Silly blasphemous doctor and silly blasphemous sage

Hello everyone! This post is about a theory thats been growing on me recently about the relation, now seemingly more visible than ever, beetween Dottore and Hroptatyr, The Wise. Keep in mind this theory might be flawed and I would love to hear every correction to point these thoughts into the most correct direction possible. So with that said, lets get to the point.

SIMILARITIES

First lets start with simple pattern recognition.

From the design alone, we can see that Dottore seems to ressemble a plague doctor/evil doctor, and that could explain the main focus of his theme. However, further than just a simple plague doctor, lets reduce the message of his design to a masked raven. Hroptatyr is presented only as a chess piece, a laughing mask, and by his name we know he is strongly related to the character of Odin, god who used ravens as his messangers/observers of the nine realms. We also know, however, that Dottores design and combat abilities as well as music themes resemble sumeru motifs, as a way to show his identity as Zandik, far from what Hroptatyrs identity as a kaenriahn can be.

Another important detail is the red eye Dottore shows both in his boss form, the face behind the mask of the machine that talked to us in the sumeru quest and even the seven floating artifacts on his boss arena (maybe representations of the seven cardinal sins). Remember now, that Hroptatyr is represented as a mask with a crown with a singular red gem on top, and also, that the abyss outside teyvat, in its most primitive form, is also represented as red. This colour may be the one Hoyoverse chose to show the concept of entropy, concept that Dottore mentions in his boss form ¨Entropy bends to me!¨, becoming the first character to talk about it in the main storyline. Entropy is chaos. Chaos is anti-reason. Anti-reason is abyss (we will see this with the card of the devil).

Notice both how the space is pictured as red and also how Surtalogi has the power to open Teyvat's borders (this will be relevant later)

And about goals and morality, at least both seem obsessed with gathering knowledge, as the idea of Dottore trascending reason was, in his eyes, an experiment, meaning he desires esentially not to become a god but to seize more knowledge than reason lets him. Dottore was unhealthy interested in kaenriahn technology and knowledge, and if he had enough research data, I believe it wouldve been impossible for him not to know Hroptatyr and his craft. This is, however, considering him and Hroptatyr didnt always have some form of direct connection (Ill explain myself later). Also the burning of the Irminsul Dottore is supposed to perpetrate, is basically, a ¨blasphemy agaisnt reason¨.

Now what does the term ¨blasphemy against reason¨ mean. Does it mean wanting to know more than the ruler of reason? No. Turn into a god greater than the Heavenly Principles? No. Reason is defined as the power to decide, to choose, what reality will be and the order reality will follow. The power to define. The power to be right, to set an universal and unmovable truth upon existence. For a researcher/human mastermind, this concept seems horrific and a complete attack against the sanctified pursue of knowledge. Specially for those who, in their gluttony of always wanting more, desire to seek what lies beyond the truth imposed by the demonic heavens. Lets make an analogy. Imagine the universe is a paper sheet, blank and empty. Reason would be the power of the pencil, the power to write and define what is true and what isnt. The authority to shape reality. Then its only logical to think that the antagonic power of reason, is not the opposite order, but rather the absence of order, the eraser. The power to destroy. To destroy what reason creates. The final blasphemy, the ¨blasphemy against reason¨ is the power of destruction. And the ideology that preceeds this power is the same that Dottore believes, and the power itself has already been pictured as the abyss, as entropy. And Hroptatyr represents this blasphemy.

HROPTATYR, ¨THE WISE¨, SINNER OF REASON

Now that his blasphemy has already been explained, let's talk a bit more about this mysterious figure. First we know he was the president of the Universitas Magistrorum, the right hand of the king, and given the obsession of the monarch and the deceitful and manipulative nature of Hroptatyr, maybe he even had more power than the king himself, as the king probably saw him as the only one he could really trust knowing that the chief royal mage was always by his side appeasing him (not related with this post but it's possible Hroptatyr was the one who killed Irmin and divided the abyssal power).

• ¨I simply appease him because it's in the interest of the Universitas Magistrorum¨, surely he didn't have any other reason did he.

