SCPantera's Dream Journal

There were definitely some dreams last night, but my memory of them is kind of a messy whirlwind of scenes. It seems I was in some sort of weird remake of Suikoden 3. I remember there was some kind of flashback scene where Thomas and the gang from Budehuc Castle were all children and living in some kind of mansion when they get attacked by some unidentifiable monster. They flee to a room, but it follows them and they enter into a battle that they're supposed to lose for the story (very Suikoden 3-ish). Later it seems as though the army of the protagonists are lined up on a beach, getting ready for battle, but it seems that Luc is with them and when the battle starts he uses some big wind attack. Sometime later again, I'm chasing someone through some ruins, and in these ruins are intermittent portals that lead to various other passageways. Whomever I was chasing managed to trick me into going into a wrong portal, and it seemed to transport me to a mansion-like place where I run into young Thomas and the gang, who see me and run away scared. I follow them to be sure that whomever I was chasing wasn't here. I follow them into the same room as before, where they turn around and attack me. I fight back and easily defeat them all (even more Suikoden 3-style Trinity Site dickery). I then go back to the ruins where I give up, having lost whomever I was chasing. Next, I recall I'm staying as a guest in a bedroom at the top of a tower on a white mansion that belongs to the mayor of some kind of small town I was passing through. During the day I explore the town, it's surrounded by a high wall on the outskirts and when I find the lone gate the gatekeeper turns me away and tells me that I can't leave at this time. As I wander back I come across a small-town grocery store, that I briefly wander through before returning to my room. That night, I decide to sleep naked, but sometime during the night I need to go to the bathroom so I go down from the tower to use a bathroom. While I'm in there I hear the mayor's daughter and several of her girlfriends return from a night out. I try to sneak by them and make it to the tower, but there's a room I need to pass through on the way up where there's one girl on one side of the room playing video games on a TV on the other side of the room so that I'd need to pass by in front of her. Realizing I can't sneak by, I surrender to circumstance and try to quickly walk through the room with as much dignity as I can muster. The next day, the mayor is making an announcement that the girls did something wrong and have to be sacrificed; I wonder to myself if it was because the girl saw me naked, but nobody seems to think I'm responsible for their girls getting sacrificed. The girls are placed intermittently on top of the walls around the village, and then bombs in the walls are detonating, knocking them down and presumably killing the girls. Afterwards, the townsfolk return to their lives nonchalantly, but I decide to check the wrecked walls for any survivors. When I make my way over to the destroyed walls. I see many people walking around outside the destroyed walls, but no sign of the girls. There's one guy who's standing still, I notice him and he waves me over, he tells me he has a mission for me. As he's explaining it, I turn and see the person from before whom I was chasing. They also notice me and take off running. I chase them up from the wrecked wall to a section of the wall that's not destroyed and across several rooftops in a way that's reminiscent of Assassin's Creed. We go through another portal and I find myself in an Assassin's Creed style city. I see a map that outlines my mission, to eliminate a target somewhere in the city, however my memory of the dream ends before I head out to start the mission.

Third sequence: this one was longer, but my recall only retained a fragment of the ending. The dream was some kind of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles RPG; it was in slightly dated video game graphics and all the dialogue occurred in dialogue boxes Suikoden style. Some villain (who may or may not have been Shredder, who made an incidental appearance during the villain's escape) was disguised as Donatello. They go into a plain, empty bland rectangular room with wooden plank floors. On the fall wall near the corner there's a bay window. Someone whom I'm not able to recall enough to identify approaches the window, and is suddenly kidnapped as fake-Don reveals himself. He grabs the person, then runs to the picture window, where he teleports away (as the villain escapes, an image of Shredder is projected onto the window. Michaelangelo is devastated, but is comforted by Raphael.

