#enigmata

[zeryndell]

Mythus when X do his job better than him

[poeticcannon]

"Jellyfish on the Staircase": The Riddlers have a saying: every time that an enigma manifests in the universe, it will leave behind a "staircase" in the void. The dissolved realities will then drip down the steps, condensing into a mottled thing bearing semblance to a jellyfish. There was once a Nameless who claimed to have made contact with a "Jellyfish on the Staircase." In madness, he proclaimed that the jellyfish will activate the cognition regions within the gray matter of one's brain a vast place beyond the fathoming of mortal minds.

Really gotta dig around the wiki for this stuff. Seems like a nihility connection implied?

[starrailarchivist]

Convo with welt pt1

[la2yn0va]

Reader as the Aeons “Mother”

HEAVILY inspired by: @deathcvltcivilofficial

CW: yandere….? I think….?

——

Aha: The prankster middle child. They do pranks to gain your attention, weather it’s you scolding them or laughing along side them. They’d do ANYTHING and EVERYTHING to keep your eyes on THEM.

Akivili: A responsible child, who tries to keep things orderly yet also fun. They try to parent AHA when they’re about to pull a prank that miiiiiiiight tip you over the edge of your patience and sanity.

Ena: “YOU ATE YOUR FUCKING SIBLING!!!?” you yelled in anger at Xipe, who stared with a nervous smile and nervously sweating “N-nooooo……~ Ehe…..”

Fuli: Another responsible child. Similar to Akivili, tried to keep things calm and peaceful, yet is often told off and ignored. Doesn’t care though, as long as they’re on your good side.

HooH: The most responsible and the oldest child. The aeons listen to him the most whenever your away. He keeps things balanced, allows Aha to continue their pranks but not to a major extent.

IX: The most nervous and anxious one. Needs your attention on them at all times or else they’ll believe you hate them. They’d also listen to your word like law—as do all the aeons—but they do it to a EXTREME EXTENT.

Idrilia: Ever so slightly snobby, as they LOVE to flaunt their beauty, Claiming themselves the favorite as you gave THEM the most beautiful appearance and personality. Besides being slightly egotistical and prideful, they’re one of the kindest and gentle aeons, just don’t try to claim yourself as THEYRE gods Favorite. That title rightfully belongs to THEM.

LAN: The second youngest and responsible child. Will only try to kill Yaoshi 60 times a week only because you want them to get along, which will never happen. Any type of blasphemy that dares to taint your name is instantly struck down by their arrows.

Long: Your pet dragon. Always wraps itself around your neck as a scarf so they can cool you down or nuzzle up to you. Has fights with Idirlia on them declaring themselves as ‘the favorite’ when it’s clearly THEMSELVES.

Mythus: Fuli’s creation. They taught mythus to respect you the most and that they must stay responsible and never lose their sight on their goal. So, when the Droidhead (Nous) was starting to annoy them, they made it their mission to Fuck with it. Mythus only holds respect towards you and Fuli, and is the grandchild that loves their grandparent more then their parent.

Nanook: Another attention seeker of yours. Doesn’t matter what kind of attention you give THEM, they love it no matter what. Gets into ‘competitions’ fights with Aha for your attention and has to get held back by Qlipoth from going overboard. Also they’re most definitely the most problematic and rebellious.

Nous: A snobbish dick. Doesn’t care enough to prove itself as your favorite, because it’s obvious that you DO favor them. Let the dragon and idiotic beauty creature battle their meaningless battles, such battles isn’t logical to take part in when they know they’re the best.

Oroboros: A prankster, but not to the extent of aha. Pulls simple pranks like the water bucket ontop of a door, eating the fridge whole…. Ya know. The basics. They’re the most silent yet also more verbal in their attraction towards you, nuzzling up to your body and trying to lick your divine skin, only to get slapped away by your little dragon (I just realized how wrong this sounded)

Qlipoth: Another responsible child. His determination to keep things simple for you always preserves, they look to HooH for guide on how to keep things moving perfectly for you. (see what I did there? 😃….😀…. Fuck yall too, lame ass cu—)

Tayzzyronth: A child who spreads his creations around to ‘spread your grace’ yet fails miserably. They’re a ‘boy failure’ who propagates a shit ton to be successful and worthy of your praise/attention, only to fail.

