Lore Recap and Theories on the Narzissenkreuz World Quest line in Fontaine! This video will summarize as well as explain theories involving the Fatui Harbingers
Timestamps:
0:00 Introduction
0:36 Recommended Order to Play Quests
1:37 Recap + Background Story
7:42 Narzissenkreuz Ordo + Rene’s beliefs
11:58 Search in the Algae Sea Story Explained
14:05 Tying the Lore Pieces Together
17:06 Fun Facts + Literary References
18:00 THEORIES (Arlecchino, Sandrone, Columbina, Time Loop Theory)
Credits:
HoyoFair 2024 History Drama https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ez5_4G-yk0
Light in the Abyss https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G5gHZi0MxnQ
Oratrice Dance https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=miJQTkuLs4U
⟡ I’m your leify lore streamer Minsleif
⟡ “I read the Genshin Impact lore so that you don’t have to”
Socials:
⟡ https://www.tiktok.com/@minsleif
⟡ https://www.twitch.tv/Minsleif
⟡ https://www.twitter.com/Minsleif
⟡ https://www.instagram.com/Minsleif
Business inquiries: [email protected]
Codes (if you like the clothes I wear or the makeup I use!):
“MINSLEIF” for 10% off your first order from Selkie! http://selkiecollection.com
“minsleifSM3QE” for 15% off your order at Charlotte Tilbury Makeup! https://friends.charlottetilbury.com/a/minsleif
“MINSLEIF15” for 15% off your order at Ivy City Co! http://ivycityco.com
#genshinimpact #genshinlore #hoyocreators #genshintheory #genshin #fontaine #genshinguide #Furina
source
I could very well imagine that the oceanid mary ann is the consciousness of lyris as well as the other ppl she had absorbed by then. because in the first encounter with "mary ann" she referred to traveller as a pince/princess from a faraway land and the real mary ann could have not known this. so that knowledge probably came from someone lyris had absorbed before. for the oceanid "ann" I think she was created by lyris (and or eltons consciousness inside her) because at the moment of mary anns death she deeply wished for mary ann to live a life without anything that happened after eltons dissapearance from the institute. during the quests ann remembered jakob and rene but not anything concerning the ordo or the abyssal experiments. the bronch qas probably given to her by lyris as well. I love genshin story so muchhhhh ❤
iam just finished the quest yesterday, time to watch this
What i would do without you minsleif, thank you so much for taking one for the community and reading all these things and summarizing it to us T____T
Its weird how Arlecchino just simply tracked down the ruins where prophecy slates were located and told us about it later…But the real plot twist comes when we look into the scene where Freminet brought the missing plate to Neuvillete when we were losing the trial(This piece of info allowed us to win trial against Furina)…He couldnt have brought it by himself since he didnt knew about the location…
To sum up All this was Arlecchino's grand master plan to get the gnosis by using the intel she had…It was also actually funny when she just literally gave us a big hint that Furina is a fraud archon….
She is not Guizhong
these quests were so complicated for my hazelnut sized brain 😮💨 ty for the summarized vid min 🫶🏻
Nah I am watching this because it's a video YOU made
I skipped, don't be mad. It was soooooo long
I feel like those 4 cycles are people. chronologically. Hyperboria is unknown, but then natlan, remuria, khanria, its in chronological order assuming natlans history pre-dates remuria, which from venti's comments in the manga i expect it does.
It makes me think of albedo, and iterations on making humans. Now that we know remurians were proto-humans made from oceanids, perhaps the other nations humans had their own origins?
Neuvilettes comment about natlan being a nation of dragons, and the open question about why he was born in a human form, could be foreshadowing dragons making themselves into humans and violating the heavenly principles long long ago?
edit:
you revisited the point later on, and with guywithamazinghats comment, perhaps its still both though. So far we are slowly being introduced to the concepts and details of sin, of which we know really only that making new humans is bad. perhaps the other cycles are other sins? just throwing thoughts out there
10:13 no way you just entirely skipped over the entire first part of those notes. seriously, it mentions "sinking into the abyss" "ajax" "rebirth as a holy infant" the entirety of these notes has something to do with childe and you just ignore that??? ngl kinda disappointed since i wanted to hear your thoughts on that
excuse me, what did you call the quest? how did you pronounce narzissenkreuz?
13:19 conveniently disolves them
Barks for Minsleif
……. What??
0:00 – 0:03
Honest to god, down to earth, genuine, immediate, truest, purest, realest thing one could ever say.
Thank you very much for the summary. I'm still going through Sumeru so this helps give me a summary understanding of the questline since I haven't gotten to this part of the game yet.
