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's been a busy month since Chenyu Vale released so I haven't been able to comment on my old predictions about it nor talk about the monumental lore update that it and our newest character had brought. But better late than never.
Ok so Suan Ni. Before any predictions I just want to gush a little over the culture and mythology miHoYo introduces us to thanks to this game. Suan Ni or 狻猊 is one of the children of dragons but these aren't quite popular in the modern day. How does miHoYo help us remember these less known creatures? Last time over on Star Rail we got a little robot lion/dog thing called Diting. Yes Diting is also not well known anymore. But what is unmistakable these days is the Chinese lion.
The diting doesn't actually look like this but I'm pretty sure we all know lions also don't look like this either. Well Suan Ni happens to be the part lion part dragon child of the dragon. And that is how it was depicted since the beginning. Yes as it turns out Chinese lions were never really lions but Suan Ni. I think that'll actually come as a shock to even Chinese players because with Gaming and his Wushou Dance (which is funny since the wu in Wushou already means dance) I'm pretty sure miHoYo's trying to explain this history to even the players back home.
Anyway it turns out China got its first glimpse at real lions through Persia (what's a good neighbor for?) and by the time of the Han Dynasty it was accepting tributes from India. Being Buddhist India gifted the Emperor with lions which in Buddhism can symbolize the bodhisattva or an enlightened one that chose to remain on Earth to guide others. This term was translated in Chinese as 师子 shizi which only means anything if you know that the modern term is 狮子 shizi. The additional strokes denote an animal and was introduced to the term in the Tang Dynasty. Because the 师子 had such a lofty meaning the old Suan Ni mythology slowly faded away and people just started calling the statues of Suan Ni 石狮 shishi or stone lions instead.
One last thing I wanted to bring up about the Suan Ni is that it likes hanging out in foggy misty places where it can sit in quiet contemplation.
Now let's get the big one out of the way. Remember all the times I brought up the Prayers Artifact Series how I said that there was a time (maybe Rene's Hyperboreas cycle) where Teyvat was just a chaotic mess of elements? Part of that lined up with the information from Enkanomiya where it says Phanes remade the world to better suit the humans. Thanks to Lingyuan and the Chenyu Vale World Quest that is confirmed. And what's more she revealed that at one point even humans were part of this old elemental world which changed because of Phanes.
In the distant past, they were indeed part of nature. But they are so no longer.
A long long time ago I made my overall predictions for the game. Back then (and I think some people do even now) the running belief was that Visions were bad. Some believed it was a something like a way to monitor the humans. Others brought up Vennessa and her "ascension" into Celestia. And that even led to some believing that the Delusions might be a good replacement one day. But I theorized that the ability to use elements as a result of the Visions necessarily made them beneficial. At worst it was the Heavenly Principles in play that was limiting humans with the physical Vision. Now that we know humanity was once elemental as well this seems very likely to be true. And it also points out that Phanes hadn't changed Teyvat for "our" sake. Instead it's basically what I pointed out in Archon 101. The Heavenly Principles forced a system of only seven elements out of a world that previously had innumerable elements. It also forced each individual including its Seven Archons to only be capable of a single element. That's what the Visions are and that was also part of what I said would be how our characters would overcome the principles. We actually got our first glimpse of this when Kazuha activated his friend's Electro Vision and became momentarily powerful enough to repel an Archon, a combat-oriented one at that. Actually if we tie this new information back to the prophecy then perhaps Egeria's "original sin" wasn't so much that she created new life but that she'd created a form of humanity that was elemental: Oceanid humans. While there probably wasn't any danger of these humans figuring out their elemental composition (they were dissolving before that happened) there was a non-zero probability of them doing so which undermined the principles.
The next part about this is the "adepti." I'd been saying this casually across my theories like in Archon 101 that an adepti is noted to be a step under the Archons and therefore related. Then as a result of Moonchase we learned that what constitutes an adepti isn't set in stone. Guoba was an Archon but considered an adepti. This blurred the lines even more. Well thanks to Cloud Retainer we now know that even non-Archon adepti can be purely elemental beings too and at the same time they don't have to be. Cloud Retainer herself along with Fujin, Lingyuan and Changsheng are all elemental beings. This is why in the World Quest Fujin can lose or regain her human form based on how much elemental energy she has. Lingyuan has a human form too as did Changsheng. Shape-shifting as I pointed out in Archon 201 based on the information we got from Nahida's Second Character Quest is another ability of elemental beings once they've accumulated enough elemental energy. And should they lose a significant amount of that energy they diminish. Changsheng if she is the Herblord likely lost her memories on top of diminishing, though at least she's still capable of speech compared to Guoba. (and the Seelies)
On the flip side, Cloud Retainer became our first playable elemental being adeptus. All the previous ones like Yanfei and Ganyu who are half-illuminated beasts still activated their elemental powers by getting a Vision. This could be a result of their human half but even Xiao has a Vision and in his Character Stories this extends to all yaksha, calling it the yaksha "Third Eye." I'd say that gives us a rule of thumb to go off of. At any point anything on Teyvat could be a pure elemental being. As long as they are reliant on elemental energy they're likely an elemental being. On top of that elemental abilities is natural. It was the Heavenly Principles that limited the use of them.
With that said let's get back to my old topic. The first thing's pretty easy right?
Who could've seen this one coming?
O that's right.
However, I also made a big goof. I broke the then existing lore about Chenyu Vale in two, with the Artifact Set telling the personal story about the local adepti and the new Battle Pass weapon telling of a further ancient history related to Celestia. For the personal story I actually linked it to the Cataclysm but this is Liyue which was never directly attacked by Khaenri'ah. So because of that really silly mistake I missed out on how both stories were connected.
Side Note: That said, coincidence struck again because the thing I had attacking Fujin and the Herblord was a powerful Abyssal creature. The God in Chenyu Vale might turn out to be the old Hydro Dragon which would have been using Abyssal Power as it had sided with Nibelung back then. More on this another day.
As for the actual story we got it almost feels like the Artifacts mashed things together. It does make sense for a story that took place all the way back during the Archon War but wow playing through it was a rollercoaster.
As soon as I saw this quest exclusive Suanni I thought for sure I'd gotten it right. This was the Herblord. And then we got this
Two adepti. Suanni and carp. Perfect. The lore up to this point also only talked about two adepti so it really fit.
.... And then late into the quest we start hearing about how the Herblord had the form of a white snake. A while ago I brought up the idea that miHoYo might be purposely throwing red herrings at us to show how difficult it is to get to the truth. I wanted to make sure to note by the end of that topic that I wasn't suggesting everybody else had gotten things wrong and I had somehow managed to figure everything out. I also fell for some of these red herrings and here's a live example of that. It can happen to anybody. The point is to do your best not to fall for them and even if the red herring is the popular theory, that doesn't protect it from still being one.
Speaking of red herrings, the Artifact Set also alluded to Fujin, Lingyuan and Changsheng knowing Mountain Shaper and Cloud Retainer. Coupled with Cloud Retainer's release as a new character this made it easy to believe that she would have something to do with the story. However, as it turns out the Chenyu Vale crew only knew the adepti in passing like commoners making the acquaintance of celebrities once.
And of course the mother of all red herrings:
Celestia is just there. And there's nothing going on with that. It's probably the biggest subversion of expectations to come out of this game. There've been theories since the very beginning about where exactly Celestia was floating over and what the significance of it was. And it's nothing.
What's sitting directly underneath this terrifying island in the sky?
Jim Bob the Treasure Hoarder's secret stash.
Topic originally created on March 17th, 2024.
