The Theory Of 8 Finalities And The True Ugliest Lie Of The Trailblaze
I’m writing this after a very long day and while mildly sick. Take everything I say with appropriate grains of salt.
Regardless, in terms of theories, both among the few I’ve shared and the many I haven’t, this may be my Magnum Opus.
Let’s talk for a second about version 2.3. Back in ‘Farewell, Penacony,’ a trend started: the Trailblaze was portrayed as a counterpart to the Finality for the first time, something that would repeat in Finality’s every mention going forward. The wiki even says it.
Logic even says it.
One is forward motion and the march towards the universe’s end. The other is backward motion, and the march towards the universe’s beginning. One is Freedom. The other is Fate.
But there are two things that feel a bit off here, when you squint.
First of all, how can Trailblaze be the equal opposite of Finality when Trailblaze is, according to 4.4, itself a Finality? That would innately take away the equal part of equal opposite, right?
And second of all, is a question that first came into my mind all the way back when the game first started and the Trailblaze became the act of carving your own path forward.
Why does the representation of Inevitable and Inescapable fate have multiple possible outcomes? And why is the representation of Freedom and the ability to defy fate…
…on literal rails?
Let’s start with the first question, as it can be used to answer the second.
#Part 1 - A Theory Of 8 Finalities
Kafka once told the player to mark this number: 4.
This is, supposedly, because there are 4 Finalities. But that LITERALLY can’t be true, thanks to our new best friend when it comes to Lore, the Asat Pramad quiz game.
See, Asat confirms, many times, that he will never outright lie in that game. And yet, he presents 3 possible Finality candidates. Even if you assume that Preservation being a Finality was the lie part of the Failure Roll Half-Truth, that is 5 Finality paths, when there should only be allowed to be 4, and he is apparently unable to lie during this game. And sure, maybe you can say that we have no reason to trust anything he says as full truth, but if we give THAT concession, then the game had no point to begin with and should be universally discarded since Success and Critical Success rolls apparently can’t be trusted.
So he isn’t lying when he says both Elation AND Trailblaze are the 4th Finality. Which also could put Preservation back on the table.
Now, we have 7 Finality candidates, including the potential for Remembrance to be a candidate, one of which is supposed to be the Equal Opposite of the path and thus shouldn’t be a candidate in the first place yet is the candidate provided by a Critical Success!
Honestly, screw you Asat. Until I came up with this theory, I genuinely wanted to punch drywall.
Ok, so let’s back it up: we know all of that is apparently true, but need to find a framework under which it makes sense.
I decided to examine the specific Paths, and figure it out from there.
Trailblaze, Destruction, Preservation, Harmony, Remembrance, Elation, and Nihility. Excluding that last one, doesn’t something there seem familiar?
It’s the Trailblazer’s paths. We have our first connection. After all, to quote Ruan Mei, when coincidences start to pile up, they cease to be coincidences.
So, let’s ask another question: if the Stellaron Hunters supposedly want to stop the Finality, why give the Trailblaze path, the most likely 4th Finality, a new god? Because that DOES seem to be what’s happening. Asat said it, but we’ve also seen it ourselves. As far back as version 1.
After all, SU Aha, who knew it was a simulation and you were a player inserting as Akivili…
…still called you Akivilli.
We were told to mark the number 4. But we can’t necessarily trust the Hunters here. Because we are, by their own admission, being manipulated for the script. A script Asat has claimed to have both glimpsed, and be capable of writing.
Moreover, our other self, who is likely Terminus, has corroborated with Asat on something: the number to keep in mind here isn’t 4, it’s 8. Exactly double. Interesting.
What if, and just hear me out, we were never lied to? It’s just that we weren’t told the whole truth.
We know that, no matter what path Terminus takes, even if THEY change things along the way, THEY arrive at the exact same Beginning. We have been told, no matter what road WE take, we’ll arrive at Finality, the only difference being whether or not we ‘Transcend’ it.
So, the four paths that bring Finality are Destruction, Harmony, Nihility, and a variable 4th. Except it’s not variable. It IS Trailblaze.
The only question is which Path will become Trailblaze. THAT is the variability.
Let’s observe a pattern:
In Belabog, despite a story focused on Preservation,
In Penacony, despite a Harmony, Nihility, and Order focused story, we wrapped back around to it being about Trailblaze, something 3.8 reinforced.
In Amphoreus, not only were we directly told that Remembrance would become a Finality SPECIFICALLY IF WE GAVE IN TO IT, but the act of the Flame Chase, usurping gods to restart the world, was about ‘Breaking Free and Trailblazing.’
And in Planarcadia, Elation’s virtues of moving forward and changing tilted on their head to become synonymous with Trailblazing by 4.4
Call it slightly sloppy and trope-centric writing if you want, but I don’t buy it.
Because this works PERFECTLY.
We can have a specific 4 possibilities be fated, with a variable fourth, only if the fourth ISN’T variable, and in truth, is always the same. A way to have our cake and eat it too that also reinforces the ideas and themes the game has been pushing since day 1 about Experiencing The Paths across the duration of our Trailblaze, while also continuing the mirroring of Trailblaze and Finality.
So there ARE 4 Finality Candidates, and also 4 Trailblaze Candidates. And now we have 8. The apparently all-important number. But one entry sticks out: Penacony. How can Harmony be both a Trailblaze AND Finality. There are two possible answers, both of which fit well.
