- Location
- Leeds
Writing is fine, I'm really not a great reviewer of this stuff. You do a good job of putting us into the weird headspace of a dragon.
But what does a pebble hatch into.
Golden Treasure: Be The Dragon Quest
- Location
- Behind the GM Screen
[X] ROAR
- Location
- St. Petersburg
Is there context for it? Right now I can't say I understand the nature of the choice.
[x] BITE
The spheres share some characteristics of ball lightning and... sci-fi drones? I wonder what those are. Maybe we could talk someone into touching one. Or throw someone at them, whatever works.
Rockeye
Plausible Engineer
- Location
- Midwestern U.S.
Maybe I'm a little too dreamy on the scale of dreamy to not that, but the dream is supposed to imply that the spheres are the vanguard of something very big that is not paying particular attention to you.
- Location
- Danmark
Rockeye
Plausible Engineer
- Location
- Midwestern U.S.
The way to do that is to take aggressive, combative, bold, or greedy actions. Occasionally I might offer you 'hone your inner Fire' as a choice against other options or something.
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Kaboomatic
Where the Wild Things Are
- Pronouns
- He/Him
[X] WATCH
- Location
- Leeds
That'll happen.
- Location
- Vermont
I'm gonna admit, for specific stuff, I can't really offer anything. Your writing is smooth enough that I can't actually notice anything about it, so much as I accept it as the way writing works in general. It's a very solid foundation for writing, which is definitely the hard part. As for the vague feel of things, you've got a particular way of writing that lends it a neutral tone. It's very good for observation, understanding the environment, and a newborn dragon's perspective, but it doesn't put you in the moment when something goes down. I'm not as good at writing as you are, so I can't actually give anything like reliable advice, and you should probably ask for a second opinion in case all of mine are wrong, but maybe right about emotion indirectly? How stuff like fear or anger make you feel shaky, or how it gets hard to stick to your reasonable priorities.
[X] WATCH
You are doing great, really like your writing style
ConfusedPotato
Unverified Verifier
- Location
- Australia
[X] WATCH
[X] Watch
WATCH
Rockeye
Plausible Engineer
- Location
- Midwestern U.S.
WATCH
Your whole being wants to respond to the massive thing looming over you in your dream. Your body screams to respond somehow, to fight, to flee. The red essence of blood inside you feels as if it has been lit on fire, and every fiber of your being is pained as you stand as if affixed to the spot, as if tree roots had grown up over your paws.
When the grey claw/tendril/thread is just about to touch you, when it is close enough to perceive fractal spiraling patterns in the silvery-grey surface, you stare and listen and smell, trying by habit to understand this Thing that is menacing you. And that is when you realize that this is a dream.
I am dreaming. This awful fear and helplessness is not Reality, and my Body is in no danger.
The oppressive dream freezes. The impression of motion remains. You are wholly convinced the limb of the giant thing is coming closer every moment and always about to reach you, but it does not.
But I was told that dreams can be meaningful. True Dreams carry a deep meaning about the world, and are rare and precious. Is this...?
The fear falls away. It is still present, simmering in your bones as your thoughts unfold, but slightly less real somehow. The dreaming is an exceedingly strange place, though it's not a physical place. In the dreaming, ideas that usually make sense do so no longer, and intuition and wisdom can leak through, showing you knowledge you did not realize you had all along.
Dreams are not dangerous in themselves. I dreamt of flooding, and awakened undrowned. I dreamt of destruction at the claws of Watcher, and my body is yet intact. Dreams are dreams, and reality is reality. They have a connection, but they are not the same... The Thing is the same color as the Shining Spheres. This must be a True Dream, surely. It will reveal a great secret of the world to me!
And so you will the dream to continue, intent on learning as much as you can.
The Thing touches the tip of your snout with a potent whiff of rain - of thunderstorms and the smell left after lightning - and then it slides through you, tugging on your essence impossibly lightly. It passes right through you, leaving only a vaguely queasy feeling and an itching on your scales. The chiming presence of its spirit in the Song barely reacted to you, continuing on completely unaffected. It seems wrong for something like that to have passed through you as if you were no more substantial than air, but you ignore that train of thought and turn your dream-self around to follow the string as it dips into the Earth.
And there in the Earth it sings. Its spirit is sharp and cold and precise, more like the clacking of stone on stone than a living thing's breath. As it digs deep into mother Earth's vast body, disturbing the ground no more than it affected you, its Song reacts, leaving signs like splotches of glowing color, like damp footprints left on hard stone. The echoing signs of Stone and tendril reacting to each other are beautiful.
