#sampo lore

[m-says-hi]

of course my first post on this blog is about to be something that is probably a little unhinged but

I saw the sampo picture from the topaz trailer. the one where he was getting his ass kicked and i noticed there was a... wanted poster? or something with words on it

and i remembered the hsr fandom wiki has a thing to help translate the hsr language so i checked there and found something interesting. This poster thing is written in penaconian script

I did my best to translate and got

SANGBO wu shi xain yin qin fei jian ji dao zhi  xuan hui de bu xu an dui de

I was vaguely worried I was doing something wrong when I translated what should've been Sampo's name but instead came up with "sangbo" but as I went on it became clear that it wasn't english. Unsure how to translate it, I just pasted the whole thing (minus what I assume is his name) into the search bar and found a website that told me this

i tried entering the second part and find out the meaning but it didn't come up with anything. So if anyone else could figure it out...

But! I still find this really interesting. This trailer is from before penacony so I find it weird that this poster thing is written in that type of script. I would've expected it to be written in the universal script or the belobogian script

all three scripts are very very similar but by all the extra embellishments you can tell that this poster is specifically the penaconian one.

Another thing I find interesting is the idiom it translates to as interesting. Solicitous means someone who cares or shows interest, so it's basically saying someone who cares or shows interest in something without a clear reason is hiding evil intentions.

Sampo has known to show up randomly and help us out for seemingly no reason at all. I mean that's basically what he did for all of the belobog trailblazer quest. But it also feels like a weird statement for the ipc to make about sampo (I'm assuming the poster has to do with the ipc considering it involves topaz). I originally thought I'd translate this and find out more whatever loan he took out or debt he owed but found this instead.

Maybe the other half of it provides more context, but I can't seem to find a way to translate it, so that's all the thoughts i can give for now

[glouris]

I do not agree with the notion of characters' gameplay paths not being their 'lore' paths at all.

imo they wouldn't be called 'pathstriders' if the paths we were shown were not correct at all. the way I see it, a person who's personal ideals and actions allign with one path could easily belong to a larger faction that follows another eon as a whole.

excuse the genshin allegory here, but I think hoyo made paths funcion like visions - a character on the path of the hunt could easily be following preservation, like a character with a pyro vision could hail from fontaine. but then also an emanator of nihility could not be something else, like an electro archon could not have a dendro vision.

so, I decided to take a look at (almost) every character and propose some reason for them being assigned their path

Nihility: things losing meaning, falling into fears and hopelessness

Erudition: pursuing or keeping vast amounts of knowledge

Destruction: eradication of the self or what's around you

Hunt: condemning something, leading it towards your judgment 

Preservation: protecting what exists in this moment

Abundance: letting life flourish, continue in the future

Harmony: not letting a single part of the collective to collapse or overpower the other, keeping things ‘whole’, peaceful

if we take, for example, Dr. Ratio - even his gameplay kinda makes sense. he launches follow-up attacks when there are enough debuffs on the enemy - he's eradicating the influence of Nihility. same thing with Acheron.

some reasons I'm thinking off here might be wrong, or there must be much more to think of here, but I'm pretty sure that the gameplay paths are the actual paths of the characters. plus, it's been stated that the pathstriders could change their path, unlike eons and emanators.

[just-space-055]

Here's a not well known but very interesting lore piece:

Seele's scythe is actually from Sampo!

I've seen many talk about Seele's power level and speculate how she can do such things as cutting through bullets, but i have yet to see people mention this fact.

There are many things that don't add up about Seele's powers and it brings many questions; such as can people recieve powers from paths even tho they don't know of their existence? It is made very clear how Belobog didn't know any aeon's existence other than Qlipoth and the underworld cares even less about them.

Now, most people assume the answer to that path question is no (after all nothing so far implies such a thing) and Seele's powers become an enigma. They exist because they simply do, or purely because of her HI3 counterpart.

However i believe her powers DO have an explanation. After all she uses all her powers with her scythe, the very one she got from Sampo.

