#rather aged notes

DISCLAIMER: “Quick and dirty” does not mean quick, but rather: half-baked. Still thinking. Feedback welcome, thoughts and contradictions more than appreciated.

Now, a lot happened in the final installment of the Archon Quest, but I want to focus on what was happening around Haypasia and attempt to connect her value to the Fatui (or at least, to Dottore) back to some events related to Scaramouche.

Some Archon Quest Recap

Dehya and the Traveler met up with Tighnari at Pardis Dhyai to discuss Dottore’s whereabouts so that they might successfully complete their objective of removing him from the larger equation of their plan to rescue Nahida. There, Tighnari divulges that Dottore requested that Haypasia’s care be transferred to him so that he might take her back to Snezhnaya:

Tighnari: Hmph... so you mean, you're leaving this place soon?

The Doctor: Indeed. Otherwise, we could have perhaps talked a little more.

The Doctor: I was just about to set out when I remembered something important. To that end, I made a final trip to Pardis Dhyai.

Tighnari refuses, and Dottore backs down - he give the illusion that he has abandoned this endeavor and leaves him with this chilling message:

The Doctor: Under normal circumstances, I wouldn't just let you off the hook like this, but unfortunately, I'm in a hurry today — what with Her most noble Majesty, the Tsaritsa, calling for our return.

The Doctor: Luckily, there is still some time left for me to take care of everything before I leave.

The Doctor: It's just as the Akademiya said — you're a responsible and gifted scholar. Sadly, even with all of that, you're still lacking a bit of shrewdness.

The Doctor: And that's also why people like you can never realize that sooner or later, everyone must pay the price for what they've learned.

After catching up to Dottore’s segment in Port Ormos, Dehya speculates as to why he’s taken an interest in Haypasia in the first place:

Dehya: They might be after Haypasia. Let's get back to Pardis Dhyai!

Paimon: Huh? What do you mean?

Traveler: I just remembered...

Traveler: Haypasia once connected her consciousness to The Balladeer...

Dehya: I'm afraid that she's seen something that she wasn't supposed to see. If I were the Fatui, I would also try to take her away. And if I couldn't...

Paimon: Oh no! Are you saying they're going to kill her!?

Dehya: Hmm. Maybe the Fatui want to cover up some secret of The Balladeer? Is that why they tried to seize Haypasia?

And as we see, the Fatui were serious about this pursuit. The seemingly endless waves of assault the Traveler met with back at Pardis Dhyai was only thwarted by Scaramouche’s thunderous temper tantrum. Though they were not able to make good on their intent, the risk Haypasia posed to them was an important loose end to tie before leaving Sumeru.

What exactly that risk is, I do not know. We can’t be sure that The “Divine” Will is a complete account of what Haypasia saw by connecting to Scaramouche’s consciousness - at first glance, there’s nothing about this cutscene that should implicate the Fatui at all. The question remains - why was Dottore concerned with Haypasia’s connection to Scaramouche’s consciousness? Why would he want to remove her from Sumeru because of it?

I am choosing to take Dehya’s and the Traveler’s speculations at face value here because I think there is sufficient previous evidence to suggest that this dialogue is not a red herring, but in fact a set up for what will be covered in patch 3.3 either in a story quest for Scaramouche (sorry, Wanderer) or in his character lore. Knock on wood, I am tired of the loose ends with this dude.

The Palace, Dyed in Black

Let’s back up a little bit, because this is not the first time that we’ve seen this behavior relating to Scaramouche’s past. You will recall if you played the Irodori Festival in patch 2.6 that Ayato disclosed to the Traveler something very peculiar - a “Fatui spy” attempted to rob the warehouse containing the Kaedehara Clan’s belongings, the very same warehouse where we found Kaedehara Yoshinori’s secret letter divulging the truth about the case of the Eccentric and the Raiden Gokaden’s demise less than one hundred years prior to the start of the game.