The lines and colors have no clear meaning to you at first - but you remember digging through stone, exploring the dark caves beneath the land, and as you watch they begin to remind you of things. They glow faintly in the Song. That grey series of branching cracks is Granite, the most stubborn kind of stone you have ever found! It breaks in patterns exactly like that. You recognize more and more features. Hollow voids of caves, shining bands of crystal reflecting elaborate patterns, the rise and fall of secret hills beneath the skin of the world, bands of stone below the soil, flowing Water-signs that show you where Earth keeps secret lakes within her...
You are transfixed by the amazing beauty the dream reveals to you. There is certainly too much detail to take in, especially as the signs start to fade immediately as the claw continues its slow path under the Earth. The clean patterns turn muddled and messy, just as a splash in a still pool makes a fine pattern for a moment before it turns to chaos. You still drink it up, enraptured, joyous as this True Dream reveals some small part of Earth's secrets to you. This glimpse into the vast complexity of Earth's body is a beautiful and moving experience.
After what feels like an eternity and is still far too soon, the tiny fragment of the vast thing finishes its journey through the Earth. It stops abruptly and returns to the sky. As the colors fade, you see the faintest hint of beige-brown disappointment echo through the sky...
When you wake up, you hold still for a long time, overcome with emotion. The cascading colors of the hidden landscape under the Earth makes you want to laugh in joy, or perhaps cry out in pain for having glimpsed such beauty and then seeing it no longer! Joy wins the internal dance, and you spring up from your sleeping-spot in a flurry of limbs and feathers, dashing in circles around the clearing and roaring at the sky. You might not fully understand what just happened, but you feel enlightened and blessed to have experienced it, and blessed all the more for having the presence of mind to face the chilling fear the dream drove into you and see the beauty in it!
You fix the memories in your mind, certain that they are a Hidden Treasure that you can learn much from in the coming days. The anatomy of Earth revealed to you in the dream seems to match what you know of the Earth beneath your feet, though you are not very familiar with the places the tendril's path touched... You are fairly sure that the dream-knowledge of new caves, aquifers, of hidden veins of crystal and shinestone revealed to you are true knowledge and not the false conclusions of an ordinary dream. There were a few unmistakable signs in the deep below of great troves of crystal like the small geode you were lucky to find, of silver and gold and other metals...
It would take quite some digging to reach those deep places, however. None of them are close to Earth's skin, all well-hidden in the recesses of her body. This seems right and good to you - you have gained knowledge of treasures hidden deeply and well, which you may never have found ordinarily. Hidden shinestone and gems, waiting for you to bring them forth... You shiver in anticipation. It will be supremely satisfying to dig down and extract those secreted-away treasures, though they lie many hundreds of feet below the surface, behind hard stone and spread across several miles in the long line that the dream revealed to you. There are no handy caves to bring you closer - it will simply be a matter of many, many suns of dedicated effort, of muscle and claw and digging.
+2 Lessons in Air, +1 Lesson in Earth. Gained knowledge of underground Gold, Silver, and Crystal veins - accessing them is a long term project.
As to the Shining Spheres themselves... In the dream, the Thing that was obviously the dream-self of the Spheres did not affect the Earth or you in any real way, simply brushing through you and moving on. You conclude that the Shining Spheres are merely searching for something, searching for some strange kind of treasure in their own way (for they found several things that seemed like Treasure to you). It fits with their previous actions and your True Dream. There is a lingering feeling of doubt, but only because they are so baffling, their Music strange and cold. You don't think you need to be worried about the Spheres burning down the forest, or corrupting the land, or trying to destroy you, or stealing your Treasure, or anything like that. They are a non-threat.
What now?
[ ] This seems resolved. Tell the Beasts of the forest what you have learned. Assure them the Spheres are harmless, and turn your attention to other matters.
-[ ] In a certain deep part of the caves there was a curious carved shinestone barrier partially blocking a rectangular metallic cave beyond. The place stank of a metallic and oily smell, and your growls echoed loudly. You fled because it was strange, but you are now curious... This is probably a no-tail place of some kind, perhaps long abandoned, and might hold more treasure!
-[ ] There is much you have learned about the ways of the forest and the beasts simply through observation, but there is so much knowledge that escapes you. You have gathered a few small treasures - enough to be worth trading with more information. The one you called Watcher named an elder called Leafback north-west of you. You could try to find your way there and speak to Leafback.
[ ] Try to hunt one of the Shining Spheres and tear it apart so you can study how it works. The Spheres' minds are incredibly simple now that you can see the purpose behind them - as simple as an insect's. They search for something you do not know the nature of (your only clue is that they haven't found any here yet), and send that knowledge to something vast and distant which considers them individually less important than a single shed scale. Then again, that still might provoke them somehow.