Knowing Sampo, i wonder if his target for that scythe was Seele all along, and him trying to sell it was just a way of getting her attention. Since selling something like this at a low price seems kind of like a waste.

All those Seele combat lines saying "illusions of the past" and "i'll free you from your chains" seem much more suspicious now huh...

[softringing]

The thing that's so off putting about Sampo is that he's willing to go really far to make others happy, even at the cost of becoming a punching bag. But at the same time, he's been warning us about himself purposely, masked fools and the dangers of becoming too selfish when it comes to elation.

It's obvious he wouldnt harm ordinary people in a serious way but at the same time, we don't know if he's actual hiding evil intentions.

Remember that sampo has dead snake imagery in his design, and usually, snake imagery isn't used on moral characters, it's used on evil, morally grey or manipulative characters.

It's telling you not to trust people who hide things easily behind a disguise but at the same time, Sampo has a "line he won't cross".

He's so paradoxical that it's actually hard to tell what his motive is. I feel like he might have split personalities because of his mask's influence or just him as a very odd and mysterious character.

I went though the trashcan lore (I feel stupid) BC in his event, after you sell items it gives you these random texts and one of them has "Diagonese's Utopia" achievement that you get from searching belebogian trashcans.

I posted this on twitter and my theory revolved around the fact that Sampo's mentality may not be the same as a normal human's.

I always felt that his odd behaviour of acting like a "fool" was genuis. Because the best way to fool someone is to make them believe that YOU ARE the fool. They won't doubt you because in their eyes you're less intelligent or less complex than them.

But when I dug deeper, I realised that Sampo actually ENJOYS being hated. This is where my search through the Belebog trashcans apply.

(some of these are out of order sorry 😔)

I initially thought Sampo was Tatalov, the Garbage King because of Sparkle's portrayal of him in the dream bubble. And as you can see in the above images where there's a story of a trashcan being stabbed by someone they raised (Tatalov/Garbage King), you can link it back to the fact that Sampo MAY have betrayed someone he once loved. "The moment of betrayal" also closely aligns with this!!

"Wind of change" "snake", these elements are all mentioned in the above story of Tatalov stabbing someone--> sampo's wind is element, he has snake imagery!! Should be straight enough to say HE IS TATALOV RIGHT?

Now listen closely, in the DREAM BUBBLE, Shentana (aka Natasha) talked about how Tatalov was once a great ruler who cared about equality and justice (sampo behaviour) but was blinded by "the thing beyond the sky" (stelleron). => Now it's making a reference to cocolia rather than SAMPO. Which DOES NOT ALIGN WITH SAMPO BEING TATALOV/GARBAGE KING and hence the "backstabbing " story gets muddled and confusing.

My theory was that Sampo killed the person that made him (Seppo Illmarinen) according to the Kalevala story, after he realised that no one truly LOVED him for who he is, but rather only his ability to bring wealth and fortune. Hence, he felt vengeful, and decided to kill Illmarinen as a revenge because of how others saw him as an object (maybe including Illmarinen too). But in that story, it's mentioned Tatalov said "you will collapse beside me" to the dying trashcan (Seppo).

That's when I went back and looked at "Garboski" (Koski) from Sparkle's dream bubble. Garboski mentions that Tatalov betrayed them, and sealed them for 10,000 years. Garboski also mentions that he will reward the people who found them with WEALTH (sampo's function in Kalevala) and then he decided to eventually give anyone who found them a painless death. You can clearly see over time that Garboski's mentality went lose. I tried to link Garboski's story of being sealed for 10k years to Tatalov's betrayal but it said 15 years since the dying trashcan hadn't seen their face. That's when everything got far too confusing for me to comprehend and link together but the only thing I was able to TAKE from these stories is that they are both about BETRAYAL.

The consumable above depicts a colorless rose. You can only see it's reds in the reflection on the dagger. Which led me to think-> Sampo's eidolon "the deeper the love the stronger the hate" might refer to the fact that he despises being loved by others because he had lost trust a long time ago from the events that happened to him, how he was betrayed by the people he thought loved him but turned out to be just to use him for their convenience and selfish desires.

