At the summit of the dreaming-realm, the hidden world that underlies mundane reality, lies the prize occultists yearn for with all their being, the thing that will make it all worthwhile. Or so it's said, anyway.
Ash is a novice, self-taught and casting about for meaning. They're not ready, and know it. They're making the Ascent, anyway.
You are a person in the world, living a life like anyone's life. You eat. You sleep. You stare at screens. You have friends, and family, or maybe you don't. You go to work, or school, or whatever.
But at night, as you sleep, you will rise towards glory.
You are a scholar of hidden lore, a practitioner of occult arts. You have learned to dream as the wise dream: to travel in the supernal places, the realms-beyond-the-mundane, where the symbols that define reality are made manifest. You know how to consort with otherworldly powers and confront otherworldly perils.
And now you are about to make the Ascent. It is the truest test for any dreaming-magus, the hardest road that you can walk. It is the tower that humans built to reach Heaven, before they were cast down for their hubris -- and the palace of the gods, spiraling upwards into the Empyrean -- and the great mountain in the desert, with the pilgrimage-road winding along its steep sides -- and a thousand other things besides.
If you do not falter, if you pass all the trials, if you reach the top of the Ascent, then you will find the thing that makes it all worthwhile. The ultimate power. The most fundamental secret. The treasure beyond price.
(You are not prepared, and you understand that you are not prepared. You do not know what awaits you along the way. You certainly do not understand what you will find at the end. But it will all be worth it, if you succeed. For your purposes. For any purposes. It has to be.)
You are a person in the world. But at night, as you sleep, you will climb. You have your reasons.
What are they? Your Aspiration is the grand purpose that fuels your occult obsession and has driven you to undertake the Ascent.
[][ASPIRATION] Ambition You wish to acquire power in order to achieve something: become wealthy, become famous, destroy an enemy, attain a position, be the very best like no one ever was, create something believed impossible, or something else in that vein.
[][ASPIRATION] Mysticism You wish to acquire supernal knowledge in order to understand one of the great truths of existence: what is the dreaming-realm, what is the true nature of the divine, what happened at the beginning of all things, what will happen at the end, what lies beyond death, or something else in that vein.
[][ASPIRATION] Adventure You wish to experience the hidden wonders of the dreaming-realm, purely for the sake of the experience: discover what lies beyond the farthest horizon, see the colors beyond the rainbow, taste fruit that grew in no earthly soil, know the passions and pleasures possible beyond the world, or something else in that vein.
[][ASPIRATION] Connection You may climb alone, but your connections shape your dreams even as they shape your life. You wish to do something for or with someone else who occupies a position of importance in your life: find a fellow occultist who was lost in dreams, prove to your teachers that you are worthy of their tutelage, claim the power that will let you save your dearest friend, make your beloved's dreams come true, or something else in that vein.
And how came you here, initiate of the hidden world? Whence did you learn your lore?
[][LORE] From a mentor Perhaps a traditional master and apprentice relationship; perhaps an older family member; perhaps some other person you know. Someone more experienced than you who has been teaching and guiding you, for whatever reason they might have for doing such a thing.
[][LORE] From a cabal You are part of a circle of rough peers who have been investigating the occult together. You have learned with them and grown with them; you have laughed with them and feuded with them. But there are steps that must be taken by oneself.
[][LORE] From books You are wholly self-taught. You found fragments of the truth written down: perhaps in ancient books, perhaps in dreamy theosophy, perhaps in tiny forums on the Internet. For whatever reason, you were willing to piece them together and try them out, and you found that they worked.
[][LORE] From nobody at all You are a naturally gifted dreamer who has found your way into the dreaming realms entirely accidentally and sought out the Ascent, not knowing what it is, or where you are, or anything of what you must do. (This background will make the Ascent more challenging.)
With the exception of the last option, these are all mechanically identical: your lore background purely influences your character's history and relationships, guiding what sort of character you are and what sort of story is being told. The only change in "From nobody at all" is that your character will not have any of the IC knowledge or the other backgrounds do, meaning that you will OOC have to figure out many elements of the mechanics as you go.
Hi, SV. I am taking a second stab at QMing, now that my life has quieted down; this time, something smaller-scale. I Walk In Dreams is an adaptation to the questing format of a game written by one of my close friends. While I am going to expand it and add my own takes on things beyond simply directly running it as a quest, the concept is his and, with permission, I will be using his prose in various places (such as the intro to this very post), so credit where it is due. I'm being coy about the details because the original game is a nest of spoilers for the quest, but following the ending of the quest, I will provide a link so you can check out the original, if you've a mind to.
Important notes:
Voting is by task and not by plan! When a vote is by plan, I will specify. Approval-vote all the options you like!
More information about the quest format will come once I know whether or not you've decided to go in blind, but I'll tell you that it involves alternating days in the mundane world and nights spent dreaming, that it is diceless, but that it does have mechanics and is not a purely narrative quest. There are multiple ways to win and multiple ways to lose. The primary action of the quest will be at night, where you encounter the places and beings of the dreaming-realm and make decisions about how to interact with them.
While Cultist Simulator is an easily-recognizable influence, I Walk In Dreams is different in important ways. Fundamentally, this is a mystical and extremely personal journey, with focus on the strange things of the world and the changes you undergo as a result of your encounters. Even with a Connection Aspiration and a cabal background, your Ascent is your own.
I expect character creation to last for three votes total -- this one and two more -- and then the first day of the quest will begin. Choices are starting very general and will become more specific in the next two.
I Walk In Dreams is divided into two phases: Days and Nights. Each Night directly follows a Day, but the next Day might not directly follow the Night -- there might be a gap of several days, or even several weeks, between Days, depending on the circumstances of your mundane life and the room it leaves you to go questing in dreams.
Days do not have specific mechanics associated with them: there may be votes involved, or there may not, but there is no mechanical system attached to how you live your mundane life.
Each Night will contain at least one Exploration. Explorations result in things happening to you, or finding places, or meeting people, along the Ascent. The Night automatically ends once you have Explored six times, but an effect may also cause the Night to end early. Many Explorations will result in you needing to make a decision about how to engage with what you have found.
The Tarot
As I cheekily alluded to when I closed the first vote, the mechanics of I Walk In Dreams are intimately tied to the Tarot. This is something that has not escaped people in-universe; there are competing theories about why this is so and in what direction the causal arrow flows. Feel free to have opinions of your own and argue about them. The Rider-Waite-Smith names and numberings will be used in the quest, as those are reasonably common.
Aces are the abstracted driving force of their suits. Each Ace is directly tied to the potential to have an Aspiration associated with that suit. Number cards are the "stations" or "chambers" of the Ascent -- locations of particular interest, or dream-beings you find. Court cards are fellow occultists that you meet along your way. Trumps are the strangest and most wondrous things that may befall you along your Ascent: dread perils that may scar you or destroy you, meetings with bizarre dream-entities offering bizarre opportunities, and the glorious revelations and treasures that await you at the heights of the Ascent.
At all times, the 78 cards of the Tarot will be divided into four groups, with each card in one and only one group.
