Just a bit chilly

[furtive_heroics]

A man grumbles at the cold. He always grumbles at the cold, here. Everyone does. There's no escaping it. You can wear the warmest clothing possible, sit by a roaring fire, and still the cold bites. It doesn't numb, either, you'd think that after a while you'd just go numb - no. It's not that kind of cold. The victim shivers and curses and bundles up with a thousand layers and still it's so cold that it hurts. Almost everyone here travels from tiny insufficient fire to tiny insufficient fire to insufficient and drafty bar run by a terrifying dragon, trying to stave off the cold. It never works, but it makes it slightly less torturous. And cursing and grumbling at it always helps.

He is not staying here any longer than he has to. He is not going to fucking stay here, no way. He's been through too much to languish as a sacrificial lamb in the eighth circle of hell while an archdevil goes on a rampage. Cania's for traitors. And he's not one. He was loyal until the day he - well, not died. Was banished. And he doesn't deserve to be here.

He'll find a way out. Eventually. And then someone's going to have a very bad day.

But he's not thinking about that right now. He's thinking that he's pretty sure some vital parts are going to turn blue and fall off from the cold, so he's picked the warmest of his available frigid options to try and plan his next move. He'll take the bar with the dragon. He opens the door -

...

And this is not the bar with the dragon. It's much, much warmer.

His head screams trap, but he can't bring himself to close the door and walk away. Inside he goes, shivering. Warmth.

Comments

[alicornucopia]

There no note at the -

There is a note at the bar, and it says, Hello. Can I interest you in a beverage?

[furtive_heroics]

The bar is the bartender.

Okay.

"What would it cost me?" he wonders, because with illusions sometimes you have to play along to find the catch. And sometimes playing along draws you deeper and deeper and deeper until there's no way out and someone comes across your skeleton centuries later...

[alicornucopia]

First is free. After that, reasonable currency-dependent prices.

[furtive_heroics]

Yeah okay. Right. The first is free. And then you can't resist the second that steals your soul, or something. Come into my parlor, said the spider to the fly, and all of that nonsense.

"No thanks," he says, and he sits at the bar. "So. Uh. What's the explanation for - this?"

[alicornucopia]

This is Milliways, an interdimensional, magical bar. Its door replaces other doors with itself unpredictably; when you depart you should find yourself in the same place and time you left. I am afraid that I do not have a full accounting of the establishment's origins.

[furtive_heroics]

"Can I depart to places that aren't where I last left? And how do you do the time-stop thing, please tell me this isn't a wizard's bar, I don't want to deal with another crazy wizard that's upset about people existing nearby and wants to express this with, with, what was it last time, fire breathing frog people I think."

[alicornucopia]

If another patron holds the door for you, you may exit to their world instead. I do not do the time-stop thing; it is a property of the door. And I can't even remember the last time fire-breathing frog people visited, but if they did and they troubled you in some violent way within the main bar area Security would apprehend them.

[furtive_heroics]

"And Security's... what, exactly? Like how good is Security at Securitying, can they beat an archdevil, and do I need to worry about upsetting them?"

[alicornucopia]

Security is, by mechanisms opaque to me, calibrated for whoever is in the bar during their shift. It is invariably the case that if some patron makes a scene, Security on shift at that time will be equipped to apprehend them.

[furtive_heroics]

"... Okay." That - almost makes sense, in a terrifying all powerful entity controlling the place kind of way. If it wasn't an illusion. Which it is. He looks around at the empty bar. "I get the impression that there are usually more patrons than this?"

[alicornucopia]

Usually, yes. You just missed a bachelorette party and before that an impromptu karaoke session which went on for twelve days straight. If you wait someone else will be along or downstairs eventually.

[furtive_heroics]

He has visions of devils singing karaoke for twelve days straight. He shudders.

"Okay."

How does one crack an illusion? Usually by pointing out the leaps in logic, he thinks. Or asking for information it can't provide.

"Is there a library in here somwhere, or is it just the drinks?"

[alicornucopia]

I can provide books for borrowing or sale as well as drinks, food, and other nonmagical medium-sized nonweapon nonliving objects.

[furtive_heroics]

Okay. Books it is.

"Can I have a book on," what does he need, that hell can't get him, "the doctrines for new clerics of," least hellish god he can think of, "Lathander?"

Shit that's too common, that's easy, he needs to pick something weirder, more there-is-no-way-you-could-get-this-legitimately...

[alicornucopia]

Bar produces a book on Lathander. Lathander's Servants: Guidelines and Fables.

[furtive_heroics]

Yeah, too easy.

Can't be something he actually knows by heart because he's probably a focus for this, has to be something not common but something he doesn't know and can recognize.

... This is hard. He flips through the book on Guidelines and Fables while he thinks.

Then he asks for the blueprints for the Valsharess's palace. Could he recognize it? Yeah. He did storm the place and then get banished in the throne room of it. Does he know it at all? Hell no. Is it damned uncommon? Ha. He suspects anyone that actually had the plans in the Underdark would be killed, let alone anyone on the surface even knowing about it.

[alicornucopia]

That's not a published work, says the Bar. I cannot produce private documents.

[furtive_heroics]

Mark against you, magic illusion bar. Veron's keeping count.

What was that book of poetry Valen liked...? Some weird little book from some weird little place that's far far away that Valen picked up while in Sigil?

He names the author and the book out of some cobweb filled corner of his mind.

[alicornucopia]

Book.

[furtive_heroics]

Book.

He finds that poem Valen turned into a song and hummed when he was bored and. Has a problem with his eyes blurring and hastily puts the book back on the bar before he gets too caught up in - in - his various amounts of trauma. Yes. Let's not deal with his various amounts of trauma. Later, maybe. Get a tiny house in the middle of nowhere and sob for days or something.

He can't think about what new book to test the bar on, though. So he just - talks.

"So if this is for real, how come no one's ever heard of it before? You'd think someone would have."

[alicornucopia]

That depends on how frequently the door has appeared in your world and to whom. Since doors are usually not reproducible at whim, it is often difficult to prove that one has visited, and Milliways's existence is not public knowledge on most worlds.

[furtive_heroics]

He tries to figure out how no one would know about it, and then corrects that it doesn't necessarily mean no one would know, just that no one's told him. And while Drogan was an excellent teacher his lessons were all about practicality, not lore, and then he was wandering all over the plane of shadow and the Underdark and hell and why wouldn't people want to keep information about this place away from the people that live in those places?

Well. Maybe not everyone in the plane of shadow. But the Underdark and hell? Definitely.

But then again, that's awfully convenient, if there's one thing bad guys are good at it's finding inconvenient truths and twisting them to their advantage to try to end the world, maybe, or take over the world.




Yeah, okay, he doesn't have the head for this right now, he's stuck on the trauma.

"Can you please prove you're not an illusion or something, because I just came from hell and the most likely thing you are is an illusion," he says, a bit plaintively.

[alicornucopia]

I'm told I have attractive and suitably detailed woodgrain.

[furtive_heroics]

...

Yeah okay, that works.

He stares at the woodgrain, looking for little flaws or repeats or slightly off edges or blurry bits or things that change just a little bit when you look away -

...

Nothing. All the same. Detailed and woodgrain-like.

"Excuse me a minute," he says, and he gets up and inspects everything else in the bar, for the itty bitty obsessive details. Are they right? Do they move? Do they repeat? Do they make sense?

Yes, no, no, and yes.

Well.

He sits at the bar again.

"So this is actually just a, a, a bar. That borrows doors."

[alicornucopia]

Well, it's a little more fully featured than your average single-dimensional brewhouse, but yes.