Remember that red roses represent passionate love and that Firefly mentions Sampo looks like he'd been training to use daggers all his life. So the symbolism of that consumable might be that Sampo trusts people's hatred more than their love because when you hate something, the hatred is (mostly) sincere. Why would you pretend to hate something you love? Sampo ENJOYS this sincerity.

He hates love because you can always hide things behind it under selfish pretense. Why else would that consumable reflect a red rose 🌹 ONLY on the dagger and not the rest of it? Because as soon as Sampo was betrayed/betrayed someone, it became clear to him/them that their true emotions towards him are HATRED not love. And SAMPO LIKES THAT!! HE LIKES BEING THE FOOL, HE LIKES BEING DESPISED BECAUSE YOU CAN'T DECEIVE HIM AND HURT HIM WITH LOVE.

He uses roses to decorate his packages in the event, also his suitcase and he uses roses to attack in HI3.

He hates love because the more someone loves him the further he will doubt them.

And that's pretty MESSES UP! To have a mentality like this means he you must've gone through some messed up crap, just like how he mentions at the end of his event that he had a "Hot-blooded past". If you didn't know, "hot blooded" usually means feeling complex emotions all at once, like anger, love, hatred, doubt, pain.

The description of the consumable sounds so warm in the begging and suddenly shifts to a tense mood? Did you notice that? It's so paradoxical. So hot-blooded. And it says "that person" so speficially!!

I'm still not sure what to believe about sampo's past, but I'm sure that his idea of love is completely messed up. In HI3, as you fight him during his boss battle, there's a bar called "depth of love", which is UHH WHAT THE HECK?? IT TELLS YOUTHE MORE YOU HURT HIM THE MORE HE LOVES YOU.

In his beta lines that were removed Sampo says something along the lines "Sampo gives all the affection yet never receives anything in return *sigh* but I'm used to it anyway 😃👍"

Ummm?? OKK?? IM SUPPOSED TO BELIEVE HE IS SANE? HE IS MENTALLY STABLE AND UR TYPYCAL CONMAN? NO WAY IM NOT!!

I hope this theory makes sense. I just need everyone to know this man has some screws lose but I love him anyway!

[q-theeccentric]

"acheron and zephyro's fight will be epic" chat i want sampo koski vs asat pramad

[vnarpius]

collab with the homie @femboi-cloud who did the cookie sampo!! it's his new silly hsr oc that suddenly turned into oc x canon :3

go white boy go!!!

+some little doodles

[ikuramachi]

it's actually kinda insane to think about how BAD the sampo fandom wanted him to have some sort of boss fight in hsr (especially after his reveal as a masked fool + that funny bone animation from hoyofair) and a year later we have a sampo boss fight in hi3, wasn't exactly what we asked for but i'll GLADLY take it with pleasure

[m-says-hi]

Hello!

I have more sampo thoughts! Surprisingly, not about the recent event but an old event. Or not even the event itself, but something from after it

The memory bubble you get after Aetherium Wars.

Couple of things about memory bubbles before I bring up Sampo or this particular bubble’s contents. After some (admittedly brief) research on bubbles, I’ve learned they’re created by Memokeepers to preserve memories and are usually stolen from the original memory holder. In the game there are 21 memory bubbles. 20 of them belong to Herta and can be found around the Space Station. The last one is the one from after Aetherium Wars and is found on Jarilo VI.

I haven’t interacted with any of the memory bubbles myself, but I have read through all the dialogue and descriptions on the wiki. The 20 belonging to Herta all seem to put you in the pov of the memory holder. It tells it more like a story, kinda similar to Simulated Universe?

But the Aetherium Wars Bubbles only gives dialogue (very similar to Sampo’s character stories) making us more like an observer and not part of the memory. Unless we’re watching the memory of someone who was watching the conversation, but I feel like there’d be more description of the setting if that were the case.