Your Pneuma contains your triumphs, your capacities, and your internal reservoirs of power -- everything that you have achieved, and acquired, through brave and capable dreaming. At the start of the quest, it contains:
0 The Fool, representing your native magic and versatility as a questing occultist
The Ace of each suit, representing the potential for various Aspirations that you hold within yourself
The Ascent Deck is the only group of cards that gets treated as a deck in the conventional sense: each Exploration consists of one randomized draw from the deck. What cards are in it at any given time is known information. Cards will be added to it over time, representing your climb into more rarefied heights of the dreaming-realm. You will be told when cards are added. At the start of the quest, it contains:
The Two, Three, Four, Five, and Six of each suit
The Page and Knight of each suit
The Lost are aspects of the dream that you have expended, rejected, used up, or passed over in some way. If a card ever goes here, it very probably isn't coming back. At the start of the quest, nothing has been Lost.
The Unseen are the aspects of the Ascent that are, at present, beyond your reach or perception. All cards that have not yet been mentioned begin Unseen.
You
Your character sheet, at such point as it exists, will possess the following mechanically-relevant information:
Your Aspiration
Your Pneuma
Your Willpower, which begins at twenty.
Any other resources you acquire. You know of four: Supernal Force, Supernal Insight, Supernal Experience, and Supernal Connection. You do not begin with any of these. Other types of resource may exist.
Further notes on Exploration
Commonly, Explorations will involve some variation on a choice between:
Engaging actively with the person or place or thing that you have stumbled across and accepting it into yourself as a meaningful part of your spiritual journey. This will usually cost 1 Willpower, and may have costs or requirements beyond that. Narratively, this will shape you and your quest.
Allowing the dreaming-event to pass you by, granting you some small measure of its power without otherwise affecting your Ascent. If you do this, you will usually gain it as an Aura, representing a temporary spiritual resource.
In the interests of, as much as possible, not bogging this quest down with many small votes, at the end of every Day you will be able to vote on a strategy for the coming Night. This will be a plan vote with two parts: how long you want to dream (up to the maximum of six Explorations; conditionals like "until we've spent four Willpower" are allowed) and how aggressively you wish to engage with the dreaming-realm (at the start, the only option will be "engage with everything straightforward" -- more options will be made available as you learn what sorts of things are actually in the dream). Non-straightforward options will always be put to a vote, I'm not going to mess with you like that.
You may only hold three Auras at a time; if you would ever acquire a fourth, the first one you gained becomes Lost. When you wake up, all Auras become Lost: it takes Willpower to fix something from the dreaming-realms within you so that you hold onto it come morning. You should assume that the suit of a Aura is likely to matter, but that all Auras of a given suit are game-mechanically identical; a trump Aura is "wild". Supernal Force may always be used as though it were an aura of Swords, Supernal Insight as though it were an Aura of Wands, Supernal Experience for Pentacles, and Supernal Connection for Cups.
Further notes on Aspirations
At the end of each Day after the first, you may change your Aspiration, if you believe it psychologically or narratively warranted. Certain card mechanics might also give you the option or requirement to change your Aspiration. If you change your Aspiration, whether by voluntary end-of-Day vote or by card mechanics, then the next Day will not have an end-of-Day vote to change Aspiration. Even if Aspiration changing is "on cooldown," card mechanics that change Aspirations continue to function as normal. However: your Aspiration must always be aligned with an Ace your Pneuma contains. If you end up losing an Ace, for any reason, you are not capable of maintaining that particular kind of drive and obsession -- it just isn't in you.
If you ever lose the Ace with which your current Aspiration is aligned, there will be a vote to change your Aspiration immediately to one that you can support.
Continuing & Ending
Willpower is the resource that you use to accomplish almost anything substantive in the dreaming. It doesn't automatically replenish in any way, and you won't find many opportunities to acquire more; in general, you should think of your Willpower stock as representing your ability to continue with the Ascent.
Your dreaming-adventures will eventually lead to a Finale of some particular kind -- a Supernal Finale, a Tormented Finale, or something stranger. You will never be forced into a "good" Finale: there will always be a vote for whether or not to accept it.
If you are ever in a position where you have to draw a card, and either
You cannot do so because the Ascent Deck is empty; or
You have no Willpower
-- the quest ends in a Wearied Finale.
After the Night in which you earn a Finale, there will be an epilogue update, and then the quest will be over.
Power
Certain cards will require you to spend a certain amount of Power in order to achieve certain favorable outcomes. Power is always associated with a specific suit. Each of the following actions gains you one Power:
Losing a card of that suit, or a trump, from your Pneuma
Losing an Aura of that suit, or a trump Aura
Spending one Supernal associated with that suit
tl;dr
Draw tarot cards to explore the dream-world. Manage your resources to grow in power and overcome challenges. Don't run out of Willpower. Don't lose all your Aces. Become more, or at the very least different, than you were. Reach the highest heights, or fail to do so, or turn aside to something else you discover you want more.
You have a Mystical Aspiration, and, with the lore you have gleaned from your reading, you know that this means it is aligned with the suit of Wands. But what, specifically, is it that you seek to understand?
[][ASPIRATION] I aspire to... This is a write-in vote. Your Aspiration must be thematically aligned with the suit of Wands, seeking to understand some compelling mystery. Examples given in the previous vote: what is the dreaming-realm, what is the true nature of the divine, what happened at the beginning of all things, what will happen at the end, what lies beyond death, or something else in that vein.
Setting aside matters of the supernal for the moment: who is it that who seeks the Ascent?
[][GENDER] Write-in
And what is it that most bedevils you, in your mundane life in the waking world?
[][WOE] Isolation You feel cut-off and alone, without a network of intimates that supports and cares about you. Such waking-world relationships as you have are superficial at best.
[][WOE] Poverty The currency of the dreaming-realms is knowledge, but the currency of the waking-world is currency. You don't have much, or it is eaten away by debt.
[][WOE] Obligation You are struggling under the weight of your commitments: to your family, to your job, or to your education.
[][WOE] Grief You are afflicted by sorrow. You have lost something precious: to death, or disaster, or the end of a relationship.
[][WOE] Ailment There is something wrong with your health: a chronic sickness, or a disability the world does not accommodate, or mental illness.
[][WOE] Write-in Write-ins are permitted, but it should be distinct from and along the lines of the above examples.
In the next and final character creation vote, we will put all this together and nail down the specifics, as well as giving your character a name. I have yet to decide whether the specifics of where you got your esoteric education will be part of the next vote or whether I will decide them, either by fiat or by rolling dice on a table of possibilities; however, I've really enjoyed the ideas being proposed in here. Even if a vote is in general terms, as [LORE] was last time or [WOE] is this time, seeing people's thoughts on what the specifics could be is always appreciated.
Your starting Aspiration is specifically to understand the nature of the dreaming-realm. Ambitious stuff! But the entire Ascent is ambitious, so, well. Your gender identity is somewhere between a shrug, a blank look, and an upraised middle finger. (As a note, this is why I like write-ins for this: in this context, "agender" and "irrelevant" have the same denotation, but the connotations are quite different!) And the biggest problem besetting you in your life is your isolation; whatever your other issues, the one that causes you the most pain is your lack of anyone emotionally close.
Let's put that all together.
[][BACKGROUND] The Bad Breakup When you and your partner split up, it wasn't particularly gracefully handled, and in the aftermath you realized that all your friends were mostly their friends. Since then, you've been just drifting through life, until you happened across some interesting literature...
