Honkai: Star Rail – 45 English VAs bid farewell to Penacony by singing White Night together

This is what Dan Heng used the Jade Abacus for

HoYoverse

About four months ago HoYoverse introduced the Planet of Festivities, Penacony, to Honkai: Star Rail, kicking off its most successful and popular story arc yet – and it did so in style, featuring an amazing trailer that doubled as a music video for White Night, an original song functioning as the Penacony arc’s “anime opening” just like Interstellar Journey did for the launch version.

Upcoming update 2.3 for the game will see us bid our farewell to Penacony for now, wrapping up the current storyline and likely sending the Astral Express back to other familiar places before it embarks on to its next main stop.

Nicholas Leung, the English VA for Dan Heng and Imbibitor Lunae, worked on something very special over the last few months to celebrate Honkai: Star Rail’s most recent story: He gathered a total of 45 English VAs involved with the game to record their own version of White Night in a massive, beautiful, and heartfelt homage.

Leung is well-known in the community for such collaborations, having produced previous songs in collaboration with other English VAs for Honkai: Star Rail before, though this is clearly his most ambitious project yet.

White Night’s lyrics ended up being prophetic for the story developing on Penacony and gave the community a ton of material to speculate on while things played out. Leung added some lyrics to the song for this extended version, keeping its spirit intact.

This massive effort is made all the better by a running gag about Leung’s character, Dan Heng, who possesses an item called the Jade Abacus. This precious artifact can be used to summon immediate help from the Xianzhou Alliance – but only a single time – and Dan Heng seemed very eager to pull the trigger during the climax of version 2.2. 

The community immediately ran with it and so whenever he comes up in some conversation, someone will have him exclaim “With this Jade Abacus I summon…” in a reference to a popular meme from the Jujutsu Kaisen manga – which makes it quite funny that Leung went ahead and actually summoned so many of the game’s voice actors for this song. 

Everything seems possible in Penacony, Land of the Dreams.