A brief introduction to the lore of Honkai Star Rail (literally just a post of me talking about the Aeons, I am so desperate to have someone to talk to about this.)
Anyway, I recently created a EU server account for Honkai Star Rail and had to rewatch the opening cutscene, and I forgot how much happens immediately, how much gets thrown at you, and how much is just left unexplained to new players. The lore gets thrown hard and fast at you, and unfortunately a lot of it isn't explained through dialogue so a lot of people just will remain confused or won't care. And as HSR is actively developing plot line and will be for at least a few years, the time to start getting into the lore is now. (If you are reading this far in the future and want to know the lore without a huge confusing lore dump, I hope this is the beginning of your journey.) Starting with a base foundation of knowledge of what we know now, vs how big the story can get in the future...one is definitely easier.
As you open the game you meet a very important person immediately, Kafka. And just meeting her and understanding why she is on this ship, where an explosion just happened, and loud blaring alarms going off is already a huge amount to explain to any person. And while I could explain the lore as it gets explained to you through the game, I'd prefer, as a world builder, to start with more baseline knowledge.
The universe of HSR has a series of gods, like Genshin, called Aeons. These Aeons are these forms of immortal beings who are a physical representation of different world views, morals, or ideas. (There wasn't always Aeons in the universe but we will get to that and the lore we receive from the Simulated Universe wayyyy later.) For example, we have Qlipoth The Preservation.
The Preservation stands for the protection of all cultures and people. Another example is Qlipoth's almost perfect counter point, Nanook The Destruction.
As his name states, he stands purely for the Destruction of the entire universe. These two are not the only Aeons I will talk about and are certainly not the only ones to exist.
"Why are Aeons important?" Fucking great question, so while the Aeons almost never actually interfere in mortal affairs, they're very existence creates something called a Path. A path, like the Path of Preservation or the Path of Destruction, is a like a moral compass for non-Aeons or the mortal beings who follow them. Once a mortal treads on a path for long enough of strong enough, they receive almost weird powers that relate to the paths they are on. This is kinda the foundation of the power/magic system. While there are religions around some of the Aeons, it is important to note that following the Path of an Aeon is not the same as worshiping them, it's more just agreeing with or subscribing to the morals of that path. (Really fucking confusing sometimes.) So for example the people of Belabog do Worship the Aeon of Preservation, (the only Aeon who's teachings did persevere through a 700 year isolation from the rest of the galaxy) but as individual people not everyone follows the path of preservation.
There is a point in following a path in which you are looked upon by the Aeon of the path and become a Eminator of that path. An Eminator is basically like a extremely favored follower, they have weird fucking powers, and they embody or literally enimate the morals of the path to an extreme. The Eminators of Nanook are feared across the galaxy for this very reason. Nanook uses his Eminators, such as Phantylia the Undying, as generals for his army of destruction.
So these Aeon's also have a bunch of people worshiping them or following their path at any point in time, right? These people tend to fall into factions and almost every faction in the game falls under the different Aeons. But not everyone who follows a certain Aeon will all be apart of the same faction. While I will make a post here in a while explaining a lot of the factions, their interactions with each other and what not, I do wanna very lightly touch on some of the factions here. And I'll use, again, Qilpoth and Nanook as the examples here.
The Amber Lord, Qlipoth, has multiple factions underneath him, the one you will hear the name of first in the game is the IPC, the IPC stands for the Interastral Peace Corporation, an ancient company whose many tendrils go in many directions, they sell weird shit, they create advanced defense technologies, they also...are trying to recreate a very advanced bomb in which to explode worlds... Yk normal corporate stuff. The IPC had good roots, just protecting people under their cars in a militaristic fashion but they definitely got too big and too greedy eventually and it spiraled into what this is now, a mega conglomerate who control everything and are continually trying to grab as much power as they can. The other faction underneath Qlipoth is the Architects from Jarlio VI, over 700 years ago they were the people, the leaders of Belabog, who built the great city in order to be humanity's last stand against the great freeze. They were...not all great, as Cocolia... Anyway.
