Out of Character (OOC):
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| Witten by Indra (played by Alanna Keith) |
The following is a summary of a plot I ran for our mage chronicle in which the characters meet Dream of the Endless (from the amazing break-out graphic novel series by Neil Gaiman). In my series the Endless (they have only met Dream and Death) are the founding Archtypes of the Tenemos, godlike entities on the threshold between the Primordial Dream and the Bright Dream of the Tenemos proper. In it they help dream get his power back by reuniting him with his regalia, and complete an adaptation of the very first story arc of the graphic novel series.
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| Original artwork by Alanna Keith |
I traveled down to San Antonio to learn dream combat from Cas, with Eris. I finally had to explain all about Mistress, and Seraph – Cas looked into my head and saw everything. And Eris – she already knew! Everything from Seraph’s point of view anyway – he downloads all his memories into her! I’d never wanted to talk about it, and for her to have known, all this time, that he was alive even, when I thought he was dead for almost a year – great, thanks Seraph. Yet another thing that I didn’t know. I should stop being so surprised… At least with Casstiel, I had a choice.
I entered that reoccurring dream with the Salawa, the hedge maze – we didn’t set up any signal from STARK to get me to realize it was a dream, so I was very relieved when I rounded a corner in the maze and saw them. I was able to snap out of it and take control. Cas transported us to another scene – Mistress and her minions. I’d never wanted to see them again. But this is where it had started…and finally, I beat her!
That night, Cas helped me sleep with his Mind magic, but I had a strange dream – rode a magic carpet over what looked like the Metropolis, then into the stars, and to a tall city gate. In front of the gate I met my Daemon. It – she – said she was anyway. I was creeped out – it was like she had a split personality – one half angry and antagonistic, the other half seemed…sad. And they talked to each other – argued with each other. This can’t be me – I’m not like that. But anyway....one of them didn’t want to let me through the gates – was afraid for me/us. She attacked me! What the heck – but I blocked it. Eventually they let me through though.
I passed through a gate and into a large crumbling city – all these gorgeous monuments, just falling apart. No denizens…just bones. Bones of all sorts of creatures. I made my way to a large palace with an elaborate carving of a being with a strange head or mask, spread cloak, and the faces of sleepers.
I met Dream there! Dream, I haven’t seen him he helped me Awaken! He’d been looking for me, and whatever change occurred when I finally overcame my nightmare let him find me. Apparently, he’d lost his magical tools in the real world, his city seems to be crumbling apart…he was imprisoned since he helped me Awaken two years ago. Since then, there has been a….dream sickness of some sort in the real world. People falling asleep and never waking, trapped in dreams. People who can’t sleep. Dream’s been weakened and can’t resolve these issues alone, or manifest in the real world. I offered to help – repaying a debt of sorts. I hope….I hope I wasn’t the cause of any of that. I’ve no idea what happened after he left two years ago, I haven’t seen him since. He said he needed to meet me in the Tenemos and I woke up.
I relayed all this to the Bridge of Souls members that were present – Cas, Eris, and Persephone. We told STARK to do a search of any medical reports of sleep disorders, and there’s been a HUGE increase in the past years – and a very high concentration in New York. I guessed that’s where one of the items might be. In any case, we needed more information. The Bridge decided to accompany me into the Tenemos to meet with Dream.
Thinking that my previous dream perhaps showed us the way into Dream’s real palace, we met up in the Metropolis and took the Midnight train to his city. The ticket seller wasn’t much help – said that the stop at his palace had been disconnected. Some random homeless man traded us info for cash – said to take the Midnight train to the last stop. Cas ‘sped’ up time using Fate, and the locomotive arrived. Creepy train… I’m not sure what we would have done if the Conductor hadn’t let us on. Although we saw other people boarding the train throughout the ride, no one was ever there, when we actually visited other cars. We had to make a jump for it, at the end of the line – the train wasn’t going to stop!
The gates were cracked open when we arrived – I didn’t know if in invitation or because of some other intrusion…We started walking through the ruined city to the palace and were suddenly attacked by Typhonides! How did they get here from the Spires? This was wrong! We defeated them – lots of Fate effects that finally made that fight a breeze – AND we were slick enough not to take much damage, besides Paradox. And I exploded a Typhonide in one hit. I’m pretty happy about that.
Dream told us that the Typhonides were leaking in from the Dreamtime because of his absence – there’s probably a lot more out there, but if we restore him to power, he’ll be able to eradicate or remove the rest.
