Nightmare Fuel / Genshin Impact

Per wiki policy, Spoilers Off applies here and all spoilers are unmarked. You Have Been Warned.

War Is Hell. Even for the Archons.

Just because the world of Genshin Impact is sunshine and rainbows compared to its sister game Honkai Impact 3rd doesn't mean it's squeaky clean fun for the whole family either.

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Trailers

• Scaramouche finally appears in the main story as of the 2.1 update, and good lord does he make for an intimidating foe. His Soft-Spoken Sadist tendencies are in full force now, and it’s blatantly clear that his cheerful, carefree façade at the beginning of Unreconciled Stars has been completely shed by this point.
• The trailer for 2.5 reveals something to be wrong with Ei. A shot of the Plane of Euthymia, an inner world with herself as its sole occupant, ominously empty, and she states in an alarmingly pained voice that she's leaving everything in Miko's hands. Yae herself tells the Traveler that she's entrusting her god to them, and asks them to bring her back. Even during the Vision Hunt Decree, she rarely wavers from her tone of aloof amusement, but here she sounds like she's barely keeping it together. It also debuts a new boss in Ei's likeness, except where Ei relied more on raw martial prowess augmented by her Electro powers, this boss opts to show off those Electro powers on a far grander scale. The last shot of the trailer shows two Eis in a standoff, one wielding Musou Isshin, and the other Engulfing Lightning. Ei might have been convinced to do away with the Vision Hunt Decree, but Inazuma's Archon problems are far from over. One way or another, her decisions as Archon are about to come back to bite her, big time.
• The teaser for the Teyvat Chapter Interlude is (no pun intended) chilling.
  • It opens with Pierro playing chess using the two acquired Gnoses while monologuing about a war where every “pawn” will not be spared, and ”Checkmate” is not when the game ends, seemingly implying that the Tsarista is planning to go further than overthrowing Celestia. Later, The rest of the Harbingers (except Scaramouche, who became AWOL after acquiring the Electro gnosis) are gathered for Signora’s funeral after her loss in Inazuma, most of them (minus Childe) debuting for the first time on screen. First is Columbina, who is seen singing Signora’s theme, smiling serenely as she rests her head on the fallen Harbinger’s casket. Throughout each of the introductions, the Harbingers (barring possibly Arlecchino) appear to care not for their fallen comrade and are more occupied with mocking each other. Pierro appears to quell their bickering, and as the rest of the Harbingers stand around Signora’s casket, Pierro declares that they will seize authority from Celestia in the name of the Tsarista. With 4 nations to go, and Scaramouche seemingly stealing the Electro gnosis for himself, it appears that Signora’s death will cause the Fatui to double, it not triple their efforts to acquiring the rest of the gnoses, which could entail more needless deaths and chaos.
  • the Teaser doesn’t end here. Columbina (innocently or mockingly) comments that Dottore looks exceptionally young ‘today’, with Dottore furiously replying that he does not consider that a compliment. Columbina then asks where Dottore’s “prime” section is, and his reply is that he is busy doing an “experiment in blasphemy”. The dialogue about 'Prime' Dottore is overlaid over footage of him smiling smugly as he stares at a giant tree burning, before it cuts to Collei, a former subject of the Fatui’s schemes, waking up from a nightmare in fright. It appears that, in a bid to gain the Dendro Archon’s gnosis and maybe get revenge on Sumeru Academy for rejecting his idea of a super-enhanced human, Dottore is willing to burn down what looks to be the entirety of Sumeru just to do that. And Collei possibly had a vision of that future without knowing.
• The trailer for 3.1 has Dottore smiling smugly at the camera while a crowd of seemingly brainwashed Sumeru citizens approach the camera and overwhelm the viewer, then the next scene has one of the game's most graphic scenes yet: Nahida (who is currently possessing Katheryne) running away in wide eyed fear as some members of the Corps of Thirty pounce onto her. The Traveler tries to reach out to her but alas, they are too late to stop Katheryne from being speared in the back. As Nahida struggles through the pain, the sound of Scaramouche's laughter can be heard, heralding his reappearance, this time plugged into a giant robot and menacingly talking about how "your era is coming to an end."
• The Character Teaser for Nahida.
  • It starts out blissful and serene with the girl herself happily narrating about her people celebrating her birthday during the Sabszeruz Festival and ends with her being inside on a flower carriage (with the second dream even featuring the Traveler (Aether) being among the guests). However, her third dream becomes nightmarish, as the screen starts to flicker gray, the landscape is lifeless white and the sky is of menacing red, and her identical narration now has a tinge of sadness and despair as she is forcibly dragged away by the Akademiya Sages and the "flower carriage" she is placed onto is actually her prison inside the Sanctuary of Surasthana.
  • Put yourself in Nahida's shoes for a moment. Waking up disoriented and afraid in a dead wasteland, she's suddenly approached by strange men who drag her away by force, with seemingly no pomp or ceremony as she is led past Sumeru's grieving citizens and promptly thrown into what would be her prison for life. Her introduction to Sumeru, rather than the joyous welcome whose honeymoon period wore off quickly that it was previously described as, is depicted here more like a kidnapping, with the scene where she is pulled along by the Sage accompanied by the sound of rattling chains. This was her birthday. These are the first memories she's ever made.
• The trailer for Version 4.0, “As Light Rains Falls Without Reason”, is chockfull of surprising moments.:
  • The trailer starts with a view of a Fontaine submerged in water, ruined buildings peaking out of the water. Lyney is heard narrating a prophecy in which Fontaine’s residents will dissolve in the nation’s water, and as the screen shifts to a crying Furina, he says only their Archon will survive, weeping at what happened.
  • While the mood whiplash of the new characters being introduced to the cheery Fontainian music is unexpected, the creepiness comes back when Freminet is heard wondering just how long before the nation becomes an underwater fossil, giving more fuel for the prophecy.
  • The scene moves to a magic show hosted by Lyney and Lynette, with Lynette narrating her fears of the nation’s water swallowing the people and their memories. Then, we are shown a view of clockwork cogs suddenly stopping, the clock in the center of the city freezing, and Navia wondering in fear why rain is pouring from the sky. Then, suddenly, we see Lynette in shock as the water trap she is in suddenly starts pushing water upwards, and when the view clears, only her clothes remain, The Traveler and Paimon wondering in fear at what happened to her. Considering she is a playable character, the idea of her dissolving in the water and dying should be laughable, but considering Mihoyo’s track record for making dead characters playable…
    • Lynette fortunately turns out to be okay in the actual Archon Quest proper, with the whole "only clothes remaining" schtick being a part of the magical act; she reappears on-stage fine and dandy, with her clothes on no less.
  • Finally, we are shown the Traveler, Paimon, Navia and her guards being cornered by a whole army of Gardemeks, while the Traveler is seen experiencing headaches similar to the ones in Tenshukaku. A male voice (possibly Neuveliette) condemns Focalors for considering the serving of justice in the courtroom a mere spectacle for her to watch and be entertained, while Navia condemns him in return for valuing the upholding of laws and justice over the lives of the Fontainian people. Whatever is going on in Fontaine, the Traveler will need to do everything in their power to solve the problem before the nation collapses in on itself.
• "According to the judgment of the Oratrice Mecanique d'Analyse Cardinale, The Hydro Archon, to be punished via.. the death sentence." That's how the trailer for Version 4.2, "Masquerade of the Guilty", starts. It doesn't get better from here.
• Arlecchino's character teaser, "Arlecchino: Sleep in Peace", has her hunt down and assassinate a human trafficker who is posing as a philanthropist. How does she kill him? By throwing him to the ground and crushing his head under her foot, complete with a Sickening "Crunch!".

