Genshin Impact: Truth About Allogenes, the Contract That Makes Kindling of Them

After six years, the truth of Visions and allogenes has finally been revealed. In the 7.2 story, Nukvah — the one that runs Celestia's preset programs — gave us the answer: those who hold a Vision are allogenes, and the allogenes chosen to ascend to Celestia are preserved as records of civilization, becoming vectors of fate that guide the next cycle of civilization. Vennessa is the most direct example. When Venti asked where this hero of Mondstadt had gone, Nukvah finished its search and showed everyone where she is kept.

The phonetic glosses on those structures point to soul, personality, and memory — the same set of spiritual concepts first raised in the texts of the Narzissenkreuz Ordo. The one who once fought for Mondstadt's freedom has now been preserved in this way. To Nukvah, the form she exists in does not matter; as long as she can still guide fate, that is enough. And this arrangement is about to fall on the Teyvat before us as well.

Nukvah demands that each nation, within the final 42 days, choose the one Vision holder most worth preserving, and let them ascend to Celestia as the last record of this cycle of civilization. Civilization will still be destroyed, but the chosen few may go on to guide the next world. This is the reward it offers — and we all know it is an outcome no one can accept.

So what clues about Visions and ascension did the old stories leave us? Looking back: Lisa long ago suspected that Visions come at a price; Neuvillette spoke of a mission and a return gift; and Ineffa's story states outright what role the soul plays in all of it. These seeds were scattered across different versions, and now, with Vennessa's fate, we can finally string them together — to see how a Vision grants power, and what the heavens expect its holder to accomplish.

First: what actually makes a Vision work? Ineffa's Moon Wheel story preserves a set of dragon research records. The researcher recovered a Vision from human remains, then discussed it with the Third Seat, who suggested that this Vision might be related to the Moon Wheel, a ritual implement from the north. The researcher obtained a Moon Wheel that still worked, and the experiment confirmed the guess. The Moon Wheel was originally a ceremonial vessel that the three moons granted to their followers, through which people could commune with the three moons. The researcher found that what drives a Vision is the same substance as in a Moon Wheel — the soul. In other words, a Vision looks like nothing more than a gem worn on the body, yet its operation has to do with the soul.

So what role does human desire play in it? The records go on to explain. According to them, a Vision uses desire to anchor some kind of existence, and through that existence calls on elemental power. The original text omits both objects but keeps the function of desire: it is precisely through desire that a person can establish this connection and then draw on elemental power. That lets us understand why Visions always appear alongside a person's desire. Desire is very likely not merely the condition for receiving a Vision — it also takes part in drawing on that power.

But a Vision's ability to call on elemental power does not mean the power comes from the gem itself. Mona calls it an external organ for channeling magical power. If its function is to help the holder channel power outward, then whose power was it originally?

Neuvillette's Vision story answers that. But the story first tells of where the Gnosis came from: the Usurper was gravely wounded in the great war and could no longer suppress this world's original order through its own authority. To keep ruling, the Usurper joined with another latecomer to create the Gnosis, to subdue the world's resentment and rage. According to the text, human thoughts could from then on fall only into seven categories, and every fragment that came from the primordial was driven to devour the others. Today's order of the Seven was established against this backdrop.

After that, when a person's longing reaches the heavens, the seven Archons of the mortal realm must make an offering for that person — a crumb of their own authority. Hence it is remembered that the elemental power a Vision grants comes from the elemental authority held by the Seven. But when the Seven give up that power, they do not even know who received the gift, nor which desire reached the heavens. This explains why Raiden Ei says that the granting of Visions has nothing to do with her own will. The Seven must part with power, but they cannot necessarily decide who receives it. So a person receiving a Vision cannot simply be read as some god favoring them, or approving of a particular wish of theirs.

Still, knowing where the power comes from does not tell the whole of the gift. Neuvillette goes on to say that once the recipient completes their mission, the return the gods receive will be even more generous. In other words, the Seven part with power first, and are repaid later.

This arrangement recalls a classic literary archetype: Faust's bargain with the devil. In Goethe's Faust, the devil Mephistopheles agrees to serve Faust in this world, at the price that in the next, Faust will serve him in turn. Faust then wagers on it: if he should ever be content with the life before him and wish some beautiful moment to linger forever, the devil may bind him and end his life on earth. A person uses the devil's power to pursue a wish and stakes their own future on the bargain.

