apocalypsehowcomm | [OPEN LOG] who's gonna take you home?

Who: Full Frontal and YOU.
When: Throughout late July
Where: ADI headquarters and ADI housing
Summary: Adjusting to life in ADI is a difficult feat... aka, the log where I put intro-y prompts.
Warnings: None as of yet!

I. HQ Canteen

[ Out of the recent arrivals to ADI's ranks, Frontal likely looks like one of the stranger ones if only for the metal mask with the red eyes that he has yet to take off even once. For a few days now, he's been a fixture in the headquarters. Striking in appearance but quiet, only observing. When he's standing in a corner, unmoving, it might be easy to mistake him for a mannequin.

Today, however, he seems to have made up his mind to stop being an extraordinarily unsettling potted plant and instead actually interact with somebody else. Are you about to settle down with your food? So is Frontal and you'll find him approaching with a polite nod. ]

II. The Docks (after the Kelpie crisis)

[ If you're by the docks sometime during the day, you might find Full Frontal (still masked, still unnaturally still in the way he is standing) staring out at the ships. Being one of the few who did not participate in the hunt for the Kelpies, he's not yet sick of looking at the water at least.

He seems to recognize you as you pass by, having memorized your appearance during his time examining the headquarters. There aren't many others around, so he feels comfortable striking up a conversation: ]

III. ADI Housing - Laundry Room

[ And finally, you can find the masked man facing a rather mundane problem. Though usually his lieutenant Angelo is the one who does the laundry for him and Angelo is still very fortunately by his side... today, Frontal has decided to pull his weight around the household. Different times call for different measures.

The only problem is, he does appear to be reading the entire backs of several different detergent bottles, struggling to decide what would be most appropriate to use. Please help... ]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[Aelwyn was standing at the dock, vacantly staring at the boats with an expression entirely unlike any of her usual snide smirks or sarcastic faux sincerity. Instead, she might as well not be here at all.

It takes her a moment to realise Frontal is even talking to her, takes her longer to remember to respond. The captain's awkward enough, he'll get it.]

Erm... It's... complicated? But I've seen ships like these before, yeah.

[She looks a little less vacant but her eyes don't leave the ships she was watching sail.]

Edited 2021-07-28 13:25 (UTC)

[ He does get it. There is no pressure for Aelwyn to answer fast and even if she hadn't answered at all, he'd have allowed for that and not asked again. It's an idle question, anyway, there is no urgency.

She may not be looking at him, but Frontal is not looking at her either. They can be comfortably empty here, that is okay. ]

They feel outdated to me. I imagine some like them might still be in use, but I've never been at the ocean before so I would not be able to tell.

[ Maybe Aelwyn feels like elaborating on her end in return. ]

...Yeah.

[She's silent for a few moments.]

It's... complicated because the country I was in most recently has very similar technology to this one, but as far as I know everywhere else on my planet is still very behind on most things. No computers, no crysta - phones, no elemental powered cars, that kind of thing. But then also, apparently these people consider creating fully sapient robots or giant fighting mechs to be science fiction?

And their space exploration is limited to the moon. We've had that for... a few thousand years? Elves don't care much for historical dates, but space travel is hardly a new thing, let alone interdimensional travel. This world is... bizarre.

[Apparently, she is actually quite passionate about this subject, passionate enough to break her out of her intentionally making herself guilty.]

Ooh?

[ It's a pretty flat noise, but still unmistakably a sign of interest. Frontal glances over, but it's hard to tell that he does because with the mask on it's only a slight tilt of the head. ]

Quite different from my own world. Space travel has certainly progressed further than the moon and done so for over a hundred years, but it hasn't quite been a century yet since any space colonies were formed.

We do have giant fighting mechs though. They are the most effective form of war weapon.

[ After a beat: ] Interdimensional travel was unheard of to me, before coming here. What does it require?

It's less space colonies here... though I think Fallinel has a few of those, no idea about Highcourt or Solis. But there's thousands of worlds and civilisations out there that we've been in distant occasional communication with for some time, our actual sphere is pretty empty as far as I know? But Spelljammers can go far, and teleportation circles can go farther.

