Welt Joyce
Welt Joyce is a central character in Honkai Impact 3rd and the male protagonist of the official visual novel Anti-Entropy. Surviving the First Eruption in Berlin unscathed, he was recognized as the First Herrscher, the Herrscher of Reason. After spending years as a test subject for Schicksal, he eventually became a research assistant at Imperial Research Institute Lab 42. He went on to lead a group of scientists away from Schicksal to found the rival organization Anti-Entropy as its first leader, striving to protect humanity from destruction.
Overview
Welt Joyce is a central character in Honkai Impact 3rd and the male protagonist of the official visual novel Anti-Entropy. Surviving the First Eruption in Berlin unscathed, he was recognized as the First Herrscher, the Herrscher of Reason. After spending years as a test subject for Schicksal, he eventually became a research assistant at Imperial Research Institute Lab 42. He went on to lead a group of scientists away from Schicksal to found the rival organization Anti-Entropy as its first leader, striving to protect humanity from destruction.
Appearance
Welt Joyce is a young man with short blue hair, blue eyes, and a gentle facial expression. His wardrobe includes a white shirt, a sweater, a jacket, and garments featuring fur trim. He is frequently depicted wearing a scarf, which may be blue or styled with a striped pattern. Visually, his countenance strongly resembles Carl Gustav.
Personality
Joyce is an earnest, pure-hearted, and gentle individual who often acts as the grounded voice of reason among eccentric scientists. He possesses immense kindness and emotional resilience, having retained his compassion despite enduring years of harsh experimentation. Inclined toward self-sacrifice, he routinely places the safety of others above his own. Outside of conflict, he is a mild-mannered man who enjoys reading, though he harbors a comical fear of ghosts.
Abilities
As the Herrscher of Reason, Joyce possesses the ability to construct and replicate any mechanical structure or weapon from his body once its design and operating principles are comprehended. With his full power, he can even manifest devices whose exact principles remain unclear, including divine keys and heavy artillery. Additionally, he can alter his physical appearance. In battle, he primarily wields the 9th Divine Key, Star of Eden, to manipulate gravity. Due to the 300,000 souls residing within his Herrscher Core, he exhibits an inherent mastery of multiple languages.
Background
Discovered at the epicenter of the 1952 Berlin First Eruption with complete memory loss, Joyce was captured by Schicksal as test subject Ω1 and subjected to continuous testing for three years. He was later transferred to Lab 42, where Liesel Albert Einstein bestowed upon him the name Welt Joyce. During an expedition to unravel pre-current era relics and Souls Steel, he uncovered the dark schemes of Schicksal Overseer Otto Apocalypse. Joyce broke away from Schicksal to establish Anti-Entropy, but ultimately sacrificed his life using maximum power to shield New York from a catastrophic missile attack, passing his Herrscher Core and the name Welt to Joachim Nokianvirtanen.
Relationships
Joyce shared a close bond with Liesel Albert Einstein and Frederica Nikola Tesla. Einstein named him and treated him with human dignity, while Tesla's fiery temperament often led to comical friction despite their mutual trust. He unknowingly maintained a letter correspondence with Otto Apocalypse under an alias, but Otto eventually became his primary enemy. At his death, Joyce passed his legacy, name, and Herrscher Core to Joachim Nokianvirtanen (later Welt Yang), the young son of his associate Elias.
Trivia
The name Welt comes from the German word for world, derived from his original lab code Ω1, while the surname Joyce was borrowed from the author of Ulysses, James Joyce. Because he had a subconscious habit of saying I'm home upon returning, Schicksal once conducted a serious investigation into whether he was Japanese. Following his death, his genetic material was acquired by Cocolia to produce multiple clones.
