Have you ever wondered... who is behind everything?

Hello again! This is the 2nd chapter of a 3 chapter group of theories regarding Hroptatyr and Vedrfolnir, now entering in full detail into their relevance and importance up to the current day. If you have interest about the other chapters, here they are! (there will be linked once the 3 chapters are posted)

CHAPTER 1: VEDRFOLNIR, HROPTATYR, AND KEY CONCEPTS

CHAPTER 2: THE PLAN UP TO PRESENT DAY

CHAPTER 3: THE FUTURE AND MESSAGE BEHIND GENSHIN IMPACT

And also as a quick resume of this individual chapter, we will talk about these points and their relation with the sinners:

• Corrupting Nibelung and starting the war beetween dragons and celestia, leading the HP to malfunction and need to be put into ¨hibernation mode¨
• Bringing our ship to Teyvat and extracting one of the twins
• ¨Revoking¨ the descender status from our sibling
• Corrupting Irmin and then plan the night of the cataclysm
• Dividing the power of the abyss beetween the later known as sinners
• Infiltrating Asmoday's coding, using her to flee from Teyvat
• Hroptatyr behind the Fatui
• Cause the crisis on the frontiers during Dottore's experiment with the help of Asmoday
• Fooling the Hexenzirkel while Dottore builds his final god with Rerir's powers

So again let's get into it!

Note: it is recommended to understand the concepts of chapter 1

CHAPTER 2: THE PLAN UP TO PRESENT DAY

We will start with what happened before the storyline even started: the War of the Funerary Flame, Kaenriah and the cataclysm.

THE PAST

NIBELUNG

Now that we have established the theory of Hroptatyr as the one behind the abyss in chapter 1, let's talk about some stories.

First, ¨The Boar Princess¨.

The Boar Princess

I have to say this part of the theory was mainly inspired by u/Breakoutofyourshell, in his post talking about Wookbakwa. I highly advice everyone to read it, it really is a fascinating post and anyone can easily understand it!

So the idea that the post talks about is the character Woobakwa, from ¨The Boar Princess¨, being behind the corruption of the dragon king Nibelung.

To contextualize, Woobakwa is an evil squirrel sorcerer that appears in the story, and whose motivation is to turn ¨light into dark¨, a malicious being who hates everything nice, and who makes the pup of the story become hateful and harsh towards others. The pup who had been away from everybody, came back with his heart frozen and being ¨corrupted¨.

The blue pup and the red squirrel, Woobakwa

The idea of the post is that the blue pup represents Nibelung, pup who gets corrupted after being cursed with the power of an evil sorcerer from the abyss, Woobakwa, represented with a red one-eyed squirrel. Their colours are not coincidences.

Woobakwa being a squirrel would be a way of symbolizing Ratatosk, a squirrel messenger in norse mythology who deliberately sets conflict beetween Hræsvelgr and Nidhogg, who are portrayed to be the HP and Nibelung, reason and abyss, order and chaos.

Woobakwa is behind the War of the Funerary Flame.

Where there are heroes, there must be wicked mages, and where there are knights, there must be evil dragons.

"Now, now, ██, ██, do get along. Don't fight."

The two who would always play the knight and the fell dragon nodded reluctantly.

The Wicked Mage's Plumage

This idea which is further defined with the story of Narzissenkreuz, is VITAL for us to comprehend Genshin's story.

In the story there are five central characters. The hero, the evil dragon, the knight, the princess and the wicked mage. For the main storyline of Genshin we have:

• The hero: the playable traveler
• The evil dragon: corrupted Nibelung
• The knight: the one who stands agaisnt the dragon, the Heavenly Principles
• The princess: the abyss sibling acting as prince/princess (explained in chapter 3)
• The wicked mage: Woobakwa

This pattern is also observed in other stories like ¨The Little Witch and the Undying Flame¨ or ¨The Tale of Kuntur¨, and later we will explain how it is also recurrent inside the main storyline of Genshin.

What is common to all these stories and to Genshin's main storyline is that the wicked mage is controlling the evil dragon, who was never trully evil, but was corrupted.

The mage is the real final villain of the story and the only truly evil character.

