Or whatever other Lumine pairing you ship. 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!
Recently I gave my interpretation of the new Artifact Set in v5.5. It seems to be telling the history of the Second Who Came and how she would be deceived into becoming the Sustainer of her deceiver's Heavenly Principles.
However from what I've been seeing most other theories believe this Artifact Set actually refers to the Third Descender so let's see if we can make sense of it that way.
The obvious thing we can relate between the two accounts is that this "voyager's" story ends with Celestia wiping her mind and separating her from the angel who we're told also had her form altered. According to Skirk the Third Descender's body was taken by Celestia and used to make the Gnoses which would definitely be an altered form if the Descender was punished in the same way. Also switching between Second and Third Descender wouldn't affect their ability to quickly remove the brainwashing Celestia used on the angels.
What about the rest of the story though? We've known for a long time now that Lumine woke up before Aether did when they arrived on Teyvat. Therefore Lumine could have had a her own separate adventure before her journey following their capture by the Sustainer. However we don't see anything about her having ever had a lover or having some foreknowledge about the impending doom of the planet. It could be part of the memories she lost after being separated from her angel but if there is no motivation from this part of her story, she may as well be a different character.
Also if she is the voyager then this might help explain the Dragon Sovereign she encountered back in her ethereal form. Since Morax didn't fall to the Abyss but we know several other sovereigns did, Lumine could have met one of them. What if the timeline of their births wasn't so linear? In my theory about it I said that Morax was first and we know he was the oldest Archon at least. At 6000 years old at the start of the game it makes sense from a Gnostic perspective that his birth was the birth of the planet itself. However twin siblings can be born minutes apart and one is still considered "older" than the other just by those few minutes. What if the sovereigns were also born at the same time as the planet, one after the next? At the very least we just need two to have been born relatively close to each other. Morax has to be the oldest as he is the planet but maybe the Cryo Dragon Sovereign and the primordial heart it brought with it which predetermined that life would always start on this nascent world. Then one day Lumine meets it. We'll be headed for its domain of Snezhnaya next so it would be an opportune time to encounter it or learn of its history thus learning more about Lumine. Why does it matter that Lumine is the voyager then? Well Aether's met Morax already and back then the story was about finding his sister. Morax had no information about that which should mean he doesn't know her. The first character to recognize her was Dainsleif and it was a big deal back then.
What about that stuff about this dragon becoming the bulwark to shield the planet from destruction then? In my old Chess Theory where I was trying to predict the chess pieces of each Gnosis (before we found out they were just one Rook and six Queens) I linked the Tsaritsa with Zhongli as the two Rooks. Part of my justification then was that both types of elemental slimes featured the same gameplay mechanic of destructible armor. Therefore it stands to reason the Cryo Dragon Sovereign also believed it could shield the world from destruction. Based on the line itself it also sounds like what we see on Dragonspine where the bones of Durin coat the mountain and its blood was how we revived its Ley Line tree. The Ley Lines do protect a localized area of the planet after all so there might be a way to make this connection. It isn't anywhere near as clean or poetic as the Geo Sovereign of course but it could still work.
There is a major problem with Lumine though. On paper it might make sense that the outcome described by the Artifact Set explains how her body was turned into the Gnoses. However it also describes the voyager's arrival in Teyvat as her having possessed a human vessel. If this vessel was the body of the Third Descender that was altered into the Gnoses then it is still a human body so it wouldn't make sense that it could be changed in this way and Lumine would have still been in her divine form without it thus not needing to commit to her war against destiny. At present I have no way to reconcile this. It still makes more sense if the Sustainer had descended into the body of this youth and the limits of this human vessel led to her defeat by Celestia thus she was deceived into becoming the Sustainer. Now that that altered form is dying which a human vessel would, her true essence is slowly becoming free thus whispering to Aether to guide him during Sumeru and then Fontaine.
So I guess the Lumilde ship is still intact. (or whichever ship you favor for Lumine)
But if we're thinking about Lumine as this voyager then what if we kept playing around with this? What other voyager could we think of for this role?
Well if we're switching between the Second and Third Descender then why not have our voyager (旅者) just stay a traveler. (旅行者) Would Aether fit into this role?
As the Fourth Descender, our boy could just as easily do any of the things his predecessors could so that already lines up with the Artifact. Just like Lumine he could have met with the Cryo Dragon Sovereign or any of the other fallen sovereigns besides Morax and Neuvillette. (there's an argument to be made that Apep was in no condition to recognize Aether even if they had met) And it's after that I think it could get interesting.
