Ok, I'm just gonna say it. I don't think Istaroth is the God of Time. I know, I know, that's a really spicy meatball to swallow given that everybody seems to be
in agreement that she is the God of Time. I mean, there is definitely
enough evidence to support the idea 'cause, like, even her scribe
refers to her as the"Ruler of Time," so... Is that it? Is that the end of the argument? Like, case closed, done deal, pack it up, it's over boys? Well, no. This is a theory video; I don't know what you expected. I can't just end it here. But I'm not even gonna try to refute her powers over time. I don't really want to. It's just that I don't think there's only one time god. I think there's at least four each one ruling over a different aspect of time and Istaroth is merely one of them which makes her A god of time, not THE god of time. And the difference kinda matters. So in this video, I'm gonna make my case as to why I think Istaroth is one of several time gods and then we're gonna investigate
just which aspect of time belongs to her. Now, you guys know the drill by now: time stamps, citations, and links for further reading are downstairs in the description while notes and corrections
can be found in the pinned comment. But there's no time to waste with time gods waiting about so let's get right to it! If you didn't already know,
Istaroth also goes by the name of Kairos and is suggested to be
one of the Primordial One's Four shining Shades; but fun fact she's never outright been called a Shade although, for simplicity's sake,
we're just going to assume she is one because it ends up making the most sense in the end. Now, most of what we know about her comes from the book "Before Sun and Moon," found in Enkanomiya which also mentions her by both of her names as well as the epithet "The Thousand Winds" a title that is also mentioned frequently in Mondstadt in places like the Thousand Winds Temple and carvings on sundials throughout the region. This same book also calls her
the "Ruler of Time" and the God of Moments and it describes several phenomena within Enkanomiya that she is responsible for like the Sinshades. She's also mentioned in
a few other places, such as Ei's second Story Quest where she's suspected of helping the Electro twins plant the Sacred Sakura and she gets another mention during Aranyaka where Aranaga calls her "Ad Oblivione." Now, we're gonna talk about all these things in depth later but I think that the best way to get to know Istaroth is through one of her fragments; specifically, Venti. Venti is most likely a fragment of Istaroth as he is described as "a single thread of the thousand winds" in his third Character Story implying that his relationship
with the thousand winds is a direct one. He seems to be
one of the thousand winds that Istaroth is made of and Venti paints a very peculiar picture of what Istaroth seems to govern. While many can make an argument that Venti has a lot to do with time in general Venti has more associations
specifically with death and the afterlife. For example, when Xiao reached his limit and was about to die it was Venti who kept death at bay for him through music. Not Zhongli, which is who you would expect because Xiao is one of his Yaksha and if all Archons could, you know prevent that kind of death, or calm the soul, or whatever then why would he not do that for his own, you know, Adeptus? Then, during Weinlesefest, he specifically said he "brought back the winds from the far-flung past" but all the people within
the memories he brought back are probably dead. Like, Crepus is confirmed to be dead and Razor's parents are assumed dead and no one knows what's up with Kaeya's father but, statistically speaking, he's probably also dead. And speaking of memories of the dead think back to Venti's first Story Quest. What was it again that we did with him? Ah, right, we retrieved the spirit of a deceased adventurer and then Venti presumably guided that spirit back home. And how fitting is it that Venti is so heavily smothered
in the symbolism of Orpheus right down to that special, magic lyre given to Orpheus by the God of Prophecy himself, Apollo. And Orpheus is best known
for the myth where he travels to the underworld to bring a soul back to life and fails. And after Orpheus is killed (torn apart by women
for reasons that vary depending on the source) his lyre is then taken up
into the sky and made into a constellation which is something
that is shared with Venti's Constellation. And like Orpheus Venti probably can't actually bring the dead back to life no matter how associated with them he is. If he could, then he probably
would have chosen to revive his friend the unnamed Bard instead of reforging his own body into the Bard's image. And all these little associations between Venti and death don't stop there. You know that kinda cracked theory that's really popular in the lore community that says in order to get an Anemo Vision you gotta have a dead friend or family member? Well, that might actually not be too crack because the associations with death and Anemo or wind go far beyond the Anemo Archon himself. For example, during Weinlesefest Venti says that the people of Mondstadt believe that the wind can bring back the soul and preserve memories. He says this in reference to Dandelion Seeds which can only be gathered by applying Anemo to them and, fun fact dandelions are also known as "fairy clocks" because they open and close under predictable conditions. So, you've got clocks, time, seeds, and Anemo application. It's almost like this was intentional! Now, the thing about seeds, which is one of the features that dandelions in particular are very famous for is that for a non-perennial plant,
