#HSR Specposting

[krawlernyannyan]

IT'S ALL ABOUT ENA (ft. SUNDAY WAS THE BAD GUY ALL ALONG)

After the v2.2 trailer I'm really starting to think the events going on in Penacony are somehow deeply tied to Ena the Order. At first I thought all the Order motifs (i.e. the eye symbol of Order being all over) around Penacony were just cool worldbuilding details about how the Harmony must've adopted the Order's symbology on top of THEIR Path, but now...

Like the thing that's really tipping me off here is all the goddamn puppets. The final boss of which is religiously-themed.

This is an insane idea but what if everything that's been going on in Penacony has been the result of somebody trying to re-establish contact with Ena and/or the Path of Order? One of the major discoveries we made in v2.1 was that something's wrong with the Harmony, so what if the Harmony on Penacony is being corrupted in such a way that it aligns more with the Order? It's not even hard to see how.

The Harmony should be about cooperation, resolving differences, mutual understanding, but on Penacony that's not remotely the case. The Family's main tactic to keep the peace has been robbing people of their memories and emotions - keeping them in control not necessarily so people can heal, but to keep them in line and serve their designated functions. The Family on Penacony has already been debasing its population into obedient puppets, doing everything possible to maintain the facade they've created.

There's also the fact that Penacony used to be a prison, a setting that embodies the kind of control and forcible penance that Order represents. Xipe's attention was drawn to it because its prisoners began uniting together in the dreamscape but what happens if Penacony reverts back to a prison?

There's a lot of things that click neatly into place with one extra assumption, that the person ultimately behind this distortion is the most Order-adjacent character in the Penacony cast: Sunday.

He's the most outwardly religious person on Penacony in terms of his faith and he's straight-up covered in the Order's eye symbol, even having them on his halo, plus his major character trait is being a control freak. Circumstantially, he fits.

At this point it's been hammered in that there's a traitor in The Family - as the person in charge of the Family (only answering to the unseen Dreammaster) he's literally pulling the strings on Penacony and in the best position to manipulate its environment, so him being the literal puppetmaster behind everything would be a neat turn of phrase.

While he's outwardly devout to Xipe it could be the case that his appeals are specifically to those aspects of Xipe that THEY absorbed from Ena.

Sunday's ultimate goal is to create a truly perfect paradise in Penacony, but his idea of that could be reliant on the complete control of its population to stop all conflict, hence why he's going to such lengths to get Ena's influence.

It's been stated that a lot of the Dreamscape exists thanks to blessings from Xipe the Harmony, leading to its relative safety, but if the Harmony starts getting corrupted and weakened, then that would weaken those effects and that could be why the deeper dreamscape is starting to flood into Penacony. (This would be an unintentional side-effect of trying to bring about Order, or at least one Sunday thinks the influence of the Order could resolve in its own way.)

Sunday's been putting more resources into finding the serial killer than he is into the Charmony Festival, upsetting other Family members. If he's the one behind everything, he should already have a plan in mind for the Charmony Festival and so it's not a concern to him but the serial murders act as a chaotic element upsetting his attempted Order so stopping them and restoring Order is his higher priority.

On the subject of the serial murders: one detail we got in v2.1 is that the victims seem to be entirely random with no correlations or similarities between them. It could be that we just don't know the underlying reason but what if it is random? Intentionally random because doing it like that means there's no order to them. Something chaotic to disrupt the mastermind's plans to re-align Penacony into the Order. If they're Enigmata-themed like Gallagher, the random killings serve the double-purpose of obfuscating their true intent by making people try to find reason where there isn't any.

(I want to emphasize here that Sunday wasn't behind Robin's murder. This idea only works if he and the killer are on opposing sides, plus when he confronts Gallagher about her death I believe he's genuinely upset about it. Her investigation into the Harmony on Penacony is probably why she was targeted but I still believe Sunday would've tried other ways of getting her onto his side if she found out.)

Now, Robin did presume he was innocent, but we can excuse that on the basis that it's unlikely she would assume her own brother had ulterior motives, and his "death" at the end of v2.1 could simply be a narrative red herring to make us think he's only a victim in all this.

The last point I want to make here: the main event of the Charmony Festival is supposed to be Xipe's incarnation descending (in this case Dominicus, who was referenced in v2.1). If someone is actively trying to tilt Penacony away from Harmony and towards Order, then by the time the Charmony Festival actually arrives it might be not be Xipe's incarnation we see descend, but instead an incarnation of Ena. Hell, we might have actually seen that exact situation happening in one of The Great Septimus' attacks:

#EZ: HSR #HSR #Honkai Star Rail #HSR Ena #HSR Sunday #HSR Specposting #fun fact: did you know septimus' third phase renames itself to “Embryo of Philosophy”? #just translate the name on it in the livestream #smth smth trying to rebirth Ena

[krawlernyannyan]

Okay I gotta ramble a bit because I feel like I've unlocked forbidden knowledge.

Okay, so, as a preface: I think the Evil Sampo in the latest Penacony teaser is actually Sparkle in disguise. My reasons are short but simple: the eyes are similar between them both, they've both got little pinkish-red energy around 'em, it makes sense for a character surrounded by masks to be a disguise-focused, and (most damningly) Sparkle's primary talent is theatre and playing roles - pretending to be other people.

