I’m a bit 🍁💨 and mostly sleepy and was doing my dailies when I connected several dots—actually maybe just two dots.

I was spending some resin at Cecilia Garden and reading through the Decarabian’s Tower series when I noticed that Decarabian is specifically called the God of Storms. Obviously the Anemo connection is there, but I was struck by how he is specifically the god of a tangible thing—you can look at a storm in the sky, but can you look at the sky and see “Anemo” in the same way?

I then realized that this is not the only example of a god (usually dead) in Genshin that is remembered as a God of a tangible thing related to an element but perhaps merely an epithet or aspect of that element, and far from all-encompassing. E.g. Havria is the God of Salt and Guizhong the God of Dust, but neither could hold a candle to Zhongli AKA Rex Lapis (Stone King), AKA Deus Auri (God of Gold).

Especially with the drop of the recent World Quest in Chenyu Vale, and the pre-“gods” Lingyuan’s attempts to return Chenyu Vale back to nature by screwing with the spirit veins, this all got me thinking about the natural order indigenous to Teyvat vs. the current one(?) introduced by the Primordial One/usurpers(?)

It just seems to me that pre-Archon war, you had all these gods running around, of any naturally-occurring substance you could think of, and even of human inventions like stoves (Marchosius/Guoba). But then something happened, perhaps a strong admonition to Celestia via the remnants of the original order (ghosts of sovereigns a la Scylla?) that this system does not compute, the seven elements must be upheld, adhered to, and revered, AND we are going to turn this shit upside down (no pun intended) if you don’t respect that. Whenever and however that happened, Celestia took it dead seriously—side note: I wonder if this was some kind of last straw and/or a consequence of whatever killed the third descender.

In any case, Celestia had to prove that they took this warning seriously by triggering the war for the “seven seats of Heaven.” Perhaps it was part of some kind of agreement or contract that the new seats HAD to correspond to the indigenous seven elements as closely as possible, with only the “strongest” (i.e. those closest in substance to the matter or ideal of the element) worthy enough to earn a trophy—a Gnosis—through which one could wield the associated element as stipulated by… something… to Celestia.

And then everything changed when Neuvillette woke up. Thanks for reading, and please let me know if I’m not correct or if there’s actually something to work with here LOL