In This Human Age (Amphoreus Theory Part 2)
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.
Last time I started bringing up how I believe Star Rail's Amphoreus story is being told by the original dev team of Genshin Impact and that they are using it to demonstrate the intentions they had for the game. In that topic we covered the setting of the world and how Amphoreus parallels several elements of Genshin's overall structure. Let's get a little more down to Earth.
By now it's become pretty clear that there are no "Titans" on Amphoreus or at least there hasn't been since the first iteration. Instead it's all about humanity and how it can maintain the world they live on.
This point was only ever hinted about in Genshin as we hadn't gotten far enough into the game's story for it to be made apparent. And this lead to the new dev team upending it in later regions. However in the early days when the game's basis on Gnosticism was very overt, the terminology lent itself to the idea that it would fall onto humanity to succeed the gods. For example, the term allogene refers to beings with a higher understanding of reality than normal humans. Some interpretations even separate them from humanity though we can see in Genshin that this isn't the case. Genshin's allogenes are more philosophically distant from the average human, most easily seen from their ability to wield the power of one of the seven elements. Amphoreus took the physical route. In some interpretations the allogene is a demigod and what are the Chrysos Heirs on Amphoreus? They are the humans attempting to gain a Coreflame and will become demigods once they do.
When it comes to specifics I've always held onto the theory that Ei the Electro Archon was a human who defeated the former Archon and ascended to godhood. We can see this most clearly from how heavily her lore revolves around her human name. Consider all the other Archons pre-Natlan. What does Venti mean to Barbatos, Zhongli to Morax, Nahida to Buer or Furina to Focalors? They are just the human name. Buer might be the one that cares most about hers from this list but in the end all the Archons know her as Buer, including Scara when he had his delusions of grandeur. However conversely, Baal and Beelzebul mean nothing to Ei and Makoto. Ei or shadow in Japanese and Makoto or truth are what define their relationship. Makoto was the "true" Electro Archon that Ei helped establish and she was only the kagemusha, the shadow that operated behind her. (The new dev team has since changed the Archon names into titles so Haborym can bafflingly be shared between scores of human Archons and Bune claims his Ars Goetia name was given to him by humans....)
So with that in consideration, how did Ei ascend? Each Archon possesses a Gnosis and it was teased as far back as the Mondstadt Archon Quest by Venti that Gnoses are just more advanced forms of Visions. Therefore if you defeat an Archon and take their Gnosis you could ascend and replace that Archon. Venti himself is also the one to show us this as - while he was a wind elemental and not a human - he too had to defeat the previous Anemo Archon to replace it.
Side Note: I might as well bring this up here too. There is an ongoing belief that the English localization for Decarabian being the Anemo Archon was a mistake because there's also an ongoing belief that Archon and god aren't the same thing. They are. miHoYo approved multiple languages calling Decarabian the Anemo Archon including Turkish and Vietnamese which came later on. None of it has been "corrected." We do know that miHoYo has corrected mistranslations in the past. Nahida was once thought to be male for example. (That had led to some theories as well lol) Anyway it was not a mistranslation. Moving on.
Now to what end are they doing this? Again in Genshin we never got to know. I've made theories based around Gnosticism but who knows if the current dev team will continue this original storyline. Therefore we look at Amphoreus again. The Flame-Chase Journey is supposedly the only means of saving the people of Amphoreus. The Chrysos Heirs must defeat their corresponding Titan, collect their Coreflame and return it to the Vortex of Genesis. We'd find out in v3.2 that this will only reset Amphoreus into a new cycle where the demigods become the new Titans and the journey will resume with new Chrysos Heirs.
If At First You Don't Succeed
-keep dying over and over again in awful and heartbreaking ways until you figure it out.
This setup isn't unique to either Amphoreus or Genshin. All the way back in Honkai Impact 3rd we were already told about at least two of these cycles, the Previous Era and the playable era or current era. However late into the game we'd learn that there were many previous eras and the cycle kept repeating in exactly the same way until finally one change was made in the Previous Era. Their own Flamechasers along with Dr. MEI replaced the fate-directing Cocoon of Finality with Prometheus, an artificial construct that assumed the identity of "Will of the Honkai" and guided humanity into just enough of a different direction in the current era that Kiana was able to deviate from becoming the Cocoon's tool, the Herrscher of the End who was the cause of every previous era's destruction. She instead became the Herrscher of Finality who could defy the Cocoon. (in Chinese it's still Herrscher of the End so it's really just about Kiana gaining more faith in herself and her friends)
I have no doubt that that's also the ending for Star Rail's Version 3 series. I think the common theory right now is that March 7th is the true inheritor of Oronyx's Coreflame and that Mem is her memories. I brought this up last time already but there's another interpretation to the one I made then. Once March 7th becomes the new demigod of time it will free the Trailblazer to attain another Path and the Trailblazer will assume the role in Amphoreus that the Traveler will in Genshin, the Emissary of the Imaginary Tree or the final Aeon in Gnosticism. That way they don't have to repeat any more cycles. Just like in Honkai they can finally be free to live how they choose. And of course this is when the Nameless can finally leave Amphoreus and head off to their next destination. And in Genshin this will play out as it was already stated since the start of the game: The Traveler reunites with their sibling and departs for new worlds.
Side Note: What about that previous interpretation? Well what is the God of Time in Genshin and what has she done for humanity? It could go either way. After all it wasn't like the Trailblazer took out Aquila right? In the last topic I even brought up that Janus and Aquila could both reflect Phanes. So Amphoreus may not have to be 1:1 with Genshin even though the devs still want to convey their original intentions for Genshin through it.
So that was part 2 of this theory. We now have a similar setting and intention. This world is then given a story about humanity caught in a never-ending cycle and must find a way out. Thanks to visitors from beyond the skies they succeed and become free.
Next time (yes there's still more) we can get even closer to the ground.
Posted Jun 1, 2025, 2:38 PM UTC