IMAGE 09[spoiler=Image]
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[spoiler=Overview and Setting]Wow. There's a lot to take in here. The scene is what looks to possibly be a parlour, with a well-dressed man in matching suit and pants, wearing what look like loafers of some kind -- he's holding a cigar in one hand, and a brandy glass (or cognac or bourbon glass, depending on how you look at it) with some kind of green liquid in it (though perhaps that's just the light) -- sitting on a leather(?) sofa. On the side table next to him, a green vessel (either a glass bottle or a painted metal flask, potentially) that probably contains more of the alcoholic beverage he's drinking. On the table in front of him, hundreds of gold coins, though I see no markings on them; they could be generic pieces, or a form of unmarked bullion, or maybe the lighting just forbids seeing the markings. Either way, this guy is stacked. Oh, and he seems to either be a cyborg or an artificial human -- note the seams in the skull that indicate he's made of components, and the mechanical eye.
Between the style of the suit, the style of the scrollwork of the wood above him, and the shape of the flask, I'm going to peg this scene as being (though of course anachronism of styles can occur in alternate settings like the Telepath universe) from no earlier than 1870, give or take. Naturally, this scene could be found even in a contemporary setting, because styles don't disappear. Note also the cigar that's incredibly straight -- it looks machine-made. However, I'm more interested in the lower bound on date that this scene can establish, because other pictures (02 and 05, especially) are better at establishing an upper bound. I'm pretty confident that this is a post-Industrial scene, though, of course, we know that in the Telepath universe, the Mechanics and Helenites are busy having a little Industrial Revolution of their own during what for everyone else is arguably late medieval or early Renaissance, depending on whom you ask.[/spoiler]
[spoiler=Drink and Flask]What's he drinking? It's definitely either a brandy or a whiskey. If it's a form of bourbon, then that places us in the second half of the 19th century again, though if it's cognac or another brandy, that doesn't help as much. It looks green, but it may in fact be brown/gold, with just a trick of the light giving the greenish impression. In the former case, perhaps it's a pear brandy (serious possibility) or a kale whiskey (not-so-serious possibility). In the latter, it could be anything. Similarly, the green of the bottle might indicate its contents, or be simply a decorative feature. I'm not even really clear on whether it's a bottle or a flask. It's too circular for most flasks, but too angular for most bottles. As such, I'm leaning towards a metal flask, which have no restrictions on their shapes in the way glass bottles do.[/spoiler]
[spoiler=Cybernetics]His mechanical eye is green, and his face and skull come in several presumably detachable parts. Despite the sheer novelty of this detail, it doesn't really tell us much about the setting, apart from the existence of construction of humanesque machines (if the rest of him is artificial, too) or the reconstruction of lost parts with technology (if he's just cybernetic in some way). I mean, there could be a third option that shows I'm completely wrong, but those are the only two possibilities obvious to me. It fits with the existence of steampunk technologies in the previous games -- I'm very much up for seeing a bit of post-Industrial cyberpunk.[/spoiler]
And the coins just tell us he's loaded. It could be evidence of gambling, since they're stacked like poker chips, in which case this is probably a small haul for him and he's even richer than this; or it could be money put forward to entice, as part of a business proposition (with the person he's currently smiling at?), designed to impress upon this person the means of their potential backer.
Oh, and his thumb is bandaged, it seems. Some ideas as to the significance of this come to mind, but none of them are really worth discussing in the absence of more information. Something something insulin monitoring after major surgery.
[Also, I did a thing where I upscaled the image to a higher resolution so it'd be easier to get a really close look at all the details present in the picture. These things were present before, but it was just hard to zoom in close enough for them, and the pixellation was off-putting; it's nicer to look at closely now.]
