Furina Rejects Your Reality and Substitutes Her Own
What's up guys! It's your friendly Genshin overthinker Inotia King. Before we begin this topic is a continuation of my previous topic discussing the new lore we've learned in Fontaine. So to understand what I'm going to talk about here you'll want to click here and read that first. (tl;dr warning btw, summary is at the end) And also I want to make sure new readers have checked out my first topic which is the basis for all my theories including this one. So if you haven't checked that out yet please click here.
Ok now for the updated predictions!
So going through the Archon Quests we're told several times that water from the Primordial Sea can turn only Fontainians into water. Curious right? Why just them? We're also told that none of the people who were transformed suffer. After they dissolve they feel like they've returned to life's original state and feel at peace. In fact even low concentrations of the water can induce euphoria into Fontainians to the point where it can be made into an addictive drug. For anyone else drinking the water all they get is a heightened sense of the people who've been turned into water.
Next we have the prophecy. It states that all of Fontaine will be turned into water and when that happens "their sins will be washed away" and Furina will be left alone to cry. There's actually an easter egg at the Fountain of Lucine where you can hear Furina crying possibly from the fulfillment of that prophecy.
But how is any of that possible? Well because they're all "Oceanids." Yes you read that right. Everybody in Fontaine is an "Oceanid." Maybe not in the literal sense but that they aren't human and instead some form of living water. Yeah I'm going all-in with my Melusine prediction. Forget just that one species. They are actually exempt. (explained in my previous topic) It's all of the seemingly normal looking humans even with some of them being allogenes. I'm saying they are all not much different from Idyia's mimics. Hmmmm I suppose in that case a better name for it would be Hydro Eidolons.
Before you guys roll your eyes at me and tune out let me explain. In my predictions video I pointed out that at least three Fontainians are definitely "Oceanids" in this same way. Rene, Jakob and Alain are people we first hear about through the Nymph's Dream Artifact Set and Rene's Investigation Notes back in Farakhkert v3.6. During their investigations Rene realizes that he and Jakob share properties with the Gaokarena (read: Hydro Archon) compared to non-Fontainians like Karl. Now in Fontaine we learn even more about what that means. The Research Institute they belong to has a specified Oceanid director. We also see from the Ann World Quest that the current Mary-Ann is an eidolon appearing exactly as Idyia's eidolons appeared with the blue hair, glowing eyes and permanent Hydro condition. She states in the quest that she then created Ann by accident. Ann is a baby Oceanid. It's very likely that either Mary-Ann is still the same Mary-Ann only without the ability to look fully human anymore, always looked like Idyia aka a full-fledged Oceanid or is the eidolon creation of an Oceanid Mary-Ann. No matter what though these guys are all related to the Oceanids.
But why? Why would Fontaine's people all be Oceanids? What happened? I think the prophecy actually hints at that. First there's the "tears" and that doesn't just come up in the prophecy. Caron once made a pocketwatch that Furina dubbed "Lady of the Lake's Tear" and we know from Neuvillette that she's been thinking about the prophecy. This prophecy came from Egeria and from the Institute of Natural Philosophy we now know she's not only the Archon the Oceanids were loyal to, she was also their creator.
Anyway notice the correlation. Another tear this time by Egeria. Egeria's past overlaps with Remuria and its fall so she's in a similar position to Rukkhadevata, existing alongside a previous Archon Remus. I'm not a fan of believing that her creation of the Oceanids was how she dealt with Remuria's destruction since that would mean modern day Fontaine was founded on these mimics but until v4.1 and hopefully something else that happened in between is revealed it's the best I've got. (and thanks to Rene and Jakob we know it wasn't the Cataclysm either since they were already alive for that event) But regardless of when it did we do know something big happened that potentially killed everyone in Fontaine so Egeria used her Oceanids to "comprehend all forms of life" and used their power of metamorphosis to "etch the essence of living creatures into its being."
But as we are also told many times anything born of the Primordial Sea will return to it one day. And that's what's happening now which is Egeria's prophecy and warning to Furina. We're told this prophecy was left to Furina when Furina took over and that only happened in the Cataclysm when Egeria became the Amrita. But why would she leave a prophecy if it's just inevitable? What if it isn't? In this theory of mine the only reason Egeria replaced the humans with Oceanids is because something big happened that killed them all. Egeria is described as compassionate and noble. Delusional doesn't fit that description so it's likely creating humanoid stand-ins and calling it a day wouldn't be Egeria's plan. I think she was hoping to buy time to eventually bring these Oceanid humans to life for real. And how would she do that? How about the Oratrice?
