Dream Masters: interest/sign up

[Aerozord]

Not sure if the RP section is still active enough to support a RP but I was hit with inspiration so here ya go.

PREMISE:Dreams are as real as the waking world. There is a reality parallel to our own with creatures that are psychic projections of all those that slumber. Some scratching at the boarder, attempting to interact with the physical world that we know. It is through dreaming that we subconsciously weaken these forces and place order on its chaos.

However things have changed. The once extensions of the global consciousness has been showing signs of a will. An active push to break through and manipulate the waking world. Thus was born the Dream Masters, people that have gained full lucidity within dreams and push back against the figments of dreams.

SYSTEM:Dream Warriors use tokens to trigger their lucid state. Tokens are items the user shares a strong connection to and have trained themselves to identify the items in dreams to obtain full lucidity. Thus you basically have two health tracks.

Lucidity: your awareness of your dream state and ability to make conscious choices. Breaking lucidity renders you a NPC and weakens your lucidity in the future, potentially to the point you can never fight again.

Stability: the reason nightmares wake you is so no real harm can come to your body. While you can still will yourself awake the reflex is gone. Meaning your actual body is at risk. While not a direct analog severe damage sustained in a dream will affect you in real life. Experiencing death often leads to psychological trauma and in rare cases brain damage or physical death.

TOKENS: Often personal items the user is attached to like gifts or things from their childhood. While it doesn't have to be something the user physically owns in the waking world these tend to be stronger.

Effigy: Those that use effigies face a degree of prejudice and for good reason. An effigy is a separate entity from the Dream Master with its own personality and will. This is only possible for those with fractured psyches. Giving this fragment of themselves form in the dream world. However this is always an antagonist relationship. A part of themselves they reject or manifestation of their own internal demons. There are advantages to having a separate entity to fight for you since your physical self is at little to no risk. However lucidity is weaker because its something they reject in the waking world.

Augmentation: Rather than manifesting as a separate thing augmentation tokens enhance the Dream Master himself. Even granting special powers and abilities. Lucidity is also very high since it requires active awareness of the dreamself to use. However it puts the Dream Master himself at great risk. Any damage or stress to the token causes feedback on the user. Its said the real reason augmentation users never worry about remaining lucid is anything that could break their connection to their token would likely outright kill them.

Vessel: Considered the most stable version. Vessels transform the token itself into a weapon or tool. Since its the token itself lucidity is still strong and like effigies it avoids the issues of feedback. The risk is the fact it is the token and a destroyed token is not easily replaced. Vessels can also grant powers similar to augmentations, though not as powerful. As well as summon creatures similar to effigies but they lack a will or intelligence. Having very simplistic behavior such as "avoid being hit, attack the enemy".

Multiple tokens is possible but the more you have the weaker each individual one is. Tokens gain their power because they are special to the user. Clearly each is less special by simple virtue of it not being the only one. The drawbacks of each type also become more pronounced the more tokens the Dream Master has. However some enjoy the versatility and redundancy of having other tokens to fall back on.

DREAMWORLD:
The majority of the dream world is a reflection of our own native reality since its the strongest thing shared by humanity. To Dream Masters the real world, when not actively being manipulated appears much like the waking world though with a variable scale. Concepts like size and distance tend to be exaggerated. The Ocean for example is a massive uniform landscape, forests are full of repeating trees, but cities have a high level of detail to them. Dream Masters typically know of short cuts to navigate between locations. For this reason teams do not need to be from the same real world location. Language also takes on a different form. As long as the concept is something within the persons mind it is understood otherwise it is mere gibberish. In those cases it becomes very difficult to convey what the word means.

Part of this is due to information being difficult to transfer between people. Normally impossible but Dream Masters can overcome this as long as its something the other party can relate to or information native to the dream world.

