"Those who believe cast the gods in glory, while unbelievers witness how gods transcend. But as for him, I will not characterize him as either. All uncertainties are but foundations for his future path." —Blessed One of Wisdom, Mahakusaladhamma (Lesser Lord Kusanali)
"Scaramouche" is but one of the many names he has been known as over the centuries. Other names include Kabukimono, Kunikuzushi, The Balladeer, Wanderer, Hat Guy or simply puppet. The player is also able to give him a new name in the game.
Age: 400-500 years
Birthday: January 3rd
Homeland: Inazuma
Power: Anemo
Weapon: Catalyst
Favourite food: Bitter tea
Least favourite food: Dango and other sweets
Relations: Raiden Ei (creator)
Constellation: Peregrinus
Special Dish: Shimi Chazuke
Banner: From Ashes Reborn
Titles: Sixth of the Eleven Fatui Harbingers; Eons Adrift; Tribulations Uncounted, Trials Unknowable; Everlasting Lord of Arcane Wisdom; Shouki no Kami, the Prodigal
Voice actor: Patrick Pedraza (English), Luyin (original Chinese)
Signature weapon: Tulaytullah's Remembrance
Signature artifact set: Desert Pavilion Chronicle
Favourite furnishing sets: Quiet Times by the Riverbank, Chorus of Desert and Wood
Outfit: A Wrathful Void
The Eccentric Puppet
He was born with a face fairer than any other, destined to a long life and a hollow will. He was a transcendent being, divinely created, but he was cast aside like worthless dross. Yet, due to an error that cannot be known, he roused himself from slumber, and began to wander the mortal realm.
500 years ago, there was the Cataclysm. The Archons of Teyvat fought against the monsters of Khaenri'ah, a nation that had brought the wrath of the Heavenly Principles upon itself. During this battle, the Electro Archon, the ruler of Inazuma, Makoto (Baal), died. Her twin, Ei (Beelzebul), took her sister's place as the Archon but was struck by sorrow. She formed an obsession with achieving Eternity to escape such grief. She planned on confining herself into the Plane of Euthymia, but in order to do so, someone needed stay ruling Inazuma. The people of Khaenri'ah had developed a skill to construct a puppet that could be a living being. Ei used this knowledge to create a prototype puppet, a proof of concept to test out. This puppet was created with the ability to host the Electro Gnosis (Heart of God). However, when this puppet was created and it slept, it shed tears. Ei looked at this puppet, thinking it too fragile to host the Electro Gnosis. However, she didn't have the heart to kill him, to intervene in his fate. She put him into slumber and set him inside the Shakkei Pavilion, never to wake up again. But somehow, for an unknown reason, the puppet awoke...
The puppet woke up, without any idea where he is or even who he is. Eventually he was found in Shakkei Pavillion by the samurai Katsuragi. Katsuragi took him to the blacksmithing forge of Tatarasuna, but told him to hide the fact that he came from the pavilion, instead saying that he was found on Nazuchi Beach.
The blacksmithing community of Tatarasuna became the puppet's family. The people of Tatarasuna called him "Kabukimono", which means an eccentric in vibrant colours. He was asked: "Don't you want a name? Or are you going to let everyone out there call you the Kabukimono?" The puppet, however, was completely fine with the name. The only thing left for him from his creator was a golden feather around his neck - a proof of identity. The people of Tatarasuna taught Kabukimono to read and write, to start fires and make meals, to forge... they considered him their friend. Kabukimono lived a calm and happy life as a member of the community of Tatarasuna.
Later, a Fontaine man called Escher arrived in Tatarasuna and introduced a new forging method utilizing Crystal Marrow. However, this caused the black smoke of the forge to poison the surroundings and the furnace was going out of control, with no way to stop it. Although they asked for help from Tenshukaku, they didn't receive it. With the golden feather, Kabukimono sailed through rain and storm to Narukami Island to get an audience with the Shogun. However, she had already retreated to the Plane of Euthymia, and the new, low-in-emotion puppet she had left to rule Inazuma in her stead didn't agree to meet Kabukimono. After this, he demanded to see Yae Miko instead, who promised to bring help to Tatarasuna. Kabukimono had no faith in the Shogunate, however, and returned to Tatarasuna.
There, a disaster awaited. Escher gave Kabukimono a device and told him to go into the furnace and shut it down, even though this was fatally dangerous. He still went and successfully shut down the furnace. After coming back, he asked Escher what was in the device as it had protected him. Escher said it was the heart of a servant Niwa had mercilessly killed before escaping Tatarasuna with his family to avoid punishment. Horrified, Kabukimono tossed the heart that had protected him to the ground. Unknown to him and everyone, Niwa hadn't run away. He had been killed by Escher, who was the Fatui Harbinger Il Dottore in disguise. The heart didn't belong to a murdered servant either - it was Niwa's heart. However, it would take 400 years before Kabukimono would learn the truth.
