Thread: Task of the Year 2017

Despite a botched attempt at a TOTM last night, I believe I did successfully pull off the "Elephant ride" TOTY... if not as stylishly as I had intended!

Full dream report here (at over 3500 words, possibly my longest screed ever! Sorry!): Fading Gift (WILD) and Elephant Ride (DILD)

And here, for your convenience, is the excerpt relevant to the task:

The dream felt reasonably stable, so I wondered if I might attempt one of the TOTYs. I recalled the "riding" theme, but unfortunately, I hadn't looked at the list lately and couldn't remember the specifics very well. There was a window here... maybe I could summon a bird and ride it through the night sky? That sounded fun, but I didn't think it was on the list. The only one I could clearly remember was the elephant ride, because my studies have given me such a distinct impression of how elephants were used in battle in pre-modern Siam. I had always planned to try that one, but how do I get from my dream bedroom to pre-modern Siam?

I tried to remember the transportation spell from Harry Potter, but the command wasn't coming to me. All I could recall was "flue" something, and anyway there were no fireplaces in this bedroom (unlike my WL bedroom, which does have one!) I decided my best bet was probably the window. I knew you needed to mount an elephant from someplace high, so if I could summon one over, I could probably just descend from the window directly to its back. Then once I was on the elephant, it would be easier to get to Siam. On the way to the window, I felt impelled to opened the middle drawer of the dresser as I walked past. It was nearly empty, with just a few stray pieces of clothing... but in the far right corner was the gleam of gold. It was a pile of chocolate coins! You know the ones, disks of chocolate wrapped in gold foil stamped like currency. These were a few different sizes. I realized these might come in handy if I ended up having to buy the elephant, so I grabbed a handful and put them in my pocket.

I opened the window and felt the cool night air. The window was on the second storey, as I had anticipated, but looking out, I actually recognized that this looked nothing like my house. To the left, I could see a garage door extending perpendicularly to the wall my window was in. The house appeared to be painted beige. Across the driveway, which ran next to this wall to meet the garage, there was a wide grassy yard bordered by trees. I looked up at the night sky above the trees to see if there were any familiar constellations, and immediate recognized Orion. Of course... it seems anywhere I go, I see Orion, even in a dream. He was at an angle, almost on his side, just over the treetops... but not exactly the same in WL. At first I counted four stars in his belt, instead of the usual three. The more I looked at it, the more stars accumulated, but only in certain areas, so pretty soon Orion appeared to be wearing not only a belt, but also a brassiere, which amused me, and a crown. The crown had spikes pointing upward, like the common representation of crowns in modern iconography, but matching spikes adorned the brassiere and belt. At this point the whole shape of the constellation was getting a bit thin and stretched, and while I'm sure these transformations could go on indefinitely, right now I needed an elephant.

I knew my husband was in the next room, probably working, and even though I suspected this was dream logic, I hesitated to shout lest I annoy him. (Though I suppose it is still reasonable not to want to annoy the dream husband.) So I tried to summon the elephant quietly. Nothing happened. After trying for a bit without results, I decided to take a more dramatic approach. I stepped through the window and jumped, setting my intention for there to be an elephant down there, so I could land on its back.

There wasn't. But the results were promising nonetheless... from unconstructed dream space, I managed to conjure something plausibly like the interior of a palace in Siam. It was a bit of a hack job, without much detail, and I confess the throne was far too low (must not have been the formal audience hall), but it was sufficient for my purposes. There were various ministers standing around (another embarrassingly inaccurate detail; no courtiers would stand in the presence of the king in early nineteenth-century Siam! Good gracious!) and the king was on the throne, but a bit vague. My initial impression was that he resembled the recently deceased Rama IX, but that troubled me because I was going for an earlier era. I tried to make him look more like Rama III, but it wasn't working very well, so in the end I just didn't look too closely. At any rate, the king was vague enough that he didn't quibble when I handed over my handful of chocolate coins and requested an elephant. I didn't feel like getting into complex negotiations; I just allowed myself assume the success of the transaction and walked away.

As I exited the interior of the palace and momentarily noticed the bright sunlight reflecting off the whitewashed arch of the doorway, I felt a flash of familiarity. Of course, I thought to myself, This must be the Grand Palace, I've been here a few times. I let my memory conjure something akin to the elephant-mounting station I remembered observing there, and walked over to it. There was no elephant there presently, so I waited for someone to bring it around... and started getting impatient. No one seemed to be doing much, or paying attention to my repeated request. They must not understand English, I considered. I'll have to try it in Thai.

"Chang!" I shouted, the Thai word for elephant. "Ma nee!" I realized how rude I must sound: while "ma nee" would probably be correctly understood as "come here," or, given the contextual clues, "bring it here" as I had intended, it was a terribly rough and simple way of speaking. It was the sort of thing you might say to call a dog. I hadn't even appended a perfunctory "kha" at the end. But then I started wondering what level of politeness would be proper in this situation. I was in the palace, which made things more difficult, because royal Thai is another ballgame altogether. But what was my own social standing here? In speaking roughly I was assuming a great deal of authority... maybe that was not so bad in this situation. Fortunately, I saw my elephant being brought around before I was able to go too deep down the rabbit hole of Thai honorifics.

It was a disappointing elephant, by any standards... not only small but kind of flabby and soft, a cartoonish cross between a real baby elephant and Dumbo. Moreover it was completely unadorned, with no harness or howdah. I momentarily wondered if the lack was due to an inadequate mental impression of what a howdah should look like? But no, I could picture it clearly enough in my imagination... it just wasn't on the elephant. I guess that's what I get for being rude to the staff. To add insult to injury, they didn't even properly lead the elephant to the mounting station—though it was probably too small to get on from there anyway—they just dumped it on the stairs, where it crumpled over weakly. On the bright side, this made it easy to clamber up on its neck, so I did so and prepared to forge on.

I knew I had to enter a battle, so we promptly exited the city. I had thought to do this properly on a magnificent war elephant with a howdah and a driver and four soldiers to guard the legs—I've seen plenty of paintings and movies of proper war elephants in action—but instead I was alone, bareback with no weapon, on the most pathetic elephant I've ever seen. But at least in dream there was no risk of actually falling in battle, so I figured I could make do.

We had barely gone past the city walls when I saw the invaders approaching from the jungle. That wasn't much of a stretch; it seemed like Ayutthaya was always under attack. (I had originally envisioned myself in Bangkok, but had already slipped back to an earlier era more appropriate for elephant combat). The invaders were on horseback, I noticed, and I was relieved to see that they were only coming in ones and twos, given that I was going to have to take them on alone. They had long black hair and Asian features, and naturally I assumed that they were Burmese... until I got close enough to swing at one and saw the pointed ears. Elves?! Last night I was playing Witcher II and Pillars of Eternity, and the portrait of Aloth in the latter game closely resembled these invaders, but I wasn't sure why they were showing up here. Also, I'm fond of elves and felt loathe to fight them. Fortunately, our combat was more play-acting than anything. I had a good mental image of the kind of long-handled glaive I should be wielding, but though I swung it toward the elves and they gamely mimed being struck, the weapon did not visibly appear in my hands—and I was thankful that it drew no blood.

So I marched forward on my pathetic elephant, going through the motions of bashing the elves (elves?!) with my invisible glaive, while they went through the motions of being knocked aside, until the jungle started to coalesce into a new kind of space, a kind of wide passage under an increasingly low ceiling. The texture of the ceiling interested me, and from my position atop the elephant I could reach up and just touch it. It was covered with a kind of thick cloth, like a yellowish patterned felt, and I reached into the seams between two pieces and felt something hard and smooth. I pulled it out and found an object streaked with yellow and brown that resembled a wild bird's egg, but it was too hard and irregular, so I thought it must be a stone. I slipped it into my pocket. The felt overhead was gaping at the seams so I grabbed it and tore it off, revealing a kind of wide hatch with a knob for a handle. I wondered what it might be concealing so I pulled it open... and found the dream space deconstructing, muffling me in a soft blankety texture. Instinctively I tried to protect myself by putting the stone I had just found in my mouth, but I was still being enveloped in the stuff. I tried to pull at it with my hands, and as my fingers sank into it I was struck by the familiarity of the texture, like coarse sheep's wool—not the clean feel of a fleece, but the dirty, oily texture it has when it is still on the sheep. That was the last thing I felt before waking.

Originally Posted by Verre

Despite a botched attempt at a TOTM last night, I believe I did successfully pull off the "Elephant ride" TOTY... if not as stylishly as I had intended!

Full dream report here (at over 3500 words, possibly my longest screed ever! Sorry!): Fading Gift (WILD) and Elephant Ride (DILD)

And here, for your convenience, is the excerpt relevant to the task:

WOW, that reads like an exciting novel. Well done!

Probably 3644 words- 19607 characters. Keep up the great work!

Did the Dolphin TOTY last night!

Spoiler for Dolphin ride:

(Skipping to the already lucid part) I tread water for a bit, noticing the tug of my wet clothing weighing me down. The sky has turned back from green and grey into a proper blue. It is very peaceful out here, no big waves, but also no land in sight. Recalling the last part of the earlier lucid I call out to summon a dolphin. One swims over to me. It seems cheerful. I ask it to take me to Atlantis then climb onto the dolphin's back. It leaps then dives down into the ocean.

Forgetting myself I take a deep breath and am holding it as we swim down, before realising this is not required. The dolphin swims down to a circle of metal on the sea floor. Then it starts poking at small screws that seem to be in the ocean floor. I help to remove some of the screws.

The room transforms around us. We are no longer underwater and the dolphin has grown legs and arms. There are coins on the floor. The dolphin says something about 'taking what is right.' I pick up a copper penny-like coin. It grabs a fistfull of golden coins and laughs. "The one with the most gold wins!" The dolphin-man declares triumphantly.

Ah whatever. I turn and exit the circular room and enter a domed one. It's old fashioned - like a National Trust property. Elegant wooden furniture, shelves lining the walls filled with large hardback books. There are those chaise-longues type chairs with red velvet. The room is populated with people dressed in 18th century clothing - long coats with embroidered collars and dressed with similar intricant designs sewed on them.

They remind me that to complete the DV Task of the Year I must find the mermaid, also, that the mermaid will want an offering from me. The room has several tables covered in trinkets.

My next course of action is to try flirting with one of the 18th century women, very badly, to find out what to pick as a gift for the mermaid. The flirting is just cringe-worthy terrible. Realising this, I end up shouting "fuck it", vaulting over one of the chairs, standing on a table and grabbing a small blue ivory comb thing before running out of the room.

There are several similar looking rooms. Now where is the mermaid? A young boy walks past. "Hey, kid, where's the mermaid?" He points down a corridor. I run down and go past an open door. Inside are tanks the size of double beds, filled with water. Curled up in the corner of a tank is a mermaid. She has long dark hair and a shimmering blue-green fish tail. I climb into the tank and touch her tail. It feels just like a fish, which is both cool and weird at the same time.

She wakes up and turns to me looking alarmed. I drop the comb and it falls into the tank next to her. She grabs it as it falls, seems happy, and then snuggles up against my chest. Well, hello. Somehow she ends up on top of me, lying on my chest, with my legs wrapped around her tail.

"So, uh, how do you make more mermaids?" The question I'd been dying to ask...
"We have a sort of opening." She says.
"Oh really. Well, uh, so can I put my erm, you know, in your... 'opening.'" (Well I'm on top form tonight... just so damn smooth, eh? Ha. )
"You already did."
"Wait, I thought I had trousers on!"
...Well, not anymore, apparently. She starts grinding up against me and I can feel the usual sensations down there now, although my legs are either side of her body/tail. Not gonna lie, it feels a bit weird, but we have sex until the dream fades.

Dream Journal Entry

Completed 7 of 7 TOTY Task.

Spoiler for "The Fly a Saucer" Task.:

http://www.dreamviews.com/blogs/ibea...12-2017-79557/

task 2 done

Spoiler for Plane task:

crawling around. scene wont stabilize. Finally get it to stabIlize. words written "green ghastly germs". I am in a terminal. I walk down to the airplane, it takes a little while to walk across the ramp because I am stretching it out to engage the senses. The walkway goes straight to the cockpit. I jump in. I take off like I do a car, just hit the gas and pull up when I go fast enough. It is flying! I start realizing that it flies just like battlefield plane even though this is a 747. I pull it upsidedown and I start falling. no seatbelt. I put my feet on the ground and only look inside the cockpit, this perspective makes me stay in the chair. I fly around like this for a little while and decide to look for a time breach. I create a long dark scratch across the dream sky and fly towards it. I hit the gas and fly faster. I notice that the plane and I are desolving and it feels like i am losing stability. I push towards dream body, but it isnt there. I wait a few seconds and I undisolve in the terminal, reading a different booklet "perking, excited, purple". The plane is still there, and I realize that I hadn't seen a single person during the whole dream.

Completed also Fly saucer from one planet to another LINK TO DJ

Relevant excerpt

Spoiler for Fly saucer from Mars to Pluto:

Then I notice a partially buried white disc. I know it's a flying saucer, although it's very small, like 30 cms. The top is made of white metal, bottom is black plastic. The bottom has few mumbered buttons and the instructions to make it normal size. I press the buttons in sequence, the disc pops open, it's now a proper saucer, 15-20m diameter. I use the catwalk to get inside.
The interior has many instruments, monitors, button panels, "flying" touch screens and more.
<CUT>
Another space travel, this time I am heading to Pluto. To quicken things up, I activate hyper-speed. The black starry space becomes blurry for some seconds, then it turns back normal, we arrived at destination. We descend on the planet, it's dark and grey and empty.

Spoiler for Extra, fight aliens on Pluto:

Once I take few steps on the gray dust, from the ground emerge 4 or 5 grey Alien-like monsters.
I use the purple alien bracer on the closest one, three tentacles fly straight into its body, which shrink, like sucked by the inside, evidently dead.
I use my left arm on another alien, which dies in the same way, plus tentacles emerge from my shoulders, killing a third one.
The remaining aliens disappear, most likely they dug back into the ground.

I say to myself that this was too easy, and my dream immediately proves me wrong.
An enormous crab-like monster comes out of the dust. I imagine it has been called by the survivors.
The giant alien crab immediately attacks me with its legs, I evade its attacks and jump on one of its leg. I draw my sword and thrust it down deep into the leg, cutting part of it away.
I avoid another attack, jump on another leg, this time I thrust my sword at the junction between the leg and the body, severing the entire leg.
I jump on its body, it's very hard and bumpy. I use pirokinesis with both my hands on its body, which hurts it.
Then I somehow get stuck by my back on the body. I free myself, get up and attack it again.
I can't recall the end of the fight, but I survive, so I must have won

A "kind of try" at the dragon castle thing. lol.

Spoiler for Spladoosh:

I am doing my old job (reading gas and electric meters), but now I am in Japan doing it. I start thinking about it and I get a phone call. Talking to my bro in law that had the same job. I tell him how weird it was that I got the same job from before and then I realized that I didn't know the route I was on and when I looked in my hand I had no handheld. I realize that it must be a dream and then I hang up the phone and look around. Everything behind me looks like Japan, but everything in front looks like something lemony snicket's lake lachrymose. I walk to a rock near the lake and don't feel good about diving in. There is a small island with a large tree in the middle of the lake and a huge castle on the other side. It looks like it might be more of rock formations, but I decide to let it be a castle and go that way. Before heading there I decide to try something with the dream control of perspective that I have been doing a lot. I close one eye and point my finger down at the lake. Then I imagine it going into the water and then I pull it out when my finger feels cold. I didn't see it go in, but my finger is wet and there is a huge disturbance on the lake where I had put my finger. I then decide to use just this version to do a quick jump onto the tree. I reach my hand out and try to grab the tree, but my mind is thinking about how small it will be with that perspective and how I won't fit on the island. I pull my hand back and think about just grabbing on it and flinging myself over to other side of the lake. I reach my hand out and try to grab the tree, the part of the tree that my hand was covering disappears. I find this amusing and do the same thing to the other part of the tree using both hands. Put my hand in front of it and then remove my hand and it is gone. I look up and see that there are some eerie looking clouds and I do the same to them. I think maybe I should go to the other side, but I also know that my lucid time is limited because my daughter will wake me at any moment. I then spend about a minute unsummoning other things like the "castle and more clouds" and my daughter wakes me up.

Awesome job, guys!!!

I am not recording dreams now, very time consuming, but I think I am gonna do them, let's do one tonight. I will make sure I get lucid, so... time to WILD...

I have reported as completed 5 TotY, but for some reason I only have 3-stars wings

If any completion requirement was missing from my LDs, let me know, I will attempt again !

Originally Posted by GenghisKhan

I have reported as completed 5 TotY, but for some reason I only have 3-stars wings

If any completion requirement was missing from my LDs, let me know, I will attempt again !

Sorry, must have missed where it says "5" TOTYs. Winging now.

Originally Posted by gab

Sorry, must have missed where it says "5" TOTYs. Winging now.

Super cool ! And thank you so much for your very fast response

Completed the Elephant ride TotY this morning ! LINK TO DJ

Relevant excerpt from DJ entry:

Spoiler for Elephant ride TotY:

After some flying, we reach a dense tree area. Good for TotY, I think.
I look for an elephant nearby, I find it, it's gray/violet, very long curved tusks, really fat, its body almost a ball.
I climb on its back and ride it in the forest.
I find a dirt clearing with low thick bushes on both sides, and people hiding behind them, shooting each other. The list of projectile they use it's quite extensive: arrows, stones, guns and lances. I learn their names (LOL don't ask me where did I take those from, I am clueless), the italian equivalent of "Liquid Assault", wearing blue uniform and "Screaming Magaglis" (not-existing word), with red uniform. I decide I am going to help in battle the guys in blue.

On the elephant I circle the bush and charge the red guys from their backs.
The elephant skews some people with its long trunks, I see one getting stomped by its leg.
I see one arrow coming out of its big arse. I tell the elephant I am sorry about that, I should have protected it.
I remove the arrow, then I summon a metal plate armor covering most of its body, it's dark brown / bronze. I am now sitting on a cloth saddle. We charge again, hitting some more people, no red guy is left standing now.
I get off my mount and move on.

TOTY 3! alien Spaceship and talking to the people that live there. No aliens, but also no aliens mentioned in the task so... I dunno.
"Week" of dream time, leaving Zödra, TOTY ★★★★★ - Dream Journals - Lucid Dreaming - Dream Views

Spoiler for Relevant excerpt:

Take off is happening. Where am I? A dream, okay! Passenger on a ship it looks like. I have a group of like 3 friends with me, supposed to be friends or family, but I don’t recognize them at all.
“The rules are really simple” A guy my age is saying while pulling out a board game. I don’t remember the board game very well, but I told him to wait while I go look around. Most of the compartments are locked, so I unlock a few doors and it is mainly storage. We are going somewhere for a long time.
“Please go back to your cabin sir” I get told by two guards guarding a door at the end. To fight, ignore, or listen to? “We will be opening the kitchens after we leave orbit.”
Ah, kitchen, not worth a fight. I am supposed to treat dreams like there is no time restraints and this is one of those, this seems like an interesting story, I don’t need to ruin it by killing people or running from those in charge, yet. I turn around and go back to my room. Since it open and all, it doesn’t seem to be a prisoner type thing, more of a passenger. I will get some more info next dream if this one takes too long waiting. I open the door and my friends are all finishing the game.
“Where did you go?” the boy asks.
“Just looking around.” I say, looking around our cabin. It doesn’t even really look like a cabin, more like an apartment, must be some rich people here, or it doesn’t cost money to do this. Furniture and a kitchen and a tv. I find a brochure on the door.
“You will have plenty of time to look around during the week voyage.” He mentions.
A week? That is a long time, I should consider myself stuck here for that whole week at least.
I read the brochure
Our Story
Zödra has been affected by many problems recently, so some of the elite in the world decided to build a spaceship and get some of the people away. This is a fun adventure that we are on and has been funded by anonymous donors, anyone that wished to leave Zödra was immediately given a room and we have plenty of room for everyone. The new home is a resort that we have all decided not to use any “godlike powers” to change or destroy and to just enjoy a quiet life. The Z will take us there in a week of luxury!

Hmm… There is a picture of the spaceship and it looks like a normal rocket. I should change that. I put my hand over the writing and the picture and change them a bit.

“Funded by anonymous donors, who retrofit an alien spaceship”. The picture now looks like a flying saucer. Perfect. There is a little shift that only I can feel and everything seems a little more round like you would expect in an alien ship. I walk over to my friends. Knock at the door. Food is here...

...“Almost there.” She says. The ship must be landing. I run to the big door and everyone is already standing there waiting. The door opens and it looks beautiful, a huge river coming from a waterfall on a mountain. There is a guide, but the first thing he says is “You made it! This place is so safe and fun and you don’t have to worry about anything! I just need to tell you where things are!’ and I stopped listening and started walking. It has the red dirt mountains like Utah and Nevada from my childhood and is extremely beautiful, there is a huge house up the ways and I remember that I am supposed to ask some questions for the TOTY. I look back at the ship and see that it is extremely small (50 meters in diameter) and then look back to the house.
“Hello! Newcomer!” Someone from the house yells, I can barely see him from so far away.
“Hey! I come in peace! show me your ways!” I yell back “Can you teach me something?”
“Life is about partying! Especially here! It is perfect! Our ways are partying!” He laughs and walks away. This is a cool oasis, I might come back here some other time. I decide to go back to Zödra main planet and close my eyes.

My 3rd TOTY

Spoiler for Sled TOTY Relevant bit:

...become lucid. I float down next to a wall and my fingers slide against it to help ground me. Recalling the sled TOTY I phase through the wall and focus on there being a snowy mountain top outside. A snowstorm is in progress and it is bitterly cold. I summon a sled and jump onto it, standing like it is a skateboard. The sled starts to move down the mountain, quickly gathering tremendous speed. I estimate it is travelling around 80-90mph.

It takes around 20 seconds to reach the bottom of the mountain. I make a powerful gesture with my left hand to shatter the earth and make a crack leading down below the surface. The sled continues sliding into the Earth through black rock cave tunnels. This continues for another 20 seconds or so, still at breakneck speed.

Suddenly the floor disappears sending me tumbling through the air. I land in fast flowing water, dragged along by the strong current towards a narrow crack in the rock. There is not much light, just a gentle luminesence from mould growing on the roof of the underground river.

DJ Entry

Whoohoo!! Keep up the great work everyone!!!

I'm baaaaaack! Dragon TOTY from 21/1/2017 -

Spoiler for Dragon:

Recalling the dragon TOTY I start to search for a castle and around the next corner is a great castle reaching up into the sky. I fly up over the castle for a better view, and summon a dragon, imagining it breaking free from the dungeons below the castle.

Instead, an enormous winged shadow passes over the ground. People inside the castle look up in fear. The dragon circles around, unleashing flamethrower like breath to incinerate the castle's defenders. I fly down and sit on the dragon's back. It's head is covered in golden scales and the rest of it's body is read. Two large backwards facing horns are on it's head. We circle and unleash more fire before flying across the city.

The motion of flying with wings is jerky and uneven. We head across the city, searching for another castle to destroy. Among the skyscrapers is a small keep with a large stone outer wall - in the middle of the tall modern buildings it looks out of place. The dragon is so large that it simply lands on the castle and the weight smashes it. We fly up and the castle has been reduced to rubble.

I try to fly the dragon over a river that winds through the centre of the city, but the dream loses momentum and stalls.

DJ Entry

So this morning I attempt the Dolphin TotY
While at it, sure I was doing well, work alarm rings, I wake up, think that I had missed the dolphin at all, fall asleep again and complete it

LINK TO DJ

Spoiler for Dolphin ride TotY:

I start in the boat again
A dolphin approaches the boat, I observe its nose
I mount on its back, in front of the dorsal fin. It swims above the water for a bit, then descends
It finds the same underwater city. I get off its back, and after a short walk I meet a couple of mer-folks
Their skin is green and they have fish-like bottom half, green-ish as well
The guy has is chest naked, the girl has two shells covering her breast
First thing I do is removing the shells, so I can look at her mermaid breast, which is green but nicely shaped
Then I ask the guy how they have fun down here. He answers their sport is catching dolphins with a net

View shifts a bit, the scenery behind him reminds me somehow of roman circus, although it's fading in the deep blue water
The merman is in front of me, he gives a signal and from my left, a dolphin sprints towards my right
I launch the fishnet I have in my hands, but it moves slower than I expect, and I miss the dolphin
Another dolphin sprints, he launches his net and catches it at first try
When it's my turn again, I time my launch better and this time catch the dolphin

This was my last one !

Nice one, Genghis!

Finished the Elephant one -

Spoiler for Elephant:

I remember the elephant TOTY and walk straight out the closest door into a jungle. There are vines hanging down and the noise of hundreds of birds and animals nearby. An elephant walks out of the trees towards me.

I climb onto the elephant and start to ride down the narrow trail, reminding it that this is a dangerous war-zone. Angry natives jump out of the trees and try to attack me with spears. I swing my arms and kick them away. One of them angers the elephant which then starts charging through the jungle and trampling everything in it's path. I concentrate on holding on.

The charge becomes so fast that the scenery blurs and I wake up.

DJ Entry

Originally Posted by obfusc8

Congrats!
Finished the Elephant one -

how many stars is that?

Originally Posted by gab

how many stars is that?

erm... should be five. elephant, dolphin, sled, dragon, car, so I have the right number of stars at the moment thanks!
plane and saucer still to do.

Unsuccessful attempt at Sled Ride last night. Full dream here: No Snow for Sledding

Excerpt of relevant portion:

Spoiler for No snow... :

After this my thoughts turned to more practical ends. Wasn't there a task I wanted to do? Right, the sled ride. I thought over the details. I would need to sled down from the top of a snowy mountain and then through a crack in the earth into... who knows? Finding out would be the fun part. It was snowy outside, like it is in WL, so I thought that would make a good start. I just needed to go outside and find a sled and a mountain.

I opened the window again to fly out, but now there was a pane of what felt like transparent plastic covering the opening. I was annoyed because even in WL this is one of the few windows in the house that has no screen, so there should not be anything barring my passing. I decided to shatter the barrier with my mind, concentrated, and... nothing happened. Disappointed that I could not resolve this more stylishly, I manually peeled aside the flexible plastic panel and slipped out onto the lower roof. (This part was not quite accurate to WL: although there is a sloping side of another roof to the left, there is no level area just below the window where one could stand.)

I willed myself to fly, but nothing happened initially. I kept focusing until I began to float up and across the yard. There were a lot of random pavilions scattered below, and I reminded myself to be observant so I would remember the details later. I flew over to the roof of a small outbuilding—the environment no longer bore any resemblance to WL—where I found two sleds. One was child-sized, the other larger, and I noticed approvingly that they were the old fashioned kind on runners, much easier to control than round saucer sleds.

I picked up the larger sled and looked it over. The details were wonderfully vivid: it had a painted metal superstructure consisting of thin round bars painted white, and flat wide bars painted green. These encircled a small rectangular seat of heavily aged and distressed wood. I noticed an odd detail in the very center of the sled, a transparent glass sphere about four inches in diameter, half full of water. I peered closer, wondering if it was some sort of gyroscope, and saw words printed on the sphere: "FAST WATER." I decided that this was a device for boosting speed, and that I would name my new sled "Fastwater." I felt very pleased with it.

Sled in hand, next I needed a mountain. I resumed floating through the air and scanning for suitable topography. I soon found myself approaching a steep hillock, but since it was at most a couple dozen feet high, I didn't think it qualified as a "mountain." After that was a second, taller hillock, but I rejected that one too on the same grounds. Then in the distance I saw a much taller hill with a massive castle on top of it. I had the impression that it was a German castle called "Schwanzstein," though even in the dream I recalled the meaning of schwanz (which, in common with many Americans, I learned long ago from the Mel Brooks film Space Balls). That seemed like a peculiar yet somehow familiar name for a castle, and I wondered why it came to mind. [Source: German castles have come up in conversation twice in the last few days, both the one at Wernigerode and another whose name I couldn't remember. I just asked my husband and he reminded me it was "Neuschwanstein." So there you have it. Sorry Freudians, you can go back home now.]

I figured that the type of hill on which one was likely to find a German castle could qualify as a small mountain, and decided that this would be a good spot to sled down from. I floated closer, noting a number of stiff and oddly sepia-hued guards standing around the courtyards, as though peopling an old postcard. I noticed a perfect straight chute for sledding that ran down from the top of the mountain, so that's where I landed. Everything was in place... except... there was no snow anymore. Could I just sled down anyway, I wondered? No, I distinctly recalled that the task specified a snowy mountain. I peered around, hoping I could at least spot a few patches of snow and call it even. But the grass was as brown as the guards—there was a hint of sepia about the whole place, like a movie scene shot through a filter—and no snow was visible anywhere.

I sat down with my sled, willing it to snow. I concentrated my expectations, imagining how the first tiny flakes would move erratically through the air. Once again the distinction between imagination and experience—which seems so improbable in the dream state—was reconfirmed, because even though I could clearly see the type of snow I envisioned in my mind's eye, the dream air remained stubbornly free of flakes. This TOTM has a lot of moving parts, I thought. It's as hard as a TOTY! A moment later I woke up and was amused to recognize my error; in waking life I would not have misremembered the category of the task, since the TOTYs are linked by a common theme.

I think this is the first year I have really wanted to complete the TOTYs and I think a big part of it is those snazzy new wings (Awesome job Spellbee2!) that I see people getting. (Although I was inspired by the Angel Falls one DV friend was attempting a few years ago and I attempted it too.) I got a ways to go though: 1 of 7.

Plane/Time Breach Success:

Spoiler for The Dream:

I think I came into this scene with some awareness from a WILD style entry perhaps from DEILD but I don't exactly remember. I am in this rocky canyon area and feel boldness to fly and start to fly fully realizing I am dreaming. I then remember the plane TOTY I tried last night with some challenges. I land and start rubbing my hands together and saying how I will have a nice long lucid dream. There is no great spot to take off from traditionally with good size rocks everywhere on the reddish brown dirt but this is a dream anyway and it's a better spot than the empty sky off of the building I was hoping to materialize an airplane from the night before.

