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Author Topic: The Dream Thread  (Read 607215 times)

Yoink

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Re: The Dream Thread
« Reply #3825 on: February 26, 2018, 03:00:12 pm »

Oh man, at first I just remembered some more mundane parts of the dream, but a really intense moment just came back to me.

I was visiting some incredibly old house, dating from medieval times at least. Where it was I do not know, but I had made my way to a spot either beside the house or in a vault/cellar below, where I found the tombs of countless dead from over the centuries. Somehow I had an impression (perhaps the practice was described to me) of myriad bodies being simply poured into each large, tub-shaped grave at some point in the past- perhaps being reinterred from someplace else. The thought of such an undignified jumble of decomposition was rather unsettling to me.

I can't remember for sure who I was with, it may have been my mother, but they expressed distaste for some rather insensitive joke I made (probably as a way to distance myself from the horror) about those resting below us.


At that point, though, when I think we were just turning to leave, I felt a sudden chill. Some presence surged outwards from the grave and over me, causing this very strange, kind of jarring but also comforting sensation in my body. After a moment it felt kind of familiar, a bit like that weird feeling when you are just fighting your way to wakefulness from a dream, struggling to gain control over your body again - but in this case the control was being taken from me, my body felt as though its molecules were being held separate by some hot, psychic paralysis soup; I was powerless, shocked and afraid, but also comfortable, just along for the ride.

Anyway, enough describing the feeling - after this entity took control of my body I felt my eyes open, my body moving awkwardly as it was controlled by a new host unfamiliar with it, and then I... we turned to my companion and spoke.
For the life of me I wish I could remember just what the spirit said through me, but I cannot. I know it was unrelated to my earlier joke, I think it just wanted to tell its story or perhaps some long-forgotten secret. I believe it was an ancestor of mine, or perhaps the spirit of someone similar to myself in terms of mind, hence why they were able to contact me like this.

Whatever the case, the possession only lasted briefly but the information it passed onto us was fascinating. Whether that was the circumstances of the being's demise (I believe he was a knight of some kind, and that I received a vague sense of his long-ago physical form at some point during the proceedings) or knowledge of what lies beyond the pale, or both, it was pretty much mind-blowing.
After that, all thoughts of leaving were gone and I instead made myself comfortable there in the tomb, attempting to clear my mind and open it, like some ad-hoc meditation. I was able to contact the being at least twice more, although before long I think my companion left for some reason - perhaps going in search of more witnesses for this supernatural phenomenon, or for video equipment to record it? - and I was left there alone with my new, ghostly correspondent. I knew little of what I was doing or the potential dangers but I was obsessed with continuing our communication. Even without the knowledge I was gaining such an interaction was such an unheard of experience that I was extremely excited to have discovered such things were possible.

Unfortunately I don't remember if the dream ended there, if that sequence slotted in or led to some of the other, less interesting fragments I remember, or what.
I can still feel a slight chill when I think of the sensation as the "ghost" contacted me. Whoa. That was a potent dream.
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Baffler

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Re: The Dream Thread
« Reply #3826 on: March 10, 2018, 04:39:59 pm »

Somewhat of a necro but this was too memorable not to share. I dreamed that I had a conversation with a bunch of strangers. I was standing at a bus stop in a very built up park, with retaining walls 2 stories tall made of huge rough-cut limestone hemming us in on two sides, and dark woods ahead and to the right. The "stop" was a park shelter, with public restrooms toward the back and the front a covered but not walled in concrete patio with a pair of sort of crude looking wooden picnic tables laid parallel to each other. Up against the concrete wall of the bathrooms were a pair of rusted out park grills and a water fountain. Stretching out of view in both directions was a jet-black road with no paint at all, lit by very anachronistic looking lampposts that looked to have been converted from gas to electric. The air was humid, and there was a bit of fog, but the air was cool like a summer night, and the last of daylight could still be seen poking through here and there.

Sitting at the other end of my bench was an old woman dressed as though it was 30 degrees colder outside, looking as though she couldn't decide if she wanted to nap until the bus arrived or not. Across from us, at the same table, was a girl about my age who was staring blankly at an old flip phone. At the other table were a pair of middle aged men who clearly knew each other talking quietly, and across from them was a man about 28 years old with some kind of musical instrument packed into a nondescript rectangular case. The musician suddenly said to the lot of us "man, when is this bus gonna get here?" This was met with general agreement all around, as the bus was already quite late.