Characters & Open World

• Klee may be an adorable and energetic little girl, but she's capable of engineering very powerful bombs. It's probably unsettling to live in the same city with someone who makes explosives for fun, even if that person is a sweet kid who doesn't mean harm and is still learning what consequences are. There are probably those who find the fact that it is a little girl who is still learning about consequences more disturbing. Someone deliberately setting off bombs to harm would be calculated about to ensure their own escape and survival. Klee could do even more harm out of ignorance and innocence.
• There's one book that explains how Hilichurls are able to weaponize Pyro Slimes: by dunking them in water until nearly drowning and cannot light themselves anymore, stuffing them into pouches to use for later, and then slamming them against the ground to create a spark and re-ignite them.
• The Stone Forest right off the coast of Liyue isn't a natural rock formation - it's a seal that Rex Lapis set up to trap an ancient god at the bottom of the ocean. And after the Traveler defeats Childe, he uses a number of Seals of Permission to break the seal releasing this god, who takes on the form of a colossal water hydra.
• Wuwang Hill, an abandoned settlement not far from Qingce Village that's shrouded in fog and filled with dilapidated houses, collapsed signboards, and decaying wells. And if you decide to read a log book about Wuwang Hill, you'll find out why it became so derelict: most of the young people had been sacrificed to a Sea Monster, leaving behind only the elderly who eventually died of natural causes. Hey, remember those creepy blue orbs floating around the woods nearby?
• The Chinese version of Hu Tao's hilichurl song is derived from a children's song about rabbits. The original song has additional lyrics stating that the fifth rabbit/hilichurl is not coming back, and a common interpretation is that it was killed and used as an ingredient in the medicine for the first one's illness. Fittingly macabre for Hu Tao.
• Dragonspine's Wyrmrest Valley
  • It is an area full of skeletal remains that belonged to Durin, a dragon that was defeated by Dvalin eons ago. The sheer scale of these bone structures give an unsettling sense of just how big Durin was, apparently dwarfing even Dvalin himself. Furthermore, there's a cave in the center of the valley which contains his still beating heart. One must wonder if Durin is really, truly dead or simply laying in wait.
  • Entering the cave is a spooky experience in its own right. The deeper you go in, the more the music fades out until it's eventually replaced by a low heartbeat, while the ground turns into a carpet of gooey-looking... stuff that squishes when you walk on it. And the way your cold meter goes down as you get closer to the heart has some pretty interesting implications in a game where everything poofs into dust.
• Childe's backstory. He used to be a normal thirteen year-old before he ran away from home, fell through a crack in the earth, and wound up in the Abyss where he spent three months fighting for his life, despite how he was actually gone for just three days in the real world. After that, he began showing violent, antisocial tendencies to the point where his father dragged him to the Fatui in the hopes they could discipline him, but he was so skilled at fighting that Childe eventually ended up being promoted to the rank of Harbinger. All he did was weaponize his childhood trauma for the sake of becoming a living killing machine.
• One possible route of Sayu's Hangout Event takes an unexpectedly dark turn. The event starts with Sayu revealing that she had actually received an order from the Shuumatsuban to assassinate the Traveler. If they choose to investigate this, they discover the Yashiro Commission member, Ogawa's daughter has been kidnapped by a band of Kairagi, who threatened to kill her unless Ogawa had one of his ninja kill the Traveler. Ogawa assigned the job to Sayu, assuming she'd drag her feet on it as usual, and is understandably horrified when it looks like she actually did it. When Ogawa meets with the Kairagi to report the Traveler's "death", they refuse to give his daughter back, and attempt to further blackmail him into having various members of the Tenryou Commission assassinated as well.
• Encountering a Withering Zone in Sumeru is quite the terrifying experience. The colors on the screen suddenly go dull, the music turns incredibly creepy, and the decay starts to creep into your body, weakening your defenses. And if you stay too long in the zone without cleansing the decay, your entire party dies on the spot.
• The Forbidden Knowledge seems like something out of a Cosmic Horror Story. The origin of the Withering, the Eleazar disease, and the corruption within the Irminsul tree, its precise nature may be impossible for anyone to know. Emerging in times and places where the Abyss comes in contact with Teyvat, its nature is so fundamentally alien and antithetical to existance as we know it that it is effectively a Brown Note for the world itself. Reality seems to break down upon exposure to it, causing things like Withering zones to appear. That's all bad enough in and of itself, but when you put together the information you've learned since coming to Sumeru you realize that it's actually infected the Irminsul itself!
• One of the medium ranked bounty targets for Liyue involves taking out a Rock Shieldwall Mitachurl, however the reason behind it is downright disturbing: The person who put a bounty on once encountered a hilichurl carrying a Geo shield (who is merely observing him) and he was told by his parents that hilichurls are dangerous creatures that attack humans. Now, as a grown-up, he saw the same hilichurl, who is now a mitachurl, resting with the same shield. But again, rather than attack, the mitachurl simply picked up his shield and left. Despite this, the man still put a bounty on a mitachurl for simply existing. A sad indicator that his prejudice finally took root on his mindset, all because his parents told him so.
• Wanderer's character stories reveal that prior to becoming a Harbinger, he was tasked with long explorations into the Abyss. While it was less than a century on the surface, it's unclear how long he actually spent in the Abyss because of how time moves differently there. Because his unique nature meant he didn't require food or rest, he would continue exploring and fighting until something managed to damage him too badly to continue. Once Dottore repaired him, he would immediately be sent back until the next time something nearly killed him, this cycle repeating many times until he finally came back with results that earned him a place among the Harbingers. Signora's comment about him being ranked 6th because of his endurance was quite accurate, since his main use to the Fatui was his ability to survive both the depths of the Abyss and Dottore's experiments.
• Furina's situation is not only heartbreaking, but utterly horrifying. Immediately after her creation, the newly-born Furina was tasked with helping to save Fontaine from the prophecy by impersonating a god. Without any further information, no powers, and no one to rely upon or confide in, she took on a 500 year "performance" while clinging to the hope that Fontaine would be saved. Her initial attempt to introduce herself to her people was met with ridicule and doubt, forcing her to adopt her bombastic personality to convince people of her godhood. From that moment on, she had to actively maintain the deception with no idea when or if she would ever be able to stop, knowing that a single mistake could doom her people. The enormity of this act earns the respect of numerous actual gods, recognizing the strength it required for Furina to endure without going completely insane.

Archon Quests (Main Story)

Prologue: The Outlander Who Caught the Wind

• The terrifying amount of power the Unknown God has and the absolute ease with which she delivers a Curb-Stomp Battle to both twins fighting her simultaneously. The battle ends with her covering both siblings in her energy cubes and forcibly transporting them through space, ripping them away from each other. Worse still, we know nothing about her - not her name, her position, why she is out to punish humanity, how she intends to do so, etc. If you thought the likes of Herrscher of the Void or even "God Kiana"^note The final boss of HI3's predecessor Guns Girl Z. weren't terrifying enough, then this mysterious character will.
• Dvalin, the Anemo dragon and one of the Four Winds, went crazy due to The Corruption magic being performed on him to in order to stoke his resentment towards humanity, and as a result he becomes known as Stormterror by most of Teyvat during his Roaring Rampage of Revenge. You get introduced to him when he nearly rips the entire city of Mondstadt apart with his wind storms, and the arduous ordeal of stopping him and bringing him back to his senses spans throughout the entire three-part Prologue. We're in for a very long and dangerous journey, folks.
• The Eleven Fatui Harbingers. The first one Traveler encounters is La Signora, and despite being a mortal having been given power by the Tsaritsa, she seems to have no trouble whatsoever with giving Venti (Barbatos, A GOD) the Curb-Stomp Battle of a lifetime, ending with her incapacitating him while Elite Mooks pin the Traveler down and knock them out too. This is her introductory scene, and it comes soon after the heroes managed to free Dvalin. La Signora isn't even top brass among Fatui ranks; she's just one of the Eleven.

Chapter I: Farewell, Archaic Lord

• Childe’s One-Winged Angel form. After he finds out that the Exuvia didn’t have Rex Lapis’ gnosis, he goes absolutely ballistic and unleashes the full power of his Vision and Delusion, turning into a one eyed monster with a Voice of the Legion who can dual wield Hydro and Electro. Even before we meet his One-Winged Angel form, The Reveal of Childe's personality as a Psychopathic Manchild Blood Knight when the Traveler meets him in the Golden House can be pretty terrifying after how he was so amicable to the Traveler.
• The Tsaritsa herself, the currently unseen Cryo Archon who wants control over all the other Archons' territories, starting with Venti's Mondstadt. She's the one who empowered the eleven Fatui Harbingers and gave us La Signora, Tartaglia, Scaramouche, and all the other Fatuus we haven't been introduced to yet, but judging by the looks of it they're going to be every little bit as crazy and bloodthirsty too.

