Greater Lord Rukkhadevata

Greater Lord Rukkhadevata, also known as Queen Aranyani by the Aranara, was the original Dendro Archon of Sumeru, the avatar of Irminsul, and the predecessor to the current Dendro Archon, Lesser Lord Kusanali. Like her successor, Greater Lord Rukkhadevata held the title of God of Wisdom.YouTube: Version 3.0 Special Program (Timestamp: 8m 23s)
Greater Lord Rukkhadevata was once one of "The Three Eternal Companion-Gods" who co-reigned in Sumeru, alongside King Deshret and Nabu Malikata. When the other two gods propagated a plan to turn against Celestia, Rukkhadevata chose not to stay by their sides and instead established her own territory by nurturing a rainforest with the Varuna Contraption.
During the cataclysm five hundred years ago, Greater Lord Rukkhadevata was one of the casualties of the conflict.Greater Lord Rukkhadevata's conclusion that she died 500 years ago is supported by Viridescent Venerer's Determination's claim about the death of the God of the Woods during "the disaster," which In Remembrance of Viridescent Fields specifies as the cataclysm. Before her death, she created the Akasha System to purge forbidden knowledge from Irminsul and created her next incarnation, Lesser Lord Kusanali, who then ascended as the current Dendro Archon and God of Wisdom.
At the end of the Sumeru Archon Quests, Rukkhadevata sacrifices herself by having Lesser Lord Kusanali remove all memories of her existence from Teyvat. The only known person to still clearly remember her is the Traveler, which they believe is because they are not from Teyvat, and thus their memories are not under Irminsul's jurisdiction.
==Quests and Events==
==Story==
===Pre-Cataclysm===
After the war between the Seven Sovereigns and the Heavenly Principles concluded, one of the divine nails cast by the Heavenly Principles to mend the land devastated and transformed most of verdant Sumeru into the desert now known as the Great Red Sand. The nail suppressed the Dendro Dragon Apep, forcing it to adapt to the desert's environment. It is unknown when or how Greater Lord Rukkhadevata came into being, but in the earliest legends involving her, she was the princess of an area where the forest still thrived, which may be due to an alleged divine presence.
Nabu Malikata, a Seelie survivor, heard about Rukkhadevata's wisdom and was impressed by the princess' answers to her riddles. The two forged an alliance which also included King Deshret, who was co-ruling Ay-Khanoum with Nabu Malikata and chose to "share" his throne with them during the Archon War, leading the three to be known as "The Three Eternal Companion-Gods"; the three had their own views on "wisdom" and often debated their ideas together. For a period of time, Greater Lord Rukkhadevata co-reigned with them in the desert, with each focusing on a different aspect of their civilization, and this era was remembered by their subjects as one of peace and ease. To this day, a chair with Rukkhadevata's name inscribed on it can be found in the Orchard of Pairidaeza.
At some point, Nabu Malikata foresaw the coming of the cataclysm and realized that humanity might not survive on its own, so she informed Rukkhadevata of the future she saw and entrusted the other goddess with "a part of herself," a Khvarena of flowers. For her own part, the Goddess of Flowers understood and embraced her own fate — to die leading King Deshret on the path of understanding forbidden knowledge, despite knowing that his endeavors were futile, in hopes of one day overturning the Heavenly Principles. Hearing of their plans and finding them unacceptable, Rukkhadevata broke ties with both of them and returned to the forest to pursue her own ideas of wisdom. Though Nabu Malikata waited for her to return, she never did, leaving King Deshret to rule his people alone following the Goddess of Flowers' death.
====Revitalization of the Forest====
After her falling out with King Deshret and Nabu Malikata, Rukkhadevata created the Varuna Contraption in a section of the desert,{{Ref/Domain|The Coordinates of Sun and Rain|note=Chinese version|quote= after which the moonlight's reflection off the water created the image of a labyrinth. This labyrinth gave birth to the tiger-like divine beast Viaghara, the first lord of the forest, who proceeded to befriend Rukkhadevata. After Rukkhadevata created the Aranara, small plantlike creatures with the ability to control dreams, the Aranara and lords of the forest used "dreams and illusions" and "hedges and streams," respectively, to protect the Varuna Contraption.
