January Event - Lost in Dreamland

[pumpkinhollow]

**Plain text version here.

Lost in Dreamland

Bedtime Story

{ CONTENT WARNINGS: Unreality, dream logic. Mind the CWs in individual threads, as they will vary! }

It is no secret that in the Emerald Isles, winter and sleep have a deep connection. To some extent, this is true everywhere. The whole world seems to fall asleep under the blanket of snow. Plants recede back into the ground, trees stand leafless and slumbering till spring, animals hibernate. Nights are longer. But the local folklore intensifies this, as Mortanne presides over Winter and the Beyond.

As the tales go, the Beyond is the realm of souls, the place where the essence of a person goes when it separates from their body. And while this primarily refers to death, it can also refer to the half-step between living and dying--- the unconscious mind. Sleep, and moreover, dreaming. And thus, winter and dreams have always been kindred spirits. Connected through their ties to Mother Mortanne and to a hushed and sleeping world.

Perhaps it is for this reason that when you go to sleep on the night of January 19th, 16:55, it is a deeper, more consuming sleep than you’ve ever felt. One that swallows you whole, dragging you down, and down, and down, into a sunken place that is deeper and more terrifying than dreams.

By the time you think to feel afraid, it is already too late to jolt yourself awake.

LULLABY

Beautiful Dreamer, Wake Unto Me

You wake. Or do you? It feels a bit like waking, and yet, it does not. It is similar enough to waking that one might believe it to be so. You feel ground beneath your feet, or perhaps a bed beneath your back. Or something. You feel… something. It isn’t like waking. But it’s a little bit like waking. Perhaps it is not. But perhaps it is as close as you are able to get. Let’s try this again.

You “wake.” Your mind solidifies and reality defines its shape around you. Your eyes focus and you become aware. What are you aware of?

Whatever it is, it isn’t good. Perhaps it seems good at first, but it is not. Wherever you are, only horrors await you here, pulled straight from your own mind. Or the minds of others.

Move. You must move. The dream is a landscape. You must traverse nightmares to escape. Seek other dreamers, and flee. To the center, to safety in false daydreams. To the underground, where the Necropolis will conceal you. To the edges, where you can feel your consciousness break free of this sunken sleep and return to the world of hard objects and light. But you cannot stay here. Gods help you if you stay here.

[ Your nightmare can look however you desire. Laws of reality and physics do not apply. Fuse them, reshape them, choose your flavor. Be liberal with content warnings and respect sensitive content guidelines, but otherwise, there are no rules. ]

Starlight and Dewdrops are Waiting For Thee

If you reach the center of the dreamscape (or perhaps you “woke up” there), you will find an oasis. You find yourself immediately embraced by a beautiful dream. All of your wishes granted, your deepest desires pulled directly from the core of your soul and brought to life before you in vivid detail.

What sort of dream do you find yourself in? What do you dream of? Is it success, love, peace? A life that never came to pass? For your troubles never to have occurred? Do you dream of fame or glory? No matter how beautiful or extravagant, no matter how simple or selfish, the things you desire most are yours.

You cannot escape from here. This is the center, as far away from the waking world as you can go. But the dream entreats you, as do the illusory figures within it. ”Stay,” they croon. ”There is nothing for you beyond here. Only nightmares, only terror. You are safe here. You are loved and wanted and happy here. Why would you ever want to leave?”

Time blends together. It often does, in dreaming, but this feels different. How long have you been here? Do you remember what you were doing before? How you got here? Have you ever even been to a town called Pumpkin Hollow? You can hardly remember.

Maybe that was the dream, and this is your reality. Even as the edges of it bleed together with that of your neighbor, even as fleeting memories come back to you, even as a little voice deep within you screams at you to wake up--- you have no reason to doubt the legitimacy of this place. Here you are happy and safe. Here you are everything you ever wanted to be, living the life you always wanted. Here there are no debts, no suffering, and you shall never die.

You belong here. Surely.

Sounds of the Rude World Heard in the Day

With how far you had to sink into unconsciousness to be here, it’s hard to believe one could go any deeper. But the Beyond is a many-layered place, and perhaps by descending a bit further, a bit deeper, a bit closer to death, you can find another place. Maybe you have a connection to death that brought you here. Perhaps you find your way by mistake. Either way, you may find yourself on a more peaceful journey through the Beyond through the Frozen Necropolis.

A seemingly endless maze of stone walls, mismatched in their depth as if they were patchworked together over centuries. Mausoleums, slotted tightly against one another. Covered marble passageways. Stone statues and carved reliefs depicting gargoyles, knights, Virtues, mages with skull motifs--- necromancers, perhaps? Banshees and dullahans, elves and humans and dwarves and orcs and fae folk of all sorts. All of these things line a network of cobblestone pathways lined with powder snow drifts and crunchy brown grass. Names are carved into the arches above mausoleum doors. Some are familiar, some are not. Fairbanks, Gladwyn, Dirthariel, Leeds, Larson, Endrin, Applegate, Brenning. Above you, white pillar candles float magically overhead, burning bright, lighting your way through the dark pink sunset sky.

In the distance, you see the achingly thin spires of the Winter Cathedral. An austere grey monolith with ornate carvings of horses and snowflake-shaped stained glass windows. Perhaps you will find some solace there. Otherwise, make your way to the river. A familiar ferryman awaits you--- though returning to reality this way will have a small consequence.

[ Encountering Mortanne here is possible, though her threads will be heavily restricted. You can do a thread here with someone else, though! It’s fine to be here without encountering her. Returning to the island by ferry will cause your physical body to die in the process, leaving you a ghost for the usual amount of time. You can also return to the nightmare and get out through the edge. ]

Lulled by the Moonlight, Have All Passed Away

Should you find the edge of the nightmare, you will be able to push yourself through the iridescent membrane at the edge of consciousness. You float through the seemingly endless darkness for a moment, then another, then a third, senses dull and drifting drunkenly, until suddenly---

Like breaching the surface of water, you return to the solid, bright sharpness of reality. Actual reality, firm and true. You are where you went to sleep the night before, though some time has passed. It might take you a bit to figure out exactly how much, though…

Those who escape the nightmare will find themselves home sometime between 1/20 and 1/30. Those who stay in the dream oasis will be comatose until the dream ends, and will not wake until 2/8. They will find the return to reality deeply unpleasant. What are you willing to endure to keep dreaming a while more?

Comments

QUESTIONS/COMMENTS/CONCERNS

[pumpkinhollow]

[goodweather]

what happens to people's bodies if they die via escaping via the Necroplis/ferry? what if I wanna huck a real life non-dream corpse at someone?

Sleepwalking

[itsjustabaddream]

An ongoing nightmare somewhere is rent in two by a curling, shifting arm of living shadow pushing its way through. Like a swarm of shimmering black crystals all moving as one, the amorphous form composed of dark particulate shoves its way into the scene, interrupting the horrors and forming a structure. A doorway, arched like a portcullis. And out from it steps a man with his face wrapped in a billowing red scarf of thin linen. Short and bespectacled, dressed for comfort. He pulls away the scarf from his face and offers a hand to a distressed dreamer. The other hand holds a lantern, glowing with ruby flame. No, not flame. His arcane focus, composed of red crystal, glowing brightly.

Neil West. The Dreamwalker.

“Come with me! I can get you out of here.”

[tisnotthehouse]

"Neil?"

The Dreamwalker has seen this shape before: in the depths of his nightmare, Tarantulas has reverted to his cybernetic body, narrow of waist and alien of feature. How fortunate that, through the wonder of dream logic, the scales of their bodies still match, and so he doesn't crush Neil as he clutches at his hand with both claws and groans, "I can't find Dawn!"

His mandibular mouth and many legs flutter in agitation, his hoarse voice high and broken with distress. "Please, you must help me find her! I know this is a dream, but she's just a baby! I can't bear the thought of her lost and alone in a place like this."

A.T. Menelikov and L.V. Morgenshtern | Original Characters | OTA

[graphomaniac]

OOC: Since Lev/Lyubov and Anzu are a) married b) thematically "variations on the same type of guy" in their own story c) significantly share anxieties/fears and temptations, I'm consolidating their dream-prompts into one TL. If you want just one of them in specific, say so in the subject, and I'll reply with the appropriate account. Otherwise, I'll be assuming you're wanting to thread with both, and replies will come from Lev/Lyubov's account.

content note for prompt 2

Cisheteronormativity, antisemitism/racism, assimilation pressure, condescending and tokenising social dynamics, social alienation; others will be noted as they become relevant.

It's unclear to them both how Lev/Lyubov and Anzu found themselves in the Oasis. And later, neither of them is quite sure how they got back out, out into the nightmares ... or if they got back out at all. Maybe they spend all that time wandering around the Hermitage before finding safety. Maybe.

Dreams are so tricky, nu? The Silver is no mirror; it is the still surface of a flooded sinkhole, ready at any moment to shiver with ripples, and betray one's reflection.

1. proclaim thy lovingkindness in the morning
Starlight and Dewdrops are Waiting For Thee | with Dr A.T. Menelikov amourtician | open to all

and thy faithfulness by night

It's winter outside — deep Siberian winter, now quiet and still, now a howling blizzard — but inside, here in this kitchen with faded floral wallpaper and the braided electric wires snaking across the ceiling to the dim incandescent bulb under an emerald green lampshade, it's warm, and the storm outside is muted, far-away, and the icy-still midwinter night stops at the frosted windowpanes, hidden from sight by lace curtains — but the heavy main curtains are drawn aside, so all passers-by know that someone's at home, that the Morgenshtern household is gathered in for Erev Shabbos.

In fine silver candlesticks, two tall Shabbos candles burn bright upon a kitchen table set for supper. A samovar gleams brassily on its own wooden stand, surrounded by teacups like a broody hen by her chicks. The enormous brick oven radiates heat; it takes up about a third of the kitchen floor, but rises only about halfway to the low ceiling. On top are wooden pallets, covered by thin mattresses not unlike futons, and a pile of pillows, and blankets both heavy and thin. A glass-fronted cabinet flanked by two bookcases reaching to the ceiling stands to the side of the brick oven, shielded from any drafts coming from the door by a sturdy wooden screen; the bookshelves are full of sforim (scholarly books on religious topics), good secular books — Tolstoy, Gogol and Turgenyev in the original, two collected volumes of Borges in Yiddish, the same two volumes in Ladsky, and a set of Kafka in the original; Westward Journey in Yiddish, in four volumes, Dumas in the original, Dumas in Yiddish, Dumas in Ladsky — and more questionable secular books, too, including what definitely looks like a couple dozen or so illustrated danmei romances, and about as many rather more staid pulp novels — wuxia and Arthuriana, by the looks of the covers. Though only Leyb and their bridegroom would know, half the sforim and half the secular books come from their kommunalka back in the Talons, and a third of the sforim and the Borges in Ladsky translation are from the old Rov Morgenshtern's flat in that same city, not from this little cabin in Siberia where Leyb grew up from infancy to late childhood, 'til just a couple of years before the age of moral responsibility.

