New Dream Adventures of Raven Knight

I was in my car driving quite fast down one of the streets in my home city, Speedway, and heading for one of the malls. I was heading for Park Mall, though I was looking in the wrong place entirely, but I didn't seem to notice that. Somewhere in the back of my mind I knew this was a dream, but I didn't actively think about it, so I continued going about my business as if I was in waking life. There was someone beside me in the passenger seat, I think it was Tigress, and she was urging me to hurry up before it was too late. I could see tall mountains to the east of Tucson, which aren't there in waking life, the mountains there are rather small. But now they towered over Tucson and disappeared into the clouds, I couldn't even see the tops, and they were covered with thick forests and sheer cliffs. Finally I reached the mall and turned in to the parking lot, the mall was drastically different, too. There were so many trees around, all pine trees, it looked like the forest had moved in to reclaim the area used up by the mall.

Tigress and I got out of the car there, and we went to find what we were looking for, which was a specific pool that was out behind the mall. There was too much forest to park any closer to the pool, but the path leading there was pretty clear and easy to follow. Tigress and I followed the path until we came across something weird, something I haven't seen since I regularly created my own levels for the original Doom… What was referred to as a line definition problem, which was basically just a spot where the pieces of the world didn't meet up properly and the player was able to see out of the level and into infinity. But line def problems in a dream? How could that be? My dream wasn't a poorly constructed video game level!

I peered through a couple of these cracks in reality, and saw nothing on the other side but a blue sky. That was pretty weird, too. I looked through another of them and I saw a plane in the sky, writing letters with its contrail… I watched until the message was formed, then I could hardly believe what it said… It said, "James Still Loves You," with a large heart around it, what the fuck? Why was I seeing a dumb message like that, since I am fully convinced James never did really love me, he stayed with me for so long due to fear of being alone, and I was all he could get at the time… but now this? I was about to get Tigress' attention to point out the message to her when I woke.

I woke up on a bed that wasn't my own, but it was very familiar just the same, and I could hear someone whispering into my ear as I woke up. That someone was behind me on the bed, and he had an arm around me. I remained still and focused on hearing what he was saying, he was saying stuff like, "James loves you," and more shit like, "James will love you forever." I sat up and looked behind me, and it turned out I had been lying on James' bed and sleeping, I looked around the room, it was as cluttered with crap as ever. I got up off the bed, thinking this was really awkward, what would this look like when Tina got home, but then I decided I didn't care what it looked like to Tina.

I was thinking aloud when I asked what I was doing in James' bed, he answered by saying I had been tired so I had been taking a nap. He looked at me strangely and asked if I was ok, he looked genuinely concerned, but I know that if he was really concerned for my wellbeing he wouldn't have lied to me repeatedly and he had been the cause of so many nights when I cried myself to sleep… that's not love. I said I didn't know how I had gotten to that room, but I was leaving, James got up and actually blocked the door, now he was asking who I was. When I was dating James, the entities living in my inner world would sometimes take control of my body, with my permission, to either do something or more easily communicate with James, and apparently he thought that had happened this time. I told him to get out of the way, he said I was not leaving until I put Shanna (my waking life name) back in control. I told him it was me, and I just wanted to leave, but he didn't seem to believe that. I then noticed he was looking behind me, he had a strange look on his face, a rather shocked look. I looked behind me and saw a demon there, rather nasty looking. The demon went right past me, picked James up, and threw him through a portal where the window of the bedroom should have been. He smiled at me and said there were still more levels of dreams to go… then I woke.

So now I was lying on a couch in a strange house, but I thought I knew what was going on. My mother and I had been visiting friends for dinner, but I had suddenly gotten really tired, so I had lied down on the couch and fallen asleep. I was hoping no one had minded. I sat up and looked around, there were cats everywhere, so I went after the cats. I was able to catch a few of them, which I sat there for several minutes per cat petting and hugging that cat before releasing the cat. The house was absolutely huge, and when I lost track of the last cat I was a bit worried that I didn't know how to find my way back to the front door, I had actually gotten lost in a house! Then I woke.

I woke up in a seat that was only semi-comfortable, it was on a bus? No, I thought as I looked around, it was a train of some kind, perhaps a subway, and I wasn't entirely sure of how I had come to be there. My confusion didn't trigger a RC as it should have… I looked around the car I was in and saw it was empty except for me and a boy, who looked to be about 15 years old… he had short black hair, he was wearing a white buttoned shirt with blue jeans, and he was looking at me with the creepiest look I have ever seen from a 15 year old… I thought I should get off the train, so at the next stop I got up and moved towards the door. There was a crowd of people boarding, however, and I wasn't able to get off. All the seats filled up quickly and the door closed, now there were no open seats except for one right next to the creepy guy, and apparently I had to sit. The other passengers were glaring at me and telling me to sit so we could go, so I finally sat beside the kid. He continued to eye me with a creepy look, looked like he might have been in a trance… At this time I woke again, but this time I woke into waking life.

Wow… A dream(Tigress/mall) in a dream(with James) in a dream(house guests) in a dream(strange kid)… some seriously nested dreams going on here…

Note: This is the last week before my final project at school, so my lucid dreams came to a screeching halt as did my recall, these are some of the last dreams I recall before the date of the project presentation.

I was in a car with Tigress, she was driving, and I was staring out the window at the stores we were passing. We turned into a parking lot, I knew it was the parking lot for Toys R Us, but it wasn't like any parking lot I have ever seen, it had hills all over it. The parking places were all on steep hills going either up or down, it was impossible to see the store from where we were looking for parking places. Tigress turned to park in an empty parking place, and stopped just in time to avoid a black SUV who decided to pull all the way through from the next aisle to our row. With a brief expletive, Tigress pulled back into the main aisle and continued looking for a parking place until she finally saw another one. We pulled all the way into the empty parking place, at the same time a yellow pickup pulled into the place across from us, but I noticed there was no room for me to get out. Tigress backed up to straighten out in the parking place, and as soon as she backed up, the yellow pickup truck pulled forward and took our place! What an asshole! There were more expletives from Tigress now as she backed up and looked for another place, finally finding one and managing to park in this one before anyone stole it.

Tigress and I went into the Toys R Us store, I immediately looked around for electronic keyboards, I knew exactly what I was looking for. There was a small kiosk in the back of the store that had a sign announcing they had quality used merchandise for low prices, I thought it was strange that Toys R Us allowed them to set up there, but I figured it didn't really matter if they had what I wanted. I went back towards their booth, and as I was approaching, I saw an awesome looking electronic keyboard on one of their shelves.

I saw a price tag under the keyboard that said $298.95, and I thought that for that kind of keyboard it was an amazingly low price. Of course it was used, but if most of it still worked, I definitely wanted to get that keyboard. I looked over at Tigress and pointed at the keyboard, then I looked back at the keyboard. I must have misread the price… it was $756.95… shit. There was no way I could afford that, no matter how cool the keyboard was. I was going to have to pass it to get to the Toys R Us instrument aisle, and as I got closer I saw I had yet again misread the price… it was only $75.95… WOW! But then I looked, and the keyboard was different, now it was a cheap looking piece of crap that looked like it didn't even have different sound choices… There was no way I was even going to pay $75.95 for that thing which wouldn't do what I needed it to do anyway, so I followed Tigress farther into Toys R Us.

Tigress and I looked around the store a bit longer until we realized it was late and we had to get to class, so we had to leave without finding any more keyboards. We drove to school, it was similar to ITT Tech, but it was in a different place, and I realized Tigress and both had two classes, but only one was together. We went to our separate classes, they were boring, so Tigress and I were chatting on Skype… until suddenly she stopped responding. I wondered if she was mad at me about something… I didn't know what I could have said. There was a short break, during which I could not find Tigress, and then the class we had together. Upon arriving at that class, Tigress sat on the opposite side of the room, which I thought confirmed she was mad since there was an open seat right beside me. We spent the first part of that class reviewing for a final exam, though I didn't pay much attention to that since I was wondering why Tigress might be mad at me.

There was another short break, then back to the same class, now to take the exam. I returned to class, and it looked like Tigress was going to avoid me again, but then she dragged a desk closer to me, pushed another desk out of the way, and sat beside me after all. Apparently she had just preferred the desk she brought for some reason. I asked if she was mad at me, she said no, there was someone she'd had to talk to over there. The instructor passed out the tests and we began. I found I had no pen or pencil, the instructor wouldn't let me ask Tigress for one… I finally found a marker, so I was trying to do the test in marker. Between the fact I didn't study and the marker was rather messy I was making a huge mess of the test answer sheet, and it was getting really frustrating. The instructor said we had ten minutes left, I was on the verge of a panic. I told her I needed more time, I told her I've been having a lot of problems with depression and the test was harder for me because of it, so can't we make an exception? She said no, she didn't care if I was fighting with depression, the test was due in… eight minutes now. I was so angry that my hand clenched hard enough to break the marker and spill ink all over the answer sheet, Tigress was saying something in a soothing tone, apparently trying to calm me down, but I would not be calmed.

"Why do you have to be such a fucking bitch?" I yelled at the instructor, causing the other students to look up in surprise, "Well fuck this test! And fuck this class! And fuck you, you fucking bitch! Fuck you!" The instructor had only enough time to look over at me with a shocked look on her face before I woke.

