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a-la-campanella · 11 months ago

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So. New Myriad Celestia Trailer, this time with a preview of the Annihilation Gang and their plans for Penacony!

TL;DR: Duke Inferno is trying to sow chaos in the name of Destruction on the planet and seems to be a single father of four. The video is an introduction to the antagonists for our next Trailblaze Missions; no surprises here.

Nevermind that. I wanna talk about new info.! I'll do this in parts, because there's a lot to talk we can discuss.

Table of Contents:

Setting the Scenes (aka comparing Scene 47 and 33)

Whose fighting who? (aka plot speculation)

Destruction as Devotion (aka imagery and symbolism)

1. Setting the Scenes

The trailer is titled "A Night of Ever-Flame: Scene 33", with the numbered scene being reminiscent of "The Jepella Rebellion: Scene 47". If you read the descriptions, the similarities only continue.

第47场。内景。耶佩拉宫——黄昏。毁灭。女人微笑着看向审判席，迎接他们的判词……

Scene 47. Interior. Jepella Palace - SUNSET. Destruction. The woman smiled and looked toward the judges' seats, welcoming their verdict...

第33场。内景。永火官邸——夜。毁灭。炽热的火焰说道：「美梦燃烧了我的花朵，我的死亡。」

Scene 33. Interior. Ever-Flame Mansion - NIGHT. Destruction. The BLAZING INFERNO speaks: "The sweetest dreams have burned my flowers and brought my demise."

(The similarities are more prevalent in the CN text, where both scenes are titled in quotations, and even the description text is written in the same format. I reformatted the EN text to highlight these similarities.)

From the Jepella Rebellion video, we could've assumed these scenes were ordered in a way such that each "scene" meant another one of Elio's scripts/missions for the Stellaron Hunters. We can base this off of the wording used:

"Sounds like a page out of the Jepella Brotherhoods' playbook..."

"A total of 46 criminal cases!" + the Jepella Rebellion = 47

However, if we were to think like that, it would indicate that Scene 33 took place prior to the events of Scene 47, which... could be the case? The invitations to Penacony were prepared quite a while in advance, even before our destination alteration to deal with the stellaron crisis on the Luofu (from IPC Broadcast #1 and a chat with Himeko). We don't have enough information to discern when the Jepella Rebellion happened per say, besides taking place prior to the events of Penacony as well given that it's brought up in Crown of the Mundane and Divine, which should occur before the Charmony kicks off.

I'm a bit skeptical of that train of thought since we don't see anything from the Stellaron Hunters in Scene 33, and they would have an incredibly short window of time to jump from Scene 33 to 47 while still making it to Penacony; you'd have to make a bunch of assumptions about the timeline to assume some kind of chronological order. That's not to say this wasn't in Elio's script. I'm not too sure what to make of the timeline here or if the numbers even matter, honestly...

We'll know more by the time the next numbered scene is out, I guess.

2. Whose fighting who?

"Children of the flame... this marks your rite of passage."

Duke Inferno picks different paths for his children, which gives us an idea of roughly how the conflict will be set up.

He drops more details in the CN version that didn't get translated over, but I imagine it was difficult for the VAs to say it all given (1) the short timeframe they were working with and (2) the Chinese language having a knack for condensing a lot of information in a few short phrases. I've included that below.

"Akash, I lit a fire in your eyes and showed you music of the strings. Serenade the celebration and hush the Harmony into muted awe."

Akash is described as his most emotional/sensitive child, and is told to use a four-stringed instrument for his part (so his cello?).

"Dubra, I set your form alight and taught you mastery of the blade. Temper it with sulfur, maim the Elation, and let the performer's blood and tears pour into the abyss."

He calls Dubra his wisest child, and says 冥河 in place of abyss, which... interesting choice, given that it means River Styx. You know, the one from Greek myths.

"Caterina, I kindled a flame in your heart and granted you blood of fire. Use your wrath to shatter the Preservation's sanctum and melt their gold to create a statue of our savior."

Caterina is left as his bravest child, and told, more directly, to "chisel open the treasury of Preservation" (凿开 -> chisel, 府库 -> treasury/government repository).

"Constance, at last... my most ambitious and exceptional child. There is nothing more to teach you. Just remember... without Penacony's midnight hour, strip away all they hold dear, and leave naught but the Rememberance's tomb."

The verb used for Constance's part is 枯萎 which means to wither. Personally, I think withering away fits the general imagery better, but that's just me.

The factions we know of (sans the Annihilation Gang) who will be present at Penacony, and their paths, are as follows:

The Family (Harmony)

Stellaron Hunters (???)

