#I'M IN A DESERT I NEED MORE CONTENT OF HIM BEING *RUINED* OKAY

[aspiringjester]

been holding it in for so long but i think it's finally time to live my truth.... i'm coming out as a bottom mobei-jun truther 🫣

(part of this is influenced by a GALAXY brain take on an omegaverse fic i read a while back where the logic was mbj HAD to be an omega so that fans wouldn't see him as alpha competition for lbh AND YOU KNOW WHAT i see the vision--)

ANYWAYS mobei-jun is actually the world's prettiest ice queen of a wife to shang qinghua's That Guy husband energy and SOMEDAY i will fulfill my vision

also i am not immune to the sheer power of the mobei-jussy-- [gunshots]

[aha-chuu]

Kaveh's Odd Desert Connections

Kaveh... Is weird. I hadn't thought that much about it until I very recently caught up with the Dirge of Bilqis quest (the new desert one with Jeht) and watched Ashikai's latest theory video. This post is just meant to gather my thoughts and share what I've learned.

So first what sent me down this rabbit hole was finding this during the desert quest:

In case you missed it in that wall of text, this record is addressed to "Mehrak". We know due to leaks that Kaveh's very cute briefcase is called Mehrak also.

Unfortunately,,, desert lore is like that and is pretty hard to untangle. These records recount the fall of Gurabad and the story of Liloupar - basically, they tell a story of a ruined civilisation from thousands of years in the past. Knowing the actual contents of them isn't really necessary to follow this post, because Mehrak (and by extension Kaveh) is only namedropped this one time out of all the records.

But we can theorise a lot just from this single mention. To me, there are two possible explanations for why "Mehrak" comes up in these records whilst also being Kaveh's present day briefcase. The first is mildly boring but kind of funny: there is no true connection between Kaveh's Mehrak and the Mehrak mentioned, Kaveh simply named his cute techno briefcase after a historical figure because he thought it would be cool. Kaveh is smart and does work on projects in the desert, so it is not outside the realm of possibility that he might learn of Mehrak and use the name. It makes him look a whole lot more nerdy, which I find amusing.

The second possible explanation (and pls do provide your thoughts if you have any other ideas) was provided to me by a redditer (PinkPrimrose05). Their theory is that Mehrak is in a similar situation to Ferigees, who I will remind you is the Jinni near the end of the Dirge of Bilqis questline. They were a person at a certain point in history, but has since been trapped in a mechanical construct. They cannot die until we release them.

(I apologise for the poor quality, Ferigees is inside that yellow mechanism.)

This has many more implications, since (if this is the case) Mehrak's current form does not really match the other ancient desert technology. Well, perhaps it has some similar patterning, but it definitely looks significantly more modern than other technology from that time -

(I could not for the life of me find a good model image for this, so sorry Kaveh's arm is in the way.)

Perhaps I should have mentioned this earlier - we know from leaks that Mehrak has some level of sentience, in that it has expressions (little pixelated anime eye reactions) and responds to Kaveh's instructions without necessitating verbal or physical inputs. This makes the Jinni idea seem more likely, since they also have sentience.

Okay, so maybe the briefcase has a rich history from the time of King Deshret. So what? Kaveh probably found it in the desert and repurposed it for his own needs - perhaps due to errosion Mehrak has no memory of its past life. Since the technology does not quite match, or at least not totally, perhaps Kaveh created the briefcase around Mehrak (as well as an architect he is also a student from the technology darshan, after all). Or maybe he just made additions. What does it even matter aside from being an interesting tidbit?

Well, then I watched Ashikai's latest video: https://youtu.be/h5rNMYwWjfA. It's not necessary watching to understand what I'm about to say, so I'll summarise some of her thoughts very broadly: she brings up the idea that rather than Alhaitham being the Deshret parallel as we all thought, it's instead Kaveh. If you would like to hear all her thoughts as to why that could be, I recommend watching the video.

This does not mean that Kaveh IS Deshret, or even that it's a reincarnation situation. Just that he could be a parallel, or have more connections/knowledge than we might realise. Kaveh is an interesting case from a meta perspective also, since he has had a strange amount of unnecessary story presence for an unreleased four star. He is in the archon quest and Alhaitham's story quest and in neither is his presence at all justified by narrative - Alhaitham's quest could easily end fifteen minutes earlier, and Kaveh adds literally nothing to the archon quest aside from some nice levity. Some lore relevant significance might explain this presence past just "oh, well Hoyo wanted fanservice".

Through the lens that their is some sort of Deshret -> Kaveh connection happening (and I say this so so loosely), his connection with Mehrak might have a more sinister implication. Deshret allowed, through his own ignorance, the Jinni he intended to protect on behalf of the Goddess of Flowers to be enslaved. He also lied about the Goddess' death to the Jinni, and it is largely due to their contract with him that their entire civilisation fell apart. An important note about Ferigees and Liloupar is that both crave an existence outside of their prisons - Ferigees purposefully trapped themself inside the mechanism but found the experience torturous, and Liloupar returns to Gurabad. If Mehrak is another trapped Jinni, Kaveh might be accidentally mistreating it.

However, I like the idea that Mehrak and Kaveh are friends much better. Its expressions are often positive ones, so even if it's forced to listen to Kaveh because he has its name, it doesn't seem too upset about it. Also, another part of Ashikai's video posits that Liloupar so quickly accepts the traveller because they have resemblance to Deshret (a whole other rabbit hole, watch the video if you want to know). In this same thread, Ashikai brings up that Kaveh looks very similar to the traveller, so I think that perhaps Mehrak (either knowingly or not) connects Kaveh to its previous master, which could explain why it listens to him so well.

Overall, I find this connection very intriguing and I'm excited to learn more. There is definitely something there, but whether or not it will be imprtant I do not know.