The ORIGIN of the Paths | A Honkai: Star Rail Theory

0:00Hello Internet people! Spoiler alert for Honkai:

0:02Star Rail and speculation about upcoming updates. Enjoy!

0:06I analyze things weirdly. I have this space in my head, ok? It’s like a huge,

0:11dim room, as big as a warehouse. And in the room, there’s information. Faces, pictures, locations,

0:16snippets of phrases, all suspended in the air like holograms, connected to each other with glowing

0:21threads. If I pick up one of these fragments and study it, I can see all the connections clearly,

0:26but that’s not theorizing. Sure, I read 90% of the lore, and obsessively catalogue it,

0:30make charts, write scripts, make videos, But the act of theorizing is so much more innate

0:36than that. It just sort of happens. One moment, I’m casually enjoying looking over information,

0:40just, you know, tracing the threads in my head, not even really thinking about it,

0:43and the next it’s like strumming a guitar. The web lights up, and I can feel how a dozen different

0:48pieces of information connect and vibrate in tune and harmonize with each other. It’s like I have

0:53nerve endings in the web. This is what theorizing is for me. 90% of the time, when you see a theory

0:58on my channel, the entire concept and the main points came into being in the span of about 30

1:03seconds. Making videos is just…giving it a form that others can see and appreciate for themselves.

1:08So of course, that’s why it took two months for

1:09me to write this one out. Time for a three part series, baby!!!

1:13But in all seriousness, that is actually the reason, because this video isn’t the result

1:17of a lightning-bolt moment (although I DID come across a couple really good lightning

1:21bolt moments while I was studying). This time I actually challenged myself to dig deeper into

1:25my own assumptions about some of the mechanics behind the world of Star Rail. Looking at the

1:29connections in the web itself instead of just at the information being connected. AND I’m also

1:34laying the groundwork for the next two videos, because in order to understand

1:36the different aeons and how they relate to each other (which are parts 2 and 3),

1:40you first need to understand the paths on a much deeper level than I’ve talked about them before,

1:44if that’s even possible. I’m not trying too hard to convince anyone today,

1:47I just kinda want to talk about it and hopefully have a discussion with you guys and see what you

1:49think in the comments (without leaks, please, especially right now, Hoyo is filing lawsuits).

1:54So with that out of the way, let’s get into part 1 of the Past and Future of the path system.

1:59If this video were “the history of the entire world I guess” this would

2:02be the section at the beginning of the video where we talk not about history,

2:06but about science. Physics, math, and chemistry.

2:08We’re not talking about the origins of the Star Rail Universe yet. We’re just

2:11talking about the origins of the Path System. I have spent SO much time going

2:15over what the paths are, what they mean, what they have in common with each other,

2:18but letting go of my precious philosophies for two seconds, the better questions would

2:22be things like “What are they made of?” “What is their relationship to the aeons?” “Do the

2:26events of the cosmos affect the paths in the same way the paths affect the cosmos?” Well,

2:31before answering, I need to semantically nitpick myself a bit. One thing I’ve repeated over and

2:36over and OVER in the past is that “Paths are Philosophies,” but I may have been a

2:41little bit careless with my choice of words. In my defense, in most situations, they’re so

2:45intertwined that there’s no need to think of them as separate. But since we’re in hair-splitting

2:48university (welcome to class), we’re gonna talk about it, ‘cause there is a difference.

2:52The word “path” is not synonymous with the word “philosophy” like I’ve implied in the past. In

2:56real life as well as in game, a philosophy is a system of thinking that tries to explain the

3:01meaning behind how we experience the world, and answer common questions about life. And yes,

3:06there is a philosophy attached to each path, but the paths themselves are - well they’re called

3:11paths for a reason, but I prefer to think of them as channels or rivers of energy. Path

3:16energy and path philosophy are very connected but strictly speaking, they’re not the same.

3:22My best guess for why specific philosophies get attached to specific energy channels is,

3:26just like in real life, these channels or rivers almost have “personalities” - some are shallow

3:31and wide, some are narrow and deep, choppy and fast-flowing, slow and calm. You get it.