[][BACKGROUND] The Filial Child You went back home to take care of your ailing parent, and that took all your energy, and in the aftermath of their passing there is no one left around you that you could call close. To cope, you dove into an old hobby of yours, with a seriousness you had lacked, and that seems to have made all the difference...
[][BACKGROUND] The Awkward Nerd You were never very good at making friends, or very close with your family, and even on the Internet where you spend most of your time you just seem to always say the wrong thing. To liven up your days, you tried some stuff you found online, and to your amazement it actually worked...
[][BACKGROUND] The Burnout You got a place at an elite consulting company, and you figured you were set for life. Then, after years of eighty-hour workweeks, you couldn't do it anymore and walked away, but that's all your life had been for so long that you had no one, and now, you cast about for anything that might feel meaningful...
[][BACKGROUND] Write-in Your write-in should be structured similarly to the provided ones above.
Oh, and one last thing. How do you make yourself known?
[][NAME] Write-in
This is the final vote of character creation. After the vote closes, I'll post your character sheet, and the next update will be the first Day, setting the stage for the start of their Ascent.
Trumps: 0 The Fool, II The High Priestess, III The Empress, IV The Emperor, V The Hierophant, IX The Hermit, XIX The Sun
Ascent Deck
Swords: Six, Nine, Knight, King
Wands: Three, Four, Six, Seven, Eight, Nine, King
Pentacles: Two, Five, Seven, Eight, Nine, Queen, King
Cups: Two, Three, Seven, Eight, Nine, Queen, King
Trumps: VII The Chariot, X Wheel of Fortune, XII The Hanged Man, XIII Death, XIV Temperance, XVI The Tower, XVII The Star, XVIII The Moon, XX Judgement, XXI The World
When you quit your job at McKinsey & Company and left that life behind, here is how you decided where you would live next: you took a list of the best art museums in the US, eliminated every city your job had sent you to, and then picked at random from what was left.
Cleveland's not bad so far, you guess.
Here's your dark secret: you liked your job. That's the thing; that's part of why it's been so hard for you to move on. Yeah, you were a sellout... but that was the point. You sold out deliberately, at the earliest opportunity you had, and you did so for the highest price you can get, because if you're going to do something you should do it properly.
(Why did you sell out? Well, there were a lot of reasons, but if you had to point to one, it would be the sentence "while you live under my roof, you'll follow my rules," which dogged your heels for the first eighteen years of your life. You may not have fuck-you money in the sense of never having to work again, but even at 28 you certainly have enough money to say fuck that.)
You knew that the consultant lifestyle would demand significant sacrifices, but you were ready, or thought you were. From the moment you stepped into the office as a fresh-faced college graduate, you were swept up in a whirlwind of intense work and constant travel. You know that a lot of eager twenty-two-year-old consultants get shunted into a lot of make-work, a lot of crap invented by their supervisors just to bill more, but you were lucky enough to be assigned meaningful work right from the start. Eighty-hour weeks became the norm as you poured all your energy into delivering exceptional results that made your clients happy with you and your boss even happier. You hopscotched across the country, spending more time in airports and hotel rooms than in your apartment. The work itself was exhilarating, and the grueling nature just meant you the extra challenge of keeping it up. You found yourself constantly pushing the boundaries of your own capabilities, testing your ability to absorb and analyze large amounts of unfamiliar information very quickly while working alongside people who would happily stab you in the back at the first sign of weakness so that they could look good by comparison. The high-stakes environment fueled your ambition, and you thrived under the pressure. You took pride in every dollar contributed to your clients' bottom lines and every billable hour McKinsey could charge for. It was a game, and you were racking up the high score. And the travel! After a while, you weren't just seeing the country, you were seeing the world. Which was your favorite city? London, Singapore, Milan, Zurich, Dubai, São Paulo, Seoul? It was hard to say. So much art to see, so much culture to experience, so much life, everywhere.
But the relentless pace took its toll. You missed every wedding of every high school and college friend you were invited to. Such romantic relationships as you attempted to cultivate inevitably collapsed under the weight of your perpetual unavailability, and you found yourself growing increasingly isolated, the messages of "hey, let's hang out when you're in town!" becoming fewer and fewer by the year. The rare moments of downtime were tinged with exhaustion, leaving you unable to fully disconnect from the demands of your job. Things you had once enjoyed lost their luster, your mind always wandering back to work.
The straw that broke the camel's back, the thing that snapped you out of it, was on a trip to Paris. You realized with horror, after you'd been there for a week, that you had forgotten to schedule a trip to the Louvre. Not "couldn't fit it in with all the work you were doing," forgotten. It just... hadn't occurred to you, it literally had not crossed your mind at any point. That was the engine-spark on the train of thought, and once you'd started seeing what your job was doing to you, you couldn't stop seeing it. Everything that you'd tried to brush under the rug as inconsequential slammed you in the face: the friends who had once mattered to you, the interests you had used to have, the flashes of feelings when performing gender was particularly onerous, the way it seemed that everyone you met in your line of work was measuring everyone else for the knife. This life was... hollowing you out, and when you found yourself thinking "but if I stay for three more months, my next batch of RSUs will vest!" you knew you had to leave before it was too late.
So. How do you build a meaningful life? No, better question: how do you bootstrap yourself back to being able to experience meaning?
Time to answer that question, you have. Your nest egg is sizeable enough that you don't need to worry about the next job you'll have for a while. The heart of University Circle, walking distance from the museums and the concert hall, might be expensive by the standards of the Midwest, but it's frankly laughable by the standards of the city (and at some point you'll stop reflexively thinking of New York as "the city"). But you're just so damn out of practice! You tried to meet people and go on dates, but it turns out that when you aren't interacting with other business and finance people you're a terrible conversationalist. The only culture you're really familiar with at this point is high, and if you don't know what you're doing (you don't), it's really easy to come off as incredibly pretentious and condescending (you do). And without a job to spend eighty hours a week at... you're lonely. You're really lonely. You can distract yourself with amusements, you're not bored, but it all feels so empty, at the same time that you're trying to fill yourself up again.
In online spaces where you went to talk to people in a lower-stakes environment, you made Ash your pseudonym as a bit of a joke: the thing that's left after a fire has burned through its fuel. It... felt painfully right distressingly quickly, and now that's how you think of yourself, whatever name might show up on your driver's license.
But if you hadn't been so fucking bad at everything you tried, you might not have wandered into the antiques store in Coventry, and you might not have bought a bunch of old occult books on the whim that maybe esoterica would be a fun thing to talk about at parties (witchy stuff was in among people your age, right?), and you might not have read The Created Light by Zev ben Avram.
We are born screaming into mortality, into a realm ruled by a tyrant sun, which doesn't care what we think at all. Reality is lit by a cruel and distant star, and so everything is only what it is, and nothing means anything. Those with the knowing of it flee into the dream. The dream is lit by the souls of men, and so everything is a symbol, and there is beauty.
