Aelwyn Abernant (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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apocalypsehowcomm2021-09-15 12:39 pm
aelwyn_aberration) wrote in apocalypsehowcomm2021-09-15 12:39 pm
Entry tags:
LOG: i've got high hopes, lots of potential... (OTA)
Who: Aelwyn Abernant & You.
When: Early to mid september.
Where: Around town, the ADI office, around the police station.
Summary: A catch-all for all september related activities, including research, paranoia and feeding the Lightless Flame.
Warnings: Paranoia, haunting, arson, misogyny, ableism, desolation feeding, side-effects of long-term sleep deprivation.
I.
[The drowsy effect of the graveyard gets to Aelwyn, probably a bit more than expected considering she doesn’t technically have to sleep. Luckily, however, she has work to keep her busy. Despite her mixed track record as a loose cannon, and despite the judgement from several different parties that would call her dangerous and destructive, she has thrown herself into working as a researcher.
Studying these gods and finding out how others harness them, how to combat them, notable cases that have been connected to these creatures... All of this has become something of an obsession to her. Sometimes she’ll even be drifting off into sleep her head laid across the open pages of a book.
She can be found researching late at night one evening, a cup of coffee cooling beside her, that she can be found pouring over old recorded records and facts that they know about the entities. To her dissatisfaction, it doesn’t seem to be a lot. She’ll sigh, rubbing exhaustion from her eyes.]
I get that some people would just choose to be evil for the sake of it, but they don’t really talk about any positive sides to these. It’s sort of like… do you want to stop having a conscience and act purely on hunger? Yes? Cool, come sell your soul.
You have to wonder if they’re just tied to the negative of this world, right?
II.
[She’s washing her hands in the office bathrooms when it happens. She looks up with a frown and sees an illusion. It startles her, but she knows this trick.
She was a follower of the Nightmare King, afterall. If there’s anything she knows, it’s fear. So when she looks at her reflection and sees a broken version of herself, draped in the layers that the elven prison were oh so kind enough to provide her. And draped around her neck is a shadowy black cat.
She scowls.] Is this supposed to be telling me something? All it’s telling me is that you need to learn some new tricks.
[She walks out of the bathroom, annoyed. A few minutes later can be spotted at the break room staring into space and stirring a cup of coffee for approximately two minutes.
III.
[And then, on a less serious note, she can be found around the apartment building. If you smell smoke coming from her apartment, don’t worry, nothing’s on fire except her attempt at cooking! Aelwyn can be spotted frightfully trying to salvage a smoking pan full of what appears to have been an attempt at frying eggs.
This is embarrassing for her. It looks like since Angelo left, she’s struggling with the whole “living as an independent person.”
She can also be found wandering through the halls and knocking on your apartment door.] Out of coffee. Can I borrow some?
[Whatever this sleeping spell is, it’s hitting her hard.]
IV.
[Her dreams are unpleasant. To the point that she’s been getting increasingly paranoid about the presence of the Nightmare King. It’s impossible. Both Kalina and the Nightmare King might have superficial similarities to this world but they’re from Spire. She’s not even sure if this is even the Great Wheel at all anymore.
She tends to go on long late-night walks, something that seems inadvisable considering the curfew, and the nightmares. She’s not sure what she’s looking for.
That’s a lie. She’s looking for prey. She looks in multiple places, all over Gloucester, but particularly in pretentious bars or 24 hour cafes.
She’s not doing it consciously, but it takes finding it for her to realise. And she does find it one night when she sits at a small, quiet restaurant, one of those Greek poems in her hands. It’s apparently some classic, but Aelwyn’s used to reading ancient spellbooks and scrolls so the outdated language is something her brain is already fine-tuned to be able to intuit on her own.
That’s when shes hears them. Some pricks from one of the nearby prestigious colleges. They’re celebrating, and at the head of all of them is this one kid with sandy blonde hair and a cruel tilt to his smile. Aelwyn knows it well. She’s used to surrounding herself with sharks. She hears them talking.
“Did you see Adeline? She completely flunked the final.”
“Didn’t she run out shaking and crying?”
And then the ringleader’s voice, nasally and thin, speaks up. “Yeah, well, I don’t know what she was expecting. Dumb bitch probably thought she could just bat her eyelids and graduate. My father always says that women have no place in higher education.”
Aelwyn has met these people. The way they tore down Adaine as she outshone them and then spat on her when she had an anxiety attack in the middle of the entrance exam. It took every ounce of restraint not to turn to each and every one of those little snot-nosed upstarts and disintegrate them. If she were a brave person, she’d stand up and punch him, or she’d stand up and call them out, or rub his nose in defeat by humiliating him in front of all his friends.
She’s not a brave person. But she is a cruel one.
