool Celestia and destroy their Hydro Archon Throne. This is to foil that prophecy they had cursed her region with. (but for some reason freed her to continue ruling it instead of you know, Divine Nail go brrrr) By the time of the Archon Quest it is confirmed by the events that there are no more normal humans in Fontaine besides any visitors from other regions. Where did any survivors go? If there weren't any why weren't there any? Was it discrimination and the Oceanid humans genocided them? Were they just unlucky and every catastrophe that occurred happened to kill mostly the normal humans and not the Oceanid ones? Or did miHoYo just forget the part where the original Fontaine under the Hydro Dragon would have consisted of real humans that the Oceanids were envious of? Just like how they likely forgot why Celestia would punish Egeria for creating those humans by sealing her away and cursing all of them but then suddenly decide to release her to rule over that cursed region even though they continued to curse it.
Sorry for that tl;dr review of the lore. It's become a fun pastime to summarize with all the plotholes on full display lol
While the plotholes are fabulously left unresolved this new information does reconcile one thing. Focalors' Divinity said that she spent so much time underwater contemplating how to resolve the prophecy that she was growing barnacles. She wouldn't have had enough time for that if she was just promoted to Archon following Egeria's death because immediately after her ascension she set up Furina as Egeria's successor. But as Egeria, she would have been imprisoned by Celestia underwater for a very long time with nothing better to do than figure out how to bypass their prophecy. She likely would have grown barnacles and those barnacles would have grown barnacles in that time. So that at least is resolved though because it confirms that "Focalors' Divinity" must refer to Egeria herself. The Focalors that's supposed to be a separate Oceanid being that Egeria selected and ascended to Archon didn't exist long enough to have done what she said she did. Furina existed for exactly five hundred years as shown by the Archon Quest itself and Egeria died in the Cataclysm that happened five hundred years ago.
There's one more thing that Petrichor gave us. We actually heard about Mecantre and Babisse a long long time ago back in the very first Evermotion Mechanical Painting event in v2.8. I had picked it out then that they were supposedly working on space travel. Since miHoYo had been promoting Star Rail stuff recently, even derailing the Archon Quest's story with space related stuff it made sense they would progress this little footnote from long ago. And especially with the addition of Bossuet now this research might actually go somewhere. At least the companion World Quests seem to suggest as much. Honestly back then I was intrigued that space travel would be a thing in Genshin's medieval and early industrial age but I really hope they don't just use it to push Star Rail onto us.
Side Note: Fingers crossed because anachronistic tech is hardly new to Genshin. Mondstadt's developing sonar and rifled mortar rounds while Snezhnaya's Katheryne models are far more advanced than even the robots we have today!
Finally when everything's said and done you have the Daydream World Quest where you catch up with Garcia and the aforementioned Mercantre and Babisse. This is where we get what I think is the best version of the Hive Mind plot in fiction. I brought up the versions I didn't like back when Sumeru was new and we had just gotten Alhaitham's quest. I already brought up how Boethius in this World Quest was following in the footsteps of Deshret, Remus and Rene right? The thing all of them had in common was the idea to pool everybody's consciousnesses together and preserve it in that state for all eternity. One of the prerequisites for all of these plans was to remove individuality. That was also the problem with the Akasha and then later on with both Nahida's and Alhaitham's quests when some yo-yos decided to continue the work of the Akasha with the term hivemind even coming up directly in the latter. These are bad interpretations of the hivemind. It shows the weaknesses of having a connected intelligence network without intelligent users. The Akasha suppressed the awareness of Sumerans so the sages could keep them under control. Beynuni preyed on people's desires and escapist tendencies and Siraj made the network only work towards his goals both of them keeping the rest of the hive under their control. 
So now we finally get the good version. In the quest we find that a previously self-serving investor Grundeland has seen the error of his ways. The reason he did was because of having been connected to the Phobos network, experiencing life from the eyes of a devoted Remurian. As a result he was able to re-evaluate his own life and wanted to repent.
I tend to compare hivemind stories to StarCraft because of the Protoss. If you read up on the Protoss backstory you know there was an event called the Aeon of Strife following the Xel'Naga abandoning them. During this long period the Protoss fell into constant civil war. That is until Khas found the Khaydarin Crystals and connected to the Protoss psionic network, their hivemind. After that he set out to connect all the surviving Protoss and this hivemind allowed all of them to feel empathy, to see each other's thoughts and feelings. This ended their civil war. It's practically the same thing that happened to Grundeland. (StarCraft didn't end this hivemind plot well though lol)
Anyway the point is that a hivemind can be so much more than a way for some dictator to suppress the people and control thought. Even when the Akasha was first introduced I saw the potential for a good plot though I knew they were going for the bad one lol. On its own the Akasha is what I'd like to think our own internet could evolve into, a repository for all knowledge available that can be accessed and "learned" instantaneously. And the thing is all of these hivemind stories could go this way with just a simple fix in the narrative. Instead of trying to rid individuality with this thing and force desirable thoughts onto people, it just needs to be that repository. When users access it they can choose what information they want to know. That's it. Instead of becoming humanity soup in literal or data form or having some corrupt leadership force thoughts and commands onto users all a good hivemind can ever do is be a more advanced internet. It's up to the users what they choose to believe from that and then all it takes is a proper education for them to be able to suss out the facts from the rest of the garbage on the internet. Hopefully we'll get a story like that from miHoYo in the future. After all that might just be the endgame for our own Traveler.