3:36And these characteristics make each path easier or more difficult for people with

3:40certain mindsets and characteristics to attach and draw energy from them.

3:44As for where that energy for the paths themselves come from,

3:47I have a theory. But let’s get one thing out of the way first.

3:50I don’t for one moment believe they came from Nous, at least not in the way that’s been implied.

3:55Zandar tries to say that he is the one who first invented the concept of paths. And I am here to

4:00tell you as someone who STUDIES THIS GAME. *slap Zandar* NO. On a timeline, it is quite simply

4:05impossible - there are at the very least six paths that already existed and had pathstriders before

4:10Zandar created our computerized overlord (I’ll go into more detail about that in the next video).

4:15Thematically, it does NOT match with everything we’ve seen about the concept of erudition. My

4:19best guess is that Zandar invented paths in the same way that Isaac Newton invented gravity. Were

4:24people floating off into space before the apple fell on ol’ Newt’s head? No! But he was the first

4:30one to give it a name and study it. Now, I could get onboard with Nous helping to shape the paths

4:35into what they are today, but not directly. There is a theory floating around that Lygus alludes to,

4:41that the Genius Society themselves are somehow under Nous’s direct control, and Nous,

4:45for lack of a better word, manipulates them into doing specific things as a way to weaponize the

4:50butterfly effect to bring about the creation of *some* of the paths. That kinda also gives

4:56me a thematic ick, cause it starts to deviate away from the concept of Erudition and into the

5:01concept of Finality. There is a possibility that Zandar is the first Emanator that ever Emanated

5:06but if he’s trying to claim any more credit over the path system than that, he is even more of a

5:10delusional megalomaniac than I gave him credit for. Lygus and his cave can go suck an egg.

5:15The only other place we see Nous being painted as the supreme orchestrator of the universe,

5:20it’s much more complicated than that. When Herta is going over the data of the simulated

5:24Nous in SimU, she says “Every step we took were within the simulated Nous' calculations

5:29as if THEY were the architect of the Simulated Universe, and we are data instead.” First off,

5:34you guys know how I feel about the Simulated Universe’s reliability. But second off,

5:39I think we might be ignoring how similar prediction and causality can look. See,

5:43here’s the thing about Nous - You guys know the scepters. They are these containment

5:47fields created by Rubert the second and Amphoreus is inside one. They work by

5:51setting up a scenario with a specific set of variables, then watching the scenario play out,

5:56and if it doesn’t proceed the way they want, they tweak a few things and run it again. And again.

6:00And again and again and again over and over and over. We saw this in 3.4. They’re basically just

6:05infinite possibility generators. Fun fact, they’re ALSO (according to As I’ve Written),

6:10Nous’s neurons. Nous’s brain is made of MILLIONS of these all running simultaneously to find the

6:16answer to any question anyone could possibly ask, and extrapolating out infinite possible futures

6:21and realities to find the one that’s most likely (did I or did I not say Erudition was the path

6:27of possibility?). It’s almost exactly like the Simulated Universe in a way. Except that while

6:31Nous’s expressed goal is to extrapolate forward to find the most likely future, the SimU’s goal is to

6:36extrapolate backwards to find the most likely past (and it has considerably less processing

6:41power). Herta does actually concede that the SimU isn’t perfect, but it still gets most of the broad

6:45strokes about cosmic conflicts and even details about planetary events mostly correct. Imagine

6:51how much closer to actual reality Nous gets with MILLIONS of scepters all operating at the same

6:57time to find answers. Someone who doesn’t have Nous’s perspective, even someone like Herta,

7:01if they see those crazy predictions coming true again and again and again enough times, it’s not

7:06entirely unreasonable to start questioning whether the chicken or the egg came first. Honestly,

7:10to me, this whole discussion feels weird. It’s like, can freewill exist in a universe with a

7:15god that already knows how everything is going to turn out in the end? And there’s terminus again.

