u/Villeryi

I’m very late with this since I only recently finished Amphoreus from 3.5 onwards up to the Penacony chapter so I have no idea what the current state of theorycrafting is (please no spoilers for Planacardia).

During Amphoreus when we were all theorizing what Paths the Heirs were representing I was convinced that Tribios was a parallel to the Trailblaze, obviously that turned out to be wrong with the confirmation that she was simulating the Harmony. That never fully sat right with me because there were just so many parallels to the Trailblaze with Tribbie. The creation of „pathways" aside she also talks about creating a ship from the moon:

"I’ll turn the moon into a ship and the stars into sails to go find Mama!" I remember writing this down when that patch came out and thinking that it might be a reference to the starting screen with the Astral Express and a destroyed planet, possibly a moon? This is where I might be reaching a little bit but hear me out, Tribbie looks a lot like Pompom lmao. Same blue eyes, red color scheme and I was weirdly validated several patches later when they wanted Tribbie to try on Pompoms clothes on the train (don't take this too seriously). Back then I theorized that Tribios relationship with her lost mother might've been a parallel to Akivili and Pompom.

I had basically accepted that my theory about the similarities between Tribios and the Trailblaze was wrong but the recent Penacony chapter changed my mind a bit. During the quest I realized that Xipe isn't tied to only one dead Path like Ena but several death/unascended Paths. Gopher Wood mentions that he tried to find out what Path their third face represented and up until that point I hadn't realized that their three faces literally represent Paths that were absorbed. So besides Ena my guess was either the Remembrance (hence the "unascended" since Fuli is in that limbo) or Idrila (which would make more sense since the Beauty is presumably an actual dead Path but I also have my theories about them possibly being connected to Fuli so either way it would explain the importance of memoria for Xipe).

Essentially my mini theory is that Xipe also absorbed the dead Path of the Trailblaze. All the Four Paths of the Apocalpyse seem weirdly tied to the Trailblaze (I think it's either because Akivili and Terminus are "twins" or because they are the same entity/two halves at two different points of time) so this would kind of fit in?

For Destruction we have the simulated dynamic between Phainon and the Trailblazer which probably foreshadowed our confrontation with Nanook in the future, though we still need to find out what happened when Akivili visited Adlivun.

Nihility in my opinion is already hinted at multiple times vaguely both through Hysilens arc and Acheron in the recent Penacony patch.

"She guarded the vortex at the depths of the sea." Hysilens is guarding the core of the world/Amphoreus.

Evernight: "The deepest place in this world is exactly the ideal location for the Trailblaze to reunite" , "Because there is absolutely nothing here, except a cold, empty void!"

Acheron: "Indeed...behind the shadow of the Nihility, there must exist the most blazing source of light in the world." , "Death/Nihility will always be the destined finale and the last reunion."

The core of the world that Hysilens guards is the Vortex of Genesis, and Genesis is the simulated Path of the Trailblaze. So my other theory is that similar to Hysilens, IX possibly "guards" the "remnants" of Akivili or the slumbering Terminus, since Acheron for some reason was aware that the Finality was still not awake. Maybe at the Genesis/Trailblaze/Rebirth of the cosmos the light originates from the vortex beyond the "shadow of the Nihility" after the Finality/End of the universe is completed.

That's all! I only intended for this to be a mini-theory about Tribbie :( I'm excited to play Planacardia though. I had so much fun theorizing during Amphoreus and hope I get a similar experience in the new patches!