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!
Correct me if I'm wrong but wasn't this game fantasy action adventure once upon a time? Sure it's part of the Hoyoverse and it does touch upon scientific subjects from time to time (usually in relation to being part of the Hoyoverse) but we're fighting with swords and magical books. Space travel used to be this dream some folks at Petrichor had and were nowhere near achieving. Now there's been a moon base since ye olde times, everybody knows how to use a holographic HUD and we're getting into subjects like the Dark Forest explanation for the Fermi Paradox?
Let's start with that. As you can see from the header image, we now know exactly who summoned the Traveler twins to Teyvat which was lore first mentioned in Inversion of Genesis. According to the new lore, it was actually the dragons that called them and it was to their undoing.
The core theme of the Moongazers World Quest was that aliens had sent a message across space before their planet was destroyed. Eventually Nin-Kiggia translated the message they'd sent which explained that just the act of sending out a message could alert the Abyss to their existence which would then lead to its invasion and eventually the annihilation of the planet. This is the Dark Forest which assumes that space is just a larger version of the open seas and any aliens that exist out there would be just as cut throat and vile as our imperial ancestors. Alerting any of them to Earth's position is a guaranteed way to get us all killed.
In modern day Genshin, this has already played out. We do see the message that the Traveler twins left the dragons but Phanes got to the planet first and just like any good colonizer, it immediately went to work subjugating the dragons, fooling the moon sisters and reaping all of the planet's resources to its own benefit and to the detriment of the local population. (first explained in the Three Realms Gateway Offering event) That said, that wasn't what the devs were going for. At the end of the quest, we get Volume 2 of the Moongazer's Engraving that you can see in the image above. The Abyss is meant to be the sole colonizer so Phanes is actually one of many defenders like Ysna'qurel whose planet eventually succumbed anyway. This is another attempt to retcon the original role of Phanes and its Heavenly Principles in the game but it actually comes off as a case of the cure being worse than the disease. Everything else about this actually creates more problems for the lore than it solves as well so let's run down that list next.
Firstly, Phanes in the original lore was one of the emissaries sent by the Imaginary Tree to protect the Genshin universe from the Sea of Quanta which manifests in this universe as the Abyss. However now Phanes is just one of many aliens that had the same plan to try and fail to protect other planets from the Abyss. We don't get the same expanded lore about Ysna'qurel subjugating the local species but it's implied given everything else matches. Ysna'qurel also had to defeat seven "monsters" or "perhaps compatriots" and bring the entire world "under the rule of their empire."
Second, given Ysna'qurel also failed and the Traveler twins who are also Descenders are just aliens themselves, what exactly made Phanes and the Travelers immune to the Abyss? Clearly Ysna'qurel wasn't as it ultimately failed and we've already seen other aliens like Skirk who are imbued with Abyssal Power rather than immune to it. The Traveler twins also come from a ruined world thus showing their own species weren't immune to the Abyss either. What made them and Phanes alone special in this universe? Again back when they were emissaries of the Imaginary Tree, it only made sense because the Imaginary Tree is equal and opposite to the Sea of Quanta and neither could gain ground over the other which is further demonstrated by how Phanes hasn't been able to truly eliminate the Abyss from Teyvat despite its power being able to cleanse areas of it instantly.
Third, the point of the Dark Forest is that sending out any message allows the colonizing Abyss to trace the message back to the source thus locating a new planet to destroy. The ending of the World Quest posed the dilemma of having the courage to warn other worlds about the Abyss and inform them of the struggle occurring across the universe or to cowardly hide in the safety of silence. This is just a little undermined by the fact that the Abyss has already found Teyvat and has been a major threat to it for millennia. That was the point of the War of Funerary Flame, the Heavenly Principles, Natlan's unique rules and the Cataclysm. It's made even more hilarious when Columbina proposes that she can use her Trilune power to watch over Ninnin as she travels out into space and prevent the Abyss from noticing. As revealed by the Nod-Krai Archon Quest, Columbina was created by herself after the Abyss-corrupted Nibelung returned to Teyvat and corrupted several of the Seven Sovereigns with Abyssal Power and imprisoned the moon sisters so he could turn their moons into the space-based weapons that we then explore in detail during the World Quest.
Side Note: My guess is Surtalogi's backstory was meant to serve as a precursor to this Dark Forest plot. Surtalogi as Skirk explained was infused with tremendous Abyssal Power during the Cataclysm and then used that power to go off world and visit others like Skirk's world which was destroyed by the Abyss shortly afterwards. It had previously been invaded by another colonizing alien species for an earlier demonstration of Dark Forest.
