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astrophyta · 3 months ago

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The Identity of Cyrene’s murderer, or the Past, Present, and Eternal Self

Ancient Hymn Trailer — "Of Titans and the Mortal Realms"

(I know we’re not in Penacony anymore, just let me have this).

There’s something interesting happening in Amphoreus. And no, I’m not talking about the eerie parallels between the world’s superficial god-slaying prophecy and the ongoing Aeon-slaying subplot playing out in the universe, or the clandestine Memokeeper who tried to spy on Herta and Nous, or even the mysterious murmurings of Oronyx calling for their “mother.” All of those things, I think, are the secrets about this world that the writers actually care about wrapping in mystery. What I find fascinating is that, to this point, there are just as many things that they evidently do not care about keeping a secret, making only the barest effort, if any, to try and hide the truth.

I think the identity of Cyrene’s killer is a prime example of this. Let me show you what I mean.

SPOILERS: Amphoreus Act I: Heroic Saga of Flame-Chase and Honkai Impact 3rd’s Elysium Everlasting arc (and also parts of the Elysian Realm arc). You have been warned!

Amphoreus’ first act concludes with Kevin Phainon undergoing Nikador’s trial to prove he’s worthy to inherit Strife’s legacy. We know Phainon is unsure of this path, despite his repeated assertions that he’s been waiting for this moment, and that it’s his dream to inherit Nikador’s authority. As of this writing, the outcome of the trial is undecided.

…Except we do know its outcome, because Mydei has already been drip marketed as the heir of the Lance of Fury, two weeks before 3.0 even dropped.

“O Chrysos Heir that seeks the Coreflame of Strife, you must suffer a thousand deaths, be bathed in blood on the path home, and bear the madness of fate alone, for one must slay a god to become one.” (Amphoreus' Saga of Heroes | Mydei)

Not exactly suspenseful for the people engaging with Honkai Star Rail’s social media accounts. What’s more, towards the end of Act I, Mem gives the Trailblazer a storybook called “As I’ve Written” to record their memories of the flame-chase journey and the flame-chasers Chyrsos Heirs. Just like the Titans’ constellations are displayed on a wheel in the Vortex of Genesis, the Chrysos Heirs are represented as icons around a similar constellation wheel after the Trailblazer writes a memory of them into the book. Mydei, unsurprisingly, is occupying the same space as Nikador’s constellation, while Phainon is at the top over the constellation I presume is Kephale’s. Again, this is not exactly a well-guarded secret. All of the marketing for Amphoreus has strongly implied that Kephale is Phainon’s fate, down to the design of Phainon’s eyes. The devs are not even trying to hide this, because it is not supposed to be a secret or point of intrigue in-and-of-itself. In other words, we know the result, but we don’t know how these characters will get there.

Now, spoilers-by-drip-marketing are not a new thing in Honkai Star Rail or in Hoyo games in general (looking at you, Mavuika and Dan Heng Imbibitor Lunae and Wanderer and Robin and–). But that’s not the only example of shit they don’t seem to care about keeping secret in Amphoreus. If you frequent any HSR fan spaces, then surely you’ve seen theories by now about our new friend Mem:

If you haven’t, then here’s the sitch: the current running theory is that Mem is Cyrene, or at least connected to her in some way. Supporting evidence for this is a mix of vibes (Cyrene and Mem’s shared pink aesthetic, similarities between Mem and ELF Elysia’s role in Elysium Everlasting) and concrete hints rooted in the narrative (the memories Mem showed us of a little boy and girl [presumably Phainon and Cyrene] when we first land in Amphoreus, and this part of Nameless Faces), as well as the uncanny resemblance between Mem’s as-yet unnamed voice actors and the performances for Elysia and Cyrene in all languages. I definitely hear Marina Inoue in Mem’s Japanese voice acting.

This is still a fan theory, but there are too many coincidences pointing at least towards its partial truth. When it comes to Mem’s identity, it seems that the writers are far less concerned with players knowing who Mem is, but rather why she is appearing to us in this form.