Chapter I, Act IV: We Will be Reunited

• The "We Will be Reunited" Archon Quest kicks off with the Traveler going out to investigate the Treasure Hoarders' activities around some ruins connected to the Abyss Order.
  • It is first, an all part and parcel, nothing you haven't seen before, you could do this in your sleep. Then you enter the ruins. It's empty besides a handful of Hilichurls, even though Hoarders from two different countries set up camp down there, and the architecture slowly becomes more hostile the deeper you traverse. Then you reach the final room to find an Anemo Archon statue suspended upside down from the ceiling while a dead (yes, dead — Paimon confirms this) Treasure Hoarder kneels frozen before it.
  • The Treasure Hoarder's reveal is extra upsetting by how he's posed, kneeling in front of the Defiled Statue as if praying, clawed hands drooping in front of his turned-down face. Makes you wonder what the hell even happened before you got there.
  • Look closely at the stone spikes around the room and you'll see wet red spatters on them — it seems like the poor guy was lucky he at least died in one piece.
• The Reveal that, most likely due to the God's actions, the Traveler's sibling seems to have succumbed to some sort of corruption and is now the leader of the Abyss Order. The Internal Reveal comes at the end of an extremely creepy quest chain and is paired with a reveal about Khaen'riah that is pure Nightmare Fuel in its own right.

Chapter II: Omnipresence Over Mortals

• Inazuma's Archon Quest reveals a new fact about Visions.
  • They aren't just a magic trinket rewarded for one's ambitions, they are literally ambitions physically manifested as a source of power. They're so integral to Vision Bearers that, when they lose them, their memories and sense of self start to decay to the point of becoming into a completely different person altogether. You get to witness the end result in grueling detail when you talk to citizens who were targeted by the Vision Hunt Decree, and it's telling that one of the Traveler's dialogue options afterwords is calling it a fate worse than death.
  • Then there's the Traveler confronting the Shogun herself when she notices that the Traveler doesn't have a Vision, before declaring that "[they] will be inlaid upon this statue". Considering that the Traveler doesn't have a Vision she can confiscate, it's very likely that Baal intended to implant their entire corpse into the statue.
  • Raiden Shogun's Hopeless Boss Fight, period. For the first time in the story, YOU are on the receiving end of an Archon's full power, and the game does everything it can to make you feel helpless by giving Raiden bottomless HP, massive damage output, rapid fire attacks, full Electro resistance, and the ability to flash step across the arena just so she can beat your ass even harder. And right when you think you might stand an inkling of a chance? "The Vision Hunt Decree is in force." Everyone's skills and bursts are now useless unless you took the Traveler in with you. Have fun.
  • The Plane of Euthymia where her Curbstomp Battle takes place helps set the tone, too; apparently Ei's innermost sanctum is a black void with a deep red moon looming in the sky. It feels like the quintessential illustration of how desolate and isolated Inazuma became under her rule.
  • The Traveler, currently on a Roaring Rampage of Revenge against the Fatui for supplying Sangonomiya rebels with Delusions that killed their friend Teppei, had confronted Scaramouche in the Delusion factory. However, the purple mist isn't his own magic - it's Orobashi's, and the Traveler gets incapacitated by the Tatarigami's influence because of their own rage. Scaramouche would've likely killed them on the spot if Yae didn't show up just in time.
• The leadup to the Traveler challenging Signora to a fight.
  • After defeating Signora in a duel where the loser is executed by the Raiden Shogun, we get a firsthand look at the Musou no Hitotachi in action and well... let's just say Signora learns the hard way why pissing off an Archon isn't a good idea. To wit, after a single strike, Signora gets hacked up by several slashes before a pillar of lightning descends and literally reduces her to ash, leaving nothing but her crown and a crackling, blackened spot where Signora stood two seconds ago. She definitely deserved her fate, but Jesus Christ...
  • For Signora, the Raiden Shogun slowly walking towards her the moment she loses is this. She doesn't spare a single word, walking past the Traveler without even looking at them and completely ignoring Signora's attempts to talk her way out as Ei gets ready to kill her. She lets the Traveler go, but the Aside Glance she gives them is anything but reassuring.
  • After Signora is defeated, Raiden honors the Traveler's victory over her by allowing them to leave her palace alive, but you don't get to run out to enjoy the spoils like every other time you won a boss battle. Instead, you slowly walk through the palace grounds while a thunderstorm boils around you, thunderbolts striking inches away as your vision grows blurry from the crushing migraine caused by unbridled Electro energy. The only thing stopping Raiden from vapourizing you is formality.
  • And sure enough, once the pair reach the entrance to the palace courtyard the Shogun immediately lunges from a portal to attack, treating us to a lovely Jump Scare of her as a giant physical manifestation of hatred and Killing Intent. Had Kazuha not activated his friend's Vision in time, Traveler and Paimon would've been the next victim of Musou no Hitotachi.

Interlude Chapter II: Perilous Trail

• The Chasm's Bed featured in this Archon Quest is one of the most terrifying places in the game. An Eldritch Location par excellence, the space seems to be actively malicious despite having no obviously apparent sentience. It traps people, reads its victims' minds, messes up their sense of time, hunger, and fatigue, warps space and time to lure them further in with mirages of their desires, brings their fears to life to further ensnare them, and eventually, causes them to succumb to the darkness entirely, turning them into faceless lost souls that are shadows of their former selves. It took a herculean effort from Xiao and the rest of the group just to escape, and even then it took Zhongli's direct intervention to ensure that no one gets left behind.
• The cutscene showing the group's escape sequence using the Fantastic Compass further shows just how terrifying the Chasm's Bed really is, as they're met with fierce opposition from red wraith-like ghosts (implied to be the lost souls of past victims) who attack the Traveler's party directly and swarm them all over. Despite the party's best efforts to fend them off, they're soon greeted by the space's true form: a red-and-black cloud of darkness that wouldn't be out of place in a Cosmic Horror Story, that threatens to engulf them entirely and forcing Xiao to use up all of his power just to escape its clutches. It's by that point that the Chasm's Bed has caught on to the group's attempt to escape and is done playing mind games, doing everything in its power to launch a retaliatory assault on the party to ensure they never get out alive.

