I thought big but miHoYo went bigger
What's up guys! It's your friendly Genshin overthinker Inotia King. As always before we begin I just want to make sure new readers have checked out my first topic which is the basis for all my theories. So if you haven't checked that out yet please click here.
It's been a while so I think it's safe to talk about Caribert the latest quest from Dainsleif.
As with most of my predictions for upcoming events and quests I managed to pick out the essentials from the livestream but not the specific details. So I had stated that I believed the glowing purple hilichurl would be Caribert and his story was about undoing the curse Celestia imposed on them. Check. A long long while ago I stated that part of the Dainsleif Travail quote about facing him for the right to save "her" would be correcting certain things Dainsleif has deemed fact. This would be one of those along with the mysterious powers he employs. I also suggested that we'd find out about Kaeya in this quest through Caribert who'd blow the whistle on his noble lineage. Well that whistle was blown just by Dainsleif directly which I was definitely not counting on. That was really abrupt especially given Dainsleif's previous appearances in Mondstadt.
Oddly though in my prediction I had a bad feeling that miHoYo might only imply certain things and that the livestream's scenes were meant to throw us off. In that prediction I suggested Caribert might be a researcher who ends up figuring out how to break the curse. Which turned out to be close since that research was indeed conducted but by his dad and for the same purpose.
I: Not big enough
So that was the general stuff I got right. But I really underestimated what miHoYo was intending with this quest and the new information is incredible!
In another theory of mine I explained what our MC's true purpose is and that there are plenty of parties trying to accomplish the same thing though they'll all fall short and meet with failure. Chlothar's whole "my son has become the Loom of Fate!" would be another of those mooks. Yeah Caribert didn't become jack lol. I think the previous Dainsleif quest explained that pretty well. If Chlothar did actually gain the Loom of Fate already and we know our sibling was right there when he did it then that would be that. Everybody could become this Loom of Fate and Khaenri'ah's problem would be solved. But since the Loom of Fate operation is still under way it means Chlothar just jumped the gun.
At the same time the fact that Chlothar would connect our MC who is a Descender, with the Abyss really helps push my other theory. Well I suppose Honkai's recent Chapter XXXV helped even more. In my theory I presented the idea that humanity is just caught in the middle of a big pissing contest between the heavenly Celestia and hellish Abyss. If we push that up a tier that would be the Honkai rivalry between the Imaginary Tree and Sea of Quanta. Well in Chapter XXXV we take on enemies that seem to represent both. There are Void Seeds and Imaginary Tree Fragments and the seeds are spawned by the fragments. (I'm translating these names. I can't find an English source on them.) So it would seem that to your average human these two entities might as well be one and the same.
The next interesting thing I wasn't counting on was actually hearing the Sea of Quanta. I don't think that's ever been a thing even in Honkai. Yes you can talk to the Will of the Honkai but that might also just be an AI created in the Previous Era that Otto spoke to. That being said Dainsleif seems to know about this entity so it could just as easily be an avatar of the sea and not the sea itself similar to how the Descenders are likely avatars of the Imaginary Tree. Either way the existence of a conscious and malevolent Void is confirmed now and that's good enough for me.
Mostly because of that other theory about those plans and how only our MC will get it right. This quest is showing us how the Abyss got started. We were once told by Tsumi during the Three Realms Gateway Offering that the Abyss rely on the Void as a power source but it was like a drug for them while flat out poisonous for everybody else. I claimed based on the Void really being the Sea of Quanta that it was whispering to these mooks and convincing them to commit to their plans which line up with the sea's own goal aka destroy the world so that another leaf can be reabsorbed into entropy.
II: Details for Days
In my previous topic I briefly brought up a part of the quest that lined up very well with my working history about Khaenri'ah. Back then all I had to go on were the Ruin Golems in Sumeru. If you go through those quests you find this group of Abyss forces that actually fought against Khaenri'ah called the Schwanenritter. But if you look into it that's a German word for something from the legends of King Arthur. I suggested that this meant Khaenri'ah wasn't a true nation but just a conglomeration of the peoples fleeing from Celestia's wrath.