I started thinking about why exactly Sparkle would be attacking us and knocking us out like we see, and while I was thinking about that the entire teaser clicked into place for me.

We're being shown the events out of order.

Here me out, this is what I think the actual order of the story is:

We arrive at Penacony.

We get separated from the other Trailblazers somehow.

We run into Sparkle-as-Sampo.

We have some kind of altercation with Sparkle-as-Sampo and she knocks us out.

While unconscious, we have an elaborate dream where Sampo is the evil king of a world of trash. This isn't just a detour from the actual story, it's an important demonstration of what Penacony as the Land of Dreams is able to achieve.

When we wake up, that's when Robin and Sunday find us. It doesn't seem like the place we wake up and the place Sparkle knocked us out are the same, so either we were moved afterwards or we wandered off in a dream-fueled haze.

Robin and Sunday are, y'know, important, so they can't do much more than check up on us but as higher-ups they can get staff like Firefly over to escort us back to the hotel.

We and Firefly have a fun date night a fun tour of the main boulevard while we get back to the Reverie to group back up with the other Trailblazers.

I'm really looking forward to seeing where the plot moves from here! Especially seeing how we hook up with Acheron and Black Swan for whatever fight we glimpsed.

#Honkai Star Rail #HSR #HSR Specposting

[krawlernyannyan]

I've been rewatching The Firefly Incident via streamer reactions and there's something that's been slowly itching at me for a bit now, and some puzzle pieces are starting to fit together:

In the lobby, when the Something Unto Death shows up, it appears almost exactly in the position it does when it's killing your party members: Directly above the Trailblazer, Black Swan, and Acheron, in prime position to kill any of them...but it doesn't. It ignores all three of them and beelines it to Firefly specifically - there's a shot that makes it clear it was in hair's distance of the Trailblazer and went around us. The minute it finishes doing The Thing, it leaves without so much as a second glance at anybody else.

That one was sitting in the back of my mind for a while but then I saw the first encounter with the SUD again. It's got you and Firefly trapped in a tight room, in prime position to kill both of you before Black Swan shows up...and it doesn't. When it could've gotten both of you, it discards the Trailblazer and only grabs Firefly.

Something Unto Death was specifically targeting her the whole time.

Which leaves the question, why? Here's what I think: We know from entities like Clockie that entities in the Dreamscape can respond and perceive things based on specific emotional states. SUD has killed two people now, so whatever it's going after must be some kind of emotional state or desire that both of its victims shared, that none of the other people in its territory have.

The obvious follow-up question is what that quality is, and there's room for interpretation here considering how much Firefly was hiding from us and how little screentime Robin got to have. I think there's enough that we get shown to make a solid guess, though:

Firefly wanted to escape the confines of her illness and break free of the medical cabin she's been confined to. Robin gives off the impression of a caged bird made to sing - she didn't, and doesn't, want to be here but is participating in the Festival under obligation to The Family. What they both want is freedom. They want to live. They wanted to be free of their respective restraints and have the ability to live their own lives, on their own terms.

That's what the Something Unto Death goes after. I have some ideas and further questions but this post is long enough and I think I've provided enough food for thought. I'll leave off with this though:

I'm convinced there's something - or someone - deep inside of the primal dreamscape that has the same dream. It wants to break free, it wants to be released, and it wants to live. But it doesn't get to. Perhaps it's not allowed to. If that entity can feel and perceive the wishes of the dreamers around it, and can sense that same desire? I'd be pretty mad about it too.

#Honkai Star Rail #HSR #HSR Spoilers #HSR Firefly #HSR Robin #corollary: SUD doesn't just leave bc it's outnumbered when acheron/bswan are with you #black swan put up a fight the first time and it kept going #it stayed the first time because It Wasn't Done Yet #and left the second because Its Job Was Done #HSR Specposting

[krawlernyannyan]

AN (APPROXIMATE) TIMELINE OF THE NAVIGATORS

Cosmodyssey's given us a slew of the Astral Express' former Navigators and my first question was, naturally, if we can actually give them a distinct order outside of "Himeko is the current Navigator".

The good news: Two-thirds of them can be cleanly placed on a timeline because most of their backstories imply or directly mention specific universal events. The other third is...blurry, but in my attempt to construct a timeline here I'll be giving my rationale for why I'm placing them where they are.

This is going to be long so I'm putting it under a cut.

Capy Baba is the earliest of the Navigators given to us in Cosmodyssey, and it's very easy to discern why. Their backstory explicitly mentions they took the helm at the end of the Swarm Disaster and that their "predictive pathfinding" helped the Express avoid the Swarm. They also existed in a pre-Synesthesia Beacon period of history and needed a human translator to aid them. Their work helped revitalize the Express' star maps so well that they're still in use today, and eventually Capy Baba retired peacefully once they were done with their work.

