Pyr
Pyr ‘secrets’
These are all the secrets or interactions that I could find regarding Pyr, yet, I feel like there are some that I couldn’t find while reading the story.
C104
It is very apparent that the two cats represent both Obli and Neru and that Pyr uses this analogy to make fun of them. If this is the case, why was the white cat, Neru, shown to have a sick complexion? Neru doesn’t seem to have any sickness during the Prologue and Chapter 2, so Pyr might just be jabbing at the fact Neru is old. (Or maybe this could point to the fact that Neru has the same ‘sickness’ as Alessia, confirming the idea that Neru had the hybrid with him, but this is just wild speculation.)
C105
Although it is from Pyr, this quote seems to be from two different perspectives.
The first part of the quote, “I see you through stained glass, but your form is clear as my reflection in still water. I hear you as if I was there, but I can’t reach you,” seems to be said from someone outside of the Demiurge's world. As said before, Aloys and Obli interpreted the world as this: the sky represents the Pleroma, and the ocean represents the void. Based on this, it would seem that someone is watching Demiurge’s realm from the Void wanting to help them. Another time the word stained glass is used is when Obli uses his teleportation magic. This could be seen in [C61], so this quote can refer to someone using teleportation magic to watch the events happening from a different location within the Demiurge’s world.
The second part of the quote, “My fingertips freeze when touching the image of your cheek. Then, I see my reflection and I realize I don’t look like myself anymore,” seems to refer to the time the Demiurge physically met with Obli for the first time. Yet, the other part of the quote doesn’t seem to be relevant to the Demiurge since the Demiurge doesn’t seem to self-reflect on his physical body.
C106
Pyr’s analysis of the character seems to suggest that he knows more of the story than what is present. Yet, these seem to be relevant to the burned man in some way. All the events could be relevant to the burned man since it seems to follow the same pattern: a group of three will have two characters falling in love, but those characters will separate in the end. I.e., Neru, Shax/Obli, and Servos while having Neru and Shax fall in love; Alessia, Bitey, and Bernardo while having Bitey and Bernardo fall in love; Obli, Noch, and Aloys while having Aloys and Noch fall in love.
Pyr talks a lot about this delusion, but I will discuss it later since it seems to be a very big thing for the story.
C107
The way Pyr says this makes it seem that he has experienced his tragedy and that someone is also trampling over it. (Possibly from the burned man himself?)
Pyr is a mysterious character that hasn't revealed their connection with the story that is being presented. Yet, Pyr may be one of the characters already introduced.
-Obli
This is an interesting idea if you consider the burned man as Neru, yet I find this hard to believe since the Obli in the story seems to not have any ill will towards Neru, and in [C107] Pyr seems too distant from Obli. This could be explained later on in the story, but as for now, I can’t say that Pyr is Obli. (There are some similarities between both Obli and Pyr, like how Shax/Obli did a high pitch voice like Pyr, or that some of the wording seems similar to each other. This can also explain why the first-person perspective is used when watching from Shax/Obli's perspective since it’s from Pyr’s perspective.)
-Nomino, Noch’s lord, and/or the person talking to Sofia in Alessia’s dream
Obli’s comment on Nomino and my thoughts on him in my Prologue post suggest that Nomino might not be simply a shapeshifter. Obli says Nomino is the closest being to aeons that he knows of, maybe hinting at the fact that he might not be a shapeshifter in the first place. We see that even Great Shapeshifters indulge themselves with food and having social gatherings with each other. Not Nomino, who distanced himself from everyone and who actively avoided things like eating. Nomino seems to be doing this of his own volition, not wanting to be more of Demiurge's creation than he already is. Although a stretch, this could imply that Nomino has a disdain towards not only the aeons but also the living beings that Demiurge has created. This could be the same disdain that Pyr has toward the being like the burned man.
Since we don’t know too much about Noch’s lord and the person talking to Sofia in Alessia’s dream, it would be possible they are also Pyr. (Noch’s lord since both Pyr and Noch’s lord are most likely to be voidborns. The person talking to Sofia in Alessia’s dream could also be Nomino since the outcome of the whole story could have been devised by them, which means that he could be Pyr if the theory above is true.)