In pride of place, in the glass-fronted cabinet's tallest middle shelf, is the Rashi khumash in five volumes (printed edition of the Torah, with weekly readings from the NaKh, and commentary by Rashi), surrounded by the Sforno, the RaMBaN, and the Ibn Ezra like a princess by her ladies-in-waiting.

Across from the oven, on the far wall, stands a truly enormous sofa buried under knitted throws and old fur coats; beside one armrest is a wooden chest with a lock on it. Over the sofa, on the wall hangs the framed kesubah of HaRav Yonoson Ari'el m'bais Bassiyah v'Simkha Lioh and Dovyd Mordekhai ben Toviyah Ĥayim v'HaRabbah Raĥav Ĥayah HaLevi; like stars around the moon, Polaroids and framed photographs scatter the breadth of the wall around the kesubah.

There's Leyb Morgenshtern themself, and their bridegroom, and Eli, the sister-in-law — an older butch otherwise nearly identical to Anzu, wearing peyos and tzitzit, and covering her head with either skullcaps or men's hats, just like her twin brother. She's usually accompanied by a tall, dark woman of about Leyb's age — her femme. Across the photos, one counts four kids — three teenagers (the older two boys, the youngest a girl), and a toddler. There's also a short, severe woman — white Ostyiddish, about Anzu's age, with bobbed grey hair, and spectacles in heavy black plastic frames a little too big for her face; in every photo, she's wearing a different brightly-coloured woollen beret; if neither Leyb nor Anzu nor Eli's femme are holding the toddler, she is. The toddler — not quite as dark as Anzu, with auburn ringlets and violet eyes — is of undetermined gender, pointedly dressed in yellows and greens and reds, and sometimes in purple.

To those who can see the unseen and know the hidden, there's something eerie about both the toddler and the oldest of the teenagers, an East Asian boy with straight white hair and a broad face, wearing a Bukharan yarmulkah, the same style Anzu wears.

But then, there's something eerie about everyone in the photos, the same strange and haunted air Leyb and Anzu have, but the toddler and this teenager seem to be moreso of whatever the rest of their family are.

There's others in the photos, too (no less eerie, though if everyone's peculiar, maybe no one is, in the end) — Leyb's uncle, often with some other older man in a yarmulkah, and a wiry, middle-aged man, probably Sefaradi, usually accompanied by ... ah, yes. That's definitely a blue tiger. A blue Amur tiger. A blue Amur tiger nearly always accompanied by a black-and-red cockatoo. Nobody runs not from the tiger; the tiger mauls not any of his companions. And in fact, if one watches the pile of blankets and fur coats on the sofa, that same tiger will eventually raise his head from the pile, blink slowly like a housecat, and then, inexplicably, say, "nu? Who'rt thou?"

2. and he hastened to bring her unguents
Beautiful Dreamer, Wake Unto Me | with Dr A.T. Menelikov amourtician | open to all

and her share of food

It's a hall of mirrors.

No, no— not no hall

Rather, endless corridors, mirror-lined above wooden panelling. The effect is disorienting, dizzying, as legless torsos fan out and multiply into infinity. Narrow side-boards set with food run along each wall under the mirrors. The food is fresh, and delicious and rich — grinning heads of pigs, suet puddings, crab and lobster and shrimp. Bread made with milk, and carafes of wine of unknown provenance, and jugs of cow's milk next to platters of caviar; salmon and tuna steaks piled on plates right next to beefsteak with butter melting upon it. And it's all running into infinity, too, trayfah spilling into the unseen horizon.

Here and there, a section of mirrored wall and sumptuous sideboard is broken off from the next one by a floor-to-ceiling wooden panel; in these lacunae, empty suits of armour recline against the wall, in the manner of bored bouncers and bodyguards everywhere. Some smoke pipes, or roll-ups. One is eating a shrimp cocktail. All hold spears and naked swords, and cudgels, and, inexplicably, in their hands and hanging off weapon-belts are books much akin to psalters, with sun motifs on the leather covers.

The ceiling is peaked, a wooden canopy lined by portraits of severe nobility in wigs and lace and silks, in military-styled court dress on lithe frames whose ancestors knew not no famines — all of them white, the wigs all snowy white, the faces subtly different, but cast from the same mould. Square men's faces, oval women's, clearly gendered with no hint of androgyny, no hint of ambiguity, no hint of anything but morally hygienic gender dimorphism. Many are portraits of couples, always a man and a woman, arm in arm, beaming and happy, until they look down at Anzu and Lev/Lyubov with undisguised pity.

Some of the portraits grin, showing rows of white teeth like the slats of picket fences. The light glints off them — ting! The women hold fans; the men hold pistols and naked swords. Some hold what look like large-ish smartphones, with styluses dangling from attached ribbons.

Prominently upon each noble breast is a sun-disc, a golden circle with stylised eagle's talons around the rim. No head is covered — hats are held in hand, laid upon tables, hang off hat-stands.

The portraits are alive.

They're talking amongst themselves, talking of the food and the wine displayed below them, talking of their hospitality and their largesse. Talking of how open-minded they are, of how they'll accept into the fold of the Triumphant Sun just about anybody.

Yes, just about anybody.

Lev/Lyubov and Anzu walk these corridors arm in arm; eyes downcast. Both are missing their sticks, and their heads are uncovered.

Lev/Lyubov is dressed mostly as they are in the photos back at the cabin, in a floral shirt with three-quarter sleeves, and lilac skinny jeans, and canvas hi-top sneakers. But the tzitzit are missing.

Anzu is dressed in a pseudo-hussar ensemble much like some of the younger portraits above him. His hair is cut short, ironed straight, plastered flat to his skull with pomade; a single rakish curl hangs over one eye, artificial and calculated. Just like his bridegroom, no tzitzit hang over the waist of his trousers. The hand that's not clutching at Lev/Lyubov holds up a Venetian carnival mask, the kind that's mounted on a pole and held up to the face — a plague-doctor's mask, corpse-grey with a long beak. The same sun-disc as the portraits wear is pinned to his lapel. The shadows they throw behind them, walking along the corridor, are in the shape of their Silver-selves, but the shadows are faint and blurry at the edges, as if unable to fully manifest in this mirror-maze.

The portraits all turn to watch them pass. A hush falls, and then—

"Knyaz Men'shikov! Gospodin Svetlov! Good evening, good evening, good evening! The Hermitage chapel's in this wing — if the two of you hurry, you'll certainly make it in time for vespers!"

3. in the valley of the shadow of death
Beautiful Dreamer, Wake Unto Me | with Dr A.T. Menelikov amourtician | open to all

I will fear no evil

The palace courtyard inexplicably gives way to thick mixed woods, autumnal in red and gold foliage, the understorey thick and unruly. Destriers — enormous flightless birds, emu crossed with feathered velociraptors — mill about in the courtyard and at the periphery of the forest.

The Hermitage looms over the scene, watchful.

From the woods comes the baying of hounds, and the cry of the hunting-horns. The woods are not wild, the forests not empty. These are the tzar's holdings, and behind each tree is a boyar, and in every clearing there is a courtier.

The sun sets, red and livid; and both Lev/Lyubov and Anzu cannot remember what day it is, and if it is Shabbos, and if they're permitted to leave the boundary of the city.

Having gotten this far, they stand on the threshold, looking out to the royal parklands, listening to the baying of hounds, and they move not from the spot.

4. from the depths I call to thee, L-RD
Wildcard | open to all

Something else? PM this journal or contact me on Discord to discuss!

and her share of food

[lovethyneighb_or]

There is no mistaking it: he does not belong here.

And it remains true now, in this palace of palaces, surrounded by images of glittering pearls and evening dress. Metal glitters on the chests of Men, their swords seem forged from clusters and stars--a flood of brilliant lights made to cry out the brilliance of those with the money to own them. Metal, jangling, in coin or sword or tableware or commendation. Glass, to reflect it all back at them. Why does wealth always seem so cold and hard?

The silence attracts his attention; the voice directs it. Turning about, he spots them. For a second of a second he doesn't recognize them, first for the fact that he's never seen them out of Victorian clothing, and second for the fact that--

Mulcahy fishes for his necklace. His hands close around a rounded edge.

He doesn't dare call out, not yet--but he does stare, a gaze unlike the rest. Round-faced, impoverished, aging, and horrified.

father mulcahy | M*A*S*H

[lovethyneighb_or]

(( ooc: this is where i'll be dropping starters for those who have plotted with me. if you also want a thread, don't worry! you can still make some plans and i'll add it on; i just need to closely manage my thread count. ))

for hawkeye

[lovethyneighb_or]

The curtains draw open on a place dim and dark, smelling of sweat and dirt and antiseptic, reeking of fatigue in fatigues. It is grey, and brown, and green. There is a bar; there is a jukebox and a record player; there are tables, and people, and a piano. The walls are wooden frames and corrugated tin. The impressions of personnel lounge about, corporals and privates and captains chatting indistinctly; a few words and faces are semi-recognizable, some even very familiar, but mostly not.

The sound of a chopper, followed by the telltale whine, click, and blow of an announcement: Incoming chopper. No wounded. Repeat, no wounded. Seoul HQ reports that rain is expected this evening.

It is, of course, already raining. There's a bedpan or two to catch the leaks.

Father Mulcahy is on the piano, playing something jazzy and slow while an impression of Klinger loungers on top of it, smoking a cigar. He is whole and hale tonight. The world is cast in warmth. For now, everything is quiet.

Sephiroth | Compilation of FFVII | OTA

[imjustaman]

Sephiroth never finds the oasis, which on the one hand is probably a good thing since it traps people. But his nightmares are dark and horrible and torment him to no end.

Lab CW: Discussions of past child abuse

The laboratory is dark, a traditional mad scientist’s lair. There’s several slabs off to the side, large tanks of some green fluid to another side, something on the walls that looks like blood, and white feathers scattered everywhere. Sephiroth is hidden on the floor between two tanks, his knees drawn up to his chest and his forehead resting against them. He is still presented at his current, adult age, but his position looks more like that of a child. He shudders with the memory of something that happened here.

Nibelheim CW: Arson, results of past mass murder

Everything is burning—houses, trees, grass.... People are screaming in terror. In the midst of it all, Sephiroth is standing with fire on all sides, the Masamune gripped in his left hand. Horror flashes through his eyes and blood drips off the sword.

“No,” Sephiroth cries. “Not again. This can’t happen again!”

And he tries to run into the blaze to rescue someone nearby. If he’s prevented from going, everything will continue to burn and fall around them. If he runs off, he’s found later kneeling on the ground and holding a lifeless body in his arms. Sephiroth’s eyes look dead and hopeless.

Safer CW: Body horror, insanity, god complex

You’re in the clouds now, or what looks like the clouds. Maybe it’s all an illusion within the dream. Then Sephiroth descends, his hair upswept and more white than silver as it defies gravity. He’s appearing as a freakish, twisted being this time, with a blackish-purple wing in place of his right arm and six white and purple wings instead of his legs. He hovers in the air, all wings moving as the large halos around him glow.

“All shall submit to me!” he cries. “Now this world will pass into a new future with me at its head!”

He may have accidentally outed himself as the mysterious man in the woods. Although this form is not quite the same as the other—especially since he has both arms and his legs in that other Safer form—it’s similar enough that anyone who has seen the one will likely recognize this version as being a prototype of that.