Fourth, if we're now dealing with the Dark Forest then this story opens up a very unfortunate can of worms. We know Ysna'qurel subjugated its world for the sake of protecting it against the Abyss. Phanes did the same to Teyvat with its principles. However, we also know that's exactly what the Traveler twins themselves would have done. In the lore of the new outfit they got from the first ending of the Nod-Krai Archon Quest, it's explained that the twins were traveling through space after losing their homeworld and were in the process of finding a new planet to terraform and inhabit with their own people. Their people were housed in a genetic vault aboard their ship and would be Teyvat's humanity, the beings that replaced the previous dominant species, the dragons. (this is because that part of the lore was lifted wholesale from Final Fantasy IX)
Finally Fifth, what exactly is the timeline here? A major aspect of this quest was the "black kuuhenki" developed by the dragon researchers. However, this research endeavor took place somewhere after Nibelung left for space and long before he returned. Part of the story even included confusion as to whether the alien message came from him or aliens. Lusalim who preceded Nin-Kiggia lived during the first era of Phanes arriving on Teyvat where he capitulated to him and considered himself a traitor to his own people. Meanwhile kuuhenki are Columbina's familiars and generated from her kuuvahki. This only started to exist on Tevyat (and only in Nod-Krai) once she entered the moon gate and traveled back to its origin point which would be when Nibelung imprisoned the moon sisters. That would have been somewhere in the middle of the War of Funerary Flame. As Columbina herself explained in the World Quest, this war took place long after any of these dragon researchers sacrificed themselves to the Moongazer project. It couldn't even work in the other direction as Columbina never mentioned having modeled her kuuhenki after these data creatures. It's even specifically pointed out that the data beings and the kuuhenki are entirely different and incompatible lifeforms.
Side Note: It's likely the devs were trying to reuse their kuuhenki asset to both save development time and money while taking one last chance to create a lasting impression of the Nod-Krai era of the game. However there was still a way to save on development while staying faithful to the game's lore. It's stated in the World Quest that the dragons got permission from the moon sisters before they started Project Moongazer. While the moon sisters don't have their own kuuhenki, they did have envoys. There are even hidden cutscenes where the three bring up Zibai and the recent stories have kept reminding us that Thoth was also a moon envoy. And what else are these moon envoys? Angels. What do we know (and also have been incessantly reminded of) about the Angels? They devolved into Seelies. All the devs had to do was change black kuuhenki into black Seelies. (though that could bring up unfortunate connotations so perhaps they could have used a different color given the quest doesn't bring up blackbodies all too often) This would also explain the "mega kuuhenki" as well since we also know that some Angels devolved into dragons. It wouldn't be too difficult to believe that the dragons could create "data iterations of devolved Angels" in the form of massive dragons like Apep. (though it's bizarre that the dragons of the dragon civilization we've seen are human sized like Kukulkan but their data transformed them into mega kuuhenki the size of a Dragon Sovereign....)
Speaking of blackbodies, it may have been fine for the current devs to have changed Genshin's genre from fantasy to sci-fi if they at least put in the effort to get the references right. Their "blackbodies" are reflective? The definition of a black body is that it isn't reflective. Black bodies are theoretical objects that absorb all light. Ungien then was merged with a Stellar Blackbody which was somehow secreting black bodies? That's not what a stellar black body would do either. A stellar black body if we go with the black coloring from the quest would have to be a black hole, again something that absorbs light radiation. They might "secrete" something then but it wouldn't be other black bodies so much as radiation. This radiation wouldn't achieve the unique reflective properties of Genshin's black bodies either.
The purpose the devs had wanted for their "black body" is more akin to chromatophores, basically a cell pigmentation that can be adjusted rapidly to fit the environment. The Lunar Veil tech that was developed based on the black bodies is animated just like how cephalopod chromatophores would function.
However just like how there was a way for these guys to have their cake and eat it too when it came to reusing old assets, there's actually a substance that can be scientifically accurate and still serve the purposes of the Lunar Veil. Strange matter is theoretically the true ground state and most stable form of matter. As a result, it is said to be able to convert normal matter into strange matter as all matter desires to become more stable. This would explain why the "Stellar Blackbody" was fusing with Ungien and also why he was secreting more "blackbodies." It would even explain why this fused entity perished not long afterwards as an effect of being absolutely stable would also mean non-reactivity which is not conducive to life. And thanks to the devs bringing up the "stellar" version of this matter, strange matter is also theorized to form in or convert neutron stars. One quality of neutron stars is their intense gravity that's only beaten by the black hole. As such while it therefore doesn't absorb light like a classical black body, it can severely warp the path of light such that you could see behind it. This would be more akin to the fictional retroreflective camouflage and thus also achieve the purpose of the Lunar Veil.