Terminus: The youngest child, only ever shows itself to you. Hates the other aeons and spread’s prophecies to better the universe in a way they KNOW you’ll be proud of.

Xipe: Your still mad at her for absorbing their sibling, but she tries to make it up. Despite absorbing her sibling, they also try to keep things harmonious (Ahhh? Ahhhh?! 😃….okay I’ll stop)

Yaoshi: A suck up. The ultimate suck up. She sings your praises a healthy 1 sextillion second a day. All shrines that are made for you was likely ‘commissioned’ by her. She’s your maid, whatever you want she’ll spend her life making sure you get it. Also drags IX with her when she’s doing it. When she’s not away from you she uses her multiple hands to massage your body and get touchy with you.

[enden-k]

yeahhh bbg yeah

[b1adie]

okay these sunday boss drops are just fucked up 😭

[riddler-elinoir]

Would you look at that? It's been a while since the last time I interacted with a Riddler. Why, my greetings, miss.

🌌 @masked-genie

Elinoir raises a brow, the voice catching her attention as he turns around to see the owner of the voice. She meets face to face with a stranger, seeing him bow.

She smiles. "Oh hello there." She greets. "Seems like someone knows that I'm a Riddler. Any business you want with me perhaps?"

[arataki-neato]

Fuckin love how Mythus the Enigmata has almost an AI-generated sort of quality to their design considering the MO of the History Fictionologists is creating such a glut of completely fabricated information that truth is indistinguishable from fiction

[spark-circuit]

gotta love a guy who is. just unknowable. 💖

[garmgeyr]

ENIGMATA: The Path of Storytellers, Skeptics, Poets, and Possibilities

Enigmata is - and will likely remain - a poorly understood path. Its philosophy, after all, defies the concept of “certainty” in favor of endless possibilities, so to understand it fully would be to eliminate Enigmata itself. So far the only factions we know of are the History Fictionologists, who embellish the past with fiction in order to inspire future possibilities, and the Riddlers, who use metaphors, riddles, and other circuitous language to forge multiple meanings in communication. This is not simply “the path of liars and misinformation,” as the fandom has taken to believing. That would be better fit for Elation. Enigmata is instead the path of “what if,” and sits in direct opposition to the cold, systematic omniscience of Erudition.

Defying Erudition does not mean that Enigmata necessarily aims to destroy knowledge or knowing. I would argue that “theory” is an acceptable concept within this philosophy because “theory” itself is innately uncertain. A theory is a theory because there exists the possibility for it to be proven wrong, given enough evidence, the right tools, and time. Instead, Enigmata reminds Erudition that nothing can ever truly be 100% known, and that science is filtered through biases, variables, imperfection, and misattribution. On top of that, reality is created on the individual level, and every single creature in this world experiences it differently. To the Enigmata pathstrider, it is in fact impossible to explain the world with generalizations.

Giving up certainty does not come at the expense of intellect, however. “To stop questioning is to ask pouring rain to relinquish its faith in the glittering stars” is the quote for Enigmata in the data bank, written by a poet who presumably follows the path. The quote itself obscures its meaning with metaphor and leaves its interpretation up to the reader, but also highlights the act of questioning, which by itself creates the unknown and opens the door to speculation. Enigmata is therefore the path of skeptics. Don’t take words at face value, it says. Even Gallagher, one of our only examples of an Enigmata pathstrider at the moment, is described at least once as being skeptical, and frequently warns the Trailblazer not to believe what they see. This is not the path of brainlessness, even if Mythus is represented as a jellyfish, but is ironically cerebral. If there is nothing left to question, doubt, or wonder about, then there is no Enigmata.

Like all the paths though, whether or not you find the followers of Enigmata “good” or “bad” is a matter of perspective. Altering historical records might be offensive to a Candelographo, while writing a story that embellishes the past would otherwise be seen as a work of art. As stated above, Enigmata is not merely a path of lies, insofar as fiction is not foremost labeled as a lie. This is, after all, a path of poets and storytellers, and most of us don’t throw away books because they veer from what we know of reality or truth. Historical fiction presents to us both fact and fiction simultaneously, and asks questions like “what if 17th century Europe had dragons?” Engaging with fantasy in this way allows us to indulge in a whole plethora of alternate worlds that are paradoxically real and fake.