I'm not sold on the precise order of these next three, only that they're after Capy Baba due to the presence of the IPC in two of their backstories and the third being an Intellitron. For the former two, the IPC wasn't formally established until the Swarm Disaster was over (I've double-checked since originally posting and it did exist pre-Swarm Disaster, it just saw massive expansion and reforms after the Disaster), and I don't believe you start seeing independent Intellitrons until after the Emperor's War is finished.

Sometime after the IPC is formed and starts hiring bounty hunters, the crew and passengers of the Astral Express mysteriously disappear. A bounty hunter named Oakley is enlisted by Pom-Pom to act as Navigator in the wake of the disappearance, and they accept. They help the Express fight off "star beasts" while helping find the missing passengers and recruiting new ones. This takes place over the course of six months, and once the crew is suitably replenished Oakley quietly leaves the Express. They still hold the record for the shortest recorded stint as Navigator.

Bob, formerly of the IPC-wanted crime syndicate Tarantula, joins the Astral Express as a guard. Eventually, it's discovered that he's joined under a false identity and his exposure results in his assignment to the role of Navigator. It's mentioned he had a hatred of mechanical life but still invited them onboard "in times of war" (which I take as a sign his stint was either during the Emperor's War or right around the same time). It's unknown how he met his end, just that he died in a heroic defensive battle.

Sam-3000 is an Intellitron and her tenure is the most distinctive out of the whole bunch since she led an entire fleet of Astral Expresses. There's likely a long period before and after her time as Navigator where the trains are constructed and then fall to the wayside, but her backstory mentions her career was during "an era of enterprise". I feel that's supposed to point towards her leading the Express during the Second Prosperity (a 500-Era economic windfall for the IPC that gets more explicitly mentioned later). She only retires once she's unable to replace her own parts.

For the rest of the Navigators, the order is very linear and defined.

Dolly was a musician from Tiafoe whose music was able to attract many new passengers to the Express, and even brought Akivili back onboard. It is during her tenure that the fall of Akivili occurs, an event experienced by all Nameless, and the moment starts Dolly's anomalous crystallization. Before she is completely petrified she's able to assign a new Navigator.

It's explicitly noted that Isee's historical record has been tampered with repeatedly by History Fictionologists, but assuming the story we're given is correct: Isee oversaw an important period in the Express' history, covering the fall of Akivili and the subsequent birth of Nanook. Their career was defined by the chaotic schisms and diaspora caused by the loss of the Trailblaze, but they remained steadfast even when the Express was reduced to two passengers. They eventually stepped down from the position, and it's explicitly mentioned who succeeded them in the role. Notably, the Omen Vanguards begin to appear in the universe after they step down.

Falcon Amundsen is listed as coming into the Navigator role shortly after Isee, and it's under him that the Express regains the glory it lost in the wake of Akivili's fall. He's explicitly mentioned as taking the helm during "the early days of the Cancer of All Worlds", and was likely the first navigator that had to deal with Stellarons. Falcon's efforts to rebuild the Star Rail inspired a new generation of Nameless, but he passed on before he could see the ultimate fruits of his work.

Granholm eventually takes the mantle of Navigator at the age of 17. His career was in "a time marred by disasters and fractured worlds" (Stellarons), and the Nameless are transformed into cosmic heroes under his tenure. Granholm spends his life on the Express and passes on peacefully of old age.

It's shortly after Granholm's passing that the Express falls into disrepair due to the influence of Stellarons on the Star Rail and the universe. The train eventually crashes into an unknown planet and remains unfound for so long that its legacy begins fading into myth.

Eventually, a teenage Himeko finds the stranded Express and spends many years fixing the train. Once her work is complete the Express takes to the stars again, with Himeko becoming the new Navigator. She is the current Navigator and (we hope) she'll stay in that position for a long time to come.

We obviously haven't gotten an exhaustive list but this is a lot of Navigators and we can draw a pretty clean timeline of who was in charge in important moments in the Star Rail universe's history (or, at the least, where the gaps are for when certain events happened). Even if we don't know every single person to ever fill the role it's still very comforting to be able to place people and cosmic events in relation to others like this.

#HSR #Honkai Star Rail #HSR Specposting #HSR Himeko #HSR Capy Baba #HSR Oakley #HSR Bob #HSR Sam-3000 #HSR Dolly #HSR Isee #HSR Falcon Amundsen #HSR Granholm

[krawlernyannyan]

WAIT A GODDAMN MINUTE

THE PENACONY FINAL BOSS' NAME IS "THE GREAT SEPTIMUS".

SEPTIMUS. SEPT-

"THE SEVENTH"

LIKE THE SEVENTH DAY OF THE WEEK?

SUNDAY?!

Fate Almighty I think I was right on the money with yesterday's theory that Sunday was behind everything.

#EZ: HSR #HSR #Honkai Star Rail #HSR Sunday #HSR Specposting #sorry this is allcaps but i literally jumped out of bed to type this #this would've been lovely to realize yesterday for my long-ass theorypost

[krawlernyannyan]

Okay wait. Wait. Hold on. Hold on. I feel like my brain is exploding again. I was looking through the mission dialogue again to build up a speculations document and it finally hit me.

Look at the secret message in the invitations again.

Witness the impossible in the realm of dreams, find the legacy of the Watchmaker, Father of Penacony, and thus the answer to the question: Why does life slumber?