With the help of her followers, who would go on to establish the Amurta Darshan of Sumeru Akademiya, Rukkhadevata revived a flourishing rainforest and expanded it furthermore. Sumeru City was built on the Divine Tree, a particularly massive tree located in Sumeru's forest region, and the sages of Sumeru Akademiya assisted Rukkhadevata in managing the nation's affairs.YouTube: Version 3.0 Special Program (Timestamp: 7m 54s) At the border between the forest and the desert, the Wall of Samiel was erected to prevent the forest from undergoing desertification.
====Suppression of Forbidden Knowledge====
Thousands of years ago, after King Deshret and Rukkhadevata had parted ways, King Deshret's pursuit of his ideal world led him to inadvertently release forbidden knowledge into his kingdom. People heard crazed whispers in their heads and the disease known as Eleazar — the manifestation of The Withering on human bodies — began to spread.
After learning of the plight of Deshret's people, Rukkhadevata came to their aid on account of her old friendship with Deshret. She gathered the people, instructing them to build temples into which she infused the divine power of life to suppress the forbidden knowledge. Doing so expended a great deal of her power and caused her to regress into a childlike form. Even this, however, was not enough — in the end, King Deshret sacrificed himself to finally put an end to the outbreak.
Although King Deshret's people were saved, the sudden death of their god led to the fall of Deshret's civilization, whose stability had already been strained by Liloupar's orchestrated destruction of the large vassal state of Gurabad. Its people were divided into numerous short-lived city-states, including Tulaytullah, Saleh, and a state named after the original Gurabad.Interactables: Vaguely-Readable Inscriptions During this time, the fox-like race known as the Valuka Shuna, which had been King Deshret's subjects, only managed to survive due to Rukkhadevata's grace and they moved into the rainforest. In the process, their fur also turned green and those with darker fur have exceptionally low heat tolerance.
After the end of the desert's city-states era, Rukkhadevata reconstructed the Khvarena entrusted to her by the late Nabu Malikata into the divine bird Simurgh. She tasked Simurgh with guarding "the border between new birth and death."
During her weakened state, Rukkhadevata also made a promise with one of Apep's Creatures to completely erase the "apocalypse" — the assimilation of forbidden knowledge inside Apep and its creatures, which had occurred due to Apep's consumption of King Deshret's forbidden knowledge-corrupted body following his death. She blessed the creature with enough life force for it to survive in The Chasm, where forbidden knowledge is "transformed" due to the power of the divine nail residing there. She predicted that if forbidden knowledge was eradicated, Apep's creatures, which had "become" the apocalypse, would also lose a part of themselves. By changing the forbidden knowledge into something else, they would still remember it. She and Apep's creatures created the Fire Seed, which could reactivate the Heart of Oasis inside Apep and cure the dragon. However, since she was weakened, the Fire Seed was unstable.
===The Cataclysm===
Five hundred years before the start of the main story, Khaenri'ah's increasing use of forbidden knowledge culminated in an overflow of Abyssal powers and monsters into Teyvat. These Abyssal monsters wreaked havoc on the land under Celestia's control and the Withering spread uncontrollably throughout both the forest and the desert, causing decay and destruction so terrible that it was called "The Black Tide."
To put an end to the devastation, Greater Lord Rukkhadevata embarked on a final journey with some of her followers and never returned. The final king of the forest perished defending the forest, while the Aranara only managed to save the forest with the help of the Traveler's sibling, whom they refer to as "Nara Varuna" due to their assistance in protecting the Varuna Contraption. As a result of Rukkhadevata's death, the "grass and trees never spoke again" to Viridescent.
During the gods' battle at Tunigi Hollow, the main rift where the Abyssal creatures emerged from, they successfully suppressed the power of the Abyss — at a price.YouTube: Version 3.6 Special Program (Timestamp: 21m 40s)It is not confirmed that The Seven were summoned to Tunigi Hollow to fight Khaenri'ah, although multiple gods were present: Egeria died here, and Rukkhadevata is assumed to have been present in order to transform the Lord of Amrita's corpse into the seal over Tunigi Hollow. When the former Hydro Archon Egeria was killed, her remains formed the water called Amrita. Rukkhadevata grew the Harvisptokhm from it to anchor the previous Hydro Archon to the mortal realm, and it maintains the seal on the Abyssal rift by absorbing the defilement emanating from it. Inside the Harvisptokhm lies the giant lotus Gaokerena,The term "Gaokerena" is also mentioned in The Folio of Foliage Vol. 2 as the name of either Rukkhadevata's remains or the culmination of the Dendro Archon's wisdom, but it is unlikely to have any intended overlap with the Harvisptokhm's Gaokerena. In fact, the Sumeru Archon Quests state that Rukkhadevata mysteriously disappeared and the sages never found her, even though The Folio of Foliage allegedly records the stories told by the sages who followed her. within which the deceased Hydro Archon's consciousness slumbers. Simurgh awoke from slumber and fulfilled her destiny, drinking from the Amrita and turning into countless motes of Khvarena, sacrificing herself to purify the Amrita from the taint of the Abyss. The thousands of specks of Khvarena she turned into created various lifeforms, including the Pari race.
