The Place Where I Can't Shut Up!

And finally you have it !!! After 90 pages, Gustave and Verso meets again ! That was one hell of a slow burn hihihi (sorry)

What's going to happen next ? 👀 You'll see on the next chapter !

Of course, I could have just kept them in their original outfits, but I wanted them to have real expedition uniforms to highlight their 'innocence', for lack of a better word.

Verso

Verso was the easiest: I just removed some bits that seemed like they might have been added over the years, like his waist-wrap, gauntlet, the wooden rune pieces, and so on. I added the backpack, and if it looks familiar it's because it's from FFXIV. :) I just recolored it a bit.

I'm not sure why I added the backpack, other than I felt like I needed something to show the length of their journey, and because (as I was thinking about the backstory of Expedition Zero a lot while working on this image) I suspected that Verso was taking on more responsibilities as the expedition proceeded. When it started, Clea was still the heir and he was still the spare, and I'm sure he was fully expecting find his indomitable big sister and to step back neatly into her shadow. By the time they were close to the Monolith, however, he would have abandoned that hope, and Renoir would have begun to drag as his injuries and refusal to prioritize himself accumulated. So he took on more and more, in attempt to live up to his father's example and to continue protecting Alicia.

Of course, he doesn't have his white hair or scars yet. He looks quite different without them. Younger and more handsome, a bit smarmy. I can definitely see Verso being a bit of a playboy, in the literary tradition of second sons. Overshadowed by Clea, spending his days sleeping, his nights gambling and dancing, but carrying a secret love for the piano, a secret hero-worship for his big sister, and a secret desire to support her and protect the family. But he was overlooked because he was not needed ... until his life was tragically cut short, and the family was rocked by the size and shape of their unexpected loss.

Alicia

Alicia's uniform was also pretty simple. I toyed with the idea of using some pieces from Sciel and Lune's original uniforms from the early concept art, but although the meshes are still in the game they aren't textured, and that was too much work. So her top half is the standard Female Expeditioner outfit, and her bottom half is from Sciel's uniform.

Her boots are the same ones she wears later in the game. It's not always easy to see, but there are subtle silver and gold runes etched on her usual clothes, similar to the gold marbling that shows up for other members of the Dessendre family. So I got rid of them but kept the boots, because I think they're really cool looking. The other thing I used was the scarf -- it was originally Lucien's scarf, judging by the names of the files (a character who didn't make it to the final draft) so that seemed fitting. I imagine that she would often hide her face behind it, as a kind of precursor to the mask she ends up wearing later.

I decided to use her real colors instead of the grayscale skin/hair that she uses in the game. I also have some headcanons/ideas about how that came about, but maybe I'll save that for later. I'm leaning towards the idea that she was supposed to stay behind in Lumiere, but stowed away with the Expedition and didn't reveal herself until it was too late.

Renoir

Renoir's uniform was the most work. His vest and shirt are Real Renoir's, just recolored. The coat and pants are from an early version of Verso's outfit, which was still in the game files (it seemed fitting). The original coat was clearly stitched together from multiple past coats, so I made them all the same color to try to make it seem newer (obviously they were going for a battered and many-times-repaired look for Verso, but this was at the beginning of their journey). The boots are Verso's. It makes sense that they would have the same boots in their uniforms, right?

I also gave him some pieces from Verso's final outfit, like the fur hood and the sling. I originally toyed with giving him a cape, like the one Verso wears in-game, but Verso's cape is too destroyed (and has the same gold/silver runes as Alicia's outfit) and I couldn't get anything else working in time. In my mind, Verso adopted those pieces of his uniform later, in imitation (conscious or unconscious) of his beloved Papa. With Renoir, I wanted to make him broader and beefier than the others, very much an old veteran and a solid bulwark against any harm (I see Renoir as the tank, Alicia as the healer, and Verso as the DPS).

I also headcanon that Renoir died before they reached the Monolith, leaving Verso and Alicia to carry on alone. He has a strange line in-game about whether Verso knows what it's like to cease to exist, so I think he stayed behind to hold off some enemy (maybe Duelliste?) and laid down his life to give his children the opportunity to flee. I suspect that when Clea was encountered outside the Monolith, she was also helping to hold Aline captive or something similar, so Aline was unaware of what was happening to her Painted Family and unable to protect them the way she does in-game. That would also explain how Painted Clea's fate remained such a mystery. Once Aline was freed and told them the truth (or some version of it) she resurrected Renoir, made the Mirror Family immortal, and froze them in time.

Armbands

The final thing was creating the Expedition Zero armbands, as well as the 100 for the Monolith. The 100 was from a screenshot from Maelle's nightmare, with some tweaking. The armbands were pieced together from the Expedition Zero and Expedition 33 armbands in the game. They're kind of twisted oddly on their arms because I wanted to make sure they were visible in the final render. :D

Sorry, I'm still fixated on the Esquie costume thing.

This is a draw-over of some funny-looking men's health urban workout diagrams and the official art render of Esquie.

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