Side Note: On top of this though there's the poetry theory. We can actually see that the Phobos began rejecting Remus when he changed his mind about the Grand Symphony just like the Shogun attacked Ei when she started to question eternity.
Ok this last section is just things I thought were amusing in the quest. Feel free to skip. 
Why do I feel personally attacked miHoYo lol. Hey it was pretty nice worldbuilding Aether!
I'm about to rant about my version of the Fontaine Archon Quest so avert your eyes all ye weary. The plotholes I mentioned before would have all been resolved using my version of the Archon Quest. That's because I kept an eye on the implications. The Fontainians weren't normal humans so you can't apply normal human stories to them. On top of that calling Act V the "Masquerade of the Guilty" should involve somebody that's guilty right? In the actual quest nobody's really guilty of anything. Egeria was guilty for creating the Oceanid humans only because Celestia didn't like it and punished her for it. They thought she was guilty but it's just a matter of opinion. Furina wasn't guilty because she was following the directive given to her by a literal god. Focalors' Divinity as a separate entity from Egeria would still be innocent because her only action was setting up the plan to undermine the Heavenly Principles. Neuvillette is no longer involved in the Remus story and even if he was Egeria was moved to running Fontaine both before and after him and set up the Oceanid humans before Remus even got there meaning even he's innocent. He was honestly trying to stop the prophecy that had nothing to do with him. Compared to that, my version has a guilty Furina because she had willingly played the part of a bad Archon that led her region to ruin as it was a necessary evil to get her in place for the long game. Neuvillette is guilty for his part in Remus killing all the Fontainians of his Remuria. Arlecchino is guilty for her role in the Fatui plot. Of course Pulcinella and Dottore are guilty for their roles too. And even the Fontainians themselves are culpable in creating class divides that provided the opening for the Fatui in the first place. More importantly, each guilty party is allowed a chance at redemption. Furina fulfills her role in defeating the prophecy which now no longer is a strange irrational anger by Celestia. She sacrifices her final connection to her Egeria half by depowering the Gnosis. Neuvillette then permanently sacrifices his old form as Dragon Sovereign in order to undo the damage he caused when he fooled Remus into dissolving the Fontainians. Arlecchino redeemed herself by betraying Pulcinella in the trial and also being dissolved by the Primordial Sea until Neuvillette remakes her as a real human. (back then we thought she was a Fontainian) Even Childe who is given agency in my version redeems himself for his actions back in Liyue by opposing Pulcinella and also providing the whale, the former body of Neuvillette which he needed to sacrifice. And finally the Fontainians themselves are sacrificed but once they are given their second chance at life, they begin working towards a better Fontaine. This is a real masquerade (a ballroom dance of people hiding their true identities) of the guilty.
Ok that was heavy. Let's got with something lighter like
What is he on and can I get some?
Let's review:
- Fontaine and Mondstadt are connected through their real world histories that miHoYo has referenced a few times. Snezhnaya is also related though more distantly through Khaenri'ah. This is also reflected by the connected history of Sumeru, Liyue and Inazuma as based on their real world counterparts Persia, China and Japan.
- We've been getting more Jesus references in this game. The truth though is more likely that the Gnostic version of the Jesus story heavily hints at our MC's character arc in the game rather than a direct tie-in to it.
- Neuvillette requiring Egeria to be freed in order to resurrect doesn't really seem to make sense unless perhaps my theory ends up true. In my theory, Egeria is needed to nurture a love of humanity into Neuvillette when he revives in order to recruit him for the endgame of Genshin. However, outside of that theory there really isn't any reason why Egeria was needed for that.
- Egeria might have partly been inspired by the Itinerarium Egeriae a pilgrimage by a Roman woman.
- The lore from the Grand Jape Artifact both persists a plothole of the Fontaine story while hilariously creating a new one. Egeria is now culpable in the destruction of Remuria and its people. And it still doesn't answer why Fontaine is devoid of those humans the Oceanids longed to become.
- However it does reinforce another part of the lore. Focalors' Divinity is just Egeria, the lingering traces of Egeria within the Gnosis. Egeria, having been imprisoned by Celestia underwater would have had all the time in the world to "grow barnacles" while she contemplated how to solve the prophecy. Conversely Focalors' Divinity would have only been Archon for a short intermission while setting up Furina as the false Archon.
- Mercantre and Babisse were previously introduced as one of the first easter eggs about anachronistic technology in Teyvat. While it started out as practically a footnote, the new World Quest makes it feel more tangible.
- A good hivemind story allows people to gain empathy and understanding of other or spreads knowledge to everyone. A bad hivemind story turns this technology on its head and forces the narrative that it necessarily becomes a method of control and repression. The Daydream World Quest is finally an example of the former.
Topic originally created on May 19th, 2024.