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

[frontality]

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. ]

Would you mind a bit of company? I've gotten the impression that you're new as well.

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: ]

Good afternoon. Would you say these ships roughly correspond to your definition of 'modern'?

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... ]

Comments

[aelwyn_aberration]

[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.]

[frontality]

[ 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.

[aelwyn_aberration]

[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.