The Tropical Vacation of Your Dreams

[applesaucemod]

The communal dreams of Manhattan have been downright pleasant lately, haven't they? Here's another sunny day for dreamers to enjoy in their sleep, though of course the tropical climate may prove just a little uncomfortable for northerners. The verdant jungle has its own sort of charm, though, teeming as it is with all sorts of exotic animals.

Make that very exotic animals.

Those who arrive close by any of the old buildings or fences will see that it's been a long time since the humans that made them disappeared. Everything here was once sleek, shiny, and state of the art. Now formerly electric fences stand bent and torn, automated SUVs sit rusting on their tracks or lie smashed to pieces where they were thrown by some enormous creature, and the jungle slowly works to reclaim a mildewy hotel and visitors' center.

Whether one finds oneself in the formless jungle that was once paddocks, in the aviary that would have housed a luxury resort, or even in the halls of what should by all rights be the most heavily fortified hotel in the world, one is always in danger here. The barriers that once separated human from dinosaur have long since fallen. Here dinosaurs have eked out a new ecosystem, the carnivores not particularly bothered about eating herbivores from entirely different epochs…or, for that matter, the funny little hairless apes that have appeared here on occasion. Here one is always in danger of running afoul of hungry tyrannosaurs, stampeding triceratops, or cunning deinonychus velociraptors (they're totally velociraptors, yup). Enjoy the eye-searing venom of that strangely undersized dilophosaurus, by the way, as well as the toxic bite of the swarms of compsognathus. Or maybe the dreamers will luck out, and the worst they'll encounter is an indifferent, bumbling brachiosaurus or an unassuming microceratops. Who here is ever that lucky, though?

Welcome to Jurassic Park.



[Mod note: Same drill as always. All players and characters are welcome, current members or no. Characters will remember or forget any and all dream events at players' discretion. Death in the dream does not result in real death.]

Comments

[interndana]

Dana relaxes visibly, though it is still very strange that she can't remember falling asleep. Hadn't she been trying to get somewhere?

"Windsong?" she looks up at the majestic creature and grins. "I didn't know they could talk! Though I don't know why I thought they wouldn't, the tarantulas at home certainly do."

Dana considers zoolinguistics for a moment (wishing she had taken more languages than Weird Spanish and Modified Sumerian), before remembering something.

"I...don't know how to say this," she begins cautiously, not wanting to alarm Daine. "I'm glad to hear that your friend up there won't hurt us but...I'm afraid there might be other things out here that would. I came from a building back there, under the trees, and there was...there was a man, what was left of him. Something ate him, I'm almost certain of it."

[wildmage_daine]

"Oh, yes," Daine says with a broad grin, "all animals can talk. Or they can talk to me, anyway." She's never spoken with a tarantula before, though; she's yet to encounter a bug with much of anything to say.

The news that a two-legger has been eaten is troubling, and Daine frowns. She hasn't forgotten the crocodiles in Carthak, or their lazy reassurance that they'd be happy to eat any two-leggers foolish enough to get too close. She's already felt the minds of some of the predators here. It's not hard for her to imagine them eating a human if given the chance; most folk are easy prey.

"We'd best stick together," Daine decides. "No one's eating me, and that's for certain." And if this is a group dream… "We should probably look for others, too. I bet we're not the only ones here."

[interndana]

If Daine could hear the tarantula community in Night Vale, she'd know they have a lot to say, and sometimes they aren't very polite about saying it, but they're trying to overcome generations of institutionalized poverty and marginalization, so, you know.

"That sounds like a good idea," Dana agrees. "This feels very solid, for a dream anyway, and people are probably going to be frightened, if not injured. Where do you suppose we should go?"

[wildmage_daine]

Daine considers the question, remembering how the place had looked from above. "I think there were some buildings that way," she says, pointing off into the jungle. "Maybe there are folk hiding there." Her instinct hadn't been to head for civilization - quite the opposite - but she imagines scared two-leggers would head for buildings, even ruined ones, before striking out into the jungle or climbing a tree or somesuch.