I Walk in Dreams -- An Esoteric Journey Quest

When you awaken in Cleveland, you brace yourself to feel like shit again, but you don't. You don't feel as well-rested, cognitively anyway, as you normally do after a full night's sleep, but nothing like what you had felt last time. You pull yourself upright cautiously, ready at any moment for the thunder of a pounding headache... but nope, nothing. Well, you're not complaining. After going through your morning routine, symptoms of soul-weariness still don't seem to be afflicting you, and you let yourself relax a bit upon sitting down in your squashy armchair. Maybe it's like mountain-sickness, and adjusting to a low-oxygen environment is miserable if you do it fast but once you're acclimatized you're acclimatized? Who knows.

Still, you're going to give it at least a day and night of rest before you jump back in. If you keep being fine, then maybe you'll relax and let your impatience take the reins, but for now caution seems the most prudent course of action. You're also aware that sooner or later, you're going to encounter perils of the Ascent, and you want to be at your best when you deal with those. After all, you don't want whatever happened to Brieta to happen to you.

Your eyes wander to some of the newest additions to your apartment, the food and water bowls in the kitchen, and you frown. If what happened to Brieta happened to you... Your mind starts to wander in the direction of imagining Hana dying of hunger and thirst before anyone does a wellness check on your apartment and you shut that shit down immediately. But not wanting to think about bad things doesn't stop them from happening, so you pull up your app and reserve another Zipcar. Time to do some more shopping.

---

A few hours later you return with some big boxes, and after a bit of swearing and fiddling with the manuals you manage to get everything set up. Automatic dry food dispenser, a cat water fountain with a large reservoir, and while you were at it you figured you'd get one of the automatic litterboxes. Not having someone clean out her litter isn't quite as dangerous as a lack of food or water, but you'd still prefer she not go neglected in any way if the worst should befall you, and honestly dealing with litter has proven a little grosser than you expected. Not as gross as cleaning up after dogs, but still, you're not going to complain about having to handle that chore less frequently. It was kind of pricey, but it's not like you can't afford it. You drop some treats in front of each of them so that Hana will be motivated to investigate and then go back to the living room, where you set up a couple of scheduled-send emails as a makeshift dead-man's switch. The first scheduled send is to yourself, to remind you in case you don't remember to reset the timer on the emails one morning, and the second one goes to your building concierge staff, asking them to check on you because this message being sent means something is wrong.

That macabre task out of the way, you move on to more engaging things. You check out Jagoda's website and spend a fascinated hour or so there. She has a sort of visual hub as the homepage without obviously-marked buttons or links: it's a sketchy landscape, and clicking around takes you to different child pages, on which you find visual art, narrative writing, poetry, and more interactive pages with child pages of their own. It's amateurish and incomplete and you love it: it's so clearly a passion project, and you're passionate about the same thing she is. She isn't as direct about the dreaming-realm as you thought she might be, more allusive, but what she has up there at the very least rhymes with the dreaming-realm. You recognize it after seeing the dream, and if you saw this first, you think the dream would seem more familiar. You hit up the site's guestbook (a guestbook!) and leave a note, letting her know you've seen it and that you liked it. You promised, after all, and you used your real email address when registering, so she'll be able to contact you if she likes.

You switch gears to doing more reading of your occult literature, after that. Some of Jagoda's questions you hadn't had good answers for, and you'd like to brush up so as to not be caught out again. After a little of this, you hear a soft thud, and look up to see Hana having jumped onto the windowsill. She chirps at a bird outside, her ears twitching with interest. You watch as she crouches down, her hindquarters wiggling in anticipation. Just as she's about to pounce, though, the bird flies away, leaving Hana looking slightly deflated. You chuckle softly to yourself, and Hana turns to look at you, her head tilted to the side as if questioning your laughter. "Hey," you say. "Bird did you a favor. You wouldn't have liked going bonk against the glass." You reach out a hand, hoping she'll come closer, but she hesitates, still unsure.

Instead, Hana decides to explore the apartment further, and every so often, you hear the soft patter of her paws on the hardwood floor. She eventually wanders back into the room, pausing to sniff at a potted plant before moving on to investigate a stray pen that had fallen off the table and which you had been too lazy to tidy up. She bats at it tentatively, then jumps back as it rolls across the floor. "You know you have actual toys, right?" you say to her. She does not deign to respond, instead sauntering off somewhere, probably to nap. Maybe she's working on her own Ascent.

