New Dream Adventures of Raven Knight

Happy Birthday
I am at a birthday party, it is a big event. It is the birthday party of my friend Alicia, though it is much larger than any party she has ever had before. I don't know where Alicia is right now, and I don't recognize any of the other guests. I explore the party, which is much too large to be in Alicia's house. I enter a room that is filled with treats of all kinds, cakes, cookies, drinks of all kinds… the center piece is a huge birthday cake. I am walking through the room when Derek Morgan from Criminal Minds comes out of the cake and starts dancing.

I think Alicia will be disappointed to miss that… I continue and find there is an indoor pool at the party, which is so big there is a small island in the middle of it. I think Alicia is probably on the island which is going to be a problem for me to get her gift to the island without getting it wet.

Kobold Attack
I am in a room, or actually it's more of a cave, it is a large roundish cavern with a glowing gem in the middle of it. The gem is about the size of a basket ball and it is floating in the middle of the room with no apparent support, bathing the room in a blue light.

I look at the gem, there are actually rainbow colors moving about in the gem, it is almost hypnotic. There is movement in the darkness around the edge of the room, and an attack comes fast and violently. I realize I am a Paladin, like from DDO, and I am armed with a nasty looking sword. I am surrounded by kobolds, and they are all attacking me. I start fighting off the kobolds. I can see enough of what is going on around me to tell that I am not fighting alone, but I can't see who else is fighting against the kobolds. Whoever they are, there seems to be three of them and they are keeping the crystal in the center of the room covered from the other three directions, so I can just focus on stopping the kobolds from one direction. My armor is very good, and my sword is deadly, I am able to successfully fend off the kobold attacks. Unfortunately I never do get a look at my companions before I wake up.

Crazy Taxi: Burnout
I am at my house, both my mom and I have errands to run. She leaves first, then I follow her shortly later. I notice she has put a lot of stuff out for the trash, so I stop to check to make sure there is nothing there I want to keep. I find a trunk there, look inside, and the thing falls apart. I find a set of sheets I really want to keep, so I put them in my car and then leave for my errands. After I get a short distance I realize I don't remember what errands I needed to perform… damn. I go home. Alicia is waiting for me there. My mom arrives home shortly after. In my room, I realize I need to feed my fish… I have two small fish bowls with male betas in them.

I forgot to feed them… but fortunately they look fine. I open my bottle of food and feed them the last of it, so I know I need to go get more food. My mom tells me not to take my car, for some reason she wants us to take a taxi instead. That sounds expensive… Alicia and I are in the taxi, heading to town. Alicia notices that the driver seems to be driving quite recklessly. I don't mind, since it will get us to our destination sooner. But he is getting more reckless… now it's like he's trying to get into a wreck. I do a RC and find out I'm dreaming, (though I don't really become lucid) this is a game of Crazy Taxi, so I am looking around through the windows for opportunities to get in a wreck. Alicia says the driver and I are both nuts. We get in a massive wreck. He jumps the cab from the top of one parking garage to another one and then we crash into a large fuel tanker, creating a huge explosion. Somehow none of us are hurt, but the explosion is awesome. The driver has had enough, but I want to play more. I jack a car from the parking lot we crashed in and take it out, aiming to get in more wrecks. I hit a few cars and then crash into someone's living room through the front window. I look around and I see Abby Shuto from NCIS

standing by a couch, she doesn't seem to notice the car that just crashed into her living room. There with her is Beetlejuice from the movie Beetlejuice.

That is a strange combo… Beetlejuice hands Abby a bouquet of black roses, with a hopeful look on his face. Abby is upset about something, however. She grabs the roses from him, tears them apart, and throws them back in his face before storming off into another room and slamming the door behind her. Beetlejuice looks totally depressed as he come over near me, finally taking note of the car in the living room, he says she'll never forgive him.

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.

Plans: I didn't have any specific plans for tonight, though I was rather expecting a DDO based dream since I have been playing a lot of DDO lately… My main goal is still to have more consistent recall, as that has been very unpredictable lately. I have some recall from last night, and here it is.