One thing I'll say is your apprehension towards the theory of the lady being Mary-Ann (or someone meant to look like Mary-Ann) and the robot housing the conscious of Alain Guillotine is certainly warranted since if feels ooc for them to be the sadist Sandrone that we know of in game. But I want to provide one line of reasoning as to how this theory could still be possible even with this discrepancy in mind. One thing to keep in mind about the Harbingers is that then common through line between many of them is that the person that they are when they join the Fatui are radically different then who they were once upon a time. La Signora seemed to have become a nasty and selfish person after the death of her beloved, Tartaglia "seemingly" (by his family's perspectives) developed a love for fighting, violence, and bloodlust overnight after he fell into the Abyss, and Scaramouche/Wanderer developed contempt and a nasty personality after his three "betrayals". Dottore seems to be the only outlier as of now, but since much of his past is still relatively unknown, perhaps this through line can still exist in some form (though I have been theorizing that his ability to "segment" himself is what helps him develop various "masks" as is the through line for the Fatui as a whole).
tl;dr This "wearing of multiple masks" throughout their life is the common denominator it seems for the Fatui and this discrepancy for Sandrone, if they are Mary-Ann/Alain, could very well be the case of the multiple masks that they themselves have wore throughout their lives, and there can be many cases of what these masks are. I say what makes this theory really up in the air is the fact that we really don't know why Sandrone joined the Fatui. Without at least some evidence of this, it's impossible to say how likely this theory of who Sandrone is can be. Though certainly interesting that Sandrone (the lady) looks awfully similar to Mary-Ann, so it seems very likely that there is some connection there at least.
Thank you ❤❤
Even when nicely condensed into a video like this, I still had to use all my braincells to follow the story. This world quest had me very confused even when I was trying to follow it in-game.
Thank you for the recap. These questions were an absolute nightmare to understand in a broader context.
We could all be watching the video to see how you pronounce "Narzissenkreuz" and "Fontaine".
But seriously this was probably the best summary I've seen on the topic so far. Felt very smooth. Also combining the timeline with non-Narzissenk stuff helped. Really good work.
On the interpretation of the Theosophy stuff although it's popular to take it all super seriously, it's important to note that René and Jakob may not have taken it seriously, because at base they organized a cult to fleece rich idiots of their money and put on a big act of being esoteric. So the line between what the really knew was true and what was a performance is hard to judge. They really did think they were saving the world and they really thought their research was vital, but because most people were idiots compared to them, and they needed funding, they couldn't just explain the truth, so they decided to embellish their purposes with a lot of theatrics. Hence while Furina was stuck pretending to be the Hydro Archon, even though she really was the Hydro Archon ("to deceive fate you must first deceive yourself") René was play acting the role of an esoteric Messiah who would save the world, even though he was in fact an esoteric messiah that was trying to save the world. In both cases they had to really ham it up and be over the top in their performances to fit with ordinary people's expectations.
I am so happy you posted this. In all honesty I am not here because I didn't understand the quest, but because I am curious of what happened to Alain. Since everyone else's story seems to have concluded (at least this chapter of the story).
In all honesty I somehow agree with the theory of Arlechino possibly being the Vice Director. As for Alain being the Harbinger is another thing.
Marionette/Sandrone has so many similarities to 2 particular characters that are both connected to science and machines and are bothe conveniently dead without a body. I am talking about Guizhong and Mary-Ann. Alain is the one with an interest in science but at the end of the day, Mary Ann was still his sister who died right in front of him. She was kind and was he. Meanwhile Guizhong is described as a pure, but intelligent person. She also showd interst in mechanics and science. But neither of them fit Sandrone's cruel and sadistic nature so at this point it is quite hard to truly determine who Sandrone is.
For all we know she could be the fox lady from the Fox in a Dandelion Sea (jest) and I would believe you. Though as someone on reddit mentioned, it seems like her only connection would be Sneznaya and not Fontaine or Liyue. But I could be wrong, we still have a likely Interlude AQ coming and Furine/Neuvillette 2nd story quest coming as well as a likely Mondstat expension so there's still time.
The heck Carrer was used like a goat☠️😭
Memescraft in the video is outstanding
Since I ignored most of the text but enjoy lore, this video had me saying “whaaaaaaaaat?!” every 10 seconds.
Nice work
I have finished the Fontaine archon quest but haven't done a single world quest since King Deshret and the Eternal Paradise. I'm behind at least 8 World Quests.
Ty for these lore folks. I just don't have the time.
Nope I just love your videos watching you makes my braincells weeeeeeee!
If Teyvat is in a time loop, it coincides with the statement Nahida made state that Celestia has been quiet for a while. So this could mean that they are either watching and waiting for something to happen during these cycles or that Celestia possibly lost its power/authority.
Did the note about “receiving a vision is to sell oneself to the “fate” of this world, to Heimarmene” and the one mentioning “Said play is called “Ajax” or “Aias”. […] “Lies beneath the great sea” comes from ancient Sumerian which means “primordial one”” appear after the end of the Narzissenkreuz quest or I am blind and did not see them in the Ordo room before?
Think of all that reading you saved me from! ALL HAIL!