Back in Teyvat, the demon names behind the seven Archons give the parallel a further echo. Barbatos, Morax, and Buer can all be found in the demon catalogue of the Lesser Key of Solomon. So when these demons part with power and wait for the return, it becomes easier to read a Vision as a Faustian bargain: a person gains power through desire, and may one day pay a price far beyond what they imagined.

Vennessa's case makes that price concrete. She fought for freedom on earth, and after ascending, her soul, personality, and memory were retained to guide the next cycle of civilization. Seen this way, the heavens granting power through a Vision and the arrangement after ascension are very likely two sides of one and the same thing. As for how a person is chosen, and whether they can decide where they go, the clues that follow will make it clearer.

The process by which a person gains power through desire shows up more concretely in the experiences of Ningguang, Kazuha, and Mona. Ningguang meant to sell a masterless Vision — an empty shell — and it lit up again in her hands. The Vision left behind by Kazuha's friend also glowed briefly in Kazuha's hands. The Vision Mona received came from an old teaching implement. Clearly, an old shell can still answer a person's desire. Combined with the research on the Moon Wheel, I lean toward this: through desire, a person borrows elemental authority by way of a Vision.

But after gaining power, what becomes of the holder's own fate? On this, Mona left a key explanation in her Constellation voice-over: the past, present, and future of a Vision holder are all reflected in their Constellation. So when we look at a Vision, what attaches to it is not only the holder's present desire but their whole life. And as early as Unreconciled Stars, Leonard's unfulfilled wish already appeared in the story alongside a Constellation in the sky. From this, desire, Visions, and fate are very likely bound by a connection we never fully understood.

And can a life that was never meant to have a Stella Fortuna change? Another of Ineffa's stories offers a clue. The Thirteen Sovereign Lords would hardly accept the confinement of a Constellation. Ineffa, the mirror-image of the Mirror of the Dawning Morn, was likewise never meant to receive a Stella Fortuna's blessing. Yet later the Moon Wheel lit up, and she recovered memories of the past. The story also says that a vanilla-shaped asterism in the sky answered the flowers Lianca had left behind — someone on earth left flowers for her, and a matching asterism appeared above. I think this may hint that Ineffa's dealings with humans are also changing the fate that once had no Stella Fortuna in it.

So by what criteria do the heavens decide who gets a Vision? Nicole's experience helps us understand this further. She knew the principle behind Visions and knew the outcome of ascending, yet still wanted to use it to return to the light. She tried everything and never succeeded. Only later did she learn that angels had long since been excluded from the heavens' plans, and that her wish had never been heeded at all. Clearly, wanting a Vision is not simply a matter of desiring it strongly enough.

Once she knew why, Nicole stopped watching humanity from afar. She took sculpture commissions, guided those who had lost their way, and quietly dropped hints for confused scholars — until one day she helped an old man and finally received a Vision. The text says the sky could no longer ignore the influence she had. So when the heavens select Vision holders, what they look at is probably not desire alone, but the impact a person has on the world.

But does the sky's approval mean one can then live as one pleases? Notes connected to the Narzissenkreuz already linked receiving a Vision with handing over one's own fate. The writer even hoped to avoid that outcome by cutting away the self — preferring to give up the self rather than surrender their fate. Clearly, in these researchers' eyes, the granting of a Vision is far from an unmixed good.

To understand this handing over of fate, we have to separate the choices a person makes in life from where they go after ascending. Keqing does not believe a god's consciousness resides in a Vision, and Diluc, after setting his Vision aside, simply carried on with his own investigation. They can doubt the gods and oppose them, acting on their own judgment. But Vennessa's case reminds us that being able to decide for oneself in life does not mean being able to decide one's whereabouts after ascending. As for whether a person can change an ending already determined, the Tuner's notes raised the question too. In that Tuner's view, if the end of a life is fixed in advance, then no matter how one alters one's melody, one will arrive there all the same. The stronger the desire, the firmer the order of fate. Put that back into the story of Visions, and we cannot help asking: when a person accomplishes something through desire, what does the heavens get out of it?

That brings us back to the mission and return gift Neuvillette mentioned. The Seven part with power, the holder completes a mission, and in the end the gods receive a more generous repayment. But what exactly is that repayment? Lisa was already wary that the gods' gifts might carry another price. And what Venti told us in Mondstadt is that Vision holders are qualified to ascend to Celestia. Put the two together, and ascension deserves a fresh reading.

Take Vennessa. Her story used to make it easy to believe that ascension is a wonderful thing. Aquila Favonia records her fight for freedom, and also the summons from the sky. A hero who defied oppression and won Mondstadt its freedom, at last favored by the gods — it seemed she ought to live freely ever after. But 7.2 tells us that although her deeds were recognized, after ascending she no longer had any say in where she went.

