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lovelyluc.bsky.social

@lovelyluc.bsky.social

Reposted by @lovelyluc.bsky.social

Kari | ❄️Cryo Support Character❄️ @kawree.northsky.social · 15/06/2025

okay so this defo would have been like about 800 replies if i'd done it as a thread. so. uh. have some images with alt text instead. i'm so normal about #Kaeya i promise. 1/3

so everybody knows Kaeya's the Cavalry Captain of the Knights of Favonius. this is brought up often, he's generally referred to as "Captain", and in the most recent AQ it was even clarified that the Cavalry is apparently the 9th company within the Knights. something that is pretty much always glossed over, however, is the fact that he is also the Quartermaster. this is both very strange and really interesting to me, tbh, bc Quartermaster is not an especially common rank you hear about in any military setting these days. in fact, previously i had really only ever heard it used to refer to the rank on a pirate vessel, where the Quartermaster [literally master of the quarterdeck] is essentially a side-grade to being the Captain of the whole damn ship.

so i ended up doing a lot more reading about military ranks and historical army setups than i really ever would have wanted to do otherwise, bc even tho Kaeya seems very proud of his job leading the Cavalry (despite the running gag of how there's no damn horses), he has never once explained or even really talked about the fact that he's also the Knights' Quartermaster. and i really wanted to know a.) what that entailed, and b.) why he would be compelled to never talk about it.

quite absurdly, the term actually originates in Germany, where it indicated the lofty duty of some poor sod of the court to prepare the monarch's boudoir. literally 'master of quarters'. it wasn't until the 16th century or so that it started seeing military applications, and expanded its purpose to include other types of 'quarter', as in the sort pirates give none of when their ships are being boarded by enemies.

there aren't a lot of modern uses of the rank--it's not so widespread or laterally utilized as the more common ranks like captain, lieutenant, sergeant, etc, and a lot of military establishments don't even seem to bother with it, folding any relevant duties into other officers' job descriptions. it's a bit more common in naval setups, though the jobs seem to differ a bit whether by land or by sea. interestingly, though, when used in army setups, it does seem to be a rank that appears *more* often alongside cavalry troops.

idk if the jobs are specifically linked wrt the KoF; there's no mention of who held the rank in past eras, and no indication of whether or not Diluc, the previous Cavalry Captain, ever did, either. given that Kaeya's lore specifies he's the Quartermaster as well as the Cavalry Captain, it serves to reason that Diluc was *not*, else he logically would be referred to as the previous holder of *both* ranks. something i think is important to note is that Kaeya is literally the only instance we see in the entire game's lore, at least as far as i've been able to find, where a Quartermaster is even mentioned. the history of the KoF is a bit fuzzy at best, it's not like there's archives we can look at to see who held what rank in what era of history, but the fact remains that while we've been told about a handful of knights of the olden days, there's zero indication that *anyone* has ever been Quartermaster, at any point in Mondstadt's history.

now, that doesn't seem particularly likely, to me. chances are there have been past Quartermasters, because the rank itself is quite old, and the KoF *are* rather oldschool. imo the most likely reason for the lack of previous mention is that the job itself isn't especially necessary for a nation at peace. by and large, a Quartermaster's duties lie in logistics, in provisions and supplies, numbers and paperwork--it's a preparedness position, and while it's a good thing to be prepared, it's not really a job that needs its own special rank when your nation hasn't really seen much in the way of battle in several centuries. remember, even though the KoF did lend assistance during the fall of Khaenri'ah, the current incarnation of Mondstadt itself hasn't actually gone to *war*... really ever.

Mondstadt is actually one of the younger nations of Teyvat, for that matter. while Sumeru, Fontaine, and Natlan have been around since essentially time immemmorial, Mondstadt as a nation wasn't founded until much later, after the fall of Sal Vindagnyr, and even then, "Old Mondstadt" was located in what is now Stormterror's Lair and was not the same nation in much of anything but name. the Mondstadt that exists today was established less than 3,000 years ago and, apart from the rebellion that toppled the aristocracy and the limited role the KoF took in trying to suppress the Abyssal onslaught during the cataclysm, Mondstadt has never really had big enough beef with anybody to warrant going to war about it. so while i'm sure it's always been *somebody's* job to make sure there's enough food stashed away somewhere to feed the city if they have to board up the gates for a few days, and enough weapons in the armory to make sure the Knights can defend themselves and the nation adequately should the occasion call for it, historically there hasn't really been any constant threat of war that would warrant the kind of specific vigilance of having that be somebody's One Job.

if anything, it was very likely just something the Grand Master or their deputy glanced at during downtime, if it was even overseen by anyone other than the actual logistics department, because the KoF *have* one of those already. you don't really need to constantly check the cupboards and inventory your nonperishable food and toiletry items unless you're expecting an imminent emergency, like a hurricane, for example. most of the time it's more than enough to just glance at the pantry and the hall closet and say, oh, i better buy toilet paper and some more canned soup next time i'm at the store.

this all begs the question, why has Kaeya been specifically given this rank if there's absolutely no real indication it's even one that's been individually held, historically? what the hell does Varka know that made him say, 'oh i better fill this largely ceremonial logistical rank just in case shit happens to hit the fan'? like, Kaeya was given that rank presumably around the same time he took over being Cavalry Captain after Diluc's departure. obviously filling the vacant Captain's position would have been a priority, but to tack Quartermaster onto it, especially when Varka definitely knew that Kaeya had just been through some pretty intense trauma, seems like kind of a big deal. that is an insane amount of responsibility to give somebody who in all likelihood was barely 18 years old. we know now that the mysterious expedition Varka's been on for the last several years now has something to do with Nod Krai, but did he know already, almost ten years ago now, that whatever Big Endgame Showdown was coming? the fact that he named a Quartermaster tells me pretty unequivocally that yes, he absolutely had some pretty clear idea that some major fecal matter was headed toward any and every possible fan, and pretty damn imminently.

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Reposted by @lovelyluc.bsky.social

Kari | ❄️Cryo Support Character❄️ @kawree.northsky.social · 15/06/2025

okay so this defo would have been like about 800 replies if i'd done it as a thread. so. uh. have some images with alt text instead. i'm so normal about #Kaeya i promise. 1/3

8139 13