Alec Troven (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
element_wizard) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
alternativewriting2016-11-28 10:49 pm
element_wizard) wrote in alternativewriting2016-11-28 10:49 pm
Entry tags:
Passages Inn OTA
There are Inns out there that exist between worlds and dimensions. They show up just when you need a place to stay, your car having stalled out a mile away or the unexpected rainstorm suddenly starts dropping torrents of water. Or sometimes you’re wandering around the streets in a city and need a place to stay and you spot the door to this Inn which looks friendly and inviting. Going in, things are just a bit off. The patrons are perhaps not quite human; the man behind the desk smiles a bit oddly. However he tells you that you’re in luck. There’s just one room left and you can have it.
But, when you leave the next morning and turn around to see what it’s called, the inn is gone. When you ask people about it, they look at you funny as if they have no idea what you’re talking about. There was never an inn there, they tell you.
And yet you may still have the key in your pocket, the leftover from dinner, a note from a girl you spoke to, just some little token that says well, maybe you’re not completely crazy.
The Passages Inn is one of those Inns.
Built in the middle of an interdimensional nexus it can reach any time or place or space. You just need to find the door and you can come in. If you’re lucky you can find the door again.
Just remember, first Tuesdays are Viking Night and second Thursdays are Poetry Slam.
The proprietor of the Inn is Alec Troven
element_wizard All questions and concerns may be addressed to him.
Re: Simon Gruber
It's a relatively recent occurrence that Alec's really embraced the whole eldritch horror aspect of his life. Alec has been summoned at some of the most irritating or awkward times. He's lost quite a few sandwiches to those. Food never traverses well during those. The shower is another time. The multiverse has been kind to him and not yanked him out in the middle of sex. Because that would have Consequences. There's salting the earth and then there's dropping a meteor on the earth.
Having been kept in a cage,in various forms, including summoning circles, enough times in his life Alec would only use that as punishment. Not for a toy. The marshmallow fluff jars don't count.
Phoenix the angelic warrior is really something to behold. Really. It's hard not to fall in love seeing it.
"How else are people supposed to know how to summon you? Just be careful, once you get it down, you can't change it," Alec said. Reality has its Rules otherwise eldritch entities would be destroying it willy nilly. So, if he's going to do it, he has to get it right the first time.
It's a pretty good idea to steer Alec away from this topic, otherwise he might start taking the wrong sort of Interest in Gruber.
There's a physical sort of shifting in his body language and air about him. Like he's getting snapped out of his thoughts after zoning out. There's even that befuddled 'where am I, what am I doing?' look on his face just briefly. "What? Oh. Yes. Of course it does."
Really good idea to steer him away from that train of thought.
Re: Simon Gruber
The shift in Alec is noted with interest; and the feral surge in Simon’s core ebbs away quite smoothly, as he takes another sip.
“As you know,” he begins, “Ylaia was Empress at the time of your younger self's pack with Phoenix and Vahlmir. After a few centuries though, she was weary of the responsibility, and as a Beta personality, started to feel that Keldra was beginning to require a firmer hand at the tiller.”
“Of zhe chieftains, Drake was well suited but had his hands full with the hell realms. Mae lacked interest, but Vahlmir was fast becoming the most powerful, so Ylaia asked him, on a couple of different occasions. Vahl wasn't what you'd call enamoured with the idea. He refused, not wishing to lose certain freedoms.”
Vahl has always made it known that he values and needs his freedom. But then he wasn’t so unfeeling as to force such a loss of freedom on any of his Danaë-born siblings. Especially Ylaia, of whom The Nightmare is inordinately fond.
“Eventually, once I had been chieftain for a couple of centuries, she asked... no, begged, actually. Again. This time Vahl thought it over, and with the condition that I was to rule at his side, not as consort, but equal, he accepted. Nobody was more surprised than I, when he came to me and suggested it.”
Simon's eyes glint with humour as he adds, “No. I'm not arrogant enough to label this as Keldra's good fortune, I'm coming to that in a minute... Suffice it to say, Keldra now has two Tzars. The Tzarkaehl and the Tzarkahn, to distinguish us from each other. Myself being the latter.”
Re: Simon Gruber
It's not a headspace Alec lets him drift into often and it's hard to drag himself out of sometimes. Especially when there's no reason to. It's a very seductive place. A rapid change of subject is a good enough way to do it when Phoenix woobles aren't around.
The coin is back as a fidget spinner as he listens to the continuing good fortunes of Phoenix's people. It seems like a ... good...? compromise for them. He's not sure yet. But, it's not his place to say. It's not his world. At least Vahl will be able to rule and have his freedom. So there is that.
"There's going to be a sixteen dollar fee for me to not call you 'Tzarina'," he said before adding a do go on gesture. He's joking about that. It was one of those things that popped into his head and he decided not to filter out.
Re: Simon Gruber
It might mean Phoenix smashing a chair across Simon's face, at some point. But it'll be worth it.
“The great good fortune arrived after that. Vahlmir and Chimaera found a twin timeline, the continuation of a severance of their original timeline... You're aware of the paradox Vahl created, when he took his own life, having his soul transplanted into his future self?”
UnGod. Why can't such simple reminders be a little less involved? Simon frowns slightly, and continues.
“The original timeline continued without Vahl, he was dead in that strand. So, when the Hell War came, and half of Keldra's gods were killed in this strand... the half that were killed here were the ones who survived the other strand. Both of our strands stem from that initial splitting when Vahl killed himself.”