The lore is so deep… Can anyone chart this out for me? 😅
I did all the quests, though out of the recommended order, so I was a little lost. Was hoping one of the Genshin lore channels I followed would put together a video like this. 😂 Thank you!
10/10 video for having correct captions
To support the theory that Alain is still alive and his consciousness is in the robot. In the notes, as well as in the quest, Rene says that he saw in Alain’s Meks an opportunity to repeat Rimuria’s idea of transferring consciousness into golems, but better, he also turned to Alain with the idea of transferring the consciousness of people into his Meks, because Alain was stated to be capable of this, but Alain back then refused. But, we keep in mind that he is capable of this, that he left the institute to engage in his secret research, and that in one secret laboratory you can find research records that in a dry manner talk about an experiment on transferring consciousness into the meka neural network, a successful one by the way. Also Nimfs set says that every member of Narcisein institute continued there journey by some way, and as for Alain it's said that "one would continue it's advanture by secrets of machinery and body of steel". As for Sandrone sadism, well Alain was never refered as a very empacetic or kind person, rather very selfcentered and poor on emotions, also as a kid Alain really liked the idea of Rene where he assumed that he will grew up as a clishe evil scientist from novels.
Thanks a million for explaining this quest, it got too complicated for me and I didn't understand half of it and lost lots of interesting information you kindly explained in your video, so thank you !
If Teyvat samsara cycle is true then it’s sure to say that the primordial one doesn’t create anything. According to Buddhism there is no creator. So PO is a fake god?
Nope. I read everything and get what's going on. I'm here because Minsleif has a pleasant voice when reading lore I already know.
Awesome video. I am going to disagree that Alaine wouldn't rip the tongue out of someone who tried to misuse Meka that he himself was the creator for. If he would go far enough to create a Machine body for himself and a machine duplicate of Mary Ann, he is capable of the act. But that is just my take..Loved the video again!
I always thought Malazan was the most complex and deep fantasy world building. Apparently, that description belongs to the side quests of this phone game.
Thank you so much ❤ This questline is so confusing and all over the place, you helped make sense of it!
Me who DIDN’T do the world quests in order: I see this as an absolute win
Ah I just completed the questline so I’m glad this came out cus I’m still pretty confused. LIKE WHICH MARRY ANN? WAT
I read the quest and understand what happened for the most part, but I enjoy watching these types of videos and seeing what i might have missed, or hearing people's thoughts
Awesome video mins! 🌸
Time Loop is confirmed in Furina's character stories. Nahida says that traces of changing fate will show like "waterdrops" hinting at Fontaine. To an extent, a lot of stuff with the Narz Ordo is overwritten history/changing fate. Caterpillar might exist to fill a void left by Arlecchino in a past timeline. Though rather than being a Hilichurl she seems to be a part-dragon creation instead.
There's this you can find in the "Meteoric Lance" quest location:
"…According to Mr. Ingold, the Master is performing "the Great Ritual." He said it has to do with the celestial bodies and the Primal Fire… The details are not to be divulged, or the "sanctity of silence and self-driven will" will be broken… Great focus and separation from the world must be maintained… For a time after this, Mr. Ingold will take charge of…" (Also she has similar strands of hair like Neuvi has in her pony tail in red) If you match up the locations of the Orthants to harbingers circle of symbols then this quest matches to Arlecchino's symbol. It also relveals that the Fatui need Furina with "Cupid's Lover" quest. And though "Thalia and Melpomene" matches to Childe symbol imo it might be about the traveler siblings instead.
The original "Mary-Ann" is likely "Magdalene" mentioned in the "Hex & Hound" book. At one point Seymour starts to say "Ma-" and then Caterpillar corrects it to "Mary-Ann". Seymour likely isn't broken but history has been erased enough to where even Seymour can't fully access info?
Sandrone might be the "Mary-Ann" of this timeline or a puppet made to look like her. It's also odd how she seems to have something against Childe (and there's the "it" Skirk senses on him and Focalors declaring him guilty so there's that).
Although people think arlebina should be a thing there's actually a lot more evidence that arlefuri is actually intended as some kind of plot by Egeria.
"Some say that Egeria felt great sympathy for dragons, and others say she felt great sadness over the eventual fate of humanity. Now, all that we have left is a metaphorical representation whose true meaning remains unclear: "The lizard's bones dissolved into mud, from which swans emerged.""
And also if you go around the edge of the court of Fontaine counter-clockwise it tells a very intentional story with the swans that also suggests that they've had a kid together somehow (it's Dainsleif 100%)
The Fox, Kitten, Monster story is also relevant with the "silver foxes"'s heart turning to a "pure drop of water" and also Albedo's story of Subject 1, 2, 3 and the "unique" person who could tell them apart
If you play close attention to everything Arlecchino says to Furina in the AQ she's either subconsciously remembering things or she does remember and is trying to trigger memories in Furina or test how much she knows
Idk there's a lot more than this but this is long enough
I really just want sandrone to be playable…