Wednesday, October 24, 2018

The Pursue of the Slimer

October 24, 2018

There's a lot of this dream I don't remember. What I remember is that it's chapter so-and-so of a series I had apparently been dreaming up. I vaguely remembering having had dreamt up the previous chapters, and that they were roughly 1,000 words long each, but unfortunately I don't remember the other character arcs. All I know is that they were similar and they were based around the same characters defeating their rival / arch nemesis. So, instead of telling the original chapter 1, I'll start off with what I can.

We were surrounded in a swamp, and we were here for a really good reason. There was a homeless man who had good intentions, but in his hands was a powerful wand that could destroy and sink dungeons. The wand had, apparently, been given to us by our enemies - nameless people who either worked for an organization or another country. Either way, we both spoke English.

Earlier, I had gotten covered in swamp water, and I only wanted to shower. We had no access to a bath, but there was a material called slimer that would act as a quick cleaning device if one were to be covered in the thick green goo. Despite this, it also acted as an energy. It was sort of like a shower gel, but taken to a very literal degree.

Anyway, I was in the large but empty tent, surrounded by my four other friends. They were talking about slimer, and I jumped forward to ask about it. At first what they said wasn't that helpful - that it was apparently from a movie, but we didn't have any spare slimer that i could use. I got a bit upset that they thought i cared about this much, and I pushed to ask where you could make it from.

They clarified and said that it could be made from rubber. I pushed past them and into the swamp. I looked to my right, and saw the group of my adversaries. They saw me too and started running towards me, holding various blunt objects. I looked forward and there was the homeless man I had been looking for.

We had, of course, been on his tail for quite some time at this point - at least a month or two - as had our enemies. I pulled out small red balls that appeared and had the consistency of bouncy balls. I threw one at the ground near an enemy in the distance. Despite the ground being only as firm as solid dirt, it bounced off with force and knocked the person to the ground. One of eight were down.

The homeless man, understandably, was intimated. I was upset and smelling awful. He started to run, and I chased after him, the small group chasing after me in turn. In my head, I was thinking of how all I had to do was grab his shoe and melt down the soles of it to make slimer. He ran and leapt over swamp water onto another set of firm dirt. I turned back and saw they were closer, throwing a couple more bouncy balls. A few missed, but two took out people. I jumped over the swamp water.

We were stuck on a small island now. There wasn't any firm ground to jump onto from here. The homeless man made a mistake and was now trapped. But so was I as the fast moving enemies came upon me, blocking the way off the island. The man was on the ground when the leader pushed me down to meet it, holding me to it.

I had faced him previously (apparently), and he was the one that had gotten me covered in swamp water some bit ago. Of course I was a bit desperate and pissed off, but I had greater problems, as far as I was concerned.

He looked to the homeless man. "You really shouldn't have used it on the dungeon. No matter, though, we can wait for it to come back out of the swamp," then he met my gaze, grinning. "I bet that makes you terrified - unable to get any slimer."

He returned his smile, and he responded to it with shocked confusion. "No, actually. I was just thinking of how I didn't want to get my socks dirty." I started to punch him over and over. He was unable to do anything. Since we last met, I had gotten stronger. Indeed, though he wasn't weak compared to me, I was not the least bit scared of him. At worst, I was disappointed I was unable to get in a word with the poor homeless man.

The dream ended after I gradually broke my "rivals" nose, him still pinning me to the ground. In the long run, I think this dream provided a feel and world that really intrigued me. It was vague in a way dreams commonly are, but nevertheless had enough detail and world building to be specific enough to create a story off it. Every once in awhile, in the middle of my dreams I would become semi-aware that what I was experiencing was a dream and that I liked what I saw and would like to write a story on it. This was one of those, suffice it to say.

Monday, October 22, 2018

Benevolence [+ Established & Assumed Lore]

October 21, 2018

This dream was a very rare one. I rarely have a sequel dream, and if it is, it's usually very calming and simple, as I would walk around the grounds of various schools. But this one was a lot more specific. I've had dreams where I would be playing a game on the PSP. It was an extremely difficult aRPG who's story I had mostly forgotten.

What I do know is that you would run around on the overworld, seeing monsters (and bandits alike) and would be able to attack them to stun them, and not enter a battle. If you ran into them or if they managed to attack you, a battle would commence. In this world, the world was already very damaged, but there still stood many statues of a goddess that would allow you to save the game. This goddess was named "Benevolence". Another interesting thing is, it took a very long time to level, and the game didn't really give you much time. Even in my dreams I disliked this aspect of it, but apparently I had ground up to level 14, had a party of people with me, and was on the final event of the game.

With me was an orb resembling something like this;
 
A VERY rough sketch of what the orb / wisp looked like.

