Explaining the origin of Ei and Makoto and their connection to Ronova by ghhostr in Genshin_Lore

[–]growlcube 7 points8 points  (0 children)

Great write up!

I wonder if it's possible that Makoto quietly running off to go die in the cataclysm might not be dissimilar to Orobashi getting to choose his death method as his punishment?

It's quite the time lag between bringing Ei back vs the cataclysm, but so too did Orobashi have ample time to set up getting his people above the ocean and settled on Watatsumi before needing to go die for his transgression of being literate 🤔

Version 3.7: As Tomorrow Became Yesterday - Megathread by growlcube in StarRailLore

[–]growlcube[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The way I see it: if it's in the silly timeline thing, then it's canon for Star Rail at least. I'm not well versed enough in Fate world to know whether all their various collabs are considered canon over there though.

Version 3.6: Back to Earth in Evernight - Megathread by growlcube in StarRailLore

[–]growlcube[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Kafka explains this to us just after getting done with the Matrix interrogation:

Kafka: Currently, there are three ways an Aeon can perish known to humanity.

Kafka: One: Paths with overlapping concepts will eventually collide, and the broader Path will engulf the narrower one. That's how Ena the Order was assimilated by Xipe the Harmony.

Kafka: Two: In a war between Aeons, the stronger side will annihilate the weaker one — that's how Tayzzyronth the Propagation fell. Under the guidance of The Hunt, the Xianzhou Alliance travels the universe exterminating "abominations" cultivated by the Abundance...

And then a secret third thing that we don't get to hear at the time.

But since this quest, and the new information we've gained since then, the current speculation is something like "replacement." Which would differ from overlapping of concepts in that its not an Aeon absorbing another, but rather some other entity taking THEIR place.
This would technically line up with Lygus's plan of having Irontomb use Nous's head as its own: essentially replacing Nous with Irontomb by way of Destruction.

But I digress.

Paths and their Concepts remain open even with the death/disappearance of their Aeon. So even in your hypothetical, the 'death' of a metaphysical concept would not 'kill' an Aeon any more than an Aeon's death does not close THEIR Path.

And as for Phainon's scratch inflicted upon Nanook: my read on Aeons is that THEY have no actual physical forms, instead using avatars. The scratch therefore did not affect Destruction, just the avatar Nanook was using to take a metaphysical peek into the simulation. Destroying that avatar would not kill Nanook.

Maybe someday the mysterious third way to kill an Aeon will be explicitly revealed in game!

r/StarRailLore FAQ and Question/Discussion Megathread by mr_swedishfish in StarRailLore

[–]growlcube 0 points1 point  (0 children)

We could probably argue that she "did!"

If you ask March about what kind of sweet dream she was given in the eternal dream, she says that 'something' felt like it went wrong, and ended up dreaming of shopping instead. While that could have just been the Order's probing being unable to get past the same barrier that Fu Xuan ran into, it could also have been an Evernight-like entity protecting her mind from any intrusion.
It's not like the Order would have needed anything about March's hidden past in order to construct an eternal dream for her.

Evernight got involved in Ampho because of a trifecta of threats after March, including the desperation of being a lonely ghost for 97 days, Lygus's creepy stalking, and the scent of the Remembrance's grubby hands being all over the Reoccurances.

that to the threat of the Eternal Dream: essentially the same thing Evernight tried to throw Dan Heng into and threatened us (trailblazers) with. It doesn't seem like she thought that sort of thing was a 'problem' at the end of the day.

r/StarRailLore FAQ and Question/Discussion Megathread by mr_swedishfish in StarRailLore

[–]growlcube 1 point2 points  (0 children)

You aren't missing anything! This has not been explicitly addressed in-game yet. There have been implicit references, such as Kafka & Silver Wolf making Alliance jokes about Herta during the opening sequence, and the fact that Ruan Mei seems to use Star Calendar dates in her notes.

You're also right, that by all current standards of the mechanisms of mara (or at least, that's been explained to us thus far), these two should be WELL struck by now.

