New Dream Adventures of Raven Knight

10/30/13

Puppet Master
I am in a dungeon of some kind. I am making my way through passages and tunnels of stone. I am thinking of it like a dungeon from one of the Legend of Zelda games. I see I am there with Link. We continue into a larger chamber where we are immediately attacked by some strange creatures. They look sort of like spiders, but they only have four legs. They kind of jump around the room. They are all about the size of wolves. They come at us as soon as we enter the room. Link starts fending them off with his sword and shield but he seems to be holding back. He says he doesn't want to kill them if he can avoid it because they aren't acting of their own free will. He says normally they are quite peaceful. I think stunning them would be a good plan. I use the song spell Battery by Metallica to summon some lightning, but I focus to keep it at a lower power. Sparks fly through the room and knock the strange creatures unconscious. Link checks on one of them to be sure it is alive. He nods at me and starts to continue to the next passage. I tell him to wait, I will charge his shield with electricity so he can knock enemies unconscious with it. I do that using Battery by Metallica again. We encounter a few more of the strange creatures in the hallway but Link knocks them unconscious with his electrified shield. We enter a large cavern now. It extends to unknown depths below us. I look down into the blackness and it looks bottomless. There is a winding path that leads across the room. The ceiling is far above us, almost hidden in the darkness. Fires around the edge of the chamber keep the chamber lit. I briefly wonder how anyone got to those torches to keep them lit but I don't spend much time on that before I see something on the other side of the room. It looks like a huge and creepy doll of some kind.

It looks like one of those evil clowns like Pennywise from the book It or something similar. The clown doll is alive, and it is holding puppet strings that are hanging down into the darkness below. Even though they don't appear to be connected to anything I figure those are what the thing is using to control the strange creatures in the dungeon and who knows what else it is controlling. There are armed guards standing along the narrow passage, blocking the way. Link says they are acting of their own free will… he knows that because they were enemies before the Puppet Master showed up. So we make our way along the narrow path. One of the guards lunges at me. I time it just right to grab hold of him and push him off the edge of the pathway into the darkness below. Link shoves another one off with his shield. I actually jump over Link and grab the next guard before he can react and I push him off of the passage as well. The Puppet Master is getting angry, saying he has to do everything himself. But he doesn't do it himself. Instead he summons forth a lot of strange creatures. Many of them are like the ones in the passages, others look sort of like ewoks with white fur.

Link says they are being controlled by the Puppet Master… but how do we set them free? I tell him I am sure all we have to do is cut the Puppet Master's strings. He looks past the army arrayed against us and at the strings hanging from the creepy clown doll. He sarcastically asks if that is all we have to do… clearly he doesn't think it will be that easy. How do we get past the guards without killing them? They are all innocent. I am thinking of Prototype, so I use moves from Prototype. I jump. But I don't just jump, I crouch and charge up a large jump. I then glide right over the Puppet Master's pawns. I form my right arm into a blade and slice through all the strings on the one side. Link is just staring at me now as if he can't believe what I just did. The Puppet Master screams in rage and about half of the army blocking Link just looks disoriented. Before he can attack me I do another charged jump and cut through the strings on the other side. Now all of his slaves are disoriented and none of them interfere with Link as he passes through them. Link says the only way to kill the Puppet Master is to destroy the gem on his forehead. I look up and see there is a red gem there that is glowing. Link says only the sword of light can do it. I have my doubts that the gem can hold up to my Prototype sword, but I decide to play along. I take hold of Link and charge a jump, getting us out of the way just before one of the clown's huge hands crashes down in an attempt to crush us. When we are high enough Link jumps off of me and drives his sword into the red gem. Red sparks fly and the gem shatters. The Puppet Master collapses to the ground with Link still standing on top. The former slaves of the Puppet Master are still a bit disoriented, but they seem to be regaining their senses. The spider creatures are dispersing. Some of the white ewoks are coming towards Link and me. They are talking to us. One of them says he does not know how to thank us for freeing them from the Puppet Master's control. Link isn't listening to them. He asks how I did that. I ask what he is talking about as I transform my blade back into a human arm. He points at me and says that. I tell him it's a long story and I'm sure I don't have time to tell it. I am right about that, and Link has barely begun to ask me more questions when I wake up.