7:19I’m starting to think there’s a closer connection between terminus and nous than we first thought.

7:23But to me the most interesting thing about Herta’s statement regarding the Simulated Nous has nothing

7:27to do with who controls what on a universal level. It’s that SimNous seems to have access

7:32to the wider simu data. I still believe they’re not manipulating it, just watching and predicting,

7:38but it does start to beg the question, where is Nous getting their data? The Simulated

7:42universe has been fed a truckload of information about the world to cipher out its conclusions,

7:47everything from privileged information Herta obtained via alliances, and public records,

7:51to probably even scientific data gathered at the space station. A lot of it is incomplete

7:55or flawed, or outright wrong if our own data bank is anything to go by,

7:59but it’s enough for the SimU to make halfway decent predictions (or post-dictions?), and it

8:03appears that the Simulated Nous is able to peak into those calculations as they’re happening. But

8:08then the question is, where is REAL Nous getting their information? What are they peaking in on?

8:13Well this is something we’re told fairly directly. Nous is analyzing the imaginary

8:18energy around them and calculating their predictions based on that. Next question:

8:22WHAT IS IMAGINARY ENERGY? Disclaimer to the HI3 fans, I know some of you are gonna hate this,

8:27but BEAR WITH ME, I’m gonna expand on this theory in just a few minutes.

8:31Imagine you’re looking up at the stars at night. While you’re trying to trace out constellations

8:35and pondering the reason for naming a galaxy after milk, there are photons that have traveled

8:39millions and millions of light years from those stars to your eyes. Those photons are all over the

8:45entire space between the stars and you. But space still appears dark. We don’t see the light itself

8:50unless it hits something and illuminates it. Light itself is invisible. But if we could make

8:55it visible, the entire universe would be FULL of it! That’s sort of what Imaginary Energy is, this

9:00latent, invisible energy that’s everywhere. It’s a nonvisible spectrum of light. It flows through the

9:06entire honkaiverse [It surrounds us, it penetrates us, it binds the galaxy together]. And this by the

9:11way is what we’re referencing with the “Imaginary Tree” - hoyoverse’s Yggdrasil. It’s not a REAL

9:16tree, or maybe it is, the in-universe jury is still out, but it is a visual representation

9:21of how Imaginary energy flows through the multiverse, branching off to create new universes,

9:26each “leaf” forming a new world, and this includes the worlds we visit in Star Rail. So, back to what

9:31we were originally talking about, what Nous is doing as an aeon, is taking Imaginary Energy,

9:36which again is basically data from the multiversal tree, and then analyzing it, understanding it,

9:41and using it to predict the future. When you look at it this way, Nous is barely even predicting.

9:46They’re just observing. It makes me wonder what question they’re trying to answer right

9:50now. Maybe, just like their followers, they’re searching for a possible route forward that’s

9:54different than the choices given to them. Which makes me think maybe Nous will be the one to give

9:58us our way out of the impossible situation on Amphoreus. (again. Terminus keeps showing up.)

10:02NOW. Before we move forward, I’m gonna back up for a moment and acknowledgize a thing. The fact is,

10:08in other circumstances, I might’ve taken what Zandar said, and what Herta said and

10:12probably said “hey look! Two almost completely unrelated people who came to the same conclusion

10:17using different equations? That sounds like proof to me!” I have done this in the past,

10:21this is straight-up one of the formulas I use to try and sort through Fictionologist bunk to

10:26what actually happened in Star Rail’s history and yet in this situation I have taken two

10:30perfectly good pieces of evidence and thrown them out. And I will be completely honest,

10:33I don’t like doing this. BUT there is a reason. The thing is, there actually is

10:38a lot of evidence for a supreme puppetmaster of the path system. It’s just not nous. Unless Hoyo

10:44has done some kind of retcon here, Nous and Zandar are kinda takin’ credit for something

10:48that’s just happening further upstream from them. (And I’ll be very clear. I don’t think they’ve

10:52retconned this. This concept is too incredible and deeply-rooted in their lore to discard)

10:57Let’s back up to our initial questions,

10:58shall we? What are the paths made of and where did they come from?