Consternation with the state of city transit services eventually led to introductions all around, again initiated by the musician. The older woman's name was Robin, the girl was Sarah, the older men were Harry and Mike, and the musician was Jay. I won't bother giving a play by play, but we talked about what we all did for a living, on to talk about local events, to music, to personal stories, to future plans, to politics, and so on. It was a bit awkward at first, with each of us having very little in common and long breaks happening every so often, but someone would always speak up again and as time went by things went more and more smoothly. The bus never showed up before the dream ended.
« Last Edit: March 10, 2018, 04:41:52 pm by Baffler »
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Rolan7

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Re: The Dream Thread
« Reply #3827 on: March 10, 2018, 05:13:06 pm »

Two and a half weeks is hardly a necro (:
I like the black road.  I'm currently running a tabletop campaign about Amber, where that is a bit of a plot point...  Maybe I'll dream of one too.
Strangers filling silence with inquiries about the bus is very relatable.
And aw...  Dreams where I meet lifelike people are bittersweet for me too.  It's painful to realize that they never existed.


I dreamed of the comfortable yet vaguely sick grinding of a familiar RPG (I have Pokemon on the mind).  Then at a fitness gym, NPCs started whispering about breaking "the cycle".  One of them slipped me a key - ah, a Kaizo Trap reference.

I kept going deeper into the lore of the game, and with every stage things became realer and nastier.  NPCs who helped me were executed by the Red Queen, but maybe released from the cycle.  Hopefully at rest.

By the end I was on the moonlit fenced porch of a southern home of my childhood.  Opening the door released [a housecat from last night's party, where I was DD] the Red Queen, moving faster than the eye can track.  She mocked me, and prepared to strike from the darkness, but there was a twist- two brothers I won't name stood next to me, bapping me with notebooks every time I tried to face away.

That was so frustrating that I woke up :P  Reminds me of a lot of games, really, but also a friend had chatted about some deep/creepy Undertale lore recently.  Probably mostly the Kaizo Trap thing though.
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Re: The Dream Thread
« Reply #3828 on: March 11, 2018, 11:29:46 am »

I dreamed I was a grayyylien, the kinds of aliens with big heads and grey bodies, living on an alien planet whose cities were ringed with yellow bands of digital advertising. It really was offensively gaudy. The dream took a turn for the bizarre when these tiny furby looking aliens showed up, adopting everyone in the same manner a cat adopts a Dwarf - I was at once alarmed and certain there was something terribly wrong, but all the other grayylmaos took no heed of my warnings. Things take a turn for the worse when the little furby aliens begin setting up their own technology, with a customer-friendly supercomputer ominously matching the grayylmaos to the furblmaos in a massive friend network. Besides a small cadre of paranoid luddites alongside me, the grayylmaos all integrated into this system.
At night, when I walked the lunar roads, the furblmaos struck. Their attack craft and tripods abducted all the grayylmaos, their soldiers marched and prodded all above them with these spears which disabled the nerves temporarily. The attack was one not of destruction, but of total enslavement. It would have been hilarious were it not for the horror of watching all my grayylmaos being enslaved by gerbil-sized ferbies with the deep bass voice of a Soviet general, talking about how they do not care for the individual traits of the enslaved, only that their functions are matched to the need of the furblmaos. The grayylmao defence technology had been entirely disabled by the furblmaos, but they did not expect my cadre to launch a counter-attack using the technology of the bully-stick. It was a stick that was used to bully the furblmaos, devastating technology from which the furblmaos were partially repelled - but they escaped nonetheless, with many slaves captured. I awoke just as the grayylmaos were planning their assault upon the furb homeworld.

Rolan7

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Re: The Dream Thread
« Reply #3829 on: March 13, 2018, 06:46:21 am »

We hiked a treetop animism preserve/shrine trail along branches.  There had been a significant theft, and we questioned the protected nature spirits about it.  We had to be careful since we weren't supposed to bother them.  On the other hand, the thief turned out to *be* a particularly mischievous spirit.  We talked them into returning the property, but got hints about human agitators who triggered the situation - before park security/priests escorted us away.

I may have Pokemon on the mind, besides being basically Animist and it raining last night.  ...We were worried it'd be frozen this morning, but it looks clear for the commute.  Thanks spirits (:
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Quote from: Fallen London, one Unthinkable Hope
This one didn't want to be who they was. On the Surface – it was a dull, unconsidered sadness. But everything changed. Which implied everything could change.

