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ph_logs2025-01-19 03:59 pm
pumpkinhollow) wrote in ph_logs2025-01-19 03:59 pm
January Event - Lost in Dreamland
**Plain text version here.
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. ]
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.
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. ]
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…
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.
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?
no subject
Does this make her a mother?
Fuck-- for a moment she thinks she's going to vomit. Her fist finds Gaeta's shirt, she keels over and clamps a hand over her mouth.
His fingers close around Ripley's forearm. The small prey animal inside thinks perhaps he might throw her. Might tamp her throat under his heel or tear her hair away at the root. It kicks little rabbit feet against her ribs, begging her to run.
Gaeta does nothing of the sort.
"There's an-- an escape pod off the bilge. This way."
An oblong white door unhinges its jaw to allow them entrance into the next corridor.
no subject
Breathe, Gaeta. He keeps hold of her -- partly to make sure she's steady if she gets the urge to be sick again, partly so he knows where she is even if he takes his eyes off her. He tries not to think of goo-filled pods on a Cylon resurrection ship, how much the viscous fluid inside of them probably feels like the webbing he yanked off Ripley. He's never seen one in person, but it's not hard to imagine.
(Breathe, godsdammit.)
He heads for the open door. It's the only choice he has.
no subject
That doesn't erase the question; if, while she'd been tacked to the wall, the alien danced its aberrant reproductive dance, what can she do now? Take a blade and pry open her ribcage? Wait for death to rear its little pink head? The lack of control threatens to send her into a panicked frenzy.
Would Gaeta kill her if she asked?
Would it be any better, any kinder, than if Ash did it?
Ripley sucks in air through clenched teeth and together they move forward. Through the sliding door, out into a corridor steeped in flashing buttons and long, florescent tubes. Fear extends even to the Nostromo. It coughs out compressed air through cracks in the ducts and walls, as if choked. It wails in SOS flashes, compensating for lack of speech by throwing aimless strobe-light against their faces. Look, it says. Listen. Leave.
"There's a ladder to C corridor there. We need to get down to F. That will let us into the main hull."
Breaking away from Gaeta, Ripley staggers toward a dark square pit set into the floor. Darker than it ought to be.
no subject
He says it without thinking, unable to look away from the lightless pit in the floor. Even on a ship in distress, it shouldn't be that dark. Emergency backup lighting doesn't fail in that small and specific an area -- there are too many redundancies. Either no lights go out or all of them do.
It's a trap.
He's spent too long not listening to his instincts, thinking oh, it can't be that bad, and he'll be damned if he talks himself out of not listening to them again.
"There's another way down, isn't there? We need light."
no subject
Soundless waves radiate from the pit just below her feet; an insatiable doom that curses Gaeta for ruining its latest meal. Hungry, hungry for whatever-- whoever-- may be unfortunate enough to descend into narrow chrome jaws.
Clever, the dream remarks to itself.
"There's an access hatch by the infirmary-"
Within territory of the Science Ward. Closer to him, wherever the bastard's lurking...
Ripley's jaw strains.
"We'll need to be quick."
no subject
Ripley's tense, clearly not liking the idea of changing course, but any path has to be better than the one into the dark. And... why doesn't she want to go that way? Is she the one who laid the trap? There are twelve Cylon models, but they only know about eleven of them; she could be a sleeper agent just like Boomer or Tigh or Tyrol and no one would be the wiser. Certainly not Gaeta.
No. He caught the trap in time. He'll catch this, too.
Won't he?
He holds out his hand to her, ready to offer support again so they can get a move on toward the infirmary.
no subject
She hasn't accumulated much by way of luck...
Sweat collects like dewdrops at Ripley's brow. She sees the world through a pinhole, spotting Gaeta's hand only after turning her head fully toward it. She clasps it in hers, throwing one arm over his shoulder to continue on.
On, into the sallow-colored unknown, lights flashing, steam spitting from pipe-lined ceilings, spraying their faces with cold dryness.
The infirmary isn't a far walk. A twist of hallway here, the slide of a hydraulic door there. Red, green and yellow lights twinkle their respective hello's, which feel more like you're fucked.