seeds are a harbinger of death. So, like, in the case of dandelions once they've successfully released their seeds they will start to wither and die. Mostly because the seeds
are considered their method of reproduction and the whole point of the plant
in the fruiting part of it is to reproduce and then, after it's reproduced,
it's actually fulfilled its life purpose so that's why it dies. But the memory of that plant, in the form of its genetics is what's carried on through those seeds which can then be planted
and create new life based on the old one thus creating a cycle. And this is thematically perfect because one of the most common ancient phrases to find around Mondstadt is "Seeds of stories, brought by the wind and cultivated by time. "Stories brought on the wind
will bloom into legends in due time." And this makes Venti out to be
some kind of Charon-esque figure with the wind who leads
the souls of the dead to the God of Time, Istaroth. And this seems to be a pretty
common belief system throughout Mondstadt even if they don't necessarily recognize Istaroth as the God of Time anymore and just kind of worship time and wind together. For example, there's a passage
in the Lost Prayers to the Sacred Winds which reads: "From the winds
we have come, and with the winds we shall go. Never, ever grieve for me.
'Tis but my flesh and bones which rest in the soil: My soul has become one with the thousand winds." This is explicitly talking about dying and then their soul being
carried by the wind to The Thousand Winds which is Istaroth. Now, you might have noticed that throughout this section I haven't talked much at all about rebirth or future or creation or anything like that. I've mostly been hammering on the whole death part because that's the evidence that's there. But how can you call someone a god of time or the ruler of time if they're only associated with endings and with death? You kinda can't, which is why
I think Istaroth isn't THE God of Time simply A god of time. The god of the end of time; the god of death. But trying to prove her status
as a death god just by looking at Venti isn't exactly fair. We should really look beyond this single fragment of hers to, you know, some more aspects of her. The first thing worth noting
is another one of Istaroth's epithets: ''The Tokoyo Ookami.'' Okami just means ''god'' in Japanese so the word paying attention to here actually is ''tokoyo'' which is a reference to the ''tokoyo no kuni'' a realm from Shintoism. It's not technically an afterlife
or the underworld or anything but it is a kind of spirit realm that's frequently conflated with the underworld. It depends on the myth and the source, right? But it's also associated with the border between worlds or the period of twilight between day and night which is really fitting since Enkanomiya —which is also called tokoyo— kind of floats in this limbo zone
between the living realm of Inazuma and the Abyss, which I guess is the underworld. However, I am leaning more into
this whole underworld interpretation for a couple of reasons. So, the name tokoyo is also shared
with a deity from Shinto mythology known as ''tokoyo no kami'' a name meaning ''the eternal god'' which is another title that is shared with Istaroth. This god was represented by the larva of a Japanese swallowtail butterfly so, like a caterpillar. If that seems a little bit irrelevant to you, it's really not. See, Istaroth has another name, which is Kairos. Traditionally, this means ''the moment of opportunity'' but it can also be the name for ''the moment where the shuttle passes through the threads of a loom.'' And a loom is what you weave on.
And you know what's really good at weaving? Caterpillars with their silk. 'Cause, like, what did you think their little nap-time blankies are made out of? Spit? No, it's silk. They weave those. And not only are they fantastic spinners and weavers but in order to attain their final form of a butterfly they have to experience a type of death where they dissolve most of their body into a goo that reforms around these undissolved imaginal discs to create new butterfly parts. And what's really funny about this is that in cultures around the globe butterflies represent the souls of the dead. So, you lose the original body and come back as a soul, a butterfly soul. Just look at things like
the Chinese folktale of the butterfly lovers or the Japanese tale of the white butterfly or the Greek myth of Eros and Psyche whose name literally means soul, by the way. And surely, if you're playing an anime-style game you've probably watched at least one anime where the dead come back as butterflies, right? Like, even Genshin does this. Just take one look at Hu Tao.
