Aelwyn Abernant (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
aelwyn_aberration) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
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.]
CW: Discussion of cults
It doesn't mean they are.
[He runs a hand over his face.]
I don't think it's the spider itself that is evil. [See Martin he can learn.] They're just a... a symbol. It's about the fear of manipulation. Of being caught in a trap that you can't perceive.
...alright and sometimes genuine fear of spiders.
If there were older records I'm sure we'd find information about how these entities have changed through the centuries.
no subject
Still, the opposite is also true. I've had an encounter with a cult to a god that we know objectively is a force for good and order, and the cult itself was trying to bring about the end of the world.
There's an evil god of spiders back home that's rather infamous among the elven people. She considers them all her children. Still, I can't say I've ever felt particularly manipulated by a spider.
[Why aren't there older records? Surely these monsters have existed for millenia, you'd think there's be something at least. Humans are weird and bad at taking notes.]
...To clarify I'm absolutely not a religious person. The idea of selling my autonomy to these creatures is repulsive, I'm just wondering about their deeper nature.
no subject
[Love had helped him save Martin. But he remembers Jane and the wasp nest that had sung to her of belonging and love.]
It's not so much the spiders really, as it is the web.
Oh, I'm not religious either. And who says you're selling autonomy? We don't know what they want really. It's all interpretation. Seems more like people being offered something they need, or going in with the best intentions, and then... it's a deal with a lot of undisclosed small print.
no subject
I suppose I can see the connection with the web of a spider and the strings of a puppet. Though, I'd still say the latter is a lot more coherent of a metaphor.
[She leans a bit closer and cocks her head slightly.] You seem pretty knowledgeable on the subject, Sims. Been reading a lot about it?
[She recalls his pre-existing expectations of the circus... She might have to pay a bit closer attention to him and his boyfriend.]
no subject
I suppose. In the end all of these titles are just... attempting to apply a framework to things we can't understand.
[He gives a shrug.]
I've read a lot. I was a researcher at home so all of this is- well, it's what I'm good at.
no subject
[Her tone's friendly but there's an undercurrent of... something between curiosity and suspicion hidden in there.
Things we can't understand? Honey, you underestimate her hubris. There is nothing in this world that they can't understand. It's rule number one of being a wizard, not even a personal philosophy so much as a rule of conduct.]
no subject
no subject
Are they verifiably real over there or more like this one where the general populace lives in complete and utter ignorance?
no subject
Did you know that vibrations... sound waves at certain frequencies just below the range of human hearing can cause feelings of dread and fear, dizziness, blurred vision? A lot of hauntings can be tracked back to that.
no subject
I can invoke dread just by waving a wand at someone. Literally, I just overpower their brain and make them feel overwhelming dread. Fake hauntings happen but there's almost always a supernatural explanation.
no subject
Probably the same principle when you get down to it.
[Make the bones of the ear vibrate in just the wrong way...
And Jon can invoke dread by looking too hard at people if he isn't careful. He hasn't done much research into the mechanisms of that. The Fears don't tend to obey scientific laws.]
Well, where I'm from they're almost entirely fake.
no subject
Are the remaining .01 percent just cases you can confirm or cases you're not sure about?
no subject
no subject
You seemed to walk in there with some prior expectations.
no subject
Yes well, when a sentient ringmaster mannequin wants to skin you alive, you come out a bit less enthralled by the prospect of the circus.
no subject
Yeah, I can imagine that'd be a bit of a turn-off. Who's to say Fenix didn't want to skin us, though? He probably thought about it at least.
no subject