Archivum Honkai: Star Rail

No. 9: The Old Verdant Home

No. 9: The Old Verdant Home
Director: Yuan Bo
Script: Bashir Bassett

— Master, we will soon depart the Verdant Home to return nevermore...
— We have never left. The Verdant Home is not elsewhither, but here. The Verdant Home is wherever we stand.

This piece is based on the Foxian creation myth and tells an epic story of monumental proportion. Before The Old Verdant Home, works of Butterfly Immersia tend to narrate using only one main perspective. The Old Verdant Home pioneered a multi-perspective narrative that allows the experiencer to live through the wars, peace, stability, and exile at the beginning of the Foxian history, as told from the perspective of the three sages Qingzheng, Manzhi, and Li Si.

There was a period of in-depth cultural exchange between the Xianzhou Alliance and the Interastral Peace Corporation, and The Old Verdant Home is a work born in that era. At that time, Ms. Bashir Bassett was probably the most popular dramatist in Interastral Peace Entertainment, and The Old Verdant Home indeed showed her profound dramaturgy.

On the other hand, Mr. Yuan Bo's handling of war scenes and perspective switching in this work has also become the basic teaching material for countless Butterfly Immersia students in later generations.

However, we can still say that this Butterfly Immersia piece is a special product that could only be made in that era. With the financial resources of Xianzhou, it would've been difficult to film the magnificent scene in which millions of people fought to de death. The Free-Will Illusion technology provided by Interastral Peace Entertainment also allowed the magical effect of total immersion to be brought to life.

Sometimes we can't help but feel that the whole galaxy is one isolated island after another, with self-absorbed and xenophobic islanders. Whenever this happens, I immerse myself once again in The Old Verdant Home not to re-experience its plot, but to reassure myself of the kind of miracles we can create when two civilizations work together.