#dreambattle

----( Recommended reading music: Baki OST - Determined (Extended) On Youtube )----

Book 1. Chapter 1: Part 2 The Tide of Tydius Flow 1. The next day

A tall adult male was sleeping shirtless on a futon. Coiling-tossing. On the Temple's third floor, which belongs to the masters as their shared bedroom space, 5 large futons lying on hard wooden-boards. All 4 futons looked used recently, besides 1 futon clean and dusty closer to the southwest wall—5 meters away, from the tall animal—in morning grey. The buff animal starts to make noise, waking up in the morning, slowly transitioning from yawning, lying-stretching, bed-stretching. Then slowly—standing, walking over and looking out the south window, finally-muttering gibberish. Stretches right arm to the sky, left on elbow. Yawns, at the same time his mundane morning turned to thoughts = "Training brats. {A smirk forms as it fades.}. The rice rats is rewarding.. {His arms dropped, as he stood tall.} Mountain sword. {He looks over and behind his right shoulder, to the northeast corner, a large war coffer—eight foot long—four feet tall—six feet wide, old wooden box decorated with orange, yellow, and light brown fabric—falling off.} Sword mastery going—{His head slowly turned forward then stopped half way.}—nowhere. {He faced out the south window.} innovating my stylish style.. Is almost a fantasy..!" For a fraction of a second his lips shook. He then gave a tired smirk. Then he said in a low quiet voice = "Well! Time for morning sword training. {His smirk to a smile.}. His muscles blooming under the sunlight, waking with no shirt—and thin light PJ-pants. A man with long straight black hair, just past his shoulder blades, white with dark blue eyes. 5'11 tall, well-shaved face from heaven, presence from hell, for he had, like us all, a story to tell..!

The-Waking-Master slouched—walking almost stumbling, muttering morning frustrations over towards the war coffer. He then bent over, and unlocked the four-number combination lock on the war coffer. He gently opened the box, his right knee to floor. Beneath a sword and shield, his right hand reached for a mountain sword in its sheath. 165cm end to end. The Blade length was 120cm. At the base of blade 2.7 inches wide. Near the tip 1.65 inches wide.

The-Waking-Master turned and walked to his futon—Then faced north wall. He sat criss-cross applesauce, sword in the sheath—a-blade's buried teeth, leaning like an embrace—resting across his right shoulder—hilt at soul ease on the ground, between his right leg. pounds to hold material felt whole, cold steel as warm. Indexes and thumbs in a circle. He closed his eyes.. To meditate...

Silence!

No will release. To self appease.

In the silence

----(Recommended reading music: Japanese traditional metal — Gakusaku Shiki On Youtube )----

Inside eyes open! A world for his demise! A pitch-black-world in smoke. An elevated circular arena barely visible, embraced haze, for his scream without a sound! Surreal, locked, focused, seen through eyes. The-Waking-Master felt-saw shadows pulling. From all around. The emanating smoke! Forming! A man, an enemy slightly shorter yet buffer—vapors rising to sky—crawling down low, a wish—warrior to-test war of the soul.

The shadow of h-a-z-e, had two one-handed swords, each about three feet long in blade, blades four inches wide at hilt... A thick slash-and-slide!

In deep focus, his sword of choice a sword held past the wish, through meditation in embrace, in both hands. His mountain sword. In hand now he stands. Facing his enemy.

The shadow enemy circles, crouched over—mist vapor trailing to skies, motions-to-ties. The-Waking-Master stands his ground on guard, facing down the shadow—leading stream of steam. A planet's pull does not orbit—the moon; a shark swims around its prey—in battle, too soon to know the cascade—of the winning blade! Focused like his soul only sees, feels, body-mind-relives, flow, motion, emotion-of-instinct, ocean-of-truth!.. I write philosophical essays, hypotheses, and fantasy fiction book Crownose Chronicals.

Well, to make a long backstory short, the Dreambattle Tower is a giant metal stake pinning the heart of an eldritch abomination to the bottom of the sea. Said eldritch abomination- the Eternal Pandora- was a portal-opening dimension-hopper that sucked entire planets dry of their life-force, and it gradually began to corrupt the tower imprisoning it over time. That’s what you yourself- and every Player- are; a creation of the Pandora, in imitation of a human form (so that the security droids patrolling the place would be tricked).

(There was a great war between the humans and the eldritch abomination, in the past, which ended with human extinction on the surface of the Earth. A team of lucky survivors in a space station orbiting the planet rebuilt their space station into a stake and literally dropped it from orbit in an attempt to kill the eldritch monster, but they only managed to deliver it a temporary incapacitating injury.)

You can probably guess what’s going on, now. Every unit of Energy is a fragment of the life-force of a planet, with each type of Energy corresponding to a different kind of planet. Eventually, you’d gather enough energy to break all the gates and then you’d set the eldritch abomination free. All the enemies opposing you were either natural wildlife (equivalent to magical creatures in their own setting) or native inhabitants defending their homeworlds from extraterresterial invasion.

Anyways, once you figured all this out and freed the Pandora, it would give you a choice. You could join it, and continue to go questing through portals and fighting exciting new enemies, getting cool loot, and gaining power. Or you could fight and kill it, and in doing so basically commit suicide (as you yourself are basically an extension of the Eternal Pandora’s form).

If you choose to fight the Pandora, the adventure ends with your death. Lynivera chronicles the story of the Dreambattle, and that’s the ending.

If you choose not to fight the Pandora, on the other hand, the adventure wouldn’t have ended. You kill Lynivera and conquer her home planet in the name of the Pandora, and then you basically get to keep playing… forever. Literally. I was planning to run the adventure indefinitely, if you chose not to give up the Dreambattle. (Obviously, that plan fell through in its entirety.)

That final choice was the entire moment I built the adventure for. Would you do the right thing if it meant I’d end the adventure? How far would you go to keep playing the most interesting game ever? At what point would your desire to continue playing the game override your desire to do right over wrong? Based on the responses my friends gave me, a significant amount of people would have gone with the ‘keep playing the game’ option, which pleases me. If I’d gotten that far, I think I would have quite enjoyed the reactions of my audience.

That’s the etymology of the adventure’s name. A dream-like battle, a dream that you don’t want to wake up from even if waking up would be the right thing to do. A dream of eternal battle, of fun without consequences.

(I was thinking about a few alternate endings too, where you realize the Pandora is just a massive cluster of Energy of all kinds, and once you’ve subdued it you decide to harness the Pandora for your own purposes. Perhaps you become a new Pandora in its place, securing near-divine power for yourself. Perhaps you create an artifact item out of the Pandora’s near-limitless energy, and lock it away somehow. Perhaps you even give the power of the Pandora to Lynivera. I didn’t really get that far, though; all of these ideas were additional ideas I had during the course of the adventure, not part of the original conceptual seed of Dreambattle.)