#for paimon that i've been tossing around in my head

[primowishes]

❝ i care about you. ❞ to paimon! <3

Meme

The words bring a giggle to her lips. Hands link behind her back, a bashful kick at the air as she delights in those words. They should be a given--the two have traveled together long enough that their bond is undeniable--but the deep roots of insecurity thirstily drink up any reassurance. In this world she feels inextricably tied to, yet which fails to recognize her as a part, her companionship and self-appointed title of 'guide' are valuable facets of the identity she's grasped in the time since she can remember.

"Aww, thanks," she chimes. It's the little things, and a statement so simple is meaningful enough to put a little bounce in her flight.

Her cheerful body language is not unlike that of a happy, floating fungus creature, though she resents any comparison between her and the monsters of the world.

"Paimon cares about you, too!" She does; she fervently hopes that he can be reunited with his sister again soon. Best friends deserve only the best things to happen to them, even if willful ignorance on Paimon's part prevents her from considering what will become of this bond after the end of that journey. A discussion that might soothe her anxieties over it, but may equally worsen them, and so instead one that she carefully steers her thoughts away from.

She's in too good a mood to think of that now. "Oh! How about Paimon cooks dinner tonight? Hmm, do we have any slime condensate? Also lotus heads! And sugar, and maybe some flaming flower stamens, too..."

Cooking, perhaps, is a task best kept out of Paimon's hands.

@solasters

[sleepy-aletheas]

I'm t h i s close to losing my mind over Teyvat's history, origin story, and cycles of eras, and it's the fault of the world's architecture and Simulanka's Narration Footnotes quest of all things. Tonight I've been running around for 3 hours just through Mondstadt, Liyue, Underground Chasm, Enkanomiya, Seirai and Tsurumi Island, and already I'm ready to gnaw at a brick.

Genshin never hid the notion that there were different eras of population in places. It's explained away easily enough - time changes, people change, the rise and fall of civilizations is inevitable, especially with the history the characters personally touch upon. But when we got more elaboration through the Narzissenkreuz questline about the cycles Teyvat is going through, it expanded upon the little exclamation point at the back of my silly head, because it made me scrutinize all the places that made me pause with a confused "huh" for a long time now.

(Wolfy is also at fault. Or better said, all the recent quests and events are heavily dropping future points and the lore of the past in very flowery metaphors and allegories that would be easily brushed away if they didn't point it out over and over and ov-)

The thing with the design of the world is, that it's very deliberate. I mean, sure, we could chalk most of it up as reusing assets and retroactively giving them meaning, but the architecture follows a pretty consistent logic that we can map out physically (digitally?) in-game by walking from place to place.

And because of this logic, I've been losing my mind for months now, because I couldn't put my finger on what was really bothering me, cause whenever it sparked in my mind, I never wrote it down and then promptly forgot because something else caught my attention. Now I don't have that problem, cause I write stuff down in a journal, so I can brainrot through all of it to my heart's content (and to the chagrin of my eternal migraine).

Anyway. Teyvat's history timeline is a mess. It makes sense if you skim it or take it at face value in the moment, but the more one tries to think about it, before the Archon War, it's nonexistent, really. Paimon herself was in shock that there was anything before the gods that walk the earth (that was through the conversation with Enjou at the end of Enkanomiya's main quest where we got Before Sun and Moon and found out about the Dragon Sovereigns and Primordial One).

The book was held at a high esteem, because in-game logic dictated for a good while, that the book (or anything from Enkanomiya, really) cannot be tampered with from outside forces, and that because a scribe wrote down what Istaroth herself told him, it must be 100% true. But, because this is Unreliable Narrator: The Video Game, I wanna hold it with a grain of salt for a bit, cause if Sumeru's desert quests have taught me anything, it's that no one is outside the realm of getting things wrong through misunderstandings, assumptions, or outright lies (and that counts for Gods and Sovereigns too btw).

The thing is, the game deliberately tosses clues and leads around across the spectrum from obvious to throwaway lines or visuals. The foreshadowing is being put into place all along, and it's not just "oh, what will happen next patch?" or "this is the new area, right?" specific things either. There are quests and books and characters that are mirroring something that happened once upon a time (or in the present), but a person has to deliberately listen for this to catch, otherwise it just becomes a fun tidbit that maybe connects sooner than later, or it just completely slips the mind and comes back seemingly as new information.