It's fairly certain the other invitations that factions have decoded have the same message; Aventurine mentions the Watchmaker directly and Firefly gives her own answer to the question posed. What I want to draw your attention to is actually that first part: "Witness the impossible."

I hadn't given much thought to that first condition yet but then I realized. There's another place we've seen that phrasing. It's right when you enter the Dreamscape for the first time, the note on the table before you even get to Golden Hour or the Gallery of Thought.

Watchmaker's Advice The impossible can also happen in dreams Find it, and then you shall be granted an audience

There's so much going on in Penacony and the plot right now that I hadn't even thought about what these could be pointing at. But then I glanced at it one more time and it hit me like a space train...you can do so many impossible things in dreams - it's the entire appeal of Penacony. But even in Penacony, in all of its Moments, there's one thing it's hammered in repeatedly that you shouldn't be able to do. I'll give you a few hints.

It's Lew Archer, throwing herself off a building over and over to cope with her grief. It's Sparkle's first victim, already walking around again by the time you investigate his "murder". It's so many other sidequests in the Dreamscape. It's the thing The Family has insured can't happen to its guests. It's the thing even a Memokeeper like Black Swan can't circumvent. It's the thing that we've seen twice now in spite of all of that.

It's Death.

Death is the impossible dream. The only "real death" we've seen has come directly from Something Unto Death, and you could definitely say both of its victims "found it". Here's the kicker, and the thing that's making my cogwheels churn so quickly: think about how the SUD actually works in observed practice. It "kills" your party...but their bodies are still there, and you can get them back. It's just taken their souls somewhere else. This is Soul Sepulchers in the fight itself but extrapolate that into a greater in-universe mechanic. In the actual story...where would their souls go?

I think our two victims just got their audience with the Watchmaker.

#EZ: HSR #HSR #Honkai Star Rail #HSR Penacony #looking forward to coming back here in six weeks to see if i was right #i ought to make a proper speculation tag ive got a couple of these posts now #HSR Specposting

[krawlernyannyan]

We're almost definitely getting Harmony!Stelle by the end of the Penacony plot and obviously I'm excited for that but lately I've been thinking about the four Paths we have to get to after this and all of them are fascinating for entirely separate reasons:

The Hunt is almost definitely the result of us going back to the Xianzhou. While I'm loudly not a fan of the Luofu plotline, there's a lot of varied locales in the ships we haven't been to yet and, frankly, any of them would be good background dressing for new stories. It's probably the Yuque since that's where Luocha and Jingliu are right now but I'd personally love to see the Yaoqing.

The Erudition is going to be interesting because I can already see a few reasons that would get Stelle pursuing knowledge for the sake of knowing, but my fascination is entirely on the back of the entire extant Genius Society looking at this girl after Nous glances at her and having to collectively ask "So do we let the human raccoon into the Society or do we pretend this never happened?"

The Nihility is going to be a ride to see play out because, like...IX doesn't even pay attention to other Aeons. How absolutely hopeless does a person have to get for that living black hole to even notice you in the first place, let alone grant you powers? How absolutely ruined is this girl going to get to start fighting on the side of existential malaise??

The Abundance is the Path I'm the most anxious about, because the Path of Abundance is nurturing and kind and all that but then you look at the factions of Abundance and it's almost entirely body horror monstrosities and living nightmares. Aside from Nanook, Yaoshi is the only Aeon whose factions are universally shown in antagonistic lights, and the idea of Stelle having to fight on the same side as armies with living warships and entire living (carnivorous) planets is so intriguing.

#EZ: HSR #HSR #Honkai Star Rail #HSR Stelle #HSR Specposting #Please do not interact with leaks/spoilers/datamines

[krawlernyannyan]

We know how Stoneheart Aventurine happens now (it's just a function of his Cornerstone) but for fun I just want to put the two pet theories I had for what was going on prior to the v2.1 livestream out there:

From how many similar visual features there were between Stoneheart Aventurine and Sam my initial thought was that the dream logic at play in Penacony allowed those two to synchronize and the power of Harmony temporarily fused them into a single entity, Steven Universe-style.

After the actual v2.0 plot came out I figured from how flamboyant the design is, the mask it has, and the knowledge that The Tavern had invited him at some point that maybe Sparkle had gotten into Aventurine's head, and at some point he would snap and realize "what The Laughter wants", and his boss form was the result of Aha getting their claws into him and getting him to go full Masked Fool on us.

#EZ: HSR #HSR #Honkai Star Rail #HSR Aventurine #HSR Specposting #Headcanonposting #(retroactive in both cases but i gotta file this post somewhere on here)

[krawlernyannyan]

I was reading up on the lore of the other new ornament set and like. I'm not going crazy, right? The Iron Cavalry in the new Glamoth bauble looks almost exactly like Sam does? A little modified from the original Space Marine design but still, same white-and-gray armor, vaguely chitinous hide, big protruding shoulders...

Not to mention the actual backstories describing the Cavalry as "silver mecha" and "knights clad in mechanical armor", and Sam being described as a "metal humanoid"...

...Is this what Sam is? A leftover war machine from a long-dead empire from the Swarm Disaster era? I'm fascinated with this concept now.