Cyrene’s only explicit appearance as Cyrene in the story so far occurs in a 2D illustrated cutscene of Phainon’s past towards the end of the first act. Cyrene is sitting in a field in Aedes Elysiae, his homeland, and she says he will be “a hero worshipped by all” based on a card she drew (perhaps some Amphoreus astrology?). But Phainon resists this reading of fate because he has no interest in becoming a hero for the world, which is yet another aspect he shares with Kevin Kaslana.

And that’s when we’re confronted with the horror of Cyrene’s fate — she’s stabbed by an unknown assailant, with golden blood flowing from her wound:

To be honest, I didn’t read too much into this image until this past week while watching Cy Yu’s VODs on Youtube. Because upon seeing it again, I realized I knew that sword. And if you’ve been watching all of the marketing for Amphoreus, then you’ve seen it before too.

It belongs to this dude:

First two images are Mythology Opening, last image is Nameless Faces

That’s what happens when you stare for too long at Anaxa crumbs. Stuff gets burned into your brain that you didn’t even know was there, and it comes roaring to the front when you least expect it. Looking at these other stills of Masked Dude at 0.25x speed, I’m almost positive it’s the same blade.

And yes, this is a tenuous connection at best as is, but hear me out. There’s a lot more to it than just the similar blade shape.

Elysium Everlasting

Cyrene is inarguably a variant of Elysia from Honkai Impact 3rd, and if you’re not familiar with the game then let’s just say she is extremely important in shaping Part 1’s finale. TL;DR, Elysia is from the Previous Era, the generation of humans before Kiana, Mei, and Bronya, who lost to the Honkai and had their civilization destroyed. She was one of the Flamechasers, a group of humans who were modified with the genes of strong Honkai beasts so that they could fight and resist the Honkai in ways other humans could not. Mei learns about this past era by venturing into the Elysian Realm, a simulation composed of every Flamechaser’s memories, where she first meets Elysia’s simulation.

Before the Previous Era lost to the Herrscher of Finality, the real Elysia sacrificed herself so that when she returned to the Honkai, her pure love for humanity would influence the Will of Honkai so that the next Herrscherrs could retain their humanity and the will to fight for its survival rather than its destruction. By doing so, she paved the way for a brighter future that she would never witness herself. I flag this plot point because it almost exactly mirrors what happened with Gnaeus at the end of Act I, and you know how Hoyo loves to foreshadow greater plots through subplots like this:

Gnaeus: I will return to where I came from and become a part of Nikador’s divinity once more. In all likelihood. I will also be consumed by corruption. An inevitable course of action if we hope to end this madness. Castorice: You are willing to…sacrifice yourself for a future you won’t get to witness? Gnaeus: This is my purpose, my origin. I am no mortal and I do not fear death…Even so, will you still weep for me? (Kremnos, Cleanse Thy Rusted Blood (II))

The last memory sync the real Elysia did with the realm happened before she died, so reconstructing the memory of her death in Elysium Everlasting required uniting the memories of those who witnessed it - and one of the people who not only witnessed it, but executed it, was Kevin Kaslana.

This leaves us in an uncomfortable position regarding Cyrene’s death. Could her executioner, (presumably) Masked Dude, actually be Phainon filling a similar role to Kevin's? In Nameless Faces, we see Phainon and Mydei fighting Masked Dude themselves, which would seem to rule this possibility out, nevermind that it seems Cyrene died when they were both children, and that Phainon once sought revenge for having his home ripped away from him. How could he be angry about what happened, and also be the reason it happened? And wouldn’t this direction for Cyrene's death be too close to Elysium Everlasting if it’s true? After all, Shaoji said these characters would have their own fates, separate from some of their variants from Honkai Impact 3rd, right? I think this is still true, but it doesn’t have to rule out the possibility of Masked Dude being “Phainon.”

It’s clear that there’s a lot more to Phainon than meets the eye. “Phainon” is apparently not his true name, and in his recent past he followed a much darker path than the one he’s on now. Kevin also was known to wear a ‘mask’ while he was in MOTH, only rarely revealing his true feelings to the people he was closest to, and even then he kept many of them in the dark, including Su, MEI, and Elysia. Everyone can tell Phainon is going to crash out at some point in Amphoreus, the writing is on the wall re: his lack of a strong will, his surprise that borrowing a Titan’s power actually hurts them, and the little he seems to understand about the true nature of the prophecy he and the other Chrysos Heirs are following.

