Ms bluebell!! Share info about the preceptors and my life is yours
Seems I've been summoned. I wondered when this day would come and I would rise from the ashes of the Fire Emblem Fandom to the days of Honkai Star Rail lore hyper fixation.
[Takes a breath and cracks knuckles] Strap in boys, because you are not ready for the goddamn Luofu Preceptors. There is SO MUCH. You have no idea what you're asking. Just one of them would take a five page paper to read. So I'll try to do a general summary without going too into it.
I am going to be very frank with you, the Luofu Preceptors are dicks.
I know, shocking news, terrible and controversial and new take. No one ever has ever thought of this before. This take will send waves through the Star Rail Community I'm sure.
But on a serious level? It is very important to look at the Preceptors in the right lends.
See, friends, the Preceptors aren't just a group of obviously corrupt politicians. They're also a set of abusive parents.
Specifically Dan Feng's abusive parents.
In the vidyadhara there are no "parents" in the traditional sense. While the existence of a bellybutton on Lingsha's naval suggests they were a species that once gave some form of live birth, they are no long there. Long turned off their ability to breed at some point. And with all the many reincarnations (it's suggested Yubie, the incarnation of Imbibtor Lunae that founded the alliance between his court and the Luofu, was the nineth known incarnation) it seems the cultural idea of having parents was simply faded out. Vidyadhara do not have siblings. They do not have parents. They do not have families as we know them. They have teachers who take responsibility for them and that's it, as stated by Bailu, the current "High Elder" of the Luofu.
This notion is bullshit.
I will explain why in another post since this is a post about the Preceptors and not vidyadhara culture. But please assume with good faith for now that I am right and this is bullshit because if asked I will explain in another post. For now, just keep in mind that the Preceptors are Dan Feng's abusive parents.
They are the ones who raised Dan Feng until adulthood, and while Jing Yuan (one of the most trusted sources of information in the game) says that they're constantly opposing one another, Dan Feng himself seems to, despite himself, hold a level of trust in them that was undeserved.
He mentions briefly in Jingliu's stories that "the Preceptors said..." meaning that he DID trust them at least with this and there was some level of deception from them, the people who raised him, to him that lead to the ritual failing and Dan Feng being painted as a Sedition causer (a sedition is specifically a rebellious attack against a governmental body, meaning most of the Luofu believes that Imbibitor Lunae was actively rebelling against the Luofu itself. Which is ironic because Yubie was the one that formed the alliance with the Luofu).
This suggests that the Preceptors betrayed Dan Feng during the "Sedition" and caused he and Yingxing's plan, whatever it was, to fail.
This is further supported by 1) a Cloudhymn echo telling Dan Heng that he warned Dan Feng that enemies were waiting to betray him at Sedition. 2) The Preceptors were the ones that called for Jingliu to warn her about Dan Feng's "plans"...before things went wrong...while Jingliu was in confinement for being in danger of being marastruck...
Evidence seems to suggest that they were not acting in good faith with the man they raised. It should further be noted that there was a purge of Dan Feng's supporters after the Sedition, many of them being forced into hatching rebirth.
At least 18 other Preceptors (assumingly ones loyal to Dan Feng) died during Sedition. It should also be noted that if you walk the Scalegorge Waterscape long enough and interact with enough eggs you will find one egg that is filled with vitriol for "those who betrayed his master" and hatred for those who set them up.
Further, you will find a Preceptor from the Fanghu that was banished after suspecting the Preceptors of the Luofu were up to something and appealing to his High Elder to interfere and punish them (note that we cannot assume that Glaciator Marum is evil just because of this, we don't know her reasons for not pursuing justice and can only speculate).
If you go even further you can find an egg with a memory of further Peceptor corruption, as this egg remembers being bribed by the Preceptors with political power if he helped overlook obvious experimentations on a vidyadhara egg.
Now, the Preceptors themselves.
Of the Luofu Preceptors we know of only a few thus far, all but one being strictly mentioned in readables, and they are:
Now, Taoran is someone that the people strictly playing the game and cutscenes should know as he has now appeared in the story itself as an NPC. He is one of the main perpetrators behind Hoolay's escape and is the one that revealed the Preceptor's plans to convert non-vidyadhara into vidyadhara. Possibly having gotten the idea with Dan Feng's failed ritual with whatever he was trying to do with the "Sedition" of Imbibitor Lunae (of which I will remind everyone that the situation was not as simple as "revive Baiheng" as there seems to be many elements involved. This is not me downplaying his love of Baiheng as I fully believe Dan Heng would absolutely revive Trailblaizer or March 7th from the dead given a dream and half an idea it would work).