The standard thing to say about a book that changed your life is that you couldn't put it down. That's not the case. You put The Created Light down a lot. You'd read it for a bit, entranced by its discussion of a mystical world where you could seek out wisdom from the personifications of abstract concepts, then it would get frustratingly dense and overly elliptical or there would be an extended diatribe taking sides in some philosophical argument you had never heard of or the author would bald-facedly assert some absolute fucking nonsense and you would sigh and put it down.
But you kept thinking about it, even when you weren't reading it. Like you had with work; like you still do with work. And so you'd stomp back over to where you'd set it down, pick it up again, and read more. You'd puzzle your way through the dense ellipses. You'd piece together the philosophical argument from context. You'd sigh and ignore the absolute fucking nonsense.
Until the night where you decided to give the absolute fucking nonsense a try and you opened your eyes in the dreaming-realm and you knew that nothing would, could, should be the same, ever again.
It's been a few months, since that first fateful night. You've mostly accepted that this is not just lucid dreaming writ large, but something realer. Something magical. Just like the book said, at first you needed to go through a lot of ceremonial rigamarole to get there at all -- anointing yourself, burning incense, inscribing mystical formulae around your bed -- but it became easier with time. Weirdly so; it feels more like remembering something than like learning it. You've wandered around a place that drips significance from every branch. You have spoken to denizens of that place, some of which were creatures out of fantasy and some of which looked human until you noticed the uncanny tell about their eyes, or their skin, or the shape of their hands. You've worked magic, gradually learning how to invoke the symbols of the dreaming realm to do things impossible in mundane reality. You've spoken to other humans, who were also there in their dreams, and who had all had different experiences getting there than you had. What did that mean? How did the dream-world work? What was this place?
One thing they all agreed on, though, was the same as what was written in the book: don't try to climb out of the lowlands. Every novice dreamer appeared there, and that's where they should stay. Until they were ready; until they knew what they were doing; until the wanting of what lay further up and further in grew too great. Once you set your feet to the Ascent, you can't really stop casually, not without establishing your nature as "being someone who stops," and that means never being able to come back and reach the top later.
(This made immediate sense to you: it was a lot like how work had been, where saying "not right now" to an assignment you were offered was a death-knell for your career. "Not open to new challenges" on a performance review meant never being trusted with anything important ever again.)
(You are not prepared, and you understand that you are not prepared. You do not know what awaits you along the way. You certainly do not understand what you will find at the end. But it will all be worth it, if you succeed. For your purposes. For any purposes. It has to be.)
At least it's simple, sort of. Here, in the lowlands, there are no perils, and it is possible to explore safely and grow stronger in the ways of this place. The dangers all lie above you, but so too are the greater opportunities. So which is better? To spend more time in the lower reaches, or to climb faster? The balance of opinion, such as you've been able to perceive, lies with the former, but you're not so sure.
There are so many things you want to know, and you're not about to learn them down here.
It's time to establish your first strategy! Normally, you'd also be able to vote to change your Aspiration, but since you just established your Aspiration that vote option isn't available yet. A strategy is a plan vote (make sure to name it starting with Plan so that it will tally correctly) that consists of two parts: how long you want to dream (which could consist of a simple number of Explorations from 1 to 6, or something more complex such as "until we've spent N willpower"), and how aggressively you want to engage with the dreaming-realm (since you don't know much about what you'll find, right now the only option is "engage with everything straightforward"). See the Mechanics post for more details.
[] Plan Example
-[] Explore N times
-[] Engage with everything straightforward
I'm going to bed right after I post this, so I will be unavailable to answer questions, but if I wake up and things have gone wrong or people are confused or there are really important misunderstandings to clarify I will do what I can to help up to and including restarting the voting. We're all figuring this out together: you as voters, me as QM, and, of course, Ash themself.
After months spent visiting this place in your dreams, after weeks spent thinking about the Ascent specifically, you set out. Tonight, instead of walking along the lowlands you have grown to know, you turn your feet in the direction of the great summits in the distance, and begin to walk with purpose. You know it is that purpose, far more than any specific direction, that this place respects and understands: here, intentions are, in fact, magic, or at least a necessary component thereof.
As it so often does, while you walk your mind wanders to the question that has obsessed you ever since you first came here: what is this place? Why is it like this? What does this mean, about the way reality is truly arranged? You've read lots of books that mention the dreaming-realm by now, though none have captured you quite the way The Created Light did, and they all have their own opinions about this place in general and the Ascent in specific. The link between it and the Tarot is often discussed, the fourfold symmetry of the stations of the Ascent and the way that the greater powers seem to correspond to Trumps, though nobody can agree upon the details and most of them admit that much of this is hearsay and conjecture. The writers invariably have never climbed far themselves or, in some cases, have not yet attempted to Ascend at all. The only author among them who claimed to have completed the Ascent himself was a clear and obvious liar who contradicted himself repeatedly.
It feels mad, audacious, positively hubristic to set out on your own Ascent so early in your career as an occultist, to try to claim the grandest prize, when many who were more learned and more prepared failed, or didn't feel themselves ready despite all their knowledge and experience. But at the same time, something about it rings truly to you. In your previous life (and it feels right, to call it that), the people who insisted on getting all their ducks in a row before tackling a task were never the ones who earned the top spots. Ducks multiply of their own volition. At some point, enough must be enough; you have to kick things off, knowing that parts of your plan are vagaries at best, trusting that you'll be able to figure it out by the time it becomes necessary. Victory doesn't always go to the boldest, but it never goes to the meek.
Or, at least, that's what worked for you. You've become alarmingly sympathetic to the notion of subjective truths, these last few months.
THREE OF SWORDS
After you've walked awhile, you start wondering about why you haven't encountered anything. Shouldn't there have been something by now? Some site of significance, some strange creature, some fellow aspirant to serve as friend or rival? The Ascent is different for everyone, but it's never uneventful. Did you... break it somehow? Has the dreaming realm cast you down already? Did you manage to fail before you even began? You look around, to either side and behind you, but see nothing but the gentle pastoral landscape that fills much of the lowlands, so easily confused for mundane reality save that the colors are just a little too saturated and the horizon is just a little too close.
Then a passing shadow prompts you to look up, and you realize that your inaugural encounter has been here all along.
The avian silhouette high above you is unmistakable, with the wide wings and splayed "fingers" of primary flight feathers that typifies soaring birds. Squinting up into the sourceless light that suffuses the sky of the dreaming-realm, you can't make out distinguishing features, but here and now, there's only one thing that it can be, according to the bestiaries you've read. That's an omen vulture. They are not as overtly strange and magical as other creatures of this realm -- they don't speak or possess dramatic powers -- but their diets set them apart from anything in the waking world. They feed on the wreckage of significance. They devour the spoiling gobbets of important events, and great triumphs, that have come and gone. They feast in the wake of heroes.
To have one following you, making its broad lazy circles in the air, is... a marker of something. Certainly it will attract attention.
[] Spend one of any Supernal resource: Gain this card as an Aura.You cannot pay the costs associated with this option!
[*] Spend one Willpower: Add this card to your Pneuma.
You feel a confused mélange of feelings, looking up at it. Does it scent your past life on you? Does it scent future failure? What dashed significance does it hope to consume? Or has it identified you as one who will leave its preferred carrion behind wherever you go? You know which possibility you prefer, but... you're not a destroyer, you don't think, that's not what you want to be. Your eyes narrow, and you consider driving it off, but you possess no obvious means of stopping a high-flying bird from following you, and you know from your reading that they are not easily dissuaded.
