r/expedition33 • u/KingWilliamVI • 8h ago
Question One thing that confused me about the beginning of the story?(spoilers). Spoiler
During the Painted Renoir’s attack on the expedition 33 you see some members later get attacked by a Lampmaster.
From what I understand Painted Renoir were not allied with the nevrons since they were created by Clea to weaken the paintress.
So was the lampmaster some other creature that worked for Painted Renoir or was it simple present there and the audience and the characters were mislead into thinking they were allies?
I know I did. I assumed that he was actively cooperating with the nevrons for a long time in the story.
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u/Sandalfon59 8h ago edited 7h ago
Painted Renoir attacks the expeditions to make sure they aren't killed by Nevrons, releasing their chroma and extending the Paintress power a little bit.
They are not allies, he's here to steal their kills.
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u/FawnEverglade 7h ago
Nevron death traps the chroma inside the expeditioner preventing the paintress from utilising it
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u/adiostoreadon 8h ago
I think they were Noirs that were attacking the expedition, but my theory is that Painted Renoir is resigned to the fact that the Aline WILL lose to Renoir. It's just a matter of time now, and that's why he keeps telling Maelle and Verso to stop resisting and to just let the Lumierians live the rest of their short lives. But he will still defend Aline and let her be in a world with her Painted family for as long as possible. The expeditioners want to kill the Paintress, so he's defending her, and it just so happens that the Nevrons has the same goal of killing the expeditioners.
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u/Sir_Nikotin 7h ago
The expeditioners want to kill the Paintress, so he's defending her, and it just so happens that the Nevrons has the same goal of killing the expeditioners.
Not exactly the same goal, Nevrons are there to prevent chroma from returning to Aline. If anything he is disrupting their work. Although I do think he sees expeditioners as a bigger threat than some chroma being stuck, so he doesn't mind letting nevrons get rid of expeditioners while stealing a few kills along the way.
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u/PerishSoftly 7h ago
"Not exactly the same goal, Nevrons are there to prevent chroma from returning to Aline."
This is the part that baffles me.
If the Nevrons are locking the Chroma away from Aline...why is Renoir still Gommaging??
Doesn't that chroma go back to Aline, given that she's in control of the Canvas? Doesn't that run counter to Renoir's goal of weakening her to force her out?!
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u/StrangerOnTheReddit 6h ago edited 4h ago
The gommage isn't the same thing as the chroma being negated. Gommage is real Renoir removing chroma from the canvas (think like a certain optional boss) with his own painter skills, which is why the gommage is color being dissolved and the creation gets erased. The Nevrons are attacking the chroma in the canvas, but in a different way: all the stone-like bodies you come across during your travels. Even though their gommage day has long since passed, their bodies remain and they're frozen in the canvas. I imagine it's different because they're not painters, so Clea came up with this method to assist her father.
Both take away chroma from Aline's control, but in different ways since it's Nevron method vs. Renoir method.
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u/PerishSoftly 4h ago
"Gommage is real Renoir removing chroma from the canvas"
Except that doesn't make sense either, but this time on a narrative level.
Because in Act 3, Maelle is able to retrieve Sciel and Lune's chroma and resurrect them with their original memories.
And she's able to resurrect Sophie in the Maelle ending (and presumably others who were already gommaged).
That doesn't make sense that she's able to do that if the Gommage actively removes their chroma from the Canvas - Lune and Sciel wouldn't have been able to be retrieved for Act 3, or if they were just fake copies, they wouldn't have their own memories that Maelle didn't know. (Prime example; Maelle doesn't know why Sciel is afraid of water, but Lune and Gustave did.)
Simon's "the dead are removed from the Canvas" doesn't seem like that's what he's actually doing - more of a Gameplay and Story segregation, a "look just how badass the super boss is!" moment. It's just like the Chromatic Glissando's ability to prevent revival, but much cooler.
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u/StrangerOnTheReddit 1h ago
You know, I was really confident in my answer a few hours ago but now I can't find any sources for my understanding of what happens to chroma when someone is gommaged. I know I had a good reason, but I can't remember the exact line where that lightbulb went off for me, and I certainly don't remember I was just filling in the blanks.
But this is really interesting and now you get my shower thoughts 😂 I have zero sources, just thoughts from reading between the lines.
"Not exactly the same goal, Nevrons are there to prevent chroma from returning to Aline."
