_You mean the fake stars up in that fake sky? Uh oh _
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 Archon Quest is finally ended and with it comes a brand new (well maybe not that new) revelation: Even the Ley Lines themselves were a product of the Heavenly Principles. This therefore also means Irminsul is a product of the Heavenly Principles. (and I have this really old shelved theory that I can now dust off and write but I digress lol) Look at the picture at the top. We were hinted about this revelation a long time ago. In case you guys don't remember this, Other Layla postulates this in the middle of the Interdarshan Championship back in v3.6. The Ley Lines may just be reflections of the stars. In other words the current stars in the sky that we learned all the way back in v1.1's Unreconciled Stars as being far too close to be real stars and held in them people's fates like Leonard's, those stars are reflected by the Ley Lines on the ground, the Ley Lines that hold all of Teyvat's memories in them and can be manipulated into making everybody on Teyvat remember different things than reality. Yeah that's no good.
Side Note: I had said that the Loom of Fate was a stupid idea by our sibling since creating new Ley Lines and manipulating memories wouldn't ultimately save them from fate. And it still wouldn't. However the plan looks less naive if the Ley Lines are connected to the fake stars that control people's fates. I still don't think the plan would work because it's still the stars that hold dominion. It'd be like replacing your ethernet cable with a brand new high speed one and expecting your internet speed to improve. If your ISP can't provide a higher speed connection you still get the same top speed on your internet. All that new cable can do is give you that top speed more consistently.
However in v5.2 we actually got a book that further hinted about the truth behind the Ley Lines. Mt. Lingmeng Gossip (I) describes the Ley Lines as "having accumulated and accumulated until growing into tumors." Tumors isn't exactly a thing you'd relate in a positive way right? On its own this book is a collection of folklore stories and the volume that I got the quote from even starts with "legend has it" making it easily dismissed. But because Layla brought it up herself, it made this book more interesting. It seems to corroborate her theory. On top of that it makes this statement: "But in that earth-shaking chaotic war a thousand years before, those gods, fairies, and former inhabitants alike disappeared." Ignoring the "thousand years before" (considering we have no idea when this folktale was told hence 1000 years before its creation could mean anything) we do already know for a fact that there was an "earth-shaking chaotic war" and that at the end of it the supernatural beings like gods and fairies disappeared. Most of the Archons perished in the Archon War and this would have also destroyed the angel kingdom. (now known as the Seelie Kingdom only in - once again - folktales, seelies being Scottish fairies) The former inhabitants in this case would be the original migrants from the Chasm area who could commune directly with Celestia and yes they too disappeared. Well at least their memories of this part of their past definitely did.
Now to understand the rest of Volume I we have to think about what folklore is really all about. When people come up with fairy tales it's usually to impart some kind of life lesson through allegory. Three Little Pigs teaches diligence because your brick house that took far longer to build will actually save your life while poorly constructed houses of straw and sticks won't. China of course has these too but over the course of thousands of years these stories can warp to the point where modern generations don't even understand the original purpose anymore. There's actually been a modern movement to reestablish the true meanings behind common phrases in Chinese because the warped meanings not only propagate a negative message but also reinforce a misguided belief that older generations were ignorant.
For example: 勾心斗角 gouxindoujiao currently means to blame somebody for everything. But this phrase was first of all written like this 钩心斗角, secondly it was the second half of a full phrase this 各抱地势，钩心斗角 and thirdly it actually means unity. (it's a little more complicated than that but basically unity) Notice how the modern meaning is pretty much entirely opposite to the true meaning?
In keeping with that idea we have the warning to avoid fog and the Ley Lines because they'd bring forth ancient sorrows. The why of it is still yet to be explained. All we know is that the Ley Lines carry bad memories of the past and nobody wants to drudge them up. But knowing what we do about what the Ley Lines actually are and considering how it's implied by Lingmeng Gossip, could it be that there's a deeper reason to avoid the Ley Lines and the memories they hold? Why are they considered tumors which are deleterious growths on your body? Are the Ley Lines a cancer on Teyvat? This could be tied to the fact that the fake stars can control fate meaning the Ley Lines might also manipulate a person's fate. Could coming into close proximity with the Ley Lines get you entangled in a fate that shouldn't belong to you just like how people were caught up in Leonard's past when they came in contact with his Constellation? And now if we take that idea and link it to the Loom of Fate operation, is our sibling creating new Ley Lines to create new fates which themselves would be more tumors poisoning humanity and holding them back from true ascension?
