Fantasy Where Dreams go to Die - Q&A

[welian]

This is the Questions tab for Where Dreams go to Die. The setting of the roleplay is somewhat complex and spacey-wacey, so please leave any in-depth questions you have here, and I’ll do my best to answer.

 

[Giyari]

Who wears short shorts?

 

[welian]

I hate you.

 

[Giyari]

:3

 

[ViAdvena]

1. Besides getting impaled with extreme prejudices in the core, what else can kill knights?
   
2. From what I read, The Archnid, The Fall, and The Chase kill people? Then what makes them any better than Night Terrors?
   

 

[Writer]

I have combined all the questions previously asked in the OOC in this nice accordion. Welian, I can give you the code to copy/paste if you want to put it in the first post.

Will the reason that all these lucid dreamers are in San Jose be connected to the story?

Yes, there is in-universe justification for San Jose being the center of this – the main antagonist has been lurking around there, and he is influencing the Terrors. Thus, the Sentinel is recruiting lots of new Knights from the area.

How public is the insomnia? Has the government made any steps to tackle it? Have medical communities tried to investigate? Has the insomnia resulted in loss of production? Closing of school because teachers can't sleep, government unable to function, etc?

Right now, the insomnia is getting about the same media coverage as the flu. The media is more focused on the influx of missing people, and the two aren’t totally linked yet. But yes, medical communities are investigating. So far, the insomnia has not significantly impacted daily functions of society. However, there’s been a measurable increase in car crashed from dozing off at the wheel. Basically, the general public attitude is “Haha, yeah, everyone’s been sleeping like shit lately. It must be something in the air.” Obviously, it’s more serious to people who are actually suffering.

Has there been any high profile deaths or disappearances that would create a movement behind fighting what's happening? Presidents, senators, governors, celebrities, etc?

High profile casualties… I’d say it’s reasonable to assume there’s been about a half dozen disappearances featured on the news over the past month, you know how once a pretty white girl disappears, the media goes apeshit. But none of them were politicians, yet. One of the disappearances is probably a veteran – since these monsters are attracted to fear and sadness, they tend to go for those suffering from PTSD and depression. Again, not everyone has figured out that the disappearances are tied to the insomnia, since “oh no, I can’t sleep” tends not to be taken that seriously anyways…

How has religions, in particular Christianity, the dominant religion in the US, responded to all this?

I would not be surprised if some Christian leaders, especially the more fundamentalist ones, believe this to be the work of devils and demons, and that this is all proof of America’s spiritual decline, God is abandoning us, etc.

How worldwide is this phenomenon? Is it hitting the United States harder than other countries?

So far, this is not worldwide. There has been extra activity in other major population centers, but so far the other Knights have not yet had to go into emergency mode like the ones living in/visiting San Jose.

Has this lead to an increase in foreign tensions? People blaming Russia/China for example? Russia/China blaming the US?

There are absolutely people who believe that pollution from China is being blown over the Pacific and is poisoning the good American people of San Jose and that’s why no one can sleep.

So dreams are beings/entities? Can Knights enter other's dreams?

There are two types of dreams – dreams as a person, and dreams as a place. I need to update the Settings thread, but I’ll explain it here. Everyone has a dreamscape. From Etherea, these look a bit like snowglobes. Touching one will pull you into that dreamscape and into that person’s dream. A dream as an entity – capitalized, so a Dream – is a conglomeration of multiple, similar dreams. For example, the Dream of Love (one of the NPCs) is not someone’s particular dream, but millions of dreams about love that have pulled together and become a unique entity. Humans, dreamers, can often be seen roaming throughout Etherea as a ghost, while their subconscious attempts to locate or construct the next dreamscape. That’s why sometimes your dreams at night change suddenly, or appear to be non sequitor events.

What does Etherea look like? I'm picturing a bunch of floating wisps and creatures, but is there light? Water? Plants? Solid ground?

Etherea does actually look like a world, with plants and animals and water and ground. That’s the part of the settings that I have to update. There are about eight major regions of Etherea that I’ve outlined, two of which are headquarters for the Knights.

When someone creates a new dream, does a new wisp appear? If someone dreams a nightmare, does a new nightmare wisp appear? Does the location they appear correspond to the two dreamers' proximity? For example, one neighbor is having a dream, the neighbor next door is having a nightmare.