I spent some time petting each dog, healing the ones who had injuries, but I was sure I would wake up soon. I wasn't ready, so I used Allura's time dilation method, there was still more to do here, but I will continue that in the next dream…

So there I was in an alley of an unknown city, surrounded by an 11 dog pack of pit bulls, each of whom had been traumatized by the world of dog fighting, each of whom I had used telepathy to soothe them and convince them to trust me, each of whom had pent up pain they were struggling to control within them. They were used to that pain and tension, and they had always been forced to release it on each other even if they didn't want to, but maybe this time they could release that pain and rage on an appropriate target, on those who had hurt them in the first place… or someone like the ones who had hurt them since their cruel masters were all dead. I accessed the memories of the people I had consumed to find out that there were two other rival gangs in the near area, both of which were into dog fighting. In the area there were the Devil Dogs (whom I had just consumed), the Hellhounds, and the Mad Dogs. I thought those were ridiculous names considering that they were into dog fighting…

So I headed out onto the streets, looking for one of the other two gangs, I was heading into Mad Dog territory, 11 dogs following after me… when I ran into Tigress. Tigress had her own pack of pit bulls following her. She said she had eliminated one of the gangs, calling themselves the Mad Dogs, and those were their dogs that were following her. I said that just left the Hellhounds, since I had taken care of the Devil Dogs and claimed their dogs. We both had the same idea. Set off a challenge to the Hellhounds to meet somewhere that they could be trapped inside and hunted at leisure. Since I already looked like one of the Devil Dogs, I figured I would drop off the challenge, that would make it look legitimate. So I took the biggest, meanest looking dog with me and went into Hellhound territory. I could sense the feelings in the dog by my side, he didn't want to fight, he would rather be curled up in a comfortable place getting a belly rub…

I didn't get very far into Hellhound territory before I was met by a couple of guys who were trying too hard to be tough, which made them look more retarded than cool. Still trying to look cool, they walked over to me and said I had a lot of balls coming into Hellhound territory… too bad for me that I wouldn't be leaving. I told them I wasn't there to fight, I was there with a challenge, from the Devil Dogs to the Hellhounds, unless they were too cowardly to accept the challenge… They said no way, the Hellhounds aren't afraid of anything. I said if they are as tough as they pretend they are, meet us at the old warehouse by the pier, I got the idea of the warehouse from the memories of one of the Devil Dog members, meet us there in half an hour… it also seemed like that should be enough time for them to gather there. The one guy said that was a challenge I was going to regret. We parted ways, with me heading back to Devil Dog territory. I met up with Tigress and told her what I had set up, the warehouse consisted of a maze of crates and stuff, perfect for hunting the assholes down in.

When Tigress and I got to the warehouse, the Hellhounds were already there. Tigress took all of the dogs around to the back entrance and let them inside, the place truly was a maze. One of the Hellhounds, who appeared to be the leader, asked me where the rest of us were, or if they had all chickened out. I said they were already inside the warehouse, of course. So unless they were all cowards, get inside and let the challenge begin. The leader wanted to know what was going on, I said the challenge was simple. If they aren't afraid, we were waiting for them somewhere in the maze, with only our dogs to fight with, so follow us in if they dared… I went into the warehouse, and after some discussion about being seen as cowards, the Hellhounds followed me in all except for a couple that stood guard at the door.

So now there were a total of 12 gang members with dogs in the maze, as well as the dogs Tigress and I had taken from the other gangs, wandering around in the warehouse. Tigress and I split up, and one by one, we teleported the dogs with the gang members to safety so they wouldn't be in danger of being forced to fight. That led to much confusion among the Hellhounds, wondering if the Devil Dogs might be cheating by taking out their dogs before facing the Hellhounds themselves, so they were getting angrier as time went by and more of them found themselves without dogs. Then came the violence. Tigress and I didn't really have to do much, as I said, the dogs had pent up aggression, rage, and pain that they would be best off releasing at the right targets. So we were on top of the huge crates, mostly keeping an eye on things to be sure the dogs didn't get in danger during the fights. Mostly the dogs were pretty smart, they would gang up on one of the Hellhounds and strike so quickly that the asshole didn't have a chance to draw a gun or other weapon. One case a woman got a gun out and aimed at a dog, so I used TK to take the gun from her before she could shoot the dog. The dog went for the jugular, tearing it open and spraying blood everywhere. The dog, a male, lifted his leg and peed on the corpse. I couldn't stifle a snicker.

I could hear all the screaming around me, screaming from the people, snarling and barking of dogs, but the sound was fading as time went on… there were fewer and fewer screams as there were fewer and fewer remaining Hellhounds. I wondered if Tigress was killing any of them or if she was letting the dogs do it all. The only ones I was thinking about were the ones at the entrance, so I went back to the entrance and pulled an Ezio… I formed a hidden blade on each arm and knifed them both at the same time before they even noticed I was there… a double assassination… sweet. They fell to the ground, and their dogs just sat there looking at me as if they didn't really give a shit, which considering how they'd been treated, they probably didn't. A short bit later Tigress came from the other side of the warehouse, already outside, with a large pack of dogs following her. She said there had been a couple of assholes guarding the back door, probably looking to catch any Devil Dogs trying to escape, but they were dead now. The pack of dogs around us had grown considerably, Tigress said maybe we should take these guys home, I agreed that Angelina could take care of them best. So I opened a portal to my inner world and we sent all of the dogs through to Angelina.

Tigress asked if I wanted to find some more, I said sure, and Nomad had said he was going to join us sometime… she said that was cool, but Nomad could find me when he was ready, she knew where there were more assholes. She teleported both of us to another place, though it didn't look much different than the last one. If you've seen one crappy area of town, you've seen them all… Tigress pointed in one direction and said they were over there, but then she vanished… I felt like I might wake up, so I focused, I used another time dilation… that time I felt really disoriented, I almost lost the dream, but finally it stabilized and I was able to continue…

I was at the mall with Tigress and Silver, we were there just wandering around and looking at the various shops to see if there was anything interesting to be found. We wandered around the mall for a while, taking a look in various stores to include computer and video game stores, an arts and crafts store, and a book store, and then we were walking past a store with musical instruments. I wanted to go in there to look around, so the three of us went inside.

I wandered around the instruments for a bit, noting some nice instruments, flutes, guitars, violins, and some instruments I didn't even vaguely recognize… I finally found the area where they were selling electronic keyboards, and I started browsing them. They had some very nice ones, and I was wondering if there was any way I could afford one so I could make music for games. My reasoning in the dream was that the keyboard I have is not capable of playing chords, but that is not actually true… it plugs directly into a computer and plays chords just fine as long as I have the memory buffer set properly to balance between speed and quality… but that wasn't what I was thinking in the dream as I browsed the keyboards.

While I was browsing the keyboards, Tigress had gone a short distance away with Silver and they were looking at ocarinas and talking about various things, I couldn't hear much of what they were saying. A sales man came over and asked if he could help me, I said I was looking for an electronic keyboard but I am on a tight budget… was there anything he could recommend? He began giving his sales pitch, saying they had three very economical models, which were very nice considering the price. He said they had the features that are only found on the high end models at other stores… He showed me the models, the cheapest one was $298, the next one up was $315, and the highest of their economical models was $355. I haven't priced electronic keyboards recently, so I wasn't even sure if that was a good value or if he was trying to rip me off… for some reason I felt sure he wasn't trying to scam me.

I asked about memory cards for easy transfer of the songs from the keyboard to my computer. He showed me the memory card slot on the middle model, said all three had it, but the memory card slot was a shape and size I have never seen, apparently they took a proprietary type of card that the company no doubt price gouged on… I said no, I didn't want to deal with odd shaped memory cards. He said that is understandable, which is why he actually recommended the high speed USB cable to connect the keyboard to a computer. He took down a $16 cable that had a USB connection on one end and a coaxial connection on the other end, that didn't look like a high speed connection to me… I told him I'd think about the cable, I wouldn't be in that much of a rush to transfer the data from the keyboard to my computer.

I was looking at the three keyboards again, trying to think how long it would get me to pay it off if I was to charge it to my credit card. While thinking about it I started playing on one of them, I was playing a song that sounded vaguely familiar. I was thinking it was a song I had heard in a dream with MoSh, and MoSh would be glad I could remember it well enough to play it. But I would have to get the keyboard… and there was plenty of room on my credit card… This is not safe thinking for me, as I have been known to get in over my head in credit card debt… I got out of that problem and don't want to go back there. But if I could just pay it off within a couple months… I was running numbers through my mind as to how much I could pay each month… well, I would definitely have to stick with the cheapest model.

I started playing the song on the lowest price model, it sounded just as good as on the other two, until I came to the left end of the keyboard… the few keys at the end of the keyboard looked like they had been chewed on?! Those keys didn't work, and I saw there was a large dog lying not far from the keyboard, I was sure that was the dog that had been chewing on the keys. The salesman came back over and asked if I had made a decision, I said I would have to get the cheapest one, but it had been chewed on… he looked at it and laughed. He said not to worry, I wasn't buying the display model, which they let the dog chew on so she wouldn't chew on random customers. I noticed the dog was now chewing on a violin…

I was debating whether or not to get the keyboard, Tigress was there beside me. She asked me if I was sure I could afford to do that, she said it would be cool to get a new one, but it wouldn't be so cool if it got me in trouble financially. For some reason I couldn't help but notice the fact that when my ex boyfriend, James, had been with me and I had wanted to buy something expensive, he had encouraged me to go ahead and do it, but Tigress was cautioning me to be careful about it. I looked at the partially chewed on keyboard, lost in indecision on what to do about it, and that's what I was still doing when I woke.

I opened a portal back to the biodome, to the location beside the koi pond, figuring I would check there again before moving on to my next goal.

I wasn't sure how much of the dream I had left, so I thought I had better extend the dream before it was too late. I focused on using Allura's method of time dilation, condensed the time on the clock in my mind's eye. I didn't notice much of a change, not really anything I could clearly identify, i thought maybe that was because I hadn't been losing the dream when I did it. With that done it was time to figure out what to do next.

I waited for a short time at the koi pond, but no one showed up, and then I thought it was time to continue to my next goal, which was to share an Oblivion dream with Tigress. As we had agreed upon earlier, I opened a portal while focusing on getting to the battle arena in Imperial City, Tamriel. A portal opened and I went through it, wondering If Tigress would be waiting for me on the other side or if I might just go ahead and have an Oblivion dream on my own if she wasn't. As I emerged into Imperial City I saw that I needn't have worried about it. I spotted Tigress right away… picking the lock on the chest containing the money from people's wagers? What did she want with money? I also spotted a guard heading our direction, he would surely see her. While I had no doubt that she could handle anything the guards could bring, I didn't really want to waste the whole dream fighting off stupid Imperial guards instead of looking for an Oblivion gate to close. So I went over to the guard and asked him a typical Oblivion type question, what was going on lately. He asked if I had been living under a rock, everyone was worried about the Oblivion gate that had opened up right in front of the city. He said it was just a matter of time before the daedra came through and attacked… Tigress came over to us and said she had heard about the Oblivion gate, and we were going to close it. The guard laughed and said if it was that easy the guard would have already done it.