Okay, back to the point of Teyvat's architecture in connection with civilizations and cycles of eras shenanigans.

There is this one specific architecture that keeps popping out across every single nation, you know the one. It has triquetra and intertwined lines (would braided be a better word for it? plaited?), with the stones big and smooth, the edges blunted. It truly is everywhere one tries to look, but it's interesting where it lays and where the region-specific architecture intertwine or avoid each other.

We could assume that that was the United Civilization, the first before it got split apart, laying across Teyvat in unison. That should be the original style. But then we got the Underground Chasm and Enkanomiya, and it throws a wrench into the whole neat fact, it makes one question what is going on.

Enkanomiya was thrown away from surface Teyvat, cut off from any connection to any divinity or other people, stuck with vishaps in the dark. And yet it's the same architecture as the Chasm, they even have the same glowing stones inside their square pillars, their walls have wavy lines carved out, it's all very angular and the stone also is more white than grey. And then there is Clymene (a shade in Enkanomiya, the ward of the Sunchildren) that says something along the lines of "I haven't seen someone dressed like you in a long time" which raises so many questions, and we never got back to it (shaking my fist at the sky, this lives in my head for years now). And on a lesser note, both reside underground, where you can see the cave arch high above and reaching deep beneath the areas. (And on another sidenote, it's interesting how similar Enkanomiya, Chasm, and Remuria have their architecture, lots of massive white stone and gold)

Old Mondstadt had actually a wider reach than expected. It wasn't limited only to the hollowed place that is now Stormterror Lair with high cliffs all around, but we can see the ruin leftovers stretching to Cecilia's Garden and all the way to Dawn Winery. Old Mondstadt had a combination of rose stems with thorns, moline crosses (or that's the closest I could compare it to), what looks like lily of the valley, domed roofs, and again the big smoothed out stones. The biggest mystery that stand out to me are the two smooth pillars in by Cecilia's garden that don't fit anywhere (it doesn't even fit the ones around the Thousand Winds Temple, where they're carved again with wavy criss-crossing lines).

Speaking of Thousand Winds Temple, that one's also coming up around in different places across the places I looked at. It's obviously across the east of Mondstadt, the secret forgotten island where the other sundial rests (and there are interesting symbols too, like the stylized infinity swirling around, the pedestal before the sundial reminiscent of the light realm sigil associated with Tokoyo Ookami, and a knot in the middle). If anything, there are other symbols that resemble the triquetra close enough to be chalked up as the same thing, but they're differently depicted that I can't unsee. Then there is the pavement, and oh my god, that haunts me. Because it can be found on the forgotten island, Thousand Winds Temple, but it's also in the underground ruins on Seirai Island (Amakumo Peak, where you first have to solve puzzles to drain the water levels), and around Tsurumi Island in general (the buried architecture reminds me of Vinagnir, I wonder if they're from the same time or not, the wall drawings would fit on their own). Istaroth had to have a direct hand in many places, because she just keeps popping up.

And Liyue has a pretty clear distinction between what Morax ruled and where he laid Guili Plains (pretty square structures with distinct symbols) and what was probably before. Bishui Plain pretty much is connected through the large grey stones, triquetra, and wavy lines, with a distinct detail of a lattice symbolism in the salt carrying pillars in Sal Terrae, or the dragon statues situated across Wuwang Hill and Qingce Village. In Jueyun Karst, where we have to drain the water to reach Tiashan Mansion, there is a similar mechanism as in Old Mondstadt (just a fun detail). It's also a fun thing to note, that in Guyun Stone Forest, the space where the geo hypostasis rests, the ground has again a resemblance to the light realm sigil, so that's fun to look around for later. All that to say, it makes me personally curious when did Morax and Guizhong become allies, because it had to be during the Archon War to make any lick of sense.

All of this to say: I completely lost the plot. I'm so sleepy, I stayed up the whole night again. I digress.

It's obvious that there is some time shenanigans going on, where there are crashes of architecture and history. The conflicting ideas of who came first - dragon or human (probably both, cause everything most likely is a dream (which i get is annoying for many people, but i think the game is trying to not use it as a copout to drop all meaning out the window once it's over like all the bad dream based stories did; they're really hammering in that even if something is just a dream or a fantasy, it's still an experience lived through and its meaning has equal value as reality)), and what the changes of cycles look like or work like. Like we know they exist, and technically one can go from one cycle into the next one (like golden bee Sybila (later known as Phobos)), but otherwise we don't know what happens at the end of one, or how the transition works or looks.