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Re: The Dream Thread
« Reply #3830 on: March 16, 2018, 09:34:06 am »

Dreamed I and a friend were somehow teleported into a nightmarish hellscape full of monsters with blood that was under extremely high pressure and extremely hot. Thus the monsters would basically cause jets of burning hot blood spilling everywhere with extreme force if they were cut even a little.

Also we had a couple of guitars and had to defend ourselves by playing music. We'd play Tribute by Tenacious D to drive monsters away. I woke up with the song stuck in my head.
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Rolan7

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Re: The Dream Thread
« Reply #3831 on: March 16, 2018, 11:52:07 am »

It's not the greatest song in the world, but it's good.
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No justice: no peace.
Quote from: Fallen London, one Unthinkable Hope
This one didn't want to be who they was. On the Surface – it was a dull, unconsidered sadness. But everything changed. Which implied everything could change.

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Re: The Dream Thread
« Reply #3832 on: March 17, 2018, 09:01:23 am »

Dreamed I was working with a company building robots. We were working on a project which was a 4 legged walker (resembling a spider) with a claw arm on top of the main body. The robot was about the size of a big dog. The robot was remote controlled and came with a headset resembling a virtual reality headset which would stream data from the robot in real time, including camera feedback, so you could see what the robot as experiencing in real time and react accordingly. Basically the headset made it feel like you were inside a cockpit and piloting the robot. I was testing the piloting experience with the headset. It felt really immersive and cool, like I was a mecha pilot.
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Rolan7

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Re: The Dream Thread
« Reply #3833 on: March 25, 2018, 06:41:56 am »

Hoo.  I often dream about recent videogames I've binged, my family, or big events the next day.  I got Neverwinter MMORPG mixed with the Ingress/Pokemon event today, with a side of family nostalgia.

It started by camping out in a field, much like on the bike rides we used to do.  I was driving my long-gone truck, though.  I lay in the warm grass and dozed, petting my little black cat.  I like dreams where she's back.  This time she met my housemate's elderly chihuahua, they got along great.

Near 5PM they ran off, and I got up because it was almost time.  People were filling the field - someone drove over the place I'd been dozing, which worried me.  There was a large, complicated tower - like a Neverwinter wizard's tower, though I interpreted it like a broadcasting station or something.  There were clues inside about Ingress's story.  But how were a field full of people stuck in such a small space going to absorb lore?  Surely they'd race to find the bonus codes.

I decided to "farm" a little around the tower before the event started.  I had my phone out, even trying to juggle Pokemon and Ingress like usual.  But the Ingress display was very strange (not the first time that's happened in my dreams).  Waves of XM were flowing up the tower like wind, guiding me.  I could never say no to a storm...

I proceeded up a rather thin stone ramp.  There were no handholds, and I felt vertigo as I looked down.  Up ahead there was a dizzying gap, which I figured players would be expected to cross over somehow.  Ludicrous!  I tried to work my phone for a bit, and when I looked up, I was surrounded in mist. 

Being in a cloud next to such a perilous drop should have terrified me more, but it didn't.  Being in the gentle storm was religiously comforting, which is no surprise.  I hopped the unseen gap with calm faith.  I didn't even consider that I might be dreaming.

I was in the top of the tower, where there were two figures having a heavy discussion.  I can't remember what about...  An adventurer and his hireling?  A mad scientist and his Igor?  An... unbalanced relationship?  I started worrying about the dozens of people about to follow me into the tower.  A part of me recognized it as an MMO instance, but I shook off the idea as ridiculous.  I began searching the room for codes...  Lore is fun, but surely more dedicated players would chronicle it all.  The figures dissipated. 

There was a table with several items, and the feeling of someone behind you as you walk home in the dark.  I picked up a heavy cylinder and fiddled, opening it up.  A thermos?  I poured orange, pulpy tea into a cup, even as I checked within and under plates and devices for codes.  I downed the liquid, trying not to spill anything despite my growing apprehension.  Didn't want to make things hard on the Niantic employees- Oh, a coded message!  But silver lines shot across my vision.  The room was getting dark.  What had I drunk?  Surely this game was idiot-safe, right??  I turned around, barely making out a doorway flanked by grinning skeletons.