His bluish-green eyes flicker and he brings his left hand to his forehead, trembling in horror. “What’s . . . why is this happening again?” he says in distress. “I don’t want this! Why . . . ?!”

The form flickers back and forth, shifting between this version and the version from the woods. He seems to be struggling with the insane side of himself. Who will win? Can you help?

Safer (Post-transformation)

[misbegottendreamer]

She can hear the music, a forceful tone, marching steadily on. It guides her to him, and as she unfurls into his dream, it's as a whirl of gray flutes, like a waving anemone. Then she rises up into the clouds, somewhat serpentine.

Drelasa does not know this man, but that means nothing when his distress is apparent.

"You are dreaming, muthsera," she explains, in a voice layered with reverb, "and I do not know how either of us might wake. But there might be a way to take control of these visions."

She extends a hand, long, blood-red claws pronounced against her gray skin.

James Sunderland / Silent Hill 2

[griefs]

notes!

( OK SO I wanted to say firstly that what I’m thinking with these prompts is that if you choose prompt 3, for example, then you’ve already gone through the first prompts on your own. But then from prompt 3, they’re free to move into prompt 4 together if that’s where the thread goes!

Also I know I took a different route with the second person thing but I wanted to set the scene for the person entering the dream without muddying it with James’s feelings despite the narrative also actually being his feelings, if that makes sense. Feel free to deviate however you would like! I just wanted to supply The Bones, as it were. I’m here to roll with whatever folks wanna do so if you’re not sure about something just lmk and we can hash it out. )

i. i get on the train and i just stand about

twin peaks voice: we live inside a dream. cw: unreality-ish dreamlike confusion

You step into a lobby. It’s old, abandoned. Quiet. Your footsteps echo softly with each step across the polished wood floor.

To the immediate left is an old reception desk. A thick layer of dust and dirt coats the countertop and everything on it, including an old brass bell. This is a hotel. There’s even a sign-in book for guests — or, no. The closer you look, the more it seems like it might be a clipboard check-in for patients. This is a … hospital? Even that polished wood floor… a second glance now and it seems more like white tile, tarnished by the same grime that coats the desk.

Oddly, it's hard to be sure. The harder you focus the more things seem to blur together into an amalgamation of something that doesn't quite make sense.

The air is sharp with antiseptic, but a heavy blanket of rot settles just beneath as if someone’s tried to scrub this place clean and did, quite frankly, an absolute shit job of it. Not really their fault, though. If something’s rotten on the inside, there’s no covering that up. Not really. If a building’s bones are decaying, you’ll always smell that little bit of damp and mold. You’ll always know.

Not much prettying up to be done to a place like this, anyway. There’s even visible water damage lining the tops of the walls, bleeding down from stained ceilings.The wallpaper isn’t peeling (do hospitals have wallpaper?) but the faded posters lining the walls sure are. Like with everything, it’s a little hard to tell exactly what you’re looking at there. At first glance it seems like standard signage advertising continental breakfasts and evening cocktails, that sort of thing, but if you look closer you realize they’re posters about grief, about signs and symptoms of a local deadly illness, or notes requesting people stay quiet in the wards. It’s a little strange you could’ve ever mistaken them for anything else, but no matter.

Before you lies a choice — left or right, though a quick glance down either way reveals no discernable difference between the two. Both lead to long, narrow hallways whose walls seem to press in closer the farther you go. Doors line the walls on both sides, but that makes sense. This is a hotel. Or — no, it’s a hospital. Isn’t it?

If this is where you encounter James, he will be standing at the crossroads, so to speak, empty-handed and despondent as he appears to have an internal debate over which direction he should take. When he hears you, he spins around and joy brightens his pallid face.

“Mary!” he cries out, breathless with relief as he takes a few quick steps towards you, arms outstretched for an embrace. And then… he stops. His face falls, shoulders slump. “No… Sorry, I—” His eyes squeeze shut, like he’s warding off a sudden oncoming headache. “I’m sorry.”

ii. now that i don’t think of you

there was a hole here. it’s gone now. cw: more dreamy confusion stuff (hallucination adjacent), general horror game stuff, implied illness & death

Whether you choose to go left or right, the result is the same: you find yourself in a long corridor that winds deeper and deeper into the building with no end in sight. There’s something else — the moment you step foot over whatever invisible threshold separates the lobby from this hallway, you may find yourself overcome with the feeling that you’re looking for someone. You don’t know if they’re safe. You don’t know if they’re alive. You don’t even know if they’re really here at all. You just know that if there’s a chance you could find them, you have to take it.

At first, nothing stands out as you make your way down the hallway. Jiggle a doorknob here or there and you’ll find every single door is locked tight; turn around and you’ll see the hallway stretches for miles behind you with no way back to the lobby. There’s nowhere to go but forward.

Honestly? Things get dull after a while. Walk, walk, walk. Check a door. No luck. Walk, walk, walk. Rinse, repeat. It goes on like this for quite a while. Maybe that’s all this ever was. A hallway with no end. Maybe the doors wouldn’t even lead anywhere even if they did open.

After hours of walking — no, it’s only been seconds — no, it’s been a lifetime, the hallway finally begins to change. There’s still no end in sight, but the water damage from the lobby has started to show here in peeling wallpaper and stained floors. Something like mold blooms across every surface and the stale, fetid stench of decay (god you hope that’s just the mold) hangs heavy in the air.

The doors show signs of rot, too. That could mean they’re easier to force open or kick down, so maybe you try. If you do, the moment your hand touches a doorknob, a heavy and roughly human-sized force slams against the other side of the door with its full weight. Something thick and black and rancid seeps from beneath the door, and that same stuff coats your palm where you touched the doorknob. It’s oily and warm and doesn’t quite come off no matter how you wipe your hand on your clothes.

So there are people in these rooms. That’s what that means. Were there always people? You can hear them ever so often now, as you walk. A moan of agony, a shrill scream, a burst of frantic scratching at the door. You can hear it all. But this is a hospital, right? Or was it a hotel? It’s hard to remember now.

You might pass a room that gives you pause, if only because you catch movement just out of the corner of your eye. There’s a strangled gasp, a struggle for breath. A shadow looms over a sickbed and something about it is terrifying. A visit from Death. But should you turn, should you look inside the room, you’ll find no shadow there at all. There’s nothing out of the ordinary; it’s just a bedroom. Dead flowers droop from a vase on the nightstand but it's just a bedroom.

So perhaps you move on, making your way down a hallway that continues to crumble. There’s rusted metal grating where patches of the wall and flooring wear away completely. The memory of the hotel or hospital or whatever it was blurs and fades until it seems as if the hallway was always like this.

“James!” a woman’s voice calls from somewhere far away— or, no. Did she say James? Or did she say your name? Or… who was that? Is it the person you’re here to save? Doesn’t that mean they’re nearby?

Or… wait…

Something is following you.

You can feel it. You can hear it. Heavy footsteps thud slowly behind you, somewhere down the hallway. You don’t see anything if you look but it’s there, it’s following, it’s coming after you.

And if this is where you first encounter James in this place, you’ll eventually find him once the hallway has almost fully deteriorated. He sits on a patch of floor that hasn’t yet crumbled away to rusted metal, slumped against the wall, head back, eyes closed.

When he hears you approach, he seems almost reluctant to look, as if he dreads what he might see.

“Oh,” he sighs in a voice graveled by exhaustion. His head tilts back, eyes shut again. “You really shouldn’t be here.”

Somewhere behind you, those footsteps never stop.

iii. i keep falling over, i keep passing out

its him!!! its that red pyramid thing. cw: n/a

Nowhere to go but forward. The hallway has degraded almost entirely, all rust and groaning metal. It’s like being in a cage. Trapped.

The floor creaks with each step and it’s easy to imagine it giving way to the dark empty abyss below. Nowhere to go but forward.

That thing is still following you. It’s closer now — impossible, or it should be, given those footsteps never quickened in pace, but it’s so close. So close. Behind you. Close enough to see it. Close enough to touch.

How?

Yet, still, nowhere to go but forward.

Maybe you spare a glance over you shoulder. If you do, that’s when you see him. A man clad in a filthy canvas apron, pale with waxy skin stretched over muscular arms. He carries a long metal spear in one hand and moves in deliberate, labored steps. All of that is sort of easy to overlook, though, if we’re being honest. Why? Because the man’s wearing a huge, pyramid-shaped helmet, gone red with rust. It’s kind of difficult to comprehend. It’s weird. It’s scary. It’s also still coming after you.

Fortunately, we have a one heroic James Sunderland on the case, and he appears out of apparent thin air to yell at you.

“This way!” he cries, urgent and terrified. His voice cracks. “Hurry!”

There’s a gap in the wall. Easy to miss, but James beckons you towards it as he squeezes through first. It’s a tight fit but if you can make it, it’ll buy both of you some time to get away from that thing.

iv. when i see a face like you

thank you mario! but our princess is in another castle! cw: body horror, illness, death, grief, guilt, more dreamy confusion

A blonde woman with a pretty pink dip dye lays on a cot surrounded by rusted old medical equipment. You know her, or you get the sense that you do. Or maybe it’s not that. Maybe when you take a second look you realize it’s not that blonde woman with the pink dip at all, but someone you really do know.

Not that it matters. The person on the cot is dead.

You’re too late. You didn’t move fast enough.

You did this.

The woman’s skin is mottled with large, flaking sores, like she’s being eaten away by disease. Pink, manicured nails lay in rotten nail beds. The smooth flesh of her arm gives way to white bone in places. Her perfect teeth glint through a weeping hole in her cheek. You get the sense that this isn’t post-mortem decomp; this is what killed her. It wasn’t an easy death. She suffered.

Rot. Decay. That’s all this place is.

(And yet, you may find, if you don’t look directly at the person in the cot, they seem to take a breath. They seem to be alive.)

James is here, of course. He’s kneeling at the woman’s side, staring blankly at her pocked face. His eyes appear glazed, like maybe he’s not really focusing on her at all. He says nothing. Does nothing. Doesn’t glance up as you enter the room.

It’s not hard to imagine what he must be thinking. He did this.

There's a door on the far side of the room. Perhaps from here you can escape, and find yourself in a better place.

v. what am i coming to?

( wildcard! If you have something else in mind or want to plot something specific, just let me know! )

1.

[imjustaman]

Sephiroth is wary of the place as soon as he steps inside. It doesn't seem as bad as where he just came from, but he can't trust in anything right now. It looks like a hotel, yes, but ... no. It's a medical establishment. Shinra's? Hojo's? Is he here?

It's old. It smells horrible in here. He advances cautiously, worriedly. He wants to just leave, but now he doesn't see the way he came in. He has to keep going. He is less concerned about finding monsters in here than he is Hojo. Of course, Hojo is the biggest monster of all.

Aside from himself.

As he's walking, he seems to be dropping white and purple feathers from under his coat. If he is suddenly surprised right now, a black wing may suddenly unfurl on his right shoulder.

