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Last night (well this morning) I had dreams of epic length even by my standards. The sort where your bladder drags you out of bed midway for a toilet break, but that is only a temporary escape. The content was not pleasant either.
In the first I was at the Hall for some reason and there was an alarm which I was calling in to 111 when I saw another of the volunteers appear out of a motel room and decided I wouldn't need police backup.
Then it turned out that not only that person but many others of the volunteers and my friends, people I trust, had been using the knowledge that the Hall was short of alarms to go there at all times, even or especially the managers residence (in the roof, on the roof), and conspiring to keep me from knowing about this. [cf previous Hall intruder dreams where it has always been strangers causing trouble]. As I'd stumbled on it however it was made very clear that they really didn't care. This was a betrayal of the first order, and it a) hurt and b) made me very angry. Of course as I became so the setting of the dream became less structured. The Hall started collapsing in parts, bleeding into other locations in others and basically shifted to a chaotic demiplane.
I'm a fairly lucid dreamer with usually a great degree of agency. You don't want to make me angry. In this dream I achieved levels of power akin to a minor deity within my own tiny realm. A such I had to face down incarnations of Death (tall, bony, black hood, carries a scythe, rides a white horse, not the relatively friendly individual from Discworld) on a number of occasions, force demons to reveal their true forms or force them from the plane altogether. But I'm getting ahead of myself.
At some point on my way to purge the "Hall" of everyone I came to the conclusion that what I was really most angry (specifically) about wasn't so much people being there or even not telling me about it but that in doing so they were ignoring my perceived authority (authoritay!) over the site. An authority which I had no firm/rational right to claim or expect. This didn't make me feel any happier but I was able to set much of the anger aside and the dream became more about finding and rescuing back to "outside" the various people now trapped in the chaotic environs of the "Hall". This had grown to include quite a number of strangers and even a few concepts-given-form. There was a little bit of reconciliation mixed in there, but not much.
Three incidents stand out in my memory these hours later.
One was that L & B were getting married on the front lawn, at least would be when I managed to find her and send her there.
One was where a group of my friends (I can only remember two of the circle now) were trying to summon a minor demon because they for some reason thought it had had taken/acquired my soul. (There was no indication they were actually doing this for my benefit as such). I stumbled on the ritual at the one-way-mirror-like planar interface, shooed off the demon (who was on my side) and then popped over and hung around a bit before wandering off because they didn't actually seem interested in interacting with me.
The third was another dear friend who was not one of the ones who "invaded" the Hall and who had her own way out through a connection with a Titania-like nature deity/power. If I wanted her to go back to "reality" though I had to follow her to that power's domain and have something between us arbitrated there. I had no and have no grasp on exactly what that was, only that safe passage to that power's dominion (where I had lessish power) was arranged if I could "find the key" (which I did, by realising that it was arbitrary what you asked the goblin who was spreading false keys around as long and you were firm enough in your conviction that you were asking for the right thing. The "key" was actually a bottle of some sort of wine-like potion, not to be drunk but to be in your possession passing through the "gate").
I'm not sure anything ever got resolved because the part of the dream between my passing through the "gate" and finding myself back in my own realm didn't seem to happen, except a little bit of wandering through a swamp and shortly after that the dream sort of faded into the next one.
There was also at some point the concept of what I was going to do after straightening the whole mess out which was either accept the Death or just close the realm off from the Hall and my past life and go "away" forever.
~~~
The next dream was about vampires. I started as a participant - a "younger son" vampire with unusual powers (like being able to pass through wards others could not and exist in the sun for more than a few seconds, or be it invisibly) and absolutely no interest in the "kill your sire to take over the clan" way of life which had already driven my "older brother at least partly mad - but later "faded back" became more of an observer, as if watching a Tv series or movie.
In short a plan of the elder brother's to trap and ambush our sire failed, but resulted in the former's destruction and the latter being weakened to the point that vampires from another bloodline (who were able to operate in a limited capacity in daylight) were able to attack, slay our sire, take over the clan territory and begin an orgiastic purge of the bloodline (which "I" was the sole significant escapee from).
As I became more of an observer the dream slipped through what may have represented several centuries of torture and abuse (much of it sexual) and drawn out suffering of captured vampires, sort of half-vampire thralls, and commoners. I'm not going to go into more details on that, suffice it to say some of the dark corners of my subconscious are not-very-nice™ to live with.
Eventually ... I'm not sure, politics happened, a blood-bourne plague struck the mortal population and was able to be transferred to the vampires via the thralls, the remnants of others loyal to "my" bloodline gained strength in secret and "I" did some fairly yucky things to suborn the thrall armies of the other clan while they were distracted, not through any great desire to do so but purely because I was the sole heir. I think everything had come together and "we" were going to "win" but the dream sort of petered out about a tipping point.
It may be worth noting that unlike the previous dream there was no-one from "real life" featured in this dream at all. Not even me really.
~~~
How much of any of these dreams may have been contributed to by not getting to bed/sleep before 2am on three subsequent nights, having a weekend of extremes in social lows and highs, spending a couple of hours around midnight wandering around the Hall (with friends) because we'd had a tip-off that a group of kids might be coming in to damage the place, the minor heat wave that Christchurch / NZ is going trough right now or the fact that I had forgotten to take my antidepressants two nights in a row is anyones guess.