The Dream World also contains fictional constructs. Ideas such as a fantasy world leaves a strong enough global impression that such worlds can be visited as well. They are considered slightly more dangerous since the figments are less constrained and its geography is more alien and ever shifting even by the standards of the dream world. These are nothing compared to "Special Zones". Special Zones are the result of particularly creative artistic people dreaming. Their minds create new worlds from whole cloth. Not only are these worlds completely unknown to the Dream Master but the figments are especially powerful. Unless absolutely necessary its advised to simply avoid Special Zones.

FIGMENTS
Figments is the general term for any being that is not a sleeping consciousness. While its believed most are constructs of sleeping people there are those that believe the dream world can spontaneously create independent figments. Regardless of their origins the duty of dream masters is to destroy figments that have crafted potent dreamscapes that run the risk of eroding the barrier of the two worlds by causing the dream to affect a waking mind. This is done by making dreams that leave powerful impressions on victims. Fear is the most common examples. Anyone that has had a particularly bad nightmare that leaves you shaken all day knows of this. It is not the only type however. Any strong emotion such as lust, sadness, even contentment can work as well.

Broodmothers: Often the key to stopping these dreamscapes. Broodmothers are figments that spawn other figments that fit with the dreamscape. Keep in mind this is a very general term. How specifically this spawning manifests or the broodmother's appearance varies quite abit.

Shapeless: Figments without any real form. Some are merely featureless like a mannequin others are shadowy humanoid blobs. These are normally very weak figments that represent the 'other'. The concept of some faceless antagonist to an individual.

Wisp: Some question if wisps are even figments at all or just a phenomenon of the dream world itself. Wisps are ghostly ethereal creatures that lack any physical form and seem incapable of interacting with the dream world. They are worth noting because their often signify powerful and chaotic dreaming right on the cusp of lucid dreaming. They mean something is out of the ordinary.

Terror: Most common in special zones terrors are powerful figments that can greatly resist lucidity of dream masters. Avoid them whenever possible.

Bleeders: Typically figments are restricted to specific dreamscapes. Bleeders are capable of crossing from one dream to another. Though rarely of great power their difficulty to track and contain makes them tricky opponents.

Dissonance: Both a type of figment and the name of a separate phenomenon of the dream world. Dissonance affects your lucidity and imposes the dream worlds laws upon you. Some figments use this as an attack. Such as affecting perceptions of time or the weight of your body.

LUCIDITY: This represents your ability to impose your will on the dream world. The more aware you are of the dream the less it affects you. Its kind of a matrix effect. You do not need to breath, feel fatigue or pain, you dont actually have organs to damage or bones to break. If your lucidity is low not only can these things effect you but at a certain point you lose yourself to the dream and are no longer conscious. Unfortunately high lucidity removes your brains natural fail-safes. Putting your physical body at greater risk. It is like what would happen in the real world is you could ignore pain. You feel pain for a reason and cant control it for a reason. Choosing to not acknowledge damage leaves the very real possibility you will ignore damage you shouldn't.

STABILITY: Basically your ability to avoid damaging your waking self. This takes into account many factors. Simply avoiding damage such as when you have your effigy fighting for you or just having a level of lucidity where your waking up reflex still functions. Some are just in better health in the real world and can handle the stress and trauma of dream fighting better.

PROFILE:
Real World:
Name:
Age:
Sex:
Appearance:
Backstory:
Token: If applicable

Dream World:
Appearance: You appear as you see yourself. Note this isn't an idealized version, or how you wish you look. This is how you look when you think of your own self and to you is accurate. For this reason looking the same is acceptable and general appearance should normally be the same.
Token: the form it takes in the dream world, unless its a vessel this is normally the same as the real world counterpart.
Type:
Powers:If applicable

[Astral Harmony]

Real World
- Name: Janice McShultz
- Age: 11
- Sex: Female
- Appearance: A wispy girl of three feet and one inch with long straight black hair and sky blue eyes. Wears a simple white dress with straps and a plain white hairhand. Her eyes never really seem to focus on what she's looking at, as though she's trying to see something on the other side of where she's really looking.
- Backstory: Janice is a mentally unstable girl who has been locked away in a laboratory for nearly all of her life. Despite her considerable youth, Janice has had a strong lucidity in the dream world and an single-minded bond with her own Token, and thus the bounds of morality were crossed and she was forced to fight as a Dream Master. She has only ever seen and known two people in her life: her father, Dennis, the director of the laboratory, and Vanessa, a caretaker who personally visits her far more often than Dennis.

