The Art of Dreaming

[Rhodes]

Rhodes smirks a little. "From 'the book'? I'm going to need a little more than that if I'm to know what you're on about, John. Although, you are correct. Longing." He looked around. "This is an archive I dream of having. Perhaps one day, I will."

He watches the others as Yani forms a bay window and Sonnie forms a desk. The Flowering tries not to sigh aloud. At least she was being quiet.

"Since you all changed the Dream in some way, you should all have felt what John felt. Normally this may need you to watch the reactions of the Dreamer to the changes - a delicate process, but with perceverence one can learn about a person's flaws or skills, or any of the effects I mentioned before. It's all the same method. Change the dream, watch the reaction. The more vivid and clear the dream, the harder it is to change. The more faded and whispy, the easier it is to break the dream into a fallow psyche and rebuild it into something more suiting your goals. We call this Dreamscaping." He pauses, looking around. "Dreamscaping can only be done in a fallow dream, and requires breaking up the dream's intensity - Scouring, as I said before. Of course, when one seeks only control over an existing Dream, we can tweak and alter and change as long as we overcome the intensity."

Rhodes smiles. "Of course with the Contract of Dreams, these inherent power to control the shape of the dream is increased tenfold. Then the limits truly are your... imagination."

He snaps his fingers, letting glamour flow into the dream.

6 successes

Date	Action	Roll	Result
2020-05-03 08:15:11	Rhodes rolls 6 to Forging the Dream: Wits+Wyrd (10 Again)	9, 10, 10, 3, 10, 8, 10, 3, 5, 6	6 successes

The wall of the library is suddenly ripped away and the debris sucked away - there is only a pure white void behind. The entir room - walls, floors, ceiling, it dragged piece by peice, like a tornado is shredding the entire room, and behind is all, a strange, matt white.

A shape hurtles towards them, blurring all around.

The world suddeny stops.

The Changelings are on the edge of an oasis in the middle of a vast desert. azure water and palm trees, golden sands. The sky is an immaculate blue.

The Dread Lord's robic apparel remains unchanged. He smiles. "You can make anything.... hmm." The smile vanishes. At the wave of his hand, time is accelerated several weeks and sun and moon chase one another across the sky, srettling on a prefectly clear night sky, awash with stars. The smile returns. "Much better."

"As I was saying... anything. A fanciful art, but no less enjoyable. To the dreamer, it's just a shift in the dream. But all this, nomatter how fanciful, cannot be used to Dreamscape. So why bother? Because it can be used for any simple dream-riding techniques, setting the scenes you want to see - including preparationg to harvest Glammour from them. Dreamscaping can perfom things regular Dream Riding cannot. It can help ease the mind, speeding up physical recovery, stress relieve, and teaching, educating the dreamer on a topic, Alternatively one can altruistically move through the dreams, soothing nightmares and psychological ills, restoring focus."

He looks across to the group, then settles on John. "You mentioned Dream-poison. The only method I know of for treating such a thing would be to track the poison, from Dream to dream across the Skein, until you find the dreamer the Fae or changeling is introducing the poison into - and Scour it. Tear the dream to the floor, removing the poison from the dream. Oneiromancy is not fast, in most cases. It is an art of the mind - and the help it can provide is almost always supplimentary. Poison, and Oneiromachy, are the exceptions."

The Dread Lord smiles and looks around. "Are there any questions thus far?"

[Anatole]

Anatole's attention snaps back to the Dread Lord when Rhodes continues his exposition. The dwarf wizened remains silent, watching and listening.

That all changes when Rhodes shreds the dreamscape and rebuilds it from the ground up. Anatole's head snaps around as the wall's start falling away in a whirl of noise, paper, and furniture. He raises an eyebrow and looks back at the Dread Lord - with an increasingly surprised cast to his beard shrouded face - as the library collapses outward in successive sections. By the end of the brutal transformation, Anatole is clinging grimly to the chair.

The dwarf curses as the chair is sucked out from under him...

And he is dumped on the edge of an oasis.

"Huh? No!" Anatole sounded grumpy as he picked himself up and dusted himself off.

"Only... You say scouring the dream will remove a source of Dream Poison. Is that it? Would scouring a dream cure it for good or is it more of a temporary fix while you take out the one who placed the Poison in the first place?"