The fourth sequence is another interesting and memorable one, for a handful of reasons. There were several subtle indications throughout the dream that in this particular dream I'm female. As it was, I was trying to infiltrate some kind of evil amusement park (thinking about it now, it's reminiscent of L4D2). At the lines to get in, I'm able to jump over the in order to sneak in. There's a direct passage in off to my right and up some stairs. It leads to an area just off one of the busy pathways in the park. There I met my contact, who happened to be Neil Patrick Harris, whom I was starstruck to see in an unusual, excitably girlish kind of way (subtle hint #1). We walked through the crowd as he explained my mission, but as we were walking I noticed another Neil Patrick Harris casually stroll by. I looked at the NPH who had been talking to me and suddenly realized he was a fake. He knew that I knew he was fake, so he pinned me to a wall and then proceeded to try to rape me. At this point (and I'm finding some more comic irony in how it reminds me of L4D2) the dream went third person, so while my gender in this dream may now be obvious looking back, what with the slim girlish figure, long blond hair tied back in a ponytail, breasts, and a vagina, keep in mind I was going by dream logic at the time so none of this seemed outlandishly apparent. I remember having that odd sort of rape victim psychological crisis where I was simultaneously scared and angry that I was about to be forced into sex against my will and slightly flattered that NPH wanted to have sex with me. Anyways, before it got particularly graphic the dream reset back to the beginning where I was a the line to get into the amusement park. This time, sneaking in I took a pathway to the left. It leads into a backroom/warehousey area. I realize I may have tripped some alarm or that somehow they knew where I was trying to sneak in, because a ways up ahead I could see several strangely dressed girls whom I identified as being with the amusement park's security. I'm able to disable most of them by stealth shooting a barrel that explodes and then a fire extinguisher, knocking them all out but one. The remaining girl looks around suspicious and confused, so I attempt to sneak by her. I make it about halfway through the area she's patrolling when she sees me. I immediately run forward, trying to find an exit while she gives chase. We go running for a little ways down a wide hallway, then up some stairs to a raised catwalk for a ways, then up another set of stairs to a higher catwalk where I find a door. I go through the door and close it behind me. I'm now on a platform jutting out from the building; there's nowhere to go but fall a few stories down. Fortunately, for whatever reason, there's a column of stacked wooden chairs a short distance away from the catwalk and I realize I can jump onto the chairs and then ride them slowly down as they break under me for a soft landing(!?), so that's what I do. I'm now in kind of dusty and sandy area that seems to be a seldom traveled passage around the outside of the park; I can hear music and crowds off in the distance and it's now dusk. Dream ends as I walk towards the amusement park.

Got a couple of longer fragments tonight, mostly owing to the fact that every time I woke up during the night I was too heavily fatigued to get out of bed to write some notes. I was able to prepare myself to preserve some general memories of them though, so here goes.

I was one of four famous/elite assassins/bounty hunters that included myself, my brother, a third random guy whom I don't recognize from real life, and Mandy. We all had, at least, some kind of rifle that had four ammo types: a bullet that would kill, a bullet/dart that would instantly knock someone out, a bullet/dart that would slowly knock someone out, and a dart that would shoot out a laser beam to help reveal someone's position. We were all together in a semi tractor-trailer going down a highway in some sort of desert canyon when third guy said something that seriously pissed my brother off, so he stopped the truck, jumped out, got on a motorcycle (!?), and fled backwards the way we came. I quickly jumped out and ran after him, hoping to keep him safe from my brother's wrath. I followed third guy back aways to a shack near a gas station off the highway. I told third guy to get down and hide. I saw my brother following out the window, so I readied my rifle and shot him with the laser-beam dart as he was approaching. I checked myself to see what other weapons I had on me; I had a revolver with only one bullet in the chamber so I set that down and then found another handgun with a full magazine. There was an old woman who had slowly been approaching the shack to see what was going on, as she got close to the door so did my brother. Instead of charge in or wait outside, my brother held his shotgun up to the old woman's head and demanded that we come out or he'd kill the old woman. From around the corner to the door I could see the barrel of his shotgun held up to the woman's head. From there I was able to extrapolate his position, so I aimed where his feet would be and fired two shots. I heard him cry out and fall down, so I quickly came out the door and pointed my gun at him to keep him from getting back up. I convinced him to give up trying to kill third guy, so we brought him in and sat him down. Some time shortly after, Mandy came in, carrying a long case she used to store her custom rifle, and told us that she was retiring, so we held a small retirement party. During the mini-party, I recalled one mission where we were all holed up in a shack like this one, fighting off dozens of enemies that were attacking us.

Second sequence was even stranger: through some freak of nature British law, I and one other American tourist were somehow appointed to two of four vacant seats in the British parliament. The other guy and I were seated at a group of desks with a bunch of old men who were all bickering over how to fill the remaining two empty eats. Across the room were a few rows of seats for observers. American guy and I were talking about random stuff while the old guys argued. At some point I joked that they should just grab a few more tourists to fill the seats, but they apparently thought I was serious and immediately held a vote to do so, but it was too split to pass. Afterwards, I called my wife, trying to figure out how we were going to make arrangements to move to the UK. I was talking to her as I was walking down a sidewalk, observing the traffic; I joked about how getting used to driving on the other side of the street was going to kill me.