I mean, she's full of butterfly symbolism: she guides the souls of the dead, and she runs a funeral parlor. She's covered in butterflies. And as another fun fact, butterflies love spider lilies. These flowers are heavily associated with death as evidenced by their nicknames like ''corpse flowers'' and you tend to see them used as symbols of death so it's no surprise that Hu Tao sports a few. The Dendrobiums in Inazuma
are also a reference to these flowers and they grow wherever blood is spilled. But what you might not know is that in Enkanomiya during Evernight, you can see
a ghostly white variety of spider lilies surrounding this grave for the Sunchild Risutaiosu. And speaking of souls of the dead Enkanomiya is full of a phenomenon called Sinshades which are self-aware,
ghost-like phantasms created by Istaroth. They're basically like
memory imprints of people, like snapshots. And the term shade in Greek mythology literally refers to a ghost in the underworld of Hades. And incidentally, these Sinshades
also go by the name ''eidolon'' which literally means ghost or phantom. So she's got all these weird,
little connections to souls of the dead and weaving and her name refers to a specific time when you're weaving something on a loom. And if you think about a loom in this game what's the first thing that comes to mind? It's probably ''The Loom of Fate.'' That's the name of the Abyss Order's secret plan. It's the thing that Dainsleif
says we have to reweave at the end of the game. And it's also this locked Traveler Character Story so, you, like, you know this is important. But you know what's also Greek and weaves fate? The Fates! These are the Moirai,
three sisters known as Clotho (the spinner) Lachesis (the allotter), and Atropos (the cutter). These powerful ladies are destiny incarnate spinning the fates and lives of every mortal on Earth. Clotho spins the threads of life, so she is the creative force. Lachesis decides how much thread is used thus determining how long a mortal's life should be. And Atropos is the one who cuts the threads witnessing the end of everything. So, if Istaroth governs death the way I have suggested then she's the one who collects these threads of life after they've been cut. She is Atropos. And if lives are just a series of moments then she becomes the keeper or god of moments. These are the seeds, the souls of the dead that are carried by the wind to the god of time. But this implies that there are
three gods of time, now doesn't it? Istaroth may be Atropos, but who would be Clotho and Lachesis? Are they shades as well? And if they are, what about that mysterious fourth shade? How about we play a little game of cards? So a couple years ago, I wrote a theory based on an interview with HoYoverse where they said that Artifacts were based off of tarot cards and William Blake's poetry. I'm gonna link the interview
in the description box if you're interested but I mentioned this old theory of mine because it's relevant to Istaroth in particular. As you know, Artifacts are split into five types: flower, feather, sands, goblet, and crown. And each type has something that they represent so it's the flower of life, the feather of death the sands of time, the goblet of space, and the crown of reason. Now, I am using the original Chinese here because I have no idea what
the English localization team was thinking for the sands and goblet, because eonothem refers to, like, the geologic record while the original Chinese
is referring to the emptiness of the sky and those are two very different things. Now, each of these Artifact types correlate directly to one of the four suits of the tarot's minor arcana with the last type likely being represented by the entirety of the major arcana or at the very least the magician card since HoYo calls this one out by name in their interview. They also mentioned the elements
associated with each tarot suit and match them to the symbols from Blake's poetry. Now, I apologize for the wonky translation here, but to quote: ''The inspirations for the Artifacts were 'tarot cards' and 'the poems of William Blake.' First of all, there is a card in the tarot called 'Magician' which appears with the 'Holy Grail of Water' 'The Coin of Earth,' 'The Staff of Fire,' and 'The Sword of Wind' symbolizing the four elements. Also, in William Blake's famous poem 'Auguries of Innocence' symbols such as sand, flowers, and robin feathers appear representing 'infinity,' 'eternity,' and 'judgment.' It is the inspiration obtained from the above two things that determines 'The Flower of Life,' 'The Feather of Death' 'The Sands of Time,' 'The Cup of Emptiness,' and 'The Crown of Reason.'" So, the crown here is reason or logos. And if you paid attention to anything going on during the Narzissenkreuz World Questline you'd remember that the Sword of Reason is a tool possessed only by one whose will is equal to that of the world the one who has the authority over that world also known as the Primordial One who, incidentally, also had a crown. Plus, in both physics and philosophy logos represents the human mind and our ability to perceive
the world and recognize its existence. This is partly why I think it can encompass the entirety of the major Arcana but that's, you know, whatever. So that's the major Arcana.
