New Dream Adventures of Raven Knight

01/31/12

Game Analysis 101
I am in school, it seems to be a game design class. Everyone is talking about some video games and comparing them. I am paying some attention, but I feel quite tired and I also feel like falling asleep. My eyelids are heavy and I close them just enough to rest them. I drift to sleep, and then I get poked by the person next to me. I look and I see that my ex-boyfriend is in the class with me, and he has poked me to wake me up. I stay awake long enough to hear everyone is now discussing Oblivion, and how it compares to Fallout 3. The subject of Skyrim comes up as the instructor asks if anyone has played that and how it compares. James says all of them blow ass. I comment he wouldn’t know a good game if it bit him. He gives me a strange look, maybe says something, but I am again drifting off to sleep. My eyes close and then I wake up.

Cats!
I am in a place I don’t recognize, it is a house, and it is a big one. I have no thought that I’m not supposed to be there, I am just wandering around and exploring. I enter a bedroom and see an adorable tabby cat on the bed. How cute! I turn to leave the bedroom and I almost trip over a tortie cat right behind me. Wow… where did you come from? I pat the kitty and head down the hall towards the bathroom. In the bathroom I find there is no human toilet, but there are four cat pans lined against the far wall. Am I supposed to use the cat pan? Even if I wanted to, they are all occupied. There is a cat doing business in each one and also three more cats patiently waiting in line. Wow… 7 more cats! I pat the last one in line and head out to find a human bathroom. I don’t find another bathroom, but I find my way back to the living room. I go to sit on the couch but I am warded off by a hiss. I almost sat on a cat! I look and see there are seven cats crowded onto the seat of the couch, all lying around each other. There are three more cats on the back of the couch and a cat on each arm. 12 more cats! I mentally count cats and realize I have found 21 cats so far. I turn from the couch and almost fall on my face as I realize I am about to step on a cat’s tail and I move awkwardly to avoid doing that. 22 cats… I wake up with a single cat purring beside me.

Plans: The only plan I had made for today was to meet up with MoSh in a Hogwarts dream, though I really want to increase my lucidity and get my recall back to its normal rate. I really wish I knew why I have been having so many problems with that lately…

Sleep In
It is time for me to go to bed, I have no idea that I am actually already in bed and dreaming. I am getting ready to lie down in bed when my mother comes into the room and asks me when I am going to be up the next morning. I tell her I'll probably be up at the usual time, of course. My mother says she wants to get going sooner than that. I don't remember where we are planning on going, but I am thinking it is somewhere really fun, and I definitely don't want to miss getting to do it. I tell my mother maybe I could get up a bit earlier than normal… My mother points at the clock and says it's only 11:30 at night, so if I sleep until my normal time, I'd be getting 12 hours of sleep! She says I really don't need to get 12 hours of sleep, do I? I agree that 12 hours is probably overdoing it, I tell her I'll get up around 10 instead, so it will only be around 10 hours of sleep. She seems to think this is still quite unreasonable, but she sighs with exasperation. She says if I can manage to get out of bed a bit sooner, please do, she really doesn't want to wait that late and might just end up leaving without me. This idea makes me a bit nervous, so I decide to set my alarm for 8:00 in the morning and settle for the usual 8 hours of sleep that is the recommended amount. I fall asleep in bed without even considering doing a RC at any point.

Rock the House
I am going to a concert that takes place in a small club. There aren't that many people there to see the band, and I figure that is because the band rather sucks. There are overly aggressive bouncers guarding the stage, maybe they are afraid someone will attack the band members for sucking so bad. One guy tries to get to the stage, though it looks like he is happy and wants to meet one of the band members rather than like he is hostile. Apparently someone likes the music. One of the bouncers grabs him, punches him hard in the gut, then drags him outside as he is gasping for breath. The bouncer throws him to the ground and shuts the door before returning to his post. Wow… so violent… everyone else sits down in the seats to keep from having the bouncers attack. I really don't like this. On a hunch I do a RC and find out I'm dreaming. I fly from my seat and phase through the ceiling of the club, out into the open blue sky.

Ok, so now that I'm lucid, I need to decide what to do. I don't remember my goals… damn… but I do remember that in some of my lucids my dream control hasn't been as strong as it should be. So I fly over the city and start practicing my dream skills. I discover that anything I can focus on and visualize I can create. Of course I can, I am inside my own inner world… it is entirely under my control… I do things such as alter the forms of a couple buildings, I bring a statue to life. It is the statue of a horse that is about 50 feet tall, the horse gallops away, freaking out all of the DCs in its path. I instinctively can tell that all of the people around there are DCs rather than real people. I fly over a park and spawn a huge and beautiful tree with large golden fruits growing on it, I pick one and eat it… it tastes like chocolate. Yay! Chocolate flavored fruit! A DC is beside the tree and staring at me with his jaw on the ground, it is an older man, I fly down over him and tell him if he's going to have his mouth hanging open, put something yummy in it! I break off a piece of the fruit and stick it in the man's mouth where he doesn't even seem to notice it. I decide to go back to the concert to see if I can make it more interesting. I head back, and I find that for some reason there is now an iron grid around the club… where did that come from? No matter. I focus a circle of heat to soften the iron, then I rip out the circle of iron to create an entrance. Wow, that was easy! Inside, the same band is still sucking, most of the crowd have left. I use a puppet kind of control on the band members, my DCs, and I summon a guitar and join in. Now we rock! We play a song I don't think I have ever heard. But there's no one there to see it. I summon some more DCs to be the audience. For some reason the DCs that appear are dressed as if for a wedding. Weird… but no matter. I continue using the band DCs to accompany me as I play guitar and sing. It is fun.


