so it turns out that skirk's banner weapon is a prophet trying to talk her peers ("brothers and sisters" as in comrades-in-arms) into rebelling against the government celestia.

more precisely, the prophet encourages her audience of four (i'll speculate on who they could be & thus identify a likely speaker) to do the following things:

"Cast it all aside, set it at naught, drench your wings in filth — let the love that blazes in our breasts burst forth." (QUIT YOUR JOB)

"Hunger, thirst, yearn, desire! Entrust the world to those who live in it — let the nations' glory exceed that of the heavens." (FIND A HOBBY/MAKE MORTAL FRIENDS)

"Sing and rejoice! Bestow upon humanity authority — let the lances of lunar light pierce the creator's delusions." (GIVE THE HUMANS INDEPEDENCE)

"Reach for that daybreak pristine, where the nations need beg for leave to live no longer!" (STOP LETTING GOD PUSH YOU AROUND)

"Lift up your eyes to the radiant daystars, let me guide us unto new skies." (HELP ME OVERTHROW GOD + more traveler-is-lucifer foreshadowing for the collection)

this is a god (the speaker) telling other gods (their audience) to rebel against God but, since this is genshin impact, this... doesn't actually narrow things down much.

what does narrow things are the lines immediately before the prophecies ("you who have submitted to the primordial master") and the line after the prophecies ("beg, plead, and sacrifice — not one of these shall loosen the bonds about your necks"): the gifting of the gnoses by celestia and venti's view of his own gnosis (which seems shared by the speaker, the tsaritsa, and by zhongli).

THE PROPHECIES

"One of us shall wander beneath moonless night, drinking a sea of tears in futility for kin who will not return." MORAX (guizhong, marchoscius, 3/5 and soon 4/5 of the vigilant yaksha, azhdaha, seagazer, skybracer, etc)

"Another shall trudge across gilded sands, never to comprehend scarlet sincerity or ardent admiration." RUKKHADEVATA (al-ahmar, nabu malikata)

"Still another shall shrink into the dark, into bone-piercing hostility, until the promised tides arise to play out one final melody." EGERIA, through Focalor (focalor was to egeria what nahida is to rukkhadevata: a segment created during the cataclysm 500yrs ago, to act as a successor in the event of their death)

"And still another shall wander ever, in dreams solely to journey, awaiting an encounter in a stagnant, foreign land." BARBATOS? (he fell asleep to heal his injuries, some of his dialogue with traveler implies that traveler has forgotten him & the 5.8 trailer places him in proximity to the mare jivari: did venti meet the traveler or their twin 500yrs ago? did venti locate & move the traveler's stasis cube from, say, the mare jivari to that cove in mondstadt?)

BA'AL isn't mentioned: this places the speech after her death but before the archons left khaenri'ah.

(no bearer of the name HARBORYM was able to leave natlan prior to mavuika's archon quest)

(the tsaritsa is the speaker)

I’ve been wondering what exactly is the role of a Gnosis in the first place. The Tsaritsa clearly thinks they’re important, since she’s going around gathering them from all the other Archons, but the consequences we see from them being taken away is pretty minimal. 

From the moment Venti got his Gnosis stolen, we’re led to believe that the Gnosis is related to his Archon status and somehow pretty important. Yet also, with each new Archon, the importance of the Gnosis seems to diminish more and more. 

Venti seemed at least a little injured when his Gnosis got taken, but there was nothing permanent. He didn’t randomly turn back into a wind spirit or lose his ability to control Anemo. Zhongli willingly gave his away, and the only consequence for him was not being able to craft infinite amounts of Mora. Ei showed us that Archons don’t even need a Gnosis to rule, since she gave hers away hundreds of years ago already. It also seems to not impact her power level that much, seeing that she still has insane abilities even without a Gnosis. 

So if Gnoses don’t seem to really be that impactful, why does the Tsaritsa still want them?

Venti says at the end of the Monstadt quest that Gnoses resonate directly with Celestia, and looking at the conversation with Yae, Paimon says that the Gnoses are what keep Archons connected with Celestia. 

So from these conversations what we have so far is that Gnoses were possibly given to Archons by Celestia, and they’re what keeps them connected to that higher level of power. This might be how Celestia ordered them all to destroy Khaenri'ah. But Gnoses don’t grant the Archons their status as Archons, as seen with Ei and possibly even Venti, since Mondstadt still worships Barbatos. Archon status likely stems from what the people think of you. Obviously the people don’t know about Gnoses so they can’t tell the difference, but given that Celestia still let Ei rule as an Archon without a Gnosis, they probably couldn’t care less who was worshipping who either, as long as they’re worshipping someone who follows the Heavenly Principles. 

This also brings the question then, how come Inazuma wasn’t struck down for severing ties with Celestia? Ei outright gave up her Gnosis in defiance of that connection. The answer lies in the Heavenly Principles, which I believe was first mentioned outright in the Inazuma quest, but the Chinese term (天理) was used several times before already, just mistranslated in EN into things like “natural order” or “the divine”. Although since 天理 is an actual Chinese term that refers to things like natural order, this could just be a coincidence, but I like to think it better contextualizes a lot of things previously said if it does actually refer to Heavenly Principles every time.