Some people associate Hroptatyr with the sin of envy, however, from what we know from him he would rather stay at his position more quietly than the king, he had nothing to envy. I personally believe he is the perfect sin of gluttony representation, a far more sinister sin. If we check Dottores boss mats, theres one that says that the fools who have tried for millennia to seek truth live under 6 cardinal sins, which enforces the theory of the ideology of the ¨hanged man¨/enlightened one to be associated with the last of the 7 cardinal sins.

Now what would be the sin of someone who desires to know everything. Well gluttony ofc! The desire for knowledge only leads to desire for even more knowledge. The more you know the more you want to know. A never ending desire to devour, to consume. Growth for the sake of growth. Gluttony. And that also fits perfectly with the nature of abyss. Now that we have associated the ¨blasphemy against reason¨ with the abyss. Then we can jump to a powerful and dangerous conclusion. Hroptatyr is the Will of the Abyss.

Weve seen the abyss as a ¨villain¨ throughout our story yet the abyss is just a force of nature, chaos. It doesnt plant the seed for evil to appear. It observes. It serves as a way for evil to grow.

• The best example of this is the abyss being presented as a force of temptation for the sinners themselves. It only showed them a way to satiate their ambitions/achieve their goals, yet the intention already lied within them.

The Will of the Abyss is, in essence, the greatest experimentator of the universe. Yet abyss itself doesn't have any conscience. It needs a vessel or a living being to define something we can name as Will of the Abyss. Someone to observe the results of applying the abyss to different variables. At last, chaos is the most interesting experiment of them all, for using the same variables can get to completely different outcomes. The perfect toy for someone who is never satiated of knowledge to play with.

Now to enforce these ideas lets talk abt two lunar arcanum cards:

LUNAR ARCANUM XV: THE DEVIL

Lunar Arcanum XV: The Devil

Was there ever a true age of darkness?
Where ignorance and shadow were mistaken for divine,
And the "Devil" was hailed as creator.
Where violence and suffering ran rampant,
A "Dark Age" of savagery that burned through civilization.

The "Devil" is merely a mask,
Through which the power of darkness is revealed.
The god who creates and maintains,
The abyss that consumes and destroys.
That infinite, boundless, perpetual "Age of Enlightenment."

As I mentioned before, here we can see the clear paralel as two direct opposing forces, the force of abyss and the force of this god, reason.

This card is narrated under the perspective of the ¨hanged man¨ (inverted logic). What this means is that whoever wrote this text meant that the ¨Dark age¨ was the age where a creator who he calls ¨Devil¨ (heavenly principles) made an age of ignorance and hid the truth behing the mask this devil is said to be. So what the ¨Age of Enlightment¨ means is not the age where reason rules but the one where it doesnt. The ¨hanged man¨ thinks that reason ruling is the dark age.

Now another interesting detail is the picture that is shown. Just some random abyssal creatures? No. These seem to be specifically Rhinedottirs creations, rifthounds and Durin, getting corrupted by the forces of abyss. Abyss which is represented as mist with a laughing face on the top right of the picture, which leads us to think abyss actually does have conscience, or at least, that it found a vessel to manifest its will. And to enforce the theory that Hroptatyr is that conscience, Rhinedottirs creations being shown here could be the explanation why she hates Hroptatyr so much, because she, as emotionless as she could seem, has proven that she actually cares about her creations even though she doesnt know how to canalize it, therefore she blames Hroptatyr as the Will of the Abyss for corrupting her creatures.

And another important detail is that the hand that has broken Durins flask is shown to have claws. This can be out of context and she was just saying it metaphorically but Nicole, in nod krais presentation trailer, said ¨now, beyond the moonlight's reach, an ancient shadow brandishes its hunting claws, taking aim at the stars¨ and now knowing Rerir didnt have such ambitions (the symbol of the stars are usually used to ressemble order, reason, fate and divine rules), and that Nicole appears mostly to warn humanity about hidden threats then its also very unlikely that she was refering to Dottore either since we already knew about him and hes not ¨beyond the moonlight's reach¨ even though he has the ambition of ¨taking aim at the stars¨.

Both Dottore and Rerir were ¨under the moonlight's reach¨, the threat shes talking about resides outside Teyvat

She could be talking about Hroptatyr himself, who should be known among the Hexenzirkel members as a great level threat to Teyvat. And her message could be a warning saying ¨hes moving again¨.