"Fine," you say, speaking for your benefit rather than from any real belief that the vulture will hear your words or take them into account. "Follow me, if you want. We'll find out together where your meals come from, I suppose." And with that you set your face again to the path in front of you, and press on.
FIVE OF SWORDS
Some time later, staring out at the rows and rows of marker-stones that cover the land before you all the way to the uncanny horizon, you suspect you may have found one of the omen vulture's intended meals.
There is a path, paved and maintained. You follow it.
As you walk, you see that every grave in this impossibly large cemetery has a weapon or tool laid on it, and you can tell that it belongs to the one over whom it lies: here a knightly sword, there a felling-axe, beyond them both a set of scalpels. The words on the stones are eroded and illegible, and the bodies in the ground are rotten and decayed, but the metal is imperishable and pristine.
The path takes you to a small shrine in what you know is the graveyard's center. Gleaming letters proclaim it the Shrine of Steel Undying. It is a place of veneration for the blessed powers who remake reality to suit their own ends and who assist humans in doing likewise. Some dreamers have names for some of those powers: Hephaestos, Ikenga, St. Dunstan. Perhaps there is truth in one of those names, or more. Perhaps they are all just myths covering over the mysteries of the dream.
[*] Take a breath, and move on: Gain this card as an Aura. [] Spend one Willpower and one Supernal Force or Aura of the suit of Swords: Add this card to your Pneuma. Search the Unseen for any one of the following cards -- IV The Emperor, VIII Strength, XII The Hanged Man -- and shuffle it into the Ascent Deck.You cannot pay the costs associated with this option!
There is an offering-bowl, and you know that powerful dreaming-entities look kindly upon gift made in places such as these. But, even if you wished to honor the powers of divine craft with your piety, you can think of no appropriate token you possess, nothing that demonstrates your commitment to the course of strength. Anything you have would ring hollow in your own heart before it rang in the offering-bowl, and an unworthy sacrifice is worse than no sacrifice. So instead you bow your head, silently acknowledging both those who have made this place their eternal home and those for whom this place is held sacred, and then move on, following the path that leads out, continuing on your way up.
PAGE OF WANDS
You continue walking for some timeless time after leaving the lichyard in the distance behind you before you spot something else on your way. Like the Shrine of Steel Undying, it appears to be a chapel of some kind. You wander in.
This one, unlike the last, appears to be dedicated to no great powers in particular. It has a space for contemplation and veneration of whatever or whomever the visitor might feel compelled to contemplate or venerate, and it is otherwise filled with books. Your own books mentioned these library-chapels dotting the dreamscape, and you reach out to the shelves with interest, curious to see what might be recorded here.
"Hey! Who are you, and what are you doing here?"
You spin on your heel reflexively, eyes widening as you take in the first other person you've seen since beginning your Ascent. She's short, young -- twenty, at the most -- and looking at you like she sees no reason why either of those facts could possibly matter when confronting someone aggressively.
You relax, straightening up and putting on a friendly face. She was here first, after all. "I'm Ash," you say. "An aspirant on my Ascent. I saw this place and decided to stop by, seeing what I might find. I guess what I found was you." No change to her severe expression. Well, it wasn't your best material. You hope. "How about you?"
She eases up the barest fraction. "Idra," she says. "An aspirant on my Ascent. I came here to see what I could learn." You see, beyond her, a table spread with books and notes. She catches you looking and smiles proudly. "I figured out a way to copy notes over, back and forth between this world and the waking. Learn magic twice as fast. The pinnacle of the dream is waiting, and there's no time to waste."
...she's smart, she's self-taught, she's arrogant, and she's decided to beeline straight to the top despite the fact that she can't possibly have been studying the hidden arts for very long. God in Heaven, is this how you look to other people? Between this and the omen vulture, you're pretty sure the dream is actively messing with you, and you make a mental note to be concerned about that later.
How are you going to interact with her?
[] Move on, saying only a few words in passing, or nothing at all: Gain this card as an Aura.
[] Spend one Willpower, teaching her a secret of light and air, one that cannot be found in these books: Add this card to your Pneuma. Gain one Supernal Insight.
[] Spend one Supernal Force or Aura of the suit of Swords, challenging her to a friendly (?) wizards' duel: Add this card to your Pneuma. Gain one Supernal Force.
Current status: 3/max 6 Explorations, 1/max 3 Willpower spent, one Aura of Swords
The omen vulture as your very first card and the Page of Wands as your third. This Tarot deck is fucking sassy.
You will note that the third option for dealing with the Page does not cost a Willpower. If it weren't for your Aura of Swords, I would have just continued with the night, under the principle of engaging with everything straightforward to engage with, but now there's a choice about what resource to spend and what Supernal to gain, making it no longer straightforward.
Because I know how Sufficient Velocity thinks, don't fret that you've forever lost the three Trumps from the Shrine. There are other ways to get them, you have to actively try to lock yourself out of possibilities in this quest. You missed out on a bonus rather than failing to take an intended path.
[*] Spend one Supernal Force or Aura of the suit of Swords, challenging her to a friendly (?) wizards' duel: Add this card to your Pneuma. Gain one Supernal Force.
You size Idra up with a critical eye. The memory of the vast solemn lichyard you passed through tonight is weighing on you. The people there -- you think it is a memory of the real person, that the ones those markers represent had existences of such weight, souls of such greatness, to have left an imprint on the dreaming-realm. You, Idra, the dead: those aspiring to greatness, and those who have achieved it. Part of you is reflexively condescending toward Idra: she's barely an adult, she knows nothing of what she's doing, how can she possibly be ready for what lies ahead? But another part of you, the part that sits back and analyzes and speaks up when something is wrong, that noticed when your job was slowly pulling you apart, points out that, given how similar the two of you are, the same can absolutely be said of you.
That gives you an idea.
"I have a proposal," you say to her. She regards you with caution and no small measure of defiance -- apparently she did not appreciate being eyeballed. "We're at similar stages of our Ascent. I think we would both find a test of our abilities useful. What do you say we step outside and have a spar? To the first clean hit or surrender."
"Stakes?" she says, her expression giving nothing away.
"The dearest," you reply. "Pride."
That gets a genuine-looking smile out of her, knife-edged though it is. "You're speaking my language. I accept."
The two of you go outside, keeping the books of the library-chapel out of harm's way, though you privately doubt that there's much the two of you could do to seriously endanger them. You discuss starting positions and whether to have some sort of ring; you settle on a rule that if there's been no active fighting for ten seconds, then whoever is closer to the chapel is the winner, to prevent endless stalling and evasion.
(Not that you have any mind to do so, or suspect she does either. But you know you would abuse poorly-defined rules if it meant winning, and so far treating Idra as another you has been accurate to a first approximation.)
You face off against one another, and the fight begins.
"You punched me," Idra complains again, leaning back on her hands as the two of you catch your breaths on a hillock. "What the hell sort of wizard punches people?"