Check. But that left things a little messy. See we also already knew there was some royal family in Khaenri'ah ever since the last Dainsleif quest. So what kind of system makes sense with a royal lineage but composed of just any random collection of runaways? Thanks to this quest we now know. "Pure blood" Khaenri'ahns are based on the Romans left behind after Rome's fall. These aren't necessarily Roman (Eastern Romans = Greek+ and Western Romans = Goths) but are for all intents and purposes a single group of people. But Khaenri'ah then accepted anybody from any of the establishing nations as long as they rejected their nation's god. That comes from the Viking aspect of Khaenri'ah. The Vikings are known for pillaging and plundering but taking a closer look we see that their conquests also ended up uniting disparate populations under their banner. (more so with the Normans but you get the idea)
Anyway that would explain the "English" Schwanenritter and this one Latin poem you can find in the Chasm from someone who references Barbatos but had joined Khaenri'ah. But then there's also Chlothar suggesting that the expats(?) that joined Khaenri'ah were changed to hilichurls while all the pure blood ones were given immortality for being the "greater sinners." So first we know that's bs because the last quest showed the hilichurls are also immortal and suffering from erosion. Dainsleif and the hilichurls suffer equally when the Abyss tries breaking the curse. Second that would actually imply that the hilichurls were the greater sinners maybe because not only did they reject Celestia they actually accepted Celestia's Seven at first and then defected from them. It could be that Celestia felt more betrayed by them and disfigured them into the Hylic hilichurls doomed to not only rot away slowly but also not even have a comprehensive mind while they live. (Or Chlothar just has no idea what he's talking about.)
III: Bonus Round
The quest reveals that Chlothar Alberich is the founder of the Abyss. But he's dead and our sibling is still the prince(ss) which means at least to me that while Chlothar did originate the Abyss he was never its King. I still believe that title goes to Rhinedottir who as the recent event reiterated is also known as Gold the crazed alchemist who brought down Khaenri'ah to begin with. I'm going to guess they keep doing that to make sure that while we learn about her from Albedo and Alice we don't forget that she's still a psychopath.
The fact that Chlothar established the Abyss also means there was a significant delay between it and the fall of Khaenri'ah. I think that was implied already but we also know that Rhinedottir created the Rifthounds and other Abyss forces during the fall which sets up a certain timeline. We know that the surviving Khaenri'ahns were cursed and some ended up hilichurls but now we also know that they were still just ordinary people with a strong anti-god bias the whole time. It was just Rhinedottir's own group that started out as zealots of the Void Realm. This could also explain why our sibling remained an underling to her despite being on the Loom of Fate mission based on the events of this quest.
It could be that our sibling is working for the Abyss to make up for their part in creating it. They hope to stop the powers of the Abyss from further corrupting and causing suffering to Khaenri'ah and this is their Void Plan in desperation.
Now I hear some of you asking "but what about the cutscene from Windblume and Rhinedottir talking about being a mother because of Albedo?" To that I say this is Genshin. You know how just about every villain we've seen so far has had some kind of sob story to explain their villainy? Well Rhinedottir was the villainous Gold before she made Albedo so it's likely Albedo is her redemption arc. I theorized that the point of Rhinedottir and Albedo is to show how hard it is to get to rubedo in their alchemy. It could be that once Albedo loses control by screwing up into citrinitas that episode hits Rhinedottir hard and sets up a plot for us to save her from herself.
Side Note: I wonder if when that happens if our sibling will double down and that's when they become King/Queen of the Abyss taking over for Rhinedottir to stubbornly continue their destructive quest.