#HSR #Honkai Star Rail #HSR Sam #HSR Specposting #Headcanonposting

[krawlernyannyan]

Had some thoughts about Ruan Mei and Aeonhood, because her possibly becoming an Aeon is obviously being set up and I've seen some conceptual titles thrown around like "Aeon of Creation" or "Aeon of Origin". I definitely agree with those estimations, but where my thoughts went is what an Aeon of Creation or Origin would actually be.

Aeons are, above all else, single-mindedly focused on the Paths they embody, so an Aeon of Creation would be fixated on creation, on the act of creation, on the birth and original state of things. Everything after that?

Just look at how Ruan Mei already acts. Her obsession is a hypothetical "perfect" creation, something greater than just any other form of life. She can create life, intelligent life even, but what she wants is a genius - something intelligent enough to be worthy of acknowledgement by the Aeon of Erudition. Failing that? She wants to create an Emanator, something on the level of a demigod in this universe, and even that is just a consolation prize for her ultimate goal of reproducing an Aeon outright.

Even without Aeonic abilities she can just accidentally create new civilizations, can create entire living planets, she can terraform places on a whim...but she doesn't care to maintain any of it. Once she's created something and that hypothesis turns into something physical that's been made and she has to look at it, it's not satisfying enough and she leaves it behind. She just keeps moving on to the next thing, because that creation might be the one she wants.

And frankly, I don't think she'd find that satisfaction even after becoming an Aeon. I see Ruan Mei the Aeon of Creation, as a living kind of primordial soup, where she can create vast swathes of organisms, evolution becoming putty in her hands, and could make anything except the thing she desires most. Once her children start existing they stop being relevant - just data to discard and leave to their own devices, or perhaps worse, something to break down, dismantle, and reassemble into some "better" shape.

And let's not even get into how an Aeon of Creation ought to embody creation itself. I imagine an entity not unlike a phoenix, that is constantly in a cycle of birth and decline to continuously recreate itself. Its own body, living through this rebirth, becoming just another part of the flurry of form and function their own powers manifest into.

As for the impact of an entity like this, we're not talking about just accidentally making a society of living moon cakes, we're talking about already-inhabited star systems reduced to an Aeon's laboratory and full-on sentient species left behind with societal abandonment complexes - and who knows what kind of chaos they'd wreak to get their creator's attention back.

And I don't even want to start talking about potential conflicts with other Aeons (I could see Yaoshi taking some issues with this whole arrangement) because this ramble's gone on for long enough.

In conclusion: Well, I just don't think this would be good for anybody, but I'm not about to tell women in STEM not to keep up the hustle.

#EZ: HSR #HSR Ruan Mei #HSR #Honkai Star Rail #this is a bit of a ramble but i wanted to write all this down while it was still fresh #HSR Specposting #Headcanonposting

[krawlernyannyan]

The fun part about theorycrafting is that every one in a while you get an absurd thought in your head that you know, instinctively, isn't correct, but you start connecting dots anyway because bad theories can still lead to greater truths, and once you start connecting dots you have the moment of "Wait this might actually explain a lot?"

My crack theory for the night is this: Something Unto Death didn't actually kill Robin. Robin's killer...was herself.

Points of analysis to explain myself:

If we assume Firefly and Robin were both killed by SUD, there's a key difference between how we see Firefly die and how we see Robin's body - that is, we see Robin's body. She left a corpse. Firefly exploded into dream bubble paste instantly before she even had time to hit the ground, yet Robin's body was evidently lying around long enough for Aventurine to find it and show it to two other people at different times before it finally evaporated. This theory provides a pretty straightforward answer to this question - the bodies are in different conditions because there were two different causes of death.

The location of the body is also suspect. Both times we see SUD, it's in wide open spaces, which is intuitive because it's a massive monster and it needs room to maneuver. Why, then, is Robin's body lying in the middle of a hotel room? Would SUD really cram itself into that small of a space just to kill someone? Now, there are some possible mundane answers here - SUD could've possibly just teleported a part of itself in, or Aventurine could've just moved the body from somewhere else, but neither of those really cleanly answer this question. By this theory's line of thought, where Robin died wouldn't matter, even if SUD has to find you and kill you itself, because she could theoretically take her own life in any location she saw fit.

What exactly was Robin - interastral pop superstar Robin, pride of The Family - doing alone in the middle of the primal dreamscape? Given how important she is to the optics to the Charmony Festival, you'd think she'd have a 24/7 security detail or, barring that, someone with authority like Sunday keeping an eye on her, yet she managed to sneak off into an area that is largely outside of The Family's control? What if the reason she was there was because she was deliberately trying to get out of The Family's sight so they couldn't stop her?

It's stated multiple times that death shouldn't be possible in Penacony; in the game's own terms, "It's the promise of The Family and the blessing of The Harmony." Even a Memokeeper can't circumvent that...but what about a member of The Family? What about a tuner who can channel The Harmony, and demonstrated that ability earlier in the story?

