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Quick follow-up
To add to my 六军 theory, I present the following.
《新唐书·百官志四上》：“左右龙武、左右神武、左右神策，号六军。”
Quick transltaion: Left & right Long Wu, Left & Right Shen Wu, Left & Right Shen Ce, together are called the 6 Corps.
龙武 (Long Wu), 神武 (Shen Wu), 神策 (Shen Ce) are names for divisions of the military under the Emperor's control. Emperor, aka 天子 aka Son of Heaven. (Note that pre-Qin, there were no emperors, but there have been Son of Heaven since the Zhou dynasty.)
So, 六军 historically has been used to refer to military directly under the Son of Heaven's control starting from the Zhou dynasty onwards. Because of the limitation of military size passed down from 《周礼》. (See previous post.) If the Marshal does in fact have direct command (at the very least the PV said the six generals all support the Marshal), then the implication is that the Marshal is the literary equivalent of Son of Heaven.
Now you'll notice something familiar: 神策. Yes, Jing Yuan's title as 神策将军 uses those two characters. So, I find it highly unlikely the concept of 六军 was not on the writers' minds when creating the Luofu arc.
Additionally, has anyone noticed the repeated use of 骁? For example, the previous general was named 腾骁. Jing Yuan's previous position prior to becoming general was 骁卫. The Quintent's Chinese name is 云上五骁.
There's that saying, "Once is an incidence, twice a coincidence, three times is a pattern." Why so many references to 骁? I mean, it's not like there aren't other characters that carry similar meaning in Chinese.
Consider the following excerpt:
《南齐书·百官志》：“领军将军、中领军。护军将军、中护军……左右二衞将军。骁骑将军。游击将军。 晋 世以来，谓领护至骁、游为六军。”
Translating the importanting bit, the 骁骑 (Xiaoqi) are part of the six corps. (The other five are 中领、中护、左衞、右衞、游击.) Again, references to 六军 appears in word association.
Finally, there's the comment I made about the Xianzhou pun. 仙舟, as written, is a magical boat, which is just a literal description of the fleet. However, 舟 and 周 are homophones, so if we "hear" 仙周, there's the pun for "fantasy space Zhou dynasty". Of course, I originally thought of replacing both characters to turn it into "先周", aka pre-Zhou, because the civilization is over 8000 years old and would immediately place it into "mythology" era in Chinese history. (Written Chinese history started in the late Shang dynasty, so by Zhou dynasty, we have very well documented historical records. This results in much of Chinese myth taking place "pre-Zhou" to avoid accidentally pissing off the emperor.)
So far, we have very little canonical text to help us understand the scale of the Xianzhou fleet nor understand the political relationship between each individual ship. For example, it is curious to me that the fleet is called the "Xianzhou Alliance" (仙舟联盟), given that the fleet was sent out on the instruction of an emperor from "ancient times". Alliance implies that each ship has a great deal of political automony and are allied with one another to pursue a similar goal (presumably to follow the path of the Hunt). However, given the inspiration from Ancient China that went into the lore and aesthetic of Xianzhou, there's really not a lot of time during the 5000 year history where China was a collection of alliances...
...except during the Zhou dyansty. Because during the Zhou dynasty, Zhou was made up of an alliance of feudal states, with each feudal lord swearing fealty to the Zhou King aka 周天子 aka Son of Heaven.
So between 六军 being coined during the Zhou dynasty and the alliance nature of the Xianzhou fleet and the decision to keep only 6 of the starting 9 ships into current timeline, I'm inclined to believe that these hints are all pointing to a Zhou dynasty-esque political power structure. Again, I'm not saying that it mirrors the Zhou feudal states, only that the vibes from Zhou dynasty is probably what's being drawn on when conceptualizing the six ships' relationship with one another.
And completely random, I just had to write this down so I don't forget, a friend pointed out the Penacony arc might have been an allusion to "The Man Who Was Thursday". Villain named after day of the week, Sunday is a mastermind, takes place in a dream... It's honestly not a far off theory. And given this game's penchant for far fetched literary references, it gets more and more likely.
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As for the 仙舟=先周, it is a cool allusion. Hopefully, we'll be seeing more Xianzhou lore in the upcoming patches to make the whole picture more clear.
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Not gonna lie, I'm starting to think the Xianzhou stuff is done at this point. The rail team basically serves as tourists that go through a bunch of different worlds, experience some stuff, then move on. Given how Genshin runs their arcs, there doesn't seem to be much re-visiting old maps. Unless there's something from Impact 3 that makes people think otherwise?
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So your assessment is that the game is going to visit other planets in between chunks of Luofu/Xianzhou story?
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