Let's quickly go over how that one works. It's described as the power of belief in justice but while that might make sense in our real world's religious systems we haven't seen the Archons actually rely on belief power so far. There's been a theory about the Gnoses giving the Archons their power but we know that's not true. Ei having given up her Gnosis a long time ago was able to overpower her Shogun puppet the same puppet that was able to casually create a nationwide perpetual thunderstorm. And Zhongli also casually gives up his Gnosis with zero visible repercussions. So what exactly is powering the Oratrice?
Well if the Fontainians are actually Oceanids then these guys are all elemental beings. What do we know about them? We're told this during Nahida's Second Character Quest. Their memories are elemental power. Their emotions and experiences are elemental power. At the power levels of dragons you might leak some of that energy just by thinking a little too hard. So what if this whole "belief in justice" stuff is just literally siphoning their emotional reactions to the trials as elemental energy. We can see in both trials that the Oratrice's verdicts have nothing to do with real justice and everything to do with how convinced the audience is. Lyney and Marcel's trials flip-flopped over and over whenever anybody provided some counterargument. I mean seriously we provide the argument that "the victim was the killer" at one point. And it's likely Childe was still convicted despite there not even being a case against him because the audience was already convinced that the Fatui were up to no good. There's actually a line from one of them guessing that Childe's just guilty on principle.
If that's all that's happening though then isn't the Oratrice just using elemental energy to power the machines in Fontaine? How does that have anything to do with the prophecy? Well in Act I of the Archon Quest Lyney tries finding the core of the Oratrice but stops when he hears a woman's voice. How much you wanna bet it's Egeria? I'm going to say its the Oratrice that Egeria had created to collect enough elemental energy to somehow build actual bodies for the Fontainians so even when their Primordial Sea Oceanid bodies are dissolved back into the sea they'll live. And then we'll have a Fontaine for the rest of the game that's normal.
Ok but what about the euphoria? How does that work? Actually we learn that in Nahida's Second Character Quest too. The whole purpose of the quest is to save Apep and return the elemental beings that lived inside of it back home. In the end this is accomplished but not in the way Nahida had intended. To save Apep they needed to charge her Heart of Oasis with elemental energy but the Fire Seed that was meant to do this was used earlier to save more of the elemental beings. What happens instead is that the same elemental beings that were saved sacrifice themselves and to the sadness of Nahida who realizes that means they will no longer be themselves ever again, all their experiences erased as the energy returns to a pure state. But that's not how they see it. They see it as still "going home" now made to mean becoming part of Apep. They are at peace with no longer being their own being.
And what do we hear from Vigneire about dissolving?
They are at peace having been brought back to the whole, the Primordial Sea.
And that's why I brought up Neuvillette last time too. It both delves into my Archon 201 topic along with my theory about how difficult it actually is to achieve "gnosis" in terms of Genshin which I believe is the Loom of Fate/Genesis Pearl/Rubedo and so on. The natural order of this elements based world is to return back into the whole.
In terms of the dragons this allows the much more important dragon to survive which takes precedent over anything else. Having any goal that surpasses survival is alien to them which is why Neuvillette couldn't understand Callus. For Callus the enlightenment and success of his daughter was more important. He placed importance on knowledge of the truth over personal survival and that falls under gnosis. (I mean there's also love of someone other than yourself but that's a different subject.) And this also used to be Zhongli's take on it too. He didn't really care for humanity until Guizhong got through to him and even after all these years what's his hot take on it? He used to be their ruler so he should stick around to see their rise and fall. That's also how Apep ends things in the quest, to wait and watch what happens to humanity albeit with a more cynical tone.
Side Note: And I should clarify that Zhongli is one of the original Seven and according to himself they tried to nurture humanity. We see in the Archon Quest that he was trying to give humanity the skills and power they needed to stand on their own which would allow for gnosis. But as a dragon his views are still old timey views of the natural order and he holds no illusions that they must succeed. We can see this in sharp contrast with Nahida who defiantly tells Apep to watch as humans surpass her expectations.