While Sunday's lines in the epilogue would point to "death" being the culprit in both cases, I'd like to raise the following counterarguments: [A] It's possible he just got bad information and naturally came to the same conclusion we did about how Robin died; [B] Likewise taking the information he's been given and mentally blocking out the possibility his own sister chose death for herself because who would ever choose to believe that if they didn't have to; [C] He knows for a fact he's talking to Sparkle from the start of that scene since he already knows Robin is dead, and could be deliberately skewing his words to keep the truth of the situation from getting out into the public.

This isn't a complete theory - I'll admit as much. If you're looking for an idea of what she did to inflict spiritual death on herself, or why she would want to do something drastic like this: I'm sorry, I don't have them. Maybe the combined stressors of celebrity life and the threat of The Family re-establishing control over her after she'd left them drove her over the edge. We are only a third of the way into the Penacony story and there is very little we can dig into about Robin, before or after her death.

However, if you think this idea is "too dark", that it's "too depressing" and they'd never actually do it: I get it. I came up with this idea and, frankly, I still don't think it's what the real answers are going to amount to. But I think it's a possibility worth some consideration, and I'd like to present one more piece of evidence to my case. This is the one that got me on this train of thought in the first place:

On Penacony, the theme of suicide and self-annihilation are pervasive and constant. You can't go two sidequests without seeing it in some shape or form: Lew Archer, throwing herself off buildings; IV, threatening to do the same; Leslie Dean, an imaginary being, ending his own existence for the betterment of the people who created him; Sparkle, symbolically killing herself over and over by making herself the victim in murder mysteries she creates; even Tizocic II, who erased her life once by wiping her own memories, then, when she got them back, chose to return to her homeworld for what could only be her own execution. There's even more examples I could list, but you get the gist. An entire planet of people, destroying themselves and the lives they've built up, all in the hopes there's something better on the other side.

I would be incredibly surprised if that theme doesn't translate itself into the main story sometime in the next two updates. Maybe it's not via Robin specifically, and there's something much worse lying under the surface in Penacony. Right now, though? We've been given a murder mystery, and murder mysteries are never straightforward when it comes to their victims. It would be very on-genre to make us think a certain Memory Zone Meme did it, right after we saw it kill someone else, only for them to pull the rug out under us.

#HSR Specposting #HSR #Honkai Star Rail #HSR Robin #tw suicide #just throwing that one in there for safety #HSR Spoilers

[krawlernyannyan]

The idea that Penacony. The Planet of Festivities, the Land of Dreams. The place that people go to so they can live, live out their lives to the fullest, live to escape the pain of reality, live better lives than they did when they were awake...

The idea that all of that, at its deepest and darkest core, is built upon the soul of Penacony's last prisoner, a single soul whose only wish is to finally die.

I don't even have a sticker to convey the emotions swirling around in my head right now. How am I supposed to put up with this for six more weeks?

#EZ: HSR #if you can't tell i've given myself a theorycrafting aneurysm tonight #HSR Specposting #Headcanonposting

[krawlernyannyan]

The Watchmaker is the founder of the Penacony Dreamscape, the reason all of its dreams can be made, and if the Something Unto Death "killing" someone is what grants them an audience with the Watchmaker then they're literally "meeting their maker".

I'm going to explode.

#EZ: HSR #HSR Specposting

[krawlernyannyan]

Unorganized Hypotheses and Notes about Penacony post-v2.0

Attempts to pick apart and unravel some of the strings we've got to untangle during this intermission. Most of these questions are unanswered, for the simple fact there's not information to go off of yet. This is thorough, and tackles pretty much every question I've got about the story at this point in time.

Posting this for my own sake, and putting it under a readmore for your sake. Anything in purple is information I want to verify for myself later or need to do more research on.

[ THIS USER WOULD LIKE TO SPECIFY THEY ARE AVOIDING LEAKS AND SPOILERS, AND WOULD LIKE READERS TO AVOID MENTIONING THEM IN INTERACTIONS. THANK YOU. ]

1. Who is Acheron?

Acheron's intermittent memory and lack of any identifying information make her one of the most important wild cards still in the game on Penacony. There is implicit evidence to suggest that she isn't just an alternate-universe counterpart of Raiden Mei from Honkai Impact 3rd, but the same person. In her first scene she makes one reference to the HI3 plot and makes another later on after Firefly's death. The former is in red text, leaving room for suspicion, but the later is in normal text. These could just be references to draw parallels between the two, but they are things Acheron explicitly is remembering. The only other hint to her past life is that, somehow, she knows the Trailblazer already in the opening sequence.

2. What Aeon is Acheron the Emanator of?

A late development in the story is that Aventurine tells us Acheron is actually an Emanator. He can't give an exact description, only describing her as one that "brings death and finality". There's a few options; Finality is the obvious answer but there's others that have some meat behind them: - If she's an Emanator of Destruction, it might provide more reason why she opted to attack Duke Inferno to swipe his invitation - she was getting a thorn in Nanook's side out of the way to kill two birds with one stone. - Galaxy Rangers are already associated with The Hunt, so if she actually is a Galaxy Ranger her being an Emanator of The Hunt tracks. - I personally think there's some meat to Nihility? It's her in-game playable Path, her memory loss could be the effects of Nihility on her mind, plus if her Aeon is one that Aventurine didn't mention this is probably the best pick.