LUNAR ARCANUM XII: THE HANGED MAN

Lunar Arcanum XII: The Hanged Man

The opulent light sinks into the dark depths beneath the earth,
Seeking to redeem the radiance that is fated to be extinguished.

Yet "redemption" is a word filled with arrogance,
There is an implicit meaning hidden within,
That mortals have done some clear wrong that must be corrected.

The path where "strength" is sacrificed for "human wisdom",
Is that of the "Hanged Man" who seeks to glimpse the mysteries of the demonic heavens hanging from the white tree.
Though the intelligence that mortals grasp is flawed,
It cannot be said to be false.
Quite the opposite, for reflected in his inverted eyes,
Is a pure truth illuminated beneath infinite brilliance.

About the second lunar arcanum analysis, I've mentioned the perspective of the ¨hanged man¨. The man who hanged himself in order to see the truth behind the ¨demonic heavens¨. This represents an ideology. The ideology of the ones who seek the true nature of the heavens, the ones who see truth in the absence of order, and those who sacrifice their humanity in order to further understand what lies beyond reason. Truth doesnt exist in reason, but in the absence of it. For one to be able to seize it, it is needed to invert our perspective, hang ourselves, sacrifice parts of what we are in order to gain this knowledge.

This card has already been mentioned and studied multiple times by the fanbase, however, it is unclear who is it referring to. Dottore? Rauthvangi? Hroptatyr? Here there isnt really a confirmation but since Hroptatyrs name belongs to Odin, the similarities are stronger when talking about him as the ¨hanged man¨.

Odin canonically hanged himself from the Yggrasil and even gave one of his eyes (symbolism of the singular eye Dottore is represented with) in order to seek more knowledge. While Dottore and Rauthvangi have similar stories (being expelled, getting obsessed with the idea of a paradise beyond reason), we still have no official Hroptatyr backstory (we can speculate one using the name of his weapon, Starkuthr, but this enters the realm of headcannon rather than theory), yet he is the one who seem to be more prolific of the three and the most indicated one to be associated with the card, while the other two just follow the same ideals.

In this last version, Hoyoverse developed the characters of both Rauthvangi via worldquests and Dottore via main archon quest. This is not a coincidence. They are setting up the other characters we know of that follow the path of the ¨hanged man¨. They are preparing to show us the sinner of reason.

THE RELATION BEETWEEN DOTTORE AND HROPTATYR

Lets go back to the analysis of the paralels beetween these two. Now that we have set the bases of their shared ideology, their similarities in design and themes, lets try to get conclusions.

Is Dottore Hroptatyr? No. Or rather, not likely. While it is true that Hroptatyr couldve used his power to erase his real identity and change his voice, appearance and even create a backstory for a human that never existed before, Zandik, its rather unlikely that the one pictured as the observer of all would be the center of attention of his experiment (he rather stay hidden, hanging), maybe in the future he will, but now, Hroptatyr is still collecting data (maybe the reason behind the different loading screen we got during the AQ).

And if Dottore was Hroptatyr himself then he would have the power to destroy us all without effort since the beginning, which wasnt a possibility for Dottore before becoming the Heretic of the False Moon.

Even as the Heretic of the False Moon, its very unlikely hes at the level of the sinner

Then what is Dottore to Hroptatyr? Most likely, one of his crows. We know of Dottore existing already around the time of Tatarasunas incident, which makes him almost as old as the Cataclysm. The theory would be then, that Dottore is either a clone/created being/student of Hroptatyr. That Dottore is his follower one way or another. This would explain how Dottore was able to replicate a technique designed in Kaenriah (the making of his segments) with such efficiency to farly surpass the electro archon. This would explain how he knew about Rerir manifested as the Wild Hunt and how he knew how to ¨revive¨ him. Afterall, Dottore serves, in some way, the Will of the Abyss to end all reason.

Maybe Dottore is a clone and he was refering to the sinner as the ¨segment in the prime of his life¨, as the one burning irminsul down.

We still have to see what will be the relation beetween Hroptatyr and this event, its very unlikely the Blasphemy against Reason just stays silent if the creation of the Heavenly Principles (Lunar Arcanum XXI: The World) gets destroyed

But most importantly, Dottore being one of Hroptatyr's ravens would also explain the crisis in the frontiers.