Chapter III: Truth Amongst the Pages of Purana

• During the Sabzeruz Festival, The Traveler experiences a sense of Deja Vu, and surmises that they're in a Time Loop. It's not until they encounter a girl named Nahida that they discover that they're in a dream, unwittingly partaking in an experiment where the Sages in the Akademiya are harvesting the dreams of everyone during the Festival. The process makes everyone forget that they already had the Festival, so they wake up thinking it just started, not knowing that the day has been repeating over and over.
• To make matters worse, as the day keeps repeating, there are signs of fatigue on the Traveler and Paimon, meaning the experiment is taking its toll on them. But Dunyazard, who was frail to begin with, has it the worst. Soon, she starts to feel more robotic, her responses have no emotion, and her cheerful demeanor is long gone. This is a sign that her consciousness is fading, and the system is replacing her with a puppet so that those inside the dream won't notice anything out of the ordinary.
• When the Traveler first meets Nahida, she is looking after Dunyazard, the real one's consciousness, who is laying down on a bed. As the quest goes on, her condition gets worse and worse. Just as they have reached an answer regarding the repeating festival, Dunyazard is gone. Nahida sadly informs them that the experiment has taken its toll on Dunyazard, whose consciousness has faded, and the system booted her out. In a state of grief and anger, they go to the place where a group of kidnappers where waiting for Dunyazard, and proceeds to vent their anger on them.
• The Traveler and Paimon hatch a plan to figure out the loop’s true nature, so they decide to go to Sumeru City's border. The Traveler tells Paimon to stay behind so that if anything happens, Paimon will be there to see. Paimon reluctantly agrees, and the Traveler sets off. Except they never come back. Paimon saw them fade away after leaving Sumeru City and spent two days waiting and waiting at that wall to keep her promise to be on the look out. And that's not all. The Traveler didn't fade away into nothing. The Traveler left the "space" where everyone was having the shared Sabzeruz Festival dream and ended up in an empty desert where dream spaces were in a loop of appearing and disappearing as they were being harvested, and where "Dream Puppets" end up walking around aimlessly when they have no hosted dreams to be in. The Traveler sounds so terrified out of their mind in their message to their future self as they describe the hellish realm they ended up in, and when they discover what the loop's true nature is, they get omniously interrupted by the reset.
• It turns out that the denizens of Sumeru aren't just immune to dreaming due to a divine gift, as the players were first told.
  • The Akasha system - which has been linked directly to everyone's brains - has been stealing their dreams for untold decades so that the Sages can harvest the brain power involved. Worse, the plot involves the Sages trapping the entire city in an endless dream - erasing memories, altering consciousnesses, etc - so that they can harvest their consciousness all the time and pull off some manner of unknown goal despite this as noted above actively harming the populace, which they can do relatively easily because the Akasha, if misused, allows them to alter the thoughts of anyone connected to it. The whole thing is heavily dystopian, and it only avoids resulting in casualties because Kusanali / Nahida didn't approve of the plan and went out of her way to sneak into the system and get it shut down. And even then the Sages get away with it entirely, with only setback being that the Akasha system couldn't handle another attack like that for "a while."
  • Even Nahida herself isn't completely immune to the spooky nature of Akasha's power. It turns out that, if she wanted to, she could take over the consciousness of anyone who happens to be connected to the Akasha system a la Agent Smith. She just prefers to possess Katheryne, rather than one of her own subjects.
• The uncanny atmosphere that permeates throughout Act II, until Traveler recovers their memories. You, the player, can clearly see that something is wrong, what with the events of Sabzeruz Festival repeating themselves over and over, the world itself occasionally flickering into sepia tones, and disembodied voice talking about some sort of experiment in-between the loops, but Traveler can only feel the sense of Deja Vu that is growing stronger and stronger with each loop. They finally realise that something is wrong when Farris, the Knight of Flowers, asks them to guess which of the five boxes of candies has the sunsettia flavor, and the options are:
  Number four.
  Number four.
  Number four.
  Number four.
  Number four.
• When the Traveler and Nahida go to meet the Akademiya researcher in the middle of the night to retrieve the documents related to the Sabzeruz Festival samsara, they are instead met with a crowd of people clapping and cheering for them some unknown reason. Then Il Dottore, the Second of the Eleven Fatui Harbingers, reveals himself for the first time in-game, to inform our heroes that their contact was found out and is currently being held prisoner. He then smiles smugly as he sics the crowd which he had brainwashed earlier onto the three of them, causing them to reach out in a zombie-like fashion all the while smiling creepily. He explains that they all believe the Traveler has just saved the world, which is why all of them are so eager to express their appreciation. With the Traveler being surrounded by these adoring fans, all of whom are coming closer by the second, it really looks like the crowd is going to trample you to death before they realize what they're doing. The Traveler is forced to flee without Nahida as she stays to undo the brainwashing, while Dottore casually strolls up to her and leans in with amusement.
• Afterwards, the Traveler and Nahida manage to rendezvous again at the Pardis Dhyai, they meet Haypasia, who is brimming with joy as she claims that she managed to "make contact with the divine". However, what she shows is neither the consciousness of the established old gods of Sumeru, but Scaramouche's memories as he in the process of transforming into a god. Haypasia, who had seemed normal until this moment, suddenly shows signs of fanaticism as she shouts in joy about feeling his will, then expresses the fact that she has a "filthy, mortal heart" with great disgust and contempt.
• While fleeing from the Corp of Thirty members, Nahida (in Katheryne's body), to the Traveler's horror, is stabbed in front of them, and the Traveler can only manage to touch her finger before being transported into Nahida's own body as she facilitates the switching of their bodies. They wake up to find themselves trapped in a circular enclosure. Suddenly, Scaramouche's eyes flash onto the screen with the words "I SEE YOU" (written in Sumeru's script) as they are made aware of the Balledeer observing them from an unknown location. He gives another of his signature Kubrick Stare as the camera zooms in before the Traveler finally returns to their body.

Interlude Chapter III: Inversion of Genesis

• Scaramouche learns that his recruitment into the Fatui wasn't by chance: The Jester had learned of his existence and sent the Doctor to scout him out. The Doctor murdered his friend, cut out his heart, and offered it to Scaramouche. Not only that, but the Tatarasuna incident as a whole was caused by the Fatui.
• While in the Fatui, Scaramouche was experimented on by the Doctor. Given what we already know about the man, we can guess that it was unpleasant, but a line from La Signora shortly before her own death drives it home.
  La Signora: Muddle-headed puppet, you're only No. 6 because you can take more abuse than other humans.

Chapter III, Act VI: Caribert

• The Traveler meets a man named Eide, a survivor of Khaenri'ah that has been living in isolation with his hilichurl son for an unknown period of time. The man is very clearly barely hanging on by a thread, prone to giggling and rambling to himself. It's little surprise, considering what he reveals about the destruction of his homeland — the gods placed two types of curses on the people, depending on their exact heritage. People with heritage tying them to the nations of the Seven were struck with the Curse of the Wilderness, slowly turning them into monsters such as hilichurls. The Heavenly Principles considered this to be the lesser of the two curses, while the worst was reserved for those with pureblood. These people, such as Eide and Dain, were cursed with Immortality but also suffered from Erosion, losing portions of their memories and fated to slowly lose themselves with the passage of time. Eide married a woman from Mondstadt, so was forced to watch his wife and child turn into monsters while he faced an eternity without them.
• Caribert looks like a normal hilichurl, save for his blue scarf. He remained in a coma while his father searched for some method to restore his mind to normal, living in constant fear of discovery. At one point, Caribert wanders off alone and while searching for him, the Traveler and Eide encounter a group that had just eliminated some hilichurls. While Caribert ends up being safe, for a short time Eide believes that his son has been killed because of his monstrous form.
• The Traveler and Eide follow a pack of hilichurls into a strange domain, where they encounter a godlike entity that identifies itself as "a Sinner". It is very clearly associated with the Abyss, and directly speaks to the Traveler while revealing that it can see their destiny and will be waiting for them in the future. Eide, meanwhile, is struck with religious fanaticism and devotes himself to serving this entity. This is the incident that will lead to the formation of the Abyss Order.
• After his mind is restored, Caribert ignores his father's warning and looks at himself in the mirror. What he saw isn't revealed, but he's soon discovered on a cliff emitting Abyssal energies and talking about being unable to endure what he knows. Caribert takes off his mask, causing a shockwave of abyssal energy that knocks the Traveler unconscious. After they wake up, Eide — or rather, Chlothar — rambles nonsensically and won't give a straight answer about what happened.
• Chlothar reveals that he knows who the Traveler actually is, remembering them from Khaenri'ah. The Traveler becomes overwhelmed and grabs the broken mirror, seeing their sibling's face reflected back at them. The entire quest has been the Abyss Twin's memories, relived to reveal the event that would led to them founding the Abyss Order along with Chlothar.
• After awakening from the dream, the Traveler and Dain dig up the nearby field. There, they discover a pair of skeletons that they theorize may have been Chlothar and his wife. The strange mushrooms he was growing to use in Caribert's medicine were the result of growing mushrooms in a field tainted by his wife's cursed body.

Chapter IV: Masquerade of the Guilty

Oh god, the tone of Chapter IV got significantly darker and horrifying right from Act I.