So Tigress and I ignored the guard laughing and headed towards the front of the city, towards the main entrance. There were guards there, and they didn't want to let us leave, they said it wasn't safe out there due to the Oblivion gate being so close to the city, so no one was being allowed to enter or leave. Tigress and I just headed for another of the exits, that one was guarded, too, it looked like they had sealed the entire city off. This wasn't a problem, Tigress and I just climbed up the side of one of the buildings, we didn't really want to start flying from the ground where it might be noticed, and then we flew over the walls to the city and landed outside.

There was no wondering where the Oblivion gate was, the eerie red light and the wilted and dying foliage clearly indicated where the gate could be found. We followed the light from that, I saw some daedra out in the distance, the Flame Atronach were clearly seen against the darker landscape, but they didn't seem to have seen us. Before long Tigress and I found ourselves at the base of a massive Oblivion gate. There were several scamps milling around, they didn't even know what had hit them before they were dead. I had my Witchblade sword. Without any hesitation we went right into the Oblivion gate, leaving Tamriel behind.

On the other side of the gate was the planes of Oblivion, which look just like I remember seeing them in the video games, although the layout of things was a bit different. There were three primary towers that were situated around the Oblivion gate, and there was a beam of energy coming from the top of each tower and feeding into the Oblivion gate. I wondered if all of those had to be stopped in order to close the gate, or would getting rid of one of them set the gate off balance and force it to close? There wasn't a lot of time to consider that, Tigress and I were attacked by more daedra, this time it was a group of Flame Atronach around us, throwing fireballs at us, Tigress and I quickly dispatched the enemies with our swords, then we headed for the nearest tower.

The interior of the tower also looked familiar, there was a winding stairway going up the tower, then there was a pillar in the middle where I could see numerous daedra stationed there to watch the stairway up. Those were sitting ducks for Tigress, she picked them off one by one with her arrows perfectly hitting their mark, piercing the necks of the daedra for the instant kill. I went ahead of Tigress, so the daedra were noticing me first, and I was fighting the ones that were actually on the stairway, I found a key on one of them that I knew we would eventually need. We made our way to the top of the tower where we found a cage with a man in it, the man was very badly burned, and when I looked closer I saw he was already dead. There was a hole in the ceiliing with a glowing light visible through it. There were also doors at both sides of the room, I checked the one closest to us and found it was locked. Sure enough, the key I had gotten off of the daedra fit the lock and the door swung open… to reveal an ambush of daedra summoners, and they summoned an ambush of scamps, and soon we found we were completely surrounded. Time to fight, run my sword through a scamp, behead a daedra summoner, slice a daedra summoner open from his left shoulder to his right hip, hit another daedra summoner with a bolt of lightning as I ran my sword through another scamp… Tigress and I fought our way through the room, killing all of the daedra in our path.

Tigress and I exited through the far side and went up another ramp to the top chamber of the tower. Reaching the top of the tower proved to be actually rather anti-climatic, there weren't even more of the usual daedra enemies let alone something that would qualify as a boss. The sigil stone was there, however, and there was a beam of energy shooting out of one of the windows towards the Oblivion gate down below. Tigress reached over and grasped the sigil stone, pulling it out of its place. The beam of energy to the Oblivion gate ceased, but the other two remained, seeming to be unaffected. I was looking at the energy from the Oblivion gate when it started going unstable, but before I could say anything about it Tigress had already spoken, saying the gate was going to explode if the other beams weren't stopped. That could either successfully close the gate or it might blast a permanent hole in the dimensional fabric and give the daedra a permanent access to Tamriel. So to make sure it didn't lead to that, I flew towards one of the other towers while Tigress flew towards the other one.

I reached the tower rather quickly by flying, entering through the same opening the energy beam was coming out of. The daedra must have seen me flying towards the tower, as there were a bunch of them in the top chamber waiting for me. I didn't want to take the time for all of them, however, the gate was getting more unstable all the time, so I used Enter Sandman in the room, the spiral pulled all of the daedra into it and then exploded, destroying the daedra in a large blast of dark and light flames. I hurried in and grabbed the sigil stone, causing the stream of energy from it to cease. I looked out of the tower at the Oblivion gate just in time to see the other beam also cease, and now the gate collapsed. I wondered if this gate wasn't so nice as to deposit people from Tamriel back in Tamriel, not that it would be a problem for Tigress and me, but it could be annoying for anyone trying to fight the daedra… A wave of energy came from the gate and washed over everything, a blinding light, and then Tigress and I were both in mid air… but for some reason we lowered to the ground slowly and landed gently on the ground. Nothing was left of the Oblivion gate but a hole in the ground, and I could see a lot of amazed Imperial guards standing around staring at us. I was going to say something to Tigress, but she disappeared. My time to go, too. I opened a portal back to the koi pond, not sure how much longer the dream would last, I just didn't want to try to explain things to the guards. I got back in time to take one more look to see if anyone was waiting for me at the koi pond before I woke.

Note: My first goal for the night was to go to MoSh's inner world to see if there was anything wrong in there due to some strange sexually explicit dreams he had the night before, consisting of transvestites and a series of lesbian orgies… After that, I just saw the movie Shrek Forever After and I saw the main characters riding on the back of a large red dragon, that made me want to ride a dragon, so that was the plan for after that. With these things in mind, I fell asleep, but I was not successful in my WILD. These dreams are kind of chained together as best as I could since this is also the night my waterbed sprung a slow leak, so I woke up several times to find I was wet… I had to take care of that situation before I could get back to sleep.

I woke up in bed… but I wasn't in bed, I was in water about half a foot deep, which was not a good sign since I sleep on a waterbed. I sat up, I was soaked, my waterbed mattress was flat beneath me, and there was about half a foot of water contained within the plastic liner around the bed frame. What had once been my bed was now a small wading pool in my bedroom… Damn, I hadn't figured I would get this wet! It was just a slow leak! Cursing my luck, I climbed out of the bed (pool) and I was dripping all over the floor, I was heading to my bathroom to get a towel and dry myself off with. I came out of my bedroom and I was not in my house… I was in a college dormitory, which is also odd since I have never lived in a college dormitory in my life, and there were people all standing around talking, no one seeming to notice the fact I was dripping all over the place. This didn't strike me as odd enough to do a RC, though. I was thinking I need to get in the habit of doing RC's more often, so I thought entering the hall was a good place so whenever I start a dream in my room I will do an RC when I leave. I did a nose pinch RC and found I was dreaming.

Now that I was lucid I had to remember what my goals for the night were so I could get going on them. As I was thinking about that, at first the goals were eluding me, but I finally got onto the right train of thought and remembered what I wanted to do. Ride a dragon! But that wasn't the first goal, the first goal was to investigate MoSh's inner world for any sign of problems. So I opened a portal to MoSh's inner world and went through it.

I stepped out of the portal onto the green grass in front of MoSh's house, which looked completely normal as far as I could see. I went to the front door and knocked, Asuka opened the door and had a plate of cookies in her hands, she offered me cookies as I entered the house looking for MoSh. I took two cookies and looked around the house until I finally found MoSh in one of the bedrooms working on a computer there. I focused on scanning the area to see if there was any sign of unstable dark energy, but the only source of dark energy I could find was me, and that dark energy was stable and contained. I checked closer, looking for any sign of various types of negative energies, as well as for light energy that was not stable, since that can be as bad as unstable dark energy. Nothing. Everything around MoSh's house looked completely normal, and when I expanded my scan to reach the outer areas of his inner world, everything looked normal there, too. I got MoSh's attention and told him I didn't see anything wrong in his inner world, he said to check again, I said I already had checked several times. He pointed out that there had been transvestites and lesbians having orgies in his house the night before, I told him I didn't know what to tell him about that, but there was nothing going on right now. I told him if there was anything else going on, I would be back to check again, but for now, how about we go get on a some dragons and fly?

MoSh was agreeable to that, and he went to get the kids. There were four kids there, I suck at telling age, but there was a girl who appeared around 14, a girl looking about 7, a boy that looked to be about 5, and one more boy who appeared to be the youngest looked to be about 3. Asuka picked the youngest up, and all of them followed me through a portal to my inner world, to a wide meadow near the edge of a cliff where there was plenty of room for dragons to take off. Right now, however, the field was full of playful pokémon, which clearly took everyone by surprise since they had been expecting dragons. I had been planning on bringing someone… Pablo! I opened a portal to Pablo's inner world and went through it, only to find Pablo climbing a tree in his inner world, I called to him and asked if he wouldn't rather be riding a dragon than climbing a tree… he jumped down from a very high branch, landed squarely on his feet, and then came through the portal. Now I saw Nomad was there, he was looking around for dragons, too. He said if we were short on dragons, he could transform into a dragon and carry someone on his back. I motioned to all of the pokémon and said we were by no means short on dragons. Additionally, there were a few dragons showing up now, those dragons included Vegeta's huge dragon, looks extremely mean and I wouldn't recommend anyone other than Vegeta try to ride him, and my own dragon, who looks like a bigger and meaner charizard with golden scales instead of red and orange, though he is nowhere near the size of Vegeta's dragon.

Vegeta came over closer to MoSh, his gigantic dragon right there with him, somehow in spite of the dragon's size he was moving very silently, so when MoSh turned around to see Vegeta the dragon was practically on top of him which clearly alarmed MoSh. MoSh stared at the dragon briefly before turning and heading quickly over closer to my golden charizard, saying he would stick with that size.