What about the four suits of the minor Arcana? Well, the Flower of Life Artifact is most likely represented by the Shade of Life a Shade that we only learned about recently from the Fontaine Wind Glider. She is responsible for creating Egeria and she's likely the Shade that helped the Primordial One recreate life on Earth, à la "Before Sun and Moon." This is most likely the Artifact
related to the Tarot's Wands suit as the wands are traditionally made of wood and typically show flowers or leaves growing on them. Wands are associated with the element of fire which can be likened to the spark of life as they represent creative energy. So, I kinda wanna recontextualize this Shade as the Shade of Birth or Creation like, the one that grants life. And I do wanna take a second
to point out that flowers grow from seeds and if seeds are what Istaroth collects then perhaps she's the one who passes them along to the God of Life, who plants them. And speaking of Istaroth most people will automatically
assign her to the Sands of Time but this Artifact type should be represented by the Pentacles or coins and that's the element of Earth. And we know that Istaroth is the Thousand Winds which should make her air, right? So, consider instead that Istaroth might actually be the Feather of Death. After all, feathers allow birds to fly through the air and in tarot, air is associated with the suit of Swords which is a weapon which can kill people. The Sword suit also represents words thoughts, ideas, and messages,
and a feather can be crafted into a quill a writing implement which
can deliver thoughts, words, and messages and so on and so forth. It kind of fits this whole
bard thing going on with Venti too, right? And speaking of Venti he sure does have a lot of feathers
in his combat animations, doesn't he? And as I've pointed out in many of my videos birds are very frequently depicted as messengers carriers of dead souls, omens of death or even the soul of someone who died. Just in a few examples, we've got Judaism where we see human souls taking the shape of a dove and then in Egypt, we see the dead turning into a bird with a human head called a ba. Aztecs then believed that some people turned into hummingbirds upon their death and then the Finnish have the sielulintu which carry away the souls of the dead and many tribes in Africa also believe that a fully cultivated
human soul will become a bird upon death. Birds are also the notorious messengers
of the goddess Ishtar also known as Astarte,
who was the basis for the demon Astaroth who is who Istaroth is named after. Birds are also known to be distributors of seeds and some types of plants even rely on them to do this for them. So, if the seeds of stories carried by the wind are actually souls of the dead carried by birds even allegorically, this fits a little too well. And it fits especially well with another one of Istaroth's assumed epithets: Ad Oblivione. So, during the Aranyaka Questline, Aranaga describes this as "the wind that flows forever,
the thousand winds that return to one. But on earth is the stream, and the ubiquitous is the wind. Everlasting and devastating." And then they go on to elaborate saying that it's a thing that takes away dreams and then they conflate dreams and memories and then later they say that death
is just a one-time loss of memory. So, this Ad Oblivione
is the Thousand Winds which takes memories and losing your memories one time is basically death. Now, this Ad Oblivione title probably
comes from Greek mythology again because once you died in Greek mythology you became this shady ghost thing and then you were required to drink from the river Lethe whose waters would make you forget your life on Earth. If you didn't do that, then you could not be reborn. And Lethe means oblivion which means that if the Thousand Winds is Ad Oblivione or rather "to oblivion" that means that it takes you to the river of oblivion to drink the waters of forgetfulness
and return to the cycle of rebirth. That means Istaroth passes
the seeds along to the Shade of Life who then helps them blossom into flowers of life. This is the cycle of life and death. So, okay, if Istaroth is the Feather of Death then what's going on with the other two Shades─space and time? The way I see it, birth
is when life begins, death is where it ends and time, or the sands, is the space in between. The fact that the Artifact for time isn't a clock but instead is an hourglass which has a fixed amount of time inside, feels important to me. Like, this is your life span. It's fixed.