I started shouting for help.  I wouldn't call it a scream, so much as a demand to see a gamemaster.
Edit:  I awoke just before sunrise to the birds calling, out in force after a night of heavy rain.
« Last Edit: March 25, 2018, 06:48:02 am by Rolan7 »
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She/they
No justice: no peace.
Quote from: Fallen London, one Unthinkable Hope
This one didn't want to be who they was. On the Surface – it was a dull, unconsidered sadness. But everything changed. Which implied everything could change.

Starver

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Re: The Dream Thread
« Reply #3834 on: March 26, 2018, 07:40:15 am »

Oh, go on then, time for another tale from me.

...apparently, it was a story about how the CIA started. Which, it seems, was a group of (mostly) British Army/Intelligence officers in Britain in WW2. There was a (NEFARIOUS NAZI PLOT) happening, and word had gotten to the central cabal of this proto-CIA (not SOE, SIS or any other MI#/TLA) being led by a British major, or maybe colonel, being referred to with a codename beginning with C. Not Charlie (or Cain or Canteen), but supposedly a phonetic-alphabet word of the time.

Signal intelligence pinpointed a barn, in which (NEFARIOUS NAZI PLOT) was obviously going on in, but though those inside were detained for "doing something wrong", the plot itself was not uncovered properly.

Next thing you know, it's the aftermath of D-Day with planes/gliders/jeeps/jeeps-that-fly-and/or-glide arriving in a field deep in France, on the way to capturing a chateau previously used by German High Command but now filled with a load of detained Good Germans who had surrended to the allied forces. Apparently the proto-CIA individuals were now just part of the general war effort, not together specifically, but (with the typical coincidence of a film script) they still find themselves nearby, most of them.

This is exemplified by the fact that suddenly all the telephones in the chateau ringing (and, apparently blaring out with a voice, suggesting more sophisticated technology) for the attention of C(whatever), who had actually rebranded himself with the codename "Angel" after the previous 'success'. On the other end of the line was a previously missing Cabalist who had 'hacked' into the phone-system (as a viewer of the action, I took this to mean that he'd got into the switchboard room and massively cross-linked all the internal lines, but it certainly impressed the characters) wanting to tell everyone about one of the Germans being a Bad German (maybe, or maybe not, involved in the (NEFARIOUS NAZI PLOT)). One of the markers for this was his leather trousers, or something, but aside from lazy cinematic outfitting (and lazier still script-writing and some degree of typical plot blindness), and said individual was promptly dressed-down (verbally and sartorially) by C/Angel. Ironically, making him look more like the rest of the inmates.

And, ummm... then he ends up outside, in the street of the ajoining French town (being remarkably geographically consistent, compared with some dreams I have), and either hijacks or accidentally ends up on a hospital trolley that he rides down a hill. Coincidentally another prior Cabal member (a huge, lunking 'Joe Indian' type, one of the few actual Americans of any kind, and ironically so in kany ways) happened to be passing and takes another hospital trolley (from where?) to recklessly pursue the fugitive escapee.

Threatening to devolve into a choreographed action sequence tacked onto what had been more a psychological drama, as a remote viewer of this action I then seem to concentrate upon a location some way ahead of the trolley-riding. (It's in a boulder-strewn desert, and it's night instead of the daylight of the extefnal scene just seen, so geography/chronology has predictably broken down after all!)  What we see here are two soldiers (maybe GIs, maybe Tommies) carrying a huge ornate picture-framd with (though its reverse is to our viewpoint) a huge ornate canvas oil-painting in it. It's either being looted or de-looted, we are led to understand, but exactly which is left ambiguous.

The scene is obviously going to be the location of the comedy-insert part of the action chase that we know is continuing, but that is actually getting no screen-time at all. 'We', by now, means me and the at least one other person (not visible, just present and talking) actually watching this action unfold on an actual screen of some kind. We seem to have given up on this being a dream-story, it's now a dream about watching a film with this story in it

The haiatus of the action and the totally-telegraphed look-ahead mean that this one (or more) other person(s) confidently predicts that it'll be the classic 'smash through the carried item' gag, and likely even be a 'leave a human-shaped hole' cliche. At least for the first troller-rider, then the second one somehow finishes the job. I don't say so (do I need to? Isn't this just another bit of me speaking, anyway??)  but I agree with the prediction.