Vegeta looked at MoSh, then at the huge dragon behind him, and said the only reason MoSh would want to ride that dragon would be if MoSh was suicidal. MoSh said he didn't want to be anywhere near Vegeta's dragon. Vegeta told him to cut that out, the dragon is a sweetie as long as you don't try to ride 'im. Vegeta told MoSh to feed his dragon something and they could be best friends. MoSh fed something to the dragon, who seemed quite pleased with that, and nuzzled MoSh looking for more. Of course when that big a dragon nuzzles you, it is likely that you fall over… which MoSh did.

Now it was time to take off. All over the place, pokémon began changing into dragons, starting with my pikachu, my first pikachu, who turned into a huge blue dragon surrounded by electric sparks. A vulpix transformed into a huge black dragon for Pablo, I saw Tigress getting onto my flaming golden dragon, MoSh, the kids, and Asuka were on a rather long white dragon, I didn't even see what pokémon transformed to form that one… Soon we were all on dragons, there were more people there than I remembered having… I was thinking that there were an awful lot of people I don't know inside my inner world, making me a bit uncomfortable, but then again, Vegeta was also with us.

We rode the dragons on a bit of a tour of the wild areas of my inner world, the castle that was designed after the Castle of Lions off of Voltron with the unused mech lion replicas perched on their towers, I looked at the black lion and remembered my ex boyfriend James used to pilot that one… no more, I didn't really want to think about my ex… We flew the dragons low over an ocean, and then through a portal out of my inner world. I wasn't sure where we were going, I didn't really care where we were going right now. I was just enjoying the sensation of flight. Somewhere in this area my memory of the dream fades, though I'm not sure if I woke up or if I stopped remembering.

Note: I actually did wake several times in this dream, then I fell back asleep and focused and got back into it, and I was able to do it! This was actually a quite successful chain of dreams, now if I could just do this kind of chaining when I'm not being awakened by a wet bed!

Note: Having not have accomplished any of my goals from last night, those goals just carried over to tonight aside from the fact Nomad warned of a Templar attack last night and there was no such warning about tonight. Unfortunately, I was not successful in entering a WILD…

I was in a city, moving around amongst some buildings. It seemed I was in a neighborhood at the edge of a downtown area as there were both single family homes and a few tall buildings around. I was there with Tigress and MoSh, and we all had large caliber weapons with us. Since I'm not familiar with fire arms I'm not sure exactly what kind of gun I had, but I know there were shotgun shells involved… and another kind of bullet… my knowledge of guns stops with pointing them and pulling the trigger. >.< The reason for the weapons was quickly revealed as zombies came from around a corner and at us. As I said above, I know how to point a gun and shoot. So I did that and fired at the approaching zombies, aiming for the heads. The heads literally exploded as the bullets hit their mark. I found I was actually a better shot than I had realized, so far I hadn't missed a single shot.

Tigress, MoSh, and I entered a tall building where we knew there were people trapped on an upper level. We had to fight our way through the building and up the stairwell to the tenth floor where the people were trapped. They had become trapped as they had been trying to escape, but the stairwell was completely blocked by zombies and they hadn't had enough ammunition to even try to get through. The three of us shot our way through the zombies until we got to the tenth floor door, then we went onto the floor. Someone pointed a gun at us, but then showed their obvious relief when they saw we weren't zombies. We told them that the path to the bottom floor was clear of zombies now so they could get out of the building and to the shelter. They quickly left. I wondered if there might be anyone else on the level, and apparently Tigress and MoSh had the same idea because they continued searching. I went with her to cover them and to help them look.

Upon opening an office door I saw a man in the corner, crouched there with a clearly wounded leg, he raised his gun reflexively and fired. He saw we weren't zombies at the last minute and pulled the gun to the side, which caused him to shoot a golden retriever lying at his feet. He shot the dog three times before he stopped shooting, then yelled in horror and grief, and started sobbing over the dog. The dog was just injured, not dead, so I went over and healed the dog right away.

The man had been bitten by zombies several times, and it was surely only a matter of time before he turned to a zombie. He said he knew that would happen and he wanted to die before he turned. I put a bullet in his brain before we took the dog and continued searching. There were only a couple zombies left wandering around on this level, and we quickly dispatched them. The dog searched out several more survivors in the building before we heard a loud roaring noise from up above. That sounded like our cue to get out of there. The rest of us went back down the stairwell and into the main lobby area. The survivors ran out the door and disappeared into the night, no doubt heading for the shelter, as the crashing sounds from above got louder and closer. The dog had its hackles raised and was snarling menacingly at the elevator door.

With a loud crash and a blast of dust and debris a huge creature hit the bottom of the elevator shaft and crawled out… or at least part of it crawled out… this thing was like nothing I have ever seen before, it is really hard to even try to describe it. But as close as I can come, the thing coming out of the elevator shaft was like a long tentacle with a mouth in the end, that mouth was filled with razor sharp teeth, and it was pretty clear that the main mass of the monster was still partially up the elevator shaft… Well, no matter what the whole thing looked like, Tigress, MoSh and I opened all up on the thing with all the firepower we had, I found my gun also fired grenades as I shot the grenades up towards the damaged wall where the main mass of the creature would be. There were many explosions, I wasn't sure who had shot what, and finally there was a huge and messy explosion within the elevator shaft, the thing let out an unearthly screech of pain or anger or both… and then the entire building started to shake. Tigress, MoSh, and I barely got out of the building before it collapsed in a massive cloud of dust and debris.

Now the three of us split up to search through the neighborhood for any other survivors. We stayed together for a while because the dog was leading us to everyone who needed help. As we found a few more dogs, we split up to search faster By the time we reached the other end of the neighborhood I alone had rescued 12 people, 15 cats, and 10 dogs. Somehow the cats and dogs knew to stay with me, and the three of us came back to the shelter being followed by all of these people and animals. The golden retriever with us seemed quite pleased with itself at having led us to all of those people and animals. I was petting some of the cats when I noticed everything seemed unstable, I was beginning to consider doing a reality check but I woke up before I could.

I was in a strange place. I looked around to see where I was. I was in a strange city. I looked around and I saw that I was in a space between two buildings. I looked out on the street and saw this city appeared to be populated by orcs. They were moving quickly from building to building, talking to each other only briefly before moving on. I saw that there seemed to be a lot of orcs near one building. I wondered what was happening over there. I wondered how the orcs would react if a human was suddenly found among them. I hesitated for a few minutes due to that, but for some reason I felt ok about going out onto the street, into the open. I felt ok about it, as if doing that would not put me in any danger. I stepped out onto the street and headed for the building where all of the activity seemed to be taking place.

As I walked across the street I noticed that the orcs were noticing my presence. They were turning to look, appearing very curious about me. None of them seemed hostile, though. They just seemed curious. I reached the building where all the activity was with no interference. When I got there I saw that the orcs were rushing in and out of the building. None of them were paying much attention to me. I looked into the building. There were orcs in beds everywhere. They looked to be in various stages of injury, They were all being tended to by doctors or healers… When I got in there, one of the orcs came over and quickly ushered me outside. She followed me off to the side of the door. She said the hospital was very busy, so unless I needed medical help, could provide aid, or needed aid, please stay out of the way. I asked what was going on. She smiled, then she turned and walked away.

I still wanted to know what was going on. I wondered who could tell me something about what was happening. While I didn't feel any hostility, I did feel an intense sense of urgency. I walked down the street towards someone who looked like they were in charge. Just as I was getting close to him, however, another orc came running up. This one was female. She said there was another attack force approaching. The male orc looked very disturbed by that. He said they didn't have any more warriors to send. He said most of them were too badly injured from the last attack… and those who weren't injured were completely exhausted. There was no way they could handle another attack… This sounded like a possible DDO quest. I would have to find out more. At thinking of it as a DDO quest, I stopped for a moment… DDO? Tigress does RC's when playing DDO… so I would do that, too. I did a RC and found out I was dreaming. But my goal was still the same. Find out what was going on.

I asked who was attacking. The woman looked at me strangely. She said the trolls, of course… I asked what she meant. She asked if I had just dropped from the sky… the troll army, they were attacking again. She said I had gotten myself into the wrong place… there was no way their defenses could handle another attack. I asked how many trolls. She said there appeared to be well over a thousand trolls… their biggest assault yet… And then there were the traitors who had fled the city to join with the enemy. She said hope was lost. I said no, it wasn't. I told her I would just have to intercept them. She said there was no way I could do that alone. I told her not to worry, there was an army ready to move in. An army? She asked an army of how many? I thought for a bit… I said definitely 256, I was expecting it would be 512, maybe as many as 1024. She asked if I didn't know how large my own army was. I said it depended on how many they had managed to gather up. She said maybe they should save themselves and run. She said full grown orcs couldn't match strength with a troll… and no offense, but an orc is much stronger than a human.

The orc that looked like he was in charge interrupted the woman. He said if the humans wanted to go out and get themselves killed in battle, then that is to be commended. It is much better to be killed in battle than to live in fear. The woman said that it is also foolish to go into a battle when you know you can't win. The leader said it was, in the end, up to the humans what they wanted to do. He said if my army of humans could hold the attacking hoards off just long enough for them to get the injured, the very young, and the very old to safety they would be extremely grateful and would make sure my army and I were well rewarded. He added that if we were in need of supplies… armor, weapons, rations, their resources would be at our disposal. It is well known that orc armor and weapons are among the best, although humans probably would have little use for orc rations… except for the mead… I told him not to worry, we were already well equipped. I asked where the trolls approached from. He said the south. I said perfect, we would have no problems intercepting them. With that I headed for the gate to the city.

I took flight, much to the surprise of the orcs around me, and flew over the gate and headed south. There were, indeed, hoards of trolls. I saw some orcs mixed in with them. I landed in front of the hoard. I landed near the one who appeared to be the general. I walked right over to him. I asked him if there was any possibility of them turning around and going home so things wouldn't have to get ugly. He and several others around him laughed. He said this stupid human amused him… so if I wanted to live, he was going to give me to the count of 10 to get out of his sight.