"The hell sort of wizard that found themself in punching range," you reply, lying on the too-vivid grass while you nurse some tender ribs. You had managed to block the rock she projected at you with one of your own, but it turns out that rocks break when they smash together instead of just canceling out and the fragments got you. It wasn't technically a clean hit, but you threw in the towel after that. "And it's not like it worked. You're absurdly fast with that air shield."
"Almost gave me a black eye, though."
"And if this were horseshoes or hand-grenades, that would matter."
She snorts. "True enough." She's quiet for a moment, taking her chestnut hair out of the ponytail she'd put it into for the spar, then speaks again. "Why'd you call it, at the end? The air shield takes a lot out of me, I couldn't have done it twice, there was still a fight to be had." There's a hint of challenge in her voice, and with the ease of spotting yourself in a photograph you pick out her real question: did you let me win?
You shrug, as best you can while still flat on your back. "I wasn't injured, but I was hurting, and you were running on fumes. Keeping the fight going was too risky to both of us. Yeah, it sucks to get taken down by a punk kid," there's the smirk you were expecting, "but it would suck more to hurt my shot at the Ascent, or for that matter to hurt yours." Fuck it, you think you've built up enough credit with her at this point that you can afford to lay it on a bit thick. "Take it from me, sometimes seeking the victory that actually matters means accepting a loss here and there." You lever yourself to a sitting position with a wince. "I should probably keep moving. But I'd like to keep in touch. You American?"
"Canadian."
"Really."
"The hell is that supposed to mean? Yes really."
"Nothing." National stereotypes are a load of crap, it turns out. "Okay. Not phones, then, I don't have an international plan anymore. Email address? Pretty sure I can remember that in the morning."
"Sure," she says, smiling again.
You exchange details and part, you headed on your way and she back to her books. Idra had a facility with the elemental magic of the dreaming-realm that was really impressive, and you fully intend to pick her brain for tips. But it turned out you are much more of a fighter than she is. Years of experience, you suppose. It didn't give you the win this time, but it easily might have, and might yet.
You think you both probably learned something.
FOUR OF CUPS
Once more, you encounter a structure on your travel. This time, it's one you've read about, and you recognize it as it comes into view: not gradually coming up from under the horizon, but a blurriness sharpening into detail. Another reminder of how this realm is different.
The Gallery of Hearts is a museum, of sorts, built by nobody-knows-who but maintained by some lesser dream-entities. It is the sort of place a psychologist back in mundane reality would cheerfully give their arm to visit (though, granted, that's probably true of this entire realm, given what it is). It contains hundreds of replicas and recordings of human hearts, with all their psychic-spiritual anatomy intact: the metaphor made literal and legible. There is no better place to see the workings of love up close, and to learn about the many ways in which it can grow. But few dreamers dare to enter the gallery, despite how valuable and fascinating it is.
For the price of admission is this: you must consent to have your own heart replicated and made into an exhibit. It will be shown to you before you leave, with the truth of your love, or its absence, on full display to you and the world forever.
Could you bear that? How much would it destroy you, to learn what you hide from yourself? You can feel it beat faster in your chest as you pause outside the entrance to make up your mind.
[] Take a breath, and move on: Gain this card as an Aura.
[] Spend 1 Willpower: Add this card to your Pneuma and reveal the top card of the Ascent Deck. If it is a Two, Three, Four, or Five, Lose the winner of the [ANTE] vote from your Pneuma, or gain a Supernal Connection if it is anything else. Then shuffle the revealed card into the Ascent Deck.
[][ANTE] Write-in a card from your Pneuma Your options are the four Aces, the Three of Swords, the Page of Wands, the Fool, and the Four of Cups, since the [ANTE] vote will only be relevant if adding the Four of Cups to your Pneuma wins.
Decks and Resources: Character Sheet Night-specific information: 4/max 6 Explorations, 1/max 3 Willpower spent
I've structured the voting this way to try to make it clear that [ANTE] is only relevant if entering the gallery wins. You can vote to move on and still cast a vote for [ANTE] without making your dispreferred option likelier to win. Let me know if you have ideas for how I could have structured it more clearly.
I've linked the Character Sheet above, which has the contents of the various decks (and, in fact, I update it while writing the updates, meaning eagle-eyed viewers can get a sneak peek of what's getting drawn), but just to make it easy for you: there are twenty-four cards left in your Ascent Deck and thirteen of them are Twos, Threes, Fours, or Fives, giving you a 54% chance of "losing" the bet, slightly worse than coinflip odds.
This Tarot deck is a dick, wow. I swear there are cards in here that aren't personal attacks on the character you made, honest.
You watch the entrance for some time, making up your mind.
The Gallery has tremendous windows, to let the light in. Through them, you can faintly see the exhibits. Heart after heart, poised upon their stands, with the web of connections radiating outward from them. Too far away to make out the details, but they remind you of the nerve fibers you once saw at the Body Worlds exposition with... damn, who did you go see it with? Which friends? Why can you so easily recall the plastinated organs and tissues, how every detail of the human anatomy was laid bare, but not the actual humans you were spending the day with?
You can't remember. That tips the balance. You can't stomach the thought of seeing your own heart and its spiritual equivalent of smoker's lung. You don't want to look at that, but more than that... you don't want to immortalize it, you don't want this version of you to be the one forever on display in the Gallery of Hearts. Your heart may be desolate, and the connections of love atrophied, but you're trying, aren't you? You're trying. You're not sure what it says about you that the closest thing to a friend you have made in years is someone you punched in the face within ten minutes of meeting, but it's progress. You aren't done with yourself, not by a long shot.
You feel your heartbeat slow.
You walk away.
KNIGHT OF CUPS
And you walk and you walk and you walk. The terrain has started changing; you're not in the proper foothills of the Ascent yet, not by a long shot, but it's definitely more rolling than it was at the start of your journey. The easiest path to follow winds and twists and finally leads to a hole in the steep face of the hills. You peek inside, and after your eyes adjust (where is that light coming from?) you walk into a great cavern.
You're pretty sure that a cavern of this size doesn't fit into the hill you just entered, but that sort of thing has honestly stopped surprising you at this point. It's not like the dreaming-realm's geography is mappable. But there's a certain level of internal logic to its features, even if they don't make sense if you tried to put them together. There's a river running through this cavern, and you figure that it needs to exit at some point, so you might as well follow it.
You're about three twists and turns along the course of the underground river when you catch sight of the weeping man.
There isn't wailing or hysterics. He's simply kneeling by the bank, his hands clasped to his chest, his body wracked by deep sobs that are not any less heartbreakingly sorrowful for all that they're carried out quietly. You hesitate, unsure of whether to keep moving forward or whether to retrace your steps, and your foot nudges a rock or something because he looks up and sees you.
"Oh!" he says. He lifts his circular glasses and wipes his eyes on his sleeve before climbing to his feet. "I'm so sorry. I was trying to be out of the way, but I suppose there's not really any such thing, here in the dream. Please pardon me for making such a scene."
"It's okay," you say, feeling weirdly off-balance by how he's immediately trying to comfort you despite having been so recently crying. He seems your age, or maybe a little older. You walk a little closer. "What, uh, happened?"
He sighs. "It's... it's a long story. But when I started wise-dreaming, I met someone. Brieta." He says the name like he's cradling it, the same way he is in fact actually cradling something you can't see. "We were in love, and met in dreams as we could not in the waking world. But then she went on her Ascent, and I haven't seen her since, and it's been so long..."
[] Move on, saying only a few words in passing, or nothing at all: Gain this card as an Aura.
[*] Spend one Willpower, sitting beside the dreamer, offering what small comfort you can: Add this card to your Pneuma. Gain one Supernal Connection. Straightforward engagement option chosen as per the Night's strategy. [] Spend one Supernal Insight or Aura of the suit of Wands, revealing a clue to his beloved's whereabouts that you have learned: Add this card to your Pneuma. Gain one Supernal Insight.
So soon after the Gallery, and the regrets you had about the state of your own heart, you cannot bring yourself to walk away from this man in his moment of pain, this man whose spirit blooms where yours is barren. You walk closer still and take a seat on the cavern-floor, feeling the rough damp stone beneath you. "I'm sorry. My name is Ash. I just started my own Ascent. What do you know?"
He wears an expression of such gratitude as he sits back down that your worries about the time and energy you're spending on this dissipate into nothingness. "Aiglan. After it had been two weeks without her coming to our meeting-place, and with no answer to my emails I sent in the waking world, I looked her up and contacted her family. Maybe whatever she learned during the Ascent made her think better of our relationship and she wanted nothing to do with me, but if so I wanted to know." His voice only barely catches, as he says that. "She's in a coma. She just never woke up one morning. I don't know what that means, but it can't be anything good."
For a moment, you have a hard time thinking about Aiglan and the story he is telling. All you can think about is something like that happening to you. It's one thing to read old books and see puffed-up authors talk in vague terms about the Ascent and its perils. It is another thing entirely to hear about a woman falling to... to something that left her soul stranded away from her body. With an effort of will, you focus. "So, you weren't Ascending before, but now you are? To look for her?"
He nods. "You need to want something enough, to start on the Ascent. But I've never wanted anything that much, except Brieta." He opens his hands, revealing a closed locket, glowing faintly in stygian blue: an impossible color in the waking world, but par for the course here. "It's hard to navigate in the dream, of course, so we made these, to avoid wasting time every night. She has another; they're enchanted to shine brighter as we draw closer to one another, but so far there's been no change. They're tied to our souls, so I know she's not... not entirely lost. But I'll have to climb higher, to the dangerous reaches, and... I'm not sure I have what it takes. I might fail before I ever come anywhere near her."
Well. You recognize a straight line when you hear one. With confidence that you compel yourself to feel, you reply. "I may have just started on my Ascent, but I think I'm pretty good. You said her name is Brieta? Give me a description and I'll look for her as I climb." You pause, an idea popping into your head. "Actually, do you think that enchantment will hold if you separate the locket along its hinge? Because then we can each have the benefit of it."
He blinks owlishly behind his spectacles, his eyes still red-rimmed. "I... I think? We might need to stabilize it, but with two of us... you'd really do that?"
You nod, your own throat tightening up. "I've... I've never had anything like what you have," you say quietly. "Not even the romance aspect of it, just... never someone who has meant that much to me, or I to them." You think so, anyway, about the latter. You don't strictly speaking know. You hope not. "And it's recently become clear to me that that's a real lack. So. Let me do my best to help."
His eyes don't brim with tears, but you have the impression that they would, if he weren't already cried-out. "Thank you," he says. He opens the locket; it's a landscape image, divided in two across the halves, of him and a woman with their arms around one another. "I'll give you the side with her picture. I don't need help remembering her face." You nod, flexing your wrists and mentally reviewing everything you know about creating enchanted objects, which isn't a lot. Hopefully he can take point, because he made it in the first place, and you can just assist.
Some time later, you exit the other side of the cavern, now with a glowing half-locket around your neck, Aiglan's gratitude echoing in your ears, and a lighter heart.
FIVE OF CUPS
The other side of the cavern let you out into a valley. With nothing else to do, and the night drawing to a close, you follow the path climbing out of it.
Which climbs. And climbs. And climbs. Your path circles around a small mountain that, from where you are, you can see juts out of the landscape around it without any lesser hills around it. This is geologically implausible, but so it goes, in the dream. You're being led somewhere, and you go obligingly.
Then you reach the top, and you stop in your tracks as your eyes drink in the sight before you. There is a shrine, there by the cliff-edge, and ornate lettering tells you that you have reached the Shrine of Celestial Winds. You've read about this place, and it lives up to the hype. It's been called the single most beautiful station of the Ascent, and you can believe it. The mountain-peak overlooks vistas of staggering splendor in every direction: palaces and cities, lakes and rivers, skies filled with sunset and stars and fireworks. You are not the type to weep at beautiful sights -- and you've certainly had plenty of opportunity to find out -- but you do need a few moments to catch your breath as you simply reel.
Then, breath caught, you approach the shrine. It is a place of veneration for the blessed powers who fill the world with terrible shuddering desire, who make it worthwhile for humans to look out beyond their own minds towards one another. Some dreamers have names for some of those powers: Ishtar, Erzulie, St. Valentine. Perhaps there is truth in one of those names, or more. Perhaps they are all just myths covering over the mysteries of the dream.
You may, if you choose, leave an offering to honor the powers of divine passion and demonstrate your commitment to the course of love.
[] Take a breath, and move on: Gain this card as an Aura.
[] Spend one Willpower and one Supernal Connection or Aura of the suit of Cups: Add this card to your Pneuma. Search the Unseen for the winner of the [PRAYER] vote and shuffle it into the Ascent Deck.
[][PRAYER] XVII The Star
[][PRAYER] XVIII The Moon
[][PRAYER] XIX The Sun
Decks and Resources: Character Sheet Night-specific information: 6/max 6 Explorations, 2/max 3 Willpower spent, Aura of Cups
This should go without saying, but: in cases where you can pay a cost with an Aura or with a Supernal, I will always have it paid out of the Aura if you vote to do it unless there is a compelling reason otherwise (the only one I can think of is a case where you have a Trump Aura, which is wild, and an abundance of a certain kind of Supernal). At all other times you don't need to specify, I'll just do the obviously correct thing.
You've had such amazing draws for a first night, Jesus. Two court cards out of six draws is a little lucky but not very, but getting to use both your Auras (and seeing five out of the seven different types of cards currently in the deck into the bargain) is quite lucky.
Reminder that since this is your sixth Exploration for the night, you're done after this even if you choose not to spend the Willpower.
send help the writeups for each card keep getting longer
[*] Spend one Willpower and one Supernal Connection or Aura of the suit of Cups: Add this card to your Pneuma. Search the Unseen for the winner of the [PRAYER] vote and shuffle it into the Ascent Deck.
[*][PRAYER] XVII The Star
First the Gallery of Hearts, then Aiglan, and now this. The dream does appear to be trying to make a point to you. Or is it? Could this just be random chance that your pattern-seeking mind is insisting on imposing order and meaning upon, finding shapes in clouds? Is there a difference? For the thousandth time, you burn with the desire to understand what the dreaming-realm actually is, a question on which learned occultists have spilled gallons of ink while getting nowhere.