3. How did Acheron even check into the hotel?

When the Astral Express crew arrive, they end up causing a minutes-long backup because security is so tight around the Charmony Festival that they can't even reassign a room to a verified party without Sunday's direct involvement. How is it possible then, that Acheron was able to swipe an invitation from another party and check in with it, with no problems whatsoever? The idea of her using a stolen invitation is brought up by Aventurine, which is actually even stranger when he's the one who initially brings up how ironclad security is at the Reverie when we're checking in!

4. What does the red text mean?

The red text appears repeatedly across Penacony and thus far has no tangible explanation. Acheron is the most obvious example and uses it the most, but there's environmental objects that use it as well - a phone in the Reverie's lobby and a Ticker in the Dreamscape Reverie. When Acheron uses red text, it's either when asking questions or explaining past events - and those sequences are actually randomized, meaning almost any time she describes her past, there is no way to verify it. The only example given any elaboration is the Ticker, where it's said to come from a record that influences people's emotions. The best theory as what it does in practice is alter people's cognition - affecting their emotional state or making them believe things that aren't true.

5. What happened to the three Trailblazers?

One of the first things we're asked to do on Penacony is figure out what happened to three Trailblazers that left the Astral Express for Penacony millennia ago (before the emergence of Stellarons, even). We get no information about any of them in the v2.0 story, sans what few details we get when we're given the task. There's Tiernan, former guard for the Express; Legwork, the former mechanic; and Razalina, the former surveyor.

6. What is the importance of the Nameless Dream Bubble?

When we first meet Dr. Edward at the Dreamscape Sales Store, it's an odd scene. We're given a bubble, supposedly from an anonymous donor, of Pom-Pom yelling at someone who we're told is Akivili. The game leaves room for suspicion on that count, by labeling the speaker as "Akivili?" and having that person's audio track completely excised (meaning we can't even confirm their gender). We're also told the bubble has something to do wit the fall of Akivili, though it's extremely unclear how. It's not clear when the bubble's memory takes place either, only that it's after Aha blows up half the Express.

7. What are Clockie and his friends, and why can only the Trailblazer see them?

The fact that Clockie, a literal cartoon character, can exist in the world of Penacony is already odd but the fact that only the Trailblazer can see them is likely extremely important. Whatever kind of cognitive entity Clockie is, their existence establishes a basic fact: there are elements of the dream world that can only be perceived by specific kinds of people. This is almost certainly going to be a pivotal element in finding the Watchmaker's Legacy, because it means even experts in manipulating the dreamscape like Black Swan might not be able to find it unless they were the right kind of person to be cognizant of it in the first place. This is a pretty reasonable line of defense when you consider whoever hid the Legacy would know the capabilities of the Memokeepers, since the Garden of Recollection was one of the original creators of Penacony in the first place.

8. Who (and what) is Misha?

There is some very strong evidence to suggest that Misha isn't a real person, and is instead the same kind of cognitive entity that Clockie and his pals are. I need to comb through all the scenes they're in and especially the scene with the mafia boss but nobody actually interacts with him. If I'm remembering the scene correctly, that mafia boss doesn't even say anything to Misha - just Acheron. There's also the fact that when Acheron says they can feel a presence next to them in that scene, they're not looking down at Clockie, she's looking at where Misha is. An important detail of this idea is that Misha isn't just visible in the Dreamscape, you can see him in the Reverie too (and possibly the Express as well if his interactions on the train are canon). If he is a cognitive entity, he has to be a much stronger kind than any of them. That the voice in A Child's Dream is Misha's implies that, at minimum, he has more to do with the goings-on in Penacony than it's been let on.

9. Who (and what) is Mikhail?

We only have a name to go off of, and the snippets of conversation we get in A Child's Dream. A late-breaking update on that front is the animated Clockie shorts that Hoyo put out. The director for the first short is listed as Mikhail (the other two are directed by "Ruthie" and "Hanunu"). The name alone is actually enough to make one connection - the shortened version of the name Mikhail? It's Misha.

10. What is "spiritual death"?

It's started at multiple points that death shouldn't exist in Penacony - you just wake up back in your hotel room even if you still feel the pain. What Something Unto Death does is treated as dying for real, and isn't described as "spiritual death" until the end scene with Sunday. We have no idea what's happened to the victims' bodies in reality, and that condition might become an important part of solving the mystery in future patches. If the SUD's battle mechanics translate to in-universe functions, then it's possible that Firefly and Robin's souls are just lying somewhere in the Dreamscape, waiting to be found.

11. Why are the two deaths different?

There are two deaths that happen in v2.0: Firefly is killed on-screen and explodes into paste before she even hits the ground, then we see Robin died offscreen with a corpse and visible wound that stuck around long enough for Aventurine to show it to two people before it evaporated. If we assume SUD was responsible for both deaths (as Sunday seems to), why are the two bodies in such different conditions?

12. Why was Robin in the Dreamscape?

Aside from the aforementioned questions about the condition of her body, why was Robin in the primal Dreamscape in the first place? She's an interastral pop star and an instrumental figure in the upcoming Charmony Festival - how did she manage to get away from The Family and wind up in the Reverie's dreamscape to get killed in the first place? Is there anything to gain from those repeated mentions of her hoarse voice in the beginning of the story?

