u/kuzann9

Sorry this is kinda messy, my brain has been running a mile a minute with speculations and it's been difficult to punch it into an organized shape. 😭 My hope is that other folks will find the concept fun to think about and maybe they've noticed stuff that correlates that I haven't.

The segments as manifestations of Dottore's Constellation is something that came to mind while I was puzzling over the various leaks, how they might connect to what we already know, etc. Given that the stars of a constellation contain memories from the person they're bound to(shown by the Unreconciled Stars event WHY WAS THAT A LIMITED EVENT WHEN IT'S SUCH IMPORTANT LORE) and it's likely that the "core" star only takes up the spirit/soul of the associated person after they've died, wouldn't it make sense that if Dottore could manifest his stars on the ground, they would have the relevant memories from whatever age he was when the "fated events" of those stars took place?

We know so little about segments and how they work(how Dottore accomplished the segmentation process, how the segments connect to each other telepathically, how different they are from the Khaenri'ahn puppets they were based off, etc.) that trying to theorize about them is kind of a shot in the dark, but the concept of the segment network being a manifestation of Dottore's constellation is an interesting one, so why not explore it?

Constellations always have six stars when it comes to playable characters, but I haven't found any direct confirmation on whether or not that's the case for every single person on Teyvat. It's entirely possible that the six star limit is a gameplay element only and constellations can have any number of stars. I wonder if the number of stars in a Constellation could even influence how tightly someone is bound by Fate... So if Dottore has more than six stars, it could mean that fate's "shackles" are even heavier than normal for him.

Dottore had eight segments before the end of the Sumeru AQ, and we saw eight of those weird star-and-crescent things around Moonttore's boss arena, the two closest of which were "active" with the upturned crescent and sitting on the disk itself(two segments participating in Nod-Krai's events?). But is it possible that there's one more star in his Constellation that hasn't been made into a segment yet, because that's the star that represents his final fate?

Or at least, he hasn't made a segment from that final star yet...

An interesting observation, if we look at the segments with the idea that they're representations of Dottore's Constellation, is that the in-game base form for his segments have that weird visor and star hidden behind his mask. (Webttore has normal eyes but perhaps his "star" is inside his body instead?) But then Moonttore has brought that star forward and into the mask itself, making it fully visible. (The mask is even blank in the boss drop, meaning that the star disappears when he's not wearing it.)

And then when we see Datattore, the star itself is fully visible through a gap in his mask. I've seen theories that Dottore was fated to bring about some great disaster, so could Datattore be the manifestation of that final star?

Something that's been sticking in my mind for the past few days is what Kukulkan said after he lured us into a fight with a Source Dragon Mech: "Well, they say that stories like this never end without an evil dragon..." What if Dottore was fated to play the role of an "evil dragon", and what if he found a way to hold off that final fate until the right moment? What if he was able to use that final fate against Celestia's control, to finish the job that the first "evil dragon" started thousands of years ago? But in Dottore's case perhaps he used his villain role to make sure the protagonists were prepared to rise to the occasion and clean things up afterward?

The tree burns, a replacement grows free of Celestia's control, and the shackles are broken. Datattore vanishes because Irminsul's final bedtime story has reached its end.

As for how Dottore delayed his fate, it's possible that the only way he found would be to put himself on ice and leave his interactions with the world to his segments until Irminsul is gone. Maybe one of the main purposes for the segments was to hold fate back until the right time and set things up so that when it came to pass, the bulk of the "dragonfire" would be aimed at Celestia's shackles.

And so the "evil dragon" falls, Irminsul's final bedtime comes to a close, and the "sleeping beauty" wakes from his deathly slumb--hahahahehehehehaha--HAHAHAHAHAHAHA--*COUGH*

Sorry, I thought it was funny! Just, hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh--why did they give him legs like that?! Why does his outfit get more scandalous every time he comes back!? What do you MEAN it's skin-tight and has HIP-HIGH BOOTS this time!? They HAVE to know what they're doing with that, they have EYES!

But yeah, Irminsul burns and the original Dottore is finally able to wake up again, now free of that catastrophic fate and ready to write the next chapter of his life without Celestia's interference.

Anyway, some additional thoughts for the road.

Citlali is able to bind "inauspicious stars" into her little puppet companions. The concept has been proven already in the game, so it would make sense that there were other methods for binding stars into physical objects or bodies.

With Dottore's Constellation in mind, it's interesting that the icon for it showed up at least a couple times during the 6.3 AQ: as the special ability given to the Traveler during the flying sequence with Dottore, and as a sort of buff on the Fatui and monsters that attacked Nasha Town before he showed up for the boss fight. His messing with the False Moon, which would've been connected to the false sky and thus be part of Asmoday's domain and possibly be related to Constellations and fate, is also very interesting.

Noted similarities between Dottore and Asmoday could be the result of his intense research into the stars and Constellations(if the segments are the stars of his Constellation given physical form). The false sky is Asmoday's domain, so it would make sense that she'd have something to do with the stars that rest upon it, and thus Dottore would show a keen interest in her power and would try to infiltrate the Temple of Space if he got the chance.

Varka was able to glimpse the future through Barbaloth's scryglass and acted accordingly, allowing him to avert a great disaster and leaving the story open for the Traveler to save Dvalin from a fate worse than death and to eventually save Varka himself from the Ley Lines. Perhaps Dottore caught a similar glimpse of the future through some other method and that set him on the path to creating his segments and binding them to the stars of his constellation so he could use his own fate against Celestia one day. And perhaps the Traveler will help in this bending of fate, just as they always do whenever they get involved.

Circling back to Unreconciled Stars again, if those events were caused by Dottore's research, it's possible that the Fatui were trying to find a way to bring people back from the dead by pulling the stars containing their soul/spirit down from the sky to be placed in a custom puppet or something similar. Sending Scara to investigate may have been a means to test how puppets react to those star-spirits. Man... did we EVER get a follow-up on what exactly was going on during that event? 😭 What was going ON with that? What were the Fatui up to??

Anyway, I hope you had fun doing this little bit of exploration with me. I have no idea if any part of this little, idk, mental excursion? Will turn out to be true come 6.6, but it's fun to think about the possibilities either way. ✨