In my opinion, Version 4.1 didn't really have a ton of juicy lore information or much in the way of cryptic quests so I was actually planning to just merge this recap with 4.2's especially since I think most of my theories for this patch have already been fleshed out in their own videos. But, uh, after watching the 4.2 Special Program I kinda got the sense that we're about to be drowning in new information and things to speculate on. So, I figured it's better to get this patch's recap out of the way before that happens. This video will therefore cover Acts 3 and 4 of chapter 4's Archon Quest Neuvillette and Wriothesley's Story Quest part 3 of the Narzissenkreuz World Quest —also known as Unfinished Comedy— and the Fontaine Research Institute questline followed by a few small theories and/or observations. Now, please note that my recap videos are not play-by-plays but more like highlight reels so some things may be told out of order, glossed over or lumped together to make the actual contents easier to follow, digest, and remember 'cause the point of recap videos
is to be able to remember the contents. Alright, and with all of that housekeeping out of the way let's waste no more time and start things off by recapping Acts 3 and 4 of the Archon Quest. Now, Act 3 doesn't start with a tea party but that's really the first important scene here. Furina doesn't want to be alone with the Knave and so she coerces Neuvillette into attending the tea party with her as well. Now, Arlecchino's goal here, at the tea party is to try to leverage Childe in order to get a better look around Meropide. I believe she's trying to get there in order to find out if that's where the Gnosis is because, apparently, Furina doesn't have it on her person but she never really says this outright. Regardless, the request is denied as Neuvillette intends to send the Traveler instead as, you know, like a kinda third party. Not only does the Traveler know Childe pretty well but they're not really associated with the Fatui or Fontaine so both parties can trust them pretty well. It makes them the perfect candidate for the job so Neuvillette arranges some not exactly false charges but kinda bogus charges. Like, he gives the Traveler
a cake and then the Traveler eats the cake but the cake was meant for Furina because the gift was from Arlecchino to Furina. And apparently, that is a crime in Fontaine so now the Traveler is in Meropide for 45 days. That's a great plan there. Now, if you're wondering why
we can't just show Arlecchino the Vision to, you know, prove to her that Childe is okay; she wants to know his exact whereabouts and his exact condition. It's not enough to just tell her that he's alive especially since Childe seems to have completely disappeared from Meropide. That makes the Traveler's job even harder. However, Arlecchino still wants
to investigate the location of the Gnosis so, in addition to having the Traveler go to Meropide she's also arranged for Lyney and Lynette, and Freminet to get arrested by putting on a street performance and stealing a bunch of people's wallets so that they can go around Meropide freely and, you know, try to locate some stuff; scout out the area, see if the Gnosis is even there. And of course, the Traveler then ends up assisting Lyney, Lynette, and Freminet on their investigations about all these weird, little things going on in Meropide in the hopes that one of them will lead them to Childe and/or the Gnosis. But, uh, spoiler alert: as far as the Archon Quest goes there's nothing really weird going on in Meropide; not with the meat or the vial of red liquid. I mean, everything there
is basically just people's imaginations going a bit wild which isn't to say there
aren't weird things going on in Meropide they're just in other little, tiny quests elsewhere. However, it is through all of this investigation that the Traveler does learn of the existence of a forbidden zone from Lyney. And Lyney thinks that this might be where the Gnosis is. But I'm sorry Lyney, that's not what's there. It's okay to be wrong. Now, throughout the rest
of the Traveler's time within Meropide Childe's Vision actually resonates with the Traveler and periodically gives them dreams that they use to retrace Childe's movements and eventually, they use that to discover that he escaped Meropide
altogether through a drainage pipe. The Traveler passes this information along to Lyney who sends Freminet to track down Childe. Meanwhile, Lynette investigates information about the forbidden zone within the infirmary because there seem to be some suspicious actions going on in the infirmary. Freminet's expedition is not actually very successful and he quickly loses Childe's trail and ends up ingesting