That is why the Traveler can never accept Nukvah's arrangement. The Traveler wants to protect Teyvat because there are friends here, memories here, a homeland they hold dear. Nukvah holds that picking out the people most worth preserving and storing them as records already satisfies that wish. Whether friends remain at one's side, whether the city can go on existing — none of that matters anymore. The Traveler wants the people before them to live; Nukvah wants only to keep records usable by the next cycle of civilization.

But why do this? Nukvah then explains that the world it was born from has perished, and it can no longer draw information from there — it can improve itself only through the growth of civilization. Humans accumulate experience in living, find ways through hardship, and try paths no one has walked before. These experiences and creations can become the new information Nukvah needs.

So we can draw a conclusion: the heavens grant Visions, perhaps, so that people with desires gain power and accomplish something on earth; then, from among them, the ones worth preserving are chosen, and the experience of their lives is used to guide the next cycle of civilization. People strive for their own wishes, and the experience they accumulate ends up as the civilizational record the heavens needs. That gives us reason to suspect, when we look at the mission and return gift Neuvillette mentioned, that what the heavens intends to take back is far more than the power it first handed out.

So when Ningguang pressed it on whether humans are merely nourishment, Nukvah even admitted that in extreme cases people can be regarded as kindling. And even without being burned as kindling, a fate like Vennessa's can scarcely be called happiness. Her memory is preserved, yet she cannot decide where she goes or whom she is to guide. The so-called eternal life still answers to the heavens' arrangements.

If Vennessa shows us the outcome of ascension, then the practice of preserving the soul and discarding the body appeared in Fontaine's old texts long before. The survey records discuss memory, desire, soul, and personality separately. Fragment of Harmonic Whimsy relates that Remus, to meet destruction, prepared to seal away his subjects' souls and then fashion bodies for them that would not decay. Remus hoped to save his subjects this way.

But with bodies that no longer decay and souls preserved, can these people still live the life they wanted? As for what must be paid for such eternity once the soul is preserved, other weapon and artifact descriptions offer their own accounts. In Forged by the Golden Melody, the Tuner's own soul is scorched away in the course of carrying out their duties. Golden Troupe's reward praises the order of eternity on one hand, and on the other describes a golem waiting to devour souls. The descriptions praise eternity over and over, yet to sustain that eternity a person may have to give up even their soul.

Combined with the situation of allogenes after ascending, it becomes hard to treat eternity as a gift at all. And at this point, reading some of the game's books shows that the condition of being unable to act freely even after losing the body was written into other stories long ago. In volume three of Anecdota Septentrionalis, a voyager in the middle of the sea comes upon a high wall stretching up to the sky, hung with countless human figures. Those people have no bodies, no flesh, yet they keep their own shapes. According to the book, those who lied in life and would not write the truth in a book are hung on the wall to be punished after death. But the narrator claims that everything he wrote is true, and so he cannot get near at all, and hastily rows away. The irony traces back to Lucian's A True Story, where the original writes both of a king without substance who keeps human form, and of those who forged history punished after death — while the narrator, in turn, vaunts his own honesty. Anecdota Septentrionalis reassembles these passages, and from them comes the wall on the sea.

Knowing the prototype, it is easy to see why the game wrote such a wall, and to connect it to Vennessa's situation. The people on the wall lost their bodies long ago yet keep their shapes, still subject to another's control. After Vennessa ascended to Celestia, her soul, personality, and memory were likewise preserved in another form. Both stories make plain that leaving the body behind does not necessarily bring freedom. And that may be exactly what the image of the wall hints at regarding the fate of those who ascend.

What stays behind with the soul is the desires a person never fulfilled. Heart's Desire turns such a wish into something that can remain. The adeptus in the glaze, at the end of its life, condensed its unfinished wish into crystal. The dead in the stone's heart let desire and regret return to the world through Cor Lapis. Life ends, yet the wish still lingers among the living. Set beside the Vision answering desire and the heavens preserving civilization, it leaves a question: is preserving a wish a way of remembering the dead, or of denying them release from the attachments of their life?

If even a person's wish can remain after death, what happens when the whole world reaches its end? Volume Zero of Flowers for Princess Fischl describes a self-contained space of consciousness where souls can be stored, and a vision of all things flowing into the Immernachtreich at the end of the universe. The world itself has ended, yet souls can still be kept somewhere else. That image readily calls Celestia to mind: even if the civilization before us is destroyed, the heavens can still keep the records of some of its people.

