[Honkai: Star Rail] One Hundred Ways for a Lord Ravager to Switch Sides and Join the Galaxy Rangers

[Complete; occasional extras are still being updated]

Q: What’s it like to become a Lord Ravager?

A: Long story short, I just started my second run and spawned in the Luofu. Overall rating: don’t do it.

A: 365 days a year without a day off, no overtime pay, and no salary either. Your coworkers are either sick or sick, and even the company next door would cry for you.

A: Anyway, I’m going to become a Galaxy Ranger now, then blast every last one of my enemies to death with a single shot.

Mo Qi, a gamer, ran into the foremost Galaxy Ranger in a game expansion and couldn’t beat him no matter how hard he tried. After half a second’s hesitation, he downloaded the game.

But isn’t there something wrong with how this story is going? How did I become a Lord Ravager, fighting to the death with the character I’m obsessed with?

Am I supposed to kill my fave? For real? (Stares in shock.)

With his convictions shattered, he decided to start a second run.

The good news: his stats carried over.

The bad news: so did his progress with the magic taro.

At this point, Mo Qi, former Lord Ravager, Hoolay’s strictest father, surgical prodigy of the Alchemy Commission, man who keeps hopping between three Paths, Galaxy Ranger, fully supportive Lamancha bot, and partner at the Undying Detective Agency, had six things to say: “…”

Never mind. Since things have come to this, I’ll take out Hoolay first.

[I once lost my way among the stars. I once scattered like flames. I glimpsed the crooked path of fate, and returned from error.]

[Now I make this promise: no matter when, no matter where, I will protect all the weak, and turn the Hunt’s arrowhead against all evil.]

[And I will ensure that one Galaxy Ranger dies peacefully in his bed of old age.]

0. Primarily a getting-back-into-writing project, probably around a hundred thousand words. Another reason is that the Path of Nihility has me feeling repressed. Anyway, everything is dedicated to our boss.

1. The protagonist is chaotic good and an unabashed, undying, devoted fan of the Path of Nihility.

2. He’ll save people. The overall timeline follows the original, but a lot of plot elements had to be made up to keep the story logical. There will inevitably be forgotten lore and details that haven’t been fully researched, so lore obsessives should be cautious.

3. A nontraditional second run.

4. My knowledge of the story goes up to version 4.3. If the developers release relevant lore later, I’ll decide whether to change the plot accordingly.

5. I’m especially fond of the Path of Nihility, Blade, and Welt, so they may get more story time. For personal reasons, Blade will become a Galaxy Ranger before joining the Stellaron Hunters (Jing Yuan: So?).

6. I’m perpetually sleep-deprived. If I’m rushing to meet a deadline, the writing will probably get overly colloquial. I won’t revise it unless it seriously affects comprehension. I hope you’ll understand QAQ

?. Gui Ji declares herself responsible for this book.

Also, here’s an upcoming story: [Honkai: Star Rail] A Ranger Can’t Be Killed

(Also known as “A Hundred Ways to Let a Ranger Grow Old”)

Blurb: The first time the Path of Nihility met Yu Xing was at a crime scene.

Except…the other person wasn’t a suspect, a cop, or a witness.

He was the victim.

“Hey, could you report a case for me? He accidentally cut my windpipe, so I’m a little hoarse…”

The man held his head and smiled wryly, if you ignored how his neck was barely holding his head on, as well as the blood covering most of his face and shirt.

Then the Path of Nihility discovered this seemed to be part of the man’s everyday life.

By the time he’d gotten used to the other man dying every now and then, he went to visit him one day and found his body cold.

He stood there for a long time, but the man never woke up again.

He decided to investigate the truth. Just then, he received a commission. The job itself was nothing unusual, but the reward caught his eye.

“I know the truth about Yu Xing’s death.”

The client was Xu Zhao.

Tips:

0. The second major work born of my Path of Nihility angst, also a short story and probably even shorter.

1. The protagonist was a Galaxy Ranger and is now a Mournful Actor. There’s a lot of invented lore.

2. There’s angst, and it’s real, but the story is fundamentally a happy ending.

3. My knowledge of the story goes up to version 4.3. I expect to start after the Thousand Stars City storyline at the earliest (I feel like the canon story is going to blindside me, so let me squirm a little first).

Theme: Uphold justice and champion what is right.