• First, Lyney talks about the ominous prophecy that all of Fontaine will dissolve, and how sea levels around the country have started rising like how the prophecy described. However, the threat isn't treated seriously by most Fontainians... until the reveal of the existence of Primordial Seawater that is able to dissolve any Fontainian, leaving nothing but a puddle and Empty Piles of Clothing. Everyone present in the opera house also gets a public demonstration of how quickly it works, with the victim screaming in pain before dissolving just a moment after.
• Then, later on, Navia invites the Traveler and Paimon to have a meal, during which Paimon accidentally drinks Navia's Fonta. Said Fonta was spiked with Primordial Seawater. If Paimon hadn't had it, Navia would've been dissolved just like what happened in the opera house.
• While Navia is accusing Marcel of being the perpetrator of the dissapearance of the missing women, The Traveler heads to the headquarters of where the manufacturing of Sinthe takes place. There, they discover a pool full of Primordial Seawater, with some of it rising up to form spikes. Normally, if you use elemental sight on something that can be affected by the elements, they would be colored white. Using the sight on the spikes would have them colored black, making it the very first case.
• The lead up to Marcel's Karmic Death by the amalgamation of his victims is both cathartic and chilling. The Traveler's previous meetings with the Oceanid presented them as a lost, gentle soul in mourning about being Star-Crossed Lovers with Vacher... then when Marcel finally reunites them they reveal their true intent. The spirit of every individual victim appears, calling out Vacher's name in various haunting tones. They all look up with a Collective Death Glare and sentence him to Drown in his lover's voice, proceeding to mob Marcel's vision as he can only scream helplessly for one final moment.
• Acts I and II have major elements of Realism-Induced Horror too.
  • Just as Lyney was finishing his final magic trick, the water tank from an earlier act comes crashing down, killing Cowell. The abruptness of it makes it all the more frightening.
  • Lyney recounts how Lynette and a few girls were a victim of Human Traffickers and Fontaine for all its numerous laws couldn't protect them nor bring the guilty nobles accountable due to Loophole Abuse. Their only option was to rely on Arlecchino (who is a Fatui Harbinger with her own agenda) and the House of Hearth in order to regain the safe environment that they needed. His wording also implies that the issue is still ongoing in the present. It hits even harder when Lyney's story quest features a cutscene showing the twins' younger selves, with information given beforehand that they met Cesar only after they had became House operatives, and thus emphasizing that Lyney and Lynette had to go through the whole ordeal by themselves when they were very young.
  • Marcel is truly a horrifying villain. From Navia's perspective, he's always been an amicable family friend and someone her father trusted deeply, but the more she investigates the more she finds out that not only is he the criminal mastermind of a drug empire and a serial killer, he had planned to kill her too. It's very reminiscent of countless cases of women being harmed/killed by a close male contact in real life.
• We finally have more intel on the Primordial Sea, and it's not pretty. Turns out the Fortress of Meropide is built upon an entrance to the Primordial Sea and has been keeping it bottled up. By the time Wriothesley shows the Traveler the sluice gate, he notes the pressure has been rising for some time, to the point that some of the seawater has been leaking into the water surrounding the Fortress despite the main gate still being sealed shut. This rising concentration of Primordial Seawater nearly kills Freminet during his search for Childe and he is only barely saved when Clorinde pulls him out of the water. Freminet is only in one piece because the Primordial Seawater he was exposed to is diluted by the surrounding seawater, letting him off with Sinthe poisoning. When the real thing finally bursts through the gate, it's all Wriothesley and Clorinde can do just to hold it back until Neuvillette arrives and uses his power as the Hydro Sovereign to seal it away once again. While the crisis has been averted for now, this is only a stopgap measure; Neuvillette reveals that none of the Sovereigns possess their full power, having had a good portion of it stolen from them by Phanes and granted to the Archons, and he can only do so much with what he has available. Worst of all, Arlecchnio's prodding of Furina calls into question whether or not Fontaine's Archon actually has a plan to deal with the disaster, or if she's even an Archon, and the Hydro Gnosis is still MIA regardless. Fontaine is sitting on a time bomb, and it's anyone's guess what will happen next.
• After her meeting with Furina and the Traveler, Arlecchino reveals that she actually went after Furina's life earlier to see if she had the Hydro Gnosis.
  • Furina was completely at Arlecchino's mercy due to being alone and totally defenseless, despite how she normally has bodyguards like Clorinde around. And while Arlecchino spared Furina's life since she didn't have the Gnosis, it's frightening how easily she was able to corner Furina in the first place. What's more, Furina recognizes Arlecchino from the encounter, but is too terrified of her to speak against the fourth Harbinger and too much of a Slave to PR to admit that she was forced to beg for her life. It draws a disturbing parallel to real life situations where people have been assaulted and are too scared to name their attacker.
  • To make it worse, it is shown that when a Harbinger tries to take a Gnosis they thrust themselves (their arm) into the body of an Archon. At the end of it all Furina was clutching her body, petrified from fear. It's hard to not see the scene as more than just an assassination, but violation.
  • After going through Act V, one sees another layer to Furina's distress after being assaulted. Arlecchino discovered the very thing Furina was trying to hide for five centuries: that she was a fake Archon. Furina had been ordered by Focalors to keep this secret at all costs, or the prophecy would proceed and destroy all of Fontaine. Arlecchino nearly ruined five centuries of Furina's efforts to maintain the façade, efforts which had driven Furina nearly to the breaking point from stress and despair. Good thing Arlecchino's attack didn't trigger Fontaine's doom.
• At the end of Act IV, the Traveler gets a vision of Tartaglia’s whereabouts: He is shown to be drifting in what seems to be the Primordial Sea, and when he opens his eyes, he looks up, and sees something that genuinely horrifies him: an entity that looks like a whale swimming above him, its size so huge that Tartaglia himself looks like a tiny speck in comparison. Even worse, this entity is implied to have brainwashed Tartaglia into finding it, as he suddenly became obsessed with something "calling out to him" during his time in the Fortress of Meropide.
• When Navia falls into a huge pool of Primordial Seawater while exploring a ruin, she is drawn into a "trial" where those who died at Poisson attempt to assimilate her into becoming an Oceanid. Seeing people who once respected and trusted her turn and try to drag her down with them into death is downright horrifying. And though Melus and Silver are able to hold them off until Neuvillette can rescue her, Navia only survives her Near-Death Experience by the skin of her teeth.
• Act V reveals the "crime" that the previous Hydro Archon, Egeria, was responsible for: turning her Oceanid followers into humanoid mimics because they wanted to walk alongside humanity. This was a noble endeavor, but Celestia saw fit to punish Egeria by dooming Fontaine's people to being wiped out by the prophecy because Egeria didn't get their permission to create human life. While the disaster was averted thanks to Focalors's scheme, it's still disturbing to think how the Heavenly Principles was willing to give out such Disproportionate Retribution for Egeria's actions. What makes it worse is that Egeria committed the original sin by using energies from the Primordial Sea, and that this was no different from how Celestia created the Archon Authorities by stealing power from the Seven Sovereigns. And yet, despite having committed essentially the same crime, Celestia had the gall to punish Egeria and all of Fontaine for it. Focalors even calls Celestia out on it when she's speaking with Neuvillette, wishing she could judge them for the crime.
• Furina's trial is utterly merciless:
  • Our heroes force her into a corner by bringing some Primordial Seawater into the courtroom. They then offer Furina an ultimatum: either confess the truth, or touch it to prove she's a god and not a human. Despite their need to learn Furina's deepest secret, putting Furina through that was one of the cruelest things the Traveler and their companions have ever done to someone. That said, it was meant to be a scare tactic; since she'd dropped the act once begging for her life from Arlecchino, they believed they could finally get answers out of her once and for all if they made her choose between maintaining the act or dying. They're shocked when Furina actually approaches it and sticks her hand in despite knowing it could kill her instantly (though, thankfully, they'd diluted the water just in case, so she'd only get off with Sinthe poisoning if she did the unthinkable).
  • Though unnerved by how badly they'd misjudged Furina's resolve, they nonetheless continue the trial, hounding her with increasing coldness and frustration as her protests get more dodgy and frantic, not understanding what could possibly be so important about her Tough Leader Façade that's worth keeping secrets at the eleventh hour. Then, just when they've finally resolved the trial in their favor, out of nowhere, the Oratrice issues a death sentence for the Hydro Archon. Only after Freminet returns with the prophecy's final stone tablet is it revealed that Furina being judged guilty by her people is itself another stage of the prophecy. Thus, by proving Furina was a human and not a god to try and force her to help them avert the coming disaster, they instead advanced it into its final stage, thereby locking all of Fontaine into its endgame. While everything turns out alright in the end, it's quite terrifying to realize that Fontaine's impending doom was all your fault.
• Just anything involving the All-Devouring Narwhal.
  • Just as they realize what's causing the Primordial Sea to erupt, the All-Devouring Narwhal shows up inside the opera house, looking for some "tasty" Fontainians to have for a snack. If it weren't for Childe and Neuvillette driving it off, a lot of innocent people would've been the huge whale's lunch. Even so, Neuvillette despairingly reveals that the monster has drank too much Primordial Seawater, and is now unstoppable. It's at exactly this point that the Oratrice, briefly forgotten in the chaos, suddenly starts up of its own volition, as if to begin enacting its death sentence...
  • The fight with the All-Devouring Narwhal has you standing above the Primordial Seawater with the whale diving in and out of it and through portals in the air. When you hit it enough times to anger it, it EATS you and you are sucked into a pocket dimension where you fight some kind of warrior. We are given no information on this shadow or how it could summon phantom versions of Geovishaps, Hat Jellyfish, or Consecrated Beasts.
  • After the whale is defeated, Childe's master Skirk finally appears, casually admitting that this Animalistic Abomination was the pet of her master. Who would be crazy enough to want such a hungry beast? Surtalogi the Foul, a person who like the alchemist Rhinedottir, seeks a "form of perfection." Whatever that meant, if his pet is capable of destroying an entire nation, there's no knowing what Surtalogi is capable of doing.
• When the Traveler and Paimon go back to ask Neuvillette about the Gnosis he handed to the Knave, he reveals that Skirk told him one last thing after he had sent the two of them back to Fontaine: the Gnoses were the remains of the Third Descender. This meant that whoever came before the Traveler was practically chopped into chess pieces by the Heavenly Principles and shared amongst the Seven to strengthen their power further. And if something similar were to happen to the Traveler...