Furthermore, strange matter would fit with other aspects of Genshin's lore. Since Sumeru, we've gotten World Quests where someone intends to remove individuality from the living for the purposes of survival. Deshret intended to upload the consciousnesses of all his people into the Golden Slumber simulated reality which merged them together as a collective. The elementals that dwelled within Apep were willing to give up their individual experiences in order to become pure elemental energy in order to allow the Dragon Sovereign to survive. Remus intended to dissolve all Remurian Fontainians into what he called ichor in order to save them from the Fontaine flood prophecy which would have dissolved them. (he didn't think that one through and neither did Rene and his "neo-human" project that ended up doing the same thing) In Natlan, Kukulkan intended to turn all of Natlan into Phlogiston where there'd be no individuality but Phlogiston was resistant to the Abyss.
In other words, strange matter would just be another demonstration that the Genshin universe prioritizes survival over personal experiences. This directly conflicts with the ideals of Gnosticism which hold that experiences allow an individual to attain gnosis which leads them to ascend back into true divinity. This natural order therefore raises the difficulty for our Traveler who is meant to help Teyvat achieve ascension. It also demonstrates why humanity is necessary to Teyvat as humans have been shown to be the first and only species that value their own experiences above survivability. It was a quality that was bizarre to dragons like Neuvillette who always assumed survival was the ultimate goal of all living creatures.
And to further the point, even the new World Quest itself gave us another attempt by the dragons to create goo. The Moongazer project was meant to turn the researchers into recyclable black kuuhenki goo so that they could continuously send out the message.
It's not all bad though. Once upon a time we learned that the moons were different sizes. As soon as that happened I came up with a theory about how they were configured thus what would happen once the two that were destroyed suddenly stopped exerting their gravity on Teyvat. The starting point of that theory was that Aria the largest moon would have to be on one side of the planet while the two smaller moons were both closer to Teyvat and on the opposite side to it to counteract its immense gravitational pull. Theory confirmed.
In this setup, if Aria was destroyed all of a sudden, the gravity would suddenly shift to the other moons which would cause essentially a ricochet. This explains the lore about massive floods occurring across Teyvat like how part of Inazuma was drowned and remains underwater even today. Morax had to divert water away from parts of Liyue and v1.1 gave us Pilos Peak which is now just Musk Reef thanks to Venti.
It wasn't a good idea to turn a game originally based in fantasy action-adventure into one based in science fiction. Much of the current lore just doesn't make sense with the game's original lore. And it only gets worse from there:
- The dragons summoning the Traveler twins is Genshin's version of the Dark Forest.
- Phanes used to be Genshin's version of the Gnostic Demiurge. Now it's just one alien "savior" who is just one of many. These aliens forcibly conquered planets for the purpose of saving them from the Abyss only to fail to save them thus thoroughly negating any positive role they could use as an excuse for their actions.
- As simple aliens, why are Phanes and the Traveler siblings immune to the Abyss? Other aliens like Skirk aren't. Other alien planets were consumed by the Abyss already. The Travelers' planet was destroyed already.
- As Descenders they were immune because the Imaginary Tree is immune to the Sea of Quanta. They are equals thus their agents the Descenders and the Abyss are equals.
- The point of the World Quest was that sending out the message would draw the Abyss to Teyvat so should we or shouldn't we? It's as if the characters in this quest don't realize we've been fighting the Abyss and its invasion of Teyvat for the last 6 years.
- If we take the Dark Forest plotline to its logical conclusion, the Traveler twins who are the protagonists of this game are now villains. They travel across worlds to find a new home to terraform and populate with the stored genetic code of their own people which is stored in a vault inside of their spaceship. They too are conquerers.
- The timeline of this story also doesn't work. The black kuuhenki the dragons developed predate the original kuuhenki created by Columbina. The World Quest states that these two creatures are not the same thing so neither Columbina nor the dragons could have coincidentally designed creatures that happened to look exactly the same as each other. It would have made more sense for the dragons to model the data entities after Seelies.
- Blackbodies don't make sense. The way they're presented is more like chromatophores.
- The devs could have used the theoretical strange matter instead as strange matter exhibits most of the characteristics of the "blackbody" from the World Quest.
- Strange matter also coincides with the trend in this game where every solution to existential crises seems to fall in line with eliminating individuality and creating a collective consciousness of goo. Strange matter can be likened to the concept of gray goo.
- At least the devs correctly situated the three moons in their holographic map. Aria's moon is meant to be on one side of the planet and her immense gravity as the largest of the moons is counteracted by the other two moons being closer together, closer to Teyvat and opposite to hers. When her moon was destroyed, this led to the massive flooding we can read about in several different regions.
At this point I don't think there's any way to save the story of this game. All we can do is buckle up and hope we don't get thrown from our seats at the next swerve.
Topic originally created on July 19th, 2026.