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    Creatures of the Labyrinth

    The most interesting part of my dreams, to me, is the worldbuilding. Not necessarily the stories or narratives the dreams create, though that can be interesting as well, but the worlds and characters and creatures and beings that are used within the dream. My dreams tend to be heavier on worldbuilding than on story.

    In accordance with my interests, I plan on making an "unorthodox" dream journal. Not for recording the dreams or their stories, necessarily, but I'd like to focus on the creatures and entities that appear in my dreams, to write entries for and describe them in detail.

    1. Selkies and Vampires

      by , 08-09-2018 at 09:28 PM (Creatures of the Labyrinth)
      Selkies have popped up a few times in my dreams, enough so that I wanted to make an entry on them in this log.

      But before I can talk about the Selkies we need to talk about the vampires.

      Vampires are your standard, Nosferatu-style, blood-drinking undead, with palid gray skin and elongated fangs. However the anatomy of the vampires of my dreams differs (consistently differing across different dreams, oddly enough) from the standard in a few ways. First, the feet of a vampire are more batlike than humanlike, and can be used to cling to cave ceilings. Second, the vampires possess crooked, bizarre "hook hands". The hands have an extra finger after the pinky finger, which curves outward and away from the hand. This hook-finger moves and flexes at odd angles. Additionally the hook-finger, as well as the pinky finger and the thumb, are covered in bone spurs that protrude from the flesh. A vampire can drink blood through it's hands, and when resting prefers to have its hook-hands soaking in fresh, bloody meat when possible.

      A vampire cannot be truly killed, as it will come back to life eventually, and thus the best that can be done is to bury a vampire's body after it dies, so that it comes back to life deep underground.

      Selkies, much like the creatures from Scottish folklore of the same name, are shapeshifters bearing a human form and a seal form, though in my dreams their alternate form is always that of a walrus rather than a seal. Selkies can freely switch between their two forms, and often do so to facilitate movement, since they are faster in the water as a walrus and faster on the land as a man.

      The selkies as a whole are additionally fiercely dedicated vampire hunters, devoting their lives to keeping mankind safe from the vampiric threat. In their walrus forms, they primarily fight vampires using their tusks, driving their massive, ivory stakes through the hearts of the vampire to incapacitate it. In their human form, they favor use of a "flying guillotine" of Wuxia movie fame, a hatlike object on a chain that can be thrown over an opponent's head, the chain then used to trigger spring-loaded blades, causing decapitation. These are favored since decapitation will also incapacitate a vampire.

      After destroying a vampire, a selkie will bury the remains, as a vampire cannot truly be killed. Selkies maintain maps of all their burial locations, so they can intervene whenever new construction might threaten to unearth a disposed-of threat.

      In the course of fighting vampires, inevitably some selkies get bitten by vampires and become vampires themselves. Vampire selkies continue to hunt rogue vampires, dedicating their now-immortal existence to the craft, and are still accepted by the rest of the selkies, despite being vampires themselves. Vampiric selkies partner with the Catholic Church to control their bloodlust, as Catholic communion wine, due to the doctrine of transubstantiation (the belief that communion wine, the "blood of God", is literally transformed to Jesus' blood once consumed), allows a selkie vampire to drink blood without having to actually shed any blood. Transubstantiation is, apparently, a 100% correct belief in my dreams, and can be thus used to sustain a vampire. Vampiric selkies often must get their communion wine through intermediaries, however, as it isn't easy to obtain communion wine without encountering crosses.

      ^w^
    2. Breatharian Spider

      by , 04-25-2018 at 09:31 PM (Creatures of the Labyrinth)
      The being I met was a gigantic spider. His body was a lime-green sphere, with one eye and a jagged mouth. He had eight spindly brown legs extending from his body, and wore a crumpled purple top hat. He introduces himself as "the Wisest Spider", though it is questionable at best if the things that come out of his mouth constitute "wisdom".

      The Wisest Spider has a long list of opinions on what behaviors a "True Spider" will or will not engage in, brushing aside any concerns that this might be a "No True Scotsman Fallacy" by simply not acknowledging that the concern was even raised.