Later still, he would disappear without a trace from Tatarasuna. But as people reminisced, they could never forget the celebratory dance he had performed together with them on the day that Mikoshi Nagamasa successfully forged his great blade.
His steps fluttered lightly like a feather in the wind then, and they could not have known that he, like a feather, would depart from them and journey to places unknown.
Tea
When the puppet first went to Tatarasuna, he was given a cup of tea. Not knowing about human customs, he emptied the cup soon and was brought another one. Cup after cup he downed the bitter tea. Later, he thought the people probably thought he had liked the tea, instead of just doing what he thought he was supposed to. However, after tasting every flavour of tea in the world, he came to realize he prefers the bitter tea. "The more bitter, the better". Bitter tea doesn't lie, isn't trying to mask its true taste in sweeteners... much like the truth of the cruelty of the world, it is best served the way it is.
A Heart
The puppet ran into an orphaned, sickly child whose parents had died of illness. The two bonded over their status as lonely children in the world and started living together. They promised to be together forever. The child made a little doll that looked like the puppet with a tear in the corner of its eye.
Once, the puppet told the child about his wish: he wished he had a heart. After thinking a moment, the child told the story of a toy soldier who fell in love with a ballerina doll. After he was thrown away into a fire, in the ashes, the people found a heart - ashes in shape of a heart. The puppet said it's not a real heart, but the child suggested that hearts could be born from ashes.
One day when coming home, the puppet found the child dead of his illness. The puppet was not only struck by grief but also anger. This was the third time he had been betrayed: first by his creator abadoning him, second by Niwa fleeing and now by the child unable to keep his promise. The puppet burned their house down, but no heart appeared in the ashes. He wished he had burned to death in that fire... No, he wished he had never been born at all.
The Abyss
"Where are you going, Inazuman? This boat is not for you!" The wandering young man was halted at the harbor by a boatman. But before the youth could draw his blade, a man in his company stopped him. The man told the mariner that the outlander youth was with him.
"Ah, so he's your guest, sir? My apologies for my presumption." The man gave the youth a coat to keep the cold out, but the youth shook his head. He had no need of such things — he only wished to know what interesting things he might find on this long journey.
The puppet began wandering the land, vowing to never consider anyone his companion again. Eventually, he was found by Pierro who managed to persuade him to join the Fatui. The puppet travelled to Snezhnaya and became a test subject in Il Dottore's experiments. This research on the puppet took several decades. In return, Il Dottore unlocked the seal on his body, causing his abilities to increase and even match the lower-ranked Harbingers. In this time, everyone simply called him "puppet".
The Tsaritsa sent the puppet to lead an expedition into the Abyss, where he sent much time. Sometimes, he would get wounded, be fixed by Il Dottore, and return to the Abyss only to later be wounded by stronger foes. This back and forth process only ended up making him stronger. After bringing back the results of the expedition, he was granted the sixth seat of the Fatui Harbingers. This is when he gained a new name for the first time in over a century: Scaramouche, The Balladeer.
Kunikuzushi
Still harbouring the hatred in his heart over what he thought was Niwa's betrayal towards him, the puppet had gone to Inazuma to enact revenge on the Raiden Gokaden, the five bladesmithing schools of Inazuma. Three of the schools fell from grace thanks to the puppet's manipulations, and he turned his eyes on the fourth one, Isshin. He sabotaged the diagram of a blade, causing Isshin blacksmiths to fail at forging them and flee to Snezhnaya.
The Yashiro Commission head and Kaedehara Yoshinori found the puppet in their pursue of the craftsmen, but the puppet slayed their group with ease. However, the puppet noticed something surprising on his victim whose hat had fallen off during the assault: he recognized something in Kaedehara Yoshinori.
"Do you know the name Niwa?" the puppet had asked. Yoshinori explained that his ancestor had been a Niwa, but after the decline of the Niwa clan, he had been adopted into the Kaedehara clan. Despite his anger, the puppet didn't have it in him to kill the descendant of his precious friend from those centuries ago. The puppet spared Yoshinori and told him to tell the Shogun the puppet's message: "My name is Kunikuzushi".
Scaramouche, The Balladeer
"Lord Harbinger. Where are you headed?"
The youth, hating chatty humans the most, gave his subordinate a backhand slap. But he also loved watching expressions of terror and helplessness play across human faces, and it was perhaps precisely because of this imbecilic underling's expressiveness that he had kept them around. He told the groveling, quailing figure that they were headed east, for Mondstadt.
"I understand! I'll get your bodyguards ready right now!"
He had no need of guards, of course, but he was lazier still to barter words with cretins. Donning his wanderer's hat, he headed eastward alone.