Yes, a new wisp appears with a brand new dream, the same for a nightmare. The location they appear in does not correspond to real world location, it corresponds to dreamscape. A nightmare that takes place in the sky would most likely show up in the Aerie.

How fast can someone move across Etherea or from dream to dream? Can I instantly go to any dream like teleportation? Or is there some kind of movement to get there?

Moving from dream to dream is not instantaneous. It’s like swimming through water, there is some resistance as the dream you are entering tries to figure out who you are, and place you accordingly within the dream. Etherea yields to the strongest of two wills or visions, so Knights will have an easier time trekking through Etherea than a normal human.

Is the Nightmare King saying that it's the Sentinel's fault for not stopping the terrors he is sending? Or is the Nightmare King not in control of the terrors?

The Nightmare King is not in control of the Terrors. See, Terrors eat dreamers. If you eat a dreamer, they no longer dream. If they no longer dream, the dream they were dreaming no longer exists. Neither the King nor the Sentinel want dreamers to stop dreaming.

Can a Knight control when they go to sleep? Invoking sleep/dreaming at a moment's notice so they can combat a threat?

Can a Knight…. Sure, why not? It probably comes with the whole dream knight thing anyways. Though, for real world fights, you’ll have to pull a Superman and find a safe place to transform.

What's the relation between time in Corporea and the Etherea?

Time does have an impact on Etherea, as Etherea is built by mortals who experience time. The stronger a Dream or Nightmare is, the less time matters to them, as there are lots of humans dreaming about the same thing throughout history. Knights have come and gone, and there are trends in dreams and dreamscapes – many Dreams and Nightmares will be able to comment on parts of human history, depending on what trends they recall seeing. Nightmares, especially – not a lot of people have pleasant dreams about 9/11 or school shootings.

How was the Corporea created? Does the Sentinel or Nightmare King have any knowledge of that?

The King and the Sentinel know about Corporea. In fact, they both often ask the Knights questions about their lives – partly out of concern for the Knights, and partly out of personal interest. The Sentinel is especially inquisitive, because unlike the King, she is unable to leave Etherea.

Is the Sentinel and Nightmare King "immortal"? Have they always been their respective roles? Can they be removed/replaced?

They are not immortal. They are very close to immortal, but they can be destroyed and replaced.

Where does the Veil come from? Was it created? Or did it supernaturally manifest with the First Dream?

The Veil manifested with the First Dream, a representation of the natural barriers between sleeping and waking. However, the Sentinel is not the First Dream. The rest is spoilers.

Does a Night Terror look like a normal human? What kind of powers do they have access to in the Corporea?

Night Terrors look like beasts! Well, in their true form. Some of the smart ones can change what they look like. The Knights use symbolism of materials, but the Terrors are based off of animal symbolism and dream interpretations. That’s why every Dream and Nightmare has some sort of animal or creature motif.

If a Knight's core fractures, can they just fall asleep later and reenter the Etherea?

When a Core fractures, the Knight will be forced to wake up. Depending on the severity of the damage taken, it could be as simple as “Drink some tea and try to fall back asleep in an hour”, or it could be “Holy shit you’re alive, I have not seen you in Etherea for ten years.” Sometimes, when a Knight undergoes a traumatic experience and loses his or her dream, their Core disintegrates. When they’ve found a new dream, a new purpose in life, a brand new Core will reform, with new powers and everything.

How many Knights are there at the start of our story? Are they loosely organized? Do they have some method of communication in the Coporea?

I don’t have a particular number of a Knights in mind… Historically, it’s been a somewhat small group for a worldwide organization. But, it’s gotten larger – you need more Knights to protect more people, after all. Knights are instructed to not tell the world that Etherea exists. That alone makes it a bit difficult to find other Knights, and so they’ve not been particularly organized as a result. However, technology has changed communication – I can picture it right now, a secret website just like in Durarara, a forum for Knights, and you have to get the password from another Knight in Etherea. Yup. That is totally canon now. Thank you.

How do Knights find each other in the Etherea?

“Hey man, are you a Knight or a Dream?” “I’m a Knight, bro.” “Sweet.” On second thought, maybe the Sentinel gives her Knights some sort of emblem to carry around. Yeah, that should probably be a thing. The Sentinel loves flowers, so…. A lotus. Yeah, a lotus. We’ll go with a lotus emblem.

