I have no clue where I’d put this little AU or parallel world or w/e, but I’ve been thinking about an idea, a sort of dreamworld. essentially, when you enter the dreamworld (still trying to figure out how, exactly) your surroundings simply become warped and things start to grow and change, all depending on your own mind and imagination. If you’ve a strong enough will and fancy a castle? Poof, there you go! want a firebreathing dragon to defend your castle? also possible, you just need to, for lack of a better word, believe hard enough, and it’ll happen. there are no physical limitations in the dreamworld, only mental. which is what makes fighting there so bloody impossible. since, of course, you’re never the only one wandering the dreamworld, and the creatures that do inhabit it are often vicious and highly territorial.
everything that happens to you physically in the dreamworld echoes in real life, but echoes can be distorted and what may seem like a little scratch in the dreamworld could fuck you up bigtime IRL, or vice versa. likewise, if you spend too much time in the dreamworld you may come out absolutely stark, raving mad.
fighting is difficult, again, since it requires immense mental strength. not only to keep off the frenzied, cloying power of the dreamworld itself (which is what slowly drains away your sanity, drop by drop), but also to fight your opponent. and more importantly, to win. in a world where anything is possible, you have to keep on your figurative brain-toes (haha, but yes, seriously). one lapse in concentration and wham, you’re dead, or even worse, your mind is put through a shredder and then locked up, leaving you either a vegetable or gibbering and crazy.
the only people who can reliably, or somewhat reliably, harness the power of the dreamworld are dreamwalkers. they are people who have mastered the ability to think without thinking, or in other words to access their sleeping mind. their sleeping mind is much faster at processing the world around them, and more importantly, reacting to it. real-world reflexes can only take you so far and eventually, you’re going to miss. by accessing your sleeping mind your miss-to-hit ratio leans in your favour. not only that, but you lose the bindings that keep you tied to the real world, or the frantic thoughts of Hey! This isn’t possible! that stop you from becoming an effective dreamwalker. your sleeping mind has no such boundaries and thus, is capable of so much more than your waking mind.
entering the dreamworld usually isn’t easy though, and no one but those seeking knowledge, power or some sort of answer enter the dreamworld. it takes incredible mental strength to tear open the fabric of reality and step into the dreamworld and there are quite a few who go mad doing so. and of course, once in there, the next challenge is getting out alive. even harder is taking someone else with you, especially if they’re struggling. you may be a dreamwalker, whose strengths lie in the mental battle, but that means squat if you can’t get your enemy on your home territory.
one curious aspect of the dreamworld is that it can show you, roughly, what the future is. or one thread of what the future may be, since the future is made up of dozens of threads and lifelines intersecting, all tied to sentient beings that enjoy changing their minds at every given moment. either way, the dreamworld can show you things, and almost always does the information end up being useful. thus the knowledge, power and information seekers.
last but not least, when your mind is exploring the dreamworld, your physical body is just chilling out, and god forbid if someone decides to fool around with your physical body. if they move it, touch it a little too much, kill it, well, your mental body is screwed. you may be able to get out of the dreamworld in a pinch, but that requires you finding your body, in the real world, while running around in an alternate reality that doesn’t quite line up with the real world, without any sort of lodestone or compass. and if they kill your body, you’d better have some necromancy or soul-possessing skills on hand, because at that rate you can only exit the dreamworld by taking over another mind’s body and subsequently defeating them—which is hard enough as it is, as you can’t gauge the strength of their mind until you’re inside it. and if you lose, you’re dead. after that you can kill them or just toss their mind into the dreamworld, effectively banishing them.
so really just don’t mess around with the dreamworld. there’s no such thing as ‘funtimes’ in there.