The first is that, whatever the 3rd face of the Harmony is, also happens to be a Trailblaze; likely Beauty. The second is that the Finality itself is a Trailblaze, and thus all Finality candidates are Trailblaze candidates. I admittedly think that one fits better, since it furthers the mirroring, while also physically forming an 8 if you order the numbers, since the 4th of each set is in the other set, thus making an infinity shape, or 8.
So what are our Trailblazes?
Well, we have Remembrance as a phenomenal candidate, becoming a Finality when it converges with Trailblaze while also being a way to pave the way for those who come next, a motif of the Trailblaze. We also have Elation, as a listed Finality second in truthfulness to Trailblaze, while constantly being tied to the Trailblaze. Third, we have Preservation, or if a certain theory regarding the name Qlipoth ends up holding water, given Qlipoth means something empty, or a husk, as a viable option, since it being a Trailblaze would certainly hold up as a ‘half truth’ when asking what the 4th Finality is, and being one of TB’s paths like the others. And lastly, we have Finality, enough said.
#Part 2 - The True Ugliest Lie Of The Trailblaze (The ‘Honkai’ in Honkai: Star Rail)
Now for the second question: why does the aesthetic of something that’s supposed to represent absolute freedom, place it on LITERAL rails? I mean, when we feel we have no free will in a game, we call it being ‘on rails!’ That’s like, a thing! That’s how blatant and strong the metaphor is! What gives?!
According to Asat, Akivilli longed to ascend the Imaginary Tree, and was obsessed with the ‘Origin and End.’ These are terms that also appeared in Acheron’s Myriad Celestia as the stand-ins in her Honkai cycle for the Herrschers of Origin and Finality. Let’s put that to the side for a minute.
Assuming the Part 1 information of this theory is correct, it makes a certain name make more sense. Terminus. That isn’t just Latin for end, it’s the name for the last stop along a Train’s stations. Akivilli’s last stop is Terminus. But then, all of a sudden, we have to confront a truth.
The Trailblazing expedition was always meant to end.
The Finality’s trip, as the first Fables About The Stars trailer put it in the subtitles, against the current? Was also meant to end. Specifically, to end back at the start of the road that, according to Pom-Pom, our original Aeon once stood at the start of, hesitating.
Hesitating over what? This. Hesitating over all of this.
Acheron once asked us, the potential new god of the Trailblaze, what we would do if we grasped the Journey’s ending right from its inception. And apparently, the choice that the future Aeon of Trailblaze chose, was to still Take the Journey.
According to Asat, the ending the Stellaron Hunters wish to avoid is a Finality where every possibility is frozen. It can’t be Remembrance, despite how it sounds, because if it was, their plan would already be over: the Remembrance is no longer a Finality, implying its lost its ability or candidacy for Trailblaze.
But this unending loop would also freeze all ‘possibilities,’ would it not?
Lygus hated the Erudition for sealing off all possibilities. He seemed to respect us greatly, someone the Stellaron Hunters engineered the life of, all to surpass Finality.
To quote the Dicehead, “What Elio has glimpsed may be an end that goes beyond Destruction itself, a point where all things settle into complete stillness and Nihility.” I think an undying, meaningless loop that creates all things anew would definitely qualify.
This is the Finality they want to stop: the eternal looping of Trailblaze, into Finality, into Trailblaze again.
Now, back to that first point about Origin and End.
In Honkai: Impact 3rd (I know, I’m sorry, bear with me,) we learn that the Honkai’s true purpose is to give worlds trials. It tests whether a world is worthy of ‘Embrace,’ or if it should prune it from the Imaginary Tree. The main tools it uses to do this are the Herrschers, which all stem from the ultimate two Herrschers: Origin and Finality, the latter of which was once called ‘End.’ Finality creates Herrscher Authorities, and Origin, seemingly, separates them.
Asat, when telling us about our Stellaron, says the Trailblaze seeks to create infinite variations.
Trailblaze is Origin, separating Authorities. Finality is End, creating the road that Origin walks.
Which means that the HSR universe’s Honkai cycle…
May just be this.
I’ve been wondering why Honkai was in the game’s title for literal years. After all, Genshin canonically exists in the Honkai Multiverse, a fact we know thanks to HI3’s Genshin collab, as well as that time Otto Apocalypse was observing the multiverse and saw Dvalin. We also found the Glider in the Herta Space station. Plus, ZZZ may just exist here too, thanks to the upcoming collab. It’s not like any game in the multiverse structure HAS to have Honkai in the name. But HSR does.
So what’s the true ugliest lie of the Trailblaze that I promised?
The journey was always going to end, and Akivilli knew it.
The Trailblaze may represent freedom, but we have always been on Rails.
EDIT
Just to be really clear, I don’t think Akivilli is, like, a secret villain. If anything, I think the bit may be that THEY thought they could change fate anyway, and when they couldn’t, they left it to us. Paving the way IS a theme of the Trailblaze.
We are almost certainly going to transcend Finality. This theory isn’t contradicting that, this is me saying “I think this is the truth of the Finality we’re trying to transcend.”
And the Honkai bit is really just a wild swing at something that may be the writer’s intent, but will never be said in lore. That Trailblaze and Finality may be meant to mirror the Honkai.
Sorry for the pace-breaking edit at the end. Just anted to tack this on now that I realized it was a little unclear