Regardless. Your night is nearly over; these are questions you can ponder upon waking. There is a thing you must do, while you are here. But how? What do you have that could be worthy? What do you have that you can give? You puzzle this over for a moment, until you catch sight of the prayer strips along the edge of the shrine fluttering in the gentle breeze, and that gives you an idea. You approach the altar, lowering yourself to your knees, and hold the locket over the bowl.
"This isn't mine to give," you say. "And I wouldn't give it up even if it were, because that would dishonor those to whom this place is sacred." You think about the Gallery, and your fears, and your hopes, and you unclasp the chain that holds the locket, letting it slip through the ball and fall into the offering-bowl. "But I offer this: I bind myself to the search for Brieta. I'll look for her along my Ascent, and if I should reach my goal or turn aside before finding her, then I will continue to seek her until she is found. I will not give up the quest to restore their lost love."
Your words echo on the mountain-top, fading away into silence. You aren't sure what exactly to expect, so you stay put. But just as you are about to climb to your feet, you see that one of the lights directly above you is leaving its celestial station. You watch as a bright star grows brighter still and begins to cross the sky.
It seems that your appeal has been favored, you think as you tuck the locket into your pocket. You'll fashion a new tie for it later, the next time you dream, so you'll be able to notice if it marks Brieta's presence. You lie back, watching the light trace out a new line in the heavens, and let your soul be drawn back to your body.
HERE ENDS
YOUR FIRST NIGHT
You wake up, in your apartment, in your bed, with gentle sunlight illumining your bedroom. You straighten up, and the world swims for a moment before your eyes. Your head is pounding, you notice. It almost feels like a hangover, but you haven't touched alcohol in a week, and your actual body seems... fine. You're not particularly tired, physically. But you feel drained. That's concerning.
You let yourself fall back onto your pillow, closing your eyes and taking deep breaths, until you feel readier to face the day. With an effort of will, you hoist yourself out of bed and manage to drag yourself to the armchair in your living room, next to where most of your esoterica lies shelved. You vaguely remember some discussion of something like this, but you were much more focused on everything involving the dreaming-realm directly and skimmed over discussions of the waking world. If you're being honest with yourself (which you suppose you might as well be), you hadn't thought any of the cautions there might apply to you. You were good at this, after all.
A little while later, you put away your books with a frown. You had found a few references that seemed relevant: an "affliction of the spirit" that "befell novices to wise-dreaming." That sounded scary as hell, but it wasn't treated as a big deal: more of a sign that the afflicted was a hotshot with more boldness than sense. As near as you can figure it, from a spiritual perspective you hadn't done enough stretching or drunk enough water before trying to hike up a mountain, and you'd pulled a muscle. Or two. Or five, you think with a wince as you reflexively try to fall into the meditative mindset you so often adopt after reading your books. OK. Well, the prescription was straightforward enough: avoid wise-dreaming until symptoms pass, and symptoms might pass more quickly and easily by "doing things nourishing to the soul."
The problem was finding things that fit the bill, you think while looking over your apartment. It is... sterile. Not barren: you have your furniture and even a few nice things on the walls. But those are all there more because you know how an apartment is supposed to be than because of any particular joy you take in them: you had been so busy with work for years that you had never rooted yourself in your home at the time, and even with your career and New York residence behind you, those patterns of thought are still here. The things you have are either practical or superficially decorative without being beloved. No, you can't just stay here, "relaxing" though it may be.
So what, then? You don't have friends, that's part of the problem. There's Idra now, sort of, you suppose, but she's off in Canada somewhere and the mere thought of emailing her and saying "hey, so I managed to sprain my soul because I suck" makes your dignity go into open revolt. Absolutely not; you'll establish contact, of course, but you're not admitting this to her. It might become a funny story to tell later on, but right now it's just pathetic. So, what? There's nobody else, that's why you chickened out on the Gallery of Hearts, and it's not like you can just go out and find soothing presences on dema-
Hrm. That gives you an idea.
You pull out your laptop and do some research. An hour later and you're showered and dressed, walking out your door and headed to pick up a Zipcar. You had some things to buy.
That afternoon, you're in an animal shelter, signing the paperwork to adopt a tortoiseshell cat named Hana. "We weren't sure she'd ever get rehomed," the painfully young volunteer had said as he encouraged her into a carrier. "Adults are harder, and her socialization is a little erratic." "Hard same," you carefully manage to avoid saying at any point, and when you get home and open the carrier door she fucking bolts across the carpet and vanishes behind the couch.
Well, you can be works-in-progress together. There's other soul-nourishment you can pursue in parallel. There's food and water and litter out for the cat, and probably the best thing you can do right now is make yourself scarce so she can get used to her new home without a strange giant looming over her. You write an email to Idra and head out to a live music show at a nearby bar. The music is just fine, but it's nice to be out and enjoying a thing among people, even if you clutch your drink in a corner by yourself and look sufficiently skittish or stressed or whatever that nobody comes over to bother you.
When you get home, the cat is nowhere to be seen, but her bowls had been touched and her litter used. Good enough for a start.
The next day, you spend all day at the Cleveland Museum of Art. You linger over the Expressionist works on display; there is something about the dreaming-realm in the way they look and feel, and you stare at them, trying to match them to the sights you've seen. Some are eerily close. Were their creators occultists? You know of no reason they couldn't be, and for roughly the thousandth time in your life you wish you could draw worth a damn. When you get home, Hana is sitting on the couch; she pricks up her ears when you walk in the door, and eyes you warily, but doesn't bolt. As casually as you can, you toss some treats onto the floor between you, and after a little bit she creeps forward to munch them. You hang out in the living room together, at a distance; to get her used to the sound of your voice you talk to her, a monologue about the pieces you saw.
You pass the next few days the same way: you go out in the morning and come back in the evening, doing something you enjoy that makes you feel more like yourself, and come back to your new cat, who is still skittish and avoidant but getting fractionally less so over time, and tell her about your day. At the shelter they'd pronounced her name like the name Hannah, but you find yourself saying Hana the way you would the Korean or Japanese words, with the vowels Latinated. It just feels more natural to you and more fitting for her. You toss toys around for her; sometimes she chases after them, and sometimes she stares at you with an expression of such judgmental disdain that you practically feel the need to apologize.
One night, you're reading on your armchair while she's perched on the couch's back, a mere four or five feet away, and you hear a strange noise, like a quiet lawnmower. She's purring, and loudly. Yeah. That does a soul good to hear. You think you're ready to continue, now.
You make the preparations before bed, and fall asleep with the memory of Hana's purring in your ears and a glimmer of remembered starlight behind your eyelids.
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: The Seven of Swords, the Seven of Wands, the Seven of Pentacles, the Seven of Cups, III The Empress, IV The Emperor
[] No change to Aspiration
[] Write-in a new Aspiration, which must begin with "I aspire to" and include the Aspiration's suit in parentheses
I'm going to try something different this time; instead of doing the Strategy thing from the first Night, we're going to do a vote for every card drawn so long as there's more one thing you can legally do. I'm going to keep it at 24 hours minimum for a vote, but please let me know what you think of this change afterwards: whether it's better to have more control, whether it's worse to have a slower pace (though I suspect the pace wouldn't be that much quicker, since you picked up two Supernals really fast, which as you've seen enable a bunch of options), whether the voting period should be shorter to balance it out... all that sort of thing, I'm still feeling my way around this format.