I could go on about the content of the conversation, but I think we’ve all read through it multiple times. What really caught my attention was the beginning and end dialogue of the bubble.

(taken from the wiki. I haven’t done aetherium wars yet ;-;)

Four things stick out to me right away:

The game/The trailblazer’s thoughts notes this feels different

As I mentioned before, there is no description of the scenery showing up before you, but just two figures. My guess as to why is that this bubble wasn’t created by a stolen memory, but was made by the memory holder (or at least the memory holder was involved in the process). The memory holder being Sampo

2. There’s an implication that this bubble was left on purpose

This only adds to the point above. There’s a strong implication that Sampo left this for the Trailblazer to find. You also get an achievement for finding this bubble called Confessions of the Mask which. That kinda says it all.

But now I have two questions, the first being how? It's not said explicitly, but in a conversation with Herta it's implied that Memory Bubbles are only made by Memokeepers. So, if this was left by Sampo, either he got a memokeeper to help him (extremely possible) or he has the power to do it himself (extremely interesting)

My second question is why? 

Why would he tell us? Why is he telling us in this indirect way? My guess is it has something to do with his mask. The conversation in the bubble mentions Penacony and Sparkle. So,this was probably around the time Sampo started planning to go to Penacony to get his mask. I discussed this with a friend, and she suggested it might even be some sort of warning, which is why it’s done with a memory bubble. 

That sort of reminds me of the recent event, where Sampo spills a lot about the Fools and the Tavern, information that you would only really know as a Fool, but said it in a way that implied he wasn’t a fool. That he heard it from somewhere else, someone else, not that he knew it first hand. I wonder if his mask is sort of.. Making him unstable? (He grew increasingly dark every day) And the 7 day event was another warning. Warning of who he might become when the mask fully takes hold and a warning to not become like him

3. The game/the Trailblazer’s thought recognizes that there are multiple mysterious things about Sampo

Maybe this isn’t as important as I’m making it out to be. After all, we all know something is very Off about Sampo. But the Trailblazer recognizing it feels significant to me. It feels like further confirmation that eventually we will unravel these mysteries. Eventually.

4. “When talking to one who wears a mask, always keep your wits about you.”

This. THIS. This statement has been driving me mad since I first saw it. When I read those words I immediately thought of the translated statement from Topaz’s trailer:

“One who is unaccountably solicitous is hiding evil intentions”

(if you have no idea what I’m talking about, it’s one of my first posts)

The statements are not the same. But they feel so strongly similar, like they go hand in hand. Both are warnings. Both tell you to be careful about people who are not how they appear, people with masks and people who are falsely sincere. Both are talking about Sampo. Looking into this made me realize just how many times we've been warned about Sampo. Half of those times being Sampo himself

Something about it just makes my brain light up with possibilities and I feel like I keep pushing the statements together waiting for something to make sense and explain everything else, but I’ve yet to figure it out. So I’m left here just kind of going insane

But that’s all I have for now! Maybe someone else will have something

[razorblade180]

So I learned Asat is most likely the Ravager in charge of destroying Elation.

Until yesterday I never really thought each one assigned a specific path to ruin, but now that I’m thinking about it, how the heck does one do that with Elation that isn’t simply killing all life!? You can’t systematically remove elation from a society without getting rid of the people for one simple reason: people will find humor in their own despair.

This freak treats life like a joke right down to the last bullet! Aha ascended after watching a mother drop her baby. Sampo would look at Asat’s head and try to sell him a ring. I fear this man might have the hardest task ever. 🤣

[shoezuki]

with the sampo event comin up in hsr i hope we acrually get gepard and sampo interacting like. On Screen. but specifically i want it to last maybe a second and just be gepard tackling sampo into a dumpster or something

[ahaclownery]

Something a bit Strange (its kinda abt Sampo)