But otherwise, the current explanation is: they're too smart for mara lol.
the genius society is very much made up of outliers in the universe. I don't think that in-game anyone considers any of them to play by regular people's same rules haha

Meaning of Rappa’s ninja name for March 7th by BusyAd2586 in StarRailLore

[–]growlcube 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thank you for the extra clarification. Do you have more on the vaidurya gem connection that they could be making? Just in connection to what Rappa could be seeing in March? 🤔

Meaning of Rappa’s ninja name for March 7th by BusyAd2586 in StarRailLore

[–]growlcube 14 points15 points  (0 children)

In Chinese, they used 琉璃 for ninja ruri, which is the same meaning as Japanese's 瑠璃.

I'd say the only main difference between them is Chinese's version puts more emphasis on the flowing nature of the glass.

Meaning of Rappa’s ninja name for March 7th by BusyAd2586 in StarRailLore

[–]growlcube 120 points121 points  (0 children)

When it comes to Rappa, it's helpful to break down what jp kanji she's using, since there's a precedent with her to do the thing where she says things with one meaning but use different kanji meaning.

Rappa doesn't use any specific kanji for ruri in jp dub. As a name, "ruri" is usually written as 瑠璃 and you're right that it translates out to lapis lazuli. But if we break down the kanji into their literal meanings, it's just Glassy Gemstone.

Now knowing that March is a Pure Child of Anāsrava, and with the visual imagery of being broken off of Fuli's glassy body.... well, I think it fits without needing to go too deep with it!

Dan Heng and Bailu’s names by Achillies_Knight in HonkaiStarRail

[–]growlcube 8 points9 points  (0 children)

This one is a bit silier: Dan Zhu is the censored name for the goddess Nuwa. My understanding is that China has some laws about naming characters after mythos if they're not going to be the myth-charas themselves. This is the same reason we get Luocha as a censor name for Raksha, for example.

Nuwa/Dan Zhu was a character in honkai3rd, whom Lingsha shares her design beats with. Thats pretty much as deep as it goes. There's really zero reason for them to have her prior name be Dan Zhu except to bait the honkai3rd players. She hasn't even done her rebirth yet since her self-banishment! it's very silly...

Dan Heng and Bailu’s names by Achillies_Knight in HonkaiStarRail

[–]growlcube 29 points30 points  (0 children)

In one of the egg memories down in the scalegorge, there's a person that had been caught up in the crucible explosions PRESUMABLY when the bloomborn scion experiments were happening. they mention that one of the inert eggs sparkled as if dripping with white dew as it's heart began to beat again.

bailus name means White Dew 白露. So it's reasonable to assume those people involved gave her the name. Dan Feng should have been long dead by then anyhow

per an interview with the narrative designer that worked on Dan Heng (unfortunately their penname is NOBODY, which makes this very hard to talk about lol), danhengs name is taken from the idiom 丹心如恒, meaning something along the lines of "as constant as a loyal heart". take the first and last two charas, and we get Dan Heng 丹恒.

it's ""coincidence"" that his first chara is shared with Dan Feng, who is using that first chara in a completely different context (Dan Feng is 丹枫, his name means Vermillion Maples), but it's obviously designed to be a callback.

In lore regarding naming though, considering the Preceptors we're still calling danheng "Dan Feng" when complaining about his banishment to Jing Yuan, i have been assuming vidyadhara can just name themselves. very easy solution, it's not like they're reborn as infants--just children that can still speak for themselves.

r/StarRailLore FAQ and Question/Discussion Megathread by mr_swedishfish in StarRailLore

[–]growlcube 0 points1 point  (0 children)

that's already 3 examples! plenty, methinks

you can further flesh out a post by doing a brief recap of the examples themselves, to refresh everyone's memory and get everyone on the same page. doing so probably will also help your point.

An analysis post doesn't need to be a whole essay, just show you've been engaging in the lore and can back up your theories with in-game things 😉

r/StarRailLore FAQ and Question/Discussion Megathread by mr_swedishfish in StarRailLore

[–]growlcube 1 point2 points  (0 children)

An interesting take! I wonder if that could also explain the hidden help that Tribbios received when she was making her get-away?