"All the way to 10?" I asked mockingly, "I'm impressed. I didn't realize trolls could count that high." The general glared at me and said I was no longer amusing him. I told him if he turned his forces around and left immediately, no one would get hurt. He said I would be wishing no one had been hurt. He took out his sword and tried to run me through. His sword hit my Witchblade armor, which formed instantly. The troll was quite surprised by that. I said if he was surprised by that, wait until he got a load of what was coming up next. I was about to focus on my multiplication spell when I saw there was another human there with me. It was Tigress. She asked what was going on. I motioned towards the army of trolls and orcs. I said if she wanted to help, just go ahead and kill something. In fact, kill lots of somethings. The trolls laughed some more. I guess the idea of Tigress killing lots of them was very amusing to them. Tigress multiplied. There was a paladin version of herself in shining armor with a large glowing sword… a rogue version of herself which was a halfling and had a dagger dripping with poison… and a fighter version of herself which was a warforged and was carrying two nasty looking swords… and that was in addition to her normal self.

So now I focused on the song Divide by Disturbed. 2… 4… 8… 16… 32… 64… 128… 256… That's where I normally stop. I saw that all of Tigress had dispersed into the enemy army, killing as she went through them. I thought I saw the pally split into two pallies, so Tigress wasn't done dividing, either. So even as the trolls attacked all of my clones, I continued multiplying… I wanted to push the limit. Another split… 512 of me. Every part of my mind seemed to be consumed by a different part of the fight. Cutting down a troll here, running my Witchblade sword through an orc there… There were still so many more trolls than there were of us… Should I keep dividing? I wasn't sure what would happen… I decided I had better not chance it until I knew for sure 512 would work well… So the fight continued. Having 512 of me was rather disorienting, but since all of us were focused on the same task, that made it easier. All of us were utilizing our Witchblade swords to cut down trolls and orcs wherever we found them.

Then I noticed something… one of the orcs had put his sword through one of my clones! His sword had managed to penetrate her Witchblade… I wondered how that was possible. Had dividing the Witchblade that many times made it less effective? My Witchblade spoke to me in my mind, saying the others were not as strong due to the dividing… but the original me still had a fully effective Witchblade. I felt the energy from the clone return to me. Ok… 511 of me… The fight was intense, and disorienting as I tried to direct each of my clones at the same time. A couple more clones went down, but that was nowhere near the number of trolls to fall. Soon the field was littered with dead trolls and also some fallen orc traitors. Only Tigress and I were left… there were 64 Tigresses and 486 of me.

Tigress looked around at all of the Ravens standing around her. She asked if I could have made any more of me. I said yeah, I thought I could have, but I stayed with 512 for now. The next step up from 256. Both of us absorbed our clones back into ourselves and surveyed the area. Nothing but death. Tigress started an intense fire. She said many of the bodies would burn, and create fertilizer for the earth… and the ones that don't burn will feed the scavengers of the wilderness. I looked at the burning carcasses and thought that was the first time those trolls and orcs would ever be useful to anyone. I was looking at the flames when I woke.

Note: This is a dream that happened back on the 15th of the month, and I would swear I had journaled and posted this dream, but I couldn't find any trace of it. No copy on Dreamviews, no copy on Mortal Mist, no copy on my personal laptop… somehow it disappeared completely. There were quite a few similarities with Nomad's version of the dream, as well as some differences, so here is my version of the dream where Nomad, me, and several other dreamers went to help a friend of his with a dream demon.

I was in the biodome on the moon, and I was lucid. I was sitting there watching the koi. The pretty fish were swimming around in the pool. The sunlight was reflecting off of their shiny scales and off of the surface of the water. It was really very pretty. I was sitting there watching the fish when someone approached behind me. I turned to look and saw it was Nomad. I remembered that he had a friend with a dream demon giving her nightmares, an older woman. I asked if he was there so we could go help his friend… he said yes. I thought for a bit… I was thinking someone else had said they wanted to come help with this… but who? I was lucid, and yet my mind wasn't fully clear. But of course my mind isn't completely clear IWL, so why would I expect 100% clarity in my dreams? Nomad opened a portal and both of us went through…

On the other side we were in someone's bedroom. There was a woman sleeping in the bed with a… um… an ugly thing sitting on top of her, looked like it was holding her down to the bed. But she wasn't reacting to the thing's presence… the thing was the size of a large human, looked demonic, and appeared to be absorbing some kind of energy from the woman. I didn't know what the thing was doing to her, but I could easily tell it wasn't good… Nomad transformed into a big cat… a solid black jaguar…

In that form he attacked the dream demon on top of the woman, hitting it across the face with one enormous paw, claws fully extended. The force of the blow knocked the demon off of the woman and onto the ground, practically turning the thing's head around on its neck… The thing got back up and used its hands to forcibly turned its head back toward the front with a rather sickening cracking noise. It started laughing at Nomad. It didn't seem to be paying any attention to me at all… I wasn't going to have that. I transformed into a big cat, a black panther… which looked mostly like Nomad except the spots were vaguely visible on his coat where as mine was a black as midnight…

I pounced on the back of the demon, drawing the demon's dark energy out of it and into me. Nomad had changed into an Assassin dressed in solid black robes, he drove his hidden blade right into the demon's head. The demon collapsed, seemed to be calling out to someone, but then it was completely out of energy and faded to nothing.

I was about to ask Nomad what the demon had been calling to when there was a portal opening… and a bunch of Templars coming through? On brooms like a Halloween witch would use? I was briefly doing a double take at that… A group of Templars coming to aid a demon and pretending to be Halloween witches at the same time… um… One of them was talking to Nomad, seemed to be annoying him. I went to another one and asked what the fuck he was doing. He said he was working for witches or something. I then asked the first question I had thought upon seeing them riding in like that…

"So tell me…" I said, "Did you really learn everything you know about witches from Halloween ghost stories and the Harry Potter series? Do you really think witches ride brooms in the night? If so, where's your black cat? Or was your goal just to come here and look completely retarded? Which you've accomplished very well… And why the fuck are you working with…"

"FUCK YOU!!!" I was interrupted by one of the loudest expletives I have ever heard… I looked over and saw Nomad chuckling next to a Templar who was poking at his ear as if he could not hear a thing, which after that expletive, he probably couldn't… Nomad yelled something completely incomprehensible at the other Templars… no doubt completing the process of making the one right next to him totally deaf… Nomad turned back into a black cat and attacked some of the Templars near him…

"Oh… There's your black cat!" I said, "And he's pissed…" Nomad tore a few Templars apart with his claws and teeth, I opened a vortex portal that pulled them all in and deposited them… I wasn't sure what was a good place… somewhere far away… on the moon Titan.

I don't know why I thought of Titan, but that was where I sent them… After the Templars were gone, Nomad and I did healing spells on Alexis. She seemed to wake up a bit, and Nomad was talking to her. I'm not sure what he was saying to her, but she seemed to be getting agitated by it, but soon calmed back down and went back to sleep. It looked like she would be ok. Nomad started talking about getting pulled into a dream… I told him he was already in a dream. He said he meant into another dream. I wasn't really sure what he was talking about… was he about to wake up or just switch dreamscapes? I told him to focus on something and stabilize the dream… but it was no good… Nomad disappeared… and then I woke.

**************************************************

Note: This was actually two separate dreams for me, but I am putting them together since they are both back dated dreams and belong together as one.

I was on the moon in the biodome again. I was lucid. I remembered Nomad disappearing from the last dream… I wondered if he was ok. I focused on finding him. A portal opened. I looked through into a black void… wtf? Nomad was floating in the blackness all by himself, yelling expletives at absolutely no one… I wondered if he was on dream drugs again… I called out to him, then threw him a tendril of Witchblade to pull him through my portal and into the biodome. He looked around. I asked if he was ok. He said Alexis was still in danger, we had to go back. I asked what was bothering her now… he said more dark things… he had seen them. I wondered if he had or if that was dream drugs… better check on her. Better look and find nothing than not look and have her attacked.

I was about to focus on a portal to get back to Alexis when another portal opened. Tigress came in. She looked at me, and changed into a paladin. She asked if I was up for a DDO dream. I told her I was going to help Nomad with his friend first. She asked what was going on there. I said Nomad had said his friend was being attacked. She pulled out a sword and said killing stuff there was fine, just another DDO quest. Um… ok… I went to open the portal again, but this time MoSh appeared. He asked why no one had come to get him. MoSh! That was who I was supposed to go get before Nomad and I went to help Alexis! I apologized to MoSh, saying my mind hadn't been clear enough to think of it… Now Nomad opened a portal, and we all went through it.

On the other side Nomad and I were on the edge of a forest looking at a rather creepy castle. I wondered why Alexis would have this creepy place in her inner world… maybe there was still a dream demon or other dark entity harassing her… We went inside the castle and looked around. Alexis looked kind of creepy, too. She was dressed all in black and had horns… she looked like a demon! She was smiling, however, and didn't look hostile. She was still smiling at us when something weird came through a portal and tackled her, and before I could even identify what it was, the two of them fell through another portal… with Nomad right behind them. The portal closed before the rest of us could get there… I had to focus on a portal to follow Nomad…

I went through the portal, MoSh and Tigress with me. On the other side we were on a desolate plane. There was an outcropping of rock over a deep canyon. There was a woman… Alexis… huddled beside a big ugly thing there. The ugly thing was growling and snarling down at her, looming over her.

I must have been in a feline mood, because I now changed back into the big panther I had been in the previous dream and tackled the demon thing off of her. We were now plunging through the air into the canyon, the thing was biting at me as we fell, I was sucking its energy out… I saw a bunch more dark creatures, those looked like shadow demons of some kind, coming from somewhere and attacking Alexis. Nomad was protecting her with a shield, Tigress was consuming the dark things, MoSh was blasting them with green flames from his naga form… Some of them were still getting through to Nomad… why wasn't he getting Alexis out of there? There was no need to be here in this dark world except to protect Alexis… and once she was safe, we could all make our exit. That was the last I noticed before hitting the ground of the canyon, I landed on top of the creature I was fighting…

The creature was stunned a bit, but then it attacked me again. The shadow creatures were coming after me now, but they never got to me… Tigress and MoSh intercepted the entire hoard of them, so I still just had the one big ugly thing to deal with. I pounced on the thing one more time and tore at its neck with my razor claws, drawing some more dark energy out… wow… this was a lot of dark energy… the thing was no longer moving. I changed back to my normal form and flew back out of the canyon. Alexis and Nomad were gone. Tigress and MoSh were still there, though most of the smaller shadow creatures had either fled or been destroyed. I opened a portal so the three of us could get back to the biodome. MoSh and Tigress went through. The big ugly thing grabbed at me from behind. I threw a blast of lightning made from light energy right in its face, then went through the portal and closed it behind me.