Story Quests

• Zhongli's Quest where you enter the grave of the Goddess of Salt. As you progress deeper into the underground city, you start to see countless people petrified in salt after receiving the full brunt of the energy released when Havria was murdered. Several of them were running for their lives whereas others had been cowering or praying for mercy, and meanwhile Zhongli's explaining how Havria wasn't even that powerful when she was assassinated.
• Nahida’s first quest has her encountering Moseis, the host of a collective dream where citizens of Sumeru can reunite with their loved ones who passed away. Moseis is frighteningly good at manipulating people, making the people he’s trapped in his dream turn on their Archon because Nahida wants them to stop dreaming and come back to the real world.
  • How did Nahida convince her people that Moseis is tricking them? By pointing at Ilman’s daughter and logically pointing out there’s no way Moseis could have put the device that allows the dreamers to share a collective dream in her. Meaning the little girl standing next to Ilman isn’t his real daughter. Which makes Ilman realize that his real daughter is still in the real world, likely panicking because her father isn’t waking up after bringing her to a location outside the city and they’re likely to be attacked by dangerous monsters soon. Ilman understandably freaks out and demands he be released from the collective dream, which leads to the others realizing they too have other loved ones in the real world who need them or would miss them if they stayed.
  • Moseis loses control of the dream because of the panic, causing every one of the dream constructs the dreamers have created to transform into monsters and attack them. This includes Emira, to Moseis’ despair. The Traveler and Nahida have to fight off the dream constructs turned monster, who still speak but their words are garbled and trying to understand what’s wrong. Seeing this, Moseis collapses and resigns himself to his fate of disappearing into the void forever, giving up on life after seeing his beloved Emira turn into a monster.
• Nahida's second quest begins simply enough, with us trying to find wayward elemental spirits and help them find their way home. "Home" in this case is the Apep, the Dendro Sovereign, which only seems markedly strange at first... and then we meet it.
  • Apep turns out to be a mountain-sized serpentine Planimal dragon with a deep voice — and it hates us, having ruthlessly and tirelessly pursued a Rage Against the Heavens ever since the Celestia first descended upon Teyvat, and stating in no uncertain terms that it's going to lay waste to the Seven Nations the gods founded as soon as its illness has passed. Said illness is the lingering remnants of the forbidden knowledge, making it even more wrathful than it already was.
  • Even after Nahida and the Traveler purge the forbidden knowledge from it, Apep's only shift in tone is that it understands that destroying humanity wouldn't make dealing with the Celestia any easier, and it plans to enact its Rage Against the Heavens as soon as it's done healing up and basically tells Nahida to piss off. Unlike some of the previous dragons encountered in the game, you really get the impression that the only reason human life exists in Sumeru is because Apep permits it, and could revoke that permission whenever it wants.
  • Think letting the ancient dragon die of forbidden knowledge would've been better for Sumeru? If only. As the original Dendro Sovereign, Apep is the holder of an incalculable amount of Dendro energy, and if it ever died, that energy would be released into the world all at once. The result would be an impossibly dense rainforest spontaneously erupting over all of Sumeru, with trees so massive that the sun wouldn't reach the land below and the air being lethally oversaturated with oxygen. If Apep kicked the bucket, the entire nation would become incapable of sustaining life as a consequence.
• Wriothesley's Story Quest.
  • At the end of his story quest, Wriothesley reveals the crime that initially got him sent to the Fortress of Meropide: he'd discovered that his foster parents were part of a human trafficking ring, selling orphans to the highest bidder while killing those who didn't sell or otherwise caused problems. Wriothesley explains that this also includes children who discovered the truth, noting that he was not the first one to do so. As a result, he killed them. His fourth Character Story indicates that it was a very violent struggle; not only did blood end up all over the place, but not all of it was the traffickers'. Wriothesley ended up passing out and waking up handcuffed to a hospital bed.
  • The events of his Story Quest in the present are no better. It’s revealed that the “Beret Society”, an organization to reform criminals that Wriothesley approved of, is actually a Cult-like hell, created by Dougier, where his subjects were manipulated, tortured and even starved to death whenever they stepped out of the line, by being injected with a substance in their brain that lead them to experience their worst memories. They were even isolated from their loved ones, with the latter explaining to the Traveler that they didn’t see them from several days. Even when they are successfully rescued by the Traveler and a rightfully pissed off Wriothesley, it’s made clear that it would take more time for the members to mentally recover from it, and Wriothesley can only help them the best that he can, as atonement for accidentally letting it happen in the first place.
• Navia's Story Quest:
  • Romeuf's grudge against Callas is so great that he had extensively planned on blowing up the Clementine Line in order to destroy Poisson. Not only would this have killed dozens of civilians and destroyed the town, but it would've also doomed any aquabuses that were currently on the Clementine Line. And this is after Callas has been dead for three years. Talk about Evil Is Petty.
  • Colter's fanatical desire to kill Navia for things she had no control over is downright disturbing, and it gets to the point that Colter is willing to let himself be caught in Poisson's destruction if it means killing her. He ends up failing, but one has to imagine what kind of effect this had on Navia, especially considering how many other narrow escapes from death she's had within the span of a few months.
• Chiori's Story Quest:
  • Uther's grudge against Chiori may be another case of Evil Is Petty, but it's got one part that's disturbing. After Chiori confronts him for sending thugs after Kirara, Uther begins spreading Malicious Slander that she associates with criminals and obtains her materials through illegal means. He also uses a photo taken during their previous confrontation on the front page of the article he had printed to make her look like a violent maniac. This causes Chiori's boutique to be flooded with refund requests and for her providers to pull their support for her right before Fashion Week. What makes this scary is this sort of thing happens in real life, with famous figures having their careers ruined because someone decided to spread lies about them, even if the lies are proven false.
  • There's also Uther's factory. It's filled with Gardemeks, and there's toxic waste everywhere. Chiori notes that said materials, which are used in making Uther's low-quality clothes, could even cause health problems to those who wear them for an extended period. Most of all, when Chiori and the Traveler obtain evidence of Uther's shady practices, he tries to kill them for it.

World Quests

Liyue

• The story of Huachu, an NPC from Liyue, is intense for a minor quest that's unrelated to the main storyline. Her father didn't approve of her relationship with Jianqiu because he was poor, so her response was to fake her own death. The bulletin board at Feiyun Slope reveals that there is definitely a "young female" found at the bottom of the well where she supposedly took her own life. This means Huachu and Jianqiu either somehow obtained an actual corpse or were very, very good at creating a fake body... one that can rot and contaminate the entire water supply of a well as if it were really a dead body.