-Nobody
I think the most likely candidate for Pyr’s identity is that he is a new character we haven’t seen in the memories. There isn't much about Pyr, other than the comments he made on the story's character and the burned man, that suggests that Pyr is someone from the story. (Pyr seems to have a possible connection with the Red Manor, which the burned man also has, but that is left to be seen.)
The Carcass
There are little pieces of information about the Carcass or even the place where the burned man woke up during Chapter 1. But when referring to the Carcass, I will only be talking about the place that takes place in Chapter 2.
The Carcass is a huge place if Pyr is to be believed, with many people using the Carcass to study soul technology and magic. It also contains memory strings that form a big tree.
Theory:
Because of this, I concluded that the Carcass is actually a dead body of an aeon. Aeons are ginormous beings made out of souls, which can account for the size and reason why the facility is used for studying souls. It can explain why the Carcass is called, well, the Carcass. Not only that, but I would think that the aeon is Samuel since the story revolves around the events that happen in Samuel’s domain. (This could mean that Noch’s plan of killing the Demiurge was to kill Samuel himself.)
The Time Egg
I always found the egg to be a bit more interesting than it first appeared. From what is shown, the time egg that the burned man has can do at least these things: look at memory threads, the ability to communicate with Pyr, teleport to the records, delete memory threads, and can go to automatic mode. Yet, this isn’t the only time we see a time egg.
Simply hitting escape, F1, or right-click will bring up the time egg allowing the user to look at the backlog, save, load, config, go back to the title, controls, or quit.
This could mean that the burned man represents us, the player, or that we, the player, are watching the events of the burned man.
Redd Manor
C108
Although not certain, this memory might have something to do with the Redd Manor. The only times that the Redd manor was said was during the Prologue, yet, even those leave no evidence of what the Redd manor actually is. (It seems that the Redd manor is an important part of the story, but we just have to wait and see.)
These are some of my theories about the story.
- The burned man is forced to watch these stories as an atonement of something.
Because of the action the burned man has committed, he is forced to witness these memories in either as evidence or as punishment.
- The story hasn’t finished yet. After reaching the end of the memories, the burned must act to prevent/help something.
This would make sense when considering Pyr's words. This endless story, a story that either has no end or doesn’t have an ending yet, could be stopped/finished after the action of the burned man. The burned man is escaping from his problems, not wanting to deal with them until he gets his memories back.
- Pyr is actually the burned man, but with his memories.
Crazy theory, but I wouldn’t think that it isn’t possible. Pyr is trying to ‘help’ the burned with these memories by making him conclude some biases.
Small things that I found interesting:
F1 is another way to go to the menu screen. What’s cool about it is that when done in the title screen, it would show the menu screen but without the Time Egg. You also can’t click on the Title screen since you are already on the title screen.
F2 brings up two different numbers. I think they are supposed to be the downloads of Neru, but I’m not sure what they are for.
F3 brings up the fps, ms, ms max. The fps doesn't seem to drop below 4 in the title screen, and the max fps that could be gained is 60 fps. (This could be based on refresh rates, but I don’t know how it really works.)
There seems to be a pair of red eyes when skipping through the story. It’s a cool easter egg, but it might be more than that.
When looking around the files for some images, I this interesting image.
This image contains Neru’s and Obli’s textbox, but I’ve never seen it during normal gameplay. Maybe there is a way to find this in the game, but I would think that this might be some unused assets. (This image could suggest that Neru and Shax/Obli are combined somehow, but since it’s never used I wouldn’t say that it is canon.)
Best Quote!
Bitey refers to Alessia as his daughter!!! This is too cute to not love.
Final Thoughts
I love reading this visual novel. I never am the kind of person who reads books, but this is the only thing I have read and reread twice over. This post took me a long time since Chapter 2 contains so many topics to talk about. I’ve removed many of them from this post, but I hope I didn’t remove the ones that I consider important. I’ll be taking a break from Nerus for a time being, and I plan on data mining this game so I can read the extra dreams from Alessia.