New Honkai: Star Rail Trailer Confirms Major Acheron Fan Theory
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It’s only one more day and Honkai: Star Rail update 2.1 will finally be here, bringing the debut of highly-anticipated character Acheron. HoYoverse has heaved quite a bit of attention on her – so much so, in fact, that players have taken to calling her the developers’ favorite child.
That’s probably not far off the mark, given she’s Honkai: Star Rail’s equivalent to Honkai Impact 3rd’s Raiden Mei and Genshin Impact’s Raiden Ei, both of which are very important characters for their respective games. Acheron has received both an Animated Short and a Myriad Celestia Trailer already, and one day ahead of her release a Character Trailer followed suit.
HoYoverse
Every one of these videos had some mind-shattering revelations in store for us – quite literally mind-shattering in the case of Black Swan. Yes, Acheron killed the mighty Duke Inferno, who’d been built up as a powerful big bad just in order to show how badass Acheron is. Yes, Acheron has become an Emanator of IX, the Aeon of the Nihility, after her homeworld was destroyed in wars echoing the story of Honkai Impact 3rd.
Naturally, her third trailer served a similar surprise: It confirmed Acheron to be a Self-Annihilator. You’d have missed the reveal if you blinked in the wrong moment, but for a brief flash the title is outright stated in the bottom right quarter of the screen when her name card is shown.
Fans have been theorizing that Acheron is a Self-Annihilator ever since the story of version 2.0 concluded. These are beings who share The Nihility’s beliefs so deeply that they’ve received a share of the Aeon’s powers, similar to an Emanator. However, Nihility being Nihility, these come at a price – Self-Annihilators eventually cease to exist, losing their memories, their bodies, their very beings. They become nothingness, dissolved in IX’s abyss.
As the official explanation of the faction puts it:
Self-Annihilators are a group that lost their meaning of existence when they carelessly stepped into IX the Nihility's shadow. The shadow of the Nihility covers the stars equally, and Self-Annihilators may form in any world. These poor souls share one thing in common: Their various existential properties — such as corporeal body, mental cognition, and personal memories... will gradually fade away in their journey of self-annihilation.
Dr. Primitive, No. #64 of the Genius Society, once asked before his disappearance: If IX is truly unresponsive to the universe, how could the Path of Nihility exist to this day? Perhaps, as the Self-Annihilators aimlessly traverse the cosmos, they are also casting the shadow of the Aeon around the universe. As for the few who can single-handedly withstand the encroachment of Nihility on their existences, their journey of self-annihilation is drawn out to infinity, and the road they walk is like a shadow of IX cast in the world.
Acheron could be on the way to a similar fate – keep in mind her memory troubles. However, as an actual Emanator of Nihility she may be strong enough to withstand this process. Like IX, the living black hole, bends things around itself infinitely, so too can Acheron draw out the process of her self-annihilation. That’s the theory, anyway. No one knows how each Aeon chooses the ones to become their Emanators and it’s believed that IX doesn’t make any conscious choices in this regard – they’re the embodiment of Nihility: Everything is meaningless to them, even the fact that someone completely shares their beliefs. It could be that the process is simply akin to a cosmic law – but the official description makes it sound like it’s something an Aeon has to do to keep its Path alive. In which case that’d be one IX actually does care about?
Related: Honkai: Star Rail – Gallagher Guide: Best Light Cones and Relics
In short: Acheron has become so depressed with the world that she accidently stepped on the Path of Nihility, becoming a Self-Annihilator. However, she’s so powerful that she was able to withstand IX and not be dissolved into nothingness, becoming their Emanator and attaining an even greater power. Tomorrow, this strength could be yours.
