The People are the True Masters of this World (Amphoreus Theory Part 3)
Ok ok only if they inherit your compassion and acceptance!
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.
First we explored how Amphoreus had a world built in a very similar way to Genshin's Teyvat. Then we looked at how the story of this world also reflects where Genshin's overarching story seemed to be going. Now let's get even closer to the ground. Let's relate the Archon Quests to the different Titan's Trials.
As that little joke I started this off with suggests, there was something I left out of the last topic. Yes allogenes are enlightened humans and yes humanity is meant to take over as rulers of their own world and their own destinies but it's not as simple as that. There's still room for improvement. It's a running theme not just in Amphoreus or Teyvat that humanity is just the worst. If it wasn't just the worst then there wouldn't be a need for a Cocoon of Finality or a Descender and its principles. Left unchecked humans end up destroying their worlds 100% of the time. The cocoon was actually so sure about this that the whole Herrscher of the End destruction of the world thing was its solution to the problem. Before humanity could get so bad that it leads itself towards fulfilling the Sea of Quanta's desire for oblivion, the cocoon destroys humanity first and forces the world to reset. That slows down the degradation so the universe can last just a little longer. And we already see what happens when that fails: New Eridu in Zenless. Zenless is by far the worst universe we have in the Hoyoverse to date. Humanity has dwindled to a single city full of decadence and in-fighting. Their world is decorated in polkadots of Hollows aka Fragmentum aka Gosoythoths aka Honkai Eruptions (the sea's version of them) and usually one or two of these things is more than enough to ruin your day in the other universes.
So what was the original Genshin dev's solution? No not another Cocoon. Phanes is bad news just like Aquila was bad news. But we actually saw what that solution was in Amphoreus. Someone needs to inspire them so that one day, the heroes will outnumber the cowards. Hyacine the descendent of Seliose's people came back after 1000 years of the Skyfolk's soul searching to show her that the modern generation of Amphoreus had earned their chance. In each of the Archon Quests we've played through so far, that's pretty much been the story as well. We arrive. The nation isn't putting its best foot forward. Something big happens. We leave it in a much better place.
Besides making the humans better what other details from Amphoreus can we relate back to Genshin to see where the original devs might have wanted to go with the story that they ultimately weren't afforded.
I relate Inazuma to Castrum Kremnos. You may be thinking that a warlike city-state should relate to the Nation of War and Mydei does have a red motif that matches the Pyro there but let me explain why Inazuma is a better fit. At the surface level if we take a look at how the Star Rail wiki summarizes the Kremnoans, they are a battle-oriented society where death before dishonor is a virtue and individualism isn't valued. If we were to summarize Japan's society especially during the Sengoku and Shogunate eras what might we say about it? Battle-oriented warrior class society with samurai in high standing where death before dishonor is a virtue and the nail that sticks out gets hammered thus individualism pales in comparison to conformity.
Now let's look at Nikador and Mydei. The image I headered this section with comes from v3.2 where we learned what the Nikador we fought really was. He's the human Gnaeus from a previous cycle of Amphoreus. But by the time we confront him as Nikador he's mostly forgotten who he was. If it wasn't for us helping Castorice find Thanatos we wouldn't have known that the "Gnaeus" Nikador we met was actually the true Nikador inside of that boss enemy. And he's not the only one. Around the same time we'd find out that "Cerces" the Titan is just Calypso who was one of the Grove's Seven Sages in that same previous cycle. Aglaea constantly brought up how her humanity was getting stripped away little by little since becoming a demigod. Memory loss. Loss of humanity. Where have we seen this in Genshin? How about Azhdaha and the concept of erosion? He slowly forgot everything and even became antagonistic to the very people he wanted to protect. Ei was worried about erosion as well. She hid herself in the Plane of Euthymia just to prevent it. However according to Yae, "Sealing yourself away from the rest of the world may only serve to accelerate the effects of erosion..." And this we can see from several different points. Ei didn't know that Archons were linked with the distribution of Visions while both Zhongli and Neuvillette did. She also barely knew what was going on in her region while Furina believes just because of the feeling he gave her that Zhongli probably knew what happened all the way in Fontaine. Venti also knew we'd be looking for the Hexenzirkel's lamp during the second Windblume event and of course Yae herself just happened to arrive in Sumeru right after the events of the Sumeru Archon Quest and just in time to foil a follow-up Fatui plot by one of Dottore's goons.