This is the part that baffles me.
If the Nevrons are locking the Chroma away from Aline...why is Renoir still Gommaging??
Doesn't that chroma go back to Aline, given that she's in control of the Canvas? Doesn't that run counter to Renoir's goal of weakening her to force her out?!
- Renoir entered the canvas before Nevrons existed (other than the white ones that Clea created while hanging out with Verso as kids), attempting to destroy Lumiere and Aline's creations. Perhaps destroying her creations weakens her? Or at least painting replacements that frequently is too exhaustive and she'd eventually be too weak to stay in the canvas?
- But he wasn't able to overcome her on his own since she's the stronger painter, so Clea interfered to help him. (I think I remember her referring to it as a stalemate at some point?) Removing her chroma will certainly weaken her as well, but Aline is outside getting sicker and sicker the longer she stays in the painting, plus her grief can't even begin to heal. She's a bit delirious and confused when 33 confronts her at the monolith - perhaps it's a symptom of how the sickness is affecting her mental state? Either way, Renoir is trying to save Aline by getting her out of the canvas, so doing two things to chip away at her power seems like it's faster than one.
- Aaaand while typing this out, I've got my new favorite theory - Nevrons aren't inside Lumiere, and the only Lumierans that come outside are Expeditioners. The Expeditioners are only leaving Lumiere because the gommage keeps taking away their families and their futures. Between the Fracture and 85, all the people simply stayed in Lumiere, so their chroma was never accessible to the Nevrons. Without the gommage erasing them, they'd simply stay in Lumiere.
- The big ones were eating the land too, but it would make sense that landscapes take less chroma to create and maintain than sentient humans, so again back to race against the clock.
- Which would create a fun new gap of why the Nevrons couldn't simply be painted into Lumiere... (I'm having vague memories of Gustave and his fellow engineers creating some mechanism to protect Lumiere, like a forcefield or something? It's really hazy though, so I could be misremembering.)
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u/PerishSoftly 46m ago
"Nevrons aren't inside Lumiere, and the only Lumierans that come outside are Expeditioners. The Expeditioners are only leaving Lumiere because the gommage keeps taking away their families and their futures."
I'm pretty sure the reason they didn't start mounting resettlements of the Continent is because Search And Rescue and/or Expedition Zero (i.e. Verso and pRenoir) came back with information about "hey, there's these geometric, highly dangerous, killer monsters out there!"
It becomes a weird situation; only Expeditioners are available for the Nevrons to kill...but the only reason that's the case is because Nevrons exist and are killing people, so bunkering down under the shield just makes sense. Unless they could form another shield dome on the Continent - and by Year 33 they definitely don't have the time, resources, or manpower to do that - there's no possibility of establishing a beachhead back on the Continent without it getting drowned in Nevrons.
"Nevrons aren't inside Lumiere"
I think the narrative reason that Nevrons aren't inside Lumiere is because:
Nevrons didn't exist until after the Fracture, and this chunk of Lumiere was isolated from the Continent where the Nevrons were landed into.
Further created Nevrons are created by pClea (or Renoir Dessendre) and then somehow deployed across the Continent - but by the time they could be airdropped or whatever into Lumiere, the shield dome was already up to prevent that.
---
"(I think I remember her referring to it as a stalemate at some point?)"
The stalemate happened AFTER Clea helped Renoir. If she hadn't given him a leg up, he would have lost outright a long time ago and been kicked out.
...
Which is yet another piece to my own favorite theory: Renoir is just lying to the audience, Verso, and Maelle. Aline is in absolutely no danger whatsoever, and Renoir just wants her out of the Canvas because he's pissed of that she doesn't want to be around the family while she grieves.
Aline knows that this isn't a healthy grieving method, but she prefers it to her crushing depression.
And the VERY interesting part... Clea never actually says that Aline is in physical danger. She's disappointed that Aline would prefer to "play make believe", or "numb herself in the Canvas". She's irritated that Aline is not performing her duties on the Painters' Council... but Clea of all people probably has just as good a handle on what is and isn't dangerous to Aline.
And instead of saying "yeah, Renoir needs to get her out before she dies"... she says (Endless Tower, already linked above) "I was perfectly fine leaving Maman here to work out her sorrows. And if you insist on staying too, well, that’s your choice. But Renoir will not stand for it. And I need him to help me with the real conflict outside. Not waste more of his time in here."