[ ] Stay and peacefully observe the Shining Spheres a while longer. You don't want to take the risk of changing something for the worse by hunting one, but they are weird and fascinating and you might learn something useful, like how to replicate the dream that showed you beautiful impressions of the inner structure of Earth.
What will you do about the hidden underground treasure you have found in the dream?
[ ] Ignore it. True Dream or not, you have no certainty that anything is actually down there. This whole situation is weird and cannot be trusted. And you don't want to spend tons of effort digging down only to find nothing.
[ ] Remember it for when you are bigger. You have certainly learned a great secret today, but it is not a secret you can make use of right now. For all that you are rapidly growing, it will save time to let such a great effort wait until you are mighty. The treasure isn't going anywhere.
[ ] Begin digging your way into the Earth whenever you have a day or two free! Every time you think of the glittering specks of gold hidden in Earth's body, you practically salivate. You're never going to get there in just a few days, but the sooner you start the sooner you will get your claws on all that precious shiny stuff!
Your whole being wants to respond to the massive thing looming over you in your dream. Your body screams to respond somehow, to fight, to flee. The red essence of blood inside you feels as if it has been lit on fire, and every fiber of your being is pained as you stand as if affixed to the spot, as if tree roots had grown up over your paws.
When the grey claw/tendril/thread is just about to touch you, when it is close enough to perceive fractal spiraling patterns in the silvery-grey surface, you stare and listen and smell, trying by habit to understand this Thing that is menacing you. And that is when you realize that this is a dream.
I am dreaming. This awful fear and helplessness is not Reality, and my Body is in no danger.
The oppressive dream freezes. The impression of motion remains. You are wholly convinced the limb of the giant thing is coming closer every moment and always about to reach you, but it does not.
But I was told that dreams can be meaningful. True Dreams carry a deep meaning about the world, and are rare and precious. Is this...?
The fear falls away. It is still present, simmering in your bones as your thoughts unfold, but slightly less real somehow. The dreaming is an exceedingly strange place, though it's not a physical place. In the dreaming, ideas that usually make sense do so no longer, and intuition and wisdom can leak through, showing you knowledge you did not realize you had all along.
Dreams are not dangerous in themselves. I dreamt of flooding, and awakened undrowned. I dreamt of destruction at the claws of Watcher, and my body is yet intact. Dreams are dreams, and reality is reality. They have a connection, but they are not the same... The Thing is the same color as the Shining Spheres. This must be a True Dream, surely. It will reveal a great secret of the world to me!
And so you will the dream to continue, intent on learning as much as you can.
The Thing touches the tip of your snout with a potent whiff of rain - of thunderstorms and the smell left after lightning - and then it slides through you, tugging on your essence impossibly lightly. It passes right through you, leaving only a vaguely queasy feeling and an itching on your scales. The chiming presence of its spirit in the Song barely reacted to you, continuing on completely unaffected. It seems wrong for something like that to have passed through you as if you were no more substantial than air, but you ignore that train of thought and turn your dream-self around to follow the string as it dips into the Earth.
And there in the Earth it sings. Its spirit is sharp and cold and precise, more like the clacking of stone on stone than a living thing's breath. As it digs deep into mother Earth's vast body, disturbing the ground no more than it affected you, its Song reacts, leaving signs like splotches of glowing color, like damp footprints left on hard stone. The echoing signs of Stone and tendril reacting to each other are beautiful.
The lines and colors have no clear meaning to you at first - but you remember digging through stone, exploring the dark caves beneath the land, and as you watch they begin to remind you of things. They glow faintly in the Song. That grey series of branching cracks is Granite, the most stubborn kind of stone you have ever found! It breaks in patterns exactly like that. You recognize more and more features. Hollow voids of caves, shining bands of crystal reflecting elaborate patterns, the rise and fall of secret hills beneath the skin of the world, bands of stone below the soil, flowing Water-signs that show you where Earth keeps secret lakes within her...
You are transfixed by the amazing beauty the dream reveals to you. There is certainly too much detail to take in, especially as the signs start to fade immediately as the claw continues its slow path under the Earth. The clean patterns turn muddled and messy, just as a splash in a still pool makes a fine pattern for a moment before it turns to chaos. You still drink it up, enraptured, joyous as this True Dream reveals some small part of Earth's secrets to you. This glimpse into the vast complexity of Earth's body is a beautiful and moving experience.
After what feels like an eternity and is still far too soon, the tiny fragment of the vast thing finishes its journey through the Earth. It stops abruptly and returns to the sky. As the colors fade, you see the faintest hint of beige-brown disappointment echo through the sky...