But that stuff was covered by the story. What wasn't? One of the biggest issues people had with the Inazuma Archon Quest was that the Act III title, Omnipresence Over Mortals and Ei's Statue of the Thousand Armed Hundred Eyed God never really came into play in the story. So let's go back to Amphoreus. In v3.0 Nikador was immortal. It would turn out you couldn't kill him because he'd split his soul into several different fragments. During the Scara portion of Act III that's how Scara described what Ei was planning to do. "Eternity stretches things out over a long time. But each moment within it becomes all the more fragile." With a title like Omnipresence Over Mortals, this line reads that Ei's plan to force static eternity onto Inazuma was to split herself into moments spread out over the whole region in order to directly control it. This was something the devs had even hinted about in the v2.0 livestream. They brought up how lightning happens in a flash so why was Ei's ideal eternity? So how did Ei plan to achieve her omnipresence? That was the original purpose of the statue just like the statues that housed the pieces of Nikador's soul. Just as Ei's statue had a thousand arms (and based on its real world lore inspiration a thousand eyes, not just a hundred) Ei would split herself into "a thousand" instances of herself. The real world goddess used her thousand arms to assist humanity and her thousand eyes to watch over its development. However Scara said she'd be more fragile this way right? It may be that the "hundred eyes" in the statue's name was going to reflect this because unlike the real world goddess, she'd have her thousand arms to control her region but only a hundred eyes leaving her mostly blind and vulnerable to the Fatui. Scara explained that most of what Ei had committed to in the last year was a product of the Fatui's manipulations again a sign that erosion was affecting her normal Archon senses.
Side Note: I also believed that the hundred eyes might have been part of whatever spell or ritual she needed to get that omnipresence. Another thing that was mostly glossed over in the Archon Quest we got was the fanfare when Ei was about to claim Thoma's Vision. It was the hundredth Vision. (Vision is God's Eye in the original Chinese.) The Traveler prevented it from being taken and made themselves a more pressing matter for her to deal with thus delaying the acquisition of that hundredth Vision. This was likely meant to be part of Act III where we'd realize what Scara was saying and had to once again prevent a hundredth Vision from being taken in order to prevent Ei from achieving omnipresence.
Now to solve this problem of an immortal god who had lost his mind, Amphoreus gave us King Mydei. He took on Nikador and then replaced him as Titan. However we know that's not the right answer. All replacing the Titan achieves is making a new Titan for the next cycle. Instead we need a human solution and originally we would have had it. But first let's get it wrong. Mydei is also an immortal and simply defeats Nikador to replace him. This fulfills his destiny where he's trapped endlessly battling and dying and reviving which we see him still doing even up to the end of v3.3. Mydei's origin story was that he was discarded by his parent. While Eurypon did far worse parenting than Ei, "abandoned and left for dead" is likely an accurate description for what Scara felt so we might be able to connect them that way. Additionally Scara is an artificial lifeform and therefore functionally immortal. I had jokingly named my Wanderer the Raiden Kuge (Kuge equates to noble and is technically higher in rank than the Shogun but in a Shogunate government it's expectedly powerless) and if the Fatui's scheme had succeeded, Ei would have lost her Gnosis to Signora and still be split into so many weakened instances that Scara might have been installed as a puppet leader under the organization. He would be "king" but the title wouldn't mean much with him under the thumb of someone else. Mydei was often accused of being subservient to Aglaea so Scara here would be subservient to the Tsaritsa. Finally when Mydei said he was dissolving the crown, Krateros argued that he was destroying Kremnos as well. Well Scara's self-appointed name was Kunikuzushi, nation destroyer. We might even be able to suggest that his previous destruction of the Gokaden was a prelude where he harmed Inazuma to the benefit of Snezhnaya's Fatui.