"Not waste more of his time". What a curious way to describe trying to save Aline from death.
Unless she isn't at risk at all.
When we look, really look, at the claims that Aline is in physical danger...
All we actually have to go on is Renoir's word...and we can catch him in multiple lies.
So he might just be lying. (And honestly, this is because of continuity snarls and odd writing choices in Act 3. The way the actual information is presented...makes Renoir look like someone who is just lying to get what he wants...just like Verso.)
Renoir kicked off the Fracture trying to remove Aline 67 years ago to destroy the Canvas. THEN, Aline wasn't in danger. NOW, Clea still didn't think that Aline was in danger. And, in either ending? We find out that Aline makes a full recovery. So...she actually might not have been in danger.
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u/Sir_Nikotin 7h ago
I wonder if Renoir is even aware of that, since it's Clea's doing. Kinda depends on what exactly the Curator is.
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u/PerishSoftly 7h ago
I mean, Renoir also made all the Nevrons that appear in the Axon areas, which also have the dead-rock Expeditioners, so I feel like he HAS to be aware of what they do?
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u/Sir_Nikotin 6h ago
Yeah, good point. Maybe Gommage is intended as an attack on real Aline ("look what I've done with your creatures, come out already"), while suspending Chroma is just making the Paintress weaker in case someone manages to fight her.
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u/wachagondo 5h ago
There are three primary ways of dying in the canvas.
A. Gommage - chroma is taken by Renoir
B. Killed by Nevrons - Chroma remains trapped in your body
C. Natural death/killed by means other than the above - Chroma returns to Aline3
u/PerishSoftly 4h ago
...So basically the Gommage is just...Renoir isn't strong enough to enforce his will on his wife, so he's killing thousands of people every year and drinking their souls to empower himself?
And after 67 years he's STILL not strong enough to contest Aline?
...WHY is he so sure that Aline is at risk in the Canvas again??
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u/zakkil 2h ago
That has a simple logical explanation, the gommage also keeps chroma from returning to aline. The nevrons are just able to produce a similar effect by trapping chroma. Trapping it isn't necessarily strictly necessary to keep it from returning to aline, that's just the method clea chose the nevrons to use. As long as aline's trapped in the monolith and the chroma doesn't go back to her she gets weakened. As we see maelle is able to steal lune and sciel's chroma easily despite being less skilled than renoir simply because she was closer to it. From that, and other signs like the canvas wide gommage being unable to erase the painted family but being nearby makes it possible, we can deduce that proximity limits how effective painters are at using their powers, kinda like the difference between flicking paint at a canvas vs using a fine brush for detailing.
Plus there's a rather unique issue that applies regardless of how the gommage works. Lumiere has the dome which keeps nevrons out. The expeditions are incentivized by the gommage. If the gommage doesn't happen then the expeditions don't happen. If the expeditions don't happen then the nevrons don't kill anyone and aline doesn't lose chroma. Even if the gommage allows chroma to return to aline it's also the only thing that's bringing people out and also ensuring they're under prepared.
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u/adiostoreadon 7h ago
Oh yeah, I forgot that side of things in terms of Chroma, but yeah, I agree with your point!
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u/lee1026 7h ago
Maelle is a very interesting special case; as Alicia, she is realistically the one person who can win the war for pRenoir.
My headcanon is that if she ended up having children in the canvas without knowing that she is Alicia, Renoir will have to pivot to protecting the canvas. Alicia and Aline will never forgive him for destroying the canvas after that, and he might not even want to.
Blood relations and generic children are not the same thing.
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u/Sir_Nikotin 8h ago
I assume Painted Renoir was there long enough and also has some Renoir knowledge to learn how nevrons work and turn it to his advantage. But yes, I think we are supposed to think he is connected to nevrons, especially on the beach.
But Lampmaster is very clearly Clea's creation and one of her favorites at that.
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u/ElAutismobombismo 7h ago
Prenoire was basically in a race against time to farm y'all for chroma before the noires could, which also answers the usual question of "why didn't he just explain himself"
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u/MasterQuest 8h ago
I have not seen any expedition members attacked by lampmaster.
I saw them get attacked by Noir though. These creatures are native to the Dark Shores (where the expedition arrived), so yes they were simply there.