#hsr swarm disaster

[s-b-party]

Tayzzyronth & Oroboros: Aeons of Deadly Sins

****Honkai star rail spoilers/simulated universe spoilers/swarm disaster spoilers****

*The moment Herta described them as being arch enemies, my mind immediately started falling into a rabbit hole trying to analyze them both & some thoughts have been cooking lol

So who are these 2 Aeons? They recently have made more formal appearances (we finally get to see their forms) in the newest hsr patch specifically in simulated universe

Tayzzyronth is the Aeon of Propagation & Oroboros is the Aeon of Voracity; propagation refers to reproduction while voracity is excessive eating

I’d like to suggest that Tayzzyronth & Oroboros are aeons that represent 2 of the 7 deadly sins: lust & gluttony respectfully

*Note: lust can refer to extremely strong sexual desires but without sexual connotations it simply refers to an extremely strong desire/emotion for something you crave*

Tayzzyronth often self-replicated & the heirs they created eventually became their faction, the Swarm

The reason why they started reproducing was bc they feared being alone since they were the last of the Coleoptera (scientific name for beetle) so they had an extremely strong desire to procreate

As for Oroboros, they devour everything that gets in their way since everything including worlds will simply return to the void in the end

Now that we’ve established how they depict lust & gluttony, let’s look at their dynamic

Both are said to have been enemies & it seems that Tayzzyronth died in a war (which involved Oroboros) at the hands of multiple Aeons according to Kafka

What I find interesting is that (like in my analyses of Lan & Yaoshi and Nanook & IX) they have a few similarities

For instance what they do is mindless (all Tayzzyronth & Oroboros can think of/do are self-replicate & consume; I think it’s important to remember that doing mindless tasks doesn’t always equate to intelligence especially when they do it in repetitive cycles; the word mindless usually gets associated w/ low intelligence which Herta implies that Tayzzyronth & the Swarm have)

They may represent different deadly sins but they are different manifestations of greed in essence, all being forms of excessive desires

They also both have similar color palettes where they use cool colors (various shades of purple) which are paired with some reds or blues; to me this is showing that in spite of their differences they do share some similarities/vibes (not evil per se but destructive)

Now to look at their dynamic from a different light, I want to first point to how them being enemies makes sense if we consider what creatures they resemble

Tayzzyronth as we already know is based off insects, the beetle to be more precise, while Oroboros is based off the mythological ouroboros which was usually a tail-devouring serpent; irl snakes & insects are normally enemies & snakes are the ones usually devouring insects although the reverse situation is also possible

Perhaps it is bc both are representative of different aspects of greed that they both would end up being enemies in the end anyway if they are to fight for dominance in this world (going back to the idea of survival of the “fittest”, meaning the stronger concept would prevail in this case)

If that is the case, the end of Tayzzyronth could imply that the desire to devour is stronger than the desire to procreate but I don’t think that’s exactly how it is because there is some irony to be found here

Even though Tayzzyronth has been deceased for some time, the Swarm still remains & they still are a menace to the universe due to the destruction they can cause, all of this while Oroboros doesn’t seem to leave any trace of the worlds they have devoured so I think that even though the Propagation is gone, their concept still has influence in the universe w/ as much “strength”/importance as the voracity

I’m really glad to have seen Tayzzyronth & Oroboros in the swarm disaster mode of simulated universe bc for me it looks like the Aeons have interesting & complex relationships with each other and I can’t seem to get over them 😂 I also like the designs of the aeons

They just have so much in their designs & stories which fascinate me, it’s just really fun chilling in the pool of aeon lore & dynamics :3

[littlekiara96]

Silly Aha.

Their die in the SU has no "face", because it's a sphere, not a proper die, but it still has a lot of "faces".

Gotta love Elation Path.

[terminaxshowtime]

hey!! heads up to everyone who plays Honkai: Star Rail, not sure if this is common knowledge yet but

I highly recommend to NOT activate Nihility Chapter I on high difficulties in Swarm Disaster as there is a chance that it stops your run!!

