Temples, and Dragons, and Evil Marionettes

From Telkoth.net

I had the most wiggidy-whack dream last night. I remember a few scenes, but not so much what connected them. I do have the chronological order down, though, I believe.

Well, the general scenery was this old, like, temple-city thing. Everything was made of huge, sandy-colored bricks, and there were fountains and pools and buildings, and there were gardens with large trees and vines which grew up the walls.

I don't quite remember what the overarching plot was, but the head monks were very worried about something... either they were fighting each other, or banding together to fight something else... right, 'cause there were four groups of monks, and they hadn't usually gotten along too well - they had different ideas about how some of the stuff from their shared religion should be interpreted, or something.

Anyway, so I was this young monk - a monk-in-training. And I met this other monk-in-training kid, too. I don't remember how, but we ended up discovering some kind of ancient power thing - it was very video-gamey - and we also decided that what we ought to be doing was wreaking havok, and destroying all of the other monk orders. We were definitely evil.

I think some of us had these weird, like, jelly pet things. Like a Gelatinous Cube that could talk, and they kind of had this little seed in the middle which was the center of their intelligence, etc - the outside gelatin was just a covering. Anyway, this kid and I decided that we needed one of these things' middles, so we found one - I think it might have been mine. But I picked it up and was trying to pull it thin so that the other kid could just grab the little seed in the middle... it didn't take long for the Gelatinous Cube to figure out that we were up to no good, and he was getting increasingly worried, telling us to stop, and that he'd tell our masters, and that this was against all sorts of rules, etc, and was trying to bend himself in other ways, but he didn't really have that strong of a control over his gelatin. Finally I pulled him thin, and the other kid sliced him in half (this does not hurt a Gelatinous Cube, but I'm sure it worries them), at which point he was small enough that I could pull him thin enough for the other kid to grab the little seed and yoink it out.

Then I remember running through those gardens I talked about earlier, and we got chased by some other monks, but I was able to unleash crazy flames from my hands... so when one of the older monks came running down a passage after us, I turned around and let forth flames. I didn