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!
We've gotten several terms since the launch of this game. Ethereal, Sacrifice, Miasmic Fiend, Vessel, Messenger and now Enchainer. Taking it just from a Zenless perspective, it sounds like the Creator set up its own gacha tierlist with Ethereal chumps at the bottom and Enchainer SSS ranks at the very top. However, widening the view to include the rest of the Hoyoverse lets us see that all the Creator did was rip off what the Imaginary Tree's agents have been doing for years.
Where the Creator has lowly grunts in the Ethereals, the Imaginary's Tree's honkai that plagues the Honkai Gakuen and Honkai Impact 3rd universes corrupt people into Honkai Zombies. A Sacrifice was explained to have a Sacrifice Core back in the Season 1 Epilogue and the core that we needed to retrieve was shown to be in the form of an amethyst gemstone. In Honkai, a Herrscher Gem is what creates Pseudo-Herrschers. One step up is the basic Herrscher, a corrupted person who had high honkai adaptability. Similarly, those who have the potential to become Vessels, Messengers and Enchainers all have high Ether tolerance like Void Hunters, Sarah and Phaethon. What makes them different is what also sets Herrschers apart. If a Herrscher has in their possession one of the Herrscher Gems, they increase in power. If they possess a fully developed core but not their true core, they are at least more powerful than one with only gems. Finally a fully powered Herrscher is one that has their own core which can even be further powered by possession of other cores and gems. Sirin during the Second Eruption for example was a Herrscher with a fully developed core and then was given four Herrscher Gems by the Will of the Honkai which made her nigh-unstoppable. There aren't actual names for these different levels of Herrscher but that's where Zenless was more diligent. While it's not clear if Vessel and Messenger are different things, we can consider Sarah to be a Vessel. She was elevated to a level beyond any Sacrifice but she wasn't the intended Messenger for the Creator because she doesn't wield a Void Hunter Weapon therefore doesn't have a Karma Core. She'd be the base level Herrscher. A step up would then be Shunguang had she been fully converted, a Messenger. Her weapon would contain her core but it wouldn't have been fully matured yet. This is unlike Vike who'd fully merged with her weapon's Karma Core thus becoming an Enchainer, the base form of Sirin. We have yet to see an Enchainer wielding multiple cores or one that absorbed the cores of Sacrifices but it stands to reason this would be possible. (and we might see that in the final battle against Arche)
Another aspect of this is the cores themselves. In Honkai games, a defeated Herrscher leaves behind their Herrscher Core. These can be fashioned into weapons called Divine Keys. Likewise, the Void Hunter Weapons that Arche built have an Enchainer's Karma Core at its center. These weapons possess a modicum of the reality warping power of the Enchainer whose core they possess. Then it is through their difference that we can see the perspectives of the Imaginary Tree versus the Sea of Quanta. A Divine Key is just a weapon. It no longer possesses any of the Herrscher's personality or will. Anyone can wield them without consequence like Raven the World Serpent mercenary and several of Fu Hua's disciples like Li Sushang. Conversely, all wielders of the Void Hunter Weapons suffer from the core's corruption on top of side-effects unique to each. Tailless attempts to possess its wielder with its bloodlust, forcing them to kill indiscriminately until it consumes the wielder themselves. The Qingming Sword erases the memories of its wielder and then proceeds to remove senses until finally it erases the wielder themselves. This shows the mildly benevolent nature of the Imaginary Tree given that all possible wielders of the Divine Keys would be beings born within its universes. On the opposite end, the Sea of Quanta wants to destroy these universes and therefore everything in them including possible wielders of the Void Hunter Weapons that it can't turn into Enchainers.
We are still missing one thing though. In Honkai games, honkai could also summon alien beings called Honkai Beasts. These are not human based at all and instead are a silicon based lifeform. We don't have enough information to confirm it but if I had to guess, the Creator's version of a Honkai Beast might be the Miasmic Fiends. There can be other versions of this though and why is that?
If we look all the way back at the basic structure of the Hoyoverse then it should become clear. In the beginning there was nothingness. That was the Sea of Quanta. Then one day a metaphysical tree sprouted from this sea called the Imaginary Tree. Every single universe in Hoyoverse games are "leaves" on this tree. They are formed from it, the Zenless universe included. Herrschers are creations of the agents of the tree, the Cocoon of Finality specifically in Honkai Impact 3rd. One power the Herrschers have is command over a specific aspect of reality in their universe. For example the Herrscher of Corruption can possess people or hack into computer systems, the rules of corruption in a nutshell. Enchainers have the same power over the rules of their domain but that domain never extends to the entire universe. Why? Well, the reason the Herrschers have full command over the rules of the universe is because the universe is a part of the Imaginary Tree. Where do Enchainers have their power? Each of the Six Great Hollows is meant to have an Enchainer who controls all the rules of their assigned Hollow. Therefore while Herrschers share control over the same universe, each of the Enchainers create specific environments within their Hollow and so we should expect to see different "Miasmic Fiend" phenomena depending on the Enchainer. Now why are the Enchainers so limited?