Now let's look at Hroptatyr's weapon, Ardent Storm/Starkuthr:

Image from u/Breakoutofyourshell's post: the squirrel motif appears in his weapon. It even has the squirrel whiskers!

A squirrel? The conclusion seems evident: Hroptatyr is Woobakwa.

He was the one who originated the conflict beetween dragons and humans thousands of years ago. This is what the original post implied. But how and why? It seems temporally impossible for Hroptatyr to meet Nibelung in the past and then corrupted him. Right?

We know that inside of Genshin's universe, time isn't meassured linearly, but meassured by moments. Like the book we were talking about in chapter 1, every page exists simultaneously, yet they only make sense if we read from start to finish without skipping them.

The ¨power of time¨ is the ability to read and move these pages. Information is what moves the world, not a linear timeline. Information determines fate and causality. The world is bound to causality. If something happens, the next thing that will happen will be the results of the previous event: each page leads to the following page. That is fate. And reason defines fate.

So is it possible that Hroptatyr could communicate with Nibelung via information messages? Well yes but... no.

Nibelung was outside of Teyvat, and the aforementioned logic only works inside the dominion of reason, where information defines the world. Outside Teyvat lies the abyss, and abyss is in this analogy, the nothingness and the destruction of the existance.

So how do you send a message through nothingness? Inside the book of reason, you could just ¨write¨ a message inside the pages of the past using the power of logos, but inside the abyss? It would be something like sending a blank message inside a blank page, impossible communication. For Hroptatyr to communicate with Nibelung, he would need a more ¨traditional¨ method.

That's right! Time travel! Which would be impossible unless he had an ally with the power of time in the abyss.

You can see where I'm going right: Vedrfolnir. Here it is the first hint that the 2 are working together! Now for a common goal, to start the war beetween dragons and celestia in the past.

The original writer of Teyvat comes to face the usurper. Discord is set beetween dragons and heavens.

Nibelung would weaponize the moons (so Hroptatyr could monitorize Dottore's experiment with them later on the present) and would die.

The Heavenly Principles would use their resources and would be needed to put in ¨hibernation mode¨ .

None of them would be a problem in the future.

Why was it important to make the war start? Because Nibelung and the HP were both external to fate, the war and anything that happened to them was not part of this ¨unmovable net of information¨ that reason relies on. They needed both of those entities out of the plan.

With the war, the wicked mage makes sure that nor the dragon nor the knight are a problem.

KAENRIAH

Now into another story: ¨Thrilling Tales of the Dragon Slayers¨.

TTDS

Five heroes that start a journey to hunt an evil dragon. A clear allegory for the sinners and the night of the cataclysm:

• For honor, the master swordsman. Dainsleif: clear relation.
• For research, the knowledgeable sorceress. Rhinedottir: clear relation.
• For bounty, the swashbuckling mercenary. Rerir: the reason for the mercenary to join the group is to egoistically get bounty for himself (to save Tholindis) and not for greatness.
• For vengeance, the deadeye marksman. Surtalogi: when Rerir joins the sinners in the cutscene of his backstory, their motivations appear. Despair (Vedrfolnir) or desire (Rhinedottir and Hroptatyr), hatred or grief (Rerir). It seems like Surtalogi's goals were originated from hatred, vengeance, and given how Haden was, that Surtalogi lived as a prisoner and that his weapon of choice is the bow, it seems logic to assume he represents the marksman.
• For stories, the grand novelist. Vedrfolnir: he wants everyone to write their own stories.

-Their quest, to defeat the evil dragon Irmin.

Hroptatyr is NOT one of these characters, but the writer of the story.

I joined this party because I couldn't find a job, and anybody can be a copywriter.

But I'm no writer, just a regular fellow in his mid twenties without an honest job.

Note after being the story of the TTDS presented

It is because of this that we can form a very strong implication: Hroptatyr is the one who writes the fates of the sinners and Irmin. The writer of the story is the one who decides that the dragon will be the monster the heroes have to face, the one who starts, controls and ends the story and their chracters.

Remembering what we said in chapter 1, Hroptatyr is implied to be the assassin of Irmin and therefore the one who split the abyssal powers thanks to the story of Starkaðr (his sword, Starkuthr), a giant who killed not one but three kings during his life, while the only other weapon of the sinners where regicide is mentioned is Rerir's Barnstokkr, and Rerir never had such ambitions to kill the king.