Castorice: The prophecy gave him a new mission, granting him a new life as a Chrysos Heir. But which is more important to him: his new mission or his desire for revenge?

This part of him, his “past” self that bubbles beneath the surface of his “present” self, may come back to haunt him as he journeys toward Kephale’s Coreflame in more than just a figurative way. It’s not like this is out of the realm of possibility - we’ve already seen how past and present can be superimposed on one another in Amphoreus, interacting in strange ways through tools that construct illusions (perhaps a consequence of both the Erudition and the Remembrance’s influence). Or maybe it’s that Masked Dude is actually split off from Phainon himself, similar to Wonweek and Sunday, or all of Tingyun’s “selves” in A New Venture on the Eighth Dawn.

And speaking of past selves, there’s a pretty fun puzzle throughout Amphoreus called Golden Scapegoat that features a “past” version of the player, which shapes the gameplay into a series of convoluted maneuvers to both avoid your shadow and trick it into creating a path forward for you. If we read this puzzle as an additional clue to the main story’s themes, just as Oronyx’s puzzles involve using shapes to create light and shadow that construct a desired form (Plato’s Allegory of the Cave), then the idea that Masked Dude is a shadow of Phainon has some additional support, though I suppose there’s nothing specifically limiting it to Phainon, either:

"Past self appears as an embodiment of darkness"

However, I did think this passage of the Golden Scapegoat’s Mutterings was interesting given the nature of Elysia’s death, since Kevin knew Elysia wasn’t their enemy and partook in her sacrifice because he wanted to believe in the future she envisioned. Still need to do a close reading of the rest of it, but this is from the 4th part:

There’s also a part of the Mythology Opening trailer that I assume is Masked Dude talking (I could be mistaken, so take this with a massive grain of salt), and while I will say in Japanese it is not clear to me that it’s Satoshi Hino’s voice (I kinda hear it, but it feels delusional), in English to me it has that same uncanny similarity to Joshua Waters’ Phainon that Mem’s voice has to Cyrene’s (compare Phainon’s “even gods can bleed” to the link clip). This is pretty copium evidence, since these similarities could be all in my head, but for what it’s worth…

Phainon and Masked Dude shown right after each other (0:09 vs. 0:10) in Nameless Faces. What did they mean by this?

One last note on this Phainon/Masked Dude theory that I think is interesting. The theory that Phainon has something to do with Nanook is as ubiquitous as the theories about Mem and Cyrene, and while there’s clearly some Nanook symbolism going on in Nameless Faces when Phainon splashes golden blood on his torso, I am hoping Phainon will have a happier ending than Nanook and that he won’t go nearly as far as Kevin did in Honkai Impact 3rd. But if Masked Dude is some other version of Phainon, perhaps he is the allegory for Nanook’s ascent, and Phainon’s journey will represent an “alternative ending.” To put it another way, Kephale is the Worldbearer Titan, who shoulders the fate of Amphoreus and delivers mankind to hope and salvation. So what is the opposite of this role, or its shadow?

The Worldbreaker, who delivers all to Destruction:

While this theory did make more sense with some additional knowledge from Honkai Impact 3rd, the available official material for Amphoreus, including marketing videos like the Mythology Opening and Nameless Faces, is not exactly subtle about who Masked Dude might be. I mean come on, they use very similar visual storytelling with Phainon and Masked Dude in Nameless Faces as they do for Mem and Cyrene in the same video. This leads me to believe that this particular “secret,” as well as Masked Dude’s potential role in Cyrene’s fate, is yet another plot point that the writers don’t care that much about shrouding in mystery. And to me, this indicates that there is something much, much, bigger that they’re concealing through the story of Phainon and Cyrene, the “why” of Amphoreus rather than the “what.”

And that’s all! Hopefully you found this entertaining if nothing else ^_^ What lore have you found in Amphoreus so far?

EDIT: changed a sentence about what elysia's sacrifice would do for the next generation of humans cuz I realized the way I wrote it before was not accurate. ☺️

Director’s cut: