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!
It took us four Lantern Rites to get to Xianyun's release and her Character Quest where I think we have more than enough information to put this one to bed. (Personally I thought Madame Ping's line was good enough back in Moonchase but other people's theories only recently seemed to have caught on and only in part.) I'm talking about how gods can't actually die.
Originally as Madame Ping explained it, when a god "dies" all that really happens is they lose enough elemental energy that they stop being what they once were. Marchosius the Stove God drained all his power into the land of Liyue and that diminished him to the point that he lost all memories of his past self and all his immense Archon power, reducing him to Guoba. Back then the only firm example we had besides Guoba was Andrius who had also sacrificed all his Archon power and lost his physical form so he became confined to the Proving Grounds. However it was easy enough even back then to extrapolate that if this applied to Guoba and Andrius then it should apply to everything else. For example, Orobashi and the Tatarigami.
Of course back then when I presented this people got mad. The most thoughtful of replies I got was the compromise that only the Archons that willingly sacrificed their power or placed it into the land itself would survive in a diminished state. Those who were killed in the Archon War still died. Without additional information I couldn't debunk this idea with anything besides just the fact that Madame Ping flat out didn't say that.
So from v2.1's Moonchase we wait almost two years until v3.6 when Baizhu finally released and we get that image I started this topic off with. And in case people forgot what that quest was about, the thing he's calling alive is in fact a "dead" Archon.
The whole quest was about the dangers posed by god remains. Now rather than the single line and specific example of Guoba which could relegate the information to only include Andrius, this time there's a whole quest. In this quest we're shown that god remains are alive. So going back to Orobashi, he lives through the Tatarigami which we've been shown is the case. All the way back in the manhua before we even knew it was Orobashi, Collei was infected with Tatarigami through Dottore's early dabbles into Delusion technology. Her power manifested as black fire in the form of a snake. When her powers activate it looks no different than the Tatarigami infected enemies we find in Inazuma, menacing purple auras and mindless rage.
Baizhu's quest also further reinforced another part of the idea that gods don't die, the entire point of Xiao and the yaksha. Even after the Archon War, the god remains poisoned the land. Therefore the adepti had to go and purify them, soaking up their lingering malice in the form of karma. Prior to Baizhu's quest most assumed this was some kind of blight left by the Archons, maybe some powerful emotion stored in the Leylines or something. The quest shows it's just the remains themselves.
Naturally if I'm talking about this now you can figure out it still wasn't enough. So this year, Lantern Rite 2024 we get Cloud Retainer's Character Quest. It was far less focused on it but she made a statement:
This statement points to the conscious behavior of god remains. If they were dead, if they were like living organisms but not truly living then there's no reason why they'd actively sniff out Cloud Retainer to seek their revenge. Viruses don't have feelings and spread simply to spread. Only if you're conscious would you go out of your way to move towards a specific target. That's something the Baizhu story was missing, active targeting of an enemy which again had caused some people to dismiss it. But now four Lantern Rites later we have Madame Ping making the statement that gods don't die, Baizhu telling us that god remains are alive, the yaksha having to deal with those living remains, Orobashi as one of those living remains, the Perilous Trail event which showed an Eldritch Abomination formed from living god remains and finally now Xianyun telling us these living remains are conscious and active.
No I'm sure somebody will still find a way to dismiss it but the information is all there now just like with my Archon 101 series.
There was another part of the lore that we haven't had a clear answer for and that was what time period Liyue is based on. Cloud Retainer's Character Quest.... still does nothing to resolve this lol
There are at least three periods in Chinese history that Liyue could be based on. There are allusions to the Silk Road and the fact that Liyue is the wealthiest of the Seven Nations and the hub of commerce across Teyvat points to the Tang Dynasty era. Several character designs take inspiration from the period's dress as well. On the opposite end though we have Zhongli himself along with the outfits for most of the NPCs of Liyue which are lifted from the Nationalist era, a combination of traditional style with the incoming western influence. And then of course you have Qiqi an actual jiangshi or Chinese zombie/vampire which was created during the Qing Dynasty.
Side Note: I had previously believed Liyue to be the only nation based on fictional China, that of wuxia because of all the vastly different eras it's based on alongside all of the fantastic elements also derived from the medium. That is until Sumeru arrived and was based around several different points of Persian history including the points where it was only a piece of the Muslim Conquests and also the fictional account from the Shahnameh. In keeping with my poetry theory it seems likely Natlan will follow this trend, which I'll be getting to to follow up on my previous theory about it.
Anyway thanks to Xianyun we have another aspect of Liyue culture that's inspired from a part of Chinese history.
The "fiduciary house" she brings up is actually the 票号 piaohao a Qing Dynasty era precursor to modern day banks. These were fairly rudimentary by comparison, though as a result the services they offer might be accurately translated the way the localization team chose. Fiduciaries are trusted individuals that manage the finances of their clients. A fiduciary duty is the legal requirement that the entity entrusted by the client must act in their best interest. As you might imagine modern day banks don't always have a fiduciary duty.
While looking up this information I actually stumbled upon something much more interesting though. Banking worked very differently between the East and the West. Tracing the history even further back you go from Qing Dynasty era 票号 to Song Dynasty era 钱庄 qianzhuang and then Tang Dynasty 柜坊 guifang the earliest form of banking in China which acted more like a vault of safe deposit boxes. All of these were private enterprises. Before the invention of these facilities Chinese people would just keep their money hidden away on their properties, you know like "hiding money under the mattress." Of course their system for this was far more elaborate something like hiding the money in jars and then hiding the jars in the ground and then having your pig sty over that part of the ground. They didn't mess around.
That was China. On our side of the world though banking started far earlier. Rather than being a personal matter, economics itself was controlled by religious institutions. This goes all the way back to Babylonia where temples doubled as schools, libraries and courtrooms on top of being banks and of course places of worship. Temples used to mint the local currency and also store people's savings. In fact we call them mints and money because of a specific Roman Temple. The Romans used the Temple of Juno Moneta to mint their coins.
Side Note: There are a few versions of how this happened. The epithet of moneta came from monere which means to warn. In one version, Rome suffered an earthquake and apparently a voice was heard coming from Juno's temple saying they needed to sacrifice a pregnant cow. In thanks they gave Juno the epithet moneta. In another (I think it's the more popular story) the Romans were warned before the Battle of Allia by Juno's geese. (And then they still lost bad, Rome was sacked, they committed to supplicia canum or punishment of the guard dogs for not being the ones to warn them and Romans developed a long-lasting fear of the Gauls afterwards. Not sure what use that warning served lol) The stories also become circular. In some accounts, Marcus Capitolinus was so grateful for the warning that he built the temple a year later while other accounts say the Senate had him executed for failing to stop the Gauls. Did his ghost build the temple? Another version says that the temple was built over the house of Marcus Capitolinus about forty years after his death. And another one said the Gauls were climbing up to the temple where the geese were and they heard them. Time traveling temple?
Anyway the history of banking and money is interesting and all but that's not why I bring it up. Instead what do we know about Teyvat's currency? Mora was minted at the Golden House right? And it was minted by the god Morax right? So in a way the Golden House is something like a temple too, the Temple of Morax.
We know the oldest human civilization in this game is based on Greco-Roman culture. And remember that old theory from Ashikai how she related Zhongli to the God Kings and also to the dragons like Neuvillette, his Leviathan to Zhongli's Behemoth? In the theory I proposed that Zhongli might be working on bringing back the Seven Sovereigns no longer to act in a capacity of leadership but rather protectorate for the humans. But originally they would have been the leaders, the Seven before the original Seven. What if the reason Mora is used as the universal currency of Tevyat stems from this old world order when humanity existed in a single nation? Looking back at the first Zhongli Character Quest it's actually ambiguous when he started making it. Considering the lore this would be based on, it makes more sense for Mora to have been created during the Greco-Roman inspired period and used universally ever since. In fact the Roman coins that were minted at the Temple of Juno Moneta were called moneta just like Morax's minted coins are called Mora. (I still remember the joke from the Game Theory video. "He named the currency after himself.")
Side Note: Also as it was established earlier this can't be a Chinese reference since Chinese currency is unrelated to religion unlike our western version. Chinese currencies have always been minted and distributed by the leadership. This actually fits with the playable story. Where previously Mora was minted by Morax at the Golden House just like the Romans minted moneta at the Temple of Juno Moneta in her name, Morax stops minting Mora at the end of the Archon Quest and leaves the Golden House's operations to the Qixing who serve as Liyue's leadership.
If Mora was actually created that long ago then it reframes the conclusion of the Archon Quest and makes Zhongli's decision even more impactful. We could even consider Mora to have been part of the foundation of the world itself just like the element system and Irminsul. And that brings me to a really old theory I had. From Yelan's Character Quest we know that Pantalone is in Liyue. From the Pale Flame we know his goal is to become the heart made of gold to control the supply of money. Back in v4.2 we got a new title for Zhongli, Deus Auri or God of Gold and it makes sense that a heart from the God of Gold would be a "heart made of gold." I think it further pushes that he and Pantalone will come to blows one day, maybe even setting up a Third Character Quest for Zhongli, a new Weekly Boss for Liyue or maybe an Archon Quest Interlude. Once Pantalone is defeated it could be the culmination of Zhongli's actions started in the Archon Quest by his retirement and refusal to create more Mora and setting in stone Teyvat's new future. We may even get an answer to what the Qixing did/will do to resolve the Mora situation.
Btw I did not go into this topic thinking I'd be linking the creation of Mora with Babylonian temple banks. It just goes to show what you end up learning from playing this game.