Well now I gotta say, while I was thinking about this theory I found myself with some little problematic questions. If Hroptatyr really planned everything from Kaenriah when he was just a mortal, and his plan was to seek knowledge beyond reason, then why would he split up the power of the abyss? That's, of course, if he was the one who truly killed Irmin and gave the power to the other sinners too.

And, speaking of Irmin, a great part of this theory comes from the implications of Hroptatyr's name being from Odin, but isn't Irmin another way of caling such norse god?

Let's answer the second question first, and leave the first one hanging for a moment.

Irmin is indeed another name which people used to call Odin, however, here it isn't a name at all.

Let me explain myself. The name Irmin has germanic roots (not norse) and was used as a way to depict ¨greatness¨,¨centrality¨ or ¨importance¨, a name fit for a king. If it was related to Jörmunr/Odin it was because Odin represented this concept perfectly, but knowing Irmin's full name was actually Irminsul (¨the great pillar¨), then it's logical to assume that Irmin stands for a concept inside a compoud word, not for a character name in particular.

Now if we create a character out of that concept, Irmin, and another character to use a name of Odin, as Odin embodies such concept, then we could say Odin is somewhat the mind/consciousness (active character) behind what the name Irmin represents. Think now about the Vinster King and Hroptatyr, this would be a way of saying that Hroptatyr (Odin), was the conscient character behind the behaviour of Irmin, which perfectly fits with everything we currently know.

• Irmin is the concept of Odin
• Hroptatyr is the name of Odin

But the thing is, that if Hroptatyr is the ¨Will of the Abyss¨, does that mean that Irmin represents the abyss itself?

Not exactly. Irmin was said to be sane at some point, and his madness to be derived from his research on the power of the abyss. We know that Irminsul is also the name of the tree that stands as the ultimate craft of reason. We also know that Rauthvangi was expelled from the Universitas for studying the ¨pitch-dark void¨, so there was a time in the Eclipse Dynasty where these knowledge was considered forbidden.

Under my interpretation, what we can extract from this is that Irmin used to be a symbol of reason itself. But would this make Hroptatyr the ¨Will of Reason¨ then? No, the Heavenly Principles already fits into that role.

Irmin portrayed as a dragon in ¨Thrilling Tales of Dragon Slayers¨, and knowing he at some point was sane and not obsessed, the paralels beetween him and another king become concerning. A king who ruled as a symbol of reason who later was manipulated and consumed by the abyss? Where have I heard this before...

Let's bring Hroptatyr's weapon back into the main topic. The death of 3 different kings is implicit to its story.

Now the pattern seems clear.

A ruler who represents reason gets corrupted by abyssal powers thanks to the actions of an evil mage and their actions bring chaos and destruction to others.

• The first king was Irmin, Hroptatyr manipulated and killed him, and after his corruption, Kaenriah suffered chaos and destruction (and the cataclysm for Teyvat too, but Irmin wasn't the one who directly perpetrated it).
• The second king was Nibelung, Hroptatyr manipulated him, and after his corruption, **Teyvat suffered chaos and destruction.**And the third one? Is yet to happen.
• The ¨third king¨ will be the Heavenly Principles, Hroptatyr will fuse/devour them, and the whole universe will suffer chaos and destruction. (explored in chapter 3)

Hroptatyr's three kings

To explain now why would Hroptatyr split the power of the abyss, let's just say for now that 5 (potentially 6) individuals with ambitions of greatness grow in power and in dominion over the abyss way faster than one, and are ways of having ¨back up plans¨ if any of them dies/dissapears.

We will talk about this further in chapter 3 (on the creation of a god), but for now, just think this:

Hroptatyr knew perfectly that in the future he would be able to retrieve the full power of the abyss*, so the abyssal* ingredient to make a god above reason would be ¨waiting to be claimed by him¨ in the form of the other sinners, until he would manage to get the rest of the ingredients for such god.