But the destination a person first longs for is not necessarily where they end up. The "Wuwang" chapter of Records of Jueyun tells such a story. Young people longing for a better life left their homeland following a sea monster's promise. Later they gradually forgot where they came from, and their old dreams became part of the monster's song, drawing more young people in. The story brings to mind thriving port cities and the old villages that slowly decline — and it serves as a parallel to the promise of ascension: a person leaves with a dream, ends up forgetting even their homeland, and the dream is kept for another purpose.

If "Wuwang" tells of a group of young people, volume three of Men of Lithin tells how an entire surface civilization took part in the plans of ancient life. The ancient life first turned itself into energy, then reached out to the surface races, letting them slowly restore the environment. The surface races used that energy to grow their civilization, and in doing so released the ancient life step by step. While building their home, they were also hastening the ancient life's return. Connect that with 7.2's revelation, and the resemblance shows: the ancient life in the novel hoped to return through the surface civilization; Nukvah wants to improve itself through the growth of civilization. Their aims differ, yet both want humanity to develop civilization so that their own plans can be realized.

So what a gift means cannot be judged by how much power one gains here and now; it also depends on what the giver wants people to do, and what it intends to take back from them in the end. But must people accept such an arrangement? Men of Lithin records another choice. In the last room are kept the memories of those who would not give up themselves and refused to merge into a collective intelligence. They can be reborn again and again among surface life. Even though most accept that way of continuing, the novel does not erase those who would not submit. Civilization may continue, but whether each person is willing to live on in such a way should still be theirs to decide.

And when a person truly wants to live as they please, is the one who granted them happiness willing to let them go? The artifact set Nighttime Whispers in the Echoing Woods turns this conflict into a complete story. A young man asked a witch to grant the girl he loved every happiness in the world, and promised to pay the price later. So the witch rewrote the girl's fate so that luck kept coming to her. But a happiness arranged by fate was never the life she wanted. She would rather give up the luck and live in the real world. There would be pain there, and loss, but she was willing to pay that price and love as she chose. Later the girl told the young man that she was willing to treat others sincerely, and willing to give him her heart. And just then the witch came to collect the agreed price, and took the girl into an ink pot, to make her a character in other stories. The girl had barely decided how she would live from then on when the witch carried her off, to become what other stories needed.

Reading this, we can see why the story connects with Faust and with the experience of allogenes ascending. The girl found a wish of her own and was willing to pay for a real life, and in the end the witch put her in an ink pot. Allogenes accomplish things on earth and leave experiences worth preserving, and in the end may be chosen by the heavens to guide the next cycle of civilization. The more precious the experience they leave, the more likely they are to be taken. But does the heavens finding a use for someone give it the right to carry them off without asking whether they want to go?

We can also see why this revelation is so cruel. The power of a Vision is real: it answers human desire, and lets people borrow the authority of the gods. But once chosen to ascend, allogenes may become the record of civilization, going on to guide the next cycle. Whether this arrangement is exactly the mission and return gift Neuvillette spoke of cannot yet be matched point by point. The analysis above is my own synthesis of these clues.

Vennessa being kept on Celestia has already shown us the price ascension can exact. But understanding how the heavens make use of human desire does not mean we should reject desire itself. Neuvillette, refusing the heavens' edicts, still chooses to part with his own power because he esteems humanity. Ineffa, after recovering her long memories, chose to return to the place where someone was still waiting for her. Power can be used to help the people in front of you, and memory can show a person the way home.

If so, why should the heavens' choice be the only thing that decides what a person leaves behind? Zhiqiong's letter shows us another answer. Zhiqiong had no Vision, yet gave just as much of herself. She wanted those who came after to know how far an ordinary person can go. The maps and the name she left behind are part of civilization too.

Now Nukvah requires each nation to choose a single person worth preserving. But Teyvat has countless ordinary people like Zhiqiong, who never drew a god's gaze — should they vanish along with civilization? A Vision can grant power, but the gods in the sky should not therefore decide who deserves to be kept and who must disappear.

Vennessa once won Mondstadt its freedom, and of course we should remember her deeds. But commemorating her never means deciding her resting place on her behalf forever. What the Traveler must hold on to is not merely a few records for later ages to use, but the Teyvat where the people before them can go on living.

That is the research on the truth about "allogenes." I expect that by now you have a better grasp of where the story is heading — what do you think? Remember to keep up with our articles and our site's merch. See you next time!