a lot of Primordial Seawater in the process. Apparently, this is because the Primordial Seawater has been leaching into the surrounding ocean and that is a huge problem because the people of Fontaine
dissolve in Primordial Seawater. Now, like any good prison warden Wriothesley has been
monitoring the situation with everybody very, very carefully. And that is why Freminet ends up being saved by Clorinde who was hired by Wriothesley
to assist with an upcoming crisis which we'll get to in a second. During her investigation,
Lynette gets tranquilized by Sigewinne and when Lyney is unable to find her or ascertain Freminet's safety he panics and confronts Wriothesley about it. Wriothesley plays the bad guy
for a bit and tries to coerce Lyney into arranging a meeting with
Arlecchino which Lyney refuses to do. And I find this a bit confusing because Arlecchino had wanted to go to Meropide anyway so I kinda feel like this entire quest could've been avoided altogether if we just escorted her here instead at the start but hey, what do I know? I'm not the writer. In any case, Wriothesley gives up and returns Lyney's siblings unharmed and then takes the Traveler to the forbidden zone where there is no Gnosis but actually a giant sluice gate which is holding back the Primordial Waters. And the sluice gate is also apparently about to burst which is why the Primordial Waters
were leaching into the nearby ocean and that's what made Freminet sick in the first place. So, Lyney somehow manages
to figure all of this stuff out on his own after he calms down a little bit. What he doesn't know is that Wriothesley has an emergency plan for Fontaine which is literally a giant boat, an ark. I mean, I guess people can't
really drown and dissolve if they're in a boat so, I mean, it's a pretty good plan. I mean, he's the only one who's really been making plans (for what looks like years at this point) so, I mean, bravo, Wriothesley! Bravo! I really do hope that boat's close to being done though because shortly after this event,
the sluice gate just breaks. Just flat out breaks. Clorinde and Wriothesley try
to hold back the Primordial Waters using the three containment gates and their Visions and then they send the Traveler to get Neuvillette who happens to be on his way anyway and merely requests that the Traveler accompany Furina while he's busy so that she's not alone with Arlecchino. He then proceeds to use what Draconic Authority he has in order to force the Primordial Waters back into place and put a temporary seal on it. Later on, he implies that he can't hold the Primordial Waters back for very long so we'd better not rely on him,
and we need a better, more permanent solution. This is also the point at which he reveals that he is the Dragon Sovereign of Water just straight up, with no ceremony whatsoever. And that's cool and all,
but I think most of us kinda knew that already. He also adds that he doesn't have his full dragonhood and none of the Sovereigns do and that's probably why he can't do
anything about the Primordial Waters. So, you know, it's just a temporary solution. We're good for now, at least. But while he was busy pushing back the Primordial Waters Arlecchino loses her patience with Furina and interrogates her about what she's doing to protect the people of Fontaine about the prophecy to which Furina can only say,
"I am doing exactly what I'm supposed to" which makes Arlecchino understandably frustrated as her goal is to save the people
of Fontaine by whatever means necessary. And you know, if the god
of the nation won't tell you what the actual plan is I can see why that would be pretty upsetting. Now, I could be a little bit off here, and this is speculation but I kind of feel like Furina
might not actually know what her plan is which sounds kind of weird but after seeing
her character teaser, I think that this might be because her role in this whole... play is just to play the role of a god and wait for this appointed time in which something is going
to happen and everything will be okay. I've suggested in previous theories that there may be another, like, clone of Furina or another fragment of Egeria
who actually knows what the plan is and Furina has absolute faith in that fragment and she just knows that her role is to play the role of a god. So, she may not know what the real plan is but she's very confident that she's doing her part to make sure that plan goes through. The video theory in question
can be found here, if you wanna watch it. Interestingly, Arlecchino's hostility only seems to extend to Furina herself as she's pretty amicable to the Traveler and she does seem to be genuinely grateful for their treatment of her children. But not about Childe 'cause she doesn't seem to care about Childe at all, which is... kind of ironic, 'cause Childe, children; she likes children but doesn't like Childe... I- I don't know, I think it's funny from, like, a pun perspective. Like- like a pun-spective. Arlecchino does mention