They come upon a white door, identical to the rest. This ship is a maze of them.
"I figure I should tell you—" A hard swallow. She jams her finger against a keypad in quick succession. "There's more to be wary of on this ship than the thing that strung me up to the wall—"
The door recedes.
And as if on cue, there stands a figure.
Indiscernible from the man who holds her up now. He wears a vaguely concerned expression, dressed in the pale blues and grays of a Science Officer.
"I'd started to think you'd gotten lost."
no subject
It can't be. It isn't.
He isn't.
The figure speaks. Gaeta hardly hears it; the entire room has tilted dangerously to one side, his vision narrowing to pinpricks like he's about to pass out. Blood beats heavily in his ears. (No, not blood, but the facsimile of it the Cylons use, silicon and iron and copper liquid that conducts just like a wire would.) He can barely keep himself upright, let alone Ripley.
No, he tries to say, but can't make any noise at all.
no subject
And like her companion, she cannot look away from him.
He's dressed like a Science Officer.
Her eyes swing from one Gaeta to the other, feeling a disconcerted pang at her inability to tell real from fake. To find rhyme or reason for his twice being here.
Clearing her throat, she speaks for the both of them. "We're— we're running maintenance on the shuttle. And— the lower decks. There's a shortage issue."
A slight pursing of lips. The man steps closer, smooths back strands of loose hair in a gesture that looks rehearsed. "But the rest of the crew has gone under. They're in their pods now, waiting for you and I to return. But he..." He gives a slow, confused shake of his head. "He isn't sanctioned to be here."
Another step.
Fear collects at her brow in the form of dew drops but she fights it, bristles a little. Her frown turns into a scowl. Tightly, she reiterates, "He's sanctioned under me. We're moving through."
no subject
"I've been here since launch," he manages. It sounds weak even to his own ears. Falsified memories are at the core of every Cylon sleeper agent, after all.
no subject
The Gaeta opposite him— real or fake, who's to say— stares with pitying eyes. Peels back, layer by layer, at the dream-walker in front of him, leaving Ripley to wonder what he sees and why he isn't telling her. Most importantly; why the fuck is there two of them?
"That's an easy thing to say, isn't it?" He blinks slowly. Reaches a human hand, all flesh and blood and bone and muscle-taut, out for Gaeta's wrist. Too slow to be perceived as a threat, although everything carries an air of violence in this place. He presses two fingers against his wrist, Ripley thinks.
He is warm. Gaeta is not.
No pulse drums beneath his fingers.
Ripley presses against the door, watching the exchange in thinly veiled horror.
"You aren't what you say you are. You're a danger to others."
A look toward Ripley. "You know that, don't you?"
The man beside her feels cold, so utterly cold. How hadn't she noticed it before? Her hand drops from Gaeta's arm and she begins to move away from him.
"What the fuck is he talking about?"
no subject
Frantic, he presses a hand to his own chest. How could he not notice it before? The most basic biomarker of human life. Cylons are near-perfect mimicries, but nobody yet knows all the intricacies of the humanoid models -- maybe they don't actually need a heartbeat to live. Why would a machine waste energy on something like that if other necessary processes required more attention? So inefficient.
The other Gaeta's eyes bore into his own. Say it, he seems to order.
The words land heavy on his tongue. He almost chokes on them. Still, he makes himself say it out loud.
"I'm a Cylon."
no subject
"How do you not know?" Ripley demands, audience to the scene in front of her. And like a true audience, a hapless participant situated faraway, neither man acknowledges her question.
How do you not know if you're real or— something else?
She doesn't trust either of them. Sees uncanniness in both men's eyes. In the way their muscles twitch, flex, strain, too real to be real and indeterminately so. She can't find their inaccuracies. That's a problem.
It happens fast, fast and without a word;
Hands— real or fake or dream-cobra-heads, she doesn't know— speed through the air for Gaeta's shoulders, hooking his shirt and using it as leverage to pull, and in a kind of manic slow motion she watches his twin— real or fake, she doesn't fucking know— pivot, roll him over his back and throw him down onto the floor. The metal floors groan ceremoniously. Or maybe that's the air leaving his lungs. If he has lungs.