The anger oozes out of her, replaced only by something akin to hunger. I’ve found my prey.
When she finds herself outside of his school’s carpark, pulling an old trick she and Penelope used to do whenever they wanted someone out of the way, with a canister of gasoline and an elemental made to look exactly like him. The elemental repeats the few words she heard him say on repeat. “I don’t know what she was expecting.” “Dumb bitch!” “My father always says…”]
Light ‘em up, darling. [And she hands him the canister and watches as he walks right inside the carpark and in plain view of the security cameras and gets to work setting all the cars ablaze, one by one. Say goodbye to your scholarship, buddy. It’s invigorating, and the only way someone might connect it to her is that she’s next to a nearby alley, doubling over and giggling.
This is so much better than any drugs or alcohol she’s ever poisoned herself with. This is what it feels like to be alive. In the fire, she feels her fears, her powerlessness, her self-hatred, all of it melt away. And to take its place, all she feels is the warmth of the fire.
She can be found that night at Bonnies, quietly and peacefully resting in the common room with a large bottle of iced tea and what looks like a full cheesecake on the table in front of her. She’s celebrating.
Alternatively, she can be found at the Laundromat, cleaning soot and the smell of gasoline out of her shirt, notably less giddy and peaceful now, and a whole lot more paranoid about what would happen if she were to be found.]
VI.
[Wildcard something! She's generally just keeping herself busy at day and then either reading or clubbing at night. Contact me on discord or Plurk if you want something more complicated than that.]
When: Early to mid september.
Where: Around town, the ADI office, around the police station.
Summary: A catch-all for all september related activities, including research, paranoia and feeding the Lightless Flame.
Warnings: Paranoia, haunting, arson, misogyny, ableism, desolation feeding, side-effects of long-term sleep deprivation.
I.
[The drowsy effect of the graveyard gets to Aelwyn, probably a bit more than expected considering she doesn’t technically have to sleep. Luckily, however, she has work to keep her busy. Despite her mixed track record as a loose cannon, and despite the judgement from several different parties that would call her dangerous and destructive, she has thrown herself into working as a researcher.
Studying these gods and finding out how others harness them, how to combat them, notable cases that have been connected to these creatures... All of this has become something of an obsession to her. Sometimes she’ll even be drifting off into sleep her head laid across the open pages of a book.
She can be found researching late at night one evening, a cup of coffee cooling beside her, that she can be found pouring over old recorded records and facts that they know about the entities. To her dissatisfaction, it doesn’t seem to be a lot. She’ll sigh, rubbing exhaustion from her eyes.]
I get that some people would just choose to be evil for the sake of it, but they don’t really talk about any positive sides to these. It’s sort of like… do you want to stop having a conscience and act purely on hunger? Yes? Cool, come sell your soul.
You have to wonder if they’re just tied to the negative of this world, right?
II.
[She’s washing her hands in the office bathrooms when it happens. She looks up with a frown and sees an illusion. It startles her, but she knows this trick.
She was a follower of the Nightmare King, afterall. If there’s anything she knows, it’s fear. So when she looks at her reflection and sees a broken version of herself, draped in the layers that the elven prison were oh so kind enough to provide her. And draped around her neck is a shadowy black cat.
She scowls.] Is this supposed to be telling me something? All it’s telling me is that you need to learn some new tricks.
[She walks out of the bathroom, annoyed. A few minutes later can be spotted at the break room staring into space and stirring a cup of coffee for approximately two minutes.
III.
[And then, on a less serious note, she can be found around the apartment building. If you smell smoke coming from her apartment, don’t worry, nothing’s on fire except her attempt at cooking! Aelwyn can be spotted frightfully trying to salvage a smoking pan full of what appears to have been an attempt at frying eggs.
This is embarrassing for her. It looks like since Angelo left, she’s struggling with the whole “living as an independent person.”
She can also be found wandering through the halls and knocking on your apartment door.] Out of coffee. Can I borrow some?
[Whatever this sleeping spell is, it’s hitting her hard.]
IV.
[Her dreams are unpleasant. To the point that she’s been getting increasingly paranoid about the presence of the Nightmare King. It’s impossible. Both Kalina and the Nightmare King might have superficial similarities to this world but they’re from Spire. She’s not even sure if this is even the Great Wheel at all anymore.
She tends to go on long late-night walks, something that seems inadvisable considering the curfew, and the nightmares. She’s not sure what she’s looking for.
That’s a lie. She’s looking for prey. She looks in multiple places, all over Gloucester, but particularly in pretentious bars or 24 hour cafes.
She’s not doing it consciously, but it takes finding it for her to realise. And she does find it one night when she sits at a small, quiet restaurant, one of those Greek poems in her hands. It’s apparently some classic, but Aelwyn’s used to reading ancient spellbooks and scrolls so the outdated language is something her brain is already fine-tuned to be able to intuit on her own.
