#celestia lore

RONOVA

she's named for RONOVÉ, a marquis of hell in the ars goetia, or RONEVE in the pseudomonarchia daemonum.

lowkey hilarious that SHE'S the "sane" one of the group (would've thought istaroth was but she did lowkey seem depressed so... valid)

her design feels so familiar?? i swear i've seen something like her costume it in a hoyo game before but the perpetual same-face is unhelpful here. a stigmata, maybe? or an awaken i noped out of saving to my lore notes.

she does kind of give me luna (vampire AU theresa) vibes? it would make sense if nahida & the shades were ALL kallen variants. the heavenly principles being a kallen prime would be cool as heck, given her plot-defining fridging in HI3.

ISTAROTH

it's Known across the fandom that she's another Babylonian god assimilated into the Abrahamic bible, right? she's an ISHTAR variant

she's listed as ASTAROTH, a duke of hell, in the [fake king demon] codex but doesn't appear in the ars goetia.

istaroth has been depicted as one of the more "sympathetic" shades, having had dual rule with Barbatos in Mondstadt for a time, and having helped out with Shogun Makoto's environmental remediation project.

her being involved with both proto-watatsumi AND shogun makoto was a good sign of her being semi-decent, as far as divine authorities go. the restrictions on her aid seem to have worn at her by the present say.

she reminds me of perse's virgo awaken & that design was vaguely recycled into HI3 as serapaeum. if so, girl's gotten more OP with every crossover.

NABERIUS/RHINEDOTTIR

i figured that hoyo wouldn't allow a design opportunity like a celestial shade be killed off offscreen so easily & this was definitely the 2nd gayest way for the "gold ate an angel" plotline to play out.

(does this make naberius albedo's new stepmom)

not sure if their current look is a mix of both characters or is primarily rhinedottir. i would feel vindicated about deducing rhinedottir would be an alberich expie but that's not saying much when they had to completely retool her costuming (HG2's alberich had a generic schoolgirl outfit: decidedly incompatible with the genshin aesthetic).

that + gold's eyes are gold, not green like her HG2 counterpart (who is herself a conflation of 3 different Nibelungen characters).

albedo's mom resembles albedo and no one is surprised

orite and Naberius is another name from the ars goetia. she's a marquis like roneve.

ASMODAY

another duke of hell! in the ars goetia, anyway, where she is or is conflated with ASMODEUS. an asmoday spelling does appear in the livre de esperitz but as a king, not a duke.

(it's hard to tell if they're meant to be the same demon or not: none of this is "official" bible canon. it's basically key of solomon fanlore tbh. that + english didn't have official spellings yet so names could vary even within one text.)

i think asmoday is another cameo god from a historically local religion but can't really be bothered figuring out who they were based on

asmoday is 100% kiana kaslana in herrscher of void mode. would be cool if the "new master" she's supposedly betraying the heavenly principles with is a sirin expie. it's not a raiden mei one, at least.

(kind of still hoping that she & raiden makoto were a thing and that makoto's death prompted asmoday's excessive force as teyvat border patrol)

other than ronova's overly detailed boob shading, i loved these designs for teyvat's shades. their little halos! the hair as pseudo-veils + rhinedottir's actual veil (more of a cloak but shhh)! could use more heads and body mass but cute anime girls ARE easier to cosplay as!

i also enjoyed seeing pierro being vague as hell in celestia's general direction. very menacing. very righteous. very cool! zero new info from him. fantastic storytelling tbh.

(it also feeds into my "pierro is a siegfried variant" theory)

i'm interested to look more into how each shade could be a kallen variant! would that make the heavenly principles a kallen prime? ronova as luna!theresa; istaroth as overseer!theresa; naberius as bianka (not technically a kallen lol); asmoday as HoV!kiana... and, ofc, nahida as principal!theresa and paimon as a "smol" theresa!

lol what if paimon is god

just chilling out with the local lucifer expie and living her best life. she's befriended at least 2½ dragons! could be a path to inter-species reconciliation??

the shade designs have given me hope around any moon sister face reveals: everyone's suffering from genshin-typical same-face but the shades ARE very celestial looking.