11:01Well, I sneakily told you the first answer - the paths, all of them, are made of imaginary energy

11:06from the imaginary tree, Path Energy is what Nous is analyzing. But what turns this giant

11:12flood of imaginary energy that’s flowing through the entire universe into paths with distinct

11:17characteristics? Well, as we said, the simplest way to think of Imaginary Energy is light,

11:21right? And what do you get when you break, or should I say refract light? You get a rainbow.

11:27This is where it gets interesting, because one of the concepts associated with the Star Rail

11:31universe as a whole is the “crystal chalice.” We only actually hear it mentioned once,

11:36but it’s referenced at least two other places. The mention is in the opening line of the first

11:41Fable of the Stars - “I dreamed of a ray of light, of a crystal chalice. The light that

11:46shone from that crystal spoke to me: Listen to the parable of the stars.” In Black Swan’s dream,

11:52a ray of light shone through a crystal, therefore becoming a rainbow and that rainbow told her the

11:58parable of the stars, which she tells to us in that video. A video which is ALL ABOUT THE

12:04PATHS. And WHY did it take me this long to realize the paths are a literal rainbow OH MY GOSH. Can I

12:13call this confirmed? Like, as a treat? But the second place we see the crystal chalice is even

12:19more interesting - remember in my reaction to Evernight’s myriad celestia last month, I kept

12:24pointing out the rainbows scattered around her, cause they’re so pretty. But here’s the thing!

12:28Hoyoverse put them there for a reason, because one path above others is actually associated with

12:34Rainbows! It’s REMEMBRANCE! Fuli is described in more than a few places as casting rainbows around

12:41them wherever they go, and we even see it for ourselves in their splash art and the aeon gaze

12:46thing from when we got Remembrance as a playable path. And the reason for this is, Fuli is actually

12:52MADE of crystal! And if you look closely at Fuli’s splash art, do you see the shape that’s being

12:58created here? This is the traditional shape of a chalice. Meaning that the crystal chalice that the

13:04light is shining through to create the paths could be Fuli theirself. Which would mean that Fuli is

13:11the one who created the paths by manipulating the energy of the universe. This makes a lot

13:16of sense for the reasons above, and would ALSO explain why the path of remembrance, when we

13:21see it used in combat, seems to mimic the other paths. It’s not mimicking - it is the SOURCE,

13:27the thing being mimicked, even while somehow still remaining its own path. It also explains something

13:32that puzzled me for a while. Do you remember how Fuli was given such a prominent role there

13:36at the very end of that same Fables about the Stars? Like in a big long video about the paths,

13:42why highlight this one? Why is THIS the one they choose to give the epic music swell to and

13:47literally use as the background for our Chariot of the Gods Astral Express. But THIS makes sense! In

13:52all areas - gameplay, lore depiction, and general fitting into the system, it makes SENSE! Finally!

13:59But there’s one last thing we need to touch on here, cause this is wild.

14:02So Fuli’s made of crystal, but it’s not just any crystal. There is one type of crystal that Fuli

14:07is associated with more than any other, and it’s ICE crystals, but not water ice. It’s crystalized

14:14memoria. You know those purple nodes that we interact with on Amphoreus and when it opens

14:18up we see people looking all crystalline? Yeah, it’s the same thing. In Star rail,

14:22important events sometimes leave energy traces behind in the area they happened as a sort of

14:27vapor called memoria. When these traces come together into something more substantial,

14:31like condensation on the side of a glass, that’s what we call a memory bubble, and we

14:35see those a lot in Penaocny, you can enter them like a dream and look around. But on Amphoreus,

14:39those memories manifest in real life when the memoria vapor freezes and it looks like this! but

14:44it’s pretty much the exact same thing. What I’m getting at is FULI is made of crystallized memoria

14:50too, which means, Fuli isn’t real. The game simultaneously claims Fuli is alive, Fuli is dead,

14:57Fuli got shattered. This is my contribution to that discussion: They are a memory, just like

15:03we were when we died on Amphoreus and were still walking around. So the logical next question is,

15:08whose memory? What memory could be so powerful that the memoria itself ascended to aeonhood?