But the reality behind her situation is far crueler than even this. She is the first and only successful test subject of a classified government operation called Project Somnus. The desired results of the operation would be the possibility of "dream assassins", those who can draw a designated target into the dream world and kill him or her, effectively assassinating the person in the real world in a way that is nearly untraceable and virtually inescapable. While the government isn't exactly enthusiastic about using Janice given the reports they've received on her, the fact that she is the only test subject they can gather data from leaves them with little options.
- Token: Mercury ~ Given to Janice by Vanessa, it is literally the only source of comfort that Janice has whenever Vanessa isn't around.
- Token Appearance [Real World]: A teddy bear, roughly two feet and six inches tall, with brown fur and beady black eyes. When Janice thinks that no one is observing her, her own tortured mind lashes out and she has literally convined herself that Mercury comes to life and speaks with her. The teddy bear actually uses a secondary personality constructed by Janice's fragmented psyche to verbally abuse her or ask her questions about the worth of her existence. From those who are observing her when she isn't aware, it happens whenever she simply stares at Mercury with an abnormal intensity, and this is the only time her eyes actually focus on an object.

Dream World
- Character Appearance: Janice is a lot more pale in the dream world, as though she has no life of her own. Her dress seems more wispy and flows more slowly than in the real world. She had a solid steel plate fastened to cover her eyes and there are bandages covering her nose, mouth, and a considerable amount of her body. Her breathing is ragged and disturbing.
- Type: Effigy
- Token Appearance: When Janice first encounters Mercury and carries it around with her, it still looks like a bear. However, when Janice encounters something with which she must engage in combat, her broken mind lashes out and causes Mercury to rapidly transform into a more horrid and violent form. The form looks like half of Janice's body and half of Mercury's body were brutally cut apart and then a half of each body was cruedly sewn together with thick black stitching. The Janice part of the body has stark white hair, a single red eye, and long, jagged fingernails. The Mercury part of the body is missing patches of fur and has even been cut open in place, revealing stuffing covered in blood. Mercury's arm has long, curved claws that reach to the floor. The form is hunched over but still stands at almost four feet tall and both sides of the body are always grinning. It takes a lot of pride in its horrible workings, and cusses Janice out whenever she voices an opinion about its brutish habits or when Mercury receives damage in battle, suggesting that Janice's own level of mindbreak is directly proportioned to Mercury's combat potential in the dream world.
- Powers: Mercury is a speedy and bloodthirsty "bearzerker" that uses its combination of jagged human fingernails and brutish bear claws to rapidly and violently rake its enemies.

[Aerozord]

Originally Posted by Astral Harmony

Sounds like the bastard child of Nightmare On Elm Street and Inception with an alluring wink to Insidious.

Also the name is a reference to Little Nemo.

As for your profile. The waking world is like our real world with no supernatural elements. Though there are those aware of the dream world and certainly groups with less ethical ideas on how to combat it. So your backstory does work. However the bear actually moving on its own doesn't since your character wouldn't manifest real world powers. That being said she can think it moves and talks to her since hallucinations are common for effigy users.

[batgirl]

This sounds interesting. Placeholder for now until I get a chance to write a profile, probably after the holiday.

[Aldurin]

Interst!

Gonna churn some ideas and get a concept written up within the next few days.