I've been saying that the angel is just an altered form of the Dragon Sovereigns. After Phanes defeated them it needed to control them to have them maintain its principles. Since Morax is known to have had many different forms there's no reason why a male Dragon Sovereign couldn't become a female angel. But there's also no need for this angel to have been the dragon the voyager met. The dragon could have been an interesting acquaintance which inspired the voyager to return to the planet only to find it under the thrall of the Heavenly Principles. They then fell in love with a separate angel individual unrelated to the Dragon Sovereign.
So then who would this angel be? Well it definitely isn't clean but what if Paimon was that angel? Old theories have long suggested that Paimon might be a Seelie or related to the Seelies. We learned in Natlan's Archon Quest that Seelies are the devolved forms of the angels and Paimon with her Ars Goetia name could fit the role of an angel punished by Celestia who took away her memories and cursed all of her kind into becoming Seelies. Just like the Seelies we've encountered Paimon does guide humans (she's Aether's guide) and she has a penchant for desiring treasure. Unfortunately this wouldn't explain her immunity to Abyssal Corruption as we know only the Descenders have this ability. (my theory about her is that she's one of the Shining Shades who would have been aspects of Phanes thus likely sharing some of its Descender traits)
Something else that works with Aether being the voyager is a long-standing oddity about this game. We know Aether is not human. He has abilities that no human in Teyvat possesses which was eventually revealed to be because he is a Descender. However even after this revelation he keeps referring to himself as a human and so do all the other characters. (and young according to elemental characters) What exactly makes people think this? He's immune to Abyssal Corruption. Not a human quality. He can purify the Abyss. Not even an Archon quality. He doesn't have a Vision but wields multiple elements. That's at the very least a Dragon Sovereign quality. Well if this Fourth Descender arrived in Teyvat by possessing a human vessel then said vessel is still human thus Aether can still say he's human and any metric used on his physical body would produce the same results.
As for the outcome, this new Artifact Set doesn't actually tell us what became of the voyager. It only describes how the angel was punished. It stands to reason the only thing that befell Aether was being separated from Paimon and then losing his memories.
There is also poetic merit to this interpretation. After being torn away from each other by Phanes, Aether and Paimon still found their way back to each other. This also adds a personal element to their eventual confrontation against the Heavenly Principles.
Now in both cases there is one more potential problem. We've been shown that the Traveler twins arrived in Teyvat together. Can we resolve this? Well one thing I used when I was theorizing about these two in the past was the Aeons of Gnosticism. Aeons are created in dyad pairs and can only create through joining together and creating more dyad pairs. Therefore while the Artifact Set portrays only one voyager, it could be that this consciousness is singular but their appearance on the lower plane of Teyvat forced them to be a dyad pair upon descent. Aether goes on to possess the youth while Lumine perhaps splits off from this union between divine entity and human vessel thus becoming a female counterpart of that vessel. They would have still traveled the stars together because they would have been a single being each time, only dividing into "siblings" once they arrived on those lower planes. This might explain Aether's separation anxiety and that he'd never been apart from Lumine in the past.
The next part is who woke up first. Well since they don't quite have all their memories together it is possible Aether was the one who awoke first. This is when his encounter with the angel Paimon happened and when he was separated from her, Celestia only sealed him back into his meteor. Then Lumine awoke and became the princess of Khaenri'ah before incurring the wrath of Celestia and waking Aether up to escape from Teyvat where they were then recaptured by the Sustainer.
I still think the best interpretation is the Second Descender and Morax but this was a fun thought experiment.
If Lumine was the voyager:
If Aether was the voyager:
Either way:
PS: An interesting detail. It probably isn't what miHoYo was intending thus probably doesn't relate to this topic but this topic is more for fun anyway. When you google "celestial disk-construct" one of the search results you get is the Nebra sky disc, an artifact of proto-Indo-European origin.
Just looking at it should bring up some Genshiny ideas right? According to the research, this artifact might be depicting the round sun, a crescent moon and the Pleiades constellation. The Pleiades themselves can be linked to a common theme in Genshin, references to the number seven. There are seven stars in the Pleiades. However it has also been suggested that it could represent other clusters of seven stars for example the Big Dipper which is referenced in Genshin directly, the Qixing in Liyue.
The semi-circle at the bottom was also discovered to be an addition made to the artifact at a later date which has been interpreted as a "solar boat." On its own this would relate to the solar barge of Ra as he traveled the underworld. This myth was used extensively in Sumeru. For example Apep is the snake that tries to kill Ra during this journey and Deshret's alternate name Amun is an aspect of Ra, Amun-Ra. If we expand from solar boat to other classical transport systems of sun gods then we can bring up the solar chariot which then relates to Phanes. This boat was the final addition to the disc thus could relate to how the planet existed before Phanes set up the false sky and the current system of Teyvat that presides over it.
Topic originally created on May 4th, 2025.