At the time, I was convinced that the attempted robbery had to have been Scaramouche’s doing, based on the flimsy evidence that he would be concerned with the contents of that letter - namely, that Kunikuzushi had shown weakness and spared someone, a member of the Niwa Clan. And no evidence could exist in this world that he had ever been weak. This doesn’t work for a few reasons, the most obvious being that there’s no way to know that he was aware of this letter’s existence at all. In fact, there’s no way to know that anyone else knew of its existence either, but there are two things that the attempted robbery and Haypasia’s attempted abduction have in common: they concern Scaramouche’s past, and they were both targeted by the Fatui.

What’s more, as Ashikai pointed out in her video on the matter, there is sufficient ambiguity regarding the identity of this thief to call into question the possibility of it being Scaramouche. The most important reason, in my opinion, is that Scaramouche had stopped corresponding with the Fatui by this time, and likely could not have left Inazuma by boat so brazenly in its port town Ritou. Therefore, my top contender for this warehouse thief is now one of Dottore’s segments.

Nothing but Ivy

Finally, we have the Rather Aged Notes, a key piece of lore pertaining to Scaramouche’s past that is also maddeningly incomplete and faded with age so that just enough information is missing. If you’re not aware of what these are, you can read about them on the Genshin Wiki:

Now, I speculated earlier this year that these notes had actually been plundered from the Fatui rather than by the Fatui because of what I now suspect is a translation error - the blurb that appears before each notes’ dialogue reads “These notes seem to have been plundered during a recent raid on the Fatui.”

But now I am wondering if the way my brain originally read it, which is that the Fatui were the ones who plundered the notes from Tatarasuna, was actually correct. Some weak supporting evidence for this is that two of the more easily reachable notes are actually near Fatui mobs in the open-world. A somewhat stronger piece of supporting evidence for this is the possibility that this would not be an isolated incident from them given the previous two examples.

So what about these notes? They are also indirectly about Scaramouche’s past, specifically about the time that he spent on Tatarasuna with Mikoshi Nagamasa and Niwa Katsuragi. The maddening part of these notes is that with age they now give an incomplete account of what exactly happened during that time. But they are still usable pieces of evidence, and here’s why:

There is something that all three of these examples have in common with each other beyond the fact that they concern Scaramouche’s past and were targeted by the Fatui: the Rather Aged Notes cover a crucial point in the manufacturing history of Inazuman blades, when Jade Steel was introduced as a smelting material, while Kaedehara Yoshinori’s letter covers the reason for the ending of sacred blade forging schools belonging to the Raiden Gokaden, though this is not the end of Inazuman blade forging overall. Haypasia has no doubt also seen from Scaramouche’s consciousness that one of his betrayals occurred on Tatarasuna, and it is highly implied by the cutscene narrative that he was betrayed specifically by Niwa Katsuragi.

And so, the other common denominators between these three examples are just that: Niwa Katsuragi, if not the Niwa Clan in general, and Inazuma bladesmithing. Again, we had the reasons for the Raiden Gokaden downfall all wrong.

Final Thoughts

Now, I am of the opinion that we have not yet seen whatever dangerous secret Haypasia has seen at all, and not that we just don’t recognize what that secret is at this time. But who knows? Maybe I will be laughing at myself in a month from now. Wouldn’t be the first time.

What I don’t understand is this - if I am right that these three incidents are all connected and related to the same secret, then why is this secret important enough to pursue, but not important enough to permanently subdue? I don’t believe the Rather Aged Notes were actually tampered with in any way, but if they really wanted to be thorough about the warehouse they might as well have burned it down. And yes, Dottore didn’t have any segments left by the time he high-tailed it out of Sumeru with two gnoses in-hand, but he really didn’t have time or the upper-hand to deal Haypasia one final blow? Really?

In fact, that may be it. But what do you think? Some pieces of lore I think are worth revisiting include Kagotsurube Isshin and the fact that the Fatui offered asylum to the exiled Raiden Gokaden bladesmiths in Snezhnaya, any lore pertaining to the Isshin Art in general (like in Haran Geppaku Futsu), and Tatarigami. I’m curious what other theories people have about this!

Sources

As by a God’s side

The Five Colors’ True Form