So that's what Amphoreus is about?
What's up guys! It's your friendly Hoyoverse overthinker Inotia King. As always before we begin I just want to make sure new readers have checked out my older topics which my newer theories are built upon. So for the Genshin ones you can click here. And for the Honkai related ones you can click here.
Wait Amphoreus? This isn't the Star Rail subreddit. Are you off your meds again, me? And me replies - I'm not making a good case for myself am I? - actually no. Amphoreus may refer to the specific container that was opened by Pandora, the one in which the gods had sealed all curses from impacting the world. Out of curiosity Pandora opens the box which dooms the world but sealed along with the curses was also hope. The idea of humanity unwittingly releasing plague upon itself due to its inherent curiosity is a core theme of Genshin and the wider Hoyoverse as well. It was why Celestia needed to create the false sky, establish its Heavenly Principles and ban anything it deemed to be "forbidden knowledge" which included legitimate curses like the Abyss. Hope or we Genshin players might be more familiar with "Tumaini" is what will help humanity overcome the curses and take back control of their world.
From a meta side of it, I've been noticing that Amphoreus plays out beat for beat with Genshin's setting. It was so much so I even memed about it on my youtube channel. But after v3.2 I think there's another side of it. After the disastrous Fontaine Archon Quest I played with a conspiracy theory that miHoYo had replaced the original dev team for Genshin with a new one and it was due to this new team not knowing all the facts of the original team's established lore, coupled with their own lack of experience that led to Fontaine's many storyline and pacing issues. And then in the v5.3 livestream we more or less got confirmation of this theory. Now that Natlan has managed to anger many players I think it's safe to say more players are willing to keep an open mind about this so we can now look into what the original team's intentions were for the Genshin story.
But how can we do this if I'm saying they're no longer working on it? That's where Amphoreus comes in. Because of how many similiarities it shares with Genshin I have a new conspiracy theory: What if the members of the old dev team are still working at miHoYo just not on Genshin? The replacement didn't seem like an abrupt move on miHoYo's part either. I had been saying that even as early as Sumeru's Archon Quest there was some amount of executive meddling which prevented the team from telling the story they wanted. And they weren't amenable to the forced changes. I believed that they instead took on a passive-aggressive approach to try raising awareness about it. Over time this animosity led to the entire team being replaced by Natlan's time so it stands to reason that while some might have been let go, at least some others may have just moved onto other projects like Star Rail.
The set up for Amphoreus already mirrors Genshin. At the very start of the game the Traveler siblings descend upon Teyvat but what we see next is their attempt to flee it as they encounter local hostilities under the Heavenly Principles. In Amphoreus this plays out when the Trailblazer and Dan Heng use one of the cars to reach Amphoreus but are brought down by Aquila the Titan who is sealing everyone in under its sky, thus making it more or less a false sky and the two Nameless our stand-ins for the Descender twins.
Once the Trailblazer comes to there's a new addition following them around, a flying mascot creature with an annoying voice. (she gets better) This Paimon-like creature is also not known to Amphoreans and she becomes a guide for the Trailblazer. It is a part of their new Path, the Remembrance and while this doesn't have to parallel Genshin, Remembrance means memories and the Traveler has since been tasked by Zhongli, Yae and most recently Neuvillette to be the Witness of Teyvat and remember as much about it as they can across their journey thus protecting it from destruction. This will come into play again for both games. In fact just the fact that the Trailblazer is knocked out by some antagonistic force and wakes up now trapped in this one world parallels the Descenders also having traversed multiple worlds before being trapped by the principles.
As we continue with the mission we learn how Amphoreus is structured. There are nations that are run under a protective Titan, a god-class being. A sub-class of godlike beings has never been heard of in Star Rail's previous lore but these would be the Archons of Teyvat in Genshin. And notice that the term Titan is used interchangeably with god just like how in Genshin Archon and god are the same thing as well. On top of this some of these Titans are antagonistic but we learn later on that this is not out of any pure malice but rather a deeper underlying purpose. This mirrors the other members of the Seven who each have an idealized method of protecting their nations to varying degrees of success. Some even bring their nation to the brink of destruction.
The final feature I want to bring up is the obvious Black Tide which is described and behaves effectively no differently than the Abyss in Genshin. It consumes, it corrupts and it can even appear in masses of black just like the Dark Mud seen in the Chasm or the Miasmic Tumors seen in Inazuma, Sumeru and Natlan.
Side Note: We can even connect the Titankin's manufacture as well. The Titankin are golems that are infused with Ichor just like how Remus used the "Ichor" he created from Fontainians to insert the humans into immortal stone bodies. Given what we learn about the Titans in v3.2 this became much more related.
So what does Amphoreus tell us about the original dev team's ideas for Genshin that were never realized? I think first that it can help us distinguish between what has remained consistent with their intentions and what was changed by the new team. For example I have had a theory since Act IV of the Natlan Archon Quest that the Dragon Sovereigns might actually not be dragons but primal representations of the original systems of the planet. In this interpretation they wouldn't actually have the powers of each of the seven elements in the game. Xiuhcoatl would actually hold dominion over all seven of them in their original form of Phlogiston. Similarly Neuvillette the "Hydro" Dragon Sovereign actually rules over the Primordial Sea, the source of all life on the planet. These might be named Primal Energy and Primal Lifeforce respectively. For the Electro Dragon Sovereign I suggested something I named Primal Discord, a primal force that pushes life to evolve through adversity. That's how the Titan Nikador's Coreflame of Strife is described during the mission. Strife is a synonym for Discord so we may be able to suggest that the original dev team was always intending to make these Dragon Sovereigns into a higher layer of creation, possibly created by the moon sisters who are so far the only beings to predate them.