03/27/13

Pools of Healing
I am in my room, in bed. Someone is yelling at me. That is all I am aware of at first. Who is it? I open my eyes and see there is a single Templar beside my bed and he seems to be in a bad mood. But I notice he doesn't seem to be sending off the attacks I have come to expect. He is asking questions. He wants to know something. I assume I know what he is talking about, but I assume wrong. I expect he will be wanting to know where I have hidden the thing I stole from them, instead he is asking what I did to someone. The three Templars that went through that portal aren't acting normal at all, what is wrong with them? I am a bit annoyed at this Templar being here yelling at me, my first reaction is to tell him I'll show him what I did to those other three… he falls silent and takes a step back, clearly not liking that idea. My mind clears and I remember that there were three Templars I got pissed at and sent to the Dark Realm. I'm not about to send another one there, but I am glad the idea of it has made him shut up. In fact I remember I had plans to get those three out of the Dark Realm, no one deserves to be left there. But first to the moon. I focus on opening a portal, and it opens right away. The Templar moves away from the portal. I tell him it leads to the balancing pools on the moon, not the Dark Realm… and then I go through the portal. I get to the other side and it is right next to the balancing pools.

Nomad is already in one of the pools and appears to be relaxing. I get into the pool and focus healing energy on his foot where he still has some sores, though the injuries look like they're improving. After doing that I let myself sink through the warm relaxing waters to the bottom of the pool where I am having no difficulty breathing the water. It smells fresh and clean. I am relaxing there as I fall asleep.

Out of the Darkness
I am with Nomad, Link, Altaïr, and Spike. I immediately don't like the place. We are in what looks like an underground hallway, part of a labyrinth perhaps, a long stone corridor that is illuminated only by torches set in the walls. The passage is stiflingly hot, the stone walls are practically too hot to touch. The look of the place isn't what I find worst about it, however. It's the sounds. From seemingly all around come the echoing sounds of people screaming in pain, like someone is being tortured. I wait for a moment for my mind to clear and then I remember I am actually there to get three people out, because this is probably the area of the Dark Realm they have been brought to. I sent them here, I need to get them out. I notice everyone else is wearing black, black versions of the usual Assassin robes, and I realize that is much harder to see against the dark stone than the white ones I have. So I change my white ones to black.

Someone I don't recognize comes down the hall, my first impression is that she is a Templar. But she seems to be helping us… well maybe she would be since the goal is to retrieve three Templars from the Dark Realm. She says she found the way through the labyrinth. There is a torture chamber, she shudders but offers no further description. Another scream of pain echoes through the halls making further description unnecessary. She says there are more than three of them there, she wasn't aware of which ones were the Templars I had sent here and who the others were. I figure it doesn't matter… if they're prisoners here they need to get out. We all follow the woman down some halls to a room of nightmares. I see a sight I am sure I have seen before. A man is naked in a metal cage over a fire, his skin is blistering and cracking as it burns, his face is a mask of pain but he is silent. Nomad says they will see about getting more free before we're discovered, though that probably won't take long. I go over to the man in the cage, he is not even aware of my presence. There is a demon of some kind watching him, completely absorbed by the sight. The demon is not paying any attention to me. The demon looks almost like a human, in fact if I hadn't already known it was a demon I might have thought it was a Templar… but a Templar wouldn't be torturing another Templar, would he? I charge my hidden blade with light energy and sneak up behind the demon, pumping him full of the stuff before he can sound an alarm. I open the cage with the half-dead Templar in it. There were three I sent here… where are the other two? I find the other two near where the first one was. The second one is another man, he is impaled on a pike that is set in fire… burning and impaled… and a demon is watching that. There is a woman in a small pit hogtied and there are bugs all over her, nasty demonic looking things, eating her alive… another demon is observing.

