We're Through the Looking Glass Now
What's up guys! It's your friendly Hoyoverse overthinker Inotia King. As always before we begin I just want to make sure new readers have checked out my older topics which my newer theories are built upon. So for the Genshin ones you can click here. And for the Honkai related ones you can click here.
Well there you have it. My last topic on the subject ended up being a roadmap to what we played, didn't it? This is actually a first for me when it comes to at least this game and I have a theory why but let's get down to brass tacks first.
Right off the bat I once again want to point out how nobody realized that Ramiel was the person we already saw in the Where the Miracle Began trailer. People picked out the fallen angel stuff, her succubus wings, that she's older than she looks and even that she looks like the game's Elysia expy. Some suggested she was a "Succubus Thiren" and may be related to the girl from the trailer. Then, even after the v2.8 livestream the most people agreed on was that she definitely was related to that girl, maybe a descendant like Miyabi is a descendant of Swordmaster. I had checked out topics on the official subreddit, discussion subreddits, even RamielMains and there was only this. However narratively speaking, there'd be no point to a descendant or a sibling or something like that. We needed Lieutenant Colonel Dan for this story and so that was my prediction as soon as they showed her. The thing is, we were getting lore about Lady Sunbringer in v2.5. Then later in the same patch we got lore about Joyous. The breadcrumbs were there. And of course the other reason why we needed these people directly is that Season 3 is setting up to delve deeper into the backstory for this game rather than to continue expanding the story forward like we have so far.
Ok I wanted to get that out of the way because there are other breadcrumbs and they explain why my predictions were so accurate. First, it was apparently mind-blowing for these 100+ year old people to still be around. Are we not Hoyoverse players? You know in Honkai Impact 3rd there's an over 50000 year old running around in a school as the class monitor right? In Genshin there's such a thing as the curse of immortality and several entities have lived very long lives like adepti, witches, gods and dragons. People who are only over 100 is fairly vanilla in this franchise. Adding to this is the fact that we only heard about 100 years in this update. Previously the most we knew was that the Old Capital fell just 10 years before the start of the game. This game's timeline is fairly short to emphasize how dire their situation is. Everything has been destroyed. Eridu was one of the last bastions of hope for humanity and even that fell which has left New Eridu as the final stand before the universe is totally consumed by the Sea of Quanta.
The other side of this prediction was why Remielle picked the codename Ramiel, the fallen angel. At first we only knew Ramiel so I suggested that it was the devs confirming for us that the emissaries the Imaginary Tree sent to this universe had failed to suppress the corruption by the Sea of Quanta, represented in this universe by the Creator. Once it was revealed as just a codename though, it felt like more of a personal choice by Remielle herself. While she believed they had failed, Sunbringer and her followers actually gave up on humanity (at least in part) which is what Roscaelifer is for. Unlike Genshin's Celestia where the floating island is something of a watchtower for Phanes and its shades to surveil their dominion, Roscaelifer is a haven away from the devastation wrought by the sea. Remielle disagrees with this. The reason why is because Sunbringer and the first Void Hunters had invested in a plan that blew up in their faces. Ramiel defied God, Icarus flew too close to the sun and Phaethon failed to control his father's sun chariot and nearly scorched the world with it. Hubris caused the fall of Eridu back then and led to the tarnishing of Carole Arna's name and while Sunbringer was fine with fleeing in defeat, Remielle wasn't. (I have a feeling Joyous didn't take kindly to it either though we'll get to him later on in the story.)
Following v2.8, this gambit seems to be confirmed as their trying to create their own Messenger. This isn't nuanced at all though. In fact, I'd previously gauged the Messenger's power based on exactly what I now think Phaethon's meant to be, a Herrscher. (an actual Herrscher though and not just an equivalent) In the other universes of the Hoyoverse, it's the Imaginary Tree's agents that create some kind of massively destructive being to maintain their control. It's now ironically too early to figure out if the Creator was the first to create theirs in this universe or if Phaethon is the first Messenger which gave the Creator the idea to begin with. It could be that while Herrschers and Emanators were successful in their respectively universes, Zenless has shown that this process isn't guaranteed and what Phaethon turned into is what a failure looks like. This could be a failure of methodology or process maybe even conditions but ultimately it allowed the Creator a further foothold into the universe. For now I'm going to go with Phaethon as the Kiana of this game's lore where they were meant to become the Herrscher of the End and reset the universe so that humanity's abuse of technology which was strengthening the Sea of Quanta's influence on it would be stopped just like in Honkai Impact. The plan failed which led Sunbringer and her followers to believe they could no longer save this universe and so they hid away in Roscaelifer to wait for the end. Eventually, we'll get to a point where Phaethon's control over Pyrois will be substantial enough that they can create branched time, the best they can do given how weak the universe is. They can't pull off a Herrscher of the End reset because the universe would just become a Bubble Universe.
So why did this plan fail? I said it was too early to tell now but we might still have a clue. Remielle explained that there are opposing forces in Phaethon's body and also that touching her Void Hunter Weapon pushed this balance further towards the abyss' favor. Actually that's also what Thaumiel means. Thaumiel is at the top of the Qlipoth Tree of Death in Judaism. It explains humanity's fall, in particular man's decision to distinguish itself from the whole: God. As humanity believes in its individuality, it cannot connect with God and so it suffers. Keter is the opposite of Thaumiel and can be related to sunyata in Buddhism or to be without self, a precursor to nirvana. During this conversation, Remielle hints that she's corrupted as well and that Phaethon had actually fought against the Creator's pull better than she had. We know that the Void Hunter Weapons were created from the Creator and can be related to the Divine Keys in Honkai Impact which are created from the cores of dead Herrschers. We also saw Shunguang being possessed by the Creator through the Qingming Sword. It could be that because the Zenless universe is already on its last legs, the Sea of Quanta's influence or Ether is everywhere. There is no pure being to take on just the Imaginary Tree's power and so even the best Herrscher that Sunbringer could create would already be plagued by corruption. They risked it hoping "light would always triumph over darkness" but they were wrong. The influence by the sea is too strong in this universe so what resulted is that anyone with the potential to become a Herrscher will instead become corrupted into a Messenger and that would only lead the universe to failing as a Bubble Universe even faster.