A Hollow is essentially a wound that the Sea of Quanta has managed to create in the Zenless universe. This plays out across all the other games. It's called the Abyss in Genshin. It's called Stellarons in Star Rail. In the beginning, these wounds can be healed or scar tissue can be formed to seal it. The Cataclysm in Genshin for example would be the largest scar that held the Abyss back. However, Zenless is the worst universe we've seen so far. The Hollows are everywhere. These wounds have been allowed to fester and become cancerous. They no longer function according to the universe's rules and so in these tumors is where the sea's rules apply instead and they can therefore be manipulated by its Enchainers.
It feels like a lopsided fight then doesn't it? The Imaginary Tree's Herrschers have full dominion of the universe itself while the Sea of Quanta's Enchainers can only control the spaces within the Hollows? How does the sea ever gain any ground? I actually had a theory about that based on something Alice said once in Genshin. First, outside of every single universe that the Imaginary Tree has created is the Sea of Quanta. This "sea" is actually composed of quantum fields at various energy levels which spontaneously generate unstable Bubble Universes. However, how did the Imaginary Tree create its universes in the first place? It turns out the universes are simply stabilized versions of these quantum fields which means they can always be destabilized. That's what the Hollows really are. In any universe, there are choices and one becomes reality while the others are eliminated. How are they eliminated? As Alice explained in Genshin, they also become Bubble Universes and these are short-lived versions that usually go unnoticed. However, if they were able to remain then they might look like big spherical spaces where reality becomes warped as information conflicts within them. (you can't be up and down at the same time for example) If enough of them form and remain in the universe then just like air bubbles within a water pipe, they cause cavitation that eventually leads the pipe's material to wear down and fail. In other words while it seems like the Imaginary Tree, its agents and their Herrschers have the advantage, all it takes is for the Sea of Quanta, its agents - like the Creator - and their Enchainers to sustain the Hollows so they destabilize the universe just enough for its border with the sea outside of it to collapse.
Side Note: You can even think of it like the story in Genshin's Fontaine. Why were Fontainians susceptible to dissolving through simple contact with the Primordial Sea? The human souls within the Oceanid bodies of the Fontainians belonged to the Primordial Sea and wanted to be reunited with it. All it took was contact between the Fontainian with water from the Primordial Sea to cause its Oceanid body to fail and the soul trapped within it to return to the sea. Similarly, each universe made by the Imaginary Tree is made using the material it absorbed from the Sea of Quanta. And you know, it's never overtly stated but groups like the Abyss Order, the Lord Ravagers and the Exaltists also show that the beings within these universes want to be reunited with the rest of the Sea of Quanta.
Zenless is the only game so far where the Sea of Quanta has gotten furthest in its goal to destroy the universes created by the Imaginary Tree. As a result, we can see that it follows the same playbook as the tree.
- Ethereals are Honkai Zombies (literally the Chinese name for Ethereal is Ether Corpse)
- Sacrifices are Pseudo-Herrschers (both possess a gem core)
- Vessels, Messengers, Enchainers are Herrschers
- A Vessel is the weakest form of Herrscher without their Herrscher Core
- A Messenger is a Herrscher without a fully developed core
- An Enchainer is a true Herrscher with their own fully developed core
- Herrschers can be further empowered with other cores or gems. We have yet to see what that would be with Enchainers.
- Void Hunter Weapons are Divine Keys, built with a Karma/Herrscher Core base and a special material, Porcelloy/Soullium
- Divine Keys can be used by anyone because Herrschers are still creations of the Imaginary Tree. Void Hunter Weapons have severe side-effects because they come from the Sea of Quanta.
- Miasmic Fiends may be Honkai Beasts as they are entirely composed of an alien matter. Fiends are Ether-born beings while Honkai Beasts are silicon-based creatures.
- Herrschers have dominion over an aspect of their universe's reality. Enchainers have full dominion over a specific Hollow.
- Enchainers are limited to the Hollows because the Hollows are encroachments by the sea into the Zenless universe and only within them do the sea's rules apply
- The Enchainers actually still have the advantage because all they need is to exacerbate the Hollows to weaken the universe enough that its boundary with the Sea of Quanta outside of it ruptures.
Note: This topic doesn't account for the information revealed in v3.2. I have another topic coming up to discuss that.