Somewhere around here someone must have gotten some attention, however, as the demons depart their posts and began gathering somewhere. I take that opportunity to get the other two free. I focus healing energy on them, healing up burns, bites, and other injuries, and blocking any pain. I see the others are there, and they have more prisoners with them. They are in an alcove, and I see there are demons searching the place. They seem a bit confused, and not sure where to find the intruders. The rescued prisoners all look like they're still in shock from their experience, they aren't very responsive. Nomad says they need more healing, and opens a portal to the Healing Glen where the crystal golem takes care of those who have been seriously hurt more than just physically. I'm not sure how many prisoners we rescued, though I am sure the three Templars I sent to the Dark Realm are the three I got out. I am thinking there are still more of them back in the prison, more of them that shouldn't be left there… but I'll not be getting them out now, I wake up.

The Halls of Data
I am heading to work at a hospital where I am a computer operator. I am parking in a huge parking garage that is arranged more like a massive maze than a regular parking garage. My mother is in the car with me, I am taking her to show her my office. We park at what is near the far side of the parking garage and then navigate the endless passages to get to the entrance of the hospital. I know exactly how to get to the data center, though the halls in the hospital are just as confusing as the parking garage. Two different times I lose my mom and I have to go back to find her. The data center is full of various computers, some of them are state of the art, others are ancient dinosaurs.

It turns out the dinosaur computers are nearly as useful as the new ones. Several employees are heading out for a smoking break, and I go along with them. We are outside on a patio and everyone lights up cigarettes and starts to smoke. A woman coworker notices I don't have a cigarette, so she lights one and hands it to me. I take the cigarette and take a drag from it. The smoke tastes gross, though I get a nice calm feeling along with it. The feeling has nothing compared to the horrible foul taste, and then there's the smell. The foul odor. I definitely don’t want any more of that. We are all playing a game of cards to win small colorful dragon figures that are encased in yummy candy. I win a large number of them and I sit back against the wall eating the candy.


The Missing Link
I am on an island in the middle of the ocean. I am looking all over the island for Link, from the Legend of Zelda. There are enemies attacking me, they look like some kind of piggish orc or something like that… I have a sword and shield, I am able to fend off their attacks. I am cutting down the attackers as they come. Finally there is a break in the attacks, and I am able to search the island for Link. No sign of him. I go to a dock and get on a small ship and I head to the next island. I know Link should be somewhere in this area, somewhere in this little group of islands. So I search the islands one by one, fighting my way through each of the islands… but I still have not found any sign of Link. I am getting quite worried now, thinking I might not be able to find him at all. This quest might end with epic failure. I am standing on a high cliff overlooking the ocean below when a strange old man walks up to me. He is a short and fat old man, wearing a really ratty hat and an otherwise nice suit. He says he knows what I am looking for, or rather who. He says Link is in the underwater kingdom of the merfolk. He says their kingdom is directly down below, in the deep ocean. I look down off the cliff and into the water. I think I can just jump down into the water and I can swim down and find Link. I ask the man if the water below is deep enough to jump into, but before he even answers I say to hell with it and jump out as far as I can. I plunge into the deep water and swim down from there, heading down into the depths. Merpeople of some kind are interfering, attacking me with spears, I fight back with my sword, though it is a bit harder to do underwater.

I can breathe underwater just fine. I swim into some caverns below, into one big underwater chamber. There is a bubble of air in the center of the chamber and Link is in that bubble. I fight my way through some more merpeople until I reach the bubble.

I take out a ring of waterbreathing like the one in DDO, and I give it to Link. A bubble of air forms around his head, somewhere I find an extra sword to give Link, and we are able to fight our way out of the cavern together and make it to the surface. We are get out of the water and onto one of the islands, the merpeople can do nothing but float in the water and throw curses at us.

Note: I know I have been away from posting dreams for a long time, and that is because I haven't been remembering any dreams. I have been having an extended drought in the area of dream recall and lucid dreams, but for last night I actually have something to post! What I remember is a lot of fragments, but part of it was even lucid, so I will post it all here. I finally remembered dreams again! Yay! My first point was to meet Tigress in the tower on the moon, so when I surprised myself by entering into a WILD, that was my first goal.