---------- Post added at 07:22 PM ---------- Previous post was at 06:32 AM ----------

PROFILE:
Real World
Name: Cecil Farlow
Age: 28
Sex: Male
Appearance: Tall and gaunt, Cecil's brown hair is just a little too long and unkempt, accentuated by his lazy shaving habits. Wears loose shirts and sweatpants, not caring for fashion or appearance.
Backstory: Cecil was a fairly successful novelist after high school, making a living with one-off stories that never quite made it to a best seller list but allowed him to live a very lax lifestyle. He was always creating new fiction in his mind, with a vivid detail that made him responsible for many Special Zones within the Dream World, though he wasn't entirely aware of it. At 22, he met Arianna, an artist who shared many things in common with him. They were both artistic enough to shape Special Zones within the Dream World, were able to overlap their dreams together and both dealt with hypersomnia, having to sleep a minimum of 10 hours each day. They began dating shortly after, and for four years lived in happiness together in both the waking world and in the landscapes they shaped in their dreams.
It didn't last. One day Cecil woke up to find a voicemail from Arianna on his phone, when he expected her to already be at his apartment. Panicked voices were in the background and she sounded like she was in immense pain, weakly begging Cecil for help. As the distant sound of an ambulance grew louder, she seemed to compose herself before saying, "It's ok, Cecil . . . I'm going to sleep now." It was a hit-and-run by a drunk driver, and she was dead before the paramedics could get to her.
On that day, Cecil was broken and in turmoil. He was always a peaceful person who disliked confrontation, but conflicting desires took over him. He snuck out of his apartment while some family was staying there, worried about his condition. The driver had connections to high-end lawyer circuit, and was able to avoid charges, but Cecil still knew where he lived. With a thorough, cold calculation he was able to break into the home, kill the driver with a slow cruelty, and sneak back into his apartment so that everyone who was supposed to be keeping a watch on him would serve as the alibis he needed. Cecil was quickly scratched off the suspect list, but the revenge only worsened his grief.
His dreams changed, the only of his Special Zones that he would find himself in was one from his earliest story concepts, quickly scrapped and never divulged to anyone. An infinite grid of perpendicular hallways of medieval make, partially obscured by a glowing turquoise fog. A horror story where the twist was that there was no monsters, that fathoming the infinite weakened the mind enough that it created its own demons. For the first few months he was alone, then he began to see Arianna out of the corner of his eye when he was within the labyrinth. Around this time he gained the power of the Dream Warrior, and was trying to understand the Dream World, or why he could never find his other Special Zones. A part of him began to believe that Arianna was still alive, finding a way to root her mind to the Dream World in order to outlive her physical body. But every time he tried to confront her in his dreams, she would turn out to be an indistinct humanoid mass of blackness, the representation of his own desire to kill out of hatred. Staring into this mirror of his soul made him retract further, another part of him wishing for the loss of self-awareness. Cecil's hypersomnia worsened. A few more minutes of sleep each day, until the present where he now requires 15 hours of sleep. Again, some part of him wished for self-destruction, but this one was the belief that by reaching the point of being in constant sleep, he would fully transition to the Dream World and find Arianna. With more time spent during sleep he eventually began exploring the normal Dream World in search of Arianna, or himself, or something that wasn't clear to him.
Token: His tokens are different aspects of his own psyche, and thus have no form in the waking world. As a byproduct of this, Cecil never has full lucidity in the waking world, which draws him further into dreams and worsens his hypersomnia.

