Topaz And Aventurine: A Stoneheart's Collateral

Topaz and Aventurine: A Stoneheart's Collateral

Obligatory follow-up to this post bc I realized I had a lot to say about the contrast between Topaz and Aventurine and their respective relationships to the IPC as an institution, because they're both very complex and morally grey but in distinctly different directions.

Ever since 2.1 introduced us to Jade and gave us Aventurine's backstory, I've been toying with the theory that being a Stoneheart is just as much about the debts you owe to the company as it is about the debts you collect for the company. And 2.3 went a long way toward supporting that theory, with Jade's monologue in "Soldier's Pay."

According to Jade, each of the Ten Stonehearts carries a void inside them, one they're not able to fill on their own. The Cornerstones (and, by extension, their identities as Stonehearts) are the means by which Diamond offers to fill that void:

Screenshot from the "Soldier's Pay" mission in the Honkai Star Rail 2.3 patch. Jade stands in the foreground with her arms gesturing outward. The silhouettes of the other Stonehearts appear behind her, glowing under the light of a gleaming diamond.

Jade: "So, you understand? This pledge goes beyond a mere oath. It's our collateral in exchange for opportunities, wealth, survival, and a future..."

While the debt language can be read as Jade using the metaphors of her home turf, it stands to reason that each Stoneheart has, at the very least, taken on a symbolic debt to Diamond and the IPC, putting forth their lives and their loyalty as collateral. Jade is likening the Stonehearts to her own clients: people so desperate to fill a void in their life that they're willing to take the devil's bargain, no matter what it may cost them in the end. For all their differences, this is the common thread that binds them together.

Topaz and Aventurine are no exception; on the contrary, they're the two largest and most recognizable silhouettes as Jade gives her speech to Firefly. And just as each person that comes to the Bonajade Exchange is driven by a different desire, it stands to reason that each Stoneheart's void is deeply personal.

Topaz is introduced as a character who values security and stability to a fault. She straight up tells Bronya that a civilization's survival is more important than its freedom, because, from her perspective, freedom was a necessary sacrifice in order to prevent her homeworld from becoming ecologically uninhabitable. She grew up on a world where, by her account, the citizens lost faith in saving themselves because they didn't have a strong leader to guide them:

Screenshot of Topaz from the 1.4 Trailblaze Continuance "Jolted Awake from a Winter Dream," with subtitles displaying her dialogue.
Topaz: My world never had a resolute leader, so people gave up on the idea of saving themselves long ago. But your civilization has persisted through the snow and storms for 700 years... A truly admirable feat.

In acquiring the planet, the IPC claimed the labor of its inhabitants in exchange for making the planet livable again. And while Topaz highlights the ecological restoration as the primary boon of the IPC's contract (and she seems genuinely dedicated to helping other planets in similar situations), it's suggested that most if not all of her adult life has been spent away from her restored homeworld... and as we hear in one of her voicelines, she doesn't want to return:

How does that song go again? "The place you can't go back to is called home." Well, that might sound dramatic, but I really haven't been back home for a long time... and frankly, I don't want to.

She's clearly retained her love for animals and her appreciation for the natural world, so it seems more likely to me that her aversion is tied to the people and the associated memories of growing up there. She was a child living through an environmental apocalypse, and from her perspective, the adults around her didn't have the ability or the will to change things: they "gave up on the idea of saving themselves." The people with money left while they still could, while everyone else waited in misery for the end to arrive. As far as she's concerned, her community failed her, and it took the intervention of the IPC to reel things back from the brink of catastrophe.

Underneath the surface of her idealism, I think that experience has continued to shape her view of humanity. Despite approaching her work from a perspective of positivity and wanting to provide a better life for as many people as possible, Topaz is consistently surprised when people come together to accomplish something positive without some level of bureaucracy binding it together, as we see in one of her Astral Express visitor dialogues:

Screenshot of dialogue from the Honkai Star Rail mission "Jolted Awake from a Winter Dream" (Version 1.4).

Topaz: Say, aren't there any forms to fill out for boarding the express? No contract to be signed? How about a deposit? Tsk, at least tell me there's a guarantee...
Topaz: Nothing...? Hmm, interesting... So it's all based on interpersonal credit? Huh, I'm amazed everything runs on something so fragile!