I was lying in my bed with my light / sound machine on, focusing on letting my body fall asleep while my mind remained conscious. Almost without even realizing what had happened, I slipped into a WILD. I was still thinking about my first goal, thinking I was still awake and had to use the bathroom. I got up and realized my door was closed, which is not normal, I leave it open so my cat, Midna, can sleep with me. I opened the door and found myself looking out of my bedroom into the sickbay of the tower on the moon. I did only a brief double take before realizing I was definitely dreaming, I was already in the WILD.

So now that I was in the WILD, I entered the sick bay and looked around. Janet and Tigress were in the room, Tigress was lying face down on one of the beds, and Janet was scanning her with a strange device. I remembered telling Tigress I was going to try a healing massage on her back, and Janet was also going to take a look. I went over to the bed and was going to wait for Janet to be done examining Tigress…

Some other stuff happened there which I think involved me completing the healing massage, but the next fragment I remember clearly included Tigress, Link, Janet, and me on the beach, I was looking out over the ocean with the adult form of Link by my side, it was an entirely beautiful scene. Tigress said the merpeople were in this ocean, and then she headed out into the waves. I followed her and Janet, then finally dove into the water and transformed into a mermaid at the same time. The four of us swam down into the ocean, at first the water felt kind of cold, but I soon adapted to it and found it felt very nice. We swam down, I watched the colorful fish around us, and we were soon greeted by a merman who indicated we should follow him. We went deeper into the ocean, it was getting darker as we went deeper, but then we came to an area which was illuminated by glowing plants and mosses. It was a really cool effect. The merman we were with said we had been expected, I wondered who had told them to expect us, but I figured it didn't really matter, it was probably Q. We were swimming towards what looked like an underwater stadium where this fragment of memory ends…

There must be some more stuff I forgot, because the next piece I remember I was in the stadium, swimming out in the middle of it with a bunch of merpeople. I felt I knew what was going on, everyone had on a different color belt indicating which of the two teams they were on, there was blue and yellow. I looked and noted I had a blue belt on. The other merpeople with blue belts were chasing after the merpeople with yellow belts, and they were all chasing after a ball of some kind that was drifting through the water. One of the yellow team hit the ball with his tail, sending it towards a goal, but a goalie for the blue team sent it right back out again to one of my teammates. With a blue team merman on each side of her, the blue team mermaid batted the ball with her tail and guided it towards the other goal. One of the yellow team managed to swim in and got his tail on the ball, sending out off to the side… in my direction. No one had been paying much attention to me, I had the idea I was just in this game because they were trying to be nice and let me play a bit, so I would just have to show them that I could contribute to the team, too. I went after the ball and hit it with my tail, hitting it away from a couple of approaching yellow team players, then I followed it and hit it back in almost the opposite direction as hard as I could, catching the yellow goalie by surprise and scoring a goal. I could hear the merpeople in the stands cheering, I thought they would mostly be surprised, and I was glad I had been able to at least score a goal… and that's the last clear memory I have from that part…

The next clear memory I have is when I was swimming along in an interesting place with Tigress, Janet, and Link. I didn't notice for sure if Tigress and Janet were merpeople, but I still was, as was Link. We were swimming through water that felt strangely warm, and very relaxing. There were colorful luminous flowers all over the ocean floor that gave off a rainbow of colored light that was very beautiful. We passed the rainbow flowers and entered into what looked like ruins of some ancient temple. The ruins continued, and I realized it was much more than a temple, it looked like the ruins of a lost city. I saw Janet and Tigress swimming very close together, and I felt Link was right beside me. I remember swimming through a particularly interesting series of pillars that looked like ruins from ancient Greece or Rome, I was wishing I could take photos from the dream plane into my waking life, I would really like to remember that. Since I couldn't pull out a camera, I continued looking around, trying to take in every detail of the place, I was thinking maybe I could create a digital picture of it in Photoshop or even a 3D rendering of it. This is the last part of the dream I remember, though I think it continued for a bit longer.