So I imagine I am climbing a small ladder up making the movements and I get into what is a vaguely forming cockpit. I imagine the key is in front of me and go to turn it with my right hand and the cockpit is looking good now with some controls and instruments that look like they belong in a plane. The engine sputters and is very rough sounding and I say okay that vague shape there on my right is one of the wings and I see them form like a small Cessna plane in off white color. The nose then forms with the blurred image of a quickly spinning single propeller on it and I have blue horizontal stripes on the nose and feel the rest of the plane behind me. I take off using a gas pedal on my right foot to accelerate the engine and propeller, moving forward now and then pulling on the two-handed rectangular control (yoke?).

I fly up over the rocky area and off of a cliff with no issues. I fly around the canyon area a bit and remember that I need to open up a time breach before getting to my destination so I decide that what looks like the end of the canyon area is my destination and I mentally will a time breach to open and it looks like a big light-blue tunnel. As I go through, the visuals fade but not to black, more of a blur of shapes. I continue to hold my hands on where the controls were and fly forward willing myself to slow down but keep going forward.

Having exited the time breach perhaps, I eventually a small European village looking place forms with 2 story stone buildings and narrow cobblestoned streets forms. I fly around the corner of one of the buildings having gone from a sitting position to a standing flying position. I see what looks like an attractively shaped girl with long black hair in a red dress from behind and I float up a little, like like I am exiting the no longer there cockpit.

I land behind her and tap her on her shoulder. She turns around and is indeed attractive and we start kissing passionately. I take her hand and we walk around another corner that becomes a room. She wants to

Spoiler for Sexual Content:

have sex

in front of her girlfriends, at least 5 of them and there's one guy as well. Sounds good to me as I

Spoiler for Sexual Content:

lean her against a bed and whisk away her clothes with a swoop of my hand and take her from behind. It is very exciting having sex with her while other attractive girls look on eagerly. After a bit I feel like I could experience ejaculation

in this dream, because it feels so real. Instead, I start

Spoiler for Sexual Content:

having issues with it slipping out and needing to stick it back in multiple times. While back in

and losing sensation I start to wake, smiling ear to ear!

My DJ link with a few notes: TOTY Success - Forming a Plane and Flying it Into a Time Breach - 5th Feb 2017 - Dream Journals - Lucid Dreaming - Dream Views

First time evah attempt at TOTY.

I have been practicing and wanting to do the car task. But when I got in a lucid, I remembered the elephant task.

LD2 - Elephant ride - Fail

I realize I'm still dreaming and I walk through the door into large department store. Get up to the second floor. While noticing all the porcelain knick-knacks, I remember I wanted to do the "ride the elephant" TOTM. Which I did, but not tonight, when I wanted to do the " TOTMs find the present, get a massage and Pandora".

As I get up, I start looking around the isles if I see an elephant. I know he is suppose to be there because I want him there. I start calling him, but I don't hear him being summoned on the PA system. I focus on it and I start hearing "elephant to isle A 1, elephant to isle A 1".

I look at the escalator coming from first floor and there he is. Big and grey. But he has no trunk and I will it to appear. But it's not growing. I figure this is getting too complicated and I'm not even in the jungle so I walk off to do something else and I lose lucidity.

TOTM attempts - Dream Journals - Lucid Dreaming - Dream Views

Finished #6 - Flew a plane through a time breach into the future. It had cool hydroelectric generators, electric motorbikes and glowing flying fish!

Spoiler for Plane TOTY Relevant bit:

Outside I recall the plane TOTY and look around. A few trees. An empty road. No planes. Well, fake it 'til you make it: I squat as if sitting in a seat, arms forward as if clutching an imaginary flight stick. Then I do a vertical take off, thinking about a eurofighter shape until the plane forms around me. Now inside a reasonably realistic looking plane, I push the flight stick forward and start flying over the forest. It's quite speedy.

Now to find a time breach. A swirling pattern appears in the clouds and I fly towards it. The swirls lead into a wormhole of blackness filled with yellow 'dripping' dots falling in all directions. Gravity is screwed. Who knows which way is up anymore?

I get through the time breach and emerge in the future flying over a city on a mountaintop. There are a cluster of spires covered in metal spikes and radio masts. A river runs through the city. It looks fast flowing and drops into several waterfalls heading down the mountain. In the middle of the river are several silver structures that must be futuristic hyrdoelectric generators....(rest in DJ entry)

DJ Entry