      The Wisest Spider continues to peddle his questionable wisdoms in his advocacy for the Breatharian lifestyle. That is, a lifestyle that eschews eating and drinking entirely, claiming the body doesn't actually need food to function. The Wisest Spider is himself a Breatharian, never eating or drinking, and attests that this is the "healthiest lifestyle".

      Except, of course, on his "cheat days", in which he eats ("for purely recreational reasons" he assures us). It's not that he needs to eat, he just wants to some times, because he likes to taste things. These cheat days are, well, every other day. Attempts to argue to the Wisest Spider that his lifestyle isn't "Breatharianism" but merely "intermittent fasting" do not appear to work. He is adamant that he is practicing a "Breatharian" lifestyle, and besides, he likes the sound of the word.

      ////==\\\\ ~Wisdom~
    3. The Strangest Couple

      by , 03-22-2018 at 10:18 PM (Creatures of the Labyrinth)
      A dream of mind focused on a romantic couple, and both of them are some of the strangest creatures I've ever seen in a dream.

      The female of the pair had the head of a cat, and the body of a gigantic bumblebee. The species further had five eyes and needle-sharp teeth. The fur of this creature's head was crimson in color, and where yellow stripes would normally be on a bee, the stripes of the thorax and abdomen were instead crimson.

      The male of the pair was mostly just a large, brown colored water buffalo, except for the creature's face, which was disturbingly human, complete with facial hair, and specifically looked to be Spanish in ethnicity. His face was constantly locked in a grimace of mild discomfort and he wore a chef hat. When this creature died it was furthermore allowed to come back to life in it's "true form", which appeared as a disappointingly normal anthropomorphic dog.

      The two were in love, though the female had qualms about dating a herbivore, though this issue was solved when the male was suddenly killed and subsequently reincarnated.
    4. Jiangshi

      by , 02-23-2018 at 06:01 PM (Creatures of the Labyrinth)
      The Jiangshi of my dreams are similar to the Jiangshi of Chinese folklore, the “hopping vampire”, except the Jiangshi of my dreams aren’t actually undead humans, they just appear to be.

      The Jiangshi are, in actuality, a species of sapient clothing. Elaborate sets of robes that possess a sinister soul within them. It is rumored that by donning one of these magic robes you will gain spectacular powers and become a powerful undead creature, but that is just a rumor created by the Jiangshi themselves. In actuality, when you wear a Jiangshi, your own soul is cast out of your body, replaced with the soul of the Jiangshi. The wearer’s original soul is cast into their old, discarded clothes, where it will survive for a time before fading away, and the Jiangshi obtains a new body.

      The Jiangshi rumor is designed to lure in those seeking power, trick them into wearing a Jiangshi, and provide a new body to bodyless Jiangshi. This trickery is essentially how they reproduce. They seclude themselves in an undead-haunted bog, luring the power-hungry to themselves and quietly amassing an army.
      Categories
      non-lucid
    5. The Cursepeddlers

      by , 02-21-2018 at 04:15 PM (Creatures of the Labyrinth)
      This is my first attempt at a dream journal entry. I'd like to take an unorthodox approach to this particular dream journal. Rather than give my dreams in full, or focusing on the stories and narratives of those dreams, I plan on focusing on the various beings of these dreamscapes. The "Creatures of the Labyrinth".

      To start this off, a dream creature from a newer dream: a Cursepeddler. The Cursepeddlers are a species of large, sapient bats, roughly the size of a flying fox, and black in color. They dwell in small shacks filled with magical baubles, curiosities, and sometimes even magical creatures like imps. They hang from their ceiling, selling their goods to those who visit. They even offer the first sale to a new customer free as a "gift".

      The catch, however, is that a good portion of what they sell is cursed. Not everything is cursed, and the Cursepeddlers themselves will openly tell you which items are or are not cursed, but one has to be careful when making one's selection at a Cursepeddler's store.

      Care must especially be taken due to one quirk of the Cursepeddler species: they speak backwards, reversing every letter in a made statement. This makes it difficult to follow what a Cursepeddler is saying, and makes it potentially easy to miss descriptions of curses within the description of any given item.

      Whether the Cursepeddlers speak backwards because they are cursed themselves, or whether they are simply mischievous and trying to obfuscate the cursed status of their wares, is unknown to all save the Cursepeddlers themselves.
      Categories
      non-lucid