[James Turner]

The world collapsed and whirled in a blur of color and motion to his eyes, he shut them instantly.

It’s a dream, it’s a dream, you’re in a dream.

As the chair disappeared he’d began falling to find himself floating slowly the last inch to the ground. Sighing with relief as he crossed his other leg now sitting criss-cross applesauce as Rhodes explained further, especially about dream poison. Luckily for him Anatole hit on some of his questions.

“And how do you track it from dream to dream? What’s the best way to find the source?

“As for healing the ills of the mind, is it like conventional therapy or more one facing their inner demons in quite possible literal combat in dreams?”

It opened up a whole host of ethical questions depending on the extent one could change a person through dreams. You can but should you?

[Yamiyo Lillich]

Her bay window disappearing everything changing before her eyes as she just stands in marvel looking at the tricks and arts the dread lord had mastered.

Viewing the skies as they change, lightly bending down to touch the water to just feel how much it felt like reality or how much it felt like she imagined it would.

Listening and taking in everything that happens around her before a concern starts to come to her mind, a wonder and perhaps a fear.

"Whilst I do find the words of the others to be of an importance so do I have a wonder of another kind. How harmful is this mastery to oneself? How many of our kind have lost themselves to it? We cannot control the shall we call it real world at all, we may have some contracts that offers us some gifts most people do not posses but we are still bound by a lot of laws and rules that makes us a natural part of the world but here they do not exist. How easy wouldn't it be to get lost in the control and beauty of dreams, of places where you are in complete control, where you with training can become a form of god. Now cannot that be harmful to the mind and make us search a more permanent escape into our own utopias?"
Her mind filled with the thoughts on how easy it would be to lose oneself to the inherent beauty of a dream only to try and find a way to never need to leave it.

[Seraphina]

As the Dream suddenly shifted and changed around them, she had to smile. Always a show off, she thinks lovingly.

Sapphires watch the stars for a moment, though she was still listening.

As the Dream Poison was mentioned again, she pays closer attention, as she was still unsure if with more training if she’d be able to get rid of it on her own.

Then more questions about it. Seems this group was fixated on Dream Poison, but she didn’t blame them. It was a bitch to deal with.

When John mentioned healing the mind, something was in her realm of abilities, she looks to Rhodes, then back to John. She wouldn’t speak up unless asked. But healing in the Dream was her thing, but this wasn’t her class.

[Sonnie Wu]

"What's this? Miss Yamiyo has a book on the Kama Sutra overdue? How scandalous! I must insist that--" It was in that moment the books, the desk and the chair in which Sonnie sat all shifted into nonexistence. During the brief white void, she teetered in a midair sitting position for about a split second before she fell, unceremoniously, onto her back. By the time she hit the ground, it was all desert dunes. "--WAAHH!"

Spitting sand, the Beast sat up. Blinking, she looked around in confusion, taking note of the oasis. "Ohhhhh! Neat!"

"Hmmm," she thought a moment, bare monkey toes digging in the warm sands, "Where does Dream Poison come from?"

Leaping to her feet, the sexy librarian outfit was suddenly gone! In its place was some sort of para-military outfit, ala 2-D! Thankfully, she included a green bikini top with it, or this dreamscape might have gotten very NSFW rather quickly. She hummed the tune to the Gorillaz 'Dirty Harry' as she strutted around the desert landscape.

Don't worry, she can still hear Rhodes just fine.

[Rhodes]

The Dread Lord smiles. This was when these things were worth it. People were thinking. Interested. Keen to expand their own knowledges. "Good questions. Very good questions."

He looks to Anatole first. "The latter," he says simply, nodding. "Consider the Poison to be like a medical drip, feeding into the body. Scouring the Dream is like cutting the tubing to the siringe in the arm. Disrupting the connection from the source of the poison to the mind. The Source still exists, you have just removed the conduit. And it is the Source, as you say, that must be dealth with. And that is easier saud than done." He looks cross to Sonnie. "The source is usually a Loyalist, or, sometimes, one of the Gentry. It has been known to form fin other ways, but those two are by far the most likely."