It's damned complicated. An absolute nightmare, but then Vahl was always good at those....
“In the other strand, the surviving gods are as close to the ones we lost as makes no odds...” Simon sighs and pinches the bridge of his nose. “Long story short. The kayori wound up with all their number restored, bar Solus, Versha, and Tai. Even Drake's shredded soulbond with Corvo repaired itself.”
Re: Simon Gruber
Ah the joys of temporal paradoxes. It's not like Alec knows nothing about those sorts of things. Or have created those sorts of things in the past.
So he understands the frustration on Simon's end.
At the mention of the merging of timelines, he holds up a finger and looks like he's intently studying something. Not like the spaced out balancing on the edge of Eldritchy-ness he had a moment ago. This is more like reading a wikipedia article.
He's checking to make sure that everything merged properly. Because you know, you can't leave that sort of things to amateurs. If there's one thing Alec is good at is melding, rewriting and erasing realities. Not to say that Vahl and the others wouldn't have done a good job but... he still needs to make sure. Professional pride. And not wanting people to get hurt, have it unravel at an unfortunate point in the future.
Re: Simon Gruber
Hells, Simon might do it anyway. Without dreaming of blaming Alec. One doesn't start a pranking contest with the personification of Chaos, and ...whatever it is Simon glimpsed, only minutes ago.
He watches Alec's reaction, wondering if he might start drawing lines again.
It took the five chieftains to put things back as they should be. They managed to access the other timeline more easily because Vahlmir's power has grown. He could reach the Dreamtime that was part of Danaë, her own region of the Dream Realm. Through that area and through her, they opened a portal. Once the Returned Ones were safely home, they'd sealed it, and the two timelines diverged again. Permanently
Which was good, because they left there an insane version of Versha and of Tai; who were at war with each other. A war which could only result in the destruction of their planet.
The Kayori had enlisted Danaë's help to close the portal and seal the breach. Danaë, in turn, would welcome Alec's checking over her work. Alec has after all, tidied up the strands before, isolating the threat of Solus Kaelen from this timeline. Danaë had gone in after him, removing her eldest wherever she found him, until she reached the strands where he's a loving father, and a wise leader of the kayori.
Simon waits a bit and then wonders aloud, “You disapprove?”
Re: Simon Gruber
If Simon does decided to start it with Phoenix then good on him. As long as he's willing for the payback.
Merging timelines is always difficult, especially when you're trying to exclude certain people. It helps if the worlds are close together in history. But since they were merging worlds where they were trying to bring in the people who didn't exist in their world, it would be harder.
They know their world, so that also helps. And they knew who they really didn't want to come over.
Still, having an outsider double check your work never helps. They can see something you might not being so close to the piece.
No lines are drawn, but he does reach out rather closely to Simon - since he's the closest thing there from that world/those worlds... and starts making a gesture like he's plucking a string instrument and weaving some things together. There's nothing physically drawn. That's for show and tell. This is working through the actual fabric of reality. Which, by its very nature, can't be seen within reality. Especially not in the Inn.
Simon might hear some notes, a plucking of a harp maybe or a violin trying to create a harmony, with far in the background a deep, but quiet, cacophony of what sounds like an orchestra if every person was playing their own piece of music and they were six bottles past what was unacceptable drunkenness. The sort of drunkenness that makes you wonder how they can even play.
The music of the multiverse.
Which is what Alec hears nearly all the time. It's a wonder he's still functional. It's not a wonder why he's insane.
When he pulls his hands away, the noise fades and he answers the question. "No. I was just doing some fine tuning. Tuck away a few loose ends," he said. "And sorry about the hands in the face. It's easier to do it when there's something from the world there so you don't have to go searching."
Re: Simon Gruber
In watching, Simon can't help but still himself enough to hear. And he does hear. It sounds... alien, and jarring, though softened by layers of reality, he supposes. Being who he is, Simon is constantly trying to figure people out. He knows that's a losing battle with Alec, but it's still an interesting mental exercise.
Alec reaches for him, and Simon is ready to duck, but no... No, it seems to be all right. If a little eccentric.
In wondering about Alec, Simon also wonders if he can tune in and out of the sounds of the cosmic wheels grinding. Phoenix has told him that Alec being aware of all of his alts has driven him slightly potty. With Simon's dread of having his mind invaded, the information had made him shudder. It's his number one fear. And to hear the thoughts of all of his other selves would be a living and eternal hell.
Some of his alts must must be quite psychotic. The ones who have been turned into teapots must be utterly, rabidly, insane.
Mentally, he thanks his Cenn once more, for such impenetrable mental blocks.
“We did all we could not to leave a mess behind. I remember Phoenix telling the chieftains, if we left behind a pile of thrashing wet spaghetti, Alec would slap us all in the face with it.”
Re: Simon Gruber
Sometimes being on the other side is a relief. There's no sound, because sound doesn't exist. Nothing does.
"Do you have any idea how hard it is to unknot a mess someone makes of reality!? It's like discovering someone has let a hundred skeins of yarn around a bunch of kittens and cats and in a room with lots of chair legs. And you can't Gordian Knot it to fix things." He twitched with the frustration of an expert discovering that the projected he'd been working on for three months got taken apart by a bunch of amateurs. Worse than that. They were amateurs who considered themselves experts and would take no criticism from the actual expert. "So, yes. I would have slapped you all. If you were lucky."
His frustration isn't directed a Simon or anyone in particular so much as the phantom amateur. This is something he has run into before. And he hates it.