Let's conclude with the analysis of ¨Thrilling Tales of Dragon Slayers¨.:

Knowing he is the writter, we have even more proof that he was the one manipulating and ¨writing¨ Irmin to be evil, that he was the one who killed him and divided the abyssal powers, therefore starting the story of the sinners, and that he will at some point absorb the powers of each sinner to create an artificial god, therefore deciding the end of the each sinner's story (further explained when talking about the future of the plan in chapter 3).

Just as a writer would.

Hroptatyr is the writter of the abyss, the ¨Will of the Abyss¨ and the avatar of destruction.

ASMODAY

The Ruler of Space has dissapeared and... switched sides?

One really important detail that I left unsolved in a previous without realizing, was how would these two, or at least, how would Hroptatyr flee from Teyvat (Vedrfolnir could be exploring moments of the past and future, but then he would be an active and detectable threat for the shades, so it's logical to think the isn't inside the world).

I assumed he was somewhere beyond the skies to justify my idea of Nicole's warning in the Nod Krai trailer talking about him:

¨Beyond the moonlight's reach, an ancient shadow brandishes its hunting claws, taking aim at the stars¨.

-Nicole Reeyn

• Now the first time I thought of who could she be refering to, I took ¨beyond the moonlight's reach¨ as a way of describing someone outside the frontiers, so it couldn't be Zandik or Rerir, and thanks to ¨taking aim at the stars¨, which symbolize order, fate and reason, I believed it was talking about Hroptatyr specifically.

Note:Actually Rerir would fit the description of beyond the moonlight's reach if we consider it inside the moongate and also the hunting claws, but he never ¨took aim at the stars¨, his only purpose would be finding Tholindis, not challenging fate and reason.

• The ¨ancient shadow¨ part would only be proof that somehow there was records of this entity's actions from long ago, maybe even before the cataclysm, enforcing the theory that Hroptatyr can be this ¨Will of the Abyss¨ and the one who corrupted Nibelung in the past.

If we consider that Hroptatyr was in the past at the time of Nibelung, he's way more suitable to be considered an ¨ancient shadow¨, rather than Rerir who only existed during the night of the cataclysm before shattering, 500 years ago and not 6000.

• The ¨claws¨ can be direct symbolism of this conscience behind the abyss shown in The Devil XV, the laughing face that extends its claws upon Rhinedottir's creation and who, in my opinion, is Hroptatyr.

Nicole already warns us. The Hexenzirkel knows that Hroptatyr is currently making a move. (explained later in this chapter)

Now the problem is his scape out of Teyvat, the reason why he is considered to be outside the moonlight's reach.

I realized that all the sinners have an ¨excuse¨ for them not to be targetted by Celestia: Rhinedottir is a shade, Rerir was shattered inside the moongate, Surtalogi is outside Teyvat... and then there's Vedrfolnir and Hroptatyr.

I assumed that if Surtalogi could exit Teyvat then Hroptatyr could do it too. However Surtalogi's powers are of the space. It would be impossible for Hroptatyr to flee Teyvat then? Maybe.

With either the power to erase or to write over reality someone could hypothetically set themselves out of Teyvat (Hroptatyr), but it still is unclear, and Vedrfolnir would still be inside Teyvat and since his power lies on time and not reason.

Unless... they had an ally with the full authority over space. That's right, Asmoday.

Let's go back to ¨The God's Limits¨ trailer.

Rhinedottir explicitly says that her experiment making these humans we see at the start of the video was unsuccesful, due to being ¨tainted by the ruler of space¨. If we use the newest theories of the HP being an AI and therefore the shades programs, what this could mean was that Asmoday's code had been corrupted.

Life, death and time were fully functional, however, space wasn't, that's why the place self-destructed, because it was a story without a defined space to happen in. In fact, it didn't self-destruct but rather, was erratic, an error in the system. This perfectly explains three points:

1. Ronova talking about ¨putting that space out of it's misery¨.
2. The following image of one of these red cubes being dissolved, and lots of other ones in outer space.
3. Why the place where they were turned red when it began to collapse.

IMPORTANT: The cubes are errors in the system, corrupted files.

What Ronova did was just deleting malfunctioning code, maintenance of the system. The place turned red as red is used to represent entropy, and to the AI, an error in the system is entropy, something they can't control.

A program with missing or erased (emphasis here) code, tainted by the red and pure abyss (explained in chapter 1).