15:13Well, the most obvious answer is Mythus, which Lalody’s lore went into detail about. And it does

15:18make sense considering how much misinformation exists around Fuli. Another possibility which

15:23I’ve warmed up to. A little bit. Unexpectedly. Over the course of making this video is that

15:28they are Terminus’s memories. If Terminus dies at the beginning of time, then these are the

15:33memories left they left behind that will somehow become “real again” at the end. But I have another

15:38couple possibilities for you. One I’m saving for part three of this series because it requires a

15:43lot of explanation but is really cool. The other is, maybe - just maybe - the memory belongs to

15:49Aha. Hear me out! The masked fools, as I’ve talked about before, have this way of biding their time

15:54and just watching things play out until they intervene and change everything all at once.

15:59Every single fool does this. I’ve been asking myself for a while now, if AHA’s followers are

16:05known for completely changing the playing field in a moment, then because pathstriders tend to

16:10reflect their aeon, what did Aha do to change everything? I don’t have like a timeline on this,

16:15or a clear how and why yet, but I can point to similarities between Aha and Fuli. For one,

16:21they look alike. You’re probably staring at your screen like “huh?” Right now. But just look - aha,

16:26if you haven’t noticed, isn’t the masks. They’re standing behind the masks. See? Dude with their

16:31hands clasped, and a circle on their chest. Now look at Fuli! There’s the circle. Also,

16:34remember I said there’s a third reference to the crystal chalice besides Fuli and the Fables

16:39about the Stars? Yeah, it’s in the elation symbol! I’ve been saying for a year now,

16:43the fools have a more complete view of the universe than anyone else. But what I think

16:47is the most important connection between the two is, Fuli is a collector of memories. Think about

16:53all the Memokeepers we’ve met so far. They all have their specific method of preserving memories.

16:57Black Swan has her deck of cards, March and mr. Reca have cameras, evernight has a scrapbook,

17:02Maybe it’s possible to contain memories in other things like music, or recipes, or contracts or

17:07Grafiti. But Aha is a master of stories. And what better way to preserve memory than with a story?

17:13I don’t know. To me this one just fits. The idea of the crystal chalice, AHA’s notorious cup of

17:20laughter that represents hedonism, being poured out and it’s just the paths inside feels right

17:25somehow. The way Rememberance works gameplay-wise, taking on the attributes of other paths could be

17:30described as “masking,” something very attached to aha. It even explains the odd stories we get

17:36about aha, how they travel from place to place just learning about people. They’ve spent time on

17:40Herta Space Station, The Armed Archeologists, with the Nameless, on Penacony. They go wherever they

17:46can just to take part in good stories. To gather information about how people experience the world.

17:51And those memories are valuable. I feel like this makes sense for them. Although, with the master of

17:56stories, you never can be too sure, can you? And this is where I have to end the video if

18:04I don’t want it to go on for another 12 pages. Don’t worry, I will be doing part two next month

18:08where I talk about how the aeons and paths have evolved over time and how I expect this to go in

18:13the future. I hope you enjoyed this video, and if you do, don’t forget to like and subscribe. I’m

18:18super excited about talking more about the aeons it’s just…a lot to do all at once. I do plan on

18:22releasing more shorts by the way tho. So be on the look out for those. In the meantime, thank

18:26you so much to my channel members this month! You are all so awesome. And don’t forget I will be

18:31streaming the new update, the Amphoreus finale on Thursday the sixth so don’t forget to turn

18:34on notifications if you want to be notified for that. I’m doing a big push to try and reach 50k

18:39followers by the end of the year so be sure to share this around if you want to help with

18:42that. I’ll talk to you all very very soon, and until then all of you Stay Safe, Stay Kind :)