Nazrax

Imager rescue
I'm watching a group of Imagers descend into a strange place, some sort of alternate dimension. It's a "utopia," as clearly evidenced by the people all wearing the same identical flowing clothes and everything being spotlessly clean. The Imagers are here because they received a report that some of their members had been captured. Sure enough, in the main square they find a slaver selling four of their friends. The lead Imager pulls aside one of the junior members and instructs him to prepare a handful of poisoned coins (large silvery things), something that will take effect later in the day after they're long gone. He then starts to talk to the slaver to set the release conditions for the four. I start to talk to the captured Imagers to find out what happened. A young woman in the group tells me they were in the square and realized the best position had been taken, but no one was in it. Going over to investigate, someone had thrown bags over their heads, stopping them from fighting back, and here they are.


Curving fire
I'm standing outside with my wife and with Emily and her family on the grass near the end of "our" driveway. We're all admiring the neighbor's boat and jet ski. Emily's husband say that a jet ski is something they'd love to buy but they haven't been able to yet.

Now I'm setting up some kind of long rack with gas burners built into it. Now I'm carrying something that looks like a big scoop. It's the same width as the rack, two or maybe three feet. As I approach one end of the rack, the flames suddenly curve towards and into the scoop, even from the far end of the rack. It's quite a sight, and Emily is very impressed.


Side scroller
I'm playing a side scroller. I have to throw bombs to open new passages, but I have to be careful not to get caught in the explosions. Now My character is in a large room with some blocks in the middle and at the bottom. The next thing I need to do is to break through the blocks at the bottom and get into a water area. There's an enemy in the room with me, and I need to deal with him before I can continue. He's small and good at hiding, only coming out to strike when I'm not paying attention, so this is taking a while.

There's something about legal torrents of old games ranging from five hundred to two thousand megabytes. Many of the "old games" are actually new efforts designed to look like old games. I think about how pixel art is popular with indie devs, and how much I can't stand it.

Now I'm at the far left end of the room. There are more blocks here, and they seem to be switching every few seconds. Some of them show a powerup icon for a few seconds, then fade as other blocks start to show powerup icons. I try to break the powerups open, but I have to get moving at a good clip to do so, and that means being off screen to get enough speed, and that means I can't see which blocks currently hove powerups. As I move off screen I realize there's a hidden key showing me the blocks and powerups, and I'm able to use it to aim my character to get the powerups. After I've gotten a bunch, a gate comes down blocking my access, and a giant spiky rod starts to come down from the ceiling. I don't move quickly enough and take some damage before I'm able to get to the main part of the room, but then I'm able to use my new powerups, especially some kind of melee weapon that looks like a long rod, to make short work of it.


Bathing man
I'm in a yellowish room watching a very large man get painted all over with oriental style patterns and figures, designed to scare off evil spirits. He then proceeds to lie in a "bath" with water just a few inches deep. I guess the designs were to scare off water spirits? But if he's bathing, shouldn't the paint wash off? Or if it doesn't, then how will he get it off later, and what's the point of bathing now?

Later, I'm talking with him and find out his name is Sm, pronounced Sem. I think that name is familiar and realize it's from one of the Final Fantasies - thirteen, I think. I ask him if he's familiar with those games, and he says he isn't. I consider explaining about them to him, but I decide that's more trouble than it's worth.


Messed up lights
I'm in my bedroom trying to turn on the lights, but something very strange is going on. We have a dual slider fan/light switch near the door, and I'm sure I'm using the light slider, but as I slide it up and down other lights in the room are turning on and off, leaving the fan's light off the whole time. I look more closely and am even more surprised to see that there are two sliders on the same track. I start moving them slowly up and down, trying to figure out the pattern. The first notch turns on my wife's bedstand light; the second notch turns on a light in the middle of the wall and turns her lamp to dim. Other positions do other things. Now someone else is in the room. He's familiar to me (though I don't know who he was). He says he saw something about this in the manual when he got one recently, and he'd be happy to let me borrow it. I thank him but say it probably wouldn't do much good, since each room is wired differently; but he politely disagrees, saying this is exactly what the manual talked about. I tell him I'd love to see it.


Fragments
Something about "medieval court posturing"

I look between two nice buildings to see a house behind them. It's rather run down, but there's a light on upstairs and it looks much more homely than the austere newer buildings.

I'm in a dimly lit hallway.