Dragonspine: The nail is broken into multiple pieces, and the land around is like a pit. This would make sense for the surrounding area to look like this. I like to think of the nail here as like a meteorite. When a meteorite hits the ground, it would make a dent on the ground it lands on IF it was large enough. Meteorites also never land on the Earth while being very large. Most meteorites that land only have 5% of the original remaining, so it would be rare to document something large. This fits regarding the state of the Dragonspine nail. The nail landed onto Dragonspine, but ended up breaking into smaller pieces on impact.

The Chasm: The nail in The Chasm is a bit different. This nail is completely intact and underground, but we don't know why this is. We're told that on the surface of the Chasm, Morax fought a battle where he used the stone pillars that are there to this day, so one would assume that the surface of the Chasm looks the way it does because of that. However, the pillars seem to be sticking in a general diagonal direction, and they don't really face a certain way. Meaning that these pillars are the result of the battle Morax fought, but not how the Chasm looks. Compared to the pillars, there are a multitude of cliffs that all face the same way, almost like they're rotating as well. Not to mention the entrance to the Underground Mines of The Chasm are in the very center of this rotation. The best way I can put this is that the surface if The Chasm looks like a hurricane. A hurricane's spin and direction are caused by the Coriolis Effect, which causes the path of fluids — everything from particles in the air to currents in the ocean — to curve as they travel across and over Earth's surfaces. But what would cause land to look the way it does. The nail in The Chasm was likely used like a drill compared to the nail on Dragonspine. This would perfectly explain why the Chasm looks this way as well as the nail being underground. The surface of The Chasm is the hurricane, and the entryway to the Underground mines is the eye of the hurricane. The eye being where the nail was placed, and when the nail was used as a drill, causing the surface to look like a hurricane. This would also explain why the Ancient City in the Chasm is upside down, since it would only be upside down if it WAS on the surface and drilled underground. However, that's a different subject.

What's also important is that both of these nails are located where ancient and forgotten cities are.

So now we can tell how each nail was used, but how do we tell which nail was used when? Well, we can't tell EXACTLY when each nail was used, but we might be able to know which nail was used before the other. Given how the first nail was dropped onto Dragonspine and broke on impact, I doubt Celestia would want to make the mistake of one of their pillars breaking again. So, they used the nail in The Chasm as a drill instead. This is only just a theory though, and there's really no evidence to back it up.

We also want to know WHY the nails were dropped where they were. For this, we want to take a look at the books left in the ruins of Enkanomiya, the ruins on Dragonspine, and the architecture of both Enkanomiya and the city in The Chasm, The books in Enkanomiya, made by the scribe of Istaroth, talking about the Primordial one and The Second Who Came, and when the Traveller and their Twin arrived to Teyvat.

The Primordial One and The Scribe of Istaroth: The Scribe wrote about the Primordial one, a god from another world theorized to be Teyvat's creator and fought a 40-year war against the Seven Sovereigns. The Primordial One also seemed to be pretty benevolent towards humans. Then the Second Who Came appeared and restarted the long-ended war. After the war, The Enkanomiyans tried to get back onto the surface. Unfortunately, their way was blocked, and The Scribe believed that the Primordial One sealed them in the underground, with only Istaroth responding to their cries. This seems like pretty unusual behavior for a god such as the Primordial one who views humanity so highly.

The Ruins in Dragonspine: I forget the name of it, but there is a specific claymore you can obtain by doing a quest in Dragonspine. In the room where you obtain the claymore, there 2 different paintings, 2 painings of each being on 2 of the walls. The first painting most likely depicts the Primordial One and Humanity, and the other seems to depict Celestia. In the painting, Celestia is depicted as a floating island in the sky. But we don't know if this is Celestia for sure, because what could be depicted is JUST the island or Celestia in it's entirety.

The Architecture of Enkanomiya and the city in The Chasm: I the second Traveller Archon Quest, Dainsleif points out that the Architecture of Enkanomiya is pretty much the same as the Architecture of Khaenri'ah, except the city in The Chasm is upside down. We also know from Ancient books in Enkanomiya that Teyvat was just one big civiliation with one culture, which ended uo changing after the war between The Primordial One and The Second Who Came. During this war, Enkanomiya fell into where it is today.

We also need to take into account the first cutscene of the game. This cutscene takes place during the destruction of Khaenri'ah, and the Sustainer of Heavenly Principles states; "The arrogation of mankind ends now." This could hint as to why Celestia dropped the nails.