In order to find where his three tools are, Dream summoned the three Fates and had us three Fate mages each ask a question for one of the items – I asked where the sand pouch was, since I actually handled it, back when I Awakened. The sand was in the real world somewhere, turns out the helm was in Hell, and the ruby had been taken by a mage.
To find the pouch, we went with the theory that I had a sympathetic connection to it – Dream wasn’t powerful enough to sustain a sympathetic connection with something in the real world in his current state. We went into my Oneiros – Cas pulled open my head and we all crawled into it – weirdest inversion ever. We ended up in a port city – a center of commerce, travel, and culture – roads, canals, bridges, all connecting and twining through the city. The outer structures were from older civilizations – old Greek, Roman, Italian – and gradually became more modern toward the center. Japanese, Chinese, all sorts of architecture side by side. Too bad we didn’t get a chance to explore!
The last place that I used Dream’s sand was in the caves of the Ohio Caverns – or rather in a dream version of those caverns. Since my port city had a theme of travel, I brought up the idea that we could find a travel office of some sort. We tracked one down easily enough, and there was a boat going to the caverns. A boat going to a land-locked place? Oh, why not! It was piloted by the Captain from Gilligan’s Island! He wanted $100 a piece to transport us, but I was having none of that. I knew darn well what had happened the last one way trip – he wasn’t that reliable, I’m wasn’t paying that price! I finally got him down to a reasonable price. Dream sped us along on our journey – more of that dream manipulation I learned about from Casstiel yesterday, I think. It grew dark and we then found ourselves in the pools inside the caverns. Dream was able to find a grain of sand that was still there, luckily. I was about to pay the Captain a little more for his service when Cas wiped out the scene – hey, I felt a little guilty for the way I’d treated him earlier, not to mention we were leaving him stranded. I suppose in retrospect, bartering with a character in my own Onieros with dream money doesn’t really make any sense…
With the sympathy between the grain and the rest of the bag, Dream was able to track it down, but he had to inhabit one of us – Casstiel – in order to have the power to get there. Dream performed some sort of high level spell combining Space, and Mind? Life? I’m not sure what else – he slashed a rip into my Onieros scene, a portal. When we went through it, we ended up somewhere in England, in a neighborhood. In physical bodies. But our bodies – our real bodies? – were still back in the Sanctum! Somehow, he’d created a path from my Onieros directly into the real world and made duplicate bodies for us. Even Cas wasn’t quite sure how he’d pulled it off.
We were in front of a house – we ventured inside, made our way up the stairs. Inside was… were dreams running amok. Nasty slithering things that coated the walls. Things that didn’t want to be contained anymore, that didn’t want to listen to Dream, their Master. They gave us intense visions before Dream finally managed to subdue them – so vivid. Eris said she was flying like superman – I wish I’d been so lucky! The first one – I shudder to remember – I was crucified. Roman soldiers pointing their spears at me. Just a flash, but horrifying enough. And then I was a man, making love to a woman. Another brief flash. Thankfully Dream got them under control – I wouldn’t want to experience what other twisted dreams these things might be giving off.
At the bedroom at the top of the stairs, we found a very old woman, bedridden, living off of the dream sand like it was some kind of drug. I don’t know how long she’d been living like that – for months at least. Just living in dreams. She was wasted away to nearly nothing; the only thing keeping her alive was the sand. The open bag must have been leaking out somehow and causing this mess in her house. Dream mercifully gave her one last good dream, and then Persephone killed her – er, ended her life – what’s the nicest way to say it? Well anyway, it was swift and kind.
When the dream sand retrieved, Dream/Cas did the slashy portal back into his Tenemos palace. And then he took us to the entrance to Hell.