Radar O'Reilly | M*A*S*H | OTA

[incomingchoppers]

[ooc: while there are no warnings for the initial prompt, trying to rescue Radar will lead to a thread that may include heavy war themes, descriptions of corpses and/or the badly injured, gore, and violence. i'll include CWs for that and any other relevant warnings as they come up!]


sweet dreams and leave your worries behind you

Not every good dream has to be some grand, extravagant display, full of riches and glory. In fact, this portion of the oasis wouldn't look out of place in Pumpkin Hollow itself.

It begins with a farmhouse set on wide fields of corn and soybeans. As you walk up the dirt path leading to its front porch, you hear a murmur of voices around back. All of them have the same American Midwest lilt, rounded and a little nasally at the same time; they're punctuated by laughter every so often, warm and uncomplicated. There is so much affection in that sound. The love of family, reunited after too much time apart.

Once you change course and follow the voices to the backyard, you step into a gathering for Sunday dinner. A huge table's been dragged outside and laden down with all kinds of food: ham, turkey, potatoes (including some kind of sweet potato casserole topped with marshmallows), corn, fruit salad, pie, fresh-baked bread. Dozens of people mingle, some already seated and helping themselves, others still chattering happily with cups of lemonade in hand. They all look vaguely similar -- round faces, a little on the short side, and practically everybody wearing a pair of glasses. A brown-and-white terrier circles everyone's heels in the hope of stealing some dropped food.

(One face does stand out in the crowd, though, for both her familiarity and how unlike the rest of the gathering she looks: Dahlia Leeds, relaxed and happy and laughing, welcomed as fully into the family as if they've known her all their lives.)

Then, rising above the hubbub, someone shouts your name.

It's Radar. And it doesn't matter if you never met him or barely know him at all, he's still bounding over to greet you, beaming so bright it could light the sky. "You made it!" he says as he grabs your hand, ready to drag you further into the backyard. "Gee, I was starting to worry you wouldn't! C'mon, lemme introduce you to everybody!"


but in your dreams, whatever they be

[wildcard! want a custom starter? want to find Radar after he's already escaped the oasis? some secret unknowable third option? holler at me on discord or the plotting post.]

[thelatechrisfreeman]

It's strange, but Chris doesn't look like themself-in-real-life upon entering this dream. Perhaps it's the strength of the longing behind this dream plus being in the oasis, but Chris looks decidedly more feminine here and not just in manner of dress as they sometimes do.

One arm cradles a basket full of cinnamon-sugar dusted cookies, and they smile warmly at Radar. "Sorry," Chris says, even as they are tugged along by Radar's welcome, "I didn't want to come empty-handed."

[[ OOC: Couldn't resist the "if you never met him" open invitation, haha. The more feminine appearance for non-binary Chris is me using the oasis-dream to push them into some gosh darn self care via gender affirmation. Feel free to have Radar treat them like a lady, they might find they like it. :) ]]

Felix Gaeta | Battlestar Galactica | 1 OTA, 1 semi-closed

[not_a_traitor]

[ooc: no major warnings for the initial prompts, but the plotting post goes into more detail re: what might crop up in a nightmare thread with Gaeta; his overall content warnings might come into play, too. i'll CW individual tags as needed, but be aware it'll probably get gnarly.]


i woke up from the same dream / falling backwards, falling backwards [OTA]

You round a corner in the nightmares, and wherever you were before has changed.

If you aren't used to space travel, it may feel claustrophobic, oppressively inorganic: an A-shaped corridor about fifteen feet across at its widest point, shrunk slightly by cargo boxes dotting its edges. The only illumination comes from regularly spaced tubes of cool white. The metal walls are dulled, scuffed, even a little oxidized in a few spots. She's an old ship, Galactica; she should never have lived this long.

Standing in the middle of the hall just ahead is Lieutenant Gaeta. And there's no mistaking him for anything but a lieutenant -- he stands ramrod straight on two intact legs, hands tucked behind his back in parade rest, wearing his Colonial Fleet duty blues. There's less gray in his hair, and it's cut a little closer to his scalp than usual. There's also a keen awareness in his eyes as he looks you over.

"Are you lost?" he asks, concerned. He tips his head to indicate the corridor behind him. "I think I know how to get us out of here. This way."

As you fall in step behind him, the walls change. Subtle at first, perhaps. Something about them echoes your own nightmares, in the etched patterns on the metal or the rust that looks a little too red. The way the hallway bends could conceal something far worse just out of sight.

Then you reach the memorial wall, and it isn't subtle at all any more. There, among the images of billions dead, are photographs of your own loved ones. Family, friends, past lovers. Maybe even yourself.


now I live a waking life / of looking backwards, looking backwards [semi-closed; ping me to plot. cw: blood]

Or maybe you end up somewhere else instead.

In the belly of Galactica sits her hangar deck, huge and echoing with the roar of engines and the shouts of the deck crew. Sleek Vipers and blockier Raptors crowd in the designated landing bays, but most of them seem to blend into the background. All except one Raptor with its hatch wide open.

A slim woman with long dark hair and a sweet, gentle smile stands in the entrance. She reaches out a hand, ready to help you aboard. A trail of blood runs from her feet over the wing of the Raptor, bright as paint, drip, drip, dripping onto the hangar deck floor. It's the only way out, you realize. You have no choice but to accept her hand -- also smeared with blood -- and haul yourself inside.

Only after the hatch slams shut do you realize Gaeta's aboard, too. Still in his duty blues, but with his jacket open and the right leg of his trousers cut away to make room for a prosthesis that's little better than a metal pole. It takes a moment for his eyes to focus on you, but once they do, they flood with panic.

"You shouldn't be here," he rasps.


when I break pattern, I break ground

[wildcard! you know the drill <3]

1.

[imjustaman]

Sephiroth is confused when he rounds a corner and is suddenly somewhere other than the nightmare crafted from his own horrors. He looks around, very much lost, and is relieved when he's noticed.

"What is this place?" he asks.

Increasing terror fills his veins as something changes in the scenery around them. This isn't right. Why does it feel like Hojo's lab or the Forgotten City or . . .

The Memorial Wall turns him completely pale. He stares in horrified bewilderment at the pictures on it. "Zack.... Angeal.... Cloud?!" Zack and Angeal are dead, but Cloud is not.

Himself too, in his second Safer form with wings everywhere and fallen feathers scattered in all directions.

Heather Harne 🌊 Original Character 🌊 Open to All

[heatherbythesea]

An Oasis Has Water

Heather dreams, as she has every night, of the ocean. In her dream, she is exploring the depths -- for various reasons -- and is swimming, swimming... always swimming. If you are in the center of the dreamscape, you likely see her, though the mutable nature of this world means that while she may see the deep ocean, you may find her swimming in what you perceive as the open air.

Heather, in her merrow form, is rather hard to miss. She resembles the popular depiction of a mermaid in only slight ways -- humanoid body to the waist, fish-like tail beneath. Long hair cascades around her, growing only from the scalp area of her head. Her eyes are as black as ever, including the sclera this time. Her mouth is wider in her face, and full of sharp, pointed teeth. Her skin is ghost-pale and lacking in scales until about her collarbones, and then little scaly patches in flame orange and iridescent white begin to show along her arms and torso, larger around the gills that start halfway down her ribs, merging together to complete coverage beneath her waist.

Oh, and her full length in this form -- from the crown of her head to the end of her tail-fin -- is twenty feet. That fish tail of hers, with its various fins, is about eight feet long on its own.

She certainly looks like a monster, doesn't she? The only way to find out for certain is to get her attention...

Wild Fae Mislike Cages

You are safe here. Why would you ever want to leave?

But merrows don't care all that much for safety. They are, after all, a people adapted to aquatic living who used their magic to come up out of the water to explore.

Heather will probably become unsettled, or at least bored, by the comforts of the oasis. If you, trying to cross, run into her and explain what's going on, she'll follow you into the nightmares for the excitement of it.

Perhaps there's someone else she listened to, and she left the oasis with then, but got separated once they wandered into the nightmare zone. So even if you haven't gotten to the oasis, you might come across Heather the merrow, determinedly swimming in the air for the edge of the dreamscape.

Neat, sweet, a groovy song, you're invited, come along...

Wildcard

[Need Heather somewhere else? Want some healing songs or water-based attacks to take care of some nightmare you've stumbled into? Let me know -- I'm perfectly willing to hop into a thread and then have her drop out. We can excuse it as the nightmare realm keeping people apart, haha.]

Re: Heather Harne 🌊 Original Character 🌊 Open to All

[imjustaman]

Sephiroth hasn't made it to the oasis, but he's wandering about looking for anyone who might need help as he tries to figure out how to get out of here. Seeing the merrow swimming in the air is ... certainly an experience. But he's the last one to judge by appearances, especially after the forms he's spent half the time here in.

"Hello," he greets. "Are you looking for something in particular?"

Open Book || OTA

[skeletonkeay]

Somewhere along your journey, you take a step forward and abruptly find yourself standing on...

nothing

Suddenly there is blackness all around you. Not darkness, far from it. That's the domain of another beast. If you look down at your own features, it would appear as though they are perfectly lit by some unseen light source. The space is simply black. It doesn't feel particularly close or oppressive, nor does it feel vast and endless. Those things also belong to someone else. This space simply is. Or rather, it isn't. Because it is

nothing

There is no floor, no ceiling, no walls. No forward, back, up, or down. Just black, cold, meaningless

nothing

You walk in a direction, or the idea of one. Whether you are progressing is unclear. But eventually, you blink, and suddenly he is there. A person.

He stand there in worn boots. A baggy coat hangs from his near emaciated frame. Even if you know him, you almost don't recognize him without his hair, which is shaved nearly to the skin. Familiar eye tattoos are overwritten with script, written in thick black lettering like sharpie ink, covering every inch of visible flesh. His eyes are white voids, and there are chains around his wrists, his ankles, his neck. Gerry seems alerted to your presence, but he doesn't turn to face you. He looks like he could collapse at any moment, yet he never wavers. He just stands there like a statue, doing

nothing

Post-transformation

[misbegottendreamer]

Drelasa does not fear the dark, nor the nothingness. She has danced with Siebren enough to know the absence of up and down as a comfort. Like a blind fish in the depths, she swims through the void, her new unearthly features slowly starting to feel more and more natural.

When she finds Gerry, he seems so small. She isn't sure if this is because she has grown, or because he has shrunk. In either case, she looms over him, a lone, red eye fixed on him.

"Muthsera... can you speak?" Her voice is soft, but absolutely steeped in reverb.

Melanie King | TMA

[ghostbullet]

[ Starters below, closed or open indicated in the subject lines. General plotting here if you wanna run something else by me, or just poke me on discord. ]

But my body is bored of being torn apart [for Anya]

[ghostbullet]

[ CWs: restraints, non-consensual body modification/surgery, medical-adjacent horror, mutilation, others added as needed ]

When Melanie 'wakes', the first thing she Knows is that she cannot move.

It's harder to Know whether or not she can see. It feels, somehow, as if the answer is both Yes and No, as if despite the inky blackness that consumes everything around her she can still See everything as clear as day.