that neither Furina nor Neuvillette feel like Archons and neither of them seem
to have the Gnosis that she's tracking down. Now, this kind of supports that idea I mentioned earlier about Furina not being a complete god, or a complete Archon; she's just playing the role of one and there may be, like, a spark of divinity that she's, you know, trapped somewhere else. Again, long and complicated. You can watch this video if you wanna learn more about it. I'll just leave it there for now because that is the end of the quest. So, let's move on and talk about the next quest: the Narzissenkreuz part 3! Uh- also known as Unfinished Comedy. So, if you've completed the quest with the little Oceanid Ann and the questline in the Melusine village you'll have a pretty good context
for this new quest in Meropide. I have made a fully detailed summary of part 1 and part 2 of this questline in my 4.0 recap video so if you've forgotten what was going on in the storyline I strongly suggest you go rewatch just that section of the video, because I will be making a complete Narzissenkreuz quest summary after 4.2 because I think that will be the finale for it. But for now, I'm not going to recap
everything that happened in 4.0 either because it's just very long and complicated and just please don't make me animate that again right now. Anyway, in this part of the quest we are following a character
named Cater, which is short for Caterpillar. And yes, it is the same Caterpillar
as mentioned by Julien in the desert if you happened to do that questline and if you didn't, then just ignore this. Basically, this entire questline is the Traveler helping Cater to get his friend Lanoire back to what family she has left on the surface. Lanoire was apparently born
to an incarcerated woman named Agnes inside of Meropide and recently, Agnes died so Cater doesn't see any reason for Lanoire to still be in, you know, like, an exile's prison area and he thinks she should be with
the rest of her family, and I agree with him. So, the goal is to get Lanoire out of jail and to do this, we need to do a lot of little fetch quests and, uh, tasks to get credit coupons in order to win a contest which will help us get to the surface where we can hopefully just leave Lanoire there, and... yeah, I guess Cater doesn't mind going back to Meropide. But obviously, things do not go
to plan because once on the surface after we do win the contest,
Cater reveals that he is actually a Hilichurl able to take the shape of a human, which should be shocking except it's not something that we haven't seen before. Except, our last few encounters
with humans shape-shifting into monsters and then back again was with a
Whopperflower that turned into Albedo and then, you know, creatures
like Enjou and other Abyss Lectors. So, I guess the Hilichurl part is
new, but the concept itself isn't. Anyway, Cater and Lanoire are then brought back to Meropide because he is a Hilichurl and therefore not trustworthy so, um, we gotta go to plan B, and plan B is basically... break out of jail the hard way. So, in order to break out of jail,
we have to travel through a mine —like a literal uranium mine— which I think is kinda funny, because I actually predicted back before Fontaine came out that Arkhium is actually Genshin's magic uranium. And if you look at unprocessed
uranium ore... yeah, it kinda checks out. They share the same coloring,
and all the same detrimental effects and also its energy properties, which we'll talk about more when we go to the Fontaine Research Institute, but uh, yeah. Magical uranium. Yay! So, eventually, we do manage to escape Meropide and we bring Lanoire to her last remaining family member and that is essentially the end of the quest. Except Cater decides to share
a little bit of his history with us. He tells us that he was once a
member of the Narzissenkreuz Ordo and he was born from the master
who also helped to shape his intelligence by teaching him language and how
to read, and you know, all kinds of stuff; including how to change his form so he wasn't stuck as a Hilichurl all the time. Now, his master should be Rene de Petrichor and it's heavily implied that Cater is actually Carter reborn as Rene promised to do for him. Now, if you remember from the quests in 4.0 Rene died in a confrontation inside of Elynas and apparently, this explosion and stuff inside of Elynas kind of alerted this whole investigation into what the Narzissenkreuz Ordo was actually doing and through that process, Cater was discovered and that's how he ended up in Meropide. He was basically put on trial,