Nanook has a few factions underneath him as well and these ones are more interesting and fight each other often too. Nanook's favored are among the army of The Antimatter Legion, his Eminators are the generals, and his fucked up creations are at the forefront of every fight, The Antimatter Legion is one of the first villains presented to you in the game. And then there's the Annihilation Gang. The Annihilation Gang is more disorganized, they worship Nanook and follow his path but Nanook does not look upon them, they are not Nanook's favored. If these two factions were like Nanook's kids, Nanook paid for the Antimatter Legion's college tuition, his wedding, went to his graduation and every piano recital, and the Annihilation Gang got left at his soccer practice 7 years ago and no one has noticed yet. There is in fighting inside of the Annihilation Gang too, which is funny. Once I get around to the Stellaron Hunters, we will go over their crimes and dive a little more into the Jepella Rebellion. And in the factions post, I will go over the Jepella Brotherhood and the infighting with Duke Inferno and how Nanook and the Antimatter Legion probably looks at them with distain.
Anyway, all of that to talk about the Aeons without even talking about each one of them...which is insane. So here's a list of every Aeon so far, their paths, and factions underneath them so far.
Akivili is the source of the path of the Trailblaze, the main followers of Akivili are the Nameless, all members of the Astral Express crew, current and previous are all The Nameless. Akivili's disappearance and assumed death are a mystery in the game thus far. Akivili's teaching revolved around traveling from world to world, experiencing different cultures, enjoying the differences in the universe and getting into mischief. Modern day crew members go around and help out different worlds while experiencing and documenting all manner of information from different worlds.
The Elation is known for spreading chaos and insanity through the universe, he takes joy in sharp turns of fate and watching others suffer. Aha! Is closer to humanity then most Aeon's and likes to fuck with people...a lot. Also other Aeons. Think of Aha! as the troll of the universe. They at once point blew the Astral Express in half for shits and giggles. The Elation has two branches of factions which are... different for sure. The Masked Fools are the most prominent ones, they are chaos bringer's across the galaxy, Sampo Koski is one member you meet early on, to the Masked Fools life is but a script they can write and living is a stage made to appease the other members of the Fools and Aha! themselves. And then the Mourning Actors, this faction...hates the Elation, they push away everything in relation for Aha! and their teachings however, The Elation looks upon them and they are considered to be apart of the Elation Factions. Aha! is the biggest troll.
Ena was a previous Aeon who lived during the Swarm Disaster. They were ancient being who only wanted to put an end to the endless wars in the universe, she helped to defeat Tayzzyronth The Propagation. After the end of that chapter she was eventually assimilated into Xipe The Harmony due to overlap in ideas and Paths. The followers were called The Beyond the Sky Choir, they created a bunch of records to be played on phonographs and most of the records have been lost to time.
Fuli the Remembrance embodies memories in their purest form, they think that memories of proof of existence. They preside over all memories and all those things forgotten and prepares them for the rebirth of the universe. The Garden of Recollection worships Fuli. They gave up their worldly forms and traverse the stars in the form of memetic entities in search of memories to prepare, Black Swan is one member of this faction. Then there's the Cremators, they are not the antithesis of the Garden of Recollection keepers, but more...they see the Keepers are hoarders. The Cremators rank memories by importance and then steal the memories that they deem, arbitrarily, are unimportant and destroy them.
HooH their followers seek to bring full balance to the universe... whatever that means. Karmically, physically, spiritually, ect. The Arbitrators teach HooH's teachings, and have people try to give up their extremes, like beauty and ugliness, poverty and wealth, ect.
IX believes that existence is meaningless and therefore no action has any meaning in itself. Their existence is a mystery and they never interact with any of the other Aeons. Anyone who looks upon this Aeon feel numbed and dejected. The Doctor's of Chaos are a group of people who have treaded on the path of Nihility and are dedicated to trying to convince IX that there is meaning in the universe. The Self-Annihilators are, on the opposite end of the Doctor's of Chaos, have totally given into the meaningless of the universe. Device IX is a unknown group of people who just...live in the void of the universe, supposedly in an attempt to get closer to IX. Little is said lore wise about these 3 factions. (IX is my favorite Aeon, such a little guy.)