When the sand runs out, you die. And this idea kind of appropriately
fits the tarot's Pentacle suit since the sands of an hourglass are earth, 'cause it's sand and the Pentacle suit is really the suit of materiality. So, like, people, places, things,
wealth, all the stuff in your life, right? So, I think time here is more like a time span which might be why they called it an eon in English 'cause that's also a span or measurement of time. So, we have birth, time span,
and death, making up a trinity of time and appropriately representing the concepts of past, present, and future. And that leaves us with the Goblet of Emptiness or Space which is actually
the most straightforward of all the Artifacts surprisingly enough. In fact, we've actually met this Shade and it's the Sustainer of Heavenly Principles. Now, I say this, admittedly a bit too confidently because the Chinese character used for the Goblet is the same one used to describe the Herrscher of the Void from HoYo's other game, Honkai Impact. And it's very easy to see
how the Sustainer is heavily inspired by or referencing at least the Herrscher of the Void in both visuals and abilities. Now, the word used for void doesn't really have a great counterpart in English which is probably why there's this
really weird translation thing here. I think it's easiest to conceptualize this term as the ether or like, the vastness of the sky since it means both emptiness and the heavens. And I have opted to translate that into space, and you know why? Because time does not exist without space and space cannot exist without time. See, time is what keeps everything from happening all at once. Without it, the physical universe
would be static and could not move which means that nothing could interact with anything else. Time is basically a necessity
for the physical universe, or space, to move. Without space, time does nothing,
and without time, space does nothing. Therefore, you must have both for reality to be a thing. And that's why we call it spacetime. And of course, none of space or time matters if there's no observer to witness it. And this is the logos the Primordial One
with three Shades for time and one for space. This may be why we see the proliferation of both triquetras and the quaternary knots throughout the game. One represents the trinity of time while the other the unity of spacetime. Now, funnily enough, the Sustainer has a quaternary knot on the back of her neck. And if you subscribe to the idea that the three shades of time are the Moon Sisters then the one moon that we've seen (which is the Welkin Moon) has a triquetra on it so that checks out. And this whole concept
of the shades representing spacetime brings me to Istaroth's most infamous deed: time manipulation. One of the most curious events in the entire game happens during Ei's second Story Quest where Istaroth heeds Makoto's dying wish (what a coincidence) and helps Ei plant a tree in the past. This is the only instance of time being actively changed in the whole game, and Makoto even says that doing this, quote, "frees the Sacred Sakura from the clutches of the Heavenly Principles." How this actually works has bothered me for ages and it got worse once Sumeru hit and we had two more cases of people being deleted from history but without history actually changing just people's perception of history. I kinda wrote this inconsistency off as the time god having more power or authority or something and kinda left it at that, but, like, upon further reflection Istaroth is most often referred to as the God of Moments and if you think about it,
a life is really just a series of moments so Istaroth rules over
the complete collection of a person's moments. Like... metaphorically. If the Shade of Life creates blank pages then the Shade of Time binds those pages into the form of a book, and then Istaroth fills those pages with words or moments, resulting in the completed book. And if a person's life is determined by their memories then creating a new moment is really just giving them a new memory. And if you think about what Istaroth does well, she cultivates the seeds brought by the wind. And what does Ei do? She plants a seed in Makoto's realm of consciousness her mind, her memory. And if you're wondering how that does or doesn't change time you did not watch roozevelt's video all about how time works in Teyvat, and you should totally do that. And I also know you totally didn't read
the new in-game book, "Time Trekker" which you should.