In the first I was at the Hall for some reason and there was an alarm which I was calling in to 111 when I saw another of the volunteers appear out of a motel room and decided I wouldn't need police backup.
Then it turned out that not only that person but many others of the volunteers and my friends, people I trust, had been using the knowledge that the Hall was short of alarms to go there at all times, even or especially the managers residence (in the roof, on the roof), and conspiring to keep me from knowing about this. [cf previous Hall intruder dreams where it has always been strangers causing trouble]. As I'd stumbled on it however it was made very clear that they really didn't care. This was a betrayal of the first order, and it a) hurt and b) made me very angry. Of course as I became so the setting of the dream became less structured. The Hall started collapsing in parts, bleeding into other locations in others and basically shifted to a chaotic demiplane.
I'm a fairly lucid dreamer with usually a great degree of agency. You don't want to make me angry. In this dream I achieved levels of power akin to a minor deity within my own tiny realm. A such I had to face down incarnations of Death (tall, bony, black hood, carries a scythe, rides a white horse, not the relatively friendly individual from Discworld) on a number of occasions, force demons to reveal their true forms or force them from the plane altogether. But I'm getting ahead of myself.
At some point on my way to purge the "Hall" of everyone I came to the conclusion that what I was really most angry (specifically) about wasn't so much people being there or even not telling me about it but that in doing so they were ignoring my perceived authority (authoritay!) over the site. An authority which I had no firm/rational right to claim or expect. This didn't make me feel any happier but I was able to set much of the anger aside and the dream became more about finding and rescuing back to "outside" the various people now trapped in the chaotic environs of the "Hall". This had grown to include quite a number of strangers and even a few concepts-given-form. There was a little bit of reconciliation mixed in there, but not much.
Three incidents stand out in my memory these hours later.
One was that L & B were getting married on the front lawn, at least would be when I managed to find her and send her there.
One was where a group of my friends (I can only remember two of the circle now) were trying to summon a minor demon because they for some reason thought it had had taken/acquired my soul. (There was no indication they were actually doing this for my benefit as such). I stumbled on the ritual at the one-way-mirror-like planar interface, shooed off the demon (who was on my side) and then popped over and hung around a bit before wandering off because they didn't actually seem interested in interacting with me.
The third was another dear friend who was not one of the ones who "invaded" the Hall and who had her own way out through a connection with a Titania-like nature deity/power. If I wanted her to go back to "reality" though I had to follow her to that power's domain and have something between us arbitrated there. I had no and have no grasp on exactly what that was, only that safe passage to that power's dominion (where I had lessish power) was arranged if I could "find the key" (which I did, by realising that it was arbitrary what you asked the goblin who was spreading false keys around as long and you were firm enough in your conviction that you were asking for the right thing. The "key" was actually a bottle of some sort of wine-like potion, not to be drunk but to be in your possession passing through the "gate").
I'm not sure anything ever got resolved because the part of the dream between my passing through the "gate" and finding myself back in my own realm didn't seem to happen, except a little bit of wandering through a swamp and shortly after that the dream sort of faded into the next one.
There was also at some point the concept of what I was going to do after straightening the whole mess out which was either accept the Death or just close the realm off from the Hall and my past life and go "away" forever.
~~~
The next dream was about vampires. I started as a participant - a "younger son" vampire with unusual powers (like being able to pass through wards others could not and exist in the sun for more than a few seconds, or be it invisibly) and absolutely no interest in the "kill your sire to take over the clan" way of life which had already driven my "older brother at least partly mad - but later "faded back" became more of an observer, as if watching a Tv series or movie.
In short a plan of the elder brother's to trap and ambush our sire failed, but resulted in the former's destruction and the latter being weakened to the point that vampires from another bloodline (who were able to operate in a limited capacity in daylight) were able to attack, slay our sire, take over the clan territory and begin an orgiastic purge of the bloodline (which "I" was the sole significant escapee from).
As I became more of an observer the dream slipped through what may have represented several centuries of torture and abuse (much of it sexual) and drawn out suffering of captured vampires, sort of half-vampire thralls, and commoners. I'm not going to go into more details on that, suffice it to say some of the dark corners of my subconscious are not-very-nice™ to live with.
Eventually ... I'm not sure, politics happened, a blood-bourne plague struck the mortal population and was able to be transferred to the vampires via the thralls, the remnants of others loyal to "my" bloodline gained strength in secret and "I" did some fairly yucky things to suborn the thrall armies of the other clan while they were distracted, not through any great desire to do so but purely because I was the sole heir. I think everything had come together and "we" were going to "win" but the dream sort of petered out about a tipping point.
It may be worth noting that unlike the previous dream there was no-one from "real life" featured in this dream at all. Not even me really.
~~~
How much of any of these dreams may have been contributed to by not getting to bed/sleep before 2am on three subsequent nights, having a weekend of extremes in social lows and highs, spending a couple of hours around midnight wandering around the Hall (with friends) because we'd had a tip-off that a group of kids might be coming in to damage the place, the minor heat wave that Christchurch / NZ is going trough right now or the fact that I had forgotten to take my antidepressants two nights in a row is anyones guess.
