This was not a good dream. This was a great dream.
Nickelodeon. They had just started a new game show, and I was part of it somehow, behind the scenes. The game was a “safer version of real life that educates children on the dangers of the world.” The dangers of the world being the demons and undead beyond the city walls. The children go in, choose a character, and begin playing Diablo II, though that is not what it’s called in the dream, as Diablo II’s world is their real world.
After a while, the market for the game skyrocketed, and people would pay (or be paid) to have their custom designs in the game. This was good, seeing as I was the artist. More money for me. After a few years, I grew tired of the secure job, and sought adventure.
I was a Druid (female). I had made enough money to be able to move somewhere else and a friend and I were moving my stuff to my new apartment. Being as anything outside the city walls was full of danger, I went ahead with some money for the rent and security payments.
To make the trip a little easier, I shifted into a werewolf, got down on all fours, and ran. The land was snow-covered, but I felt no cold. I came to the outer limits of a city, and I began to run on the empty highway. The snow must have scared everyone off the roads. I heard a rumbling and something to my left shot out of the ground . . . and followed the highway. It was just a train.
I continued on the highway and made it past the city. Finally, I made it to the building beyond the city that I had chosen.
I shifted back to normal, I paid for my apartment, and went into it. I then created a townportal. My friend, my brother, and I moved all my stuff into my new apartment. I said my goodbyes and thank yous, and closed the portal.
The first thing I did was log into the battle network for the game I co-created and played.
The log in system for this game was a bit strange. You could log in your character at any time, and play around town, but you had to speak to the Matron to get permission to exit the city. One would exit by way of a portal to another section of the world. Usually, the matron is automated, pay a certain amount, have earned enough experience, etc. But not when I played. Oftentimes, I would log in as the matron and freak the kiddies out.
I’m just so evil.
Another part of the system was that if your character is able to do one of the One-Time Quests, they get to adorn the Matron statue with something of theirs. One-Time Quests: Can only be done once per realm. Once someone does this quest, no one else can until the yearly reset. Adorning the Matron: You have to give the Matron something of yours, namely a Weapon if you’re a barbarian, your pelt if you’re a druid, your staff if you’re a sorceress, your bow if you’re an amazon, your shield if you’re a paladin, your blades if you’re an assassin, and your wand if you’re a necromancer.
At the yearly reset, your item that adorns the matron becomes a unique, personalized item, only one of them per realm, so your name is immortalized in the game. It also adds incentive for the long-time players to either collect these, or for people to get theirs back. The items are strong in their own right, giving insanely huge bonuses, but are even stronger in the hands of their owner.
If you somehow manage to do more than one One-Time Quest during the year, you can adorn your local matron with more than one item, thus making a SET. The only problem with making a set, each item will be weaker than if you’d adorned her with one item. Making a set also gives it a lower rarity, meaning that you, and several other people, can wear your set.
When I log in as the matron, the statue becomes animated, so there’s a ten-foot-tall, eight-armed sorceress with an Aztec sun-god headdress walking around with the weapons and armor given to her by the one time questers.
I became bored and went to bed.
I awoke in the middle of the night to the sounds of prayer. I looked to my desk and noticed my idol was missing. I walked over to the next room, still in my pyjamas, and saw a pair of monks inside, praying. One was old, the other was young. They had many idols and fetishes in their room, so I asked them if they’d seen mine, a small dark statuette of a winged man, with silver mixed in with it in random places. They began to search through their idols and asking me if they were it, even if they didn’t remotely fit my description.
If I said that the idol wasn’t mine, they would take the time to explain to me what it means. One was of a water god, meant to hold water within it, though it didn’t look like it could hold much water at all. One was for the god of mice . . .
The old priest left the room to search elsewhere in their apartment for idols. The young priest invited me to sit next to him, and he asked me questions, stating that I looked familiar. He said I looked like something he saw in a game once, namely, my game. He handed me my idol and asked whether the idol was based on the idol in the game, or the other way around. I explained to him that the idol was a big part of my life, and came to me long before the game, and without it, I cannot dream. I left the monk’s room, and returned home. The idol was placed back on my desk where it belongs.
The Idol gave me good dreams that night for being kind and rescuing him.
I moved out there because I sought adventure in life. After a while, this was granted to me, as I soon realized that the building I was in was once a hotel, and a haunted one at that.
The spirit that had moved my idol into the hall, where the monk had found it, returned to my room often. He would try to touch me in my sleep, he would poison my dreams. He would always try to harm my idol, because the idol would try to protect me.
Ghosts are spirits locked into a room, Idols are spirits locked into a relic.
The ghost lusted after me, because my soul, though cleansed, was of his wife . . . which he murdered. He was a sorcerer, and in a fit of anger killed his wife with a spell. He tried to raise his wife, but she was already passed on. After several years of trying to contact her to ask her forgiveness and failing each time, he took his own life in hopes of seeing her on the other side.
But that’s not the way souls work. They pass on to another body after being cleansed of their old memories, unless they’ve got something weighing on their memories that is so strong it holds them back. The ghost’s obvious remorse for his actions bound him here, while the idol was once a paladin, dedicated to protecting innocents.
The Sorcerer-ghost had been awakened by my presence, and began to live in this house/hotel as he had once done before. Tricks and traps disabled long ago began springing again.
The tenants in the building soon realized that we were now trapped within. The owner of the building had been possessed by the ghost of the sorcerer. The tenants and I began to search for ways out, by examining all doors. We came across a gallery of pottery and idols . . . and my idol was trapped. I had to save him. I pried at the glass that kept him captive, but I couldn’t get it to move. I tried to break it, smash it, cut it, everything. I couldn’t get to him. I fell to my knees and sobbed.
One of the other tenants consoled me, and we stood up to continue our searching for an exit. The next door I opened led into a dining room, and another door beyond that. Always wary of traps, I tiptoed into the room, only to be greeted by a rottweiler The dog backed me toward the door, which I could not exit because of the people behind me blocking it. The dog got right in my face and said, in the voice of the wizard, “My dearest wife, you know you are not permitted here.” Then the dog punched me in the face.
We moved on. We found a spiraling stairwell, and began to decend. There were various traps down the stairs, and soon, I was the only one still running. Upon reaching the bottom, it was a dead end. I turned and ran up the stairs, passing the people who had been caught in the traps. Those that were not dead grabbed at my legs for help, while those that were dead grabbed at my legs to stop me. Somehow, they were able to pull my clothes from me, and, finally, at the top, I met the sorcerer.
He somehow compelled me to walk up a set of stepping stones in the middle of the spiral stairwell. I wrapped myself in curtains that were hanging around the stairwell (they were still attached to the ceiling) and began to walk up these stones. In the middle, the wizard removed the stones from under my feet, and I fell down the tower.
I never hit the bottom, because I was grabbing on to the curtains. Or maybe I did.
I don’t know, I woke up.