No, no, not everything. Just some things. She can See the Bullet, just above the tibia, throbbing with poisonous rage, pumping along the femoral artery and flowing all the way to the heart. She can see the Scalpel, and the Needle, and the Eyes. But she cannot See her surroundings. She cannot See what it is that's holding her down against the camp-hospital-stretcher bed—though it feels like hands, like hands wrapped around wrists and ankles, improbable in number and in strength. She cannot See herself, even though she is aware of every inch of her body, even though she can See the Scalpel and the Needle hovering mere millimetres from her leg.

Even though she can feel the pain as the Scalpel starts sawing through skin like it'd sooner take her whole leg off than wait, than be precise.

The leg is not numb.

And so Melanie screams.

Johnny | Life Eater | ota

[stalkholmed]

wake unto me

cw: gore, captivity, ritual suicide

Johnny opens his eyes. No, that can't be right.

Johnny opens his eyes, but in the instant before that, he already knows where he is. On the floor of a dog crate too small for him to stand up in, in a basement. There is a terrible, rotten, familiar smell that the bunches of scented candles surrounding his cage do absolutely nothing to combat. All they do, all they've ever done, is make the scent of vanilla turn his stomach.

"Ralph?" He can't bring himself to look-- where it happens. Where Ralph does his grim duty. He can see, and if he can see, he can remember, and he doesn't want to remember this. Like he has a million times before, he rattles the door of the cage, but of course it doesn't budge. He can see the padlock on it still.

"Johnny..." A familiar voice croaks from where he doesn't dare to look, sounding even rougher than usual. "Don't worry, Johnny. I'm taking care of it. Zimforth will get his sacrifice." A terrible, wet squelch and Ralph cries out in pain.

Another wave of terror grips Johnny. "Ralph-- I'm stuck in here! You have to let me out first." He pleads desperately.

"Won't let him take you." Ralph mutters, nonsensical, already too far gone into the ritual. "Keep you safe."

Tears streak down Johnny's face, and he rattles the bars, a desperate scream tearing from his throat. The calm acceptance he'd once fallen into down here crumples away at the thought of being trapped in this cage with nothing but a rotting corpse for company until he himself wastes away. "You have to let me out! Ralph, please--"

"Water the flower--" The sickening sound of a sharp knife sliding into a beating heart, and a dying gasp. "I love you, Johnny."

He still does not dare to look at the body.

wildcard
[want johnny to visit your dreams? maybe get lost in a maze together? let's do it]

wake unto me

[heatherbythesea]

She's in her human form within this nightmare, her own terrible memories blending in on the edges a scene in charcoal and smudged pastels to chain her wall. Heather dangles from aching wrists and tries to lift her too-heavy shackled feet.

"Silly little sea bitch," says the hateful thing inside what used to be her friend. "You can't do anything good here..."

Then Johnny's voice which she does not recognize, breaking in with a cry -- "You have to let me out!" and that's different

Heather screams, "Who else is here? Who else is here?" and there's a compulsion in that desperation -- speak, reveal yourself, answer me.

Agent Connecticut / CT | RvB

[liesdontfindyou]

[ Starters below, closed or open indicated in the subject lines. General plotting here if you wanna run something else by me, or just poke me on discord. ]

The places I've been, the people I've seen [for Crichton]

[liesdontfindyou]

San Tierra, Resol. City of buildings that stretch as far into the earth below as they do into the sky above, interconnected by platforms and roads and bridges that play havoc with your sense of where, exactly, the ground is. The first place Crichton finds himself as he crosses over the boundary certainly looks like it could be the ground floor, a wide communal square that stretches between multiple tower blocks that loom overhead, and yet at the edge there is a railing, and beyond the railing there is a clear view down to several more levels of interwoven infrastructure.

Even down here, the sun shines bright and hot upon those milling around the streets. There are market stalls and outdoor seating for food and screens full of information relevant to the public. People wander around, shopping and talking, sometimes calling between levels.

And, every now and then, some even climb over the railings from another level or off a building that stretches between them, like they can't be bothered with safer, easier methods of getting around.

Zivia Birnbaum | OC | OTA

[tehilim127_1]

oasis: does it almost feel like you've been here before?

Dream New York isn't quite like real New York. That's mostly because dream New York is all of New York in one place: neighborhoods and decades blending into each other, time and physical geography taking a back seat to how well every part of it is known and loved, how much any part of it is needed at the moment. Here the World Trade Center can be a single angled spire or a pair of blocky columns or both at once, and Yankee Stadium shifts amorphously, now overlapping a past parking lot, now a present children's playground. Here the Shakespeare Gardens in Central Park can open out directly onto the shore of the Hudson River, or share a border with a Brooklyn block party; here one might turn off Museum Mile onto Queens Boulevard, or step off the Staten Island Ferry into the star-speckled main concourse of Grand Central Station.

The sun is high in a dome of clear blue, and it's also setting in bands of brilliant color over the distant hills of New Jersey, and it's also invisible behind a thick soft cloud cover that's sprinkling down snow like powdered sugar, and it's also wholly absent from a sky full of more stars than one can ever really see through all the lights in this town. Smells whip by in bewildering profusion: car exhaust, pizza, perfume, faintly metallic steam, stale urine, spring flowers, ozone, hot honey-roasted nuts. Thunder goes by underfoot and overhead: airplanes out of JFK and Laguardia, subway trains hurtling north and south in their complex of tunnels, the veins and arteries of the city's heart. Everything hums, deeply alive, deeply loved.

Zivia's probably here somewhere. Just start walking; you always run into people you know in New York.

nightmare: oh where do we begin, the rubble or our sins?
[Content warning: large-scale natural disaster, potential peripheral gore]

It begins in that same city, tall-spired, million-windowed. It begins with a tremor underfoot, the lightest sway, almost pleasant, as though the island were dancing.

Sharper then, as though shivering with fear or a fever, then as though convulsing in pain. Shaking so violent it ought to be accompanied by a cry, and indeed almost at once it is: deep groaning of concrete and stone under intolerable strain, higher shriek of metal tearing, shrill wailing of alarms. The air is suddenly thick with dust and smoke and ash.

There are churning crowds of people, faces distorted with panic -- they should blur together but they don't, each one standing out in a moment's heartfelt fear. There are no people, only scurrying urban wildlife -- rats, squirrels, wildly flapping pigeons, trying to get away from the danger. There is no sight or sound of any moving life at all: only buildings and streets, bridges and tunnels and towers, coming apart.

Somewhere in all this is Zivia, struggling to run, struggling to scream.

wildcard: how am i gonna be an optimist about this?

[PM or Discord to discuss, or surprise me!]

Nightmare

[imjustaman]

Sephiroth rounds a corner and suddenly appears in this large-scale city as the earthquake begins. Alarmed but staying outwardly calm, he tries to talk to people and attempt to guide them to safety. He sidesteps the animals, allowing them to run. They probably know better than the people where to go, what feels safe.

He comes across Zivia and approaches her with that same calmness and firm kindness. "Come with me," he says. "I'll get you out of this."

And to where? Back to the nightmare he just left? Someone else's?

Well, regardless, they can't stay here.

Drelasa Veloth | Morrowind OC | CWs in headers

[misbegottendreamer]

Starlight and Dewdrops (The Lotus "World") | CW: mind control, religious control, implied (auto)cannibalism, unreality

Daeseh. Sister.

Bahrdruha. Wake up.

Ohn muhri'ath druham. You have been sleeping.

The past two hundred years... have they all been a lie? Drelsea opens her eyes to find herself lying upon an altar, with a figure she does not recognize standing over her. The glow of a grand halo silhouettes his head, and he wears the garb of someone of very high station. His face is adorned with a braided beard, almost Dwemeri in fashion.

"Congratulations, sister. You have passed the final test and been found worthy." The towering mer's voice is steeped in reverb when he speaks, in the manner of a grand ancestral spirit.

She looks at him in confusion.

"Worthy, serjo? I do not understand."

"As Lord Dagoth Ur willed it, you have been dreaming, of a place and a time where your faithfulness to our House would be tested. Though you faced doubts as any other, you showed resolve towards honoring the Sixth House and the Tribe Unmourned. Your flesh, your spirit, have been blessed and made truly holy, and from this day forward, you will stand at a place of honor, and guide your brothers and sisters towards the true world. Congratulations."

She is being helped to stand. She is garbed in fine robes and jewelry, and guided to a banquet hall where the most esteemed of the House sit, all graced with features of lesser divinity. And she realizes, quickly, that she bears those same features: a radiant halo, fire in the eyes, an unearthly grace, and a restoration of her youthful beauty.

It is everything she could have hoped, that these beautiful things were all true, and not just a wonderful lie.

Why, could it be that she carried memories of her beloved brothers and sisters into her dreams? After all, she sees them now, wandering in, perhaps having just passed their own trial.

"Sibling! Friend! Here, come join me in this celebration!

Wake Unto Thee (Escaping the Lotus "World") | CW: Implied (auto)cannibalism, unreality, body horror (melting, fleshy weirdness)

Something is wrong. Something is wrong. Something is wrong.

I am walking backwards, unseeing, into peril.

Turn around. Turn around. Even if you are afraid.

From time to time, she catches glimpses of gaps in the false paradise. Twisted facial features in the guests, fleeting images of the feast being that flesh-offering from her "nightmares," the sound of a distant bell pressing down upon her like the crushing weight of water. The doubts pile up, until at once, it's like a thread snaps, and the image of a paradise comes crashing down around her, as some great pain erupts betwixt her temples.

The light fades to a dim red. The walls turn to crumbling ash-bricks and pulsating flesh. The ringing grows louder. She flees, even as the floors seem to reach out as clutching hands and she can feel her own flesh grows into their touch. She tears herself free with all her strength, the accursed feasts beginning to bubble in her stomach.

Stay. Stay. Stay.

There is no daylight to stumble into, but there is a sense of "outside." Drelsea- no, Drelasa- can see, faintly, the presence of other dreams, as much as they exist in any sensible idea of space. Somehow, motes of dust become ribbons become roads become whole worlds, and she finds herself racing down them with all haste. She understands, even if she does not understand, and for the first time in a long time, she feels like she knows her purpose.

"Please! Please, wake up! We must flee this place! You are not safe here!"

Beautiful Dreamer (Fleeing into nightmares) | CW: Body horror (extensive melting and mutating), nudity (brief), trypophobia (description only)

As she flees away from the oasis, Drelasa realizes with horror that her body is beginning to change. Or rather, it feels as if her body is melting, starting at the feet and moving upward, threatening to swallow the rest of her body whole. Even more bizarre and frightening is the blissful feeling that seems to be coming with it, a euphoria trying to coax her into accepting her fate. By the time the strength in her legs fades and she's left sprawled on what the dream passes as ground, her whole body is aquiver, thrashing and trembling and racked with wild spasms.

She grabs onto whoever or whatever she can, screaming, weeping, as her lower half continues to contort, developing rows of strange, circular holes, not unlike the spiracles that line her facial flutes. Those, too, have returned, though she's appeared as her waking self since she fled the center. She's forced to tear away what's left of her now-tattered robes, too, as her body seems to grow, the breadth of her shoulders alone increasing by almost a meter.

Waiting for Thee (Wildcard and Post/Transformation) | CW: TBD, in Headers

(Perhaps you meet her in the dreaming after her transformation, and the two of you travel together. Perhaps there is something else in the dreaming you wish to know about her? Feel free to put any outliers here!)

Wake Unto Thee

[stonecoldtop]

Motes of dust become ribbons become roads, and roads lead to the House.

There is no front entrance to this house, no door that was stepped through, just a gradual slide from where she was to where she is. A dim and crowded corridor that stretches on infinitely in both directions, years- centuries- millennia of soot soaked into the stone bricks from the few and far between candles that light the way. There are doors every few metres on each side, and despite the fact that they bare no distinguishing features, people rush from one door to the next as if they know exactly where they're going.

The people are... odd. They come in all shapes and sizes, many with distinctly unnatural features. Wooden skin here, animal eyes there, silver chiming hair in another. And yet, if looked at too closely, their features are blurry somehow, like the crowd in the background of a painting. There for texture, not to be examined.

It's not long before George, in sharp focus, steps out of one of the doors and — though they barely show it — has all the others cowering away from him. His impassive marble skin is polished to a gleaming shine, and his eyes burn bright with a cruel flame.

It seems to take him a moment to process Drelasa's plea, the faintest flicker of something passing through his eyes before it is thoroughly quashed.

He bows politely, if shallowly, and with a stiff and professional tone says "I am quite safe, ma'am, but you should not be here."

Chris Freeman [Eternity] 💀 DC Comics | Rebirth 💀 Open to All

[thelatechrisfreeman]

[Content Warnings: For the initial prompts, and going forward -- Chris's first death involves a drive-by shooting and the death of their father David. The scene involves a lot of blood. Imagery from other past deaths will occur, involving domestic violence, stabbing, having one's head crushed, and dying in isolation of a respiratory illness. There will also be descriptions of feeling your body rot.]

Follow the White Rabbit🐇

Your own nightmares may be interrupted by the sight of Chris -- looking somewhat younger, and definitely more masculine in dress -- running through the scene. He's got a handful of bullets sloshing around in his ruined guts, a hand pressed to the entry wounds on his belly without realizing that his lower back is a mess of shredded tissue leaking copious amounts of blood down along his legs.

There's no losing him if you decide to give chase yourself, bloody shoeprints and dark red splashes of blood marking Chris's path.

"Dad, wait!" Chris gasps out.

"You left me behind, Christopher. You let me die, you left me, and you've done nothing to help me rest..."

"It's not like that!" Chris sobs out, past the burning in their laboring lungs, even as their body begins to shut down from the damage, "I was scared too, damn it!"

And then Chris's lungs aren't just hurting from the strain of running, they are filling with blood. Chris spits it out, clearing xir mouth to cry out, "Don't leave me, Dad!" and xey fall to xir knees.

How did a damn kitchen knife end up in xir che--

"--only love that whore! I'll kill you!"

Oh. They've been here before.

Below, Between, Beyond

At some point, in their eagerness to escape the nightmare (and running around in circles), Chris's powers kick in to take them below.

(There's a way to follow, if you wish to make the trip. The sign of their passage is a gruesome one perhaps, depending on how you feel about a pool of blood and a chalk outline. But if you touch or disturb it, the blood will dissipate and leave behind a pool of clear water in the shape that a dead body fell. Perhaps it's larger in this wonderland and you can get into the underland by falling through...)

Walking along the cobblestone pathways, shrouded in the dancing shadows cast by those floating pillar candles, you may see Eternity in several different forms.

A body cradled in the arms of an angel statue, shattered head resting against its shoulder and dripping blood and brain matter along the white marble --

--the door to a crypt is open, and on a marble bench within, Chris shudders with powerful coughs and struggles to breathe -- "stay back... I'm contagious!" they will plead if they see you --

or perhaps you will see them as they once were, before this life... a child's corpse, bloated and discolored from rotting in the ocean -- yet standing there dripping brine onto your shoes.

"Do you know what it is to rot? It is being consumed by all the little things that lead to decay. Your sorry second life after death among the living. And I can feel it. I can feel my flesh swelling, membranes bursting, gas building up behind weakening walls of flesh being broken down and consumed. That's why the spirit flees the flesh after death. To stay is madness. To stay is to feel it all, and to feel it all is madness."

The sharp ringing sound of a kitchen knife's blade being dropped among the cobblestones. And there's Eternity, a spreading bloodstain on the chest area of their white shirt, pink foam surrounding their mouth and dripping off their chin. They sign to you, with a silent smile,

|Would you like to find the ferryman?|

Follow the White Rabbit

[pineapplesalmon]

César is pulled from a nightmare of mass-production horror to a very personal and singular one. The boy runs past César, and he gets a full view of Chris's back. For a moment, César stares in horror, and he realizes who the boy must be (time travel happens). "¡Dios mío!"


The next moment, his instincts kick in, and suddenly his brain goes into overdrive; you can't slide into panic if you're thinking too hard to fully process your own emotions. "Chris! Your back! Stop!"

Claude von Riegan | FE3H | ota

[inaurate]

oasis - marketplace

That this part of the dreamland is called an oasis is doubly apt here, for you have arrived in Al-Jawahra, the Shining Jewel of Almyra, the oasis in the desert. Even the streets people walk on every day are works of art, tilework in colorful mosaics dulled by dust and footsteps but still pleasing to the eye if you stop to look. Wyverns with their riders fly overhead.

There is a bustling marketplace with merchants offering goods from all over the world, and beyond-- every land you've heard of, and so many more you have not. It seems to stretch on for miles, and it would be easy to let yourself get lost in the bustle of it. A familiar face can be found doing just that, enjoying a kebab at a food stand, or looking over books. The man you know to go by Claude is dressed down for his marketplace excursion, blending in to the crowds, and making conversation with the merchants at the stands he frequent.

oasis - palace

Perhaps the busy marketplace isn't your style, or you just need a break from being out in the sun. Luckily, you have been given a guest suite in the palace, by grace of the king. If you thought the marketplace was a work of art, the royal palace is beyond that. It's easy to see why they call this city the Shining Jewel-- unlike the roads, the tilework is carefully upkept to look as brilliant and vibrant as the day it was first inlaid. The grand entrance features intricate carvings with gold plating and gemstones.

A palace attendant leads you to your lavishly appointed rooms. "The feast will begin in a few hours time. King Khalid would be very pleased to see you attend."

wildcard

[sticks my leggy out real far]

Marketplace

[misbegottendreamer]

There is a creature stumbling through the streets. It's a faceless, gray-skinned thing, garbed in rotting robes, with a bundle of tentacles emerging from what would be a head on a human being. It seems to be heading right for him, walking with an odd sort of swaying, sashaying grace despite its seeming panic.

Miles Upshur | Outlast | OTA

[upshore]

[Note: Since Miles is from a deeply, deeply fucked-up horror canon, his nightmares will be...A Thing. Content warnings will be added where appropriate.]

a. three months is a long time if you don't like it where you are

'beautiful dreamer, wake unto me'
cw: involuntary commitment, body horror, suicide by self-immolation, potential brief mention of nazis in background context, murder, just really gory shit

As Miles Upshur 'awoke' one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into an abomination of science.

It's the smell that gets him first. The smell of pennies, of old pennies, and then he can taste it, pennies in the water, pennies in the air, pennies in his mouth. It's wrong, it's wrong, it's wrong...

...it's right.

Miles wrenches his wrists out of the leather straps holding him down. He half-phases through them. He's physical, he's human, but he's so much more. He's so much more. He's static and sand and iron and blood and death, he is what Father Martin thought that he had been, immolating himself alive on a cross.

He is Miles Upshur. And he is the Walrider. And they are the same.

He walks/floats/walks through the crumbling, chaotic building that Mount Massive has become, stinking of blood and death and piss and shit and the wails of Variants locked in their cells echoing through the halls. Twisted, mutilated men, poor souls subjected to Wernicke's horrifying experiments. They shamble towards him like zombies, reaching out like penitents trying to touch the robe of Christ, kneeling like they are before the Pope.

Miles turns them into chunky marinara for their faith, which is what they wanted, of course. What sort of merciful god would he be if he didn't answer their prayers? The Variants want to become a soup-like homogenate. The ultimate expression of their faith. Showers of blood and fragments of bone as the remaining Variants cry out in religious ecstasy.

There's an intruder. He turns his head to see them, half-human, half-nightmare of nanites, and though his face may not quite resemble a human face, there's something like a predatory smile on it.

You should probably run.

b. three months is forever when the sun don't shine at all

'beautiful dreamer, wake unto me'
cw: involuntary commitment, potential brief mention of nazis in background context, body horror, murder, torture, mutilation, cannibalism, just really gory shit

monster hospital, can you please release me

Now it's a different nightmare. Instead of being the monster he's terrified of becoming, Miles is one of them. Locked up in Mount Massive as a 'patient', not a journalist. No notebook, no camera, just the jumpsuit of a Variant and knowing he's next.

Sometimes it's Chris Walker stalking him, breathing heavily, chains dragging as Miles hides. Sometimes he manages to escape. Sometimes he's unlucky, and Walker drags him out of the locker or out from under the bed where he's been hiding, snarls "Little pig," and rips his head off.

Sometimes it's that fucking business-school prick Trager, the 'doctor' who'd decided it was fun to torture and mutilate people in the name of his god, the almighty dollar. Sometimes he's chasing Miles. Sometimes Miles is strapped down in the wheelchair, unable to escape, as Trager takes his rusty shears and cuts raggedly through fingers and toes and tongue and testicles, smiling at his handiwork as best he can.

Sometimes it's the Dick Twins, as Miles has taken to calling them in his head (and yes, they are stark absolutely goddamn fucking naked). They stalk him through an infinite asylum, persistence predators, ready to rip him apart with their teeth and bare hands and eat his organs while he's still breathing. Sometimes they catch him, and he can't even scream because they've ripped out his throat.

And rarely, very rarely, it's the Walrider itself - under Billy Hope's control, not his own. Without the infrared vision his camera gave him, he can't see it. He's out of the asylum itself, in the underground lab that smells of blood and viscera and too-sterile isopropanol. He's down here to kill Billy and kill the Walrider with him, and Billy knows it. Sometimes he can hide, but Billy always catches him, picks him up, tosses him around like a cat playing with a mouse and breaking his limbs one by one...and then juices him.

And he dies. And he comes back. And the cycle repeats.

Anyone wandering into his nightmares will be more or less ignored by Miles' tormentors...unless they get in the way.

c. some day you're gonna realize you've been sleepwalking through it all

'sounds of the rude world heard in the day'

down, down, to goblin town

The cold of the Frozen Necropolis is welcome, in its own way. It makes him feel like he's alive. It still feels too much like Colorado, but he's out, he's free. This spooky shit? Small potatoes compared to what he's been through. He laughs at horror movies now (or would, if he'd have seen any since getting here).

"Loving this hike," he says, turning to the person behind him with a laugh. His face is pink with cold and his breath is showing, but there's a life to him even here in Death's domain, and a relief so strong it's nearly tangible.

d. you've been sleepwalking through it all to get back home

'lulled by the moonlight, have all passed away'

wake up. wake up! W A K E U P

After his long pilgrimage through the realm of nightmares - his own and others' - Miles reaches the end. It's like a soap bubble, colors swirling, and he pokes it. Too easy to have it pop that way. He kicks it and punches it, throws his whole weight against it, but it doesn't even dent.

So he takes a deep breath, and lets go.

He's half a monster now, Walrider and human, and he doesn't know if he'll be able to get back to himself properly and to be honest he doesn't really care. He screeches, an unholy, blood-freezing noise, and attacks the barrier, tearing at it with nanite claws. He'll get through if it kills him.

wildcard | sleepwalking through it all (through it all, through it all)

[hit me up on dm, discord, or on plurk at Chatvert! or just jump in, i'm not picky]

A

[thelatechrisfreeman]

Oh? Chris was already running, when they turned a corner and found themselves on the outer edge of a shambling group of twisted creatures. There's a wince from them as the Walrider... Miles... shreds most of them into a mass of bloody meat and viscera chunks, a turning away of Chris's face to avoid the flying shards of bone.

Their own steadily drip-drip-dripping blood joins the rest, as they stare... and beyond him they see the thing of nanites.

Chris reaches out to Miles, not a penitent to touch the hem of his robe, but a lost psychopomp taking hold of the only soul it can see.

"This way!" Chris shouts, pulling him along, pulling him away from that nightmare predator as best as they can.

phil connors | groundhog day: the musical

[goodweather]

(( ooc: like before, this is where i'll be dropping starters for those who have plotted with me. if you also want a thread, don't worry! you can still make some plans and i'll add it on; i just need to closely manage my thread count. ))

there before the threshold (for hawkeye)

[goodweather]

He has the drive up to Punx memorized by now, but apparently that doesn't preclude him from getting so completely, utterly lost. He must've zoned out and taken a wrong turn somewhere. These woods don't look quite right, but he doesn't even know what highway he's on to correct where he's going. It's not Groundhog Day or anything; he was just going to visit, check up on some people, revisit his favorite mediocre diner.

Oh, well. At least no one was expecting him.

Okay, he's got to pull over somewhere. Not on the highway. He finds an exit--the woods shift, adapt, and he finds himself on a road, on a gravel path, and follows it to a lake. Phil steps out of his car and tries for reception on his phone.

Yeah, no luck. He tuts.

Well. t least it's a good place to take a break, he thinks, as he sits down on a log by the lakeside.

Ellen Ripley | Alien (1979)

[2onostromo]

Regurgitation | The Beginning | OTA
CW: Graphic violence, eventual themes of alien impregnation, more tbd.

It begins in the mines.

Ripley lugs a jack-leg drill deep into the mineshaft she’s to be stationed at. An air hose drags weightily behind her, prepped to deliver compressed air to the machine in rhythmic punches. 160 or so pounds of deadweight. A pain in the ass to carry, but she isn’t one to complain. No, Ripley kicks out the tripod stand, affixes the pneumatic leg support and holds the damn thing steady. It strikes the underground— that raw, hard, valuable earth— in a machine-gun like tempo. Compressed air hisses deafeningly, joining the apparatus in song.

The drift she stands in is narrow. Esophageal in comparison to the rest of the underground chasm.

Her device slows its battering on the passageway’s throat.

“Drexton, the bolts.”

Ripley stills, ears straining to adjust to the stark lack of noise. There are no footsteps. No pop of gum she’s used to from him. Bastard, he didn’t take lunch early, did he? And without saying a word?

“Drexton.” She says again, the name clinched between her teeth.

A mass of cables and jutting tube stalks behind her. Its smooth head peels through the darkness, and at its feet drags a long, slender tail not unlike her hose. Nothing taller than 5 and three quarters of a foot can stretch to its fullest height here, and so the shape must resign itself to slouching. One slow, haggard step forward. Two, three, pop, pop, pop.

She whirls. The beam of her headlamp penetrates the darkness, making out her coworker’s sun-tanned mien. He’s adorned in a hardhat and dragging his hose. Ellen curses. He cracks a smile, wad of gum inflating like a blister between chapped lips.

“Scare ya?”

Drexton looks pleased with himself. Not for long.

Scrrk—!

It happens instantaneously. Blood paints Ripley’s face in a hot splatter as a thorn bursts from the back of his head to the front, opening him up like a used bullet casing. And it’s wrong, so dreadfully wrong how his face flowers around the black thorn. How his mouth goes slack to allow a scream his lungs cannot produce. Ripley completes the noise. Her’s is shrill and corvid-like, hammering against the cavern walls much like her drill.

No no no—

Her mind palms at reason. Did an explosive tear away one of the mine’s steel support beams and send it flying? Had a person behind Drexton approached with faulty gear? She probes the darkness with a swing of her headlamp, making out the stooped body and elongated head of an old friend affixed to the cavern ceiling. That black latex creature that’d fought its way aboard the Nostromo.

Difficult to see in the dark, but she’d never mistake it.

Like a doll, Drexton is wrangled through ore-lined intestines. His limbs and skull make an awful thumping noise against the ground, and soon the darkness swallows him whole.

Saving only her pickaxe, Ripley sheds her drill, air hose and heavy work belt to run.

Nothing to do but run. Run through the drift toward her hydraulic-powered safety, not stopping for anyone or anything. Four giant, clawed feet scrabble behind her once it decides that Drexton is not satisfying prey. Its mouth— then another, smaller jaw— unhinges to let out a scream. A laugh, rather. Mirth in its most unadulterated, animal form.

She runs despite the weight in her chest and legs. She runs regardless of how terrifically her lungs fail to bring in new oxygen. So little of it is to be spared down here, after all. She forgoes the dizzy panic that threatens to send her toppling off her axis to run, clearing several checkpoints, knocking over metal fixtures to block its path.

Fucker— I thought I blasted you into space.

Maybe it wants to return the favor.

Maybe it’d taken the same maiden voyage she had, in order to oblige its bloodthirsty instinct.

No time to think. Just run...

You should run, too.

So you run. Through the darkened mineshaft, up onto the hydraulic platform, and out into--

You don't recognize this world. The air reeks of ammonia, and yet you're able to breathe it anyway. It tastes sour inside of your throat. Stings until your vision goes wet. However, no protective gear needed. No domed astronaut's helmet, no fat pack of oxygen at your back. The sky is dark and the rain hits you as hard as stones.

You're about to make a break into the fog when something rope-like steals forward. It lassos you by the ankle and drags you back down into the horrible derelict's throat...

Do you scream?

Does it matter?

The Rescuer | Closed for Gaeta
CW: Graphic violence, themes of alien impregnation, eventual themes of assault, more tbd.

The walls around her are breathing. Pulsing. Secreting something thin and gelatinous that drips from floor to ceiling. Thread wetter than silken web binds Ellen to a wall of indiscernible origin. At her feet lies an old pickaxe, the sharp end eaten away to frayed metal (where had it come from?). So too does the shed skin of a parasitoid. She cannot move. Can scarcely breathe, though whether that’s her fault or the cocoons, she hasn’t the faintest clue. She knows what happens next. Doesn’t need to be told. She’s seen the fetus-creature burst through her colleague’s chest and knows with full certainty that soon her own ribcage will split like a sallow flower.

“Surely you understand,” A voice crackles over Mother’s communication channel. So it is the Nostromo… “That scientific progression is the very core of human evolution. That without evolution, humankind will cease to exist. When presented with an opportunity to accelerate growth in the face of ecological adversity, should that opportunity not then be taken? Do you not wish to serve mankind? To serve The Company, as they’ve so courteously served you?”

You hear his voice too, curt through aged speakers.

You stand before a large metal opening, one of many aboard the Nostromo. How did you get here? From which corridor did you come? And in what pod had you been sleeping? Perhaps you've always been apart of the crew, and you believe this intrinsically. The door opens, exhaling, to allow you entrance into a wide expanse. Chains dangle from the ceiling. You see a woman— a stranger to you— indiscernible from the neck down. She fights against her bonds. Expects Ash to have entered, to watch her demise like a public execution, and instead finds a stranger in turn.

She doesn’t recognize your face— but that doesn’t stop her from calling to you in a whisper.

"Help me."

Wildcard | Surprise me!
p.s. If you'd like to plot something a little more specific, feel free to shoot me a discord message and I can edit this post or add a comment!

regurgitation

[starfleetashell]

Mariner's running. She's smart enough to realize when discretion's the better part of valor, following Ripley out through the mineshaft and into the world. Not a class-M planet; the atmosphere's basically unbreathable, a little voice in the back of her head tells her.

The xenomorph's ropelike tail curls around her ankle and yanks, dragging her back. She screams and struggles, kicking at her assailant. She doesn't look back at it. No time to be frozen in fear when confronted with something she doesn't understand. If she had her bat'leth - if she had a phaser--! But she needs both her hands to keep from being dragged down into the darkness.

Darcy LeJeune | Original Geist Character

[saltwaterlungs]

[Placeholder, all thread starters will be in the comments below]

I think I saw what happens next [Phil]

[saltwaterlungs]

The apartment is somewhere between Lyon and Pittsburgh, maybe some combination of both that will only feel strange upon waking, and outside is a warm summer evening that wafts in through the open windows. There are some things Darcy knows as they come out of their room, freshly showered after a long day of (Work? School? Hunting?) and in their pyjamas. This is safe. It’s home. If they go over to the couch, and they do, they’ll find Phil already there, with dinner for them and Jeopardy on the TV. There is nothing fanciful in this version of Darcy’s good dreams, no baroque fantasies of dragons. Just rest, and quiet, and a kind of domesticity that is as comforting now as it was painfully dull back then.

They sit theirself on the couch and lean against his shoulder. Already they know they can't stay.

"Hawkeye" Pierce | MASH

[notinflictthem]

[Placeholder, all thread starters will be in the comments below]

Inspekta (Hector) | Great God Grove | OTA

[carefulinspekshun]

i. when it grows bright, the particles start

From the dark, cloudy depths of dreams, the glow of sunlight is almost as unbearable as it is unrelenting. Searing light turns into a comforting warmth as one acclimates to it, and nothingness underfoot gives way to lush grass. A plum-red sea sprawls into the distance, flowing over cliffs and across a pink-tinged horizon. People bustle about this small cove, and they're friendly enough, though deeply invested in their own, offering little more than a wave or a pleasant hello.

Well, save for one.

A little man, clearly some sort of little monkey-person in a sharp red jacket, trots up to you, stopping just a few feet away to stand tall. (Well, tall is a bold word - he's little more than four feet tall at best.) He grins, lopsided and delighted, and offers a hand--- paw?--- for you to shake, or perhaps to lead you by.

"Hey-hey! You're da one with the appointment to talk to our god, right? C'mon, he's ready to see ya!"

[ OOC Note: for those familiar, this one isn't any particular one of his men, just a Generic Bizzyboy that Hector dreamed up to run errands! Also, for this one, I'm completely open to playing a dream version of Miss Mitternacht or Sirena the historian to speak with for extra lore! Just let me know if that's something you'd like! :D ]

ii. to marvel, having made it through the night

Regardless of if the Bizzyboy takes you directly to where he's promised to, led you off on a little run around God Cove to see the sights, or got distracted and let you find yourself off to speak to the other gods in this dream, one way or another, the dream pulls you towards one of the domains in the cove. Instead of the van, where his domain could be anywhere it needed to be, it is planted at the heart of God Cove, a spot where any looking to move onto the next city, Milldread, would pass it by. A small dock sits just over the waterside, and an multifoil arch near it looks over the cliffs and the horizon beyond it, seemingly leading to nowhere.