It is suggested that Rukkhadevata already died by the time Simurgh completed its sacrifice. At the moment of her death, Rukkhadevata was at Irminsul, which she had been tasked with protecting. Unlike the other members of The Seven, Rukkhadevata was not summoned to participate in the war against Khaenri'ah, since protecting Irminsul was a more important task. The pollution of forbidden knowledge occurred alongside the disaster, and it had already invaded Irminsul and caused great distress to Rukkhadevata. She created the Akasha System to "borrow" her citizens' wisdom in the form of their dreams to aid her in solving the crisis, and used her divine strength to purge the forbidden knowledge, much like how she once drove it back during the incident with King Deshret thousands of years ago. However, she realized that because she was the avatar of Irminsul, when forbidden knowledge corrupted Irminsul, it had corrupted her very existence as well. Even if she died, she would live on in memories, and this meant that Irminsul could not be fully purified of forbidden knowledge contamination. Because it was impossible for Rukkhadevata to erase herself, she created Lesser Lord Kusanali from the purest branch of Irminsul to be her incarnation in the "next samsara," leaving a trail of clues starting with the phrase "Let the world completely forget me."
===Legacy===
Greater Lord Rukkhadevata was remembered as a goddess who had protected Sumeru "since time immemorial" by dealing with disasters and creating the rainforest so that the people of Sumeru could live in peace. Some of her most devoted followers who were researchers founded Sumeru Akademiya and assisted her in ruling Sumeru. The Akasha System, which was powered by the Dendro Gnosis, was considered her legacy; it was modified by the Akademiya at some point after her death to become the public information-retrieval service utilized across Sumeru City.Il Dottore's quote about the "Gnosis of Sumeru" likely confirms that Rukkhadevata's Gnosis and Lesser Lord Kusanali's Gnosis, which had varyingly been cited as the Akasha's power source in Sumeru Preview Teaser 03 and the Sumeru Archon Quests, are the same item. YouTube: Version 3.0 Special Program (Timestamp: 9m 0s) While Lesser Lord Kusanali had her reservations about the Akademiya's use of the Akasha, she believed it was Rukkhadevata's wish to see it taken to its maximum potential and thus did not interfere with its affairs until the sages enacted their Samsara plan during the Sabzeruz Festival.
The Akademiya greatly idolized Rukkhadevata — or at least, the wisdom that they believed she personified. After Rukkhadevata's disappearance, the sages searched for her. They found Lesser Lord Kusanali, who bore a great physical resemblance to their former Archon, and brought her back to Sumeru City. Initially, the people rejoiced at her discovery and changed the Sabzeruz Festival's date to commemorate Kusanali's birthday. However, after some examination, the sages found that Kusanali was barely any different from an ordinary human child; she had no great wisdom nor the strength of a god. Disappointed in their new god, the sages locked her up in the Sanctuary of Surasthana and greatly reduced their focus on the new god in favor of espousing Rukkhadevata's legacy.
The device in the Sanctuary of Surasthana where Nahida was imprisoned was created by Rukhadevata as a space where she could meditate in peace. After her death, the sages reprogrammed the machine so that it could only be controlled from the outside, then placed the young god inside it. Because the dungeon was created by divine power, Nahida was unable to escape on her own.
Over time, and partially due to the Akademiya's misinformation campaign, the people of Sumeru have forgotten the true history between Rukkhadevata and Deshret. Some believe that a battle between the two was what created Sumeru's desert, and fanatic followers of Deshret view Rukkhadevata as a traitor who betrayed him and took the place of Archon. This perversion of the truth has allowed the sages to maintain tight control over information in Sumeru by pitting the people of the forest against the Eremites, making it easy for the sages to manipulate both groups from behind the scenes.