Since joining the Fatui and eventually becoming a Harbinger, Scaramouche participated in Harbinger duties around the world. Eventually, centuries later, he ended up in Mondstadt, investigating a strange meteorite incident. While there, he ran into Mondstadt's saviour but failed to kill him due to the presence of the Millelith as well as the saviour being alerted by the magician Mona about Scaramouche's threatening intentions. However, killing the Traveller wasn't Scaramouche's mission, and he kept going for his original objective. During his studying of the meteorites, he learned a truth of the world: the skies and stars above Teyvat are fake.
"Child, where are you going?" Returning home, the youth was stopped at the roadside by an old woman. He told her that he was going west.
"To Yashiori Island, then? What business are you on?" She had said this thoughtlessly, knowing only that things had not been peaceful of late. The youth thanked her for her concern with earnest smile and told her that he was bound for an appointed meeting.
Another Fatui mission took Scaramouche back to Inazuma. He was tasked with supervising the delusion factory, a part of La Signora's plan on destabilizing the country by handing out delusions to the desperate citizens of the war-torn islands. This factory was where the Traveller once again ran into The Balladeer, who had little concern for the victims of the delusions. The Traveller was, however, not able to counter Scaramouche as they fell unconscious but were saved by Yae Miko. She gave Scaramouche exactly what she knew he had always wanted: his heart, the Electro Gnosis. Scaramouche ran off with it, not bothering to inform his colleagues.
Scaramouche went missing, but was found by Il Dottore. He was starting a new experiment, and the Grand Sages of the Akademiya of Sumeru were about to get tangled in as well: they were going to build Scaramouche a massive mechanical body and use human wisdom to turn him into a god. However, their plans were foiled when the Traveller and other heroes from Sumeru joined arms to rescue the Dendro Archon, Lesser Lord Kusanali, who had been imprisoned by the Sages for 500 years, as well as put an end on the plans of the corrupt Akademiya Sages. When the new god Scaramouche, the Everlasting Lord of Arcane Wisdom, was unable to defeat the Dendro Archon and the Traveller, he begged for Lesser Lord Kusanali not to take the Gnosis away from him, never wanting to go back to the way he was. However, she took the Gnosis and Scaramouche fell from the massive robot body, falling unconscious.
However, she let him live. While confronting Il Dottore, she had learned the truth of Scaramouche's past - that Niwa hadn't betrayed him and instead, he had been lied to by Il Dottore. Wanting to show this him, she made a deal with the disgraced and abandoned Harbinger: Since he had briefly been a god, he had formed a connection to Irminsul he still retained even after losing his divine powers. The Dendro Archon sent him to Irminsul to look for information on the Traveller's sibling while being supervise by the Traveller. This is where he learned the truth. Thoughts went through Scaramouche's head. Niwa had been killed, and Katsuragi had been slain in order to save accusations on the Mikoshi clan. Would things have gone badly if Kabukimono hadn't been there? Could the people of Tatarasuna have lived long, happy and prosperous lives? If even the slightest chance to change reality existed, Scaramouche was willing to take it. He asked the Traveller if it was possible to change the past. The Traveller didn't respond, but their reaction convinced Scaramouche that it was. So, he turned to Irminsul and declared: Scaramouche and Kabukimono will cease to exist.
He believed himself bold, for he feared not death. Death was but a tiny threat to a puppet, and only humans with hearts knew horror. He also knew himself to be craven, and for that he had remorse. If he had been then more like he was at present... if he had learned to be less trusting... Would those he had viewed as friends have met such a ruinous end? Traitor, hero, god, discarded detritus — all these identities would cease to matter to one who leaped into the flux. The information flow was a place of incomparable silence, and yet his blood roiled in his ears, and his mind roared.
Embrace oblivion! The puppet was a discarded milksop, the Kabukimono unaccomplished and sheltered, and Scaramouche was a schemer — one who eventually went against divine decree, seeking to go against the tides of the world. But what of it? Once upon a time, these inhuman hands had shut a great blazing furnace without caring if his ten fingers were burned to a crisp. Now, these hands grasped at the tiniest possibility, twisting the truth to fulfill his wish. Yes, embrace it, embrace it with this form that shall be obliterated! To ruin with this life, as worthless as flowers and feathers and the dawn dew! Farewell, world! The future shall be what it will. Farewell nonetheless!
The Wanderer
It is not possible to change the past by removing oneself from Irminsul. The fates of the people of Tatarasuna didn't change - it was simply that everyone forgot the existence of the puppet and anything he ever did. Everyone forgot, including himself, now wandering around without memories or purpose. The Traveller, the only one to remember him, found him in Sumeru's bazaar and brought him to Lesser Lord Kusanali. As it turns out, the Dendro Archon had managed to salvage The Balladeer's memories by disguising them as a fairytale. Using this, she was able to return The Balladeer his memories. In that moment of turmoil, he received the gods' blessing: an Anemo Vision.