[Oh, now it's time to explain fucking... Sigil and extradimensional telportation magic.] Well... it depends, I guess? Somewhere like this would require a whole lot of steps that I can't begin to figure out, but if you wanted to go to, say, Heaven or Hell, these other entirely different planes of reality, then there's some powerful transmutation magic that can create gateways.

On top of that, gateways are naturally occuring in my world, they just have extremely arbitrary locations and keys to unlock them. Like... [She hums in contemplation, looking at the water and pointing to a rock under the waves.] You see that rock? A gateway could be that rock, so long as I'm singing Don't Stop Me Now as I leap onto it headfirst. Or something more ridiculous like... [She points at a cloud in the sky.] If I were to put myself in a cannon, wrap myself in duck carcasses and fling myself at that cloud, it is entirely possible that that could be the "key" to that "gateway" and I'd end up in the Elemental Plane of Slime. On the other hand, some are rather simple, like a circle of rocks in the ground that you just have to jump in. Complete randomization, you know?

There's a whole city of gateways like that called Sigil, supposedly at the center of all realities and all worlds. I don't know if that includes here but I have no reason to believe it doesn't.

[ Under the mask, Frontal is frowning now. ]

This sounds incredibly inconvenient, I must say.

[ The odds may be slim, but how unfortunate would it be to accidentally fulfil the conditions of a gateway and end up a whole world away from where you were, possibly unable to go back? Get back, hmm... ]

Your explanation gives the impression that these gateways are inherently one-way, is that correct? You could find the correct combination of key and gateway to possibly wind up in my dimension - but my dimension does not have gateways or if it does they are so uncommon that they have never been discovered. Would you be stuck?

[She shakes her head, a little amused. How to explain this...]

It's actually more likely to be the other way round. They're not always one-way, but the key is often different from one direction to the other. Sometimes the Lady of Pain decides to just remove the gateway as soon as you step through though, she's an asshole like that. She's the one who sets them up, and her reach is supposedly uh, limitless. Like... Elder Gods have tried to walk into her city and she's killed them on the spot levels of limitless. She just largely stays in her lane. She's a whole other set of issues though, I can get into that later if you're curious.

[She rests her chin on her hand, still watching the ship and furrowing her brow.]

I personally can probably get back home from your world rather easily, I have the spell for it, and if I can't get home I can get to one of the outer planes and hitch a ride until I've found my way back. But on the other hand, it would be next to impossible for you to get back to yours if you accidentally stepped through a portal. Which has... happened. We get people from planets completely unused to magic, they get lost either in Spire or in one of the other worlds like it and then they never find their way back.

But yes, portals are..... existentially speaking, an entire fucking nightmare both conceptually and in practice. There's horror stories of people stepping into their bedroom and ending up in Sigil, a city full of portals, and they never find their way home again, instead they keep getting more and more lost as they walk through labyrinth after labyrinth of horrors and eventually learn to never trust any gateway again and go completely mad.

[This of course begs the question of why she hasn't done it here if she's so confident it would work out for her, doesn't it.]

[ It sounds like Aelwyn's world is certainly more... changeable than Frontal's own. Maybe more full of potential? No, a being such as that Lady of Pain ruling over the world and its magic for all eternity would simply bring about another kind of status quo, another endless cycle of suffering. Living creatures are the same everywhere.

Frontal is glad to not have to deal with portals anywhere in his own world though, this is a logistic horror show.

More importantly... ]

You can't get back from here, not with whatever energy you might derive from the Entities, then.

[The Lady of Pain is just vibing. Even her city is tumultuous and undergoing constant revolution, she only steps in if someone gets too ridiculous and destructive.

But there are worse gods out there that are absolutely immovable, not to mention that the nature of things is written into the core of the world. Good, Evil, Lawful, Chaotic, all literal spokes on a literal wheel. Reality is horrifying but at least reading about it grants her some kind of power over it.]

Well... [Now she'd have to admit to being scared. Great.] If these entities are being fed with magic, even I'm a little concerned about what they'd do if I tried something like that. Teleport me into the depths of whatever torture prison they've built for me? Maybe.

[She frowns. Ugh. Time to be honest.]

...I'm also concerned that a monster I'm familiar with would follow me. Being stuck here is better than being stuck with her.

[OPEN LOG] who's gonna take you home?

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