So Ei doesn’t like Celestia, but since she doesn’t outright go against the Heavenly Principles like Khaenri'ah did, Celestia leaves Inazuma alone. Most likely the Heavenly Principles contain something about not progressing without the gods, or not allowing your nation to develop to a certain extent, but nothing about just disliking Celestia.

And speaking of progress, who else do we know is progressing a lot? Snezhnaya. It’s stated by Venti that their military is the strongest out of the seven nations, and the Fatui we fight have very technologically advanced weapons, like water/ice cannons and rifles that other nations don’t use. The Tsaritsa also is the only Archon that has the ability to manufacture Delusions. She’s also running around collecting Gnoses, so why hasn’t Celestia struck her down yet? She’s defying the gods almost even more than Khaenri'ah did, but nothing bad has happened to her so far.

Then like Ei, the Tsaritsa’s actions must not outright be against this Heavenly Principles. She saw how Khaenri'ah was taken down just for allowing progress, and she’s seen how her own nation might be following that path soon. Thus in order to prevent that, she has figured out a legal way to challenge Celestia that won’t get her people killed. The way that she’s battling against Celestia must be somehow legitimate and allowed in their eyes, like how Ei will allow a duel between her and an opponent if they wish to challenge her.

Going back to the Gnoses, which are the Archons’ connection to Celestia, perhaps this is the Tsaritsa’s legal method of rebelling. If you’ve watched No Game No Life, you know that this has something similar, where if someone gathers all the sixteen races’ chess pieces, they have the right to challenge Tet, the god of the world.

Similarly, the Tsaritsa isn’t collecting Gnoses for power-- we already know that the Gnoses don’t contribute much towards power level. Instead, she’s collecting them to earn the right to challenge the gods. Once all the seven Archons’ connections to Celestia are gathered, she can formally challenge Celestia without bringing destruction on her nation. 

so two things that we should have flagged as contradictions:

1. out of the seven archons who won some 2000 years ago in the archon war, only two remain of the original seven

2. for inazumans, their archon has always been the raiden shogun. the god of eternity, baal.

the first point made a lot of people doubt that the baal we meet was the “first” electro archon so to speak, with many thinking it might have been yae since she spoke casually w morax and was “an old friend.” and funnily enough, they were half right! ei isn’t the original archon, but she did win the archon war with her twin, makoto. technically she does qualify, much like andrius. and like andrius, she rejects the status of archon and worked in the shadows.

ei inherits the role of electro archon when makoto dies. beelzebub becomes baal. the electro archon remains eternal.

now this is interesting because it ties up to another question i’ve been pondering about: the role of the gnosis in “archon-hood.” yae reveals one very crucial thing: the gnosis wasn’t with ei at all. when ei sought eternity in the plane of euthymia, she gave the gnosis to yae for safe keeping. this implies two things:

1. the gnosis need not be on (or? inside? that was kind of implied when la signora stole venti’s gnosis lmao) the archon’s person to work

2. the loss of a gnosis doesn’t really mean the loss of an archon

the second point is doubly interesting to me bc it implies morax would have still been the geo archon without it. he needed a public spectacle (i.e. faking his own death) to officially renounce his title and live alongside his people as the funeral parlour consultant zhongli. the same thing with venti, actually. barbatos is still the anemo archon, whether or not he has it or has even been seen in mondstadt lmao.

all the archons have kind of implied the gnosis is generally useless to them. they are still capable of using their elemental powers to an extent without it. arguably, they’re still some of the most powerful beings in teyvat (zhongli has enough power in him to defeat azdhaha, after all). we’re not sure if this means that they can’t grant new visions anymore, though.

which brings me to my next question: what does the tsaritsa want with the gnosis? it’s not to incapacitate them, as they’re still powerful enough as is. and stealing it certainly isn’t to kill them. the gnosis acted as a sort of direct line to celestia once upon a dream, but venti makes it clear that may not be the case now.

now, the latter is exciting to consider! because we’ve already established the possibility that losing your gnosis means losing your archon seat but it doesn’t explain how fast (or what even exactly) the process of filling that archon seat goes. but IF the new archon is born when the previous ones die, there’s a lot of loopholey things to think about! if the Tsaritsa’s goal, actually, is to usher in a new age of archons, leaving Morax and Barabatos as they are would be unacceptable. unless taking the gnosis is actually a veryyyyy slow assassination attempt, i don’t think the Tsaritsa would leave their deaths to chance. 🧐

though honestly the real reason for this post was to talk about the dendro archon, i wanna think that the lore we’ll get once we reach sumeru is related to the succession process of the archons. especially since the god of wisdom doesn’t seem to... uhh... value conventional wisdom at all LOL

screenshots below lmao i’m on mobile and have no idea how this works sry.

Keeping it below the line cause it might be kinda long