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(+2)

so heres some of my thoughts, spoilers obviously


ive reread the prologue quite a few times (cause i like making myself cry ha ha) so these theories will pertain to that, and what im currently rereading


for some dumb reason i never checked it when i literally knew it was a thing during my last playthrough which im kicking myself for but the burning sound effects that happen at certain points in the prologue means that lines of text are added to the backlog, and the static is either lines being erased or not recorded at all in the backlog.

the first line occurs when nerus is talking about how monotonous his life is and mentions how a clock just kinda does its thing on repeat, and in the backlog this line appears: "Perpetual... So boring..."

the second line comes when nerus thinks theres an intruder, which we know later to be lucusti checking in on obli, when nerus goes into shax's room and lights a fire, this line appears: "Sleeping like a little angel..."

theres more but i need to go through and find them all again so ill prob update this once i find them. theres one after nerus confesses to shax his feelings and they return home and mention having to bathe to get all the sand off that reads: 

"Well, isn't this cute? Too bad you have already failed him, though. And you know what the best part is? You didn't even notice, despite him acting up in front of you.

Bravo, four eyes and for nothing. Let us see how much longer you manage to retain this tiny bit of "peace" before it all falls apart. I can hardly wait."


now for a theory. the redd manor is nerus's house, im like 99% sure it is. my idea is that theres some time shenanigans going on

im assuming obli is maybe trying to change how things played out but is either being stopped by someone or is just unable to

also, and this is just highly speculating cause my brain likes to associate things a lot, the whole redd manor thing makes me think of a song by Blackbriar called "Crimson Faces" which is about the novel "Rebecca" by Daphne du Maurier, in which the narrorator marries a man whos manor is haunted by the ghost of his dead wife. "Nerus" definitely reads to me like a classic gothic horror romance novel. 


just some thoughts i wanted to get down. Nerus is easily one of my absolute favorite VNs. the unique story and characters, and excellent writing, i cant wait to see how it all concludes.

i just hope that nerus and obli/shax end up happy together

(+1)

Neru’s mansion being the Redd Manor? That… could be true.

From what I can recall from the story, it’s been a while since I read it so do take this with a grain of salt, the Redd Manor has only been used sparely throughout the story, but the little times we get information about it are from Neru and Nomino. Neru’s description while holding on to the Redd Manor’s files makes it seem that his house isn’t the Redd Manor, but this could be due to him losing memories of it or even not knowing about it. The other descriptions come from Nomino where he talks about a red mansion in a world with blue skies, which is kinda the opposite of what currently Neru’s house is. It could be that the Neru’s house was the Redd Manor back in the day but after some events, it was abandoned or changed to what it is now. (Or it could just be another mansion that happens to be red.)

And speaking of time, I’ve never considered that the story could have time shenanigans… as in maybe time-traveling? It could explain some things, like how Nomino seems to know how everything goes during the War, and even the slip of paper Shax got during his pickup of delivery could be a message from the future. (And yes, I still think that the message is important to the story and that it would be brought up later in the story… eventually.)

i have a theory that shax is nomino from the first timeline when all of this originally happened. future shax finds a way to turn back time over and over and over and over again, doing everything he can to make sure him and nerus end up together, but it fails every time. so the reason nomino-shax is so odd is cause his form and mind are barely holding it all together turning going back so many times

(+1)

Here's something that hit me by surprise while I was doing some light google dorking on this.

The main mention of the Redd Manor is the development in the Philipines. Given the nature of the project, a "condotel" (condominium/hotel) it's pretty easy to dismiss this as being relevant.

I did some digging, and found one other example. However, given the nature of the controversy surrounding said person, as well as the apparent maturity they show in posts, I'll be willing to believe candidate one is... at minimum, 23 by now. This would also mean that the person in question underwent some sharp changes in ideology and behavior, leading me to believe that option one is out of the question.

The second option is from DeviantArt, but is also far-fetched. After some searching, I found no unusual activity that can connect anything to here. That leaves The Redd Manor as almost definitely being a creation of the author.

Seeing how far you currently are in the story, I won't post too many spoilers here. However, I don't think it's likely the Redd Manor is the location in question.

My reason? A pseudonym used later on in the story by an unrelated character is "Mr. Redd." This is content that is new to 0.11, which I missed as I was out of the loop on this novel for a while.

That was the reason I started that googling again, and how I found the additional results for "Redd Manor".

Wait wait wait. I don't recall someone being called 'Mr. Redd', but it does sound familiar for some reason. (Haven't read in a while, but planning to later under different circumstances.)

I do wonder if Roddio's intent is for us to get more information via the internet, or even digging through the files of the game. If it is, then I will take some time looking through them.

…I do, at some point, want to make a post with my definite thoughts on the story as my previous posts are more scattered with suggestions and theories. I don’t think I will make it anytime soon, since all this evidence doesn’t seem to connect to a simple perfect storyline, with many mysteries and gaps that need to be solved for a coherent story.

(2 edits)

The problem with this train of thought, as I alluded to, is that the person who also came up with the idea of the Redd Manor, if they are Roddio, is someone I don't think they'd want to associate with, hence the lack of a link to back it up directly. Dorking is a skill that can be learned, but also used responsibly. It's entirely possible to uncover confidential information with it.

As for file digging, I've mentioned before -- it's given me information as to who the "traitor" was. And, well... I think I finally get it.
The traitor is Nerus, and here lies my argument.

When Alessia gets a strange dream, she sees a ring of fire. What else looked like a ring of fire? His eyes.

What's the name of the thing that is taunting the traitor? Pyr. That is a pretty close resemblance to the word root "pyro", which is related to fire (as in pyromanic, pyromancer, etc.)

What was the traitor's skin like? Charred.
And who had the power to engulf themselves in flames? Nerus, again, when he burned away his body to fully use his prowess.

The last part is the one you don't have access to without digging through files, usually. In it, the 5th dream (with later context) can be interpreted to mean that someone was meeting void creatures (like Noch) once again ("we all meld together out here" being similar to how Noch describes the feeling to Aloys). Who do we know that's relatively recently been introduced to the void? Nerus.

Even the timeline itself lines up with this. If the objective, as the traitor has proposed, is to help them get back their memories -- why is it happening? My thoughts are so Nerus is caught up on what is going on in the world at the time Obli manages to bring him back, which is presumably the event that occurs at the end of the timeline. Thus, this is all happening in the blink of an eye. Nerus's past before Obli was less important to either of them than afterwards -- for that matter, it might be easier if it was entirely forgotten. Therefore, the timeline starts with Nerus's memories, and everything afterwards is helping him catch up on current events.

This opens the question as to why Pyr wants to keep the traitor guessing, and my theory is once the traitor remembers who they are, they are restored to their reality. Pyr probably gains something in keeping them there, which justifies his goals and actions.

As for the new character -- that was a random surprise. I guess it makes sense that we'd get another shifter working with Ren, but I wonder if this is the same one that contacted Obli with the plan.

I also wonder if Obli continues to talk to Samael at all. It doesn't look like we'll get to see his POV for a little while, but I think that Obli's talks with Samael were in the top moments of the novel, and I took a lot of great lines from there, guidance for myself.

Actually, Fanatic, if you want to get in contact, I was thinking of getting into video essays recently. We could try to set up something to work together, I might not have as much time in the future but I'd be happy to work with you on it. To be honest, I want to do a full rundown of how I got all of the evidence in here, but some of it takes way too long to explain (as you might guess from the length of this).