Delusion

Delusions are powerful, Vision-like objects produced by the Fatui. Their production method and the number in circulation is unknown, but it appears to utilize the remains of deceased gods and other powerful beings. Like Visions, Delusions grant their wielders the ability to manipulate certain elements, but unlike Visions, they can be used by anyone, and are also supposedly far more powerful than Visions. However, Delusions have immense and potentially lethal drawbacks in exchange for their power, possibly draining the user's vitality or backfiring on them.
Knowledge about Delusions is scarce and it is a closely-guarded secret even among the Fatui. According to the Fatui member Viktor, few members beyond the Eleven Fatui Harbingers possess one, and they are personally granted by the Tsaritsa herself. In recent years, Fatui agents have secretly been distributing mass-produced Delusions amongst commoners of the seven nations.
==Overview==
Based on current knowledge, Delusions utilize the remains of ancient gods and other powerful entities; the Delusions produced at Yashiori Island's Delusion Factory used Crystal Marrow, which contains the Tatarigami curse originating from the slain god Orobashi. The Delusion used by Crepus and Diluc in the Manga was created alongside Barnabas' experiments on directly injecting archon residue — the remains of ancient godsDue to translation adjustments made since the manga's release, the term "archon residue" is an inaccurate translation of the original Chinese term, refers specifically to gods before the rise of The Seven. — into human subjects like Collei.Observing the way Jean holds the burnt papers in Chapter 6 (Part 2), pages 2–3 reveals that it is a single, folded document which details both Crepus' Delusion and the syringe used to inject Collei with archon residue, which is seen in a flashback in Chapter 10 (Part 1), page 18. The Knights could not have written the document since the syringe's side was written in an ancient language which none of them could read, which makes it a Fatui document by process of elimination.
A Delusion's abilities seem to depend on the type used. Ones used by the Fatui largely contain elemental powers and allow their users some degree of elemental manipulation abilities. The archon residue imbued in Collei and in Crepus and Diluc's Delusion is considered as having a "neutral" element despite manifesting as black fire, as their effects do not resemble that of any known element. During the investigation into the Black Fire incident she caused, Collei's fire was described as having a "great hunger for anything living," and people who touched it were "devoured" and all that was left of them were "charred remains."
The Knights of Favonius conducted some research on Delusions following the incident resulting in Crepus' death, although their documents on them were partially destroyed by fire. The little information Jean, Lisa, and Amber could salvage from the tattered documents revealed that Delusions emit the smell of Mist Grass upon use.
===Side Effects===
Delusions are extremely powerful, but potentially equally dangerous for their user: Crepus was either killed by using one, or left in such agony that Diluc chose to take his life to spare him the suffering. Some members of the Watatsumi Army who used Delusions suffered from rapid aging as a result of their vitality being drained, with some like Teppei dying from its effects.
The side effects of Delusion usage seem to vary from person-to-person. Crepus and Teppei died relatively shortly after taking up the Delusion, while Diluc used Crepus' Delusion for three years without any obvious consequences. The Delusion-users among the Resistance were unequally affected, but there is too little information to draw any conclusion on why that was so.
Too little is known about Fatui personnel to tell whether they suffer from the same Delusion side effects as non-Fatui users. Neither Childe nor Signora have displayed any physical drawbacks from using their Delusions, although neither are ordinary humans and so there are many potential reasons as to why. Childe has only been seen suffering the repercussions of using his Delusion in conjunction with the Abyss technique Foul Legacy Transformation. Signora's Delusion is explicitly different from most other Delusions, as she had previously transformed her body with the art of living flame and her Cryo Delusion — created with the Tsaritsa's "grace" — prevents it from consuming and killing her.
However, it has been suggested that Signora's Delusion warped her already-unstable mind. Signora's memories of her past were suppressed upon gaining her Delusion, and the "delusion" Pierro gave her when he did so convinced her to join the Fatui.
==Types of Delusions==
===Crepus' Delusion===
In the manga, the Delusion in Crepus' possession takes the form of a red orb fitted onto a left-handed glove with a ring on the middle finger. The symbol inside the orb is not an elemental symbol or the Fatui emblem, but is instead a large circle with another smaller circle towards the bottom. When activated, it forms barbed chains that sprout from the palm of the glove, allowing them to grapple even large and powerful creatures like Ursa the Drake. These chains can also be conjured from magic circles, allowing more chains to be produced at once.
These chains can optionally be surrounded by black fire, as seen when Crepus used it to fight Ursa the Drake. When Diluc uses it to apprehend Krupp, the black fire is not present, but it reappears when he fights the Fatui personnel while posing as the perpetrator of the Black Fire incident.