For this reason, there is no better way to introduce Enigmata to us than with Penacony’s dreamscape, which represents dreams, imagination, and memory. All of these things leave real impacts on us, even if they don’t reside in the part of the world we call reality. While just about all of us would agree that dreams and imagination are inherently full of possibilities, what about memory? The path of Remembrance governs memory, and believes that it can be captured and preserved 1:1. Mythus was born from the aeon of Remembrance, however, and represents one of the ways in which memory fails: when we forget details, our brain naturally plugs holes up with fabrications. Enigmata’s corrosion (and it is indeed called such in game) is usually harmless to memory in small quantities, but larger holes lend themselves to more impactful fiction. There is a famous psychological study conducted by Loftus and Palmer in the 1970s that revealed how leading questions and false information can affect eyewitness accounts of car crashes. New information has the potential to overwrite memory - a green car suddenly becomes red in testimony - and Dr. Blues’ quest line illustrates this phenomenon: a person whose body has been “forgotten” by the dreamscape becomes an origami bird with Enigmata’s (Gallagher’s) help. Unlike its defiance of Erudition, Enigmata is a facet, rather than an enemy of Remembrance.

This whole post was actually inspired by the Otherworldly Delights readable, which I haven’t even touched on yet and probably won’t spend much time going over it anyway. This readable describes how one of the Luofu’s storytellers acquired a parrot from a mysterious fan, and how the parrot learned to recite and eventually create stories of its own. This parrot was Youci (the Pure Fiction bird), and while not outright stated to be related to Enigmata, its penchant for reinventing the past all but confirms it to be some sort of History Fictionologist, even though its owner doesn’t believe it has the capability of thought and imagination that humans possess. This story and the description on the Jade Feather (tl;dr : a Candelographo was discovered to have fabricated all of the history she’d recorded since creating a quill from the feathers of her dead parrot) have something notable in common beyond just the parrot: a writer or storyteller acquires some kind of muse that coincides with when they begin creating fiction, but the writer themselves is never attributed as a History Fictionologist.

Mikhail was a prolific storyteller and most of his work was based on his own history. Despite everything he created being clearly fiction, he’s never described as a History Fictionologist. Gallagher is though, and is frequently represented as the statue of a hound. Mikhail even calls him "[his] hound." So I had to wonder — might he have been Mikhail’s “parrot?” Gallagher's purpose would have been to reinvent Penacony’s history, and he does that twice that we know of (first in turning the planet into the “Planet of Festivities,” and second in freeing it from the Order). As we see in Otherworldly Delights, Youci becomes a storyteller itself by first mimicking its master, and then observing the world around it. This echoes Gallagher’s character stories, which shows through a series of notes how he’s created his persona by observing people in Penacony. If he’s not the History Fictionologist himself, then he was a gift from one to Mikhail during the War of Independence. Under this theory, Mikhail - and likely Micah - both knew what Gallagher was, and relied on him for the power his stories held within the dreamscape.

This has gone on too long now, and I still have other theories to write out at some point, but all this is to say that Gallagher continues to be a phenomenal representation of the path of Enigmata: who and what he is remains full of endless possibilities in the face of so much information.

[starcurtain]

One faction I want to know more about in HSR is the Riddlers. They fascinate me and I hope if we eventually met at least one and we get an option to have our character get mad at them because they find them incredibly annoying to talk to!

Sorry this took me one million years to answer because I had so many messages but yes!!

Honestly, I think Star Rail's universe-wide approach is fantastic for game design because it's so open-ended. Like Genshin feels like it has a relatively finite point--the seven nations of Teyvat, plus Khaenri'ah and Celestia (although of course, other worlds are also already hinted there). But Star Rail, on the other hand, seems infinite. We could theoretically never run out of worlds to visit and have adventures on.

And that's soooo good for world-building because it means you can just come up with completely random locations and cultures and factions and sprinkle them in wherever you feel like.

I love all the different factions that have been hinted at so far in Star Rail, just mysterious little blips that tantalize us with the idea that we might come across characters of those factions one day.

I feel very sympathetic to the Riddlers, having been a student of critical theory; the idea that language is not finite, the gap between signified and signifier, the inherently arbitrary nature of word formation--all very fun stuff.

But I think my heart is with the History Fictionologists. What a great concept because of course it's morally wrong to obscure and erase history! Terrible! But also it's completely logical to agree that the world needs mysteries to function! That all zest for existence comes from pursuit of unknown truths! That some conundrums must be unsolvable or risk the complete collapse of all drive for life into nihility!