Who knew a little folksy gossip and the idle thoughts of one astrology nerd could get us this far!
But wait. What I just brought up wasn't what I came up with back then. Back then when Unreconciled Stars was a little fresher on the mind than it is now I proposed that maybe the Ley Lines were created because of those fake stars, specifically when those stars come crashing down to the ground. In the event, Leonard's Constellation in the false sky became unstable and fell out of it as meteors. Those meteors rendered anybody who touched them unconscious and they'd dream about Leonard's life, his fate as given to him by the Heavenly Principles. But it was because the stars had fallen that we were able to figure out about the false sky to begin with. I suggested that maybe remarkable people existed across Teyvat's history and fought against their allotted fates. At the ends of their lives even though they failed to overcome their fates, they'd do enough to cause their Constellations to destabilize. What they did to achieve that is stored in the Constellations which after they fell became part of the stored memories in the Ley Lines, potentially allowing future generations to succeed where they failed.
The thing I think we tend to forget from time to time is that Celestia isn't technically a villain. For all the grief it causes us it's motivated by sincere love. It was appointed by the Imaginary Tree to keep this universe afloat after all. Therefore despite the stars being fake and the sky being a barrier keeping us in a terrarium, the Ley Lines shouldn't be a bad thing. I mean they aren't what I suggested back then because we now know Celestia constructed them itself. However even if they could entangle you in another unfortunate fate or haunt you with unhappy memories of bygone days, I think the crucial detail that the Archon Quest reinforced for us again is the difference between the elemental and human memories.
Think back to the part of the new quest when Ayo's grandparents rejected being saved by the Night Kingdom in order to stay with Ayo. It was seen as a tragic moment done out of love but ultimately ending in despair. But we know that's probably not what was going on in their minds. Back in Sumeru we had Nahida's Second Character Quest and the elementals we met didn't really value their memories. They served a purpose; it helped them evolve. But when it comes down to it, evolution isn't the point for them. Survival is. Therefore what form that survival takes is irrelevant. Do they evolve into something powerful themselves or do they return back to a something that was already powerful? Either will suffice. However humanity was changed. Again back then humanity was also elemental. But Celestia changed that and humanity started to care about its memories. We know Genshin is heavily inspired by Gnositicism and Gnosticism focuses heavily on individual experiences because it's through those that a person can attain gnosis. Unlike the elementals, human memories are precious. They sometimes mean more than individual survival - if all those heavy-handed "hope to see you again soon" to the dead didn't point that out. (well I guess if it didn't then Citlali's Tribal Chronicle covered for that afterwards)
What we have in the end is a self-contradiction. Phanes wants humanity to grow and thrive, maybe even achieve gnosis one day. But it's programmed to control and keep humanity's ambitions from getting out of hand. So while it did set up the Heavenly Principles to limit humanity it also paradoxically set up Irminsul (and therefore the concept of memory in Teyvat) to allow them to surpass those limits. My guess is that over time and with humans doing their human thing (like getting the Cataclysm to happen) Phanes became more jaded. It was already suppressing humanity under its orders from the Imaginary Tree but after the Cataclysm "the arrogation of mankind ends now." It lost its way and this is what caused it to lash out at the Third Descender, our sibling who is now also embittered and because of that working with the Sea of Quanta of all things to undermine it. Two Descenders are at war with each other again. The only way to fix that is with us the Fourth Descender doing the right thing, focusing on the experiences brought to us by all the memories we've gained from our journey and finally getting humanity to that gnosis that each of the previous Descenders failed to achieve. Good grief you can't get good help these days.
Topic originally created on January 12th, 2025.