found guilty of being an accomplice and, yeah. So, he's in prison. Now, you may be wondering what the implications are that a human can basically die and be reborn as a Hilichurl and it just so happens I made a whole video about that and you can go watch it if you want
to because I'm not going to elaborate. But, uh, anyway, now that Cater isn't stuck in Meropide anymore he is free to do whatever he wants so he decides to go back to the Ordo's headquarters which is, uh, in the Natural Philosophy Institute, underwater. It's in this headquarters that
he meets up with Ann and Seymour. Now, these are characters that we met in the previous two parts of this questline and he tells them a little bit about this Red Empress character, or rather, Lyris. Now, Lyris was the Oceanid director
from the Narzissenkreuz Orphanage from which the Narzissenkreuz Ordo was established. Now, I think this is the first time that we get explicit, overt confirmation that Lyris is the orphanage director,
but I could be wrong on that. It could have already been
confirmed and I just don't remember, so, yeah. There are a lot of other little tidbits that he says that I think are definitely worth talking about but I kinda wanna refrain from doing that right now because I want to wait until the end of the questline. Because they're all a little bit cryptic and I think they'll make much more sense after 4.2. I'm just spitballing, but... Yeah. Anyway. Overall, the Unfinished Comedy quest is actually pretty simple, pretty straightforward and there's not a whole lot to it,
apart from, uh, you know, a few big lore bombs so, uh, hey! Good times. Why don't we move on and talk about the Fontaine Research Institute
of Kinetic Engineering questline? The premise for this quest is basically this: the Fontaine Research Institute
exploded due to an accident involving Edwin Eastinghouse's experiments with Arkhium so the Traveler joins a researcher named Nacker to try and salvage the situation. Like I mentioned earlier, Arkhium
is basically Genshin's magic uranium so a lot of the tasks here
are centered around to trying to mitigate the damage within the fallout zone of the explosion and to, you know, monitor the situation. Part of this task involves retrieving the experimental field generator which is unfortunately stuck
on floating debris up in the sky which is why they need the Traveler's help in the first place. They, uh, kinda need some help getting up there. So, it seems like the point of this research was to find a way to create a floating city so that
Fontaine could just float in the air and never drown due to the prophecy. And that's kind of why everything's floating. Now, to do this, they needed an immense amount of energy hence the Arkhium-uranium
radioactive nuclear power, you know? You get the parallels to real world history there, right? So, the field generator itself
apparently has some level of control over gravity. However, the Arkhium reactor that powers it is not super stable;
also a pretty familiar historical parallel. All of the researchers that are left in the area are pretty scared that it's going to explode and that's also why they want to shut it down very discreetly ㅡso this reporter doesn't knowㅡ and that is really the real goal of this mission. So, once the Traveler gets up there Nacker is supposed to stay up there and shut it down and he says that he can do it alone and that he'll be able to get back down on his own because yay, gravity manipulation with the field generator! So, we leave him up there, ‘cause that's a great idea, and uh... Nacker then decides it would be a great idea to just blow the whole place up and disappear ‘cause, you know, he's not
actually a good dude, and that's the plot twist. Nacker is apparently someone
who's been stealing data and components and then selling them for a ton of money. And he also used to work directly with Edwin Eastinghouse and apparently, Edwin is also not that nice of a guy. The entire quest kind of subtly paints Edwin and his companions as brilliant but not all that humane of people as they call him an inhuman monster and then lament how he's damaged the reputation of the Institute forever but, you know, given how open-ended this whole quest is I kind of doubt this is the final installment to the story. I kind of hope that in the next part, which may or may not be in 4.2 we actually get to meet Edwin because, apparently, no one thinks he's really dead. So yeah, the quest seems
to end with Nacker going completely missing and the generator properly shut down, so that's a great thing. Um, yeah. In the meantime, let's, uh, let's move on. I have more stuff to talk about. Wriothesley's Story Quest had some weirdly juicy bits to it and I don't really know what to make of it right now. Most of it was surrounding this weird-as-heck rock which is actually just this stone
