A Long Strange Trip... into Ashraen's Twisted Psyche

non-lucid
lucid
TOTM
notes

I am at a party where there is dancing and music. The guest of honor is announced as 'Adam Sandler,' but it's really my old soccer coach Joe, who actually looks alot like Adam. The spotlight is put on him, and he's trying to take a nap, which everyone thinks is hilarious. I am swordfighting with some people with long balloon swords.

I walk outside to get some fresh air, and it's dark. There are some people here and there, milling about, doing the types of things that people generally duck outside of a party to do, and I decide to start walking home. Suddenly, it's morning and I am driving down the road. There is a limo pulling out, and I slow down in order to let them on the road.. but the driver waves me on. As I pass the limo, I see that Mayor Royce from The Wire is riding in it, wearing a tuxedo with the tie undone and all disheveled looking.

When I see my turn off the road, I start to slow down, but I realize I'm not slowing down fast enough to make the turn. I try to slow down more, but it doesn't seem to work. This type of thing is common in my dreams, and it hits me that I might be dreaming. I quit trying to slow down and try to fly instead... the car lifts off the ground and I become lucid

I shed the car and keep flying for awhile, passing farmhouses and livestock, streams, hills, and fields. I'm looking for something but I don't seem to know what. I see a tall white tower on the side of a hill which looks very out of place, so I fly down to check it out. When I land on the roof, it becomes clear that the tower is very small - on a different scale than me. I am far too big to actually go inside.

I try to scale myself down - and it's working - but I can't seem to get quite small enough to actually go inside. The building seems to be scaling down a little as I do, altho I'm definitely getting smaller faster (in other words, the building was shrinking, but not as fast as I was). I decide to give up on this little adventure and find something else to do.

I fly over to to a large tree stump where a hispanic guy with a hat and sunglasses is sitting. I say 'Hola amigo, como estas?' He looks at me and says 'You must finish the quest.' I am confused by this.

NOTE: Upon waking, I realized this was my subconscious telling me to finish the quest I started the night before in the Serial Dream RPG. I even went to bed trying to incubate this... but sadly I didn't realize it in this lucid.

I look over and see a small pond with a rail fence around half of it. I have been trying (and failing) to walk on water for several attempts over a few months, so I decide I should walk on the water. Successfully this time. I fly over to the water, wave my hand to send a couple of sheep flying off in the distance (this is almost force of habit now. If I have a DC - human or animal - near me while I'm about to attempt something, I dismissively send them flying away from me immediately).

I had an idea of how to make the water walking work while in the waking world. I'm good at flying/floating, so I figured I would start by floating on the top of the water, then try walking. I grabbed the rail fence and stepped onto the water, keeping myself hovering over it. I lowered myself until I could feel the water touching my feet, then I let go of the fence and started to walk.. It was working! Finally!

As I crossed the pond, I began to every-so-slowly sink into the water a bit. I focused on levitating myself up a couple of inches, and continued to walk until I crossed the pond. At the other side, I took a deep breath, stabilized, and repeated the process. This time I made it back across without a hitch. I was so excited that the dream started to fade... I sat patiently, telling myself that it would come back as my world faded to black..

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

I was now awake, laying in bed, but I still hadn't moved or opened my eyes from the previous LD. I knew if I was patient, the dream would return. I began to hear sounds in the distance, and a dreamscape (my room) began to form out of the darkness. I got up, levitated the fan on the desk in my room just to be sure I was dreaming (it worked), and walked to my door. I decided to walk through the door instead of opening it (sometimes I can do this easily, sometimes not). As I pressed against the door, the door resisted and I felt my dream fading. I stubbornly kept trying to force myself through the door... and I woke up.