A weird sequence, likely inspired with a chance meeting last night with an old FFXI friend as well as an unrequited mystery from those days as well as several related events earlier in the day.

There was an early sequence where I seem to recall a Starfox-style shmup that I can't place within the context of the rest of the dream.

It seems that I lived in some unfamiliar downtown location, and that members of my old TiamatsFangs FFXI linkshell were getting together in real life to do some sort of video game-esque covert operation. We were to try to get into some kind of factory, the entrance to which was on the roof of a tall building, to demolish...something. We went in, and made our way to the end, but my partners started dying as we got ready to blow up the place. There was some kind of weird monster/alien thing killing people. As I fled out I turned and saw it grotesquely kill two people. I managed to escape back onto the roof-entrance, the only survivor. Except it flashed back to before the operation began. Since I knew what would happen I began trying to prepare an escape route, cleaning up excess ammo, weapons, and items on the floor to make picking up things for use easier, however I became frustrated that my partners were sitting around goofing off instead of preparing for the mission so I gave up and left. On my way home I realized I could use the opportunity of the TiamatsFangs' gathering to track down Jillia. I had already called and talked to her at some point during the preparation for the operation, so on my way home I called her number again but she didn't answer. When I got home to a room that looked like some sort of home office I sat down and started to think about how I could proceed. I started looking through the contacts on my phone and noticed I had a second number for Jillia, so I called it. An older woman answered the phone; I asked her if Jillia was there to which she replied yes. I asked the woman for the location of this phone number to which she replied that it was a place called "The Dungeon". I thanked her and hung up to consult the internet for the Dungeon's location; I remember that the first time I searched for it I forgot to specify the city I was in (when I corrected it, I corrected it with Fargo, ND or 58102, so evidently this dream was supposed to take place in Fargo). I quickly found it online, it was some sort of arcade. I went there; inside I met the older woman I had spoken to earlier behind a counter just inside the entrance. Also there were several teenagers there, I thought it odd that several of the boys were shirtless--and also that none of them were playing any arcade games, in fact there were no arcade games at all. The area was mostly empty except for some furniture and beanbag chairs. I asked the woman if Jillia was there again and she offered to take me to her. As we slowly made our way back I continued to observe the bizarre behavior of the children here. The woman explained that Jillia was a poor girl, having been abused and I recall ending that explanation mentally by adding "by these people" to the end. As we reached the entrance to the basement, I observed a short, ugly-looking girl and a boy getting ready to have sex, and they were eventually joined by a second boy. I went down into the basement alone. At the bottom was a large room, the room was pitch black except where it was sparsely lit by a small television in the middle on the other side of the room. There was some kind of clothing rack blocking the direct path to the television, instead leading a path around the outside of the room. In the far back corner there was a green couch that was very brightly lit. I called out for Jillia and she answered, though I couldn't see her at all. I replied, "Now there's a voice I recognize!" She sounded somewhat paranoid however. She instructed me to go to the couch in the back corner. Standing in the light it was even harder to see into the darkness, but I sensed that she had moved from near the TV to around between me and the door. She instructed me to remove my pants and shirt so I removed my black coat, shirt, and pants and set them on the couch. She then instructed me to go over and play the game. I went over, in just my underwear, and sat down by the TV. There was an old school Sega console there with what looked to be some sort of hacked old school Sonic game. I picked up the controller and hadn't even started playing when I heard the door to the basement slam shut. Alarmed that Jillia may have ran off, I quickly got up and returned to the couch to put my clothes back on and try to follow her. As I was putting my clothes back on the lights came on in the rest of the room. The floor was concrete and the walls were painted a bland white, it looked for sure like somewhere people may be held captive and I recall thinking, "Aw shit, I'm trapped down here." I immediately suspected the bizarre people on the floor above of foul play. When I checked the door, however, it was unlocked so I went upstairs to leave. The teens that were there before were outside in the rain, apparently having fun and taking pictures of each other. I quietly left, trying not to draw attention to myself. About a block away I turned and looked back, trying to think of how I could find her now. The dream ends there.

Side note: with some more effort into reality checking around phones as previously planned, I might have been able to catch this one.