The Perfect Storm
I am in a castle like the one in Harry Potter, I am in Hogwarts. There are people around me, everyone seems to be rather huddled together, though I'm not sure why. They have everyone crammed into the great hall, all of the people from all of the houses, and this is creating more than a few arguments amongst the less friendly students. Mostly everyone is keeping to themselves, however, and the talk is mostly about a storm. I listen to some of them, then I go over to a window and look outside… and there sure is a storm out there, it looks like a serious blizzard. The wind is howling outside and looks like it must be blowing at hurricane force. I look beside me and I see MoSh is there. I ask what is going on out there, he says it's a major storm. No shit, Sherlock… I say it seems strange, where did it come from? MoSh says no one is sure, it is the worst storm Hogwarts has ever seen, and it came out of nowhere. The temperatures in most of the castle have plummeted to sub zero levels, there is no way the fires and such can keep things warm at all. The great hall has been placed under an enchantment to keep it warm, which is why everyone is here. Wow… that is one serious storm. I wonder if the storm is definitely natural.

I wander around the room more, I see Crabb and Goyle near another window, staring out, apparently fixated on something out there. That gets my curiosity up so I go over to them and ask what they are looking at. Crabb said nothing, they are looking for Draco. I ask why they are looking out there for Draco, shouldn't he be in the great hall with everyone else? Goyle hesitates, Crabb says they're not supposed to tell, Draco said it's a secret. I say I won't tell anyone, so go ahead and share it with me… I'm sure Draco wouldn't mind if I know. Finally Goyle says Draco went outside about an hour ago, before the storm got so bad, and he hasn't come back. Crabb said Draco had been going out to get something to do with the tournament task, but students aren't supposed to go into the forest… and he hasn't come back. Wow… Draco is out in the storm? I decide I have to go out to get him. Goyle says I promised not to tell… I ask how they can keep that secret when Draco could die out there? I add not to worry, I don't need to tell anyone… I'll go get Draco myself.

I go to leave the room, but McGonagall stops me and says no one is to leave the room. I had thought that might be an issue. I go to the other side of the room and find a secret passage behind a suit of armor, the passage leads outside eventually. And it is freezing out, though it doesn't feel as bad as MoSh had indicated. Then again, I am used to the cold pretty well. I wrap myself in some cloaks I find near the exit and head for the forbidden forest. There is no point in calling Draco, the wind is much too loud. The sleet and snow is like needles against my face, not comfortable at all, but definitely bearable. Once I get to the forest I find there is a bit of shelter, I look around, not sure where to find Draco. Somehow my instinct guides me, and after I have traveled a short distance, I find Draco huddled under a particularly large tree. He has his robes pulled tight around him, but those do no good… they are soaked from the sleet. I have seen movies and read books about arctic survival… wearing wet clothes is worse than none at all in the cold… and I have enough cloaks around me to share… So I start getting Draco out of the wet robes, he seems too out of it to respond much… I wrap my cloaks around both of us, keeping him close to share some body heat as we head back to the castle and into the passage I left through.

McGonagall meets us just a short way in, she says if I thought she didn't know about this passage, I was sorely mistaken… how dare I go outside and risk my… she sees Draco with me… good lord, what happened here? Where did you find him? I answer with the first thing I can think of, I say he was outside looking for herbs and hadn't gotten inside before the storm started. True, but I didn't mention the forbidden forest. McGonagall looks at Draco, mostly naked and shivering under my cloaks, she asks if he didn't hear the storm warning, or if he didn't take it seriously… he should really have listened… but save that for later. She asks for me to help her get him to the hospital wing. We get Draco to the hospital wing, where another spell has been cast for warmth, and put him into a bed to be cared for by Madam Palmphrey. Outside the hospital wing McGonagall says that my going out in the storm alone was very foolish, why hadn't I told someone, told a teacher that Draco was outside? But it was also very brave… she doesn't know whether to punish me for leaving the castle in this storm or reward me for bringing Draco back safely… so she will do neither. She says to get back to the great hall through the hidden passage and no one will know I had left, or at least they wouldn't hear it from her. I head back to the great hall.