Time to unleash the theories...per Roddo's request. (Pt 1)
But first, and most importantly....Bitey x Bernardo! I'm of the strong opinion that Alessia needs a 2 parent household. and Bitey needs some birb lovin'
Anyway... as of this build we finally have a timeline for where the prologue fits into chapter 1.
- 0AD: Last known shapeshifter presence on earth (Jesus?)
- 2000AD : Battle of Aeon
- Beginning of 2199--end of 2200 AD: Prologue
- 1.5 years from start to beach plans...2 days until beach...1 day when Nerus receives letter about 2nd Battle...80 days until battle
- 2200 AD: 2nd Battle
- August 8-12th, 3041AD: Chapter 1
- August 23rd, 3041 AD = Date being counted down to / Assumed to be some sort of "end of the world" / perhaps battle part 3?
Another thing that 0.5 cleared up was the mysteries surrounding Frank and Aloys.
The events of 0.5 confirm for me that the info in the Glossary is important and that Roddo may be using it to either lead us or mislead us in the right direction. The masks on the Noch monks along with their respective body types almost immediately made me draw comparisons with Nerus and Shax respectively.
According to the glossary, Nerus cannot change the color of his irises. Thus, if this was Nerus, this might explain why the pair have masks on...building tension.
However, as 0.4/0.5 went on, Aloys became less and less Nerus-like in his actions, and his mask off confirmed it.
However, my theory is that this is a red herring red herring, at least with the purpose perhaps of trying to draw away attention from Frank.
Now, we know that Shax theoretically could be able to change his eye color along with his form, but I'm going to ignore that for now
Not only do Shax and Frank/"Obli" share eye color, but especially during the boat ride, we begin to see that the two share a lot of characteristics
- Frank seems to want to hang around Alessia when she has the pouch looking for Lucusti, and has to be dragged away by Bitey. Is he also attracted to the herb pouch like Lucusti?
- Frank gets oddly quiet when Alessia begins talking
- Frank talks negatively about his parents "They tend to shove their lifestyle on their children without thinking."
- Franks speaks of someone he knows who "behaves like he knows something you don't, even when he is just as lost as I am", whom Alessia gets home to confirm is not Aloys.
- Alessia says that Franks reminds her of a lizard with feathers who appears in her dreams, plays with her, and looks sad, looking like he wants to tell her something
- Frank laughs at this, and this triggers the mask-off moment
- "Maybe the two of us have a lot in common, after all."
- Obli/ "Mysterious Descendant" swapped places with a wet boulder, something we've only seen Shax do.
At this point, I'm willing to put money on this. However, this reveal brings up more questions than answers.
At the end of Prologue, my guess that Shax was trying to say that he was an angel/descendant. However, there are some problems with this theory.
- Unless Descendants can also be prone to soul amnesia and that soul can cross into shapeshifters, how did Shax get born to two Shapeshifter parents?
- Also, I have no reason to doubt that Shax is a soul amnesiac, he appears to actually suffer from the disease
- According to Nerus, Angels cannot reproduce
- According to Nerus, Angels don't often experience physical attraction
- Can Descendants also shapeshift/warp?
It is my opinion that the Extras stuff isn't just for fun, but has lore implications, as I've demonstrated with the eye color foreshadowing.
Blessed vs Hybrid vs Human
Blessed seems to refer to humans who are born with a animal shape, called Beast Men in Ch 1 , as every animal character in Ch 1 (minus Aloys of course) is referred to as a "blessed human". Remigio also refers to himself as "blessed", so I'm guessing prior to his vampire transformation, he looked more like an animal as well.
Bitey is referred to by Alessia as coming from a "blessed family", so it appears that the animal forms seem to be hereditary, as his uncle looks like him.
Interestingly enough, back to Alessia's dream about Shax, she refers to him as blessed...although most likely any animal human would be referred to by that term, it's likely she's just making a guess. However the difference in usage of "beast man" vs blessed is interesting.
I'll get to Alessia in Pt 2, but the narrator (who I believe to be the writer of the glossary), calls her a "hybrid human"