Inazuma

• Similarly to Dragonspine's Durin, Inazuma has Orobashi no Mikoto, a serpent creature that came from the Dark Sea and became the god of Watatsumi Island. Orobashi declared war on Narakumi Island but was defeated by the Raiden Shogun at Yashiori Island, where its remains became the Serpent's Head. However, its lingering hatred manifested into the Tatarigami, a malevolent energy that is basically the equivalent of the Malice from The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. The people of Inazuma created wards to suppress the Tatarigami, but those wards were destroyed by fanatical worshippers of Orobashi from the Sangonomiya resistance, causing the island to be trapped in a perpetual thunderstorm and resulting in the deaths of countless civilians from fatal Tatarigami infections.
• The Fate of Higi Village. One by one the villagers succumbed to the Tatarigami plague and died, and it's mentioned in some leftover Shogunate notes that the army was planning to slaughter the entire village for housing suspected deserters and refugees. Then, for reasons unknown (and possibly due to Sanity Slippage), the village chief Washizu began sacrificing remaining villagers, random passersby, and Shogunate soldiers to the serpent god Orobashi by luring them to a specific shrine, before he recorded each of their deaths in a detailed list. By the time the Traveler visits the village, it's already a Ghost Town save for some rogue infected Rōnin squatting around. And to make matters worse, the final entry in the list describes the Traveler, who managed to kill Washizu before he could murder them first.
• Tsurumi Island. The island is blanketed by heavy fog that you need road lights to travel through, and although you meet some locals early on, there's something clearly very wrong in the island. With little visibility, the atmosphere feels oppressive and the whole island feels haunted, like something out of Silent Hill or other horror stories. Though you eventually break the island's curse and restore the light of day to the place, it still doesn't change the fact that the locals sacrificed a boy in a misguided attempt to appease their god. And the island really is haunted, since one side quest in the epilogue is to gather all the wayward souls for The Boatman to take to the afterlife.

Enkanomiya

• Orobaxi may have turned out to be a benevolent deity for Watatsumi, and a victim for whatever game Celestia is playing, but the Great Serpent is not exactly wholly good either. Enkanomiya's experimental records detail a set of experiments on living Bathysmal Vishaps. Trying to comprehend their physiology is understandable, but one set of experiments involved transplanting Orobaxi's coral directly into the bodies of Bathysmal Vishaps. Earlier attempts failed because the Vishaps, despite their adaptability, rejected the transplants; their physiology as residents of the "Light Realm" is fundamentally incompatible with the power of Celestia's gods. One can only imagine what it took for them to successfully create the ones sealed beneath the Dainishi Mikochi that sport the Bloodbranch Coral. (At the very least, Orobashi was careful enough to make sure no vishaps outright died to the experiments, although that doesn't discount the possibility of the vishaps suffering.)
• The Sunchildren regime before Orobashi's arrival in Enkanomiya is disturbing. Children were selected by nobles to act as a puppet and figurehead, and when they were old enough to understand the manipulation of the nobles, they would be killed off. The method of killing is brutal: the child would be burned alive, incinerated by the Dainichi Mikoshi. Death by burning is particularly painful and slow. The people of Enkanomiya, despite the children's suffering, hated them and called their ignorance the greatest sin of all.

The Chasm

• The Chasm's inner region is a massive underground area, much like Enkanomiya. But while Enkanomiya is littered with largely-intact ancient ruins and has an artificial day-night cycle, the Chasm's underground is a sealed mine that's dark and oozing with corruption, requiring a special torch to explore. Going deeper down the Chasm leads you into a sprawling network of enormous caverns, claustrophobic passageways, and sheer drops, dotted by several nameless ruins that are almost devoid of life, including an entire city suspended upside-down over a cave bathed in corrupting ooze. The soundtracks don't help either; while Enkanomiya's music is epic and gives a sense of wonder and tragedy of an ancient civilization in its final days before being evacuated, the Chasm's music is eerie, foreboding, and gives a feel of "what the hell is going on here?"
• Exploring the Chasm's underground mining area without entering its deeper levels leads you to a large underground cavern where the Ruin Serpent resides. On the northwestern end of this cavern is a long tunnel littered with gears that leads back to the mines' main entrance tunnel. Realizing the close proximity of this populated area to the lair of a massive, tunnel-boring war machine would certainly make one raise more than a few additional concerns about the safety of everyone who continues to toil away in the underground mines.
• The Chasm's Bounty is easily one of the more unnerving World Quests. At first, it starts off pretty innocuous, with the Traveler and Paimon tasked with finding a missing miner named Qi Ding. Upon finding him, he asks the two to find the doll he bought for his daughter Qi Nan. And that's when things start to take a more sinister turn. While searching for the doll, they meet a little girl claiming to be Qi Ding's daughter Qi Nan. She helps them find the doll and they bring it back to Qi Ding. They also tell him about how they found his daughter Qi Nan... only for Qi Ding to point out that Qi Nan is all grown up and working at the Ministry of Civil Affairs. At which point "Qi Nan", who somehow followed the Traveler out of the Chasm and was eavesdropping on their conversation, promptly runs off. In other words, someone or ''something'' was lurking in the Chasm impersonating Qi Ding's daughter... and you just helped set it free.

Sumeru

• The Withering is this in spades, a form of sickness or "tumor" that infected the forest which made them wither and die. It is extremely creepy to stumble upon one in the open world thanks to the sheer contrast between the forest and a Withering Zone: one moment you're exploring a green, lush forest, and the next fog suddenly obscures your vision, the plants and grass around you turns sickly brown, and somewhere in the area is a giant scarlet flower - the tumor of the withering. Not helping matters is the disquieting music that plays in a Withering Zone, and that having the decay gauge completely fill up will result in a Total Party Kill.
• If you thought a normal Withering Zone is bad enough, then Old Vanarana is much, much worse.
  • On the western side of the rainforest was the old home of the Aranara - and the reason they moved to the current Vanarana in a dream is because the entire section of the forest has completely withered away. To put this in perspective, Old Vanarana has its own Statue of the Seven, and the whole area is counted as a Withering Zone. Stumbling upon the place when you're exploring is pure Nightmare Fuel not only because of the sheer scale of the devastation, but also because if you try to explore the place, you'll get the warning of going out of bounds despite it clearly being a finished area. It's as if both the Traveler and Paimon knew that Old Vanarana is a Death World, so they stayed as far away from the place as possible. Indeed, you can only explore the place by doing the Aranyaka World Quest and having Arama accompany you.
  • And it still gets even worse when you actually explore the place. The decay gauge in the whole area starts at four - the highest in the game - and continues to fill up on its own if you stay away from the safe patches. As you go deeper and deeper, you'll start encountering Rifthounds and Ruin Machines, making exploration and combat extremely dangerous. And in the deepest part of the area, deep beneath the ground and behind an ancient seal, lies the Land of Grounded Dreams - the very place where Marana's Avatar was sealed hundreds of years ago. Here, the miasma and death is so prevalent that even the water and air has turned black, and it is here that you will fight the physical embodiment of the Withering itself.
• Jeht's story arc quest ends in a rather hopeful note, but during her journey in finding her roots, she has become Babel's enforcer who has murd-ahem, assassinated several traitors to the tribe. Even the Fatui were freaked out at how vicious Jeht could be, when they had her captured. But this is still not enough for Babel, and she's still shunned, and was about to be disposed of. So at the end of the story arc, she and The Traveler commit outright genocide on the Tanit Village. And unlike most examples where you clean up enemy camps, this one sticks, and the Tanit village would be empty from thereon.

Fontaine

• The Ancient Colors World Quest goes into the backstory of the Melusines and has you travel through Merusea Village... which is under the skeletal remains of Elynas, an abyssal entity who, much like Durin, is so large that its body forms a large part of the regional landscape. Towards the end of the quest we find out that the Melusines were created from Elynas' blood during a massive battle that occurred within Elynas' corpse. Later on the Traveler gets to speak with Elynas' spirit, during which it describes itself as something that lived within a "cosmic darkness" before its mother (implied to be Rhinedottir) brought it to Teyvat, and only allowed itself to be destroyed after realizing its very existence was ruining Fontaine. While it's a relief that Elynas isn't interested in being brought back to life, it's still horrifying knowing something that massive caused so much damage during the Cataclysm, and if he is to be believed, could awaken again.

