Summary
EarlyGenshin Impactlore still remains full of unanswered questions, as its players haven’t been able to pinpoint the identity of the person addressing the Traveler in the game’s drip marketing from 2019. Though HoYoverse was known forHonkai Impactat first, it wasn’t until the launch ofGenshin Impactthat the company became a household name. In those early days, the developer tried to tether the two franchises together by introducing obvious lore parallels and exported characters, with the latter even becoming tradition withGenshin Impact’s Archons.
WhileGenshin Impactsolved some of the questions it posed at launch, with players finding out more about Khaenri’ah and how it relates to the Traveler and the Abyss sibling, many more mysteries remain – such as the identity of Paimon or why Celestia has remained silent since the Cataclysm. The physicallocation of Celestia inGenshin Impactmay have been determined in Version 4.4, but it’s highly likely that its lore will remain untapped for at least a few more years.
Who Is K.K in Genshin Impact?
As pointed out by Atomic_Slasher on the main subreddit for the game, HoYoverse teased the new world of Teyvat and its Traveler through a person bearing the initials K.K. The most commonGenshin Impacttheories claim that K.K. is Phanes, the first Descender of Teyvat, also known as the Heavenly Principles, the entity that built Celestia and usurped the power of the Dragon Sovereigns. Fontaine’s Archon Quest revealed that a Gnosis holds the stolen power of a Dragon Sovereign, while Sumeru’s Archon Quest revealed that Descenders fall outside Irminsul’s authority, which implies that HoYoverse is certainly trying to point the overarching story towards Phanes.
However, the initials of K.K. on their own could be pointing in a different direction altogether. The Kaslana family plays a major role inHonkai Impact’s lore, and HoYoverse could have initially been planning to bridge the two franchises together. Kate Kaslana was famously the originalGenshin Impactprotagonist before Lumine (and Aether) were finalized as the Traveler, while theSustainer of Heavenly Principles inGenshin Impactbears a striking resemblance to Kiana Kaslana.
It’s quite possible that HoYoverse only intended to symbolically pass the torch fromHonkaitoGenshinby establishing this connection, and given that there are no in-game mentions of K.K. or voice lines that imply their existence, it would be easy for the developers to pivot in a different direction. Given thatNatlan is the nextGenshin Impactchapter, it may be some time until players get a definitive answer to this unsolvedGenshin Impacttheory.