It is very important to notice that when the shades are shown in the book the humans were reading, Asmoday is NOT shown with these cubes.

And then, the most vital point, Istaroth mentions she could've just ¨switched sides¨, implying that they acknowledge an enemy faction:

• It is impossible they are the Traveler (actually they should protect us as part of the HP) nor the Fatui or Abyss Order, since they could find Asmoday if she was inside Teyvat.

Then the logic conclusion is that they believe the enemy band is the abyss itself, implying that the shades, by defining another side, are aware that the abyss has some level of consciousness, most probably refering to the sinners in general.

This quote says everything:

¨She just switched sides? You make it sound like such a trivial affair...that is unthinkable, we are shades of the Heavenly Principles¨

- Ronova

It means it would be impossible for her to join the enemies. And this would make sense as it is impossed in Asmoday's code not to side with the abyss and to obey the HP, unless...

The corruption in her code is not just a simple error, but a direct manipulation and erasure. Someone modified her coding.

Let's discard posibilities.

1. Rerir: uncapable and not interested
2. Surtalogi: not interested
3. Rhinedottir: another shade, uncapable
4. Vedrfolnir: no confirmation
5. Hroptatyr: INDIRECT CONFIRMATION

Let's see the namecard ¨Orbits¨:

¨Achievement: Orbits¨

"O Almighty Sovereign, the Universitas Magristrorum has provided the predictions you requested: The two stars have been captured by the world's gravity... After a lengthy orbital period, today their paths shall intertwine once more."

The one talking here is most likely Hroptatyr, he was aware that the Heavenly Principles were an AI and that the twin travelers would come to Teyvat, so he used this information to force a landing on Nod-Krai to then take one of them to Kaenriah and make them the vessel for unlimited amounts of abyssal energy.

He knew to some extent how to manipulate it to make the ship crash forcefully into Teyvat.

Ending of Nod-Krai's Luna IV AQ

He took advantage of the HP being weakened from long ago thanks to Nibelung (conflict he would later create after travelling back time to corrupt the dragon king).

VERY IMPORTANT CONCLUSSION: The red cubes are not Asmoday's power, but probably, a subproduct of Hroptatyr's power, files with uncompleted (erased) code*.* This perfectly aligns with the notion that Hroptatyr has the power of the red and pure abyss, the power of destruction.

Asmoday's own power shows star patterns and orange/yellow coloration

We can prove this by remembering that while we've seen this cubes in the cataclysm, the start of the game and with the shades, when Asmoday was present/mentioned, we've already seen them roaming around close to the Irminsul in the present with no relation to Asmoday.

Center: cubes where Asmoday wasn't present (inside the domain of Irminsul); When she directly uses them, her original yellow/orange power turns erratic and red, and also how in ¨The God's Limits¨, they roam around in outer space.

The cubes we've seen during the cataclysm are most likely originated from Hroptatyr directly irrupting into Asmoday's coding (and possibly more failures in the system).

Hroptatyr is metaphorically a ¨virus¨ that plagues the Irminsul. A program that grew beyond control and now threatens to destroy and infect everything in the system.

She would be his getaway to enter and exit Teyvat freely. And also, the reason behind the crisis in the frontiers in the Luna IV AQ.

I'll explain this soon in the present section talking about Hroptatyr and the Fatui.

THE ABYSS SIBLING

Furthermore, if he was able to manipulate the code already when he was in Kaenriah, then we could theorize another key point of the story:

IMPORTANT: Our sibling is not a descender. They have a story and fate registered inside the Irminsul.

Hroptatyr and Irmin somehow revoked their status as a descender. They wrote a story for the sibling, and therefore the sibling lost their power of logos and became another character inside the story. They inserted a reader into the story:

• If we remember the analogies made in chapter 1, we will remember the descenders being seen as readers of the writer's story (currently, the HP) who have the power to imagine and therefore to become a new author of the story. This power to imagine is the power of logos, reason.
• The traveler is able to cleanse abyss because the purple abyss we see is a blank space in the story, the traveler (consciously or not) imagines something to write in that space, so the abyss dissapears. Like a reader who imagines the colour of the hair of a character. They define variables.
• But our sibling didn't cleanse the abyss, but rather, they were used as a vessel for holding unlimited amounts of abyssal energy.