It should be noted that Bailu is likely an artificially made vidyadhara (specifically she is most likely the Bloomborn Scion) resulted from the experimentations done by Sanctus Medicus. Currently, Bailu is the only successful attempt out of many to make more vidyadhara by Sanctus Medicus, but her success sets a precedent for this plan.
It is likely why Taoran is so confident in his assertion that they can make more vidyadhara. There is clearly a plan in place there based on what Sanctus Medicus did in creating Bailu, and he's convinced that if he accomplishes his mission he can create more vidyadhara.
It should be noted that Taoran, prior to 2.5, seems to have been trusted with the task of extracting the secrets they needed for whatever their plan is.
Why do I say "whatever their plan is" when it seems their plan is obvious? Because if we read Preceptor Assembly Chronicle Fragment we can see hints that their plan is in action long before Bailu could be made from the Bloomborn Scion. It was in action before Dan Feng's fate could even be decided!
Anyway, getting back on topic, Taoran is the Preceptor seen in Dan Feng's cell in his MC trailer with Intelligensia Guild member Oppenheimer. Subsequent readings shows that Taoran was regularly allowed into Dan Feng's cells with researchers in order to torture him and try to find three pieces of information: The secrets of the Transmutation Arcanum, the secrets of the Orb of Abysm, and what seems to be referred to as a "Dragon Heart" which may or may not be a physical or metaphorical but we have to assume is an element in play.
Anyway, Dan Feng didn't tell Taoran shit, so he was tortured so badly he was sent into molting rebirth (which seems to be like hatching rebirth, but premature and not quite as complete).
This, obviously, was not what the preceptors wanted. And so they tried to course correct.
See, the Preceptors need the information Dan Feng possessed from his past lives. It's too much to get into right here and this post is long enough, but just know that Dan Feng gets information from his past lives and the Preceptors want this information BAAAAAAAAAAAAAD. So they purposely fucked up his rebirth to make sure that Dan Feng's reincarnation wasn't complete. That's why everyone, even vidyadhara, call him Dan Feng. Because his reincarnation isn't compete. He IS Dan Feng, just deaged and with amnesia. (Don't @ me everyone, Dan Heng himself has admitted as of 2.6 that he is effectively Dan Feng. I'm being objective).
And the Preceptors wanted custody of him again. Because fucking up raising Dan Feng one time wasn't enough for them.
In An Appeal from the Vidyadhara we see Preceptor Shaoying (not in the meeting from the last reading) making appeals to try and have custody of Dan Heng.
This is a bad thing.
My speculation is that the Preceptors were hoping to groom Dan Heng and raise him to be far more trusting of them than Dan Feng was (it should be noted that trusting them in the first place was most likely why Dan Feng's plan failed and I have reasons for believing this I can't go into now because this post is SO LONG) and make him more likely to share the secrets they need.
We can see this in their experiments with both Bailu and with their constant attempts to play with experiments that will help them keep their own memories. They want his information so bad and they have to move fast to get it.
They're not the only ones either, as Lingsha's mentor, who opposes the Preceptors, experimented on Dan Heng to insure he would have Dan Feng's memories.
It's also just one reason why they seem to want him back on the throne so badly (there are other factors, not the least being that it's hard to explain Bailu to the other High Elders when Imbibitor Lunae is still running around. And also the fact that Sanctus Medicus specifically want her on the throne which cannot be a good thing even if it's just for the fact she's THEIR successful experiment). To give them a chance to interrogate him and get that information out.
It should be noted that it's specifically Taoran and his faction of Preceptors that want the High Elder system in place over a system of Preceptor Counsels. Like the one Preceptor Xuepu suggested (temporarily) in the Preceptor's meeting in the aftermath of the Sedition. Xuepu, who was one of Dan Feng's teachers, seems to be unaware of the full extent of what is going on but cannot assume to be innocent just because the other Preceptors oppose her ideas.
Anyway, that is the lightest summary of the Preceptors plan I can make. There's a lot going on with them. So much. This was genuinely the lightest version of this I could make.
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