Ok let's switch gears now to Childe and bring up his Vision woes. Something I noticed with Fontaine's release is the lack of Hydro characters. O sure you might point out Neuvillette already coming out in the next patch or Furina coming in the patch after that. But when one is the Archon herself and the other also doesn't have a Vision because he might be a reborn elemental dragon of the Seven Sovereigns I don't think that quite counts. Meanwhile all our new mortal characters are Pyro, Anemo, Cryo, Cryo again, Geo, Electro and Charlotte is.... right also Cryo.
Why might that be? Well if these guys are all Oceanids maybe the worst thing that could happen is showing them their innate water powers which could potentially cause them to realize what they are and lead to a revelation-driven dissolving effect. Another issue could be the Oratrice which is actively absorbing their elemental energy. If any of them did have a Hydro Vision it could trigger something in them to again dissolve them. I think Childe's own Hydro Vision being affected might show this. (Also I did this as a joke in my playthrough video but "women dissolving into water" is literally Mona's unique dash. Imagine if one of these characters had a Hydro Vision and had this same ability Mona has. Would they turn into water and be able to turn back or just flat-out die from using a basic allogene ability?)
Of course I'm sure the first question you guys might bring up is "how do you create allogenes from water?" We've never seen Oceanids with other elemental powers right? But let's remember what specific kind of water these "Oceanids" are made from: the Primordial Sea. Going back to the end of Act II we have Neuvillette talking about how all life sprang out of the Primordial Sea. This should mean that despite being literal water it isn't just Hydro and does possess the properties for all the other elements. (actually if the Primordial Sea is what I think it is it has incredibly powerful potential) Anyway then we have the unique properties of the Oceanid. Earlier I brought up the Institute of Natural Philsophy's research on Oceanids. According to them Egeria wanted the Oceanids to comprehend and etch the essence of all forms of life. So if these specific "Oceanids" are made from a water that birthed all life on Teyvat then they could potentially comprehend and manifest any kind of element to thereby create a proper facsimile of even allogenes.
Ok smarties reading this. I know what you're going to ask next. If the water making these Fontainians is the same water all Teyvat life cropped up from wouldn't the dissolving thing still work on everybody? So here I'm going to need to hop us over to Honkai lore which has the rivalry between the Sea of Quanta and Imaginary Tree. This is miHoYo's multiverse setup. The tree constantly makes new universes which make up the Hoyoverse but how does it do that? It absorbs some of the sea. What we hear from Neuvillette is likely this exact function from an in-universe perspective. There once was a Primordial Sea and out from it sprouted the Teyvat universe. From the outside though the Imaginary Tree absorbed part of the sea and generated life from it, that incredible potential I mentioned earlier. But afterwards we're told there were still some traces of this sea left over. It disappeared from the surface of Teyvat and we had to go deep diving into a cavern for Marcel's. Now Egeria wouldn't have the same power the Imaginary Tree has so she wouldn't be able to absorb the water and then create life from it. Instead all she can do is manipulate it through water-based lifeforms like the Oceanids. So while both all life on Teyvat and the Oceanid Fontainians come from the same source they're not the same being. One is true life, the other is only mimicking life. (and actually that could make it make more sense that using a large amount of elemental energy could bridge the gap between these two forms of existence)
And one last thing about that. When Childe gives us his Vision he explains that the Vision might be malfunctioning because of his mood with attention drawn to whatever happened to him in the Abyss that's given him his Foul Legacy power. Now the Abyss forces are powered by the Void Realm and if he fell into the Abyss he could have gotten influenced by it too. The Void Realm is what I theorize to be the presence of the Sea of Quanta in Teyvat and the Primordial Sea which all life arose from would also be the Sea of Quanta albeit a partly filtered version. In a similar way to Fontainians being triggered into recognizing what they really are and then dissolving it could be that Childe is also being affected the same way. Maybe Furina set up some kind of safeguard to prevent someone using Hydro powers and dissolving and that's what messed up Childe's Hydro Vision. Anyway onto the other Harbingers.
So if the plan's all set what's Arlecchino and the Fatui's part in this? Well in the last topic I said she's trying to help Fontaine but she's still a Harbinger so her plan's not the right plan. We know her plan is to use the Gnosis and fix things somehow. I'm guessing Dottore and Pulcinella are deceiving her since they're only in it for the Gnosis anyway. Dottore could be using his old disguise of Fontaine engineer again and he convinced the people to power all their machines with the Oratrice which delayed it from stopping the prophecy. At the same time the water not returning where it belonged for so long might be the reason for Fontaine's water pollution. The new Tainted Hydro Phantasms are Oceanids that were born from the polluted water. Dottore would have fun researching this. He and Pulcinella could easily manipulate lower ranking Harbingers like Arlecchino just like Dottore already had with Scara and Pulcinella with Childe.