How does a Night Terror invade another victim while in the Corporea? When a night terror takes over someone in the Corporea, do they vanish from the Etherea? Or are they tied to both places?

Ooh, mechanics! Okay! When a Terror eats someone’s core, that dreamer will disappear from Etherea. Cores are very magical, you see. It lets you exist in both worlds, like an inner anchor. So if a Terror eats your core, you lose the ability to enter Etherea…. And the Terror cans the ability to exist in both worlds. Which is bad.

What do the Sentinel and Nightmare King say about when they originated/where they came from?

Your character ought to ask them that in person.

Is it possible to become trapped in Etherea, and unable to wake up?

Yes. Two of your fellow characters are trapped in comas. Both are assholes. Don't let it happen to you.

Can a Knight simply will themselves back to Coporea at any time, even if they're in the middle of combat?

Can a Knight simply will themselves back to Coporea at any time, even if they're in the middle of combat?

When entering the Etherea, does a Knight always start out in their own personal dreamscape, the last dreamscape they were in, or last area they were in, etc?

A large number of Knights start out in their respective HQ. Unsurprisingly, people tend to dream about what they're thinking about, and Knights tend to be thinking about their job right before they fall asleep.

Is it possible to be in Etherea and live the equivalent of a life time in there, and then wake up to find that only an hour has passed?

It's possible, but it's unlikely to happen to a Knight, because Knights are better grasps of time and space while asleep.

I want desperately to have my character's moniker be something slightly different than the "The ____ Knight" format. Is that possible?"

As long as you have the boring default one listed, you can list as many other titles as you want, even silly ones like "Peter Pun".

Do our characters (the new Knights) have our cores and magical weapon at this point?

They do, but they proooobably don't know how to use them, much less what the fuck is going on.

Any way you'd like us to format (bbcode) the posts? Character name and location on it anywhere? A special color for our character's dialogue?

Character name and location is appreciated, any other formatting is optional. The important thing is that you use a spellchecker.

So are Nightmare's Knights also committed to stopping terrors? I'm not sure what their angle is, and what their differences are compared to the Sentinel's Knights?

Yes, they are. There are two primary differences between the groups.


1: They'll take commands from the Nightmare King, but not (necessarily) the Sentinel.


2: Their powers (usually) are less about achieving their dreams, and more about overcoming their nightmares. Basically, the King prefers Knights who weaponize their fears, as opposed to the Sentinel who prefers Knights that weaponize ideals such as friendship, love, fortune, etc.

Can the general public 'see' the terrors? Or is perceiving a terror limited to the person who's nightmare it came from alongside any knights trying to destroy it? Similarly, can the general public see the Knights in all their magical armour stuff? I'd figure if everybody could see every terror then there would be a lot more public hysteria than there is, plus following some logic, the Knights armour and whatnot is technically imagined in Etheria, not Corperea.

Yes, the normal public can see Terrors and Knights. This is why Knights are encouraged to be stealthy, and why we have fairy tales about knights and dragons and demons and vampires.


Speaking of which, a small enough Terror could conceivably be banished just by virtue of their victim waking up. Lots of people wake up when the sun comes up and it's time to start work, and with the advent of electric lighting and graveyard shifts and the endemic of shitty sleep schedules, Terrors are - were - actually slightly less common than before the Industrial Revolution.

You mentioned some kind of secret website where the Knights can talk and co-ordinate. Would that extend to small mission teams, perhaps, and technology and whatnot? Say, for example, mobile communications, people sitting at desks saying 'yo guys, there's a bit undead cow tearing up the highway" and leading folks to the right place?

Oh yeah, I made that website idea canon. Let me think about the scale of it, okay? @DJ MagicHat had some backstory shenanigans that I might be able to expound upon with this development...

Dark matter: Would people see invisible mass in Etherea or what they think dark matter looks like?

They would see what they think dark matter is supposed to look like, at least the more lucid dreamers would since they would notice Etherea changing around them. This is of course, assuming that such things like dark matter and antimatter exist in Etherea, which is another realm of existence entirely that has been both stated and shown to not follow conventional physics.

Also, since Etherea would not exist without people to dream it into existence, and the ability for individuals to exert their will only extends so far from them, do areas where there is no-one to exert will exist?