Dainsleif says that the "Sinner" can see into memories of the past. Because of that it saw into the Ley Line-born dream of our MC and now knows about them. I think miHoYo was just using this as an excuse to keep Dainsleif out of our party until Khaenri'ah but what it also implies is that we've now "met" one of our ultimate enemies. As a Descender we're at the same level as Phanes but because our mission sets us up to gain the Eighth Element, Rubedo, Loom of Fate, what have you we will end up at the level of the Imaginary Tree which is equally balanced against this "Sinner" aka the Sea of Quanta. And as I previously said it works even better if the voice ends up an avatar of the Sea of Quanta since we'd technically be an avatar of the Imaginary Tree.
Finally there's the Kaeya of it all. I think he's going to have it rough. If miHoYo keeps up the positive atmosphere of Genshin though he should be fine. But this is miHoYo we're talking about. They could easily plunge this game into Honkai angsty hell and then Kaeya's going to have a bad time. But I think that deserves it's own topic so I'll save it for the next one.
So in summary:
- Events in the quest seem to support the idea that the Honkai rivalry between the Imaginary Tree and Sea of Quanta exists in Genshin.
- The Void which represents the sea is actively speaking to the Abyss Order's forces for its own ends. The actual voice though could just be an emissary of it and not the sea itself.
- Caribert's not the Loom of Fate.
- Khaenri'ah is shown to be a nation with a core "pure blooded" population and an extended population made up of people across Teyvat.
- It's more likely that the extended Khaenri'ahn population were punished further by Celestia by both disfiguring them and making them immortal. It could be because they would have technically accepted the new order before deserting it.
- While it is now revealed that Chlothar established the Abyss Order he's dead and yet our sibling is still the second in command. I maintain that the Queen of the Abyss is still Rhinedottir.
- This is more likely as we know Rhinedottir already had Abyssal powers prior to the fall while Chlothar spent a long time as a cursed human before establishing the Abyss Order. It's likely her original forces hold the high positions in the order while the Khaenri'ahns gathered by Chlothar make up its grunts.
- Our sibling might be with the Abyss simply to make up for their role in its creation. This would explain their stubbornness in the previous quests.
- Rhinedottir while being Queen and also Gold might still have some redeeming quality as shown by the Windblume event.
- If she is redeemed this could also be when our sibling truly takes over leadership of the Abyss.
- Kaeya has a truly important choice to make. It's been downplayed for now but I think Mona is on to something even more so now.
Posted Mar 15, 2023, 5:05 PM UTC
One thing I disagree with this is about Rhinedottir. I think the creation of abyssal monsters (Rift Hounds and Durin etc.) were just experiments and out of curiosity and not for destruction. I strongly believe that those were ones cute and lovable creation of Gold but in some shenanigans got corrupted with abyssal powers (experiment gone wrong). The evidence for this is Durin and her/his attack on Mondstadt. In Durin's mind him/her and Duvalin were playing while admiring his beauty but in reality, Durin is fighting Duvalin.
It means that Durin knows how to have fun and has innocence prior the cataclysm.
Gold mentions that most of her creations were gone and only Albedo remains, which she told to find the true nature of this world before entrusting him to Alice. If she's in fact the queen of the abyss, isn't it more fruitful if she recruit Albedo? Since Albedo told how he followed everything his master says.
But this doesn't prove that she is not connected with the abyss but I think that she is not a part of the Abyss Order.
The tale of pale princess and the six pigmies has a night queen in it. So I think there is a real queen of the abyss but it is not Rhinedottir.
If Art of Khemia was connected with forbidden knowledge in any way, probably the cute doggos eventually got corrupted by it.
And the same time Albedo's "brothers" been feed to Durin, just because they're seen as failure creations to Rhinedottir, what a lovely mother she is.
I think aiglas0209 already pointed it out very elegantly but I'd like to add that even if Durin believed it was only playing with Dvalin it's very difficult to believe that Rhinedottir would think attacking Mondstadt with a dragon dripping with poisoned blood was playing. She seems to know exactly what she's doing.
At best I could give you that she's similar to Chlothar where she's blinded into hating the Archons and mentally unstable because of the curse. That second thing still came after Khaenri'ah's fall though which we do know she caused with her attacks. There really isn't a way to make her innocent in all this.