Tigress asked me what took me so long. I said I had found an old friend to play with a bit more. This was the first chance I had gotten, so I focused on The Curse by Disturbed to stabilize all the dark energy I had just absorbed… Tigress, still a paladin, sheathed her sword. She said she had told me this would do fine for a DDO quest… I told her I wished they had quests like that in DDO! That would be awesome. She said it would be hard. Yeah, but hard and AWESOME! Everything faded around me and I woke.

Note: My goals to begin with my WILD were to go check on Tigress… she thought there might be something strange around her somewhere, then go see MoSh, he wanted to go view a section of a Castaneda book having something to do with Castaneda and a waterfall and manipulating one's energy body IWL. We tried doing this before, but it didn't seem to work, and after hearing the part about manipulating one's energy body IWL, I was even more interested in trying it again. I had these goals in mind as I fell asleep and slipped into a WILD…

I was in a different place. I looked around and decided it looked like ancient Rome. I didn't recognize the exact location, but I figured this was where I would find Tigress. I started exploring the area. It wasn't too long before I found Tigress. She looked like she had been waiting for me. I went over to her and asked how she was doing. She pointed down the street to a narrow space between two buildings. She said they had gone over there. I asked what had gone over there. She said it was bugs. Bugs? I said there was a shit load of bugs around there. She said they were dark energy bugs, and they had been spinning fucking dark energy webs. Spiders? No, not spiders, but they were spinning webs… She said it was about time I had gotten there… she had thought she would have to clean the entire place up all by herself.

I went over towards the place Tigress had indicated. I looked down the passage between the buildings. There were indeed bugs down there. They were large bugs. Each bug was about the size of a house cat! They were spinning a sort of thing that maybe could be called a web, they were creating thick ropes of a strange and disgusting sticky black substance. They were hanging those rope type webs all over the place. And the stuff stank. It smelled like a decaying corpse that had been tossed into the filthiest sewer ever and left there to marinate for a while… the smell alone almost made me ill. I ignored the stench and focused on the bugs. The walls of the alley were covered with the black goop. When covered with goop the walls seemed to come to life and move… not normal… I focused on the song Fuel by Metallica, which is a song I normally use to absorb energy… and now I used it to absorb the dark energy. Using that song I was able to pull all of the dark energy from the alley and from the bugs.

So for the rest of this dream, Tigress and I searched the rest of the area and got rid of more of the intruding bug things. During the times while I was searching I could not help but notice that the dream was very vivid. If I hadn't been lucid, it would have been really easy for me to think I had somehow traveled back in time to be in Rome… it all looked so vivid and detailed… not like a dream at all. After searching the place for a while, I came back and met Tigress near one particular house that seemed to be lost in a mist. Tigress said that was ok, it was supposed to be like that. I said fine, and I thought I had found all of the strange bugs and black goop on my end of the search area. I definitely had enough dark energy for a while. Tigress said I wasn't the only one. She laughed a bit. I told Tigress I had other plans, but if she wanted to do a DDO dream now, those other plans could wait. She said yay, we could finally do a DDO dream! And this time she was going to remember… she disappeared. Crap. That always seems to happen when things get good.

I felt my dream slipping, too, so I did the time dilation trick I learned from Allura, causing the dream to stabilize. Good… at least that seemed somewhat consistent… So my next goal was to go see MoSh… I focused on opening a portal… I opened a portal and went through it into MoSh's inner world…

Note: Since the main topic of the dream changes here, I am going to post the next part in a separate post even though it is technically a continuation of the same dream. So this dream ends with a (to be continued…)

Note: The rest of the night was filled with fragmented dreams, and they are all listed out here:

*Tower Defense*
I was on top of a tower. There were four of us there, and one of the other three was Tigress. I didn't recognize the other two people, but they were men. The tower was circular and quite tall. I could see far out over the surrounding area, which included a cleared meadow area and then a thick forest. The meadow was too circular to have been natural, so I figured it had been cleared to provide a defendable area. The four of us were covering all four directions from the tower. Tigress was on my right. We all had bows and arrows. Enemies were storming the tower. We were picking them off with our arrows. The enemies were firing arrows back, but it was proving harder for them to get their arrows up to the top of our tower than it was to shoot arrows down from the tower at them. I was surprised at my own accuracy. I glanced to my right and saw Tigress was also picking off enemies with deadly accuracy. The fight continued for a while, and was actually rather boring. The enemies seemed to be slowing down, and it was shortly after picking off the last enemy and seeing there were no more enemies coming that I woke.

*What Goes Around Comes Around*
I was in a subway tunnel. I was walking along the walkway at the side of the tunnel. The path was there for maintenance purposes. I saw there was a subway intersection ahead where two tracks merged into the one. There was a young man on the path with me. He was using a hot glue gun to form words on the wall of the subway tunnel. The words were not very visible, but they would be raised off of the wall slightly. He was doing that when another young man came over and got all kinds of pissed off at him for that. The second man grabbed the glue gun from the one who had been using it on the wall. The second man shoved the hot glue gun in the first man's mouth and pulled the trigger, filling the first man's mouth with hot glue. The first man's cries of pain were muffled. The second man kept adding hot glue until it covered both the first man's mouth and nose, then he dropped the first man onto the ground and watched him suffocate. The killer laughed and kicked the victim a few times as the victim suffocated. The killer headed down the path towards the intersection. He stepped out to cross to the other side of the intersection. Right as he was in the intersection, two speeding subway cars, single subway cars, collided there in the intersection and crushed the killer between them… The car operators somehow got out of there uninjured, there was no one else on board either car… only the killer had been killed. Well that was karma for you…

*Metallica's New Member*
I was at a Metallica concert. I had a ticket to get in. I went inside the arena. It wasn't a very large arena, and I felt I was very fortunate to have gotten a ticket. I went to find my seat, but my seat sucked. I thought maybe I could find another seat that hadn't been filled. Maybe someone had been unable to attend. I walked through the seats and saw most of them were filled. The concert was about to start. I saw an empty seat. I sat down, it was only five rows from the stage. The concert started, and it was loud. I watched as the band members came out on stage. Lars Ulrich was on drums, James Hetfield was on guitar and singing, Kirk Hammett was on guitar, and then the fourth member came out… and it was MoSh! I did a double take! Wow! MoSh had joined a band! And not just any band, he was now the fourth member of Metallica! I thought that was awesome, I would have to congratulate him after the show. And this meant I know one of the members of Metallica! I could meet the rest of the band, too! I was so excited while I watched the concert. MoSh was rocking! He did a solo part way through the concert… my only thought was wow! The concert ended, and I was headed to the entrance to back stage to see about talking to MoSh, I told the bouncer to just tell MoSh that Raven was there to see him. The bouncer didn't believe me, but I saw MoSh back there and he waved at me, telling the bouncer to let me through.

*Winter in June?*
I was in my normal house. I left the house to go get the mail. The ground outside was covered with snow! In spite of the fact I live in a desert and this is the middle of summer, I didn't think to do a RC in response to the snow. I threw a couple of snowballs at a large cactus. I threw a few at the house. I hit my mother with one of them. She was not pleased. She told me to stop messing around and go get the mail. For some reason our mailbox was so far away I would have to drive to get there. I left the house in my car. It really was a long ways to the mailbox. I drove down a couple long streets and made several turns before I realized I was hopelessly lost. I figured things must look too different being covered with snow… and so I wasn't recognizing the place. I didn't want to admit to anyone that I had gotten lost when looking for my own mailbox… so I kept looking for it, and I figured to explain why it took so long I would just tell everyone I had gotten stuck in the snow.

… so I figured to open a portal to get MoSh and myself back to my inner world… where he said he would take a look at the locked book from the Akashic records to see if he could help me get it open… (Continued from last entry…)

MoSh and I were in my inner world in my bedroom. I looked around and picked the book up off of my chest of drawers. I looked at the book for a couple of minutes. I remembered that MoSh and Tigress have said they would help me figure out how to open the book. I handed it to MoSh, and he looked at it for a few minutes. He set it on the bed and pointed at it with his pinky. I wasn't sure what he was trying to do, but I left him to do that. Tigress had also said she would help… but she wasn't here. Maybe I should go find her. I was thinking about finding Tigress when I felt like I was going to wake up. But I didn't want to wake up yet, I was on a roll with this nice long WILD. I wanted to know how long I could make it. Wait… it was another goal of mine to attempt time dilation. I would do that quickly before I woke, and maybe I would be able to extend the dream!

My plan was to try Allura's method of time dilation. I figured MoSh would try Walms' method, and then we could determine which one works best. I figured I would have to try both to find which one works better for me… but for now, Allura's method. Her method starts with visualizing or summoning a normal analog clock, a digital one will do no good. So I focused on that clock.

Soon I could see the clock clearly in my mind. I didn't figure there was any need to summon one, actually I thought that might make it harder. The next step is to increase the amount of time that will fit on the clock by compressing all 12 hours into half the space, then filling the empty half with 13 through 24. At this point the clock displays twice as much time as is normally displayed on it. The resultant clock will look like the 24 hour clock shown here.

Since 24 hours are now compressed into the space normally used by 12, this works out to a time dilation of 2 hours of dream time for each 1 hour of IWL time. I focused on using this technique, first vividly visualizing the 12 hour clock and then gradually compressing the time on the clock until it was a 24 hour clock. I continued compressing time until 48 hours fit on the clock. That should be 4 hours of dream time for every hour of IWL time. I didn't know for sure if it was working, but I did notice that the dream had stabilized. So maybe that meant I could call the time dilation of this dream a success? Either way, this dream was going to continue.