When you unlock Nihility I in Swarm Disaster for the first time at 6 points in the Communing Trail after clearing Plane II, you meet Aeon IX who has a chance to crash/interrupt your run. This is story-coded/intentional and your progress in the run is not saved and does not count as a victory so if you're attempting a high difficulty I recommend for you to not pick Nihility options or if you notice your communing trail points for Nihility at 6 and are about to complete a mission granting Nihility points, then you might want to play through a lower difficulty as this is a one-time event. Although it is random so if you want to take your chances then go ahead!

Haven't unlocked Chapter II yet so I'm not sure if it does it then as well but I wanted to give a heads-up!

[kitshuwun]

I FUCKING PASS AND NOBODY DIES

[starry-skies-116]

finally FINALLY unlocked propagation path in SU

[arbalestdevil]

I did it, my first Swarm Disaster at max difficulty. It only took 12 times rerolling the first plane to get the ice weakness effect for Jingliu.

[sheyfu]

jiaoqiu who cant help but talk about you whenever he has consultations (his patients eat it up fr)

jiaoqiu who purposely makes your hotpot spicier so he can take pics of you (blackmail material)

jiaoqiu who lets you groom his tail (he loves it when you weave your fingers through it)

jiaoqiu who absolutely LOVES it when you just . nom 🧍‍♀️🧍‍♀️ on his ears LMAOAOAOAOO

jiaoqiu who lets you do whatever you want to his hair (he'll feel like your pretty princess after)

jiaoqiu whose heart does flips whenever he sees you comfort children after he gives them yucky medicine (common jiaoqiu L 👎👎)

jiaoqiu who throws himself on you when he gets home after a long day

jiaoqiu who wraps his tail around you when he gets jealous

jiaoqiu who scolds you whenever you get hurt (even if it's a scratch LMAOAAOAO [and most of the time it isnt even your fault like the rock hit me wdym i tripped and fell 👎👎👎👎])

jiaoqiu who takes (forces) you to accompany him when he needs to collect herbs; and

jiaoqiu who regrets introducing you to feixiao and moze bc he feels like theyre stealing you away from him (he wouldnt have it any other way though)

[b1adie]

[yuesya]

Ember kicks at the sand beneath his feet out of sheer boredom. At the same time, a coincidental passing breeze stretches out the grainy trail of sand in a cloud of golden dust beneath the dawn-pink sky. It’s an unexpectedly pretty sight, and Ember immediately blinks, committing the scenery to memory. A common habit that most everyone in the Iron Cavalry had ended up developing, in quiet hopes that they would be able to share such experiences with their Queen through her dreams.

The Queen’s dreams, after all, were known to be drawn from the Iron Cavalry’s collective memories.

“Sorry, did I keep you waiting long?”

To the eyes of outsiders, the young girl approaching him would appear as his sister; they share the same gray-silver hair, the same blue-violet eyes. But commonality in appearance is something that’s shared through all members of the Iron Cavalry –their Queen included. Which only makes sense, seeing as they were created from slight variations of the exact same template.

AR-214, Aurora, flashes AR-53935, Ember, a small smile.

“Don’t worry about it,” he tells her, shifting his weight on the dry Sigonian sands. “It hasn’t been that long.”

“Idalia and I ran into one of the local tribes while we were resupplying earlier, and got delayed while chatting,” Aurora explains. “I know that we were originally planning to wrap things up for the Sigonia-sightseeing, but it turns out that there’s actually a local festival happening tomorrow!”

“Oh,” Ember blinks. “I take it that we’re staying, then?”

“Yup! The locals seemed pretty flattered that Idalia and I were genuinely interested in hearing about their culture, so we somehow ended up with an invitation,” Aurora laughs. One hand comes up to readjust her glasses as it becomes slightly lopsided from the motion. “So, Idalia is thinking about staying for an extra day or two, if that’s alright with you?”

Ember shrugs, “Yeah, I’m fine with it. Idalia barely leaves Glamoth to begin with, so it’s a good thing that she wants to look around and explore some more.”

“Probably because she’s a Personal Escort model,” Aurora muses. All members of the Iron Cavalry are attached to their Queen, more or less, and Personal Escort models –particularly those who’d served the Queen directly during the Swarm Disaster– definitely lean on the ‘more’ side of things. “I think… I think she wants to share festival memories with our Queen.”

Completely understandable, honestly. “Wait, what kind of festival are we dropping in on?”

“It’s the locals’ celebration of the rebirth of their god!”

“… What?”

Aurora laughs again.

“It’s called the Kakava Festival! See, the Avgins believe that everything that exists on Sigonian land is part of their god’s divine body, and every year it will perish and ascend…”

[ironunderstands]

How this singular Gold and Gears occurrence might change everything we know about Dr. Ratio 

…He might be thousands of years old, oh boy.

Ok, where to begin? Well probably with the occurrence that started it all:

Mechanical City, “Cogito Hair Salon”- Intellgencia Guild 

This is where things get complicated.

You see, the Mechanical City is old as hell

This took place around the time of the First Mechanical Emperor’s war, who created the machine empire, which included the Mechanical City, something which occurred soon after the Borderstar Trade War. 

Then, the Rupert 1 (the leader of this empire) sleeps, and this caused his empire to crumble, presumably the city alongside it:

Which according to these Xianzhou records, happened at this time

Then Polka Kakamond fought Rubert for a few more Amber Eras until she eventually succeeded in killing him, marking the end of the First Mechanical War.

Which resulted in the collapse of its empire, and presumably, the Mechanical City alongside it, Nanook, the youngest aeon, also ascended during this time due to the mess of the Emperor’s War and the remnants of the swarm.

Now, for the sake of my sanity, and this first scenario, I am going to assume that the Mechanical City fell alongside Rubert I when their empire collapsed about years ago, as although it’s likely Rubert II could have revived it, as you will see, it’s not necessarily relevant to this discussion (there are actually only two possible paths this situation could lead to). 

If Amber Eras are on average this long

And the current year we are in is

Which is about this in Xianzhou years 

Meaning that disaster in the Xianzhou happened around 3500 years ago (if Xianzhou years are the same length as Trailblaze ones, if they aren’t I’m not gonna think about that <3). Then, Polka Kakamond was alive around this time, and it took her several Amber Eras to finally kill Rubert, which I’m going to interpret several as ~5 and the length of these Amber Eras to be averaged out to be around 158 years long each, meaning Rubert died about 2700 years ago, give or take A LOT OF TIME because of the inconsistency of Amber Era lengths, the amount of Amber Eras, the fact that we don’t know when exactly Polka Kakamond decided to start trying to kill Rubert, or even when she was alive, etc. 

SO, when you put it all together Dr. Ratio must be at least 1000 years old if he were to be able to be alive during this period of time to attend the Mechanical City within this occurrence.

Which changes everything, because presumably Dr. Ratio is a normal human and he should not be that old.

Oh dear.

However, before I ponder the implications of THAT, let’s explore the other possibilities.

This never actually happened.

This is by far both the most boring and most likely one for a lot of reasons.

a) There is an occurrence that definitely takes place in the preset exactly like it 

This is Mechanical City, Cogito Hair Salon: Genius Society 

And based on its description, it was clearly put in here to help the trailblazer navigate the Simulated Universe through the Intra-Cognition function, and the 4 Genius Society members depicted (Ruan Mei, Herta, Stephen Lloyd and Screwllum) absolutely did not travel back in time for this to happen, rather they seem to habe implemented it themselves. 

Therefore, the occurrence with Dr. Ratio could be something similar: an event made up for the sake of navigating the Sim Uni, and not something that ever actually took place, I believe this and another solution I will introduce later are the most likely explanations for this situation.

b) The occurrence with Dr. Ratio is uh, weird 

For lack of a better explanation in this, Dr. No5 is uh, tweaking. Meaning, the events taking place around him might not even be what’s happening in reality.

Or, the Trailblazer is in the Mechanical City, but Dr. No5 isn’t and the sim uni kinda just meshed the two together. 

What also complicates things is that it seems like after he killed himself, No5 turned into a mechanical spinning top, meaning the Anti-Organic equation might have been the cause of his death? And I’m not sure if it’s still active in modern times.

Either way, the sheer levels of delusion radiating off of Dr. No5 leave to believe this scene isn’t entirely real, however I don’t think this explanation is all good honestly, it’s just something I wished to point out before moving on.

That’s not our Dr. Ratio

Apparently in the original Chinese, the characters used to denote Dr. Ratio are different to the way he is typically referred to, meaning that whoever this Dr. Ratio is, it might not actually BE him.

Now, I know absolutely nothing about how Chinese works, but based off the discussions I’ve seen around this particular detail, I think the general consensus is that the Ratio in this is more of a surname, and our Dr. Ratio either named himself after/is a descendant of this one.

Which would be interesting, and would mean we (I) would now have to scour future updates for his mention, but for now I’ll leave this option at that because like I said, I don’t know how any dialect of Chinese works at all, much less the original used in the game.

If someone reading this does, I would really appreciate clarification/confirmation/your opinion on this, so thanks in advance.

Finally, for my favorite explanation (and the one I think is what really happened), that being:

The Mechanical City still exists, and Ratio is in fact, some dude with a normal lifespan.

Let me cook.

So, based on what I showed you earlier, it’s heavily implied that the Mechanical City fell with Rubert during the First Emperor’s War around 2000 ish years ago alongside him.

However, what if I told you that isn’t necessarily true:

The IPC took it over.

Although this passage doesn’t mention the Mechanical City or even allude to it, it does mention thin how the IPC, with the aid of the Intellgencia Guild, began taking over areas across the universe, especially areas of inorganic life, following Nous’s prophecy, with the methodology of “Colonization Under the facade of development,” (the game straight up calls them colonizers LMAOOO).

Anyways, the IPC HATES inorganic life due to the Emperor’s Wars, and were about to pass an order to eradicate all inorganic life when Screwllum gained Nous’ approval and joined the Genius Society, and as we saw in the screenshot, they were, well, colonizing those areas and making it into their own.

So- who’s to say they didn’t do it to the Mechanical City? Why wouldn’t one of the most defining features of the Mechanical Empire now be under IPC control, even to this day?

Besides, inorganic life forms have no need for hair salons- they don’t have growing hair! But in a Mechanical City repurposed for people, yeah, a hair salon would make sense.

Thereofore, Ratio isn’t some thousand year old entity, rather he’s just in a location run by the IPC and Intellgencia Guild that happens to have thousands of years of history behind it.

Moreover, it just wouldn’t make sense for Ratio to be that old.

He has plenty of media about him documenting his life, and based on how recent those media are and how this passage is worded, I’m led to believe that Ratio aged like a normal person, and his middle school years didn’t somehow last an exponential amount of time. 

Also, I feel like if he WAS that old we would have some actual clue pointing to it beyond a singular occurrence that would only ever point to that once you do all this digging.

Therefore, I conclude Ratio is not in fact immortal, and the IPC likely just colonized the Mechanical City, which is why it is still around today.

Finally, I sincerely hope you enjoy me going insane over this one stupid occurrence, and I would like to disclaim that I am no lore expert when it comes to the simulated universe, so if something I said in here was misinformation, please tell me! It seems as though Dr. Ratio is never beating the “just some guy” allegations lmao.

[dawnbirdwhistle]

Expectation vs Reality (Honkai Star Rail)

Or at least it used to be 👀

He is lvl 80 on my account now so actually cracked??

Anyways I wish you all a wonderful evening with this silly little comic

[akatsuki-shin]

the Imaginary has always been my strongest team and Aventurine makes it complete 🥺💛

finally cleared the Difficulty V of "Swarm Disaster" and "Gold & Gear" SU, both on Elation 🔥✨️

[bibi288]

Harmony Trailblazer who just HAPPENS to deal Imaginary damage.

---off to see the True Sting in the Simulated Universe

-- Ends in satisfactory Annihilation--

[kitshuwun]

Swarm is worst than gold n gear

[prjyoung]

thank you honkai star rail.

[essefryu]

Holy shit, I finally did it

Aventurine feels like cheating, and that’s e0 with a 4* lc and half levelled traces. He also helped me to finally clear MoC floor 12. Dude is as much of an easy mode switch as Zhongli was in Genshin.

I got lucky with sealing wax of elation here, of course, but still. The FuA spam from Ratio + Ave is extremely satisfying.

Special thanks to grandpa Welt for holding the bugs in place while I smack them and to Pelageya Sergeyevna for being a debuff machinegun.

A delightful team for swarm disaster.