In this manner, you comfortably spend the remainder of your day. As the afternoon wears on, Hana becomes more active. At one point, she even jumps up onto the arm of your chair, rubbing her head against your hand in possessive greeting and even accepting a few pets before hopping back down and continuing her strolls around the apartment. She saunters over to her new water fountain and drinks her fill before making her way to the scratching post in the corner of the room. This is extremely good of her and so you tear yourself away from your reading to reward her appropriately, and remain so torn for the rest of the evening.

---

The next day, you decide to play tourist again, because if you sit around the house waiting for it to be night to fall asleep then you aren't going to get any actual spiritual rest done. The weather is nice, so your first stop is the West Side Market. The grand clock tower and ornate arches loom down on you as you head into the indoors portion, and it almost reminds you of staring up at the peaks of the dreaming-realm. Once inside, you're hit with the smells of endless varieties of food and the sounds of dozens of vendors who passionately desire to sell it to you.

You wander through the aisles, taking in the variety of offerings. You had skipped breakfast, which was a strategic error, but one which is easily remedied as you stop by a bakery stand. Thus fortified by croissant, you head through the building and to the outdoors portion. Sure, you could have just hit up a grocery store nearer to you, but... this has more heart to it, and you think that matters a lot, these days. Or maybe that's just the excuse you're using to justify getting fancy cheeses and exciting apple cultivars instead of a more utilitarian form of grocery shopping.

After stopping off at home to drop things off and ensure the cat hasn't set the house on fire, you go to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. It's right on the shore of Lake Erie, which is magnificent even if it isn't a patch on Lake Maranatha, and you spend a while admiring it and enjoying the air before you head in. The historical stuff is neat, and of course you enjoy the opportunity to listen to the music. That said... you can't help but think of the melodies of the Tragoudion. Would yours still be there, waiting when you arrived in the dream the way the omen vulture had? Or would it have wandered off in search of some other audience?

You jolt out of your musings to the sound of people chatting and getting up out of their seats. The interactive exhibit you were checking out had ended, and you hadn't even noticed it beginning, you were so lost in thought about the Tragoudion and its music. You feel a little uneasy about that and do your best to push away thoughts of the dreaming-realm and just enjoy the Hall of Fame.

But it proves difficult, when every sublime moment reminds you of somewhere else.

---

That night, you get a reply from Idra. She immediately launches into discussion of esoteric matters, bemoaning the difficulties of fitting Ascending in around her studies and once again harping on the extremely reasonable decision you made to lash out physically at someone with whom you were in close quarters (no, obviously it wasn't going to leave a bruise upon waking even if it had landed, she can just give it a rest already). You find yourself smiling as you read it, though, only to be caught up short at the end.

"I've run across some others as I've been climbing," she wrote. "Two of them mentioned other dreamers they'd encountered who had reported being attacked. Not by a dream-peril, not by one of the terrors that haunt the upper reaches, but by a fellow occultist. He did serious damage to them before they could flee. The ones I met appeared to have met different victims; the stories were distinct when I questioned them, but similar enough that I judge them reliable and not just rumors or two unconnected incidents."

"Keep that right hook handy, and watch your back."

Night after night, you climb higher; night after night, you approach the greater powers of the dream. You may or may not be ready for them, but they draw closer, regardless...
Cards added to the Ascent Deck: I The Magician, XIII Death

[] No change to Aspiration
[] Write-in a new Aspiration, which must begin with "I aspire to" and include the Aspiration's suit in parentheses

---

Sorry about how long this one took; I was traveling over the weekend and didn't have a lot of time to write, and then I got back and needed to catch up on work, and Days are more difficult to write than Nights (which may have something to do with the fact that they are less structured and something to do with my congenital inability to shut the fuck up). But we should be getting back to our normal schedule, more or less!

When you return to the dreaming-realm, you see that things are once again different. Previously, the land was mostly flat, or at least gently rolling. Now you are in the true foothills of the Ascent, where level and forgiving terrain is the exception and not the rule. At this point, there are no more dilettantes or uncommitted dreamers: everyone you meet is either on an Ascent of their own or has already gotten as far as they were going to get. And, of course, the greater dream-entities will become more and more common as you climb, about which the books are extremely vague. The ones who didn't meet them personally are working from rumor, and the ones who did don't seem willing or able to describe them clearly.