Dream World
Appearance: Much like his normal form, except no matter how the lighting of the area is he appears as if he's inside a dimly lit room, faint shadows obscuring part of his face at all times. Cecil always starts his dream inside his labyrinth Special Zone.
Token: (1.) Cecil's vision of Arianna, which looks exactly like her to everyone else whenever Cecil doesn't look directly at her. When he looks at her, she becomes the swirling black mass that is Cecil's malice and capacity for cruelty. (2.) Cecil's nihilism given stronger form. When this is active Cecil loses opacity and becomes even more obscured by darkness, his movements becoming stuttered and unclear.
Type: (1.) Effigy (2.) Augmentation
Powers: (1.) Arianna takes precedence when Cecil loses awareness of his environment, trapped in introspective. She locks into blackness form where she becomes Cecil's malice, fighting aggressively using short-range tendrils of darkness as bludgeoning weapons. Should she get the opportunity to kill an enemy, she produces a knife and begins to attempt to kill her opponent in the same torturous manner that Cecil killed the drunk driver. (2) Cecil loses awareness of himself, being able to focus on the dream world around him. He becomes less affected by attacks, and some outright pass through him without harm. Additionally he is capable of instantaneously moving short distances in a sudden dash that makes him harder to hit. This also makes him hard to be spotted by others who have not yet noticed him.

[Intern Nin]

Placeholder, until my body vanquishes this cold.

[Aerozord]

Now I have been reading everyones stuff. There is abit more info I want to put down about what exactly you guys will be doing and what you are fighting as well as how lucidity and stability works. Short answer, lucidity can help you stay in a battle longer but that puts your physical self at higher risk.

Its just work has kept me busy so I haven't really had a chance to sit down and write it all up. Likely Sunday is when I'll get to everything. Hopefully there wont be any major issues and we can get things going monday or tuesday

[Aerozord]

Added abit more info on figments and elaborated on stability and lucidity. This is probably all I'll be adding unless I get into Dream Master factions

Astral: you are good now. But so you know the effigy is more of a projection from your token than the token itself. This is so you dont risk the token.

Aldurin: a few things, mostly concerns than vetos. First I want to be clear, your token itself is a figment which takes the form of an effigy? Thats fine but you kind of lumped all the weaknesses of each type of token into one. Your lucidity would be horrible and if your effigy is destroyed so would your token and as I stated this is very bad.

My issue though is with your augmentation. You cant just have invulnerability especially when you are already taking two tokens. However your body is inherently more durable. If you just want to keep the short range dashing thats fine though.

[Aldurin]

Originally Posted by Aerozord

Aldurin: a few things, mostly concerns than vetos. First I want to be clear, your token itself is a figment which takes the form of an effigy? Thats fine but you kind of lumped all the weaknesses of each type of token into one. Your lucidity would be horrible and if your effigy is destroyed so would your token and as I stated this is very bad.

My issue though is with your augmentation. You cant just have invulnerability especially when you are already taking two tokens. However your body is inherently more durable. If you just want to keep the short range dashing thats fine though.

Effigy: Huh, that's a bit of a problem. Looking at the expanded figment info, it does make sense for Cecil's effigy to manifest as a sort of shapeless/terror figment. How about this: The two tokens become a single two-stage sort of token, since both are pure manifestations of Cecil's psyche with no physical root other than his own memory. The effigy is the default, as the grief that Cecil is obsessed with, and leaves Cecil unable to use his augmentation while it's still alive. When that is destroyed, Cecil is then only able to use his augmentation, as the mental barrier that keeps him from focusing on his own monstrous side has been broken, unable to look away from his own disgrace. Over a length of time the effigy will regenerate and force Cecil back into his sub-lucid wandering of the Dream World, disabling the augmentation again. The effigy dying would damage Cecil less than a normal figment token breaking, but it would still chip away at him and still put value on winning a fight without having to resort to his augmentation.

Augmentation: I can accept changing that to a mobility-focused buff, or changing it to a different combat focus depending on how you feel about the above suggestion. I could see the augmentation making Cecil fight in a similar manner to his effigy but with some substantially different properties.

[Aerozord]

Mechanically your suggestion is fine, except that you have no token for your augmentation. Without a token to focus on your lucidity is gone thus Cecil will be just another dreamer. Might I suggest instead of the figment being the token when he dreams he has something of hers. Again it doesn't have to be something he has in the waking world and could be something morbid like an actual part of her.