To loop back around to @starcurtain's original point about Aventurine vs. Topaz as IPC supervisors, I think one of the reasons we see Topaz surrounded by her grunt squad so often (at least compared to the other Stonehearts we've met so far) is because that's one of the core things that she gets out of working for the IPC: the sense of being united in purpose with others, of being able to rely on the people below and above you, because the system enforces loyalty and cooperation as expectations rather than aspirations.

I just. Ugh. There's a mix of compassion, naivety, and hypocrisy baked into Topaz's character that I find so fascinating. She's not driven by profit, and she's not beyond reason. She cares about the people on the other side of her negotiations. She listens to Bronya's petitions, reconsiders her approach, and willingly takes the heat for Belobog's continued self-determination... but she's able to do so without ever really deconstructing the premise of her job and the ways in which she relies on the IPC for her identity and purpose. It makes me wonder what it would take to truly shake her worldview.

Aventurine's relationship with the IPC, meanwhile, is less about belonging and more about autonomy, or at least a facsimile of it. He's distrustful of power and authority, but he also recognizes those things as tools he can use to stake out a place for himself in the world. As far as he's concerned, he can't rely on the system or the people around him, but he can at least play the game in a way where he comes out on top.

Screenshot from the Honkai Star Rail animated short "Non-Zero Sum Game." Aventurine looks toward the camera, holding up a closed fist containing a coin, with his dialogue displayed in YouTube closed captions: "I don't make deals that don't pay off..."

Throwing his lot in with the engine of Corporate Cosmic Capitalism (to the point where he introduces himself as a cog in the machine of the Strategic Investment Department) might not seem like the obvious first choice for someone seeking autonomy, but it lines up with what the vision of Aventurine's future says about him in 2.1:

You know who you really are, Mr. Cavalier Gambler: Uptight, overcautious, massive inferiority complex. You've won so much, and you're still SO afraid of losing.

Aventurine had options that could have afforded him something closer to 'true' freedom. He could have joined the Tavern as a Masked Fool; we know he had the offer in his back pocket. He could have struck out as a lone vigilante like Boothill. But those are riskier gambles, ones that involve embracing uncertainty and operating outside the system. (The Masked Fools carry their own power and influence, but at the end of the day they exist to stir the pot and destabilize anything remotely resembling an institution. Boothill, meanwhile, is dead set on blowing the whole damn thing up, because he has nothing left to lose.)

Screenshot of dialogue from the Honkai Star Rail mission "All the Sad Tales" (Version 2.1) between Aventurine and his future self (identified at this point in the subtitles by question marks).

???: Haha, of course, I know you all too well... But, it's strange — why did you decline that invitation? You had the chance to embrace Elation. Was that not what you most wanted? But you chose the IPC instead...
???: For the Preservation? Hmph, I doubt it. Do you even have anything in common with the Preservation?
Aventurine: I thought you knew... Didn't you say you had me pegged?

Aventurine isn't bound to the IPC against his will. He's there because he the void inside him yearns for freedom and self-determination, and becoming a Stoneheart—being in a position where he can make grand gambles with grand returns, from within the structure of a system he can learn and leverage to his advantage—offers him something that feels close enough, while still allowing him to stack the deck against the throes of a destiny he can't control. He might claim he has nothing to lose, but he's afraid of losing all the same.

As a Stoneheart, he has enough control over his life to voluntarily risk it again and again for the IPC's profit. Enough control over his resources to dole out credits and expensive gifts to his allies. Enough control over his body to choose his own clothes, and to make sure they're the finest clothes money can buy. And it's closer to freedom than anything he's been allowed to keep so far, so it has to be enough.

Initially, 'close enough' might have been a temporary measure, in the interest of seeking out any surviving Avgin and repaying the people who helped him along the way, but I feel like even as his third character story eroded the meaning behind his decision to join the IPC, it also eroded his desire to fight for something more than close enough.

Which makes his choice to keep going at the end of 2.1 all the more significant. The desire to live, to make his family proud, to embrace his past while looking toward the future... it's not something the IPC can milk for profit, and it's not something he can sell or wager to further his schemes. It's just his.