The Flowering looks to John. "All dreams of all sleeping minds are connected through the Skein, the web of the subconscious minds, and all dreaming minds are connected to it. Dream-Poison always has a... patient zero, one might say. The mind into which the poison is introduced, which travels form mind to mind, infecting the dreams and, depending on the poison, the behaviours of that mind once it wakes." He takes a deep breath, looking out over the water. "If you find a dream at the middle or end, of the chain, one can follow the stream of poison from dream to dream.... just like following a river back to it's source. One opens a door, just as you all did from your own dream to mine, using the current of the poison to guide your path. In the next dream, you find the pont of the poison angain, and repeat the process, until you find the Original Dream. You'll know it when you get there. The feeling is... inefffable."

He turns slowly, looking back on the group. "Without that kind of path to follow across the Skein, travelling from dream to dream looking ofr a specific ndividual, or dreamscape... what we call Skeinwalking... can be done, but it is a process not without risk. One can open a door form dream to dream, as you did to reach here.... but it will always induce nightmares. Or, one can seek a guide to take them to the dream they seek - an Incubus, usually, from a Goblin Market or similar. There are other, much rarer methods, often closely guarded secrets."

Rhodes looks back to John. "For your second question, it is more like the first... but the form that treatment takes can be anything, froma subtle change innthe dreamer's behaviour to, as you say, quite literally fighting their inner demons. That depends on what approach will suit the individual most and, equally, the temprement of the changeling trying to do so." He catches Sera's glance, and smiles. "Of course, this is not my specialty. There are some who devote much time to learning these subsets of Dream techniques. Darling? Care to weigh in on the healing power of Dreams?"

Emerald eyes turn to Yamiyo, and the Dread Lord grows solemn. "Our minds are fractured even more than our forms. Your thoughts are correct, Miss Lillich. Loosing oneself in the dreams can be done. But while here, in a realm of the mind, your body continues to exist. Without food and water, it will simply stop.... ending your dream forever. I suppose it is possibly someone has done it, seeking an eternal escape from reality. But none that I know." His gaze turns to the skies, looking through the multitude of stars.

[Anatole]

Anatole grunted.

"Sounds much too complicated. I guess at best we can stop Dream Poison when we find it - we'd only be able to get to the source by a fluke or a break in our favour."

He grimaced through his beard but nevertheless turned his attention back to the Dread Lord.

"Had any experience with these... Incubus types yourself?"

He was curious, stroking his beard while he gave Seraphina a sidelong look when Rhodes handed the conversation over to her.

[James Turner]

Like the Serpent and Loki it’s not a stream but a drip, following the infection to the source but what if the Source is one of Them? How could you possibly hope to Scour their dreams and purge them? Rhodes’ advice when encountering them was to run, was there any hope left then?

He sat there and nodded as he looked on intently, trying his best to absorb everything that was told to him, to store it into his own subconscious. His head tilted as he looked to Sera, a dream healer huh? That was interesting, he supposed it made sense it looked like she was slowly fading out of existence from our world to dreams.

Yamiyo had brought up a point that wouldn’t have ever crossed his mind, the allure of the escape of dreams. It hadn’t ever occurred to him the pleasure and power they could find here but it started to make sense, he was more relaxed here than out there.

“So we can go from our dreams into the Skein of dreams and navigate from there? But being near the dreamer or having a compact is easier? Should we hunt for these Secrets perhaps?”

He wasn’t about to trust a hob in his subconscious if he didn’t have to, they could always be bound by Pledge but that was tricky and he imagined an incubus especially had a particular skill with words.

[Yamiyo Lillich]

It was a lot of information to take in however one part stuck with her closer than anything else, chewing at her mind, gnawing over and over again. The more it was brought up the more it pushed on her little mind, annoying her until she just had to ask.

"I am sorry if this goes a bit out of the lesson plan or the purpose here but why is it called an Incubus? An Incubus should be the male equivalence to me and I do doubt that the name implies that all males of my kith are the ones you seek hence the name feels very oddly chosen in my mind. I do understand that lore and us does not always go hand in hand but if it is a being of which we are in contact with then why do we use the name for both? Is there some kind of implying behind it, after all we are the ones who knows that words holds power, names have meanings and if they originally didn't so will one come to be. As such why is this thing double used, what is the hidden meaning behind it or what have the double name created?"

This felt far to wrong for her and if this were tied to the male types of her kith then would it eventually affect her in some way, now that she thought about it did any other kith have a distinction between genders?