When you wake up, you hold still for a long time, overcome with emotion. The cascading colors of the hidden landscape under the Earth makes you want to laugh in joy, or perhaps cry out in pain for having glimpsed such beauty and then seeing it no longer! Joy wins the internal dance, and you spring up from your sleeping-spot in a flurry of limbs and feathers, dashing in circles around the clearing and roaring at the sky. You might not fully understand what just happened, but you feel enlightened and blessed to have experienced it, and blessed all the more for having the presence of mind to face the chilling fear the dream drove into you and see the beauty in it!
You fix the memories in your mind, certain that they are a Hidden Treasure that you can learn much from in the coming days. The anatomy of Earth revealed to you in the dream seems to match what you know of the Earth beneath your feet, though you are not very familiar with the places the tendril's path touched... You are fairly sure that the dream-knowledge of new caves, aquifers, of hidden veins of crystal and shinestone revealed to you are true knowledge and not the false conclusions of an ordinary dream. There were a few unmistakable signs in the deep below of great troves of crystal like the small geode you were lucky to find, of silver and gold and other metals...
It would take quite some digging to reach those deep places, however. None of them are close to Earth's skin, all well-hidden in the recesses of her body. This seems right and good to you - you have gained knowledge of treasures hidden deeply and well, which you may never have found ordinarily. Hidden shinestone and gems, waiting for you to bring them forth... You shiver in anticipation. It will be supremely satisfying to dig down and extract those secreted-away treasures, though they lie many hundreds of feet below the surface, behind hard stone and spread across several miles in the long line that the dream revealed to you. There are no handy caves to bring you closer - it will simply be a matter of many, many suns of dedicated effort, of muscle and claw and digging.
+2 Lessons in Air, +1 Lesson in Earth. Gained knowledge of underground Gold, Silver, and Crystal veins - accessing them is a long term project.
As to the Shining Spheres themselves... In the dream, the Thing that was obviously the dream-self of the Spheres did not affect the Earth or you in any real way, simply brushing through you and moving on. You conclude that the Shining Spheres are merely searching for something, searching for some strange kind of treasure in their own way (for they found several things that seemed like Treasure to you). It fits with their previous actions and your True Dream. There is a lingering feeling of doubt, but only because they are so baffling, their Music strange and cold. You don't think you need to be worried about the Spheres burning down the forest, or corrupting the land, or trying to destroy you, or stealing your Treasure, or anything like that. They are a non-threat.
What now?
[ ] This seems resolved. Tell the Beasts of the forest what you have learned. Assure them the Spheres are harmless, and turn your attention to other matters.
-[ ] In a certain deep part of the caves there was a curious carved shinestone barrier partially blocking a rectangular metallic cave beyond. The place stank of a metallic and oily smell, and your growls echoed loudly. You fled because it was strange, but you are now curious... This is probably a no-tail place of some kind, perhaps long abandoned, and might hold more treasure!
-[ ] There is much you have learned about the ways of the forest and the beasts simply through observation, but there is so much knowledge that escapes you. You have gathered a few small treasures - enough to be worth trading with more information. The one you called Watcher named an elder called Leafback north-west of you. You could try to find your way there and speak to Leafback.
[ ] Try to hunt one of the Shining Spheres and tear it apart so you can study how it works. The Spheres' minds are incredibly simple now that you can see the purpose behind them - as simple as an insect's. They search for something you do not know the nature of (your only clue is that they haven't found any here yet), and send that knowledge to something vast and distant which considers them individually less important than a single shed scale. Then again, that still might provoke them somehow.
[ ] Stay and peacefully observe the Shining Spheres a while longer. You don't want to take the risk of changing something for the worse by hunting one, but they are weird and fascinating and you might learn something useful, like how to replicate the dream that showed you beautiful impressions of the inner structure of Earth.
What will you do about the hidden underground treasure you have found in the dream?
[ ] Ignore it. True Dream or not, you have no certainty that anything is actually down there. This whole situation is weird and cannot be trusted. And you don't want to spend tons of effort digging down only to find nothing.
[ ] Remember it for when you are bigger. You have certainly learned a great secret today, but it is not a secret you can make use of right now. For all that you are rapidly growing, it will save time to let such a great effort wait until you are mighty. The treasure isn't going anywhere.
[ ] Begin digging your way into the Earth whenever you have a day or two free! Every time you think of the glittering specks of gold hidden in Earth's body, you practically salivate. You're never going to get there in just a few days, but the sooner you start the sooner you will get your claws on all that precious shiny stuff!
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