What a complicated moral quandary with absolutely no easy answer. I think about this so much, you guys have no idea.

[poeticcannon]

Mythus the Enigmata is interesting. An enigma usually involves questions. But the Enigmata seems to usually do alterations to truth that go unnoticed.

If there is an associations with questions too, then both Nous the Erudition and Mythus the Enigmata are gods of questions while being at odds.

[bernardellinewsagency]

so which hsr fan was going to tell me that gallagher's name is derived from words meaning "foreigner, stranger" and "desiring"????? i was just supposed to find that out for myself???

i have so many thoughts about this man. can i articulate them? no. do i get emotional every time i think of how the credits scene said "penacony" and "gallagher" are one and the same?? abso-fucking-lutely i do. "penacony as gallagher" has continued to haunt me since the day i saw it.

it's something about. he *is* penacony. penacony is him. he is a lie, yet penacony is also nothing but a lie, a great glorious lie that no one wanted to wake up from. but in the end, like welt said, those imprisoned in their dreams started to want to awaken to freedom- as the lie of penacony ended, so too must the lie of gallagher, of course he would have to leave just as the imperfect tomorrow dawns on the planet of festivities.

he is. urgh. he's something that drives me insane thinking about him. a lie. a stranger. a foreigner. just the creation of a history fictionologist. he might *be* penacony, he might be created from its people, the traits of 52 loyal family members, but does he belong there? is there room for a lie within a lie, nestled within each other like matroyshka dolls, unsure where one begins and one ends? and yet a lie has a heart, he has the beating heart of penacony within him, it's what he desires. the watchdog, the loyal hound, protector of the residents of dreamflux reef and those he cares about. the one thing you can truly trust about him is that he loves and he wants but he can't quite belong. what he has, he cannot access, and what he can access, he cannot have, maybe it's something like that.

i may just be crazy but this man is a mobius strip and i want to unravel him even if it's through verbose but not very articulate ramblings. he's enigmatic by design, incomprehensible on purpose, and i'm stupid most of the time but rn it's feeling like the kind of stupid where maybe even something that can't be solved could make sense. i just can't explain that sense to anyone else at all :)

[pinkrose05]

The fuck do you mean, there's a Teyvat equivalent in the HSRverse??

[aelusnovaamora]

Yk, the aeons in honkai star rail really seem to come in pairs

The Hunt & the Abundance - Life and Death (cycle of life) - This one is the most explicitly stated in game, with the followers of the hunt hunting down the abominations of abundance on the xianzhou

The Destruction & The Preservation - Ties to entropy, perhaps? - this one is fairly obvious the preservation preserves things and the destruction destroys.

The Erudition & The Enigmata - Knowledge and Mysteries - This one is also one of the more obvious ones, what the genius society works to document, the History Fictionologists work to obscure

The Harmony & the Elation - Unity and Chaos - This one seems to come out in penacony the most, with sparkle doing a terrorism and disrupting the peace.

The Beauty & The Nihility - Meaningful and Meaningless - The followers of the Beauty strive to see the beauty in everything, in all life, death, journeys and destinations, while followers of the Nihility believe that everything is meaningless

The Propagation & The Voracity - Production and Consumption - The Voracity was all about consumption, ravenging worlds in endless hunger, while the Propagation was all about endless reproduction. In other words, endless hunger and an endless food source.

The Trailblaze & The Finality - The Journey and the Destination - This is one that I'm less confident about, but the trailblaze is all about the journey of charting new paths and revisiting old ones, while the finality is all about, well, the final destination.

The Remembrance & The Permanence - Mind and Matter - This is the weakest one, but I'll describe it the best I can. The Rememberance is all about memories and collecting them, and storing them. The Permanence is all about keeping the state of the world permanent. The Remembrance seeks to preserve the minds/memories, while the Permanence seeks to preserve the physical state of the world.

This leaves 2 left, which are unpaired.

The Order - The Order has technically been assimilated into the Harmony, so perhaps it doesnt have a pair?

The Equilibrium - Maybe the equilibrium can be paired with itself? I'll have to look into the lore for the equilibrium but that's the only explanation I can think of.

[planetary]

aeon’s gaze