By Hroptatyr and Irmin writing a story for our sibling, or most probably, by erasing the records of them as a descender, the sibling lost their power to imagine for the abyss to not dissapear inside them while they still were a perfect vessel.

Another important point is that in ¨A Space and Time for You¨, it is mentioned that the power which could destroy the world and create the trascendent sinners would be the the power that lied inside the sibling, and if that power could imitate the HP and the shades, as the nature of the abyss is to imitate creation, then the combined power of the abyssal power that they held, that the sinners now have... could be around the power of a fully fledged descender.

But this is just speculation, right? Let's jump into the present part of the post to later analyze the future in chapter 3 and solve these questions.

THE PRESENT

HROPTATYR AND THE FATUI

Now, while Vedrfolnir is easier to link to the Abyss Order, the relation beetween the Fatui and Hroptatyr is a bit more complex to understand, and not strictly official.

The theory of this relationship comes from the latest Luna IV quest with Dottore, and the implications of Pierro in the plans of the fatui.

Everything starts with The Doctor in the archon quest, and the questions:

• Why would he open the false sky if that was the main reason of his defeat? Why would he gain anything from this? Wouldn't that put himself in a dangerous situation as he knew they were trying to get Columbina back, and the moon he unveiled was the Frost Moon, Columbina's moon, while he already had an artificial moon marrow?
• How would he manage to cause a crisis in the frontiers, before having the power of the moons, big enough to trouble all the witches but Nicole?
• And the last question: Aren't his ideals way too similar to someone that already existed in the past?

In a previous post I try to answer all of these questions thoroughly, but to explain it here, the idea is that Dottore was opening the sky for another entity interested in his experiment to enter Teyvat, therefore the crisis in the frontiers was this entity with power enough to be a problem for the combined forces of the Hexenzirkel trying to break into our world.

IMPORTANT CLUE: When the crisis started Dottore never had the power to be a menace for Hexenzirkel, so its logic to assume he started a problem that ¨escalated¨*.*

Dottore would open the inner barrier, that entity would open the outer barrier. What Dottore did was not making the frontiers ¨vulnerable¨ for the abyss to enter, but ¨contact¨ an ally from the outer world to keep the witches away from his plans.

And that entity, would be none other than Hroptatyr himself (with the help of Asmoday).

This would explain what Nicole warns us about in the Nod Krai trailer, warning that we already developed in this chapter.

Following, to further explain the relationship of Hroptatyr with the fatui, we have to remember the notion of the ¨hanged man¨ (explained in chapter 1), the one who understands the order of reason, and because of this, they decide it is a crime against human growth and against the pursue of knowledge to set limits in such eternal quest.

Dottore is another ¨hanged man¨, whose design, further than just a plague doctor, represents a masked raven.

We should remember that Odin (Hroptatyr) used ravens as his messengers and eyes across the realms, and Hroptatyr is also represented as a laughing mask.

The pieces connect.

Dottore was trying to create an artificial god, and with the power of the moons, he had already harnessed reason to some extent.

I already mentioned that to create such gods, a recipe should be followed, but I didn't explain the ingredients:

VERY IMPORTANT:

• A body capable of not being ¨driven mad by knowledge¨: Dottore used a segment. Both the Heretic of the False Moon and Shouko no Kami were an attempt to create a god out of a puppet. Neither Scaramouche nor Dottore's segment was capable of diving into madness because of knowledge.

Rerir, however, was ¨driven mad by knowledge¨ and weakened since his body wasn't completed and was a ¨dissapointment¨.

• Divine knowledge, the power of reason, the power of writing: Dottore already had that power from the moons.
• Forbidden knowledge, the power of the abyss, the power of erasing: Dottore didn't have this power yet. Hroptatyr was the one meant to enter Teyvat and provide Dottore with that power, but Hroptatyr's intervention with Asmoday was just a way of hiding the real plans of these two from the Hexenzirkel.
• Faith of the people: Shouko no Kami used the fuel of people's dreams and faith as another ingredient. However, Dottore is labelled as a false god from the start. Columbina becoming the ¨true moon goddess¨ was just a way of harvesting people faith in the lunar authority while the experiment is ongoing inside a simulation. That would be the reason why the screen glitches when the moon is mentioned in Lantern Rite. The simulation is gathering the beliefs of the people.