Events

• "Shadows Amindst Snowstorms"
  • The Boss Battle of the Shadows Amidst Snowstorms is revealed to be the Fell Flower, a mutated Whopperflower that learned how to impersonate a human. After it's defeated, Albedo speculates that it may have created through Durin’s corrupted blood seeping into the leylines underneath Dragonspine.
  • Albedo’s Big Damn Heroes moment in the Version 2.3 Shadows Amidst Snowstorms event, where he sneaks up from behind and stabs his Evil Doppelgänger in the back. It’s one of the most graphic scenes ever shown onscreen in Genshin. And then he turns into a giant Whopperflower.
  • The entire premise of Act II is plenty nightmare fuel inducing to begin with because you’re stranded on a snowy mountain that can freeze you to death in minutes. If that wasn’t bad enough, there’s someone who looks exactly like you running around that robbed your home and tried to kidnap a child, who’s now impeding your escape at every turn and trying to kill you so it can take your place and eat your friends. Gee, good thing Albedo faked his own death by avalanche to lure it out and defeat it... and not to mention the fact the entire thing was just a diversion from his real evil double.
• For an event themed around a summer vacation, "Summertime Odyssey" has a surprisingly nightmarish reveal near the end. The main reason for the wondrous mirages that Traveler and co. got to explore over the course of the event? It's because of the Fatui doing trial runs on a device that alters the state of people's brains and is modeled after an Archon with control over illusions. Except the device started malfunctioning and severely affecting everyone in the vicinity, and while Traveler and their party, all being strong-willed individuals, only experienced the effects in form of stable mirages, those with weaker minds — as in, all of the Fatui soldiers (including the one scientist in charge of the project) present on the islands — went delirious. To make matters worse, the Fatui soldiers in question were junior soldiers who all signed a waiver of claims against the Mad Scientist who created the device, and due to their own technological incompetence they not only failed to fix the malfunction, but ruined the device entirely. Add to that the fact that Golden Apple Archipelago is all but cut off from the outside world... It's a good thing Traveler and the others happened to be on the islands at that exact timeframe.
• During the TCG event quest “Culminate! Chatter of Joyous Dreams”, the gang are hiding while Kirara delivers her last delivery to a suspicious group of people they suspect to be related to the Card Snatcher, whose leader is acting hostile towards her as soon as she asks about the contents of the box, and after she presses more, the leader decides to kill her in the middle of nowhere just so she won’t be a witness to them. And as it turns out, he was willing to do that over a bunch of card backs! Granted, the card backs had a secret message on them that would’ve exposed their plans, but the secret message had a convoluted way of being revealed, so even if somebody took the card backs, they would have to experience a chain of coincidences just to reveal the message. In essence, if Kirara had delivered the card backs without meeting the Traveler and becoming suspicious over who the Card Snatcher is, she would’ve been killed in the desert with none the wiser, capable or not.
• Thelxie's Fantastic Adventures final chapter gives us a heartbreaking amount of Realism-Induced Horror, the seemingly uplifting story of Zuria Destree trying to cure her son of his Loneliness Syndrome, a sickness that causes severe delusions upon the inflicted, is turned on its head when it's revealed that while her son did have the sickness, he is no longer among the living. Zuria, who contrary to most examples of parents in these sorts of storylines was supportive and doing everything she could to help her son, left him alone in order to oversee an art exhibition specifically meant to help treat him, but that day alone was all that the fantasies needed to get the better of him and he drowned himself. Coupled with the loss of her husband not too long ago, the poor woman developed a similar syndrome out of sheer regret of not being able to give her son a better life and everyone involved is terrified that she too will take her life if she is not helped. Fortunately for Zuria, Freminet, the Traveler, and Paimon were able to help her regain the courage to face reality and make peace over her son's death.
• The web-event "Phantom of the Night", in sharp contrast to the other web-events, is Darker and Edgier in nature and is more akin to a horror story.
  • The event starts with two Treasure Hoarders (a Scout and a Seaman) infiltrating a mansion, it is set in nightime, the house is very dark and the atmosphere is eerie. As they trek through the dark mansion, they stumble a key to the ground but the Scout is disgusted at the sight of a suspicious liquid (implied to be blood) and the Seaman notices the windows are open.
  • As they proceed to the next room, the Seaman notes that its pitch black and the Scout lights up the nearby candles for a source of light — as they approach, they saw a silhouetted figure sitting motionless on the floor; once they notice a gemstone, the Scout tells the Seaman to take the gemstone but the latter is freaked out to do so, forcing the former to snag it away instead, once the scout successfully snatches the gemstone from the neck, the silhouetted figure reveals himself to be a bloodstained corpse with a stab wound.
  • After the Scout steals the gemstone away, he tells his lackey that they should proceed to steal more of the belongings but then the latter notices something is off—the area looks cleaned out. As they walk they notice a rather ominous painting and, once the Scout lits up a candle on the table, the camera zooms out to reveal the painting of the Arlecchino and the woman herself sitting by the table. While the Seaman attempts to talk tough, she gives them a hint as to why the area looks unguarded the Scout takes the hint and tells the Seaman to bolt it, but the Knave has no intention of ever letting them leave, expresses displeasure to those with avarice, and coldly kills the two.
  • The story ends with Arlecchino musing that only in death that they are equal, and has two additional corpses (and their blood) to clean up—that is a pair of Treasure Hoarders she killed a second ago. While she normally goes after Asshole Victims, it makes one wonder what would happen to the law enforcement (and journalists) if they are unlucky enough to stumble upon the Knave while conducting an investigation, especially those from the Special Security and Surveillance Patrol and the Marechausse Phantom (and given how she ambushed Furina at the dead of the night, and only spared her because she had nothing to gain from it, she'll likely have no problem with it)....

Webcomics

• The Prologue centers on the beginning of Vennessa's rebellion against the Lawrence clan, and demonstrates just how terrible things has become during Barbatos' absence.
  • The Ludi Harpastum under the Lawrence clan was not a joyful festival for the people, but debauchery reserved solely for the nobility. Venti learns from the crowd that the tradition of the champion choosing a maiden to throw the harpastum at the conclusion of the festival has been corrupted. He sees a sobbing girl at the top of the tower, and learns that Barca Lawrence intends to rape the girl after the festival concludes. The crowd notes this is the 5th time this has happened.
  • Barca has Vennessa and her entire clan sent out to face Ursa the Drake, as revenge for her standing up to him. Lord Lawrence forces the people to watch the massacre, ordering his troops to shoot anyone that tries to escape. If not for divine intervention, the clan would have been sacrificed as part of Lawrence's deal with the monster.
• The main story begins with a glimpse of Haeresys, an underground fighting arena run by the Fatui. The arena has several levels of balconies looking down on the pit, with shapes that appear to be well-dressed people enjoying watching what are likely kidnapped/trafficked people being forced to fight for their lives. A decoration featuring what seems to be a human skull hangs from a chandelier. The latest victim, #139, lies in a pool of his own blood with a monster of some kind looming over him.
• The entire meeting between Dottore and Diluc is a tense affair, with Kaeya finally saying exactly what is actually being discussed. It isn't a meeting to see about recruiting foreign members for the Fatui, it's a human trafficking operation leveraging Mondstadt's debt. Kaeya compares the whole thing to a blood tax, using their children as payment for Dottore slaying Ursa the Drake.

Other:

• Zooming in your character will normally make them transparent, or completely hidden from view if up-close, but if you angle your camera movements right, the active character's face will display a sudden Nightmare Face with void-black eyes, and a mouth locked in a perpetual scream.
• Late August 2023, a hack was discovered that allowed Kaveh to permanently delete objects in unsuspecting players' worlds.^note This was supposedly done by hacking bloom core status onto the objects, which would get deleted because Kaveh's ability immediately detonates bloom cores. This included gameplay-important objects such as non-player characters, chests, and Statues of the Seven, which could lock a player out of progressing. Even worse, relogging or even reinstalling would not restore the missing objects. Fortunately, this was quickly fixed by the developers, who were able to correct the impacted accounts.

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