===Mass-Produced Delusions===
The mass-produced Delusion confiscated by Gorou is a round glass orb with the Fatui insignia inlaid in it, encased in a jagged-edge frame. When Gorou displays it, the orb appears black while the Fatui emblem takes on a light gray color. Because no member of the Watatsumi Army is seen using a Delusion's power on-screen, it is currently impossible to discern how their Delusions' abilities manifested. Teppei, who used a mass-produced Delusion and never received a Vision, guessed that using a Vision would be similar.
The Delusions used by Agents, Cicin Mages, Mirror Maidens, and Operatives are visually identical to those distributed to the Watatsumi Army, although their orbs are colored based on the elemental abilities they bestow. Childe's Vision, and by extension his Electro Delusion, uses the same casing as mass-produced Delusions, although the true form of his Delusion has been obfuscated (see below).
===Childe's Delusion===
Childe's Delusion appears to change forms, making it difficult to discern its true appearance. Pierro "pinned" it on him when he became a Harbinger, but Childe's regular character model has nothing that looks like his Electro Delusion. Instead, his Hydro Vision is held in the same casing used to encase mass-produced Delusions. When Childe enters the Delusion Unleashed phase of Enter the Golden House, the Hydro Vision on his belt appears to be supplanted by his Electro Delusion: The orb turns Electro purple and bears a Fatui symbol instead of the Hydro symbol. His clothing also changes color, although it is unclear whether that is directly related to his Delusion or not.
In his Foul Legacy phase, his Vision and Delusion change places again and he is capable of wielding both elements at the same time. The positions of his Vision and the badge along his right shoulder swap places; his Vision, bearing the Hydro symbol once again, can be seen on his shoulder, while the badge — which had no elemental color or symbol up until this point — moves down to his belt and bears the Fatui emblem with Electro purple colors.
===Signora's Delusion===
The appearance of Signora's Delusion is unconfirmed and she does not wear anything resembling an orb-type Delusion. Hers is also unique, in that her Delusion was bestowed to suppress her flame-based power rather than amplify it.
Based on her animations during the Narukami Island: Tenshukaku fight, the catalyst-like object that floats around her is probably her Delusion. At the start of battle, she uses it to activate the Cryo snowflake-like field under her feet, within which she could create icy blades while surrounded by a barrier. While preparing her transformation, she dispels the barrier and briefly remanifests the catalyst above her head before immediately using it to encase herself in an ice cocoon. After completing her transformation into her Crimson Witch of Embers phase, the catalyst cannot be seen on her, but it returns after she is defeated and she returns to her normal appearance.
===Arlecchino's Delusion===
Arlecchino has a Pyro Vision attached to her back under her ponytail. During Phase 2 of The Knave boss fight, she replaces it with a Pyro Delusion.
==Known Users==
===Fatui===
* The Eleven Fatui Harbingers
** Tartaglia ()
** Signora ()
** Arlecchino ()
* Fatui Cicin Mages
** Electro Cicin Mage ()
*** Lyudochka Snezhevna (formerly)
*** Katarina Snezhevna
** Cryo Cicin Mage ()
*** Tae
* Fatui Agents
** Pyro Agent ()
* Fatui Maidens
** Mirror Maiden ()
*Fatui Operatives
**Frost Operative ()
**Wind Operative ()
===Others===
* Crepus (deceased)
* Diluc (formerly)
* Kirya
* Yelena (deceased)
* Watatsumi Army (formerly)
** Teppei (deceased)
==Story==
===Manga===
Three years before the events of the manga, Crepus, Diluc's father, obtained a Delusion. While the exact circumstances behind how he obtained it is unclear, it seems to have been part of an overarching plot by Il Dottore's subordinates, which may include Krupp and Barnabas. Crepus planned on gifting to Diluc on his eighteenth birthday, but with Diluc's preternatural skills, Crepus deemed it unnecessary. When the Fatui lured Ursa the Drake to attack them on their way back to the Dawn Winery, Crepus wielded it to save Diluc, but its power backfired and left him in incredible agony. In the manga, Crepus disintegrates and disappears; however, Kaeya's character story says Diluc put Crepus out of his misery by killing him. It is unknown which rendition is the truth.
Diluc ended up taking the Delusion for himself, and departed from Mondstadt to search for the Delusion's origins. He eventually traced it back to the Fatui and likely used the Delusion to fight them during his three-year journey across Teyvat. For reasons not fully known, the Delusion never backfired on Diluc, but it may be because Diluc was a Vision bearer while Crepus was not. Kaeya also learned about the Delusion, although he wouldn't be made aware of its origins until investigating the Black Fire Incident.
Upon Diluc's return to Mondstadt, he used it to ambush Krupp during the party at the Dawn Winery. Dottore silenced Krupp using an unknown weapon but decided not to make the incident public after taking an interest in Diluc's Delusion, which he calls a "Vision." He was likely unaware of the Delusion's nature, given his general apathy towards his subordinates' actions until they provide results that pique his interest.