Dottore will use these beliefs for the final creation of his god.

IMPORTANT: Dottore and Hroptatyr staged the events of Luna IV so that Columbina could become the ¨true moon goddess¨ and the Hexenzirkel would think that their plan was Hroptatyr entering Teyvat for the abyssal power and the people of Hyperborea for the beliefs.

The moment Alice realizes that Dottore has the power or rather/has an ally with the power to create ¨variables¨, and as we already defined in chapter 1, variables are blank spaces in the story, the result of the power of desctruction.

In reality, Dottore will use Nod-krai's faith and Rerir's powers to complete his god.

If Dottore himself was the one causing these ¨variables¨ then he would already have the power of the abyss (destruction of the story), therefore reviving Rerir would've been useless for him.

In the image we also see when Alice realizes that the crisis originated inside Teyvat, but the crisis was still openly a problem throughout Luna IV, so this is the moment she finds out what Dottore did was ¨calling¨ Hroptatyr.

Hroptatyr and Asmoday had already done his part and now are observing the rest of the experiment. The Hexenzirkel arrived at a wrong conclusion.

Retrieving Rerir's powers shouldn't be a problem for someone with the power of reason, for Dottore would have some degree of freedom inside the moon's reflection.

Everything goes according to their plan.

But, wouldn't this mean that Dottore has ultimately betrayed the Fatui and cooperated with an enemy of the organization? Not exactly. Or better said, not necessarily.

Now is where Pierro enters the equation.

Pierro, most likely Eftirvit, a sage that couldn't save his kingdom in the past, who was rejected by the king. The vicepresident of the Universitas Magistrorum. It would be logical to assume he hates Hroptatyr as much as Dainsleif does, or maybe even more.

However, it has been shown multiple times that the Fatui motto is: ¨to sacrifice everything that is needed to achieve our goals, for our ideals are perfect, then our methods shall be forgiven¨.

Pierro is the director of the fatui, ¨the greatest of the fools¨. He himself has said that he isn't afraid of Kaenriah 2 happening, as hes willing to sacrifice Sneznhaya to pursue his goals.

¨A nation brought to ruins? So be it. It is nothing I have not endured before¨

-Pierro

Why would he personally recruit Zandik long ago, soon after the cataclysm, if he could've seen how similar he was to the man he hated the most in life?

He was never afraid of Dottore taking the same path Hroptatyr took. Pierro wasn't trying to do what he couldn't do in Kaenriah.

He has been shown as a man who's only purpose is to dethrone celestia, and who would do anything for it to happen. The part of his character that explains why he hates celestia so much to forget about everything else is yet to be explained: revenge? desire for power? love? We don't know.

But then, why wouldn't he deliberately sacrifice his honor and sense of morality by cooperating with a sinner.

The biggest trait of a fool, afterall, is making ¨a deal with the devil¨, and in chapter 1, we already explained how it is implied that Hroptatyr is the ¨devil¨ of Genshin.

Eftirvit is working with the man he hates the most, Hroptatyr, if that means his goals can be achieved. In fact I would dare to say that the idea of the fatui was originally from Hroptatyr.

Let's analyze the fatui wheel.

A 4 spiked crown with a gem on top and a mask with one singular eye?... hmmmm

Theres one of the symbols that is more important than the rest.

IMPORTANT: The crown on such symbol is strangely familiar right? In fact, it's almost identical to Hroptatyr's crown in his chess piece, while his face is covered by the Pale Star. It even has the gem on top of the crown.

Because as we know, Odin would rather stay hidden, observing.

The mask on the top is another hint. It lies behind the wheel.

Genshin has always encouraged us to look beyond simple appearances. The harbingers, the Fatui as a whole, are actors. Their names make it clear. Even Pierro (crying mask) is another actor inside the wheel. Don't pay attention to the actors, for their performance only distracts you from the one pulling the strings beetween the curtain call.

IMPORTANT: The mask behind a wheel having one singular eye is not a coincidence. That mask is a message for us to realize who is behind the Fatui.

The story repeats itself. The cryo archon leads a revolution agaisnt the heavens, helped by a ¨hanged man¨ who claims to know the truth of this world.