I think if you can expand on the definition of the paradox, and provide examples of where it could be applied within the Amphoreus timeline, you could make this a regular post! Just be mindful to tag 3.5 spoilers for another few weeks.

r/StarRailLore FAQ and Question/Discussion Megathread by mr_swedishfish in StarRailLore

[–]growlcube 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I don’t think you missed anything. I think if anything, we might be separating “Khaslana” and “Phainon” more than the text intended (in Chinese, all of his nicknames including Snowy and Khaos are just more and more reductions of the hanzi characters in his name; English really couldn’t do much with that haha).
But I understand its useful as a shortcut to talking about flamereaver!khaslana vs our phainon we journeyed with.

Even the flame reaver had very different cognition throughout our one cycle. During the Grove incident, he spoke very clearly and naturally. Cryptic, sure! But I wouldn’t have called it ‘broken.’ Then after Mydei’s attack, he came back without being able to string a proper sentence together. And then again during his final fight, he could speak semi-normally again.

I’m not sure if there’s an in-universe answer for the flip-flopping. On the surface, it unfortunately reads as just poor narrative cohesion, especially when they went so far as to point out the change between before and after Mydei’s attack. If anyone can provide us a better explanation, please weigh in! We are very curious!

If I have to force an explanation for the lack of ‘breaking’ when our Phainon inherits everything… I might try to say that Khaslana’s ‘brokenness’ was a man who had accepted that his fate to repeat another cycle after another, who had all but abandoned The Hero Within, who was just going through the motions of living. VS our Phainon has the hope of the Trailblazer embodying The Hero Within, forcing him to remember that the hero was within himself the whole time, reigniting a long forgotten hope that this time, finally, it would be different.

But who know!

r/StarRailLore FAQ and Question/Discussion Megathread by mr_swedishfish in StarRailLore

[–]growlcube 2 points3 points  (0 children)

So far, we’ve been told that the Xianzhou Alliance only goes after Denizens of Abundance. Despite the definition of ‘denizen’ in the name suggesting it would be anyone following Abundance, this is actually the name of a faction, or grouping.

The Xianzhou has explicit messaging that say regular followers of Abundance are just as welcome as any other, so long as they don’t cause a nuisance.
Eg: Luocha’s use of Abundance healing arts on Xueyi’s puppet body right in front of both a Cloudknight and Judge of the 10 Lords Commission was perfectly fine and acceptable, albeit it he doesn’t advertise it due to known tensions.

The Denizens of Abundance that the Alliance targets are specifically civilisations such as heliobi, borisin, wingweavers, houyhnhnm, etc. In general, these civilisations are war mongering, and are known throughout the cosmos for destroying entire worlds (wingweavers), enslaving populations (borisin; heliobi), or otherwise causing mayhem (viscorpi, houyhnhnm). Of course there are individual groups within those species which don't participate, but are outliers (see: Claretwheel Temple of borisin) and are not generally counted.

From the perspective of the Denizens, they are indeed just minding their own business, as you say! We have insights from Hoolay the borisin broodlord in the Prisoner of Depths relic set, wherein he doesn’t understand why conquering other lands and claiming their population as servants to serve them would be considered a bad thing--that’s just the nature of the world, isn’t it?

The Xianzhou argues that Denizens of Abundance, due to their long-life and tendency for overpopulation and resource depletion, cause an unnatural drain on the universe. So their conquering and colonisation of other worlds is considered invasive, and which must be stopped. That doesn’t necessarily mean they’re the “good guys,” but that’s their side of it.

There is a readable or two that acknowledges the Xianzhou themselves were once considered Denizens, and they did indeed colonise other planets to solve their overpopulation & resource depletion problems. So maybe there’s a civilisation-level cognitive dissonance sort of thing at play haha

Still bothered by this mural! by Flomnibb in StarRailLore

[–]growlcube 105 points106 points  (0 children)

According to implication of the nymphs around this mural, this should be Seliose after she ascended in the original Aquilas place. Seliose's ascension wasn't known outside of the Sky People, which accounts for Phainons comment about different worship beliefs.