that's full of concentrated fear juice? ‘Cause, apparently, this one dude
created this whole Beret Society and he was basically controlling everybody by jabbing their heads with needles that had been dipped in this fear juice in order to make them experience their worst fears. And then he leveraged this power
of fear to control and manipulate them and then he hid their wounds with their beret. The whole thing is incredibly messed up but after this guy gets brought to justice we got to learn some things about Wriothesley like, straight from him, which was cool. He tells us that he was an orphan
who was taken in by some foster parents who ended up turning out to be, uh, child slave traders. So, then he murdered them
to protect the rest of his kids and siblings and that apparently got him
sent to Meropide on murder charges. And the administrator of Meropide at the time was a tyrannical piece of work so, at some point towards the end of his sentence Wriothesley challenged him to a duel to see if he could make things better for the people there and the admin, I guess, kinda just peaced out and ran away so Wriothesley just waltzed into his office and was like “hm, I guess this is my job now” and he took over the entire fortress. Wriothesley is hilarious and I love him. Now, Neuvillette’s Story Quest is kind of the complete opposite of Wriothesley's. Most of it is completely introspective. Neuvillette explains that
although he is part of Fontaine's society because he is a dragon, he also kind of exists outside of it and therefore, he struggles at times to understand his role in the grander scheme of things. This quest also explains how Neuvillette discovered the Melusine race and brought them into the city and that includes all of the challenges that went along with integrating two very different
species together into one society. There was apparently a lot of resistance in the early days, like, 400 years ago and Neuvillette blamed himself a lot for the death of one particular Melusine named Carole, since he was unable to protect her from prejudiced people who wanted to harm her and didn't want Melusines
integrated into Fontainian society at all. But after Carole was murdered her partner, the Maison Gardiennage — Vautrin ended up getting revenge
for her death by killing her killers and Neuvillette had to perform the very difficult task of punishing him for breaking the law regardless of his own personal feelings on the matter. Now, this incident from 400 years ago is kind of mirrored during the present time
of the quest, as another Melusine named Kiara is being threatened by a man
named Domenico via letters from Meropide. As it turns out, Domenico was
being thwarted by the Mutual Aid Network which had been founded by Vautrin 400 years ago in order to help the other prisoners come to terms with the wrongs of their past and work together towards a better future. Neuvillette then realized that Vautrin didn't actually resent him back then and instead, he had understood
Neuvillette was in a difficult position so he had put on a show of false anger so the people of Fontaine truly understood that Neuvillette was an impartial, trustworthy Iudex. He knew that if the people had a good opinion of Neuvillette then they would trust his judgment about the Melusines. We also got to learn a little bit
about why Neuvillette struggles so much with understanding his own emotions. Apparently, water contains people's most intense emotions so, as the dragon of water, he ends up feeling those emotions from everywhere, all the time. It's only natural then that he tries to suppress his feelings in order to simply function on the day-to-day. At the very end of his quest, too we get some very suspicious lines from Furina which I think foreshadow the events of 4.2 which, you know, we'll see as soon as it comes out. I guess if you play his quest after 4.2 comes out then it's more of a reference than foreshadowing, but... Uh, 4.2 isn't out here as of time of recording so, um... yeah. So, that just about does it for all
of the quest recaps for this patch which means it is finally time for a rapid-fire roundup of a bunch of little observations and neat tidbits that you may have missed, that I think are cool and wanna share. Let's start off with some surprising Harbinger lore. We all spent a lot of time in Meropide, and in doing so we were forced to learn the value