It was yellow, floating behind my character. Everything was dark and the overworld was covered in monsters and bandit, chaos striking the world, sending it into pure madness as everything begun to fall apart. The statues of Benevolence were now rare and far between, destroyed after the fight and after the destruction of society. it was when I was near a peninsula. In the distance was a Gothic lighthouse / church, then in the distance, across the lake were the walls where a once gorgeous city stood. It was still very much beautiful, but now it stood ominously in the dark-blue sky, the music letting out an uneasy, distraught violin.

A rough sketch of the peninsula, with the walls of the city in the distance


It was on this peninsula that the goddess appeared before me. Though she once took on a fully opaque form, her feet were now translucent. She had been drained of power from the final villain, who took the form of my companion, except a dark purple, and in her feet were similar energy forms, though it was mildly confusing, these did belong to Benevolence, but her once pure and strong form had left the energy in her feet drained and nearly completely corrupt.

Here, she picked my character up and set a hand on his head, blessing him with a 1 million years worth of experience. Of course, it did not stand for one million years in the real world, but that of in universe, but even with this much experience, I only just made it to level 15 - 1 level. I was powerful for a human, but as one, I was far weaker than the creators and the manifestations of Darkness and Benevolence, even teaming amongst other very powerful humans.

Truly, the world was doomed, and playing the game, I felt the same. This was, again, the reason I had not played this game in a long time. With the additional level (which even to me and in-game, wasn't much), I crossed the lake to a hill. There, I saw a man sitting idly on a hill. His name read HiBob. In fact, this is the username my brother uses regularly, and in this dream, it WAS my brother. He had "only" reached level 9, and he had long been off. The game had a function that, if someone played the game nearby, there player character would be left in the place they had last been.

He had not played in quite some time, and I wanted to tell him the game was good, but at the time, I wouldn't have the chance to do so.

The dream ended inconclusive, as had the others where I had experienced this game. Indeed, I had explored the world of this game and it's mechanics so much in previous dreams, when I awoke, I wasn't uncertain it wasn't real. Many different things about it resembled other real games. From the fast paced button mashing action of a Kingdom Hearts game, and the complexity of battle of a Street Fighter or Monster Hunter entree, and to the lonely feel outside of outposts of Guild Wars. And also to the feel of a sprawling, but relatively empty world covered with monsters of many old MMORPGs.

The scope was enormous, and perhaps even this description is somewhat misleading, as this was likely to only be the HUB area of the game. Nevertheless, it was a very story centric area, and would represent a decent proportion of one's impressions.

LORE

I emphasize, the next part, for the most part WAS NOT IN THE DREAM. Some of it was implied and outlined. Think of the following as a mix of conclusions from pre-established material.

The world was once a place covered in statues to Goddess Benevolence. She may have not been the first maker, but she was such a being that kept the peace among the world and its monsters. If things ever got out of a hand, there were young people who went around, killing monsters. They were known both as Guardians of the Gods and Explorers of the Gods, naturally that of Benevolence's.

Their bravery and persistence drew them to a powerful state of humanity, allowing them to bring down fearful monsters as a team. In the grand scheme they were not powerful beings, but with teamwork, they were capable of taking down Gods.

People who weren't strong enough, perhaps because of age or lack of bravery spent most of their time in their cities, naturally enough, occasionally going back and forth from large city to a neighboring large city. Along the road, were of course these Benevolence statues, where they would regularly pray at, asking for protection. As time went by, the brave became weaker and weaker. Those corrupted by evil became bandits, and wandered the open world.

Things were becoming dangerous, so they slowly built walls of stone that would protect them from bandits and monsters. The statues stayed in good condition, having been upkept by the goddesses's existence and power.

When the game had started, these walls had became ancient. Many, many generations saw their entire life behind them. The world was still full of hope, but masked beneath it was a deep fear of what lay beyond what they knew. Most who had left the walls would not come back, and very rarely returned dead, much less alive.

Those few who returned living further convinced those to stay outside. But as humans were, the mangled look of these people sometimes inspired people to go beyond the walls and one up each other.

The main character was once such. In the walls, people pretended there was nothing to be scared of, and technically speaking, there really wasn't. The impenetrable walls were indeed extremely effective, but naturally this only encompassed a small bit of the world; much of it was infested with monsters and bandits, who had somehow joined side by side with the legions of creatures.

The main character, was of course, one such brave soul. And beyond the walls he discovered just as people had spoke. Everyone else ignored what it meant, but the hero had read the ancient stories; of how the world was once pure, clean and populated. As the story goes on, more and more is revealed about what had happened, and indeed, there still stood people outside of their city, and even in different cities and outposts.

Somewhere, in the desert there was a small band of dark-skinned humans who lived on the thin edges of cliffs bordered by plateaus of jungles and barren crevices between each area.

The world was in danger, and though he didn't know at first, he was to go around it and find other brave souls.

Despite their efforts, despite almost defeating a god-tier being, they failed. With this being of pure evil, they almost lost benevolence - the goddess and the mere idea. Things became worse and worse, but still this brave group fought. Even if they barely held any hope in their hearts anymore, they fought with all of they had.