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 first thing that seems to be backed up is the composition of the Tacet Discords. Previously in Jinzhou we learned that the TDs were related to negative human emotions. They could arise from the reverberations of dying soldiers or through the frequencies of lingering hatred found in their weapons, amassing during the Retroact Rain incident three years before the start of the game. Similarly now in Rinascita, the persistent war between Imperator and Leviathan turned the nation into a land of Echoes, tamed TDs.
A follow-up to this is what the Lament and its Threnodians actually are. Back then I suggested that WuWa took some cues from the Persona series specifically Person 3. In that story the final boss was a personification of death which was actually being drawn to Earth by humanity itself, from their negative emotions. There is no way to destroy death and no way to stop it from trying to end all life on Earth because humanity itself is calling for it. That was then personified in the sequel Persona 3: FES as Erebus and I think Erebus might reflect what the Threnodians actually are. At the end of Act IV, Imperator says, "The Threnodian cannot be undone whilst civilization endureth. Even It knows not the means of Its own destruction." As long as humanity exists they will suffer negative experiences. These negative experiences elicit negative emotions which then generate TDs and Threnodians to call forth the Lament to destroy the world.
Once upon a time the Arbiter descended and quelled disasters in each of the nations around Solaris-3 by setting up a Sentinel. The way this game is formatted, we'll arrive at a new nation, defeat the Threnodian threat, heal or replace the Sentinel and gain a new form in the process. In Jinzhou this played out when we defeated Ovathrax, healed Jue and gained Havoc Rover as we already had Jue's Spectro attribute. Now in Rinascita we defeated Leviathan, replaced Imperator and gained its Aero attribute. There should be three more nations with Sentinels representing Fusion, Glacio and Electro.
After that we'll reach a Part 2 of the game where the now fully restored Arbiter tries once again to eliminate the Lament. That will be when they encounter that problem Imperator explained, that it is not possible to eliminate the Lament and Threnodians while humanity exists. How can they get around this? I theorized that they might actually side with the Fractsidus in order to learn the other side of the situation as the Fractsidus are comprised of those very humans who are actively calling the True Lament. At the end of Act IV, Cartethyia seems to be foreshadowing this. She suggests that she may have to surpass, defy and defeat them in order to save them as "if one day you find yourself in a similar predicament to mine. Who's going to save you?"
Some information has been expanded on too. We're told by Roccia that Tacet Discords are essentially WuWa's zombies. They are constantly degrading so they hunger for other frequencies to sustain themselves. I had theorized that the Overseers in the Fractsidus might also suffer from this issue. In Act VII of Jinzhou this was what was killing Jue; she had lost parts of her frequencies which meant she lost access to some of her abilities. I suggested that the Fractsidus might want humans to join with Tacet Discords to gain their power to absorb other frequencies and use it to fill in the gaps in their own frequencies. This would be similar to Persona 3's antagonists Strega. What if the original disaster that the Arbiter resolved not only damaged each of the Sentinels but also most of humanity? The pain they feel from their missing frequencies led to their wanting to call the True Lament. Here in Part 1 we don't know this and so won't be able to actually resolve the Threnodian threat so Part 2 is when we learn about it by joining the Fractsidus and seeing things from their perspective.
I also suggested based on the information we can get in Act V of Jinzhou that Abby is SY-A038 or an attempt by human researchers at recreating a god. This god made an appearance after we hear from the chief researcher that he regrets having ever wanted to create the Artificial Retroact Rain and that he should have had faith in the Arbiter. It is the same god that sent the Arbiter at the start of the game and she was the one that placed Abby inside of the Arbiter's Tacet Mark. Now looking at Abby's design, her Tacet Mark in displayed vertically on her forehead. This is also where Cartethyia's mark is and we know that she is a creation by a Threnodian using powers from a Sentinel which are affiliated with the Arbiter. If we can suggest that Cartethyia is then similar to Abby then maybe the vertical forehead mark is a sign of being related to the divine. In that case the god's mark should be hiding behind her bangs.
Side Note: What about Yangyang then? Before this game released most promotional material focused on Yangyang. She and her VA became essentially a spokesperson for the series as well. Until the game developed and she became just one of your starting team members Kuro may have had a bigger role for her. Before Cartethyia we hadn't gotten another character with a vertical forehead mark. The closest was Calcharo with a horizontal mark which itself might play a role in the New Federation since he's one of the exiles. And nothing says Kuro can't circle back to Yangyang later.