There are links below. But until you do... it seems like Genshin is operating with a type of time-travely shenanigan known as eternalism or block time. Now, eternalism suggests that all time exists at the same time, meaning that no matter where you are in time the future has already happened. Whatever choices you are going to make are ones that you have already made. That might be a little bit hard to conceptualize so let me try to paint a word picture for you. This cube represents your life as a small model of space. This side is where your life began,
and this side is where it ends. Everything that has happened or will happen exists simultaneously in here. But you, as the observer can only experience a single moment. This sequential perception of moments is time and it is what allows you to move through your life through space which means that every instance
of you exists at the same time within your life-space cube. So if Istaroth, for example, decided to mess with your perception of time by giving you a memory she can do so at any point within this box and that memory will echo throughout the entire cube and permeate the space that is your life. It's a bit like if you had a cup of water and dropped some colored dye into it. This dye would spread throughout the water until it tinted the entire cup. The funny part is that you
wouldn't even know that this happened because the dye is in the past, present, and future all at once. It doesn't matter how it got in there. This is what I'm calling an echo. And if this echoing through time thing
sounds a little familiar it's because it's from the book "Before Sun and Moon" specifically the parable of the tree. The parable here is about a gardener who asked an incarnation of Istaroth for help with a magic tree that would take 500 years to grow. She tells him that if he plants a cutting of that tree his, quote, "one thought shall echo throughout eternity" and the tree will grow in an instant. And then the parable goes on to say "For it is the God of Moments who is able to take 'seeds' from this 'moment' into the past and future." It is pretty fitting, right? I mean, this parable suggests that Istaroth might have given Ei a seed, a memory, or even a dying wish. And then Makoto told Ei to grant it life. And so Ei did just that. She planted that seed
within Makoto's realm of consciousness (which is not too dissimilar to the gardener's backyard) while the Traveler bore witness to it. Now, I don't know whose thought echoed throughout eternity because it could have been Ei's
or Makoto's or even the Traveler's but this action made the tree appear in the far distant past and the future. So the tree had just always been there. Time had always been as we had witnessed it. The only thing that had really changed is that Ei now understood how the tree came to exist. And this is what makes block time a little difficult to wrap your head around because it's really different from branching time. And I think that's one of the most common
sorts of timeline alterations that we see, like time moves in a straight line and then it kind of branches off into alternate realities as you make different choices. In branching time, the Traveler would've arrived in Inazuma and there would have been no tree. And then they would've witnessed the tree being planted and then, when they returned back to Inazuma the tree would've been there with everyone also believing that the tree had always been there, but not you, because you know the truth about the timeline being altered. Block time is a little different because, again every choice you've ever made has already been made. It's already manifested in the past, present, and future. So that fits with the idea of the Traveler arriving in Inazuma and having the tree already be planted then witnessing it being planted then coming back and having it still be planted. And that is what makes block time special. It doesn't branch out and it doesn't loop back on itself. Just to further my point, while the Traveler was in Makoto's realm of consciousness, time was said to be moving both forwards and backwards at the same time. And Makoto then claimed that she had lost her ability to perceive time which may be because she's, you know, dead. But this is very block-time-like because all of her past and future seems to exist at the same time, but she can no longer observe her own life because she's dead and therefore cannot perceive time in a linear way. Now, if I haven't lost you yet, I do want to touch on one thing and that is how this incident differs from what Nahida and Wanderer tried to do when they tried to change the past. Now, full disclosure here: I don't actually know which difference matters the most because I can make a case for all of them and it's possible that all of them matter an equal amount so I'm gonna leave the final choice here up to you about which one actually matters or if they all do. So for the first difference, we've got to recognize this realm of consciousness belongs to Makoto, who is dead. And it's also a physical space that exists outside of Teyvat; a place where time runs
both forwards and backwards simultaneously. Now, Nahida and Wanderer were still in Teyvat when they tried to alter the timeline so the location could be the difference. Now, the second difference
could be that Ei created something whereas Wanderer and Nahida tried to remove something. Now, if you create something in block time then it will just have always existed and you will know that because you can observe it. But something can't really
erase something else in block time because that would mean that
you would never know that it was erased. It would have never been there from the start so removing something then creates a paradox in block time, while creating something, doesn't. So, it could be the difference
between trying to add something or trying to remove something. And this ties into the third difference which is that the Traveler actually bore witness to Ei creating the tree away from Irminsul. Now, both Nahida and Wanderer leveraged Irminsul specifically to tamper with the world but Irminsul cannot alter the mind of the Traveler so it would be impossible for them to forget that Rukkhadevata or Scaramouche existed but it would be possible for
