Tender Lumplings Everywhere, Life's No Fun Without A Good Scare [Open to All]

[applesaucemod]

The woods are dark and deep, but not particularly lovely. If anything, they feel dangerous, as if something terrible might come lurching out from behind any given tree and tear into the nearest warm body. What that terrible thing might be is anyone's guess. A cat with hands? Slenderman? Stegosaurus? Actual cannibal Shia LaBeouf? All of the above in a horrible mob? It's anyone's guess. But every dreamer will be absolutely convinced that there is something unspeakable out there, and that it's after them.

The dreamers have two things on their side. The first is that there is actually nothing dangerous lurking in these woods (with the possible exception of other dreamers). The pervasive terror the dreamers are feeling is just that: a rift-given feeling, nothing more and nothing less. That snapping twig or rustle in the undergrowth is almost certainly just a squirrel or something else equally harmless.

The second is that no dreamer is alone. They all will be reunited with - or introduced to - their dæmons, a source of comfort in this dark, intimidating wilderness. However frightened the dreamers might be, at least they have someone with them who definitely doesn't want them dead.

[OOC: as ever, any and all are welcome! You don't have to be in the game to join the fun. Dreamers can remember or forget the events of the dream at the players' discretion. And the party only stops when you want it to; feel free to backtag forever.]

Comments

This tag is basically just me trying (and succeeding!) to hit the NaNo wordcount

[eighth]

"I have, but not your universe, clearly," the Doctor answers. It is already very easily to see the barely contained excitement bubbling inside of Daniel. He wouldn't mind being inside his head right now, because an archaeologist and anthropologist being confronted with the idea of time travel is always going to lead to a lot of interesting thoughts. The Doctor smiles, wondering if he's going to get any more useful information out of Daniel without first having to probably answer a few hours worth of questions about anything and everything.

"See, humans don't have intergalactic travel in 2005 in my universe. Or most of the universes I've been to so far. My universe is actually pretty close to this one, at least when it comes to the Earth. Right down to the government covering up secret Rifts in space and time that bring people and creatures and objects in from all over the galaxy. Ours usually don't go from universe to universe though, that's a bit trickier," the Doctor starts rambling, because Daniel doesn't seem to be able to use words at the moment. Might as well drown him in information instead, right? At this point his hands are no longer held behind his back, now gesturing enthusiastically.

"There are plenty of ways, however, like traveling through a charged vacuum emboitment. And then of course there are pocket universes, those are usually a bit easier to access, but harder to get out of. The most recent other universe I was in a pocket universe called the Divergent universe, which didn't even have a concept of time, no web of Time, making it impossible for me to travel in Time there at all. You did have a certain amount of cause and effect, of course, one moment following another, but it was a cycle. Destruction and recreation, over and over, following the same patterns, but developing a little differently each time. You see, someone had installed a mobius loop, so once every twenty to thirty millenia, all life got destroyed, and and then rebooted the universe in its original form. Very interesting, of course, but what a headache."

He's gone off topic.

[peacefulexplorer]

Some of those descriptions of the oddities and burps in time ring familiar but most don't, and Daniel has no doubt that he's somewhat reduced in his ability to conceptualize much of it. The science and specifics of time travel have never been his area of expertise. Number-related matters in general will always be beyond him.

"That is," he says with an astonished grin when the Doctor stops for breath, "wow. I mean, really, wow. I've, I've traveled to other planets and phase-shifted and even, even occasionally breached into another dimension or universe but, uh, but time travel? That's, that's just incredible. We've managed it maybe twice." Possibly three times, if that one report on time loops can ever be conceivably, reliably verified. Maybe four. It's confusing without outside confirmation.

"How, though?" Question number two already, and Daniel can hardly keep it at just that. "We've used solar flares, a ship once, but those were very, very one-time affairs. How do you manage that sort of thing regularly?"