Genshin Lore

*all Biblical passages quoted are, unless stated otherwise, from the NRSVUE

Gurabad was basically a cautionary tale within the traditions of the Desert, the culmination of delusion and the prime example of retribution.

"Young wanderers, please heed this man so old and blind.

Heed the ruins of Gurabad, heed the culmination of a delusional dream...

Heed the jewel that shines like a dome of stars, and heed the riven states." (End of the Golden Realm)

"Merchant sheltering from the storm, please heed this man so old and blind.

Heed the past of Gurabad, heed the retribution its people sought for themselves.

Heed the newborn nobility and the peasants who dwell beneath the palace…" (Legacy of the Desert High Born)

The images of Assyria and Babylon (the two entities I will be mostly talking about in this post) have been shaped primarily by the writings from the Bible and various Greek authors, and even today . Both have lived on within western imagination as symbols of opulence, decadence, arrogance and repression, which went conjointly with the orientalizing view of the East, the "other" against the west (it helped that their ruins were in Ottoman territory, and so were equated with the Ottomans.) Their fall and desolation was viewed as palpable proof of divine retribution.