the Traveler to witness a tree being planted created, and have that thought echo
throughout time and shape reality. Now, this would tie into the idea
that the Traveler is the designer of all as stated in the Narzissenkreuz Questline and how Dainsleif claims
that the Loom of Fate is theirs to reweave. It would mean that the Traveler
is the one who has to witness something and that you can't alter reality officially with Irminsul because Irminsul can't touch the Traveler. So, again, it could be any one of these things or it could be all three of them. And you'll note that I didn't
actually list Istaroth as a variable uh, difference between what Nahida and Wanderer did and what Ei did. And that's because, if you think about it Istaroth's involvement was really minimal. All she did was deliver a seed to Ei. Ei was the one who actually gave the seed life and it probably wasn't
Istaroth's thought that echoed through eternity. That said, it is very curious
that she did decide to tamper with time at all —however minimal her involvement—
especially since this action of hers apparently led to this tree being completely freed from the Heavenly Principles. And since the Heavenly Principles
are basically the natural order imposed on the world by the Primordial One it makes you wonder why a Shade of the Primordial One would try to, like, buck the system. I guess if I had to speculate on this question (since I'm the one who brought it up) I did mention earlier that there's this common theory that three of the Primordial One’s Shades are actually the Three Moon Sisters: Aria, Sonet, and Canon. And legend says that after a great disaster occurred two moons fell from the sky, leaving the third up there alone. Now, in some versions, all three moons died and in other versions, two of them died and the third locked herself in her palace. Now, if the Primordial One
had any involvement in this tragedy it would provide the survivor so Istaroth, potentially, plenty of motivation to rebel against the Primordial One out of revenge for her fallen sisters. Because we know she didn't bring them back or else there would be two more moons in the sky, right? That's block time, baby. Although it's possible that she didn't survive and what we're witnessing
are just seeds that she's left behind. Now, while this next thought is a little on the crack side it is possible that the Traveler
is going to become the next Istaroth or at least will share some traits with her. Actually, if the Traveler is gonna be the next Primordial One which is more likely, and then inherit the throne of heaven, as per their Character Profile Story then that means that
they will create shades of themselves, too. Well, potentially. The only real reason I say this is because of this namecard called Traversal. It says that “A traveler shall
experience ten thousand tales and each shall form a part of the traveler's soul.” Now, stories, seeds, and souls are all synonymous, right? And that's very reminiscent
of the lines all around Mondstadt that talk about the souls returning to or merging with the Thousand Winds. I've got no proof here, just vibes,
and I think I'll leave it at that. This was supposed to be
a short theory and that obviously didn't happen so, uh... hehe. Anyway, let me just entertain you all while the names of my super supportive channel members scroll on by. So, in talking about spacetime,
I'm always reminded of light cones and not just ‘cause they're in Honkai Star Rail but because light cones have this really weird resemblance to Deshret's Mausoleum. You thought you were gonna get through this whole theory without a single Deshret mention, didn't you? Well, too bad. But anyway, just put these
side by side for a second and compare them. I mean, you've got the past and future cones on either side and they’ve got this singular point in the middle which should represent the observer. And then, like, between
the pyramids, you have this crystalline eye which, you know, an eye observes things, right? I don't quite understand why Deshret designed his Mausoleum to look like a light cone, but I do think it's interesting that he has this whole "separating mind from body" and then the "all minds merge
into one thing with the Golden Slumber" and that's kind of reminiscent from that one line in Lost Prayer to the Sacred Wind that goes: “My soul has become one with the Thousand Winds.” It's almost like he's trying
to control the circumstances of his death. And come to think of it we never really did figure out what this Mausoleum was doing with all that red stuff in the sky, did we? Was it, like, trying to alter time somehow? Or, like, reverse it? I'm not sure but I do think about it a lot. Also, there wasn't really anywhere to put this but while I did liken three of the Shades to the Greek Moirai (so, like, the fates) it's also worth mentioning that they have a lot in common with the Horae as well. So, these are known as the seasons and they're represented by natural time, not fate. So, Thallo, one of the Horae, was the one who brings blossoms so spring, and obviously kind of
indicative of the Shade of life, right? And then we have Auxo who was the one who promoted growth making her summer, and also
the god of time, or the Shade of time, rather. And then we've got Carpo who is the reaper or the harvester and therefore autumn, and also Istaroth. And the Horae, weirdly enough, were also deities of justice although I don't quite know the reason for this overlap and they were responsible
for guarding the cloud gates of Zeus. And this immediately made me think of the Sustainer of Heavenly Principles for obvious reasons. I mean, she is literally guarding a cloud barrier. It also seems like the Horae were executioners of the Moirai judgments in some myths too which is kind of interesting especially because Hesiod lists the Moirai and the Horae as sharing a mother,
which would make them all sisters. Anyway, lots of food for thought to chew on here. I mean, I don't know if I convinced you of anything or anything but I hope you at least had fun today. So, thanks once again to all of my channel members for supporting my nonsense and thanks a bunch to you, little viewer, for watching. Take care now. Bye-bye!