• The Belyi Tsar with Rauthvangi (later known as Rotwang).
• The Tsaritsa with her Fatui and the ¨hanged man¨? Hroptatyr.

Hroptatyr gave Eftirvit the idea of looking for the cryo archon, whose lover, the 3rd descender, had died by the hands of celestia.

Hroptatyr offered Pierro to recruit Zandik, as The Doctor would be the eyes of the sinner inside the Fatui (one of Odin's crows).

Dottore being directly related to Hroptatyr is a brilliant move from him, as he would monitorize the efforts of ¨his fools¨ to revive the 3rd descender, the power of the moons and also our moves as the 4th descender (all potential ways of experimenting with destroying reason).

And what would be their relation then?

The technique that Dottore used for his segments, the one who Ei used for Scaramouche, was a kaenriahn technique. ¨The Wise¨ should not only be aware of such technique, but also the best user of it, maybe to the point of making segments who have complete free will and differentiate from the original one.

IMPORTANT: Zandik was created by Hroptatyr. A segment that was actually capable of growing and had own consciousness and personality, and even capable to discover and develop own segments on his own. A perfect artificial being. In some sense, Hroptatyr would be the original Zandik then. Idea further explored in chapter 3.

And about the main plan of the Fatui, we know that they are gathering the 7 gnosis right now. But the thing is, are they trying to somehow revive the 3rd descender, who would have his own personality and maybe not align with the Fatui's goals, or are they trying to create a new god with his power

Now enters the debate about the Tsaritsa being controlled by Pierro or not.

The direction of the story seems to point at the Tsaritsa being the evil dragon of Sneznhaya's story, and Pierro the wicked mage, someone who took advantage of a conflict inside the dragon's heart.

This doesn't mean the Tsaritsa won't pose as a good villain, but rather, as someone like Scaramouche or Rerir, who willingly decided to fight for their interests while having an ally with own agendas.

While the Tsaritsa seems to be interested in the paradise beyond reason his father also desired (and of course, bring the 3rd descender back), Pierro seems more interested in just destroying reason, no matter the outcome nor the cost. Their goals align yet are slightly different.

And if Pierro doesn't want to revive the 3rd descender but use his powers, then he would have to create another god, and for that he would need Hroptatyr's power as an abyssal source.

Pierro needs Hroptatyr for his plan to succeed. Hroptatyr doesn't need Pierro.

The interest of Hroptatyr on the fatui might dissapear once Dottore's experiment is finished, who knows.

IMPORTANT: The goal of Dottore's experiment is: either to surpass the HP and end the story, or what is more likely, make a simulation on what's the ¨price of killing a god¨. What would be the consequences of such death and what would be the outcome of the Irminsul burning. What Dottore is currently doing in Nod-Krai is just another experiment inside long term plans:

• The fatui final plan involves the 7 gnosis and the power of the 3rd descender
• Hroptatyr's final plan involves himself turning into a god beyond reason, for that, he is interested in Rerir's powers (explained in chapter 3) being seized by Dottore.

Both the Fatui and Hroptatyr are interested in the results of Dottore's experiment with the moons for them to carry on with their plans.

¨The sages think themselves to be all knowing, but we alone are wise to a virtue in those acts of folly¨ Clear reference to Hroptatyr

The problem the Fatui have is what Pierro states: ¨the sages think themselves to be all knowing, but we alone are wise to a virtue in those acts of folly¨.

He thinks he can win over Hroptatyr at the end. Proof he still hates him.

But to Hroptatyr, the fatui are just another experiment, an interesting one, but just an experiment.

The Wise pulls the strings of his puppet fools. The fooled ones will fail, the wise one will succeed.

The Fatui, the main antagonistic force for years now, are just actors playing a performance to reveal the real final villain of the game.

FOR CHAPTER 3

Again if you have read until here, thank you for your patience!

Here it will be soon linked the 3rd chapter:

CHAPTER 3: THE FUTURE AND MESSAGE BEHIND GENSHIN IMPACT

Since anything that studies these 2 characters is still very difuse, any objection/enforcement of these theories is highly appreciated. Have a good day and see you in the 3rd and final chapter!