13. Who hired Sparkle, and what do they want?

In her companion mission, it's mentioned that someone hired Sparkle to come to Penacony, and implied that this person wouldn't appreciate Sparkle going out of her way to make alliances with the other factions. Who are they and why did they bring her here? It's not likely to be someone like Giovanni, who definitely has the money for it but he's mentioned by name elsewhere so I doubt it's him.

14. What was the Stellaron disaster Penacony went through?

There has been in-game mentions that Penacony dealt with a Stellaron disaster, and that Xipe was the one who ultimately dealt with it. We have not, however, received any information about what the disaster was. Implicitly, it's something bad enough that three different Aeons got involved. Is it possible whatever happened is why the penal colony was able to be turned into the Penacony of today, or why so many objects inside the primal dreamscape seem to embody the memories of the original prisoners?

15. What is the ultimate goal of the Stellaron Hunters on Penacony?

In the first scene in the Dreamscape, there's the echoes of Sam and Silver Wolf discussing their plans. Specifically, they mention "pulling [someone] off the stage" and "presenting the truth". It's not clear when this conversation actually takes place, but what "truth" are they planning to reveal? What do they plan to do at, presumably, the stage of the Grand Theater?

16. What was the goal of the invitations inviting so many different factions to Penacony?

Even before we got to Penacony, The Family choosing to let other factions into the Charmony Festival is brought up as a weird unique occurrence. Over the course of the plot it becomes clear at least some of the factions were invited outside of The Family's control, though some number have to have been invited naturally (otherwise it would be trivial to simply acknowledge all of them as fake). The intention seems to be to get as many parties as possible working to undermine The Family's control and get people looking for the Watchmaker's Legacy, but some of the choices are bizarre and indicate a high degree of desperation. Why the Knights of Beauty? Why the Annihilation Gang, of all people?

17. What is the relationship between the Watchmaker and The Family?

The Watchmaker is a legendary figure on Penacony and the alledged Father of Penacony, yet Sunday's line early on about "actual administrators" paints a very certain picture about how The Family view themselves. It's implied The Watchmaker themselves might be the reason the primal dreamscape is starting to subsume Penacony, but how did the dreamscape's founder and its current controllers come to blows like this?

Speculation & Other Notes

The clocks are a recurring motif to the point they infiltrate the OST itself. This goes just beyond the obvious - the entire dreamscape is modeled like a clock. The Grand Theater sits at the center of the dreamscape as a central pivot; the twelve Moments are the numbers representing each of the hours; you could say the long thing shape of The Reverie puts it into the position of the clock's hands, moving guests around the dial to each of the Moments; and the deeper dreamscape is where the internal clockworks would be kept.

Suicide and self-annihilation are constant and repeated themes across Penacony. To list a few examples: Lew Archer throwing herself off buildings to cope with her grief; IV threatening to throw themselves off a building to cope with criticism; Lesley Dean allowing his imaginary existence to end for the betterment of his creators; Sparkle casting herself as a murder victim in murder mysteries (something even Sampo comments on); Tizocic II destroying herself by erasing her own memories, then returning to her homeworld for an assured execution. People destroying themselves, or parts of themselves, because they believe there's something better on the other side. This hasn't been part of the main story yet, but I expect it to play a major part of the events going on in Penacony.

The map screen on Penacony straight-up shows us some of the future areas we're going to get, and we've got at least 4-5 areas left to explore on Penacony, above or below the glitz and glamour.

As a point of speculation: I think the Trailblazer is going to earn their Harmony path by managing to get all of the disparate factions playing against each other to finally work together towards the same goal. Similar to how Belobog's plot ultimately focused on how Preservation was worth pursuing even in the face of uncertain struggles and potentially endless struggle, I believe the Penacony plot will end in the Trailblazer pursuing cooperation and unity between the factions, even in spite of the dangers of trusting people. It's mentioned in a few places that "the Harmony's incarnation" will descend to the Charmony Festival - I wonder if the Trailblazer will ultimately filling that prestigious role.

I have no clue what Type the Harmony Trailblazer is going to be but I like Ice/Harmony considering the water themes going on with the Dreamscape. Imaginary or Quantum would be nice, too.

I expect this list to balloon further as I dig more into this update, and more so with future updates.

#EZ: HSR #yeah haha you think i'm subjecting any of the main tags to this #consider yourself spared unless you found this the hard way #HSR Specposting #Headcanonposting

[krawlernyannyan]

Follow-up to the previous post:

There's some disconnect between my theory that death is the impossibility the Watchmaker wants the factions to find and that the Something Unto Death killing people is what grants them an audience, and this new theory that the Something Unto Death is targeting people who want freedom and life. I've also got to try and square those together with some of my current ideas on the Watchmaker and their ultimate goals.

There's surely some connecting points I'm missing here, but that's what we have six weeks before 2.1 for.

#EZ: HSR #TLDR theorycrafting is a process and it's not always perfect the first time #small revelations lead to larger ones even if they aren't completely correct #HSR Specposting