Hi guys I am Inotia King a youtuber, redditor and gamer who likes theorizing about the story. I actually cobbled together a list of some of my more important theories with respect to the game Genshin Impact and Star Rail that I have been basing all of my newer theories on. I'll be putting more of those up on Hive along with new stuff but if you're impatient I also archived all my theories here. I hope some of you guys are game theorists too. Let's try to figure out these great games together!
Last time I brought up all the similarities between Yae Miko and "Focalors' Divinity" as an extension to my poetry theory but there was one thing that I missed for the longest time. That said I'm glad I did because there's additional aspects to it that we wouldn't have pieced together until v4.4 and even more recently.
Recently as in the new Cyno Character Quest. After going through that I had one question on my mind. Doesn't their power come from their Electro Visions? How much of their power actually comes from the Ba Fragments? And it was that question that made me think back on just how these guys get their Electro Visions. Cyno's not the only one whose Vision seems to be an add-on. Lisa got her Vision by just saying "Hmm... I suppose I shall need a Vision, then."
So let's go back to the Inazuma Archon Quest again because I think everybody missed this part. After she rescues us from Scara we find out Yae is the one who had Ei's Gnosis. She traded it to Scara for our lives. We find out the reason by the end of the quest. Ei couldn't hold onto the Gnosis while bodiless in the Euthymia. Her puppets couldn't hold a Gnosis either. Scara needed the Gundam Scara to harness its power for him. But that's really where everybody left it and I think for most people the reason was that Ei stated that she doesn't grant Visions anyway. People just accepted this despite Zhongli having told us since v1.1 that they did. We now know for a fact that Ei was mistaken because we have Neuvillette who isn't even an Archon and doesn't even have a Gnosis and yet he still set aside some power to bestow Visions, Furina's being his first. So what does this mean?
The timeline works as such: Ei loses Makoto, sets out to enter the Plane of Euthymia and have a puppet empowered with her Electro element to act in her place. She then gives her Gnosis to Yae. No new Electro Visions are granted for a year starting with the enacting of Sakoku and the Vision Hunt Decree.
And that's the crucial detail. Only for the year leading into the Inazuma Archon Quest did no new Visions get bestowed. Meanwhile Ei entered her Euthymia at least four hundred years ago. From the end of the Fontaine Archon Quest we are directly shown that generations of humans would have passed by then. This necessarily means that people were still getting their Electro Visions for several generations - from Yae.
I know people really hate it when I bring that up. But are you guys just going to keep arguing against miHoYo because I'm not the one coming up with all of this. It's in-game lore. And suffice it to say had Yae actually been just a young kitsune there's no way she would have known how to use a Gnosis to grant Visions, the Divine Gaze she brings up with Ei. And as Ei herself admitted she doesn't even know how to grant Visions which is the other detail. Ei technically only held the Gnosis for a very short amount of time. It was in Makoto's hands since their ascension and then not long after she died Ei went into Euthymia and gave Yae the Gnosis. Then it was given to Scara so Ei never even got it back. And since none of our Electro allogenes are immortal or even all that old, they must have gotten their Visions somewhere in Yae's stint with the Gnosis therefore the only person would could have given it to them is her.
Now my current theory on this is that "Yae" is the Electro Dragon Sovereign possessing the kitsune Yae Miko. The mechanism for how this works we learn about in her Character Quest as I brought up last time. So just like Neuvillette and Zhongli she'd know exactly how these things work and I think she's manipulated that knowledge in a very creative way. Hopping over to Xianyun's Vision Story we learn that hers is a fake too, but that's not the important part for today. The important part is that she noticed the courage humans draw from seeing a Vision and therefore she wears her fake one just to inspire them. Then from the Chenyu Vale World Quest we find out that humans used to be elemental beings themselves. They were just changed by Phanes.
Ok that was all the setup. Now let's actually look at those Electro allogenes we have. To start we see that both Cyno and Sethos have the same abilities but they don't claim them to be related to their Electro Visions. And Lisa was studying to be a witch at the Academia, the Witch of the Purple Rose specifically just like how the Crimson Witch of Flames studied there for the same purpose before her. Their powers likely don't come from Visions either. And of course I have my theory on who Fischl really is. And from all of these examples we know something weird about them. Most Visions are granted when the person did something significant or made an important choice. But Fischl? She was just crying in the library because her parents stopped wanting to play make believe with her. Cyno? He was reviewing his law books. Lisa too. She was studying and just like that all three of them got a Vision. If we look further, we don't even know how Keqing got her Vision just that she was really upset when she did and Sara was just flung off a cliff. Something saved her and boom, she had a Vision.
But there's one thing these guys have in common. When they got their Visions they were on a path. Cyno was about to become Mahamatra. Fischl was about to fully commit to being a chuni. Lisa realized her research could only continue if she was one of the chosen, Sara refused to die and Keqing was defying the gods. They all just needed a little push, that inspiration to courageously follow through with that path. In other words I don't think any of them needed their Visions. They may each have had some innate Electro power but didn't know how to draw it out so Yae snuck a "fake" Vision onto them to nudge them in the right direction. This is also true for Dori and Shinobu. Dori was pushed into becoming Lord Sangemah Bay through circumstance but getting her Vision was just the push she needed to keep it going. And Shinobu was trying to leave the shrine. The Vision helped make it happen but it's all of her brains that got her to where she is today. (Also just like with Itto, Yae might be counting on her to inspire Inazuma's future.) Finally Sethos got his after a storm had passed and he'd seen the determination of a parent or clan leader to protect family. And Clorinde was just engaging in yet another duel but it had inspired her sense of justice by the sword. Anyway it wouldn't surprise me if Yae provided Visions to key people that she knew wouldn't actually need them.
On the other hand she has offered traditional Visions as well. Razor for one, got his Vision in the heat of battle. This is the same for Beidou. Both of them were in a do or die situation and needed the power of the Visions to survive. But seeing this list I think you guys can see they were the exception to the rule. After all as someone who wants to nurture humanity just like her counterparts Zhongli and now Neuvillette, she'd still want to protect worthy people too.
This idea also reconciles my original theory for the Elemental Character Traits. For Electro, all I had been able to come up with was larger than life yet immature. I think that still carries forward with Cyno and Dori. I mean the dad jokes already do it for Cyno but he's also a grown ass man who plays children's card games very seriously. And Dori well- So yeah it works. But for the moment both Sethos and Clorinde seem mature and even without them there's still Shinobu. But if some of these Visions Yae's been providing aren't legit and her true goal is just to use her Visions to inspire key figures in Teyvat's history then it all meshes.
So what's in a Vision? Visions are normally provided to worthy individuals by one of the Archons through the use of their Gnoses. The element the allogene gets is the one they naturally resonate with. However it could be that a dragon with full knowledge on how Visions work could purposely grant them to those of their choosing. Neuvillette's very first Vision was bestowed onto Furina, giving her access to both her and Egeria's styles of Hydro power. And Yae might have given some of hers to people she felt could carry Teyvat forward towards a better future despite their not actually needing a Vision to do so and not actually resonating with her Electro element. (This may even be what Lisa was actually talking about about why she left Sumeru: "Before demanding too many miracles from the Gods, first consider if you are willing to pay the price they ask.") She could be playing a deeper game than even Zhongli.
Could this be true? It's still a little too early to tell for sure but just like it was eventually revealed that Yae was rewritten from original Electro Archon to "familiar with greater knowledge than her Archon and a fake Vision" and now to Dragon Sovereign, the pieces seem to be lining up in favor of it.
Topic originally created on July 28th, 2024.