A secondary purpose for risking this though is my other old theory that they mean to get the Creator on their side just like how Kiana had gotten the Cocoon of Finality on humanity's side in Honkai. The hope was that an individual with the potential to become a Herrscher might grasp the corruption inside of them and use it to influence the Creator instead. This is the "cause" that Remielle was a part of at Helios which led to Phaethon suffering from the "effect." It was their hubris. Whether or not the Creator knew this would be the outcome, it's too early for us to know.
A minor tweak I do have to make to my predictions though is I was thinking Digimon when the devs revealed Pyrois as the way we'd be able to play Phaethon in the Hollows. I didn't think it would actually be Digimon Frontier instead. If you don't know what I'm talking about, I thought Pyrois would be a summoned creature from Phaethon's eyes. I wasn't counting on them to actually transform into Pyrois. This is actually my own oversight as we'd been shown increments of Phaethon's transformation this whole time. In v2.5 their arms turned yellow when they saved Shunguang. In the Honkai cutscene Meteoric Salvation, Kiana's arms also turned yellow before activating her Herrscher form. This is also why I'm now considering Pyrois to be the base form of Phaethon's Herrscher of the End or something like the Herrscher of the Void and "Eous" will be their final form. Either way though, the Angel of Mercy Remielle did contain it (likely with a more matured version of the power we saw Phaethon use to save Vivian from corruption) and will therefore likely be our next Yixuan Shifu for Season 3.
Before that though, we'll see a "doctor" to stabilize the condition. Unlike Season 2, I'm seeing Remielle as Phaethon's mentor in secret which adds a layer of suspense. The entire time they're up in Roscaelifer, they'll have to undergo the official training (maybe under that Durandal expy, Sigrid) while also finding ways to sneak off to meet with Remielle for real training. Perhaps now that Nicole and the other Cunning Hares besides Billy are up there too, they'll be able to run interference.
Cissia is so much more suspicious now. There's only so many "accidental" acts of awesome a person can have. She previously predicted with 100% accuracy exactly why Nicole couldn't make it to the competition. Now she's planting bugs on Void Hunters without them knowing? Sorry girl, you're definitely not just some cute snake girl from the Outer Ring. I also have a feeling Severian's already figured out who she really is. Also-
-isn't it just a little curious why she'd try to dispel Billy's suspicion about who's talking for Mecha Romeul? This isn't the first time she's "accidentally" spoken up in favor of Youkai. During Gilded Carrot Day, she happened to mess up security on the broadcast which allowed Youkai to hack in and take over. Her "incompetence" is just a little too competent when it suits the situation.
She has also now gotten closer to Promeia. Promeia has already been compared to being the next Evelyn. Both of them have a shaded past. And Evelyn was acquainted with Rain who not only made an appearance in an event related to Promeia, she just got another shoutout in this story next to two other potential players, Zhao (related to Promeia) and Nicole who we saw was already in Roscaelifer. Right off the heels of this, we would learn that Cissia has indefinite "leave" from Severian in order to continue tagging along with Phaethon. Curiouser and curiouser.
My "B Team" theory seems to be going strong. The only thing that's concerning is that if Nicole is already up in Roscaelifer and we're about to bring Cissia and Billy there, it could mean they get tied to the Main Story which is not where I want them. Hopefully Cissia won't make it up there because she'll "accidentally" run into trouble that keeps her from traveling with them. Meanwhile, hopefully Nicole's troubles run her right into Remielle or one of her contacts so the Cunning Hares can take point between the two stories and act as our liaisons so Phaethon and Remielle still know what's going on with the TOPS stuff. I just don't want them directly connected to the Main Story which will be about understanding why Sunbringer gave up and then convincing her to take up the cause again. (also the Main Story will focus on new characters and that would undermine the screentime the B Team gets if they're involved) The Main Story should conclude with the climax in v3.5. The B Team's counter TOPS story should conclude in next year's Epilogue with a S-Rank Nicole.
Season 2's Epilogue was epic and Season 3's looking very interesting:
- Remielle was always going to be Lieutenant Colonel Dan. There was no reason not to realize this nor question how someone in a Hoyoverse game could live longer than a normal human lifespan.
- As Lockspring said, Sunbringer mostly gave up on humanity and she and her followers fled into seclusion in Roscaelifer, the Celestia for Zenless. Remielle disagreed with this because it was their hubris at fault so she holds their group accountable.
- The hubris was actually just Sunbringer doing the usual thing of creating her version of a Herrscher.
- The problem with doing that in the Zenless universe is that there's too much existing corruption by the Sea of Quanta so the Herrscher became the Creator's Messenger instead.
- Sunbringer knew this risk but went ahead anyway in the hope that her "Herrscher of the End" would be able to influence the Creator just like Kiana had with the Cocoon of Finality. This didn't work.
- Pyrois is to Phaethon what Herrscher of the Void was to Kiana. "Eous" or maybe Lucifer will be the Herrscher of the End form.
- Remielle unlike Yixuan will be Phaethon's mentor in secret as they work behind the scenes with her against Roscaelifer.
- Cissia more than ever seems to have set things in motion for the counter TOPS side of Season 3's story, separate from the Main Story in Roscaelifer. Members seemingly confirmed for this side are Krampus especially Promeia, Rain and Evelyn and the Cunning Hares.