A plan where both Dottore gets to observe how water pollution affects local fauna, humanoid beings can be dissolved into water, energy from elemental beings can be harnessed to power machines and the natural order of the Primordial Sea drawing back all of its water and Pulcinella gets to undermine the government of another nation, embarrass its Archon and still make out with a Gnosis all while blaming any direct antagonism on a lower ranked Harbinger sounds like an all win no loss plan that both of them would be very happy with. But why would Furina even allow this? Isn't she already biased against the Fatui? Her justification for both Childe and Lyney's guilt was that they were Fatui and that was even her major argument against Lyney. Well we already know she's an airhead. Neuvillette and even Navia don't have very high opinions of her. So it's probably not farfetched to believe these Harbingers could fool her. On top of that if my predictions video is right she's trying to fool herself too. It could be that she doesn't remember what the Oratrice is really for after Egeria became the Amrita and the trauma of that event has her trying to deny all the problems her region and people are facing while paradoxically looking for a solution to them. (think Mutoh from Majora's Mask)
So the solution I'm predicting is still the same. We need to convince Furina to accept what happened to her during the Cataclysm while Lyney convinces Arlecchino that she's being played and then together we can set up a trial to convict Pulcinella. Dottore will still likely escape. He's the Second Harbinger and his part in this scheme is indirect so he has many opportunities to sidestep Fontainian law. But ultimately Furina will still lose her Gnosis. It could be that it'll take so long to convince Arlecchino that she'll have taken the Gnosis already and passed it on before Lyney can get through to her. If I was setting up the scene I might actually put it all together with us tasked with stopping Arlecchino's infiltration and assault on the Archon after a failed initial conversation with her. There isn't any easy way of getting to Furina so we arrive too late to stop Arlecchino from taking her Gnosis but Lyney does finally get through to her. She does still leave but will go on to confront her fellow Harbingers in a Kujou Sara-like fashion while we check on the shaken Furina. In her weakened state she can't continue with her usual facade so we take the opportunity to get through to her in an emotional cutscene. Finally the pieces are put in place with a recovering Furina ready to help us. Lyney leads the charge to finding Arlecchino and we discover her battered the Gnosis no longer in her possession. She's been told what's actually about to happen and to make up for her mistakes she'll help provide us with whatever information we need to put Pulcinella on trial.
The final trial against Pulcinella will be enough to power the Oratrice to do what Egeria had planned and we save Fontaine by turning them all back into humans just in time for the prophecy to come true and dissolve all their Oceanid bodies. With all the water returned to the Primordial Sea maybe that raised platform of the nation will flatten out too. From this point on no Fontainian can ever dissolve again and the actual Oceanids may even slowly return now that the waters have begun to be purified.
To summarize:
- Something happened that killed Fontaine but Egeria used the Oceanids to mimic the population to buy time for her to find a way to save them.
- That way is the Oratrice which is drawing in elemental energy from the Oceanid Fontainians into the core to somehow use to bring all the humans back to life.
- The Fontainians feel euphoria from drinking Sinthe and peace when they dissolve because returning to the source is desirable for elemental beings.
- The natural order in Teyvat is to return to the pure elemental state now further expanded by the idea all life will return to the Primordial Sea one day.
- Childe's Vision malfunctions as a preventative measure against Fontainians accidentally triggering their own dissolution. For example Mona can literally turn herself into water at will. But if an Oceanid Fontainians did this would they be able to turn back?
- Some Fontainians are allogenes but since the water these Oceanid Fontainians are made from is the Primordial Sea it might contain all the elements and make it possible to replicate even non-Hydro elemental powers.
- All life came from the Primordial Sea but normal Teyvat life was processed through the Imaginary Tree. Egeria isn't that powerful and could only use the water to create temporary facsimiles.
- Arlecchino believes the Gnosis can stop the prophecy because she's being tricked by Pulcinella and Dottore.
- All they care about is the Gnosis and all the trouble they're causing is good research for Dottore and coercion for Pulcinella.
- Furina is blind to Pulcinella and Dottore's actions because she's not as aware as normal Archons and she's also deliberately blinding herself to the current issues of Fontaine due to trauma from the Cataclysm.