I…still hate to remember what happened there….what it was like. Just the gates alone were terrifying. And that was before we even entered. There was a creepy demon that spoke in rhymes who let Dream enter – and we were kind of an afterthought. He led Dream and us past all sorts of horrors – tortures, monsters, things I don’t want to think about. Into a giant – a structure shaped like a tortured giant – all the way up into the mouth. And there were the three lords of Hell. I remember bits and pieces, as it slowly comes back to me. Lucifer, Beelzebub, and one other – eyes and a mouth – after catching sight of the fly/spider thing, I tried not to look at anything anymore – just stared at the – tongue – of the giant’s mouth that we were standing in…
I remember Dream trying to negotiate, convince Lucifer to give up the helm – the banter went on for a while. Dream didn’t know which demon had it. Lucifer finally said that if Dream could identify the demon out of all the billions, he could take the helm. The giant’s mouth then opened up to the entire horde…and that’s where my memory gets really sketchy. I think I blacked it out. I feel that if I wanted to remember, I could, but I don’t really want to. That doesn’t stop my mind from inadvertently wandering back and seeing glimpses though. I hope those thoughts stay out of my nightmares…
Dream took out his bag of sand and threw some of it into the air – it drifted, wafted out over the horde until it singled out one demon. That demon challenged Dream to single combat for the helm. Dream wasn’t in any position to argue. It was a version of a mage battle, this combat in the Tenemos. Each attack was spoken in words, became reality – each combatant, Dream and the demon, attempting to outdo each other in power, something bigger, but not always, something greater, but not always, something to overcome the other’s reality. We Mages tried to help, boosting Dream’s attacks and protecting him from the demon’s, taking some of the damage instead. But one by one, Eris, and Persephone, and then I were overcome, our willpower depleted, until only the Archmage Casstiel was left. In the end, Casstiel told us, to overcome the demon’s world ending, universe consuming darkness, Dream became Hope.
Things almost got worse right there, Cas said, as Lucifer and his demons tried to argue that Dream had no power there, and they didn’t have to let him leave. Dream responded that what power would Hell have without dreams of Heaven? He walked out of Hell, the demons making a path for him.
Casstiel joined us back in our real bodies in the Sanctum and we all decided to get some rest – the only thing we could do, we were so drained. We expected Dream to maybe contact us…but he didn’t.
We woke up, no new leads, other than the information that STARK had given us about the high concentration of dream sickness in New York. And the knowledge that the last group to have had the ruby were Mages. So now we had to try to contact the Mages in New York to not only get permission to enter, but also try to pry out information. Each of us contacted Mages we knew, but I was the only one who was able to get through to anyone – good ‘ol Garm! We exchanged some pleasantries – yeah, I know I haven’t really contacted the local Consillium yet… I’ve only been in Florida since October…after my training with…
Well, anyway, I think I ticked off Garm a little – he wanted the chance to study Dream’s pendent, which I just couldn’t promise. Meh, he’ll get over it.
Garm gave me the name Bones – an Adamantine Arrow Sentinel, a Moros, detective from NYPD. After speaking with him and telling him we needed to retrieve our ‘friend’s’ magic pendent, which was last in the possession of a Doctor Destiny, Bones said we needed to talk to a Solomon Kane, New York City’s Adamantine Arrow Sage, the highest ranking AA in the city. We got his lackey instead, some guy named Rane or Phoenix, another Sentinel – who, after hearing the name Doctor Destiny, passed us right up to the big guy. I guess Doctor Destiny was a big name a while back – went by the name John Dee, the name of Queen Elizabeth’s alchemist. He’d been wrecking havoc with Dream’s pendant – oh yeah, Kane already knew about our ‘friend’ – so much for secrecy. Kane told us that they’d had Dee’s soul removed and replaced with a Sleeper soul, and incarcerated in an insane asylum. He was THAT horrible? To rip out his soul and STEAL the soul of another? Some innocent Sleeper? I…I just don’t know which is worse…what kind of atrocities did Dee commit? Why didn’t they simply kill him? Why destroy another’s life? I’m not sure which is worse, the Arrow or Dee…
As a side note, Solomon Kane, what an interesting name. Am I the only one that has heard of it? I mean, really? That name was familiar to me even before I found out that it was the name of a demon hunter in a comic. Appropriate for an Adamantine Arrow, anyway.
I agreed to give a major boon to Kane and his Adamantine Arrow (unbeknownst to them, the boon was from the Horsemen, not the Bridge – maybe I overstepped my bounds, but there was nothing I could do at the time. I’m sure I’ll have some explaining to do later, to both parties.) in return for locations of warehouses that might have housed Dream’s amulet –Dream had already visited Kane and Phoenix last night and had requested the amulet and already got the locations….but no one had woken up from their Dream sickness, so if he’d actually found the amulet, wouldn’t that have been fixed already? Did something go wrong?