Next time I have any grain of energy left, I need to crawl through the rest of Teyvat to sate this need to know stuff. But that's for later.

I should stop talking, nothing is making sense to me anyway and I'm not rereading any of this (will i still toss this out here? apparently yes. there is no restraint when i can barely keep my eyes open, and i choose to not care).

[doublejango]

for @botanikos, plotted starter for the Princess Stolas verse. Am going out of order with drafts, I am so sorry gfdhjksgd. no rush to reply ofc!

-

"My lord," the incubus called as he trotted up the steep mountain road. Stumbling, he nearly fell, but caught himself gracefully enough that he could maybe, maybe still show his face. Not that anyone ever expected him to be one of the warriors, or even particularly dangerous; Yves was the Duke's aide, not a fighter. So here, at the mountain camp where Vepar brought his legions to train--one at a time, typically--he tended to be looked over, dismissed as if he didn't even exist.

By most people.

Vepar? Not so much. Vepar always gave Yves his full attention--something Yves wished he maybe wasn't so zealous about just now. Because damn it. Not only had Yves tripped on his way up here, but Vepar was shirtless. Sure, feathers maybe made it not matter so much, but his feathers were so close to his body that the shape of his muscles was a little too evident and Yves had had enough dreams where... Don't think about it. Don't think about it. Don't think about it. Face burning, feeling clumsier than ever, he held up the sealed packet and nodded towards the command tent.

Vepar nodded to him, then turned back to the demon he had been sparring with. He gave a polite bow, sheathed both of his swords, then walked off to join Yves. Outside of the tent, he stopped and fluffed up his feathers. In an instant, the frigid air froze his sweat. Vepar shook himself off in a little puff of sparkly snow and, feeling refreshed, went in to join his sweet aide.

Yves had curled up in front of a little brazier. He immediately straightened and offered the packet.

"From King Paimon, Your Grace." When Vepar gave him a look, Yves just blushed again. He reached up and covered his own throat--covering up the deep claw-marks over it, scars that he hated, scars that still pained him, especially when he was cold. "Vepar," he amended.

Vepar was oveheated from the days of drilling--unlike many Goetia, he trained with his legions frequently and was glad to gesture Yves to sit near the stove again. He fetched a blanket and wrapped it around his aide, then went over to the little desk to open the letter.

As he read, his perplexed expression turned to frustration, then disapproval.

"Paimon commands me to wed his daughter," he finally said, his voice cold and dry. "A princess. Surely, there must be some prince more suitable..." As a Duke, he was barely a stone's throw below her station, but the difference did often matter. Frowning, Vepar tossed the letter down, folded his arms, and looked at the wax seal. It was clearly Paimon's, he could feel the magic radiating off of it just as well as he could see the intricate details.

"Princess Stolas?" Yves asked. "Isn't she... kind of a troublemaker? And plain?"

"No living being is plain." Vepar sighed and closed his eyes, leaning his head back. "But she is young. Surely, there... I've been married twice before. I'm old, Yves. I don't look it," he admitted, well-aware that damn near everything about him seemed youthful, "but I'm close to five thousand. And my children are--" But he didn't need to say that. Nor could he. Speaking of it still ached too deeply. One of his sons had just recently died doing his duty, and the other--the twin--was so broken by the experience of losing his brother that no one had seen him in months. Vepar knew where he was, but also knew that the boy needed time alone.

Would he be more suitable to the young princess, he wondered? But no. No. Azathoth was exclusively attracted to male partners, on the rare occasion he was attracted to anyone at all, and asking him to take his father's place in something as ridiculous as this... And what will he think? When he hears that I've been commanded to marry? Will he think I'm trying to replace Azi? Vepar groaned quietly, stretched his neck, then sat upright again.

"Forgive me. Thank you for coming so quickly, Yves. Climb into my bed and rest. I'm commanded to be at a ball thrown in the Princess's honor tonight, but we'll portal home. You need to warm up."

Yves nodded and gratefully climbed into the cot, exhausted from his hurried trip here. He watched for a few minutes as the Duke penned a reply, but his cold, tired body won out, and his lids slipped closed.