We know there was a crisis in Teyvats frontiers originated from Dottores actions and that kept the Hexenzirkel occupied while we confronted him. Now the thing is, they never really explain what was the nature of this crisis, and given that Dottore started it when he didnt have the authority of the moons and also that ALL members of the Hexenzirkel (except Nicole) were needed to stop it, which includes Rhinedottir, ruler of life, then its logic to assume that Dottore never had the power to cause a struggle like that but rather, he started a detonant that would escalate the issue to something big enough to trouble all the witches. Now we know, as Alice mentioned, that it wasnt a common abyssal intrusion but rather a specific anomaly caused by Dottores influences, so this discards the possibility of Dottore just making the frontiers ¨vulnerable¨ to the entrance of the abyss.

And now, why would Dottore open Teyvats false sky in our fight agaisnt him? He already had an artificial moon marrow for that specific moon, the Frost Moon, so it is illogical he did it to gain more power out of the moon's presence, but actually, since the moon was our only hope and Columbina's original moon, it would be an unnecesary risk for him to open the false sky (it even was the main reason why he was ¨stopped¨).

Maybe he was just aurafarming but this would be completely unnecesary unless...

Now heres the theory. What if, what he did that caused the crisis was, contacting an insanely powerful entity interested in his experiment. What if he was opening the false sky as his way of letting someone else enter Teyvat. Now the question of what was the nature of the crisis becomes WHO was creating the crisis. Dottore would open teyvats inner barrier and that other entity would open teyvats outer frontier.

And who is this entity then? Well if this is true, such entity would be powerful enough to make almost all Hexenzirkel members break a sweat. Someone that dwells outside of Teyvat, in the most pure form of abyss, with the power to confront the witches and interested enough in Teyvat to make an move at the exact moment Dottore was trying to ascend to godhood. Someone whos goal might be also to dethrone reason. And these traces point to a clear suspect. The ¨hanged man¨, Hroptatyr, The Wise, ofc!

And lastly, why would Hroptatyr, one of Kaenriah's great sinners, maybe even the most important of the five, be interested in having Dottore as his eyes in Teyvat. What Hroptatyr wants is to dethrone reason. To end the concept of order. And how can he achieve this? First thing that comes to mind is descenders. Descenders are the perfect experiment for someone like Hroptatyr, they live outside the rules of reason, theyre living proof of beings beyond the demonic tree, and if Dottore represents his vision in Teyvat, then Hroptatyr would be tracking the efforts of the fatui to revive the 3rd descender and also our actions as the 4th descender. The moons power was another experiment to see if the lunar authority couldve been enough to defy reason. The perfect way of experimenting in Teyvat without anyone pointing at him directly, because Odin prefers to wait and observe, hanging from the white tree.

Hroptatyr may have been observing the traveler since the beginning of the game, we know there has been simbolism of this character from the inverted statue in the first Dainsleif quest to the Mondsdadt quest were a mage is behind a dragon turning evil (Hroptatyr as the Will of the Abyss, Nibelung as the dragon) to the story of Woobakwa (evil red squirrel that represents abyss in the Boar Princess, which further expands the theory that abyss has a vessel that carries its will) or even the Thrilling Tales of Dragon Slayers book with Hroptatyr being represented as the grand novelist.

Hints of Hroptatyr throught the game (about the statue, possibly hints that Vedrfolnir also follows the hanged man ideology aswell, enforcing the theory that both are working together)

Dottore is alive, Zandik is alive, and will probably make his next appearance alongside with Hroptatyr. We even saw a different loading screen saying collecting data, and had two endings to the last archon quest, so the possibility of us and the witches actually losing is and being now inside a new simulation is likely to be true. We still don't know the full extent of the sinner's powers.

Now about the sinner, I'll be making another theory on how it's likely that Vedrfolnir and Hroptatyr are working together, how they are the cause behind Nibelung being consumed by abyss and how these two will play as the most important antagonist of the game being paralels of eachother (Vedrfolnir fails and Hroptatyr succeds), as well as how will their character develop through the story and their ultimate goals. For now, we just have to wait, but keep in mind, that Hroptatyr is probably coming soon, very soon, for if this theory is true, then he would've finally made a move after ages of silence. The Will of the Abyss is moving once again.