New Dream Adventures of Raven Knight

My Virtual World
I am in a place that looks like a video game. There is just something about the place that makes it look like a computer rendering instead of a real physical place, though I'm not entirely sure what that something is. I am designing the place as if I was in a 3D virtual reality design system. I place pieces of geometry to form them into buildings and such, then I choose textures from a menu that pops up in mid air to apply to the buildings… it is really cool. There are a couple people there with me, but they don't seem to be real people. They are actual NPCs I have already designed for the game, and it seems I programmed them well enough that they can now help me with designing the world.

That is awesome. I have to give them explicit instructions, but they are still very helpful. I leave the virtual world for a bit and find out I am at school, at ITT Tech. I wonder when they got such cool equipment in, and why did they have to get it when I am just ready to graduate? My instructor tells me what effect I need to be creating in the virtual world, so I go back in and begin setting that up. It is a lighting effect where the rays of the sun are visible shining through one of the windows of the building. I create the effect without much difficulty. There is another effect I have to do in the same setting. I enter a completely blank void. I pull out what seems like a blanket and throw it out in front of me. It expands to become a copy of the world I just made previously. Now that is a useful feature! I pull my NPCs into the setting again and then I begin adding the details I need to achieve the next effect. My NPCs are getting annoying now, however, they just want to stand around and do nothing while I do all the work.

DDO - In Poisoned Waters
I am in a place that looks a lot like the city of Stormreach from the DDO game, I am in the harbor area. I am not alone there, I see there are two men and a woman there with me. I am instantly aware of who they are, though I do not become aware it is a dream. It is Nomad, MoSh, and Tigress, but I am thinking they are just in a virtual reality version of DDO with me. And the game is completely awesome! I look around at all of the NPCs and the other players, there are actually some of the NPCs with golden chalices floating over their heads indicating they have quests… Tigress heads over to one of them and talks to her. I follow Tigress, Nomad and MoSh come with me. The NPC is telling Tigress how some of the wells in Stormreach had been yielding poisoned water. She says the kobolds are responsible, though no one knows why. The poison is coming from the waterworks.

The four of us go into the waterworks. At first we get attacked by a few kobolds, but there isn't much kobold resistance. Farther down we start seeing a lot of dead kobolds lying about in varying stages of decomposition… yuck. The water smells bad, it is poisoned. Why would kobolds poison their own water supply? We go deeper, and soon we aren't in the waterworks any more, now we are in what looks like mine shafts. Kobolds are digging at the mine, but they pay no attention to us. Most of them look very weary, exhausted even. I see a kobold fall over from exhaustion. A goblin comes and starts poking the kobold with a spear, snarling at it to get up and back to work. It is clear the kobold can't go on any longer. It weakly tries to get up and then collapses again. The kobolds around the fallen one make no move to help, they hardly seem to notice. The goblin kicks the fallen kobold.

Nomad tells the goblin to pick on someone his own size. The goblin notices us for the first time and calls out that there are intruders. Nomad picks the goblin up by the neck in a hand that has grown huge, and snarls at the goblin that he is pathetic for being able to pick on those who can't fight back but he calls for help the instant someone who can fight comes along. He crushes the goblin's neck. More goblins are coming now, so a fight breaks out. I am a paladin, Nomad is a dark knight cutting down goblins with a black sword and drawing their energy into himself, Tigress is a rogue hitting the goblins when they are distracted attacking Nomad, MoSh, and me, MoSh is a monk knocking goblins to the ground with martial arts moves. We fight all the goblins off, but we know the boss is down farther into the dungeon.

The four of us continue down farther, past a lot of kobolds who are working as hard as they can. A couple kobolds pause in their work to look over at us. We get down to the bottom chamber where the kobolds are digging down even farther. There is a really nasty looking goblin there, examining a chunk of metal. He smacks the kobold who presented it to him, saying he would not stand for them bringing him crap like that. He says any fool can see it's the wrong mineral. The kobold is on the ground, begging for mercy. The nasty goblin says mercy is for the weak and kicks the kobold. He then tells the kobold to get back to work and don't bring him any more crap or next time the penalty would be death. The kobold can barely stand, and is moving slowly away. The goblin tells the kobold to move faster or he might change his mind and kill the kobold now. The goblin looks over and finally sees us, and asks who the fuck the three of us are. Three? I notice that the rogue Tigress is not with us. I then spot her in sneak mode over behind the goblin boss. I comment that they are polluting the water, and that has to stop. The goblin laughs and says he doesn't care. That's what he told the kobolds when they bitched about it, and that's what he's telling us. I say I guess that means it's time for him to die, then. He laughs harder. He says his goblins are more than a match for three pathetic humans.

Tigress attacks the goblin boss, which takes him completely by surprise, he spits an obscenity… AAHHH!!! SHIT!!! What the FUCK? We get into a big fight. I am fighting off goblin warriors and throwing out healing spells to allies. I can't see their health bars… so I don't know if they are needing the healing… but I don't want to take any chances. It feels like my supply of mana is limitless, and I credit that to a potion that gives that temporary effect. The goblin army that the boss boasted about proves to not be so tough. Archers are shooting at us from above. Tigress is sneaking around the rim up there and knocking the goblin archers off one by one. On the other side of the room I see a couple goblin archers get attacked by kobolds. It seems some of the more capable kobolds decided to join in the fight. The goblins never had a chance. We wipe out their numbers completely, I see Tigress finish off the boss near the end of the fight. I see Nomad over near the underground stream, he is doing something to clean the pollution from the water. The kobolds keep saying they don't want any trouble, won't attack any people, they just want their home in the waterworks back… I don't see any reason to attack kobolds right now, so instead I heal some of the ones that are more seriously injured. I tell a couple of the kobolds in charge that as long as they're not hostile towards the inhabitants of Stormreach, I certainly have no problem with them. The kobolds say we helped free them, they won't forget that. I'm not really sure that will prove to be true, but Stormreach is used to dealing with kobold problems… and they'll probably be busy for a while cleaning up the mess the goblins made.