Hell Is For Children
I am in a dungeon like the kind that is found in the online game DDO, Dungeons and Dragons Online. I am there looking for some prisoners, a woman in a nearby town has told me that the kobolds have kidnapped several children and are holding them captive in these very caves. Of all weird things, I have a log book in my pocket and I am able to look back over the goals I have for this quest. Find and rescue all of the children, 5 left. Kill Sagun Krent, who is apparently one of the leaders of the kobolds. Kill Darren Drexel, who is a human traitor, and apparently helped the kobolds get hold of the children in the first place. Destroy the kobold dungeon (optional) is on the end of the list. Ok, so now that I have the goals memorized, I put the log in my pocket and form Witchblade into a sword and armor. The dungeon is pretty basic, there are quite a few kobolds guarding the place, and also quite a few barrels and crates to smash, I am finding a decent amount of money. I find a locked door quite a ways in, and the kobold guarding the door has the key, so I kill that kobold and go into the main prison area. There are a few more kobolds there, I kill them, and then use some thieves tools I have on me to pick the locks to the prison cells that each have a child in them. Four children. One left. I have two girls and two boys with me, they all grab daggers from a pile of weapons stashed in the corner, not wanting to be defenseless. We look for fifth child. There is a torture room, the girl is naked and chained to a table with a kobold on top of her, forcing himself on her. Before I can act, the other four children swarm the kobold, stabbing it with their daggers, it falls off the girl and bleeds to death. Pick the locks on the girl's chains, find some rags to use as temporary clothing, she is more traumatized than the others. On the way out Sagun Krent blocks our exit. I fight him, the traitor Darren Drexel tries to grab the kids, the four stab him to death. The one girl is huddled on the floor. I kill Sagun Krent. All mandatory tasks complete. Now I can recall… no recall button? Of course not! This isn't a game! Kids and I make our way out, killing a few lingering kobolds on the way. I notice some barrels of explosives near the entrance, convenient, so once we're all outside, I detonate them with an energy ball, and the entrance to the cave collapses. All goals complete. I lead the kids back to the town, I use a healing spell on the one girl to help her overcome her trauma. Parents are thrilled to see their kids, want to give me rewards, but I wake up


One Woman Army
I am in the town of Korthos from DDO, and everyone is in a state of panic. I ask someone what is going on, he says the city is about to be overrun by devourer servants… not on my watch! I go to the front gate where there are a few warriors trying to hold the gates, there are many enemies just outside it. I say I will fight, they say it's too late, and they can't open the gates, they need to give the people a chance to escape. I jump over the gate and I am now facing a huge group of surprised enemies, that seem to be made up of sahuagin, various classes of human devourer minions, kobolds, zombies, and skeletons. What a nice mix. I use an Alex Mercer archetype and form my arms both into his sword blades and charge directly into the group, cutting enemies down as I charge through them, they are momentarily too surprised to respond much, this is totally unexpected. I am in the middle of the group now and I use a tendril barrage devastator attack and send razor sharp tendrils through all of the enemies anywhere near me, huge numbers of enemies of all kinds are killed by this. Now the ones who had been ready to attack are being killed before their attacks can actually land, others are just trying to get out of the path of my attacks. It's the devourer forces who are now panicking, they hadn't realized that many of them could be killed that quickly, so many of them are running away, the leaders are getting pissed and saying it's only one person, kill her, you cowards. There is one leader each, a devourer priest, a sahuagin priestess, a kobold chief, and a necromancer that is of a race I don't recognize. The human priest is closest, so I form one hand into an Alex Mercer claw and crush his neck to shut him up. I use a tendril from my left hand to pull the sahuagin priestess to me and then cut her in two with a blade formed of my right hand. I charge at the kobold chief and knock him to the ground, then impale him there with three tendrils… the necromancer is running, leaving undead to guard his back. I use a variant of Alex Mercer's ground spike attack, sending biomass into the ground that erupts through the ranks of the undead in a wave that keeps going until it catches up with and impales the necromancer. Except for the undead, the enemies are fleeing… cowards… disorganized, fleeing into the hills and surrounding wilderness. I use the blade to cut through the remaining undead, and soon all that remains outside the Korthos gate is a lot of dead bodies and blood. Two stunned Korthos guards are looking out of the gate, gaping at me, one of them says, "What the fuck are you?"

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.