Not much of a theory from this yet, but I noticed when playing Hanu's Prison Break, every single loading screen to enter the bubbles was Sampo's. I was like er, could this be a coincidence? But I checked on different accounts, and watched a few YouTube videos, and all of them also had Sampo as their loading screen. It makes me think it's either an error or something the devs intentionally did, as loading screens can be specific for quests to build up hype or drop hints. Maybe Sampo was the supplier for this dream? Tell me what you think abt this in the comments or tags <33

[laseratingfist]

oughhhh okay so im thinking about the knot on so many kalevala covers (hannunvaakuna i found out is the name) which then led to me thinking about swords to plowshares because, well,

it's clearly reused jarilo-vi assets, BUT.... the npcs have different outfits! kalevala specific outfits! non-belobog outfits!!

and that's a modified hannunvaakuna on her skirt!! it's also similar to the knot on sampo's coat.

it's not the same, of course, and perhaps the one on sampo's coat looks more like an angular bowen knot.... also known as a "true love knot" ....!!

i can't remember if any other characters (playable or otherwise) have a similar four cornered knot, but, yknow.... more fuel for finnish sampo + sampo's love motifs

[kuijoon]

If Sparkle changes because of the mask, could it be that the reason Sampo put his mask away for so long is because he didn’t like who he was with it?

He already mentions that he doesn’t like it when people get hurt for laughs and the masks seem to make people more deranged as time goes on, so maybe he was influenced by his own mask but then decided that he was better off without it.

“Sparkle” is obviously a stage name, while “Sampo” seems to be a real one. Maybe he used to have a stage name as well but now uses his real one instead

[rimzieiei]

THE BELL SOUND ???? sampo koski what the hell

[starcurtain]

NO LITERALLY there’s so much worldbuilding potential with humanity evolving differently on different planets….. add space and magic to the mix and there’s an endless sea of possibility…… its so fun just coming up with new explanations for designs and headcanons based on what info we have

Right???

I'm over here like "Is no one gonna talk about how Jade is just straight up using magic?" and "Why is no one making a bigger deal out of the fact that Dan Heng is literally a reptile?" 😂😂

Some Halovians have wings and some don't and nobody's out here coming up with twelve page long scientific treatises on why?!

Normal Star Rail fans: Ruan Mei's creations are so cute!

Me: How does the digestive system in the sentient cake work?

Definitely massively rich in worldbuilding potential; I am constantly itching thinking about the strangeness that these characters must run into every once in a while when their comrades do some spectacularly alien nonsense.

"Aventurine, that's not food--"

"Maybe not to you, but I'm a Sigonian."

[softringing]

been thinking a lot lately about Sampo's 5* design. A part of me REALLY wants his original hair colour to be fully white BC of his little white strands and his eye lashes to also be like that cuz I think it'd make him look gentler??

His downturned eyes is the reason I love him more than any other man in hsr. He just looks like a cat!! If he smiled more often with his eyes open I think the white hair and lashes would make him look so SOFT.

and I wonder what kind of clothes he'll wear. Desperately hoping it's not the generic male design with long coats I'm sick of that.

I want him to like have 3 starts floating on top of his head with a matching earring like his bp icon (has to do with my theory of him being some device to grant wishes)

For the clothes I'm thinking a ringmaster in like the circus? His normal outift already looks like that anyway but it's a little all over the place.

I think a velvet vest and a black shirt under would be nice. Also a mini bowtie. I want him to have a cloak that's like split in half behind his back and looks like the purple-grey fangs of the snake thingy he has on his normal design.

Of course!! Not forgetting short, black gloves and his little eyeshadow. I really do hope his eyes have slit pupils like acheron's so that he resembles a white snake 🐍

AND HIS MASK.... EUGHHH I have like 3 main ideas;

A grey snake mask that covers half of his face

Broken heart mask on his eyes

The mask in sparkle's showtime LC with a little more detail

Hmm, that's basically it. Really wanna hear and see sampo nation's own designs ABT him cuz I feel so starved all the time and have no one to talk to about this irl so I'm just going insane internally.

Here's a messy sketch of the rat I did in a shaky bus <3