Not to mention the ones who encountered perils and left no records, because they fell doing so.

That won't be your fate, you resolve. It won't. It can't. You've always been sovereign over your own destiny: you left home to make your own way, and succeeded at that, and pursued an excellent career, and succeeded at that, and then when that career began to run counter to your deeper values you jettisoned it without a -- okay, you're not going to lie to yourself, there have been many backward glances, but you still succeeded in cutting yourself away from it when you decided it was holding you back. The point is that if you leave the Ascent, it will be by your own choice. You'll take whatever the perils have to offer and swing back twice as hard.

You look up, at the clouds concealing from you the summits that are your goal, and are not entirely surprised to see a circling silhouette. It's still here, then. And when you focus, you can hear the skirling exuberance of the Tragoudion, and are mostly sure you're not just inventing what you expect to perceive. You lower your eyes to earth, or the dream's best imitation thereof, and begin to pick out a path that will take you toward your destination.

Your day of rest has left you energized, and now you're back here. Time to get moving; no answers will come from staying still.

---

KNIGHT OF PENTACLES

Despite the pattern set by the last two nights of exploration, you do not run across any strange creature persistently seeking to follow you around. Instead you walk undisturbed, tromping over the hills. Finding your way is more challenging than it was before; you don't know what would happen if you slipped and fell and hurt yourself in the dreaming-realm but you're not very eager to find out, so you navigate the terrain with care.

Eventually, though, you happen to stumble across an actual path. The direction closer to taking you upwards faces into what would be a gorgeous sunset if there were a sun in this place's sky, or any sort of internal consistency as to the apparent time of day. Instead, it's just a more colorful region of the horizon, casting all the traditional twilit dusky hues across the sky. You admire it, as you walk along.

Not long after, though, you hear a very recognizable noise: hoofbeats. In just a little while, the rider catches up to you: they are only moving at a horse's walking pace, but even that is enough to overtake you. You step aside to let them pass, but the rider calls out to you with an energetic "Halloo!" and comes to a halt, so you pause as well. He dismounts to talk to you, which is very polite of him, but also gives you the opportunity to goggle at his steed. Not because of its nature -- it seems like a very normal brown horse -- but at what it's carrying. It's festooned with packs and bags which appear to be full to the brim, and some additional items mounted on the horse or its tack. There's a skull dangling from the harness, which wouldn't be that remarkable (albeit nonetheless alarming) were it not for its prodigious size and lone eye socket. A metallic disc is carefully secured to the side of a pack, shimmering with iridescence and seeming unnaturally thin. Tied to the saddle is a bronze sword sheathed in a scabbard of what appears to be glass. And that's only a selection of what isn't packed. It's a prodigious quantity of extraordinary stuff.

"Well met!" the rider booms. He's on the short side, maybe in his early thirties, has a nose which looks like it's been broken at least once, but such a cheery attitude that you can't help but be positively disposed. "To whom do I have the pleasure of speaking?"

"I'm Ash, an aspirant on my Ascent," you say. "And yourself?"

"Ah, hmm, well," he says, hesitant all of a sudden. "May I be frank with you?"

You nod and wait politely for him to continue -- perhaps he doesn't want to share his name, or there is something about his identity he expects you to recognize -- but he doesn't speak, and then you notice the signs of a suppressed smile about his face, and the other shoe drops. You sigh. "Your name is Frank, isn't it."

"Indeed!" he says, the smile breaking out in full force. "Pray pardon my little joke."

"No pardon needed," you say dryly. "It was a very little joke."

Frank laughs at that. His laugh is big, like his voice. "Ah, it is so nice to meet a fellow traveler, especially one possessed of quick wits! Does your Ascent permit you to tarry awhile with me? I'm out to see everything I can in the dreaming-realm, and while it has yet to take me very high, there is always a new wonder to behold over the horizon!"

How will you interact with him?

[] Move on, saying only a few words in passing, or nothing at all: Gain this card as an Aura.
[] Spend one Willpower, traveling by his side for a short time: Add this card to your Pneuma. Gain one Supernal Experience.
[] Spend one Supernal Force or Aura of the suit of Swords, begging, bartering, or stealing a particularly useful-seeming item from him: Add this card to your Pneuma. Gain one Supernal Force.

[][ASCENT] Keep exploring.
[][ASCENT] Wake up, ending the Night.

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Decks and Resources: Character Sheet
Night-specific information: 1/max 6 Explorations