A step through it leads to an entirely different world, though, a wide, open space hidden away from the mortal plane.

It's sunset, in this quiet place, the sun hanging just above the skyline. No longer does Inspekta feel the need to crowd himself into a small, mobile space, where he can obsess over information, to track every moving part of the Grove to identify any weak spots or errors; now, the wide open spaces speak to confidence, security. Intricately-patterned tiles lead visitors up a slow slope to the peak of what appears to be a mountain, towards a pillar-lined area that looks remarkably more lived in, where a tall god tinkers with paper notes clipped onto strings. The place lacks any of the mess that he'd been prone to in life, and the organized chaos leans more towards the former than the latter, now - the rows of notes and information look more like rainbow pennants than clutter. It takes him a moment to notice that someone has arrived, but when he does, he absolutely glows with delight, turning away from his work to beam over their way.

"Well, hi there! I was wonderin' when yew'd show up!" The teasing is joined by a little wink, clearly good-natured. He's in no rush to be anywhere, after all. "I'm just kidding, yew're right on time! Inn-tro-duck-shuns are in order before we get tew bizznizz, though, aren't they?"

He leans forward, stretching impossibly over the gap, to offer a floating, disembodied hand to shake.

"Inspekta, da God of Leadership, at yewr serve-ice!" The handshake is given with an over-enthusiastic gusto, and as soon as he lets it go, he leans back, waving his newest visitor closer. "C'mon in! What can I do for ya? Got a request, need a hand, just wantin' to chat?"

iii. never they ponder whether electric [Closed to Capochin]

Everything in this place is perfect.

Inspekta's never felt quite so light in all of his life. Not during his ascension, not when he'd won the godhood election, not even when he'd first seen the sky sprawling infinitely above the world. There's no fear, in this place, none of that perpetual dread that had loomed over him like an unforgiving cloud. Here, he is loved, revered, and welcomed, never once doubting that he's as valuable of a gear to the intricate workings of the world as any others are. Never doubting the importance of all those other gears that are right beside him, working in beautiful, immaculate tandem, in both the heavens and the earth.

Here, he can keep people close without restraint, ulterior motive, or fear. That fact extends no truer than to his closest confidant, his eternal accomplice, a crucial part of his whole world.

"Capooochin!" Inspekta sing-songs, swaying softly to and fro, hanging another note. This one's some jotted-down ideas along with a doodle - it's as silly as it is undeniably affectionate. "C'mere, I gots some things I gotta tell yew about!"

iv. calming if you look at it right

[ Wildcard! Put this long son of a gun in a situation, he loves those, and so do I! ]

Capochin || Great God Grove || Response to Inspekta + OTA

[staybizzy]

iii.a. spiraling down Thy majesty
[ response to Inspekta ]

Capochin stands just outside the entrance to Inspekta's domain. He hears that beautiful voice, the voice of his leader, his love, his god, ring out from beyond that heavenly archway. And dutifully, merrily, he comes when he's called, having no greater desire than to serve his perfect and wonderful god. He can think of no greater purpose.

He practically bounds up that tiled slope, his aging joints forgetting to complain in his hurry.

"Yes sir?" His voice comes eagerly, echoing in the grand and colorful space.

v. i beg of Thee, have mercy on me

A comforting glow of ethereal sunlight. A plum-pink sea. A blushing sky. Thick dark grass. Where Inspekta is, so too is Capochin. His right hand man, his oldest supporter, his most dedicated servant. And frankly, he couldn't be more proud of his work. After all, he is the confidante of a god! Not just any god, but the beloved and renowned Inspekta, the God of Leadership. God of the People. The Hero God. Kind, encouraging, charming, intelligent, all of the things he had seen in Hector all along, now made plain for the entire world without a hint of insecurity or doubt. Godhood had freed him of any such petty concerns, and the warm and good person that Hector is at his core (he is. he is. he is.) can be allowed to shine.

Capochin is blessed with magnificent purpose. He serves a perfect god. And that means that he, too, is perfect.

Near the entrance to Inspekta's domain, Capochin can be found accepting a report of success from a cheerful Bizzyboy, who salutes him proudly before running off as a new face approaches.

"Afternoon!" He offers a wide grin. He distinctly lacks the scent of tobacco on his clothes--- he hasn't smoked a cigarette in at least 20 years, after all. "Capochin, leader of the Bizzyboys and foremost disciple of the beloved Inspekta, our great God o' Leadership. Did you need any assistance today, or were you lookin' to head to Milldread? If you've never been to da Grove before, a Bizzyboy would be happy to escort ya."

vi. i was just a boy, you see

Something is wrong. Something is wrong, wrong, wrong. But it can't be, can it? Life is exactly the way it was meant to be. Isn't it? Everything is perfect. Inspekta is perfect, the Bizzyboys are perfect, Capochin is perfect, they're happy here, this is a good life! It has to be real, it has to! It can't be---

Can't be a dream.

Because that would mean...

Capochin wheezes with phantom pain as it wracks his chest. He gasps for air, clutching at a wound that should not be there. It can't be. He shouldn't need to give offerings like that, not to Inspekta. He would never ask that.

He would never accept that.

Inspekta is perfect. He is generous and selfless and kind and wants for nothing, he is perfect.

What's wrong?

Capochin looks up as he sees someone approach, forcing his usual smile back on his face. His mouth tastes of nicotine sludge and ashes. He doesn't know why. He doesn't smoke. "Hey! I'm okay! Just gettin' old, y'know how it is. I-is everything alright? Can I do anything for ya?"

vii. i plead of Thee, have sympathy for me

[ Wildcard ]

fever (dark urge) | baldur's gate 3 | ota

[abhorrently]

the sky, the earth, the undone wheel of fate. - ▼▩▼

cut for length.

Where are you going? This is a question you cannot answer. This is a question you will not answer. You go, without knowing, and there is a sense that you are

(falling, falling) rising until there is ground under your feet, movement thick and heavy through liquid, sloshing with every step. Don't look down. You cannot look down. You cannot look up. You cannot look back. Entangled and encased, you can only move forwards. Connected to a thousand tiny filaments, each with their own heartbeat, asking, being something else. Do you hear them? What you can be, and what you are - struggle, writhe, as warmth drips down the back of your neck. Open up. There's enough blood in this river to replace what's been lost.

Every empty space, filled with the taste and touch of what clings to every ridge and facet, distorting and coloring the surrounds.

Whose blood is it? does it matter?

Is it your own, shed in suffering? Is it your kin's, shed in hatred? Is it a foe, shed in joy? Is it an innocent, shed in fear? Who pursues you, with their breath on the back of your neck?

Are you even here at all?

Lying on your back under the midday sun (the full moon) and the scent of smoke fills the air, hazy and blurring the edges. Smoke is lilies is the damp earth that longs to cradle you while you rest, fresh water and moss and someone singing a song that cannot, will not form words around you. Change is here. Change is inevitable. Light scatters itself across the world in a pulse attuned to your own.

What do you bring, dreamer, when you know what has passed? When what has been and what will be are as chains - the past around your ankles, the future on your wrists. What do you dare to do, when all of your guts threaten to fall out of your stomach, when you are asked to rise, to fight, to venture forth? Infinite possibility. One just needs to be

just a little (mad)

and it's quite possible that you will need to stop thinking in a standard order.

Find something, anything, and pursue it with the same focus that a dog hunts, a bird flies, a dagger of cold metal longs to piece into soft and warm living flesh. Reach out your hand, and see what you grasp. Hold something in your mind's eye, and watch it unfurl.

Decay feeds life which grows upon the backs of another, until they too fall and become part of something else, smaller and greater all at once.

(she dreams, and loses herself further and further into the tangle of them, dreams long denied, dreams that were and are and will be, unbound in form and will. perhaps she is only a spark. perhaps she is at the center. perhaps a cloud wreathes her limbs while her heart rests in a fire, asking the burning flames to warm something cold and shriveled. perhaps she weeps all the blood to fill the river she stands in. everything is true. all is false.)

One asks you to try. When the mind clouds, take a breath, and take stock of yourself.

[ooc: plotting post here. treat this as a freeform jumping off point - if any of the details mentioned would snag your characters into following that specifically, or if they're just trying to cope with a mind suddenly branching into varied tangents. there are no specific rules for this.]

CW: Self harm, blood, violence

[redlightgreenlight]

Chains. There's nothing she hates more than the idea that someone would try to hold her back, still it's not so much rage as it is fear that has the giant wolf trying to gnaw off it's own limb in an attempt to get free. This place is wrong, smells wrong. Fever's scent had led her here, but now it only smells of blood and death.

She tears at her leg, trying not to thing about the chain around her throat, she snarls in pain and fury, but internally she's screaming in a long dead language that anyone nearby may hear. Her bones break between her jaws but she still can't pull free.

Tom Howell | OC | ota

[ohioisforweirdos]

you can't go back home

This corner of the oasis is quieter, simpler. Peaceful. A condo in an American suburb, in early spring. Tom is in the front yard, working on a little garden.

There is no looming apocalypse. Everyone he loves is safe, and happy. The flowers he's planting should be fully bloomed just in time for Lorelei and Nick's wedding. Julia is on track to graduate high school early in a few months, and she's gotten a full ride scholarship to CCAD for Photography-- not that Lorelei wouldn't have happily paid her way through whatever degree she wanted anyway. Even her weird little friend has stopped breaking and/or stealing their mugs.

It all feels too good to be true, because it is but Tom isn't going to question whatever good fortune the universe decides to finally send him. After he's finished planting, he's got to prepare to have everyone over for dinner-- it's always a tight squeeze and a lot of work, but so worth it to see everyone all at once.

recurring nightmare

Tom has lived this nightmare countless nights before; no matter how old he gets, it stays mostly the same. An endless forest of pine trees, and the certainty that something is chasing him. The bite on his shoulder burns and bleeds, and hunger gnaws at his belly.

If you find yourself in this nightmare, the sense that you need to run or something is going to catch you is near overwhelming. Along with the pervasive sense of being chased, there is a separate feeling of being watched. There are only the briefest of glimpses of the watcher in the trees, a young man with wavy, dark brown hair and unnaturally green eyes. Too many of them, in fact. Even when you can't see him, you somehow know he's still there, watching, and he either will not or cannot intervene. He's not truly present in the dream, not in the same way the two of you are, but the weight of eyes pressing down on you is undeniable.

wildcard
[ooc: idk i'm all top-leveled out now, tom can def show up in your dreams too if you would rather]

recurring nightmare

[actuallyawolf]

For Ylva, who is a creature of forests, such places are rarely source of terror for her. She knows, though, that the line between predator and prey is a narrow one.

Flight wins out over fight, this time, for now. She flees, shifting shape into that of a deer. It's not a shape she often takes, but it is a good one for running.