Now let's do better. Kamisato Ayato released at the same time as the Hues of the Violet Garden. In the event, Yae set up the Irodori Festival which finally reopened Inazuma to the outside world. Just like in real life Japan, this opening up would have followed the fall of the Shogunate and brought the nation into the modern age. Just like the Irodori Festival, Japan ran the Cool Japan Strategy which brought Japanese culture to the rest of the world. Ayato was the one Yae appointed to run the festival. During the event, Ayato had noticed a future threat to Inazuma (Scara) and set up a team to one day face it. Therefore in this human age where the people must find a way to overcome crises on their strength alone, who better to lead than Ayato? (of course if you've checked out my recent Albedo topic, we didn't get that)
After Inazuma we had Sumeru. This one's much easier to see isn't it? The most prominent academic facility of the nation that is located inside of a giant tree? The Grove. However right off the bat we already have a notable change don't we? In Sumeru there are Six Darshans in the Academia. In the Grove of Epiphany though there are seven. Well actually there should have been a seventh Darshan. While Darshan is a Hindu term, the actual schools are named after the Amesha Spenta of Zoroastrianism. The Seven Amesha Spenta. The one that's missing from the Sumeru we got was Spenta Mainyu and probably the most important of the Amesha Spenta as it's essentially to Zoroastrianism what the Holy Ghost is to the Holy Trinity in Christianity.
This is where I think the original story heavily deviates from what we ended up getting. Back then I had come up with theories about how the academics there would behave given the information miHoYo was providing us. Unlike the story we got I thought the sages were part of a single Darshan and because of what Lisa said, they'd be silenced by the raving scholars of another Darshan. These opposing Darshans were the enlightened sages of Rtawahist (which comes from Ardwahist for Truth) and the Vahumana (which comes from Wahman for Intelligence) which would be represented in Amphoreus by the Venerationists and Nousporists of the Grove. Of course my prediction got it backwards. I thought the truth-seekers of Ardwahist would be the forward thinking ones while the Wahman were chomping at the bit for useless information because of their uninhibited erudition. Instead I think Amphoreus shows the Darshans would have gone the other way, with Rtawahist being far too traditional and therefore sitting in underutilized advisory councils and the Vahumana... well still pushing for uninhibited erudition. But as a good thing! Well a good and bad thing. From v3.1 we learned what the Nousporists were about. Yes they opposed tradition (which would just be to venerate the Titans and their established order, hence Venerationists) but they also did things like Anaxa plucking out his own eye for an equivalent exchange spell as depicted above. Equivalent exchange as all FMA fans know is a rule of alchemy and in Genshin that'd be Khemia and Khemia is a Khaenri'ahn art derived from the Abyss. Not good.
Under that kind of setting I think the story might have broken up into three parts. Instead of the sages working with the Fatui it might have been these destructive Vahumana scholars, an outlier. They'd be the easy part since it's easy to see that they are the enemy. However after that we still have the rivalry between the traditionalists and those seeking knowledge at all costs. In that case I think we'd end up with what Cerces chooses to do which is to die in order to pass her divine power to humanity. In other words, Rukkhadevata's death and the Akasha System were likely still part of the story but not as part of Dottore's Scara plan. Rukkhadevata had faith that humanity would find the right path.
And that path was not Nahida. In keeping with the theme of humanity needs to stand on its own feet we'd need to look at Anaxagoras. I think Nahida - as a proxy for Rukkhadevata - would take interest in the character Anaxa reflects. Through his maniacal schemes, he'd use Rukkhadevata's death to put an end to the debate between the traditional sages and the pugnacious scholars just like Anaxa resolved the debate between the Council of Elders and the Chrysos Heirs. (which led Caenis to another point in the story for this topic series) Of course, I mean Alhaitham. Unlike in the story we got, I think Alhaitham would have remained the new sage or rather that he'd be the leader of a new system in Sumeru. What that system might have been, would Alhaitham revive or establish the Spenta Mainyu Darshan to oversee such a system, if the Akasha would have remained active in this version of the story, what role Nahida would serve in this version, that's all up in the air. We didn't get that story and Amphoreus can only tell us so much while still being able to tell its part in Star Rail's lore.
Ok and off of Sumeru we reach Fontaine. Now Fontaine was a mess. I already did a full rewrite of that Archon Quest because the one we got was pretty much filler for 90% of the story and then way overblown drama that left several characters without any agency. Also, by that time most of the original dev team had likely been replaced so there's really no telling what that story would have been save for the information we'd gotten early on meaning a story based on the French Revolution using a technologically advanced steampunk theme. French Revolution and steampunk really go hand in hand since the revolution took place during the Industrial Revolution that steampunk romanticizes and its core story centers around corruption which was the major focus of the revolution.