Finally, the timeline has been expanded. Previously we only had Jinzhou's events to go off of which made it seem like each Waveworn Phenomenon was global. We knew Jinzhou was established by the Arbiter some arbitrarily long time ago and after quelling the first disaster Jue was slowly dying. Three years before the start of the game Ovathrax attacked again. We now know that the Waveworn Phenomena are localized and probably related specifically to the Threnodian assigned to each nation. Rinascita was established also some arbitrarily long time ago but Leviathan was never actually defeated and instead the nation suffered from endless war until Imperator's wounds became severe enough that Leviathan was able to start assimilating it. The Arbiter had commanded it to figure out how to destroy the Threnodians so it used the opportunity to set things in motion that eventually led to the creation of their merged Resonator and paradoxically a safeguard Resonator which was meant to trap Leviathan forever 20 years before the start of the game. Instead unforeseen events set the stage to erase Leviathan and Imperator's existence. This new information seems to suggest the Arbiter hasn't returned as many times as previously believed. They may have only been around for the establishment of each of the five nations and then the establishment of the Black Shores which itself could have just been an extension of that single awakening.
Originally Solaris-3 was based around a fictionalized take on string theory where all things are composed of vibrational waves, differentiated by their unique frequencies. This seems to have been inspired from Honkai Impact's own fictionalized account of string theory. However based on the wording of Imperator, there's actually another Hoyoverse-based theory that might apply more to WuWa now: the Simulation Theory.
Root privileges only really makes sense in one way, a computer program. Reframing the game in this way we could see the Arbiter as an admin. They don't always log into the system but when there's a significant bug they may be required to provide authorization like we saw in both cases with the Sentinels so far. As for Imperator's plan, if there is a condition limiting each unit to a single designated Resonator then creating a redundancy might glitch the program into endlessly self-correcting to address the discrepancy thus freezing all other operations involving that code like the Threnodian.
In this way we could also see the Black Shores as a backup. It's stored in the same partition as the Solaris-3 simulation and once again requires admin authorization to fully access. Only when the Arbiter arrived could the Shorekeeper repair damaged files.
Besides this we may be seeing a couple of themes. We already knew Jue had control over time. We also knew Ovathrax represented war. However now thanks to our new members to both groups we may be able to suggest that the Threnodians each represent an aspect that will lead humanity to ruin. War is obvious but then what about Leviathan's assimilation? Is Kuro trying to say conformity is a bad thing? Probably not considering unity is also something Rinascita has been working on. Instead I think we can translate assimilation to passive acceptance or apathy. Leviathan would like it if humans just "go with the flow" so to speak.
And that brings me to another part of this theme. I've seen some chatter that the ending was confusing because it was believed that the Pegasus would have turned out to be the Threnodian while the whale was the Sentinel and therefore it should have been water-based. Why isn't there a Hydro attribute in WuWa? I think water is the attribute of the Lament. Lament itself already relates to the Etheric Sea. The known forms of the Waveworn Phenomenon are the Retroact Rain and now the Dark Tide. This actually could have been inspired by Genshin's Abyss and its relation to Honkai's Sea of Quanta. Kuro simply went with a literal interpretation.
Finally if we know the attribute for the Lament and that each of its Threnodians represents an aspect of humanity's fall what about the other side's attributes? Jue controls time and now we know Imperator controlled space. That should mean that Spectro has power over time too and Aero controls space. We'll be getting three other Sentinels for the remaining versions of Rover but Havoc isn't one of them. Instead we already have that version from Ovathrax's Dreamless. Therefore I think Havoc also has power over war or maybe death itself, the end result of the True Lament. Based around that we may be able to guess at the remaining attributes. Fusion could literally be fusion, an abundance of energy that can catalyze something that we'll need to defeat the Threnodian. Maybe it'll be the attribute of the Sentinel in the New Federation. Glacio is the one I'm least sure about but it might be inertness. Maybe we'll be dealing with a Threnodian of Decay with power to wither frequencies and the Glacio Sentinel can prevent that by preserving the frequencies. Finally if the Simulation Theory turns out to be true then Electro may be the last Sentinel we encounter. Electro could control data processing and act as the core attribute for all of them to allow them to properly configure with the Arbiter.
Anyway if Rinascita follows in Jinzhou's footsteps then we should actually have one more act to go when it releases its final location. For Jinzhou it was Mt. Firmament. For Rinascita it should be Septimont which judging by the name should also be a separate group living on a mountain. What story we'll get from there isn't certain since Mt. Firmament was where we encountered the Sentinel but we've already done that in Rinascita. There have been ideas suggesting that the leaf we see blowing to Cartethyia at the end is Imperator and so she is still alive somehow. Maybe reviving the Sentinel will take place on Septimont.
Let's see if this all holds up!