That’s when shes hears them. Some pricks from one of the nearby prestigious colleges. They’re celebrating, and at the head of all of them is this one kid with sandy blonde hair and a cruel tilt to his smile. Aelwyn knows it well. She’s used to surrounding herself with sharks. She hears them talking.
“Did you see Adeline? She completely flunked the final.”
“Didn’t she run out shaking and crying?”
And then the ringleader’s voice, nasally and thin, speaks up. “Yeah, well, I don’t know what she was expecting. Dumb bitch probably thought she could just bat her eyelids and graduate. My father always says that women have no place in higher education.”
Aelwyn has met these people. The way they tore down Adaine as she outshone them and then spat on her when she had an anxiety attack in the middle of the entrance exam. It took every ounce of restraint not to turn to each and every one of those little snot-nosed upstarts and disintegrate them. If she were a brave person, she’d stand up and punch him, or she’d stand up and call them out, or rub his nose in defeat by humiliating him in front of all his friends.
She’s not a brave person. But she is a cruel one.
The anger oozes out of her, replaced only by something akin to hunger. I’ve found my prey.
When she finds herself outside of his school’s carpark, pulling an old trick she and Penelope used to do whenever they wanted someone out of the way, with a canister of gasoline and an elemental made to look exactly like him. The elemental repeats the few words she heard him say on repeat. “I don’t know what she was expecting.” “Dumb bitch!” “My father always says…”]
Light ‘em up, darling. [And she hands him the canister and watches as he walks right inside the carpark and in plain view of the security cameras and gets to work setting all the cars ablaze, one by one. Say goodbye to your scholarship, buddy. It’s invigorating, and the only way someone might connect it to her is that she’s next to a nearby alley, doubling over and giggling.
This is so much better than any drugs or alcohol she’s ever poisoned herself with. This is what it feels like to be alive. In the fire, she feels her fears, her powerlessness, her self-hatred, all of it melt away. And to take its place, all she feels is the warmth of the fire.
She can be found that night at Bonnies, quietly and peacefully resting in the common room with a large bottle of iced tea and what looks like a full cheesecake on the table in front of her. She’s celebrating.
Alternatively, she can be found at the Laundromat, cleaning soot and the smell of gasoline out of her shirt, notably less giddy and peaceful now, and a whole lot more paranoid about what would happen if she were to be found.]
VI.
[Wildcard something! She's generally just keeping herself busy at day and then either reading or clubbing at night. Contact me on discord or Plurk if you want something more complicated than that.]
I
I think it isn't very different from the people who take power from exploiting people in any other world. Someone who is willing to prolong a war to make billions isn't a better person than someone who is willing to prolong a war to cast magic spells from the fear it creates.
[She looks up, reaching absently to pick up the cup she'd brought from the canteen, and grimacing when she finds it empty.]
But I think if they do have a good side, or if there are some that are less awful than the others, an organization devoted to fighting them would probably not be the place to find that information. They wouldn't want the recruits who have not already been attached to the Dread Powers to decide that maybe aligning with one would not be so bad, and would help in the crusade.
no subject
[She's aware she's discussing this in the middle of their headquarters but she doesn't really mind. It's not like she's particularly outraged by the prospect, if she were in charge she'd be doing the same thing.
There's little they could do that she wouldn't nod and say 'fair enough' considering their goal is to save the world. But if that's not their goal? Then that's a problem.]
Wouldn't surprise me if the higher-ups have intentionally turned a few employees into Avatars they could put on leashes, just to try and get some on their own side.
In war, the better armed side always wins. The moral highground rarely plays into it. [In theory, anyway. Aelwyn's genre savvy enough to know that the plucky heroes have a way of winning anyway.]
no subject
[She rolls one shoulder in a shrug.]
But you're right that morality is rarely a factor. I don't think they would avoid giving people bad ideas because of moral objection. It's just practical. Even if they want an Avatar on a leash, they would not want fifteen junior operatives dabbling in dangerous magic.
no subject
I agree though. It does make me a bit interested in finding whatever information they've got hidden away, though... Still, I suppose it'll be a while before we learn anything like that.
no subject
[Some days, she even sympathizes with them - or at least with the 'burn the world' part.]
I think it will be quite a while. Organizations like ADI are reluctant to give up their secrets.
[And it takes time to learn the intricacies of an installation's security.]
no subject
Sometimes the world needs to be burnt. Or at least sometimes it's a relief to just watch it all go up in flames. On that much, Aelwyn relates.] You'd think they'd want to rule over the intact copy. Or at least try to go for that.
[She sighs.]
Somehow I feel as if their secrets will escape them before long. They always tend to.