Take that water walking!! I was so sick of mastering all kinds of crazy dream powers (even successfully made a portal the other night) and not be able to do this one simple thing.. but now I've done it and I have the confidence of knowing that I can. DEILD chained me into a very short LD unfortunately, but that was because of my stubbornness with the door. If I had stopped and stabilized, it would have extended. All in all, good morning of dreaming

non-lucid
lucid
notes

I was in a restaurant with my family eating. It was time to leave, and I left in my car with my mom driving. The parking lot was crowded, and my mom was squeezing over to the side to get by some cars. There was a large tree overhanging into the parking lot, and I was worried that we would wreck. Instead, we just drove right THRU the tree. I thought 'that was weird,' and as we got onto the highway, I tried to levitate the whole car into the air (a little RC I've been doing on my looooong weekend trips for work). It worked, confirming my suspicion that I was lucid dreaming

I moved thru the car door (without opening it) to the road and stood there for a minute, stabilizing. The road stretched out ahead of me, and the sky was a beautiful pink-orange, so I started running down the road, trying for super-speed. It wasn't working, when I remembered that it was much harder for me to do if I was actually moving my legs. So, I started floating forward, imagining the world moving quickly past me, and I began to pick up speed until I was cruising very fast!

After a bit of this, I stopped and thought about what to do next. I was standing on the road, with scrub land spreading out all around me. I decided to try to make a portal. I have tried this before with no luck, but I tried to eliminate doubt and expect it to work. I wanted to continue my quest in the Land of Aud, so I attempted to make a portal that would take me to the Market in Denn.

As I watched, a blue mist began to materialize before me in the air, expanding into a circle about 4 feet in diameter. I closed my eyes and backed through the portal (for some reason, at the time this method of entering seemed like the most promising for success )

It worked! When I backed through the portal, the sounds around me changed, the temperature changed, and when I opened my eyes, I was in the marketplace in Denn! The sky went from clear and pink-orange to cloudy and purple. There were small shops criss-crossed by dirt paths, with small rectangular pools of water smattered about. I walked over to a pool and looked at my reflection. I wasn't in character, so I changed into my brown wide-brimmed hat, white linen shirt, and brown leather pants. It's getting much easier to do this

Because I've been having a tough time walking on water (made 2 attempts even before it was the TOTM), I decided to give it a quick go while I was staring at some... and failed. and failed. and then said screw it!

Now, I needed some armor and a weapon. I ducked down an alley and found several aisles of armor. I walked down a couple of them, surveying the selection. There was mail, plate, boiled leather, and things I had never seen before, all in crazy colors (even polka dot). I found some burnt-orange colored armor that looked interesting. It looked almost like a robotic suit of armor, but lightweight.

As I slipped my legs into the bottom part, they snapped tightly around my legs, forming to the contours and glowing slightly. They were lightweight but felt very sturdy. I still had great flexibility. I put on the breastplate and gauntlets (this was all hanging together as one suit), and began to jump around and move, testing the armor. I was able to move like I had nothing on, but I felt incredibly well-protected, and everything was lightly glowing a dark orange. There was a helmet but I decided I didn't need it

I remembered that I needed a weapon. I realized that the armor I was wearing resembled the 'shardplate' armor suits that I had read about in The Way of Kings by Brandon Sanderson. In that book, shard bearers (those wearing the shardplate) were able to summon a shardblade with their minds. I closed my eyes, took three slow breaths (actually, I think it takes 10 breaths in the books, but this didn't deter me at the time), and opened my eyes as I felt something in my right hand.

I was holding the grip of a brilliant orange sword, glowing. The blade came out of the grip and curved around my hand and out in front of me. It was about 3.5 feet long and looked kinda like the sword from Halo. I took a few practice swipes, and it whistled as it sliced through the air. I just stood there for a few minutes, sort of in awe at the whole situation.. feeling pretty invincible

It was time to find a beast to slay! I took off back up the alley I had ducked into to find the armor. When I reached the place where the broad street had been before, it was now a stream bordered on the other side by a forest. I headed in a trot and made a flying leap to cross the stream.. and woke up.. d'oh!

This was really fun. I'm so glad I found this site, because I was pretty bored with my lucid dreaming when I last focused on it (a few years ago). The creative adventures of the peeps on this board have given me all kinds of new ideas, and I have developed dream powers I had never even thought of in the brief couple of months I have been a member. Damn that water walking tho.. I'm gonna get that one eventually!