What Amphoreus does explain to us though is the original story behind the Archon. One big issue with the Fontaine we got was that it left us so many unanswered questions about Focalors. Egeria supposedly predated her but if she died only 500 years ago (Sumeru's Vourukasha Oasis established that Egeria died during the Cataclysm) and then Furina took over Fontaine as the stand-in Archon for exactly 500 years (we're shown the number of days she was Archon and you can calculate that to 500 years if Teyvat's yearly cycle matches our own) then how long was "Focalors" in charge? She claimed to have been working on the prophecy until she was "growing barnacles" but at best the established lore seems to suggest she went into the Oratrice like a minute into her reign right after making Furina and getting her set up for her plan. My solution to this was that Focalors was never called Focalors at all in the whole quest. Instead she was always called "Focalors' Divinity" and what is an Archon's divinity if not the Gnosis? So "Focalors" was really just the remaining consciousness of Egeria that was housed in the Gnosis while the rest of her had become the Amrita. Furina is the rest, a depowered Archon. Then at the end of the quest Furina becomes the only Fontaine character capable of using both Pneuma and Ousia and this is also never explained. Theories suggested that she had stronger powers because it was Neuvillette's power that gave her her Vision. (her Vision is the only one to have four prongs holding the elemental gem in place) But that's not how Visions work. As both Zhongli and Neuvillette (and technically Yae) had explained, the only part that the Archon plays is providing the energy. The allogenes gain their powers based on their qualifications so Neuvillette only set aside some required amount of his power in order to keep that system going. My answer to Furina's unique ability was simple: she's both halves of Focalors and so she has both sets of powers. Egeria's benevolence is her healing side and Pneuma-based. Her base abilities are Ousia-based and deal damage while draining health.
Side Note: If you guys think I read too much into it because miHoYo only used Focalors' Divinity for her dialogue, keep in mind they also consistently called Capitano the "Captain" with the quotes. I used that detail to justify a theory that he probably housed multiple souls inside of his body hence not being just the Captain. That was then proven true in Act V. These subtle details are classic moves by miHoYo and in this case both would have come from the new dev team.
How can Amphoreus help us figure this out? Let's check out Castorice. While Star Rail already has a Seele and Veliona expy, I think Castorice and her twin sister Polyxia also work as well. They are two halves of a whole. Literally. Castorice is named after Castor and Polyxia was literally Pollux the dragon. These are the twins of the constellation Gemini and they are also the two Chrysos Heirs of Thanatos. On top of that, Seele/Veliona represent rebirth and death respectively and that's exactly what Castorice and her sister also represent as the hands of Thanatos. In the previous cycle Castorice sacrificed herself (death) so that her sister could become the new Titan and her first act as Titan was to resurrect her sister. (rebirth) That led to Polyxia becoming the new sister representing death (she dies) and Castorice using her power to revive the Trailblazer. (rebirth) And also, what weapon does Castorice use? A scythe. What about Star Rail's Seele? A scythe. And original HI3 Seele? A scythe. Anyway you can then link this back to Furina who was a new human life Focalors had wanted to live (rebirth) after she died as Egeria. (death, well you can also count Focalors' Divinity killing herself to resolve the prophecy which also freed Furina to live her life)
Side Note: To Furina's dismay I think the devs (not sure which team) wanted to be funny and so Arlecchino is the one wielding a scythe in Genshin. Arlecchino traumatized Furina and she's been terrified of the Harbinger ever since but they have very intertwined stories. Both (considering Archon Furina) loved the people under their care and sought to save them by any means necessary. In her boss fight, you more or less need Furina because you'll need her consistent healing to stave off the effects of Bond of Life. Back when we were still theorizing about Fontaine's Archon Quest, I had actually come up with a different boss fight against Arlecchino with a mechanic that ended up being exactly Furina's combat style, switching between damaging and healing. I also theorized that Arlecchino is the expy of Honkai's Herrscher of Sentience and around that time Senti just happened to meet with Veliona to berate her which ultimately led Seele to awaken as Herrscher of Rebirth.