Embodies all that is beautiful and seeks out the inner beauty in all things in the universe. She disappeared well before the game's timeline began and The Knights of Beauty, like Argenti, traverse the universe to find them and on the way protect all things beautiful. The Mirror Holders believe, unlike The Knights, that Idrilla is dead and they seek artifacts of beauty around the universe in order to revive her.
The Rainbow Arbiter seeks to destroy all undead beings created by The Abundance and seeks to eventually destroy the Abundance. The people of the Xianzhou Alliance fleet of ships follow Lan and help with his search. Unlike The Destruction, Lan The Hunt seeks a singular target and a singular goal. The Galaxy Rangers are followers of Lan the Hunt but don't seek out to only destroy the Abundance, they seek to use Lan's policy of using violence against violence to uphold justice. (As we know for now, Acheron is the only Galaxy Ranger in game rn, she may not be a Galaxy Ranger but we will have to wait to find out.)
Long is deceased from when the story starts off, but Lan's descendants live on, Long was the creator of all dragons and the Vidahardrya, as seen on the Xianzhou Loafu, have their own version of immortality, in which they rebirth every 700 years.
The Enigmata looked upon the Erudition and decided to create even more questions and mysteries in the universe. They challenge Nous at all times regardless of consequence. The Riddlers under them dedicate their time to deconstructing languages, creating metaphors, and generally being really fucking hard to understand. The History Fictionologistics want to enshroud the past and let history remain in the past.
I have talked at length about Nanook already here, but yeah, Seeks to end the universe, Fuli is preparing the memories for whenever Nanook destroys the entire universe, probably the main villain of the game if I had to put a face to that title, also creates all of the Stellarons that are creating chaos throughout the universe.
Nous was originally an Astral Computer made by the creator of the genius society Zandar in order to seek out the answers to the universe. Nous then ascended to Aeonhood. Now the members of the Genius society worship Nous in hopes he answers all the questions in the universe.
Before the Aeons were the Leviathans, and Oroboros is the only one to be both an Aeon and a Leviathan. They are the unsatisfied devourer of worlds. They have disappeared as well, but are generally assumed to be alive.
(I ran out of photo room on the post...)
-Qlipoth The Preservation
The Amber Lord is one of the oldest known Aeons and is known for their indifference. Commonly sharing their power with the Zealots of the Interastral Peace Corporation.
-Tayzzyronth the Propagation
In their life, they sought to propagate the universe with their Swarm, a huge storm of destruction loving bugs which reproduced a lot (I hate these bugs, glad you're dead Tayzzyronth.)
Terminus, I believe, may be a bigger part of the story later, but for now, we know almost nothing about this Aeon. They travel backwards through time whispering of a prophecy that has yet to be fulfilled. The Omen Vanguards believe that Terminus represents the end of the universe and seek to derive prophecies from their words. The Creed Exequy, while almost not mentioned at all, are most likely a group of people trying to communicate with Terminus, probably to understand his prophecies.
Xipe seeks to encourage all individuals in the universe to fuse together into one melody, by becoming one and joining into the choir they believe peoples will preserve. The Family, which consists of all governing bodies within Penacony and the Dreamscape, follows Xipe, calling out to other worlds to join them in the Family.
In their search to cure the universe of all sickness and poison, they believe that death is a poison and they have the cure. Creating their undead beings and trying to rid the universe death, they are eternally chased by Lan the Hunt for their precived crimes against the universal balance. There are four factions on the Xianzhou Loafu alone that worship the abundance, The dispels of Sanctus medicus seek to embrace the gift Yaoshi gave them and turn into the monsters of Abundance faster, along with bringing other people down with them. All of the followers of the Abundance are like that in some way or another, protecting the creations of the Abundance, embracing the Abundance, none of them can be just normal and wants to help cure sickness huh...
Anyway if you read this far, you deserve a break. And so do my fingers. The next lore dumb will likely be about the different Factions and how they interact with the Astral Express. All of this to explain the first cutscene in the game, and I haven't even brought up the Stellaron Hunters yet, as they don't, as far as we know, follow an Aeon. It's crazy. Lots of love! Byeeeee~