And what about those moon sisters? We've been slowly learning of this prehistoric period of Genshin. If my sovereign theory is correct that would make the planet's birth also the birth of the Geo Dragon Sovereign. However the sisters predate him. This is likely represented by the myth of Era Luminosa. In the beginning there was chaos which I have also theorized about for Genshin. The primordial god Chaos may be the localized name for the Sea of Quanta in Genshin while the Imaginary Tree would be Ananke the Goddess of Inevitable Fate. Janus seems to be the tree for Amphoreus though it may also be a conflation of it and Phanes the Primordial One. Phanes in Greek mythology was born from the primordial egg and that may be reflected by the Coreflame thus Janus should be the Amphoreus iteration of Phanes who was born of the Coreflame. After that we know Phanes created its Four Shining Shades but Amphoreus only gives us two, Talanton and Oronyx. However I've been theorizing that Paimon is one of the shades and she's now diminished. <!As of Paralogism we know another one Naberius is also diminished, its heart now merged with Rhinedottir.!> Therefore these two Titans may reflect the two that are still present. We already know them as well, Ronova and Istaroth. Istaroth is the easiest to see. She is the Goddess of Evernight Tokoyokoku and Ruler of Time just like Oronyx. Talanton governs law and order and created cause and effect. While it isn't quite the same we can suggest this relates to the rule of death that is enforced by Ronova.
Side Note: It's also funny to consider the Oronyx miracles function just like Zelda Skyward Sword's time stones. They create a limited area of the past for you to solve dungeon puzzles. At launch there was this belief that miHoYo had copied Breath of the Wild wholesale and so Genshin was merely a ripoff. The old dev team has made many jabs at this before so it wouldn't surprise me if these time stones were also part of it.
The birth of Georios coincides then with the Geo Dragon Sovereign as they both are born with their worlds, Amphoreus and the planet that Teyvat envelopes. After this we can skip ahead to where I think my old timeline comes into play. Back then I suggested that Phanes first descended but worked constructively with the sisters. He did reshape the world to be more accommodating to humanity but this wasn't challenged by the sovereigns or dragons. It was only after the arrival of the Second Who Came that Phanes feared losing control and thus committed to war against the Sovereigns and dragons who had sided with her. After defeating them it set up the false sky of Teyvat under the Heavenly Principles. This would be reflected by Aquila and this is where I'm curious about the story again. We seem to already have a Phanes in Janus, both beings born out of the primordial egg and being named the creators of the world. However Phanes should have also set up the principles but now that is represented by Aquila's actions. As described by Aglaea, when humanity sought to reach the heavens - building skyships instead of a tower - Aquila struck them down in divine punishment, even razing entire city-states which would be exactly how it worked in Teyvat with the Divine Nails destroying cities like Sal Vindagnyr and Ay Khanoum. We may find out in v3.3 that Aquila's reason for doing this is much like Phanes, to cut Amphoreus off from the meddling of the Aeons, specifically Nanook the Destruction and that Ravager Lygus warns Hertha about. On top of that we even seem to have a parallel to forbidden knowledge in the form it took in Sumeru as Divine Knowledge Capsules. Just like the mad scholars were affected by using them to gain knowledge from Rukkhadevata, the Grove scholar Phereseus went mad trying to glimpse Oronyx. So right now I think we can look at it in two ways. Either Aquila represents the Phanes after the Second Who Came who had a different goal than when it first arrived or the theories that Phanes isn't the same thing as Celestia might have been right all along.
I'll stop there because there's one last thing I think the old dev team was hoping to convey. Amphoreus isn't quite a planet. It takes on the outward appearance of an infinity symbol. As of v3.2 we also seem to be getting heavily hinted that the entire world cycles through the same periods leading to another Era Nova where the demigods remake the world again to try for a better outcome. There have been many theories that this is exactly how Teyvat functions as well, that it has been through many iterations. However I think we'll learn either in v3.3 or v3.4 (Phainon is set to release then so it could be there's more story to go) that this was the failsafe which was enacted by the Titan/humans once they reach the end. We already saw what they did the last cycle. Gnaeus set the stage for his soul to be split apart while Polyxia interfered with the new cycle by forcing her dead sister into it as the living end of Thanatos, herself then representing only the death half. In my theories this is called the Human Plan, named after the Human Realm of the Three Realms. The better solution which they haven't figured out yet will be to break the cycle and free Amphoreus (which according to other theories will actually happen in v3.7?) and that would be the Light Plan in Genshin. There are also two versions of this plan where one would be to challenge Phanes and replace it as the new principles but the better version would be for the Fourth Descender to course correct Phanes and enlighten humanity itself to become its own rulers. I have a feeling the roles will actually be reversed in Amphoreus where the Trailblazer is only a stand-in and set to challenge their principles, namely to defeat Aquila but that only leads to more problems so it'll be March 7th who will realize her true purpose and regain her memories. Just like Aether, she was encased in a dormant state until awoken without her memories and needing to travel and grow. We've already gotten an alternate Path for her which has so far only been something the Trailblazer experiences.
What do you think about this? Does it make sense that Amphoreus might be the pet project of some of Genshin's original dev team and through it they are telling us their intended storyline for the game?
This topic is just a brief (probably not that brief for you guys) overview of this idea. Next time I'll get into more specifics. Given there's still more story to go it may be that I'll be creating a miniseries of sorts with this. But we'll see how it goes so stay tuned for the next part of this theory!
Posted May 11, 2025, 4:09 PM UTC