Since Tigress had offered to help me with the locked book, my next thing to do would be to find her. I focused on opening a portal to find Tigress. A portal opened. I went to tell MoSh I was going to find Tigress, but MoSh was gone. The book was still on the bed, still locked. I wondered if MoSh had woken up. I wondered if he had discovered anything before waking up… I figured I would have to wait until the next morning and find out if he remembered anything. I went through the portal I had opened to find Tigress…

On the other side of the portal I was in a green field. There was a fight going on not far from us. There were a bunch of people dressed in red robes fighting another person… it looked like one person against a large number. I wondered what was going on there, and I also noticed the single person seemed to be winning. I headed closer to the fight to see if I could figure anything out. I saw that I recognized the single fighter. It was a woman who looked like a paladin from the Dungeons and Dragons Online game, and I recognized that paladin! It was Tigress! Ok, it appeared that if I wanted Tigress' help with anything I would have to help her out first. This looked like the making of a DDO adventure, so I really wanted her to remember this one.

I went over to Tigress, and called to her. She briefly noted me, and continued fighting. I formed Witchblade into a sword and attacked the enemies. I wasn't sure why they were fighting, but I figured Tigress' enemies were my enemies. I engaged the enemies, fighting with my Witchblade sword, blocking attacks, cutting enemies down all around me… with both Tigress and me fighting, it didn't take long before the entire enemy force was taken down. A few remaining enemies fled across the field to a forest. I put my Witchblade sword away and greeted Tigress. I asked her if she was lucid. She said it was finally happening, we were sharing a DDO dream. I agreed that was awesome… what's the quest? She said that there were some people being held captive in the mountain dungeon, and our quest was to rescue them. I said that sounded like a good quest to me! Tigress and I headed across the field towards a mountain. I could see a cave in the mountain, and that was no doubt our destination.

Tigress and I reached the cave entrance in short order. Sure enough, there were more red robed people inside the cave. They were guarding a locked door, but once we killed them, we found a key on one of them and were able to get inside the cave. Beyond the door it was more of a dungeon than a normal cave. There were long halls and large chambers. There were enemies all around, and they all attacked us on sight. Some of them attacked with melee weapons such as swords and maces, others attacked us with projectile weapons such as arrows and darts, and there were even some that were attacking us with energy attacks. We fought the enemies, taking them out quickly as we progressed through the caverns. We searched the underground complex for a while and finally found the entrance to the main dungeon. There were more enemies down there, of course, and there were numerous prison cells.

We killed the enemies that waited for us there, and then investigated the prison cells. In each of the prison cells there was a single prisoner. The prisoners were humanoid in form, covered with fur, had fluffy tails, and there was a flap of skin between their arms and their legs that looked kind of like the 'wings' of a flying squirrel.

The prisoners were all chained and hanging upside down from the ceiling, dangling about a foot off of the floor. They looked badly beaten, badly injured. It looked like they had been beaten, burned, cut… Allison and I got the prisoners down by cutting through their chains. I did a healing spell on the injured prisoners, and then they were ok to get themselves out of the dungeon. We assured them all the enemies in the upper chambers were dead, and the prisoners headed for the exit. We finished releasing all of the prisoners in the prison cells. We went into the next room and found a nightmare…

In the next room there were more enemies, and they had several prisoners in that room, too. One of the enemies had a prisoner tied to a spit and had them hanging over a fire. He was rotating the spit around as if cooking a chunk of meat, but the prisoner tied to the spit was still alive, and already showing signs of serious burns all over her body. Another enemy had a prisoner chained to the wall and was whipping the prisoner violently, blood spraying off with every lash. A third prisoner was chained to a concrete slab and covered with blood, there were several rats chewing on the prisoner's body… a fourth had a noose around her neck and was positioned so her toes barely touched the ground… so as long as she could stand on her toes she would be able to avoid strangling to death… There were four enemies standing around, and they attacked us on sight. We had to fight those four enemies and then the ones who had been torturing the prisoners. We freed and then healed the prisoners, who then headed for the surface, leaving the dungeon quickly.

Tigress and I were now in the torture chamber alone, only dead bodies were there now. I felt like I should be looking for a reward chest and then recalling back to the surface… but this wasn't an actual DDO game! Tigress looked around one more time, apparently making sure that we hadn't missed anything. She came back over to me. I asked if she was going to remember this dream. She said we were playing DDO. I said yeah, but we were playing DDO in a dream. So she would have to remember the dream when she woke up. She said she would remember this when she logged off. Logged off? I repeated that it wasn't a game… it was a dream. She said she was going to log off now. She disappeared. Wtf? She must have woken up… crap. I started feeling like I was waking up… but I could dilate time! I didn't have to wake up at all, or at least not until I was good and ready to! I could spend as long as I wanted in a dream! I tried to focus on Allura's method of time dilation again, but between the excitement at the idea I could stay in a dream as long as I wanted and the fact I was already in the process of waking up, I was not able to focus and I woke.

Note: My list of goals remains long, but I am trying to focus on a couple at a time. Right now I am primarily focused on sharing a DDO dream with Tigress and having both of us remember it and opening that locked book I got from the Akashic Records. With not having my nightly WILD (tonight was no exception) I had better not make my list of goals for one night too long or I will just end up forgetting all of them!

I was in a bed. I rolled over and got up. I looked around. I was not in my bedroom. I was not in a normal bedroom of any kind. It looked like the kind of bedroom one might see in an inn in an RPG. I wondered how I had gotten there. My first thought was that I needed to get home. My mother would definitely be wondering what had happened to me… I looked for my purse. I would call her. I couldn't find my purse. Shit! Where was it? What was happening here? I would get home as quickly as I could to tell my mother I was ok. So I at least needed my car keys… which were probably in my purse… which I couldn't find. Ok… this wasn't turning out to be a very good situation. I thought my keys might be in my pocket… I searched my pockets… and found I was not dressed as normal. I was wearing some strange clothes that looked like something out of an RPG. Everything was all too strange that I finally decided to do a RC… and then I realized I was dreaming.

Now that I was lucid, I left the room and found out I really was in an inn. I looked around the room down below and it was a typical RPG pub. I walked around a bit and I could hear everyone talking. They were talking about an impending attack force coming down the canyon. They were talking about their warriors not being strong enough to hold the attack off, and about how it might turn out that their easily defended canyon hiding place might turn out to also be their tomb since there was no way out except through the enemy forces. People were clearly scared shitless, talking about trying to scale the sheer canyon walls or even killing themselves to keep from falling into the cruel hands of the enemies who would no doubt have torturous deaths planned for each and every one of them. From across the room I heard one woman who didn't sound like she had already given up. She was telling the people they needed to fight for their village and not give up no matter how big the enemy forces appeared to be. No one seemed to be listening to her, and when she asked who was with her, no one responded. A few people laughed. I finally spotted her. She was dressed as a paladin, and asked again if there was no one there with the courage to fight. I raised my hand, noting the Witchblade on it, and said loudly that I was willing to fight. She peered out over the crowd and looked directly at me.

"Raven?!" she asked, "Is that you?"

I hesitated, not sure how she knew me… then she took off her helmet and I immediately recognized her. It was Tigress! I went directly over to her and climbed up on the table she had climbed onto, using it as a stage to address the people around her. She now told everyone that there were two women willing to fight for their village… were there no others? Were all those men who called themselves warriors going to be shown up by a couple of women? Were there no other women who called themselves warriors willing to stand beside their fellow female fighters? Once again no one responded… there were some embarrassed glances around, some nervous chuckles. I told Tigress that we didn't need these idiots. We could handle whatever attack force there was on our own, and have fun doing it. I said I was ready to take this quest if she was. She gave one more look around the room, announced that everyone in the room was pathetic, and said she was ready to kick some ass.

So Tigress and I left the pub full of cowards, the people around us were muttering something about that just meant we would be the first to die, and went outside into the village. Tigress must have been there for a while already, as she seemed to know where to go. I followed Tigress. She went to the front gates of the village. There were guards there that didn't want to open the gates. They didn't seem to think two people stood a chance against the invading forces. We insisted on going out. They finally gave in and opened the gates, announcing that if we really felt like committing suicide that they wouldn't stand in the way. After all, everyone in the town would be dead before long when the enemy forces arrived. We went through the gate, the guards shut and barred it behind us. I wondered why they even bothered closing the gates since they were so sure they would be killed anyhow…

There was a winding path through the canyon. Tigress and I went down the path and around a bend and then we spotted a large number of somethings approaching. We got closer and it turned out there was an entire army of what looked like kobolds. Mixed in among the kobolds were some larger orc type creatures and some that looked like humans. They were all armed with swords, spears, and bows, all in armor. That was definitely a sizable attack force. A hail of arrows shot out of the group at us. Somehow we had been spotted. Tigress had a bow and arrows. She was firing five arrows with each shot. That was an interesting trick. That resulted in a return fire of a hail of arrows, because she was also very fast with shooting them. I saw there were spear warriors just beyond the archers. Those spears up in the air looked like lightning rods! I used Battery and they worked like lightning rods, too. The spear warriors were electrocuted through their own spears. The battle continued. We encountered each other. Tigress and I were both using our swords now, I formed my sword from Withcblade. Both Tigress and I were moving like lightning. Much faster than the kobolds, orcs, and human enemies. Our swords cut through their armor like it was made of tissue paper. Tigress jumped to a couple of rocks and part way up the canyon wall, then she unleashed another rain of arrows. The enemies kept coming. I cut some more down, threw some fireballs at more of them. Tigress got tired of the bow and arrows, changed into a werewolf and jumped down off the canyon wall. She tore into a bunch of the enemies with her claws, leaping from one enemy to the next. In spite of the fact we were sorely outnumbered, we fought until all of the enemies were either dead or retreating… mostly dead. The battle was over.