Minutes pass by (should be tedious or frustrating, but it isn't, perhaps it's the running commentary by myself to myself that's making the interesting cinemtographical decision to long-cut away from the action less distracting) until "whumf!", and there's a human-shaped-hole in the canvas. No idea about the trolley, BTW, it must have passed through the exact same gap. And it is heavily implied, though we never see the front of the canvas to be sure, that the human-shaped-hole actually matches up exactly with what had been a figure in the painting. A classic Harold Lloyd/Buster Keaton sight-gag, that we still don't see.

Expectation is now that the hurtling indian will coup-de-gras the scene by doing something with his own human-shaped-hole, like creating a tableau with his addition (again matching the image we haven't seen), perhaps comical. Or it'd modify the original hole to something else (perhaps in conjunction with the later reveal of the image front), or the whole setup just gets blasted apart to make a point. Such is the discussion we're having, there's plenty of that in the time we're waiting.

But then I wake up!
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Rolan7

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Re: The Dream Thread
« Reply #3835 on: March 27, 2018, 07:30:37 am »

Continuing to have strange, vivid dreams.  Last night I got superpowers from Nazi experimentation, and then had to infiltrate the base... to steal more superpowers, and also free prisoners I guess.  It had Neverwinter MMORPG stealth mechanics, which was handy and unsurprising.  Why Nazis and body horror, though?

Night before I dreamed about a NWoD Chronicles of Amber session I fell asleep while planning.  I dreamed I GM'd it, complete with making stuff up on the fly.  It was... okay?  I think it mostly involved them investigating the giant cursed yard santa, rather than anything Amber-related.  When they sold it to that IRS agent, they thought they were free, hehe...  Sadly the dream was so exhausting I didn't end up imitating it.

Edit:  Haha, I totally forgot reading Starver's post yesterday morning.  Nazi dreams are communicable!
« Last Edit: March 27, 2018, 08:22:19 am by Rolan7 »
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No justice: no peace.
Quote from: Fallen London, one Unthinkable Hope
This one didn't want to be who they was. On the Surface – it was a dull, unconsidered sadness. But everything changed. Which implied everything could change.

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Re: The Dream Thread
« Reply #3836 on: March 27, 2018, 11:46:01 am »

I've been working on claiming mastery over my dreams. It's... interesting.

I basically dream every night(not sure if that's normal or as a result of my efforts). I don't remember my dreams unless I make an effort to write them down after I wake up, however. Lucid dreaming, however, is much rarer for me. I remember one night in the past few days, where for a brief period in my dream, my dream came into focus and I realized I was dreaming. Interestingly, the way things looked in the dream changed when I had that realization. That was shortly before I woke up, though. Actually, I've had bits of lucidity a lot of times directly before I woke up.

Interestingly, a lot of my dreams seem to take places in houses/complexes and the like. Is that normal, to have certain themes in most of your dreams?
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Re: The Dream Thread
« Reply #3837 on: March 27, 2018, 01:20:39 pm »

Interestingly, a lot of my dreams seem to take places in houses/complexes and the like. Is that normal, to have certain themes in most of your dreams?

It seems to be for some people, yeah. I for instance find that while content varies my dreams are almost always in a natural setting with few to no artificial features. I like to think it's because I'm an outdoorsman at heart, but who knows? I've stopped trying to lucid dream because it's led to more bad experiences than good but recognizing that sort of pattern was actually kind of helpful in getting into the right state of mind.
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Re: The Dream Thread
« Reply #3838 on: March 28, 2018, 09:41:11 am »

I had a dream where I was hosting an RP forum on my computer, with an user base of 16 AIs that never metagamed, never missed their turn, never got bored with RP etc. It didn't need an admin, as it had no internet access. And it was purely text based. Eventually, they asked me to create more. Now there were 32. But that taxed my computer a lot, so when they asked me to make more again, I thought about where to put them. I chose bay12. Toady at first refused to accept them, fearing spambots, but when I made one show up for a chat with Toady, he let them in, and now there were 128 AI users in bay12.


 I hope something like this becomes feasible in the future.
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Re: The Dream Thread
« Reply #3839 on: March 28, 2018, 12:44:42 pm »

AIs which play roles for humans to create interesting stories with?
That's pretty DF, heh.
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She/they
No justice: no peace.
Quote from: Fallen London, one Unthinkable Hope
This one didn't want to be who they was. On the Surface – it was a dull, unconsidered sadness. But everything changed. Which implied everything could change.
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