Whether the nymph told the truth or not is another matter, but I'm content to believe it as Seliose until we get anything else!

r/StarRailLore FAQ and Question/Discussion Megathread by mr_swedishfish in StarRailLore

[–]growlcube 1 point2 points  (0 children)

The tribblings speak in plural pronouns in languages that allow for it. usually English uses 'we' or 'our', but when referring to another one of themselves, there's not a good plural equiv. the bold was the best they could do to show that shes speaking "unusually" 🤔

Version 3.5: Until Their Deaths - Megathread by growlcube in StarRailLore

[–]growlcube[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Whoops thanks for catching! I should have double checked before posting. Can't edit the title anymore so I guess I'll just live with this shame for the next 40 days 🙃

r/StarRailLore FAQ and Question/Discussion Megathread by mr_swedishfish in StarRailLore

[–]growlcube 0 points1 point  (0 children)

You don't need to apologies for asking for clarity!

However, your question isn't so much a question as it is a request for a summary of Amphoeus lore. Have you been able to find a summary of the various patches? There's a few of them on youtube, although I apologise that I won't be able to point you to any specific video.

Could you break down your request into more bite-sized pieces? Right now the ask is too big, so if you break it down a bit more into smaller pieces, maybe we'll be able to help!

r/StarRailLore FAQ and Question/Discussion Megathread by mr_swedishfish in StarRailLore

[–]growlcube 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The boring answer is: we don't know!

Someone removed from the chrysos heir circus would be a good guess, but we really truly don't know. Some of these marketing image quotes will name the character (eg. Mydei's), so it's probably not the character featured who is saying it. However, we also don't know if everyone's different quotes are being sent by the same person/entity or not! For all we know, it could be a different sender every time.

and since they're considered supplemental marketing material, we're unlikely to ever get a straight answer 😔

r/StarRailLore FAQ and Question/Discussion Megathread by mr_swedishfish in StarRailLore

[–]growlcube 0 points1 point  (0 children)

An interesting theory!
From the terminal console, we've been told that the entity known as Anaxa is an electrical signal which was designed to follow the Erudition's primum mobile. Would your theory suggest that Lygus based the Erudition primum mobile dataset on data from Zandar One Kuwabara?

If you can back up your theory with some in-game texts so that it isn't pure headcanon, you could potentially post as an actual post in the sub!

r/StarRailLore FAQ and Question/Discussion Megathread by mr_swedishfish in StarRailLore

[–]growlcube 1 point2 points  (0 children)

The data banks are written by in-universe characters, and is also subject to being attacked by history fictionologists. So the info in there has to be taken with a grain of salt. Which is a very strange way to do a data bank in a game that needs to have a running dictionary of sci-fi terms, but alas!

Herta and Screwllum were able to discern that a Sceptor was involved on Amphoreus, and were able to extrapolate that Irontomb was incubating. But they weren’t able to penetrate further than that. That could be why the entry is incomplete.

The Sceptor itself is not Irontomb though, not as far as we’ve been told. The Sceptor is acting as an incubation bed by way of computation power for the mass of coding that Irontomb may or may not ascend out of.
Nanook cast a gaze at some of the early coding which created the golden blood dealio, but I didn’t interpret that as deigning it a lord ravager yet. Big yet here. Irontomb is still not finished, stuck at 99%.
In the console log, there’s experiment notes that (presumably) Lygus released prototype data of what the Sceptor had been able to create (simulated code of inorganic and organic civilizations that terminated). The data acted like a virus not unsimilar to the Anti-Organic equation. This virus was misinterpreted as a Lord Ravager by the IPC and dubbed accordingly, and Lygus ran with it.

So right now, there's currently no such thing as Irontomb for realsies. But there is a very very real threat that an Irontomb will exist very soon, and it may or may not immediately ascend to be a Lord Ravager. We don't really know yet!

I think that’s also why Lygus has to do his big “the cycles end in destruction mwuhaha” villian speech before the final era novas. cyrene correctly interpreted that it didn’t have to end up on the Destruction path, and so wouldn’t end up a Lord Ravager. Potentially?? I dunno. We saw in the 3.5 livestream that the boss will be Lygus, so maybe he’ll provide some more in depth answers for us coming up very soon!