The Big Applesauce Dreaming

In the dream there is a jungle. In the jungle, there is an impossible inland sea, briny like the ocean but surrounded by land on all sides. Around the sea there is a beach, and in the sea there is an island. On the island, there is a a cornucopia, a great curled golden horn with an opening that yawns twenty feet high. Around the cornucopia, land bridges stretch like spokes of a wheel from the island to the beach.

Inside the cornucopia, there are weapons. Everywhere, hidden well enough to escape the attention of all but the most carefully observant, there are cameras. Above is a false sky, an electric dome that stretches over the round expanse of jungle and disguises itself as the illusion of more jungle where it touches the ground. To touch it is to be electrocuted.

Those who hike off into the jungle may not ever reach the edge of the dome and learn how thoroughly they are trapped. An invisible, almost always intangible line extends from each of the island's spokes to the edge of the dome, a barrier between dangers for which there is no warning. Viewed from above, this round jungle begins to resemble a clock with its face divided into twelve wedges that all converge on the cornucopia. Unfortunately for the dreamers, this clock keeps time.

At the stroke of twelve, lightning strikes in the segment toward which the tail of the cornucopia points. At the strike of one, catastrophe moves clockwise and the next segment rains blood. Disaster strikes at the beginning of each hour, moving slowly but inexorably all the way around the jungle until it comes back to the beginning and starts again. Some segments represent near-inevitable death for anyone caught in them at the wrong moment, while others simply torture their captives or twist their perceptions. The beach and the island might seem to represent safety and reprieve, but some threats, like the wall of saltwater that comes crashing through the jungle at ten o'clock, reach even that haven. And though the world outside the jungle may be watching, that world is beyond the dreamers' reach. No one may pass beyond the dome except by awakening from the dream and leaving this place entirely in favor of the waking world.

Welcome to the Quarter Quell.


[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. Post your tags under the header for the section of the clock in which your thread takes place (if the thread takes place in multiple sections, put it under the header for the section in which it begins). Threads can take place at any time; note what time your thread begins when starting a new one so other players know whether the section will be active. Multiple threads per header are allowed. Dream time passes more quickly than real time (and is kind of timey wimey anyway), so feel free to subject your characters to as many or few hours as you wish.]

It's that time again! The rift has caught the good little dreamers of New York (and beyond) in its currents and washed them ashore on a desert island in a dream wonderland. This time, however, quite a noticeable change has come over each of the attendees of this nocturnal party.

All the people who arrive in this shared mindspace will find that they have been transformed into some sort of animal they find familiar or that resembles them. They will find that they can still communicate with one another and that they still have all their mental faculties, but might be a little…well…influenced by the forms they have taken on.

They will also find that they have been deposited in the middle of the largest, most elaborate playground they have ever seen. Climbing equipment and slides of the sort meant for human children are in evidence, but so are cat trees, meadows, tunnels, pools and ponds, aerial obstacle courses, and anything else the mind can imagine, for as far as the eye can see.



[OOC: The usual dream party rules apply: players apply the party's theme (in this case, transformation) to their characters according to their own discretion, and both members and non-members are more than welcome to use this post to try out characters not yet in the game. Usual dreaming rules also apply, in that players can choose whether or not their characters will remember this in the morning. Have at!]