Over the course of the Sumeru Archon Quests, the Traveler becomes entangled in the nation's affairs when their quest to gain audience with Lesser Lord Kusanali leads them to the Divine Knowledge Capsule, which was extracted from scholars who had come into contact with Rukkhadevata's consciousness. After learning about the sages' treatment of Nahida, their ambition to create a fake god, and the Fatui's involvement, the Traveler resolves to help free Nahida and find a way to end the Withering crisis. After the Traveler defeats the faux god Shouki no Kami, Nahida obtains the Electro Gnosis that had been in Scaramouche's possession and uses it to enter Rukkhadevata's realm of consciousness, which contains her final memories. After reaching the Irminsul where Rukkhadevata's remnant is located, Nahida realizes the purpose for which she was created. Despite her unwillingness to, Nahida has no choice but to eliminate Rukkhadevata from Irminsul to completely remove forbidden knowledge. Afterwards, the consequences of forbidden knowledge (crazed whispers, The Withering, and Eleazar) disappear, but Rukkhadevata herself is written out of history, as if she never existed in the world. While she still existed, no one remembers her and all references to her are rewritten to refer to a generic "Lord of Verdure," which people understand to be a pre-amnesiac Nahida. The only individual who still remembers Greater Lord Rukkhadevata is the Traveler, a Descender, although Nahida has mentioned that she instinctively feels as though there was someone before her.
After the removal of the forbidden knowledge, Nahida finally fulfills Rukkhadevata's promise from thousands years ago with Apep's creatures and saves Apep from illness.
===Removal From Irminsul===
==Character Mentions==
==Trivia==
* Rukkhadevata is the second god shown to regress into a physically smaller form after imbuing her power into the land (or in her case, towers). The first known case is Guoba, who as Marchosius, God of the Stove and Patron God of the Soil, "placed all of his power into the land itself" to quell the disasters and calamities that threatened it. Divested of his strength, he shrank to his current size and fell into a deep slumber, during which he lost most of his wits, memories and wisdom. After he awoke, few people realized he was a god until it was revealed during the events of Moonlight Merriment.
** Rukkhadevata is the first god indicated to have placed her power into the land twice and shrunk accordingly: The first was to remove forbidden knowledge after King Deshret released it to his civilization, which changed her appearance from an adult's to a child's. The second likely occurred during the cataclysm when she had to remove forbidden knowledge from Irminsul, causing her appearance to regress to an even younger child's, identical to Nahida in stature. When Nahida and the Traveler encounter the Elemental Being: Grounded Geoshroom, it asks her, "Wait, did you... get smaller again?"
* While talking with Citlali about outliving others during her Tribal Chronicles, without naming names the Traveler confides via mind reading that not only are they much older than they look, but implies that there was someone on Teyvat of which their memory of her is the sole proof that they ever existed. 
===Etymology===
* in is a who is worshiped as the goddess of wealth or the guardian spirit of practitioners. The Yakṣiṇīs are the female counterparts of the Yakshas in Hinduism and Buddhism, and also appear in Jātaka literature, where they are considered as local deities living in trees and sometimes referred to individually as "rukkha-devatā".
*In Hinduism, is a goddess of the forests and the wild animals that inhabit them. As the name derives from the word , araṇyānī can also refer to a "large forest."Wisdom Library: Aranyani, Araṇyāni, Araṇyānī: 9 definitions
==Gallery==
Story Teaser- Lost Legacies in the Sand - Genshin Impact
Cutscene Animation- "A Dream of Falling Branches" - Genshin Impact
Greater Lord Rukkhadevata Creating Lesser Lord Kusanali.png|Greater Lord Rukkhadevata creating Lesser Lord Kusanali from purest branch of Irminsul
RUKDVTA Eternal Oasis.png|Greater Lord Rukkhadevata's chair in the The Orchard of Pairidaeza
==Notes==
==Other Languages==
==Change History==
==References==
de:Höhere Herrin Rukkhadevata
es:Reina Mayor Rukkhadevata
fr:Molrani Rukkhadevata
id:Greater Lord Rukkhadevata
ja:マハールッカデヴァータ
pl:Wielka Pani Rukkhadevata
pt-br:Lorde Maior Rukkhadevata
ru:Великая властительница Руккхадевата
th:ท่านหญิง Rukkhadevata ผู้ยิ่งใหญ่
vi:Đại Vương Rukkhadevata
zh:大慈樹王