Following the Black Fire Incident and the discovery of the link between the Delusion and Collei's archon residue powers, Diluc and Kaeya concocted a plan to derail the Fatui's plans. Taking advantage of the shared origins between the Delusion and Collei's black fire, Diluc posed as the perpetrator of the incident to lure the Fatui guards away from Collei, the actual perpetrator.
While Barnabas was not fooled and quickly caught up with Amber and Collei, Diluc arrived late into the fight and pinned him down with the Delusion's powers as Amber delivered the incapacitating blow. Before losing consciousness, Barnabas expressed his surprise upon seeing that Diluc was wielding the Delusion. Kaeya and the Fatui guards arrived on the scene and "captured" Diluc to bring him back to Dottore. However, Diluc escaped and sent Dottore the broken delusion, much to the Harbinger's consternation.
===In-Game===
When Signora attacks Venti and the Traveler, she creates a blizzard capable of instantly freezing Venti's legs. This is later shown to originate from a Cryo Delusion, given to her to suppress her Pyro abilities as the Crimson Witch of Flames. She would continue using it during the Duel Before the Throne.
During the Golden House battle, Childe uses his Delusion. His Delusion's element is Electro, indicating that Delusions are not bound to its user's Vision element, if they have one.
While investigating claims of accelerated aging among the soldiers of the resistance, Gorou manages to seize the "secret weapon" they were using and shows it to the Traveler, who immediately recognizes it as a Delusion. Due to the Sakoku Decree, the Fatui had been making the Delusions in Inazuma by utilizing Crystal Marrow, supplied by the Kanjou Commission. The factory is later raided and razed by the resistance.
Yelena, a renegade Fatuus, took her Delusion with her when she and her brother Kirya defected and fled to Sumeru. After studying perfumery, the siblings eventually went to Fontaine, where Yelena worked with Edgar, Sylvain and Lucien, by using the Delusion to cultivate flowers with the distorted elemental energy, to create the "Auguste" perfume, which was so popular that it sold for as much as 10 million Mora per bottle. However, extended usage of the Delusion rapidly aged Yelena, and the traces of elemental energy from the Delusion had a chance of harming anyone who is particularly sensitive to it; Sylvian believed that the harmful effects were so negligible that he forced Yelena to continue to cultivate more flowers to they do not miss out on profits, rejecting her concerns of bringing a potentially harmful product into market. To hide her accelerated aging, Yelena wore heavy makeup and scarcely showed herself to Kirya in favor of her work.
Their hasty actions would eventually led the Marechaussee Phantom to investigate on price gouging. Fearing the investigation could lead to her and her brother's connections to the Fatui be discovered and the secrets of the Auguste's harmful background, but being too weakened by the Delusion's side effects to escape, Yelena committed suicide by self-immolation, incinerating all the Auguste flowerbeds to destroy all incriminating evidence. However, Kirya got a hold of the Delusion, and used it, along with the Auguste profits that Yelena left him, to enact his revenge against the Yelena's three associates, whom he blames for his sister's death. 
Kirya used the Delusion to continue to cultivate the flowers, which aged him greatly, to around Edgar's age. He used this to his advantage, by killing Edgar, so he could take the man's identity for the next twenty years and plot revenge against the other two. Upon successfully assassinating Lucien, and forcing Sylvian to confess their conspiracy of creating the Auguste, Kirya, still under his Edgar guise, feigned insistence that he and Sylvian should return to Fontaine to face justice. But the night before their extradition, Kirya tried to poison Sylvian and then fled, by using the Delusion to give him the strength that his weakened body could not on its own. After fleeing to his hideout where he was cultivating the flowers, Kirya was so weakened by the usage of the Delusion that he dropped it as he prepared to commit suicide, which Emilie and the Traveler stopped him from doing.
==Trivia==
* The Chinese name for Delusions, is a nod to their name for .
** Similarly, in English, the term "vision" can be used for both the literal ability to see, as well as the experience of a divine or otherwise supernatural appearance. A "delusion," meanwhile, is a false belief that is propagated even in the face of facts, or the state of being deluded.
* Delusions are obtainable items in the form of the Operative's Constancy, a Character and Weapon Enhancement Material dropped by Fatui Operatives.
==Gallery==
Fatui Cryo Cicin Mage Delusion.png|Fatui Cryo Cicin Mage
Fatui Electro Cicin Mage Delusion.png|Fatui Electro Cicin Mage
Fatui Pyro Agent Delusion.png|Fatui Pyro Agent
Mirror Maiden Delusion.png|Mirror Maiden
Frost Operative Delusion.png|Frost Operative
Wind Operative Delusion.png|Wind Operative
Item Operative's Constancy.png|Operative's Constancy
==Notes==
==Other Languages==
==Change History==
==References==
==Navigation==
es:Engaño
fr:Œil maléfique
id:Delusion
ja:邪眼
pl:Deluzja
ru:Глаз Порчи
th:เนตรมาร
vi:Delusion