- A possible sequence of events for Act V might be Arlecchino assaulting Furina and taking her Gnosis. Lyney convinces her she's been tricked but she confronts and is betrayed by Dottore and Pulcinella. We convince Furina to remember what actually happened in the Cataclysm and she gets back to normal. Arlecchino helps us defeat Pulcinella. The Oratrice core then saves the Fontainians and all the primordial water returns to the sea.
How likely do you guys think that will happen? What do you think might happen instead and why?
Posted Sep 1, 2023, 10:19 PM UTC
And if that stuff about gnosis against the natural order didn't do it for you how about this from the Ann World Quest? After she says this you're given a choice of three options. Only if you select the last one do you get additional dialogue and then Mary-Ann replies "Hmm. Can they, really?"
I think the fact that we're given a choice with only one producing an additional line and that that response only casts doubt on what we choose to say further shows this difficulty in attaining gnosis. The other options only adhere to the status quo. Do you value individual existence or better survival as a whole? The third option is ascension that despite (going into Gnostic terms here) returning to the Monad your individual experiences hold value. They were what allowed you to ascend back into the Pleroma.
Also I normally respond to all of your comments but there's so many in that last topic of mine lol
And most of it focused on the plothole parts anyway so I'll just collectively address them here:
all the other expies share a lot more than a similar color scheme though...and to get it out of the way, I just have to assume you're willingly ignoring the fact that they do so with their primary designs and not a skin. what does Arlecchino share with the actual Senti or Hua??
all those you mentioned share a name (the expies we got in Sumeru are an exception to this), all of them share VAs, and all of them have similar or outright the same powers or authority. hell, if we wanted to discard those for fun, let's look at how these similarities for other expies are always consistent, and this time they're just...not...I guess.
Venti and Wendy have the same hair color, hair style, primary color scheme (primary greens with secondary whites) and even outright share a design in the form of GGZ Wendy and 'Archon form' Venti
Ei/Makoto and Mei have the same hair color and theme around the same color (purple - most of Mei's designs are full of reds and blacks (like Ei...) but purple is the only constant)
Miko and Sakura have the same hair color, hair style, color scheme (whites and secondary reds), Sakura has stylistic fox ears and Miko actual fox ears
HoV and the Sustainer share pretty much everything except a model
Alhaitham and Su share the same hairstyle, hair color and color scheme
Nahida and Theresa are by far the weakest linked bc they only really share a hair color stylistically but do share VAs
I won't even mention that their faces are usually drawn very similarly (it's the same art style, just do a side by side), but I will mention their eyes tend to be extremely similar except for Nahida and Theresa. so while yes, not every expy is bound to the same rules and yet there is a pretty clear through line here that Arlecchino, Topaz, Senti don't have whatsoever. I won't post Hua bc she's not even close in anything. she doesn't share a thing with either of them (and again, there is even a named Hua in HSR).
the only argument provided for them being expies is "they have similar color schemes, sort of". like c'mon lmao. like, no Arlecchino is not a Natasha expy either, she's just an original design. every other Harbinger is as well.
I think it's only your opinion that they only share a color scheme then. If I didn't think they shared anything else in common why would I link to a picture of Onyx Simurgh and Arlecchino side by side? And also say that the expies "are only about their colors and looks." I suppose I should emphasize "looks" this time?
Anyway going off your metric they share the same hair color and style and major thematic colors of red, white and black. Their colors and looks.
And actually going off of your metric you slipped up on your own. Mei's primary design in Honkai Impact 3 was "full of reds and blacks" with no purple at all like you said and this is a color scheme that came back in her Herrscher of Thunder design which was still compared to Magatsu. Neither Genshin design matched in that color scheme. Everything about Ei and Makoto has been purple. But in this case it didn't matter that they didn't share colors because the looks and of course the name more than made up for it.
Thank you for pointing out Nahida and Theresa who don't share similar names nor authority. Similar to Zhongli and Welt Yang. Actually these two examples don't even share a color scheme. Zhongli and Welt don't even share a VA. So if these guys can be expies why wouldn't characters that obviously share both colors and looks? Do you just not want them to be expies for some reason? Because there are people who reject the idea of Nahida/Theresa and Zhongli/Welt too.
False, Diluc threw away his vision because to him, it was a sign of his knighthood.