-

As far as dukes went, Vepar was well-aware that he was somewhat disreputable. He carried out his duties flawlessly and maintained one of the most lethal armies in Hell, but he also owned a sex club and had that "unfortunate" obsession with fish which had led him to opening the massive aquarium in Pentagram City. Whatever Paimon was thinking, Vepar had no doubts the princess would veto the absurd plan once they met.

Still, he would go in good faith.

He dressed in a tailored suit of a rich blue so dark it was nearly black. There wasn't a hint of jewelry on him--his stunningly iridescent feathers more than made up for any lack of flash--but it all fit nicely and was of an expensive enough fabric that it shouldn't be an insult to wear into her presence.

As he approached the palace, music and conversation drifted out, and Vepar suppressed the urge to sigh. He would rather be, well, anywhere. Tending to his aquarium, tending to souls aching with loss, training with his legions, balancing the books at the club. Anything but going to yet another Goetia party. He shouldn't be so judgmental, he knew that, he did genuinely like his people--but he was tired and frustrated by the entire premise.

I'll just have to ensure she dislikes me as much as possible.

Yves trailed in after him--wearing a lovely and classic tuxedo, but with a satin scarf covering his throat--and wished he had an excuse to stick close. He didn't, though, so he made his way to where the other servants and staff waited.

When Vepar caught sight of the princess, he made his way towards her, slipping quietly through the crowd. Once at her side, he waited for her to acknowledge him in some way, then bowed.

"Your Highness. It is a pleasure to finally meet you."

[liviavanrouge]

Kano: *Carries his bag, walking down the docks*

???: WAIT!!

Freminet: *Runs over, Lyney and Lynette behind him* Wait!

Kano: *Looks at Freminet, stopping in his tracks* Huh?

Aether: *Runs up behind them with Paimon and Luna*

Kano: What are you all doing here?

Freminet: I-I want you to stay! I want you to stay here in Fontaine with me!!

Kano: *Stares at him* No.

Freminet: But-

Kano: Freminet, you have a great family here, you don't need me around....I'd just make you remember the past

Kano: *Looks away* Besides, my search for you had been what fueled me before...now I don't really have anything to keep me going...

Kano: *Looks at Freminet* So from today onwards, we're no longer brothers, Freminet

Lyney: H-Hey! He came all this way for you!

Kano: And he can go all the way back.

Kano: *Turns and walks away*

Freminet: *Leaps forward, throwing his arms around Kano's abdomen* BIG BROTHER, DON'T LEAVE!!!!

Kano: *Grabs Freminet's wrist, forcing the male to release him and tossing him down*

Paimon: WHAT THE HECK IS WRONG WITH YOU!??

Aether: *Starts forward, his eyes narrowed*

Aether: *Stops in front of Kano* I've lost my sister, I'm still searching for her...

Kano: And? How is that my problem?

Aether: You've found your brother after searching for so long, don't abandon him thinking you wouldn't regret it

Kano: *Tilts his head to the side then turns and walks away, tossing his bag up* Cya.

Aether: Kano-

Freminet: Wait-!

Kano: *Leaps up, placing his hand on the railing, launching himself around and landing on the ships deck*

Lyney: Freminet...

Lynette: *Looks at Lyney then down at Freminet*

Freminet: I....want to wait here for a little while

Lyney: Okay....we'll wait here with you..

~~~~

Freminet: *Stares at the ocean as the sun started to set*

Lynette: Is that a ship?

Freminet: *Perks up the ship passing by and stopping at the docks*

Kano: *Leaps off the ship, landing on his feet and dropping his bag*

Freminet: *Stands up, staring at him* Kano...

Kano: *Stares at him, then steps forward holding his arms out* I'm sorry-

Freminet: *Hugs him tight startling Kano*

Kano: *Hugs Freminet, closing his eyes* I'm so sorry....

Freminet: *Sighs, tears starting to fall* It's fine....

Paimon: Kano came back! That's a good thing, he must've heeded your words!

Aether: *Smiles and nods*

Luna: Yay! He's staying!!

Lyney: That's a good thing too...

Lynette: It is, Freminet has his brother back..

Lyney: *Chuckles* Someone who can understand him better than we can

Kano: *Sighs, tightening his arms around Freminet* I'm not going anywhere...

Freminet: *Smiles, clinging to Kano* Okay...

@queen-of-twisted @albedomestic-airline