Tigress and I returned to the village. The guards on the gate looked quite surprised to see us back in one piece. They were just staring. Tigress said the enemies were all either dead or they had fled for their lives. The guards seemed reluctant to believe that. I noticed for the first time that Tigress had a severed head… yuck. Apparently it was the head of the leader of the enemy forces, as it convinced the guards that we had indeed been victorious. They let us into the village now. Tigress showed the head to prove the danger had passed, at the same time as she made fun of all of those people who called themselves warriors and had not had the guts to go out there and fight for their village. It looked like they weren't sure if they should be happy with us for helping them or annoyed for calling them cowards… but the thing was, that was what they were… a bunch of cowards. Overall, the view of us was that we were some kind of heroes… which I really didn't care about. I told Tigress maybe we could go out and explore a bit. She said sure, but then she disappeared… damn… she must have woken up. The people from the town were silent now, staring at where she had been. They were muttering amongst themselves about what kind of magic she had just used. I thought I could still explore a bit. I took to flight and looked down, wondering which way to go. I had just barely gotten to go anywhere before I woke.

Note: And the rest of this night was taken up with a couple of fragment dreams, both of which were unfortunately non-lucid. I really need to improve on my RCs!

*Outer Realms Software*
I was sitting at a computer. Tigress was sitting beside me, both of us were talking about a video game we were working on. The part of the game we were working on would have a town located near a dungeon. The strange thing about the dungeon was that it wasn't stable… it was constantly changing and rearranging itself. Passages would adjust themselves, dead ends would open up, passages would close off… so each time the player entered the caves it would be a completely different layout. This would be cool, because each trip down there would be new. I was figuring this could be easily done with a random maze generator. I was looking at the screen trying to think if UDK (Unreal Development Kit) could be used to generate a random maze. I would have to Google that.

The next idea we had was to have some characters in the maze that weren't evil. While there would be merchants in the town, the maze we were planning would be big and the player could easily run low on supplies. Then it would be a pain in the ass to have to leave and come back since the entire maze would've changed again. So to fix that there would be random goblin merchants wandering the maze. These merchants would sell the same items as the town merchants, just at an inflated price. Their excuse for the inflated prices would be that the dungeons are dangerous, thus it is dangerous for them to be down there selling stuff. In fact they most likely sell to both the player characters and the enemies alike, and are probably in very little danger, it is most likely the fact these goblins are just greedy that makes them charge so much. Tigress and I talked about the rules involving the goblins for a few minutes.

After Tigress and I were done talking about the goblins, it was time to start doing something. I was looking at a blank screen. It was ready for me to start coding. But what to code? Would UDK handle a random maze? I would need custom models… maybe I should start there first? But making really good models just takes so long… maybe I should just make place holder models and use them for the initial build. Yes, that would be good enough. Before I could even launch the 3D modeling program I woke.

*Watch the Way I Navigate*
I was in a car with Tigress. We were driving down the street rather fast. That didn't bother me since I have a tendency to speed myself. I had the feeling we had just left the Pima Community College, West Campus, and now we were driving down Speedway. Tigress was taking the street name very literally as we flew past other vehicles that were barely moving compared to us. I also noticed that she was beginning to drive erratically. She was swerving all over the road. I looked over and noticed for the first time what Tigress was doing while she drove. She had her laptop opened on a make-shift stand to her right, a cell phone pinned between her shoulder and her head as she talked on it, a piece of paper on the center of the steering wheel where she was drawing a rough map, and she was steering with her left knee. Talk about distracted driving. We were rapidly coming up behind a pickup.

"TRUCK!" was all I managed to say as I saw the impending wreck. Tigress looked up and swerved around the truck. She asked if I could grab something for her, it was in her backpack. I said I was too busy watching the way she was navigating… That brought to mind the lyrics of a song called Feel Good Inc. by the Gorillaz, "Yo, watch the way I navigate
Hahahahahhaa!" And I was watching as Tigress was navigating directly towards a stopped bus…

"BUS!" I cried out. She swerved around the bus. She said I was getting way too worked up over those little things. She said she really needed that hard drive from her backpack, so could I please get it. I was just happy to be able to put my head down for a bit so I wouldn't see the impending doom…

Note: I had a whole one night WILD streak… lame. I didn't succeed in a WILD tonight, and my goals were pretty much the same as last night. I have a list of goals I am working on, tonight was to be focused on sharing a DDO dream with Tigress and unlocking the book from the Akashic Records, and viewing a dream MoSh had where he told me don Juan left a message for me if I can find it. Hmmm… one out of three ain't all that good!

I was in bed. I sat up and looked at the clock. It wasn't on. Damn… power outage. Now I would have to reset the clock and the alarm… fortunately there wasn't anything I particularly had to get up for the next morning. I lied back down on my pillow, but then my pillow squirmed from underneath my head, hissed at me, then jumped down and left the room. Oops… that was a cat… and apparently she didn't appreciate being used as a pillow. I sat back up, thinking I should do a RC before going back to sleep. My RC revealed that I was dreaming.

Ok. My first goal was to have a DDO dream with Tigress. To do that I would first find Tigress. I focused on locating her and opened a portal. A portal opened, I went through it. On the other side of the portal I was in a strange place. It looked like a dungeon of some kind. Was Tigress already in the DDO dream? Because this definitely looked like a possible DDO dream… I looked around to see if there was anyone else there with me. I wasn't alone. There was a man and a woman there with me. I looked at them… Tigress and MoSh. I said hello to both of them and gave each of them a hug. We were all together in a DDO dream!

Ok. I wasn't sure what the goal was, and neither was anyone else it seemed, so the first thing to do was to just explore the dungeon. The three of us began looking through the dungeon. There were enemies there. We came across a group of kobolds.

I formed Witchblade into a sword and fought them in the manner I would fight them in a true Dungeons and Dragons game. Tigress also had a sword, MoSh was just beating the shit out of them… A bit farther along the dungeon we found a group of orcs. We quickly dispatched of them, as well. They had been guarding a door. Unfortunately the door was locked, and none of the orcs had the key… so we headed in the other direction. A few more battles with kobolds… this was proving to be quite a fun dream… and then we found an encampment of kobolds. There were quite a few of them, and we covered each others' backs as we took them all out. The sheer number of kobolds in the room made this a bit more of a challenge than the previous fights. A couple of them seemed stronger than the average kobold, too. When we finished, there was a chest in the back of the room. All of us went to the chest and opened it. There was an array of treasures in the chest, gems and gold, and there was a cool looking sword. Tigress looked at her own blade, which was charged with elemental fire energy, and kept it. I looked at my blade, Witchblade, and I kept that. I handed the sword to MoSh since he didn't have one. We gathered the gems and treasure, the last item in the chest was a key, Tigress grabbed the key and then we left the room through the same path we had entered it through.

The three of us made our way through the passages back towards the locked door. Most of the passages were empty, but there was a hidden door that had opened. Kobolds were swarming out of it to ambush us as we tried to return to the locked door. MoSh, Tigress, and I all engaged the kobolds in battle and we were victorious. Dead kobolds now littered the ground. The three of us continued until we found the room with the locked door, which was still littered with the bodies of fallen orcs. I thought about the fact they disappear in DDO, but apparently not here. Tigress had the key and she unlocked the door. We all went through it.

On the other side of the door we were in a larger chamber. There were distracted orcs in the room. I wondered what they were doing… Tigress snuck up on one and killed it with one strike. That alerted the others. We got into another battle. We fought our way through the orc infested chamber and over to a narrow passage out the other side.

The orcs didn't seem to stop coming. Kill one, three more came in. Once we were all in the passage, we slammed shut a stone door and barred it from the other side. Good. I could hear orcs pounding on the door, but it was holding up to their pounding quite well. They wouldn't be following us down this passage.

The narrow passage was dark and ominous. It was creepy. There were spider webs on the sides of the passage, and that just made it look even creepier. The three of us finally reached the end of the passage. We were now in the largest chamber yet. There was a path around the chamber about halfway up the wall, and ladders led down to the bottom of the chamber. Tigress swapped her sword for a flame bow. She said she would cover us from above, because this looked like a trap. MoSh and I climbed down into the pit… and sure enough, it was a trap. The far wall of the chamber collapsed, and a giant spider came into the room. It was HUGE. And it looked pissed. A bunch of smaller spiders also came. By small I mean about the size of a German Shepherd… compared to the big one which was about the size of an elephant… We got into a fight with the spiders.

I fought my way through a lot of the spiders. MoSh apparently decided he didn't want to mess with the blade and changed into a large winged cobra. Tigress was up on the ledge, and she was proving to be deadly accurate with her arrows. One arrow pierced the head of each of the dog sized spiders she aimed at, and that made the spider burst into flames. She had cleared my way to the big spider. I went in quickly, aiming for one of its legs. The spider shot web at me. I cut through the web and then through its front right leg. The leg was hanging on by skin. Tigress fired a couple of arrows into the big spider. There were poofs of flame where the arrows hit, but it didn't kill the spider. The spider turned and fired web at Tigress. She dodged to the side of the web. While the spider was distracted, MoSh bathed it in green flames. The whole spider was flaming. I was attacked by some dog-sized spiders. I ran them through with my sword. A stream of web was aimed for Tigress. I intercepted it and cut it down. Tigress nailed two dog-sized spiders trying to jump on me from behind. MoSh had bitten the huge spider… yuck… I didn't envy MoSh. Enough playing around with this boss. I jumped to a pile of crates, to a taller pile of crates, and onto the spider's back. I ran Witchblade right into the spider's head. As the spider turned, one of Tigress' arrows went in to one of the spider's eyes and disappeared completely. Whether due to the poison, the sword in the brain, or the flaming arrow through the eye and into the brain, the spider finally collapsed and burned into a pile of ashes.

MoSh turned back to normal. Tigress came down to join us. There was a chest in the middle of the room where the spider had fallen. We went there to open it. We all opened the chest together and looked in. There was a treasure inside it. There was also a strange blue orb. I wondered about the orb. Did it have magical properties? I picked up the orb to look at it. There were words written deep within the orb. I looked closely to see what was written there. The words said, "This is a dream." Wtf? Oh, well… this was a dream DDO level… what else had I expected. I passed the orb around and everyone had a good laugh about it before I woke.