The IPC (Preservation)

Astral Express (Trailblaze)

Intelligentsia Guild (Erudition)

Garden of Recollection (Remembrance)

Masked Fools (Elation)

Galaxy Rangers (Hunt)

So the lineup seems to be:

Akash VS various members of The Family

Dubra VS Masked Fools (Sparkle)

Caterina VS the IPC (Aventurine)

Constance VS Garden of Recollection (Black Swan)

This leaves the Stellaron Hunters, the Express Crew, the Intelligentsia Guild, and the Galaxy Rangers caught up in the fray.

I expect the Express Crew and Acheron will be working to fight against the Annihilation Gang and help protect Penacony, since that's a very Astral Express and Galaxy Ranger thing to do.

Dr. Ratio, while invited as a member of the Intelligentsia Guild, shares a connection to Aventurine via the IPC, so he might be with him during this mess. Or he could be challenging Duke Inferno directly after the whole Phase Flame problem he dealt with on Herta Space Station (maybe there's a grudge there?).

The Stellaron Hunters may working independently to collect the Stellaron on Penacony. That's just what they do. They could also run into conflict with Acheron and Aventurine by virtue of their infamous criminal status, but at worst, I don't anticipate a fight between them with the Annihilation Gang — or at least, not in purpose. They helped the Ever-Flame Mansion rise in power after the fall of the Jepella Brotherhood, so I don't see why Duke Inferno would want to go after them.

But who knows? In the end, all will unveil in time.

3. Destruction as Devotion

The official social media accounts for HSR posted art of each character shortly after they were introduced in the video. With this, we now have titles to ascribe to them, and we can compare them to the characters they'll be facing off.

Already, we can see some parallels.

Akash and Robin both tie into music, instrumental vs vocal, together creating song and harmony. His title as "The Tuner" seems to imply a sort of control over the music (since tuning in instruments is for manipulating the pitch produced). For Akash's part in the video, we see an eye surrounded by rotating rings, with the eye sort of submerged in blue flame. It's reminiscent of an angel (insert biblically accurate angel meme here) like Robin and Sunday do, with their halos and wings.

Dubra clearly references the myth of Eris, goddess of discord; the fight over Eris' golden apple led to the Trojan War and overall destruction of Troy. Maybe Dubra is responsible for kickstarting the main conflict in Penacony? The apple reveals a skeletal-like structure, which could be a metaphor for Penacony as a whole. Dreams are not reality, and escapism can only go so far... It's an interesting comparison with the Elation, especially the Masked Fools, since both would be willing participants in sowing discord. The Masked Fools are motivated by shits and giggles instead. There's likely a more direct comparison to be made, but we don't know enough about Sparkle to comment there. It leaves the question of who plays the roles of Hera, Athena, and Aphrodite, or even Paris. No clue what "The Scribe" means here.

Caterina's part zooms out on a bunch of spinning gears to show what might be a safe door (though it definitely hides some kind of treasure). It seems to be burning away, though the door stays shut regardless. What's inside? Who knows. The secrets to the IPC, perhaps? It's definitely something related to the IPC, though; they're the only ones with enough baggage on this planet (besides the cult-like Family themselves) to be hiding away. She doesn't parallel Aventurine directly, from what it seems far. I saw someone point out that she looks more like she parallels an IPC guard, which I can see. She's "The Shacklebound", which might be a reference to her past? (And given Aventurine has the word "slave" branded on him, maybe they were both shacklebound once.)

Constance has the most interesting visual part; it's an ever-blooming, ever-wilting dahlia, caught in a blue-purple flame. It's a flower that can't exist in reality. Likewise, Black Swan was drip marketed with her art showing her holding a blue rose. These flowers can be produced, but they don't grow naturally like that. Additionally, their colors contrast each other, light vs dark.

Fun fact! Dahlia flowers symbolize betrayal. She's also the only character from the Annihilation Gang without a golden frame...

With Duke Inferno, there's a re-occurring goat motif. Besides the obvious (his head), his cane is shaped like a skull with one horn. There's what looks to be a goat sacrifice early in the video, "as an offering" to Nanook... though if Nanook assumes the role of "god", I don't think he'd appreciate the offering all that much.

There's a halo-ring around the offering, too, that reminds me of Sunday and Robin...

Rapid fire tidbits, too lazy to expand on them now (may do so as an edit to this post):

Saw someone mention that they each have different colors associated with them all for fire! I don't think it means anything that deep, but fun to point out.

The ten-legged... not-spider... thing.

Duke Inferno's burning flower. The flower feels important. I don't know what it means. Is it meant to be Penacony? Him? Not sure.

References to Penacony outright: every time Duke Inferno says "dream". Also, the pocket-watch with shattered glass and a burning hour hand should be a plot reference, so time-fuckery shenanigans will be happening. Hm. But the second hand still works, so Penacony will come out fine.

Penacony map revealed at the end!

#honkai: star rail #hsr #recall and retrieve #penacony #duke inferno #akash #dubra #caterina #constance #more rambles incoming soon #when 2.0 stream drops #and when I finish the posts abt the newer lore vidoes

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