of its unique currency, the Credit Coupons. But did you know that this fiscal system was actually developed and implemented by Pantalone? It is true. Wriothesley's signature weapon talks all about it. He wanted to trial a new type of currency that would have the least amount of risk of being tampered with by anything divine so Meropide was obviously the perfect place for it. This weapon also confirms that Pantalone is not from Liyue as many suspected him to be. Still, we don't know what his real hometown is. Now, the event for this patch was a little tepid as far as lore is concerned but there were a couple
of neat things about it towards the end when we finally got
to confirm the true identity of Callirhoe. She was an Oceanid who fled from Fontaine hundreds of years ago
and settled in the waters of Springvale earning herself the nickname of Spring Fairy in the process. She became a bit of a local legend and was the one responsible for blursing Diona with the ability to always make
delicious drinks no matter what she does. Now, this event also gave us some nice closure to her relationship with Finch an old man who has literally been standing by her pond talking about her since the very beginning of the game. His steadfast commitment to her touched her heart so hard that she gifted him with... an egg, I think? I'm not really sure if that's what that is but that's kind of what it looks
and feels like to me, given all the context so that's what I'm gonna call it. It's an ocean egg, hehe. Now, Mondstadt is kind of odd because it doesn't really have any magic races of its own with the exception of the Kätzleins but they're not really equated to races like the Youkai or so we thought. During the poetry event, Xiao comments that Diona actually has Adeptal affinity, which is quite curious. The Adepti are also known as illuminated beasts so I suppose it makes sense that someone with the traits of a beast, or animal could be lumped into that category. But one thing that the Adepti seem to all possess is a blessing given to them by Morax. Now, Diona has a blessing given by Callirhoe. So, now I'm wondering if the blessing part is more important than the beast part. Although, we do know that humans can't be called Adepti although they can learn Adeptal Arts. But then we've got, like, Yanfei
and Ganyu who are only half-human and both of them are considered Adeptus. So, maybe you need both blood and a blessing? I don't really know where I'm going with that. It's just... I thought this
was worth mentioning for future reference. Maybe it'll come up again. One last thing for this patch, and it's a biggie. This patch is the earliest possible patch where you can get the Fontaine wind glider and the lore within it is pretty juicy, and long. So, here's the highlights: the Primordial Sea
used to belong to the Hydro Dragon Sovereign and when the Primordial One took over they killed the Hydro Dragon and then one of their Shades, the Shade of Life created Egeria to take over
as the heart of the Primordial Sea which had previously belonged to the Hydro Dragon. Now, this makes Egeria one of the oldest gods we have on record up there with the likes of Zhongli. Now, after the God King Remus
and his civilization of Remuria fell Egeria was awarded, quote, "A Shard of the One Who Was First" which also gave her the title
of Archon, as well as a Divine Duty. Something worth paying attention to is that this Shard and the Heart of the Sea may or may not be two different things with two different roles, and I'm not sure which is the Gnosis. "The One Who Was First" may be the Dragon King Nibelung since he was the first king of Teyvat —that we know of, anyway— or it may be the Primordial One. I am going to refrain from sharing my opinion on this because I have a feeling 4.2
is going to give us a lot more information to work with that will completely
change how we think about the Gnoses. But I wanted to bring it up anyway because I feel like it's gonna be really important. Alright, I think that just about
does it for the recap this time. Usually, I have a few more theories and more speculations but this time, I'm releasing the recap a bit late and I feel like most
of my fully fleshed or interesting theories already have their own videos that you can check out if you're really interested in them. Anything else that I have
is basically speculations on the next patch and that's just a different type of video so I'm excluding them for now. Anyway, I just wanna say thank you guys so much for watching and of course, a very special thank you, as always to all of my beautiful channel
members for all of your support. I really couldn't do this without you, and I mean that. We are about to get pummeled with a massive lore storm of theory-breaking proportions in the next patch so I hope you've all got a life vest or two handy. I'm gonna go find mine, 'cause I don't know where it is. So, um, hopefully I'll see you all in the next video, okay? Take care of yourselves, and bye for now.