I think the old dev team even wanted the parallels here to be really in our faces because where did Polyxia resurrect her sister? Styxia. What was the Titan that they worshiped? Phagousa the Ocean Titan, the one that controls the waters that Mr. Dragon Boy Dan Heng ends up using. All you have to ask is if the devs needed that connection to Phagousa at all. What did it add to the story? So we can at least consider that maybe it was a hint about Fontaine instead. And if the connection to Fontaine and Furina is still not strong enough let me just talk about Castorice's gameplay. She drains her party's health to power herself up. This allows her to summon Polyxia who drains her own health to deal damage. And then once Polyxia's health is fully depleted she heals the party. Her damage scales based around a mechanic of fluctuating HP. Furina's damage scales based around a mechanic of fluctuating HP.
Side Note 1: I'd say my rewrite back then even provided that same heartbreaking separation we saw between Castorice and Polyxia. Fate means to keep them apart. One must always die to allow the other to become the new Titan. In my rewrite there was no way to prevent the remains of Egeria in the Gnosis from being expended. Just like Castorice, Furina knew and had to accept the reality for the sake of everyone. Now seeing it play out in Amphoreus, I wonder how close I got to what the original devs had wanted. It's a shame we'll never get to see what their Fontaine would've been.
Side Note 2: In fact there was another detail from my version. What was the fate of the people of Styxia? They were killed by an evil dragon and then became the River of Souls. Put into Fontaine terms this is the story of Remuria but in my version it was Neuvillette's original form that convinced Remus to convert all his people into the Ichor which we know is actually dissolving the Oceanid humans into the Primordial Sea. Back in those days the Hydro Dragon was a follower of the Abyssal dragon Nibelung and therefore it wouldn't be wrong to classify him as an evil dragon.
And that's really all I can say at this point. I haven't noticed any Chrysos Heir that feels reminiscent of Natlan's story or Archon. I suppose Tribios and her many counterparts could match up to the long line of human Pyro Archons but not much else does. Also by the time of Natlan there was already no more input from the original devs. The biggest issue Natlan had was that it was the sole region we had zero information for. There were no NPCs to work off of and the most we got was something about the Mare Jivari being on the other side of the continent from Mondstadt and that Natlan has natural hot springs. I had even pointed out that we didn't even know the Archon's name because "Murata" was a mistranslation.
So let's review what we do have:
- Humanity is meant to control their own fate in these Hoyoverse universes but they need to do a little soul searching first. There's room for improvement.
Inazuma
- Inazuma's intended story is represented by Kremnos and Nikador.
- Just like Gnaeus Nikador, Ei was planning to separate herself into pieces in order to preserve her eternity.
- The human solution to Inazuma was Ayato, a "king" like Mydei who would lead the nation away from isolation, war and eternity. And also give up the royal status.
- There is also a bad end for Inazuma which is Scara as Mydei. Also "royalty" as he is the son of the ruler, Scara might have defeated Ei after her omnipresence plan and become a puppet king under Snezhnaya. This mirrors accusations against Mydei suggesting he was subservient to Aglaea.
Sumeru
- The setup for the Academia might have gone differently. The sages might have all come from a single Darshan, the traditionalist Rtawahist while there'd be a forward-thinking opposition Darshan the Vahumana. This is because in Amphoreus there are also two opposing schools in the Grove of Epiphany.
- There would be a faction in Vahumana that goes too far like Anaxa had in the Nousporists. They'd side with the Fatui to revive Deshret.
- After that it'd be Alhaitham just like Anaxa who'd find a way to resolve the disputes between Rtawahist and Vahumana, becoming the leader of Sumeru under a new system.
Fontaine
- The original dev team had more or less been replaced by this time so only pre-existing information can be linked to them.
- As such it is likely Furina was meant to be one half of Focalors while Egeria was the other half. Egeria would die and become the Amrita but leave some of herself in the Gnosis which was then separated from Furina to make her a simple human. This relates to Castorice who was revived as a human after she died to elevate Polyxia to Titanhood and this move by Polyxia led to Thanatos barely existing in the current cycle.
So with that I think this theory's... well what do you know. Thank you v3.3. We've still got one last section of this. I'll see you next time!
Posted Jun 15, 2025, 3:11 PM UTC