In any case, we agreed to meet at the Hudson County Administration Building in Jersey City in one hour – another mistake on my part, we had no easy sympathy to portal there, and traffic in New York is horrific. We arrived very late. Oops. They were waiting for us on the steps; the building was closed for the day. They took us in a blacked out vehicle – a gift from Guardians of Veil, no doubt – to the different warehouses. While searching, the AA got the message that John Dee, Doctor Destiny, had broken out of the Trenton Psychiatric Hospital, and a warehouse in Brooklyn was broken into. We arrived at the warehouse to a dead Sleeper – one of the AA precoged and saw that a skeleton guy had zapped a middle aged man – the dead man – that Dream had been riding – killed him with the power of the ruby amulet. We didn’t know what had become of Dream, but the man – John Dee – was now at a diner, and crazy things were now happening across New York, sending the Adamantine Arrow into a tizzy. They took us to the diner where we said we’d go after Dee.
The lights were out, things looked wrong. Eris called the diner – a strange madness effect went through the phone line, but she managed to evade it. She saw everything that had happened in that diner – she saw the guy had been torturing and then killed the patrons after twenty hours. I’m glad she spared the details.
We entered the diner through the back door, into the kitchen, and entered a field of madness – the kitchen was a kitchen from Hell – I freaked out, screaming, I didn’t want to see the twisted horrors again, I tried to tear my own eyes out! I’m thankful that Eris stopped me. The commotion alerted Doctor Dee, though, so much for surprise… Eris threw me at him, tried to bring me back to my senses – or maybe stun him, I’m not sure which. Thankfully, when I attacked I didn’t lash out at my friends – instead I stabbed Thrymja into Dee and blasted him in half. But…he was still moving! His torn upper half, still twitching, still talking…How – ? It was ghastly! He still wouldn’t give up the dream stone.
Dream then arrived – apparently his earlier encounter with Dee had greatly weakened him – Dream portaled us all into the Tenemos. Dee and Dream battled, each blow from the ruby continuing to weaken Dream. I did my best to shield Dream, and Eris put a Geas on Dee that finally caused the ruby amulet to shatter when Dee refused to return it to its rightful owner. All that power exploded out and back into Dream – he got everything back, everything he had stored in that ruby. After each tool he had regained, his power had increased exponentially – he’s actually a rank 7 spirit!
Dream took Dee to a Tenemos asylum back into his old cell – Dee’s body is dead, he can’t live in the physical world anymore. How curious that Dream can be so merciful, almost compassionate – I don’t know if I would have done the same thing – Dee terrorized the city, twice, attacked Dream with the intent to kill him, murdered the Sleeper Dream was riding, murdered who knows how many other Sleepers…but I guess it’s not like Dee can do anything else. He can’t go back into the real world, the ruby is gone, Dream has all his power back, no one can steal it anymore, and Dee can’t cause anymore trouble in the Tenemos. Killing him wouldn’t DO anything. But then Dream also told us how he’d dealt with at least one of his captors when he finally got free – he gave him eternal awakenings, always waking up into another dream. I shudder to think of that. He treated the two people – Dee and his captors – so very differently. Well, I guess Dee wasn’t deliberately acting against Dream – he was insane and just wanted power. In any case…I should be careful around Dream.
We found a card of the First Tarot, the Moon card, Dream’s card, on the bed in Dee’s cell. Who left it? How does he/she/it keep getting in front of us? And why? We let Cas take it for safekeeping.
Anyway, we’re back, we succeeded, I politely refused Dream’s offer of becoming his servant – yeah, I need to watch my words more carefully. I had trusted him since I Awakened, but being around the Bridge of Souls is making me more paranoid. It’s so hard to trust people…things…anything. I dunno, Dream seemed to be trustworthy still. Did he really help me Awaken? I’d like to think so…
Oh, and we saw Death again – Dream’s older sister! Older sister!? They’re two of the Endless. The Endless are…extremely high ranking spirits of concepts? I’m not really sure. How many are there? Who are the rest? Are we going to see them again?
I called up Solomon, explained that Doctor Destiny was dead (technically correct), Dream got his amulet back – Kane seemed busy, involved in taking care of the fallout of people waking up, all the weird crazy stuff that Dee did. The Horsemen will owe him a major boon later. I’m already leery of the Arrow…I know Creepy and Kairos will be mad, well, Kairos anyway, but I really don’t trust the Arrow – I don’t like how they handled Doctor Destiny in the past. I’m not sure if I like the way they do their operations. What sort of major boon are they going to ask of us in the future?
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| Original Artwork by Alanna Keith of Dream with all this Artifacts returned |