Nope! Basically, if no one is dreaming it, it's dumped from that part of Etherea. All the thoughts and dreamstuff in Etherea just naturally clump together, so when something disappears, something else takes its place.

Can people will things that they do not know about into existence?

Technically, no. You can will in things you don't consciously understand, but if you never met Alice in your life, you will never will up the dream of Alice.

Do the Dreams have greater ranges of will-exertion than the Knights, and are they the ones enforcing geography?

Yes.

Wouldn't there not even be laws of physics, since most people wouldn't understand in detail what the current understanding of the rules of the real world is, and many people would have their own conceptions as to the mechanics of how the world works? If everything is driven by perception, the only law would surely be what the observers think law is, right?

You don't have to understand physics to intuitively know that a thrown object will arc in the air, that water flows downhill, that some liquids are thicker than others, that rocks near water come in stripes, that banking on curves keeps you from being flung, and so on. People think about what they see every day, and what people see every day in the natural world around them.


It's like the black box of computer programming. The end user doesn't need to know what's in the box or how it works, so long as it functions.

New hypothetical: imagine there are two people near each other, alone, with the exact same amount of 'willpower'. One drops a rock. Person A, the dropper, has in his mind that the rock should accelerate at 9.8 meters per second, and has as very firm grasp of what that means. One person thinks it should fall at a constant speed of 15 meters per second, and also has a good conception of what that looks like. When the rock is dropped, what happens?

Etherea will default to Person A, who dropped the rock.

How did someone heal so fast?

Claire's wounds healed fast because of her powers. Wounds in general, in the dreamworld, heal faster than normal - but not as fast as a Knight's with specific healing abilities.


And then, the larger wounds will carry over in some form in the waking world, so.... prepare to be sore in the morning.

Out of curiosity, how would something very drastic, such as an amputated arm, carry onto Corporea? Would it just be an large scratch or badly broken? Would the arm remain missing when returning to the dreamworld, or regenerate perfectly okay a la videogame respawn style?

Your arm will PROBABLY still exist in Corporea. However, it would be horribly bruised, and your bones may be fractured. With such a major wound like that, it's likely to persist into Etherea... but it may grow back eventually, or it might not. It will depend on the individual, and how they internalize the event.

 

[Writer]

Is this accurate? Can gravity work like this?

As gravity pulled her down, Mary felt the familiar numb sensation that come with the fall and deafening sound of the wind in her ears. In Corporea, this situation would mean death. But not in here. That's one of her favorite thing about the dream land; no matter how high or how fast you fall, you still could land with your bones intact.

What would be the threat of The Fall if you couldn't die in the dreamland from gravity?

 

[welian]

1. Besides getting impaled with extreme prejudices in the core, what else can kill knights?
   
2. From what I read, The Archnid, The Fall, and The Chase kill people? Then what makes them any better than Night Terrors?
   

1. Not too much else, so long as you're within Etherea. Stress, from fear or from impact, can fracture the core as well. Outside, on the other side of the Veil, most of you will be using your real bodies to fight. Therefore, those injuries could very much kill you.
   
2. That's up to your character to decide. Some agree, and say the Terrors are just nightmares that have escaped their prison on the dark side of Etherea. Others think nightmares are a necessary and natural part of the dream world, and should be respected as guardians and teachers, and that the Terrors truly are a different breed of monsters.
   

What would be the threat of The Fall if you couldn't die in the dreamland from gravity?

Just because you won't physically die, doesn't mean that the Fall can't traumatize you. Remember, your dreams are affected by your mental health. If Mary isn't scared of falling in Etherea, then no - the Fall isn't a threat. She's not Mary's nightmare. But she's still the nightmare of plenty of other people.

 

[Mordecai]

Just because you won't physically die, doesn't mean that the Fall can't traumatize you. Remember, your dreams are affected by your mental health. If Mary isn't scared of falling in Etherea, then no - the Fall isn't a threat. She's not Mary's nightmare. But she's still the nightmare of plenty of other people.

Also, if you read the Fall's bio carefully, you'll see her big stick isn't about making people physically fall. She prefers making them fall mentally, emotionally, dragging them down on a spiritual level. She'll only resort to physically pulling them down if/when they resist her mental attacks.