Now knowing the truth of Il Dottore's lies, as well as the Fatui having forgot his existence, The Balladeer had no interest in reaching out to them, vowing that everyone who hurt him will pay. He discarded all his old names, and the Traveller invented a new name for him. He stayed travelling around Sumeru, working in the background to help the Traveller, as well as working as Lesser Lord Kusanali's helper.
Tiny doll
In Sumeru City, the Wanderer stopped by to learn how to make toys from a local merchant. The elderly man taught him how to make dolls from cloth and thread, and the Wanderer found himself not hating the process. He had learned to do many things in the world with care in the past — holding cutlery, wearing clothes, combing his hair... Little by little, he had learned how to be a "human". After a few days, his doll was finished: it looked just like the one the child from his past had made in his image. Keeping it in his sleeve, pocket or hat, it was the Wanderer's new travel companion.
"From today, you shall wander together with me."
The Grave of a Friend
On a fateful night, a figure arrived at a place that had once been called Tatarasuna. There should no longer have been residents there, but as if destiny had decreed it, a farmer had come there, picking Naku Weed to make a living. Thus it was under the moonlight that he saw a phantom figure standing on the edge of the cliff. This person wore a wide hat that concealed their face entirely. However, the farmer could hear breathing through the pitter-patter of the rain.
A moment later, the figure spoke. "This is how humans should breathe."
The farmer was terrified that he might had encountered some spirit, and hurriedly hid behind a rock. The figure spoke again. "What are you afraid of? Would a passerby such as I hurt you? I am merely here to tend to the grave of a friend."
Silence filled the air once more. The farmer peeked out from behind the rock, and saw that the figure had vanished. A note drifted to the ground and was instantly soaked by the rain. Three questions had been written on that piece of paper, along with answers that were not yet fully written—
If humans have a heart, why do they not fear the hearts of others? Due to their inferior nature.
How should one treat others, knowing full well their inferiority? ...
How can one be a human being without a heart? One without a heart is hardly human.
Chills ran down the farmer's spine as he finished reading the note. Tatarasuna had been deserted for many years, and it had been a long time since anyone came here to pay their respects. And even if there were, why would they appear on such a night?
Vahumana scholar
After learning of an Akademiya scholar who made research about Tatarasuna, Wanderer wrote a few essays debunking his points. Later, when bored, he also wrote about societal issues in Inazuma. This caused people to view him as a foreign scholar in the same field as Vahumana, and when Lesser Lord Kusanali heard about all this, she signed Wanderer into the Vahumana Darshan under the name Hat Guy. His analyses were seen as incisive, but his way of speaking didn't make him the most likeable individual.
He was Vahumana's representative in the Interdarshan Championship, but was only there to keep an eye on things for Lesser Lord Kusanali and didn't even try to compete. The first round, he just drank coffee, and the second, he withdrew, though not before giving his water to Tighnari who was in a bad shape from desert heat. It turned out there was something fishy about the Diadem of Knowledge featured in the competition, so Hat Guy was there just to keep watch for Lesser Lord Kusanali. However, after the situation was solved, she expressed her intention of keeping Hat Guy in the Akademiya for real, which Hat Guy wasn't the most excited about. Lesser Lord Kusanali had also wished that Hat Guy could interact with others during the competition, but this didn't quite work as he didn't approach the others much. In his own eyes, Hat Guy is just a prisoner paying back to Lesser Lord Kusanali for what she did for him earlier.
Specialities
Scaramouche's constellation is Peregrinus, meaning "Wanderer". The constellation portrays a puppet (possibly a kokeshi doll) holding a heart.
Scaramouche's special dish is Shimi Chazuke, a version of Unagi Chazuke. It increases healing by 25% for 300 seconds.
The mildly bitter fragrance of tea and the refreshingly sweet aroma of rice are perfectly blended together, leaving you to wolf it down insatiably. How did he manage to cook something so extraordinary? Ah, your expression must have betrayed this thought to him, for his face suddenly turns grim: "Have you finished yet? Stop gawking and go wash the dishes now."
Scaramouche likes the forests of Sumeru, which are warm, humid and teeming with life. On the other hand, he finds the forests of Inazuma too gloomy, and Snezhnaya too frigid.
More info
The name Kabukimono means an eccentric wearing bright coloured clothes. In actual history, kabukimono were samurai gangs in feudal Japan. Kunikuzushi means "country destroyer" and in Inazuman theater, it means characters that are often schemers and usurpers of nations. Scaramouche comes from the Italian Scaramuccia, "little skirmisher". The name of his god form, Shouki no Kami, means "The God to be Saved".
Some of Scaramouche's lore is explained in the description of the artifact Surpassing Cup from the Pale Flame artifact set, as well as in all the artifacts of the Husk of Opulent Dreams artifact set.
