#was gonna play genshin tcg while servers were down

[a-la-campanella]

Diamond and the Ten Stonehearts; who are they?

This was going to be part of a more comprehensive post about the Myriad Celestia IPC video, but fuck it, I've been scratching my head over this for hours now.

The Ten Stonehearts represents ten members of the IPC, led by Diamond. We know a few things about Diamond courtesy of this text. ->

This is from a larger post about the IPC, posted here. (According to the note left on Diamond's fandom wiki page, there was an official English translation, but it seems to have been deleted now.) Regardless, here's a translation for the above:

The Strategic Investment Department possesses the corporation's second-most long-term vision, and their investments are never constrained by short-term returns.

The investment department established an elite organization(1) of "Non-Performing Asset Liquidation Specialists" led by the mysterious supervisor "Diamond", one the few confirmed Emanator of Preservation leaders. They travel around the universe, actively liquidating lands with bad debts(2) produced by the Cancer of All Worlds.

Something to note, 使团 (which I translated as an organization above) refers to specifically a diplomatic corps or mission, like something more along the lines of an ambassador or representative for foreign relations.

It's basically the Topaz in Future Market situation. That's their job.

Note: I used a dictionary for most of the above translation, so it's a very literal reading on the text. My Chinese isn't good enough to translate this alone.

We can infer that the so-called Specialists probably refers to the Ten Stonehearts and maybe some other members of the IPC, or at bare minimum there's some level of overlap between these Specialists and the Ten Stonehearts. There's a reason Topaz was sent to Jarilo-VI instead of some low-ranking grunt, and those kinds of projects tend to be managed by people who can pull rank.

So we can confirm Diamond's the leader, and we assume to know what the Ten Stonehearts do. What else?

In the Myriad Celestia Trailer about the IPC (or what I like to call the IPC Recruitment video), we get an overview of how the IPC works and the different departments within it. We also get to see the gem representations of the Ten Stonehearts when the video starts talking about the Strategic Investment Department. What Owlbert says isn't important, he's talking fluff for the most part. What is important is what we're shown.

The picture on the left is cropped from before the person in the video picks up the gems. The one on the right is from after the gems are thrown, which is the image everyone else I've seen has been using.

But if you count these, there's nine gems before they get picked up, and eight after they're thrown.

I tried to match the numbers in both pictures to keep track of which gems were which, based on their colors and shapes.

Next train of thought: what's with the 9th gem?

A few theories, speculations, whatever you want to call it:

The boring answer: the producers working on this video straight up forgot about it. I find this hard to believe given the company's track record with lore in general.

It's hidden behind one of the other gems. I'm also skeptical of this answer, mostly because when you go frame by frame, it's still only eight gems, no ninth one. Besides, the only gem big enough to cover the missing one completely is the diamond, and for what reason? All the other gems are on display, why hide one?

Or? It's supposed to be missing.

In that case, why?

Whoever that gem is supposed to be is being withheld from working by the IPC board directly. The big guy who holds all the gems got to choose which ones to toss into the world, after all.

The person behind that gem is actually gone. Like, they no longer exist. Maybe it's a Garden of Recollection moment or something more sinister, or they woke up and decided to leave the IPC one day.

My friend's answer: that gem represents Topaz. She was, after all, demoted after her failure in Jarilo-VI. I personally don't believe that would've kicked her off the Ten Stonehearts group, but this is still worth considering.

There's more things we can consider, but this is what I think so far.

And what about number 10, the last gem?

I'm inclined believe it's actually represented by this heart-shaped gem seen right after the zoom-in on the diamond, in the Talent Motivation Department. It's literally a (gem)stoneheart. This one could not be any more obvious. Why are they here and not with the Strategic Investment Department? No fucking clue. Nobody said outright that all Ten Stonehearts had to be from the same department, I guess(?)...

We see the heart gem throughout the Talent Motivation Department section, so they're probably a big name in that part of the IPC. There's not much else to say here; we don't know enough to make any decisive comments and the readables about the Talent Motivation Department are rather scarce.

Fun fact, I guess! The two heads of the Talent Motivation Department? One of them named Yan Shiluo. Yan Shiluo is also the name of a cult leader in Honkai Impact 3rd. The more you know!

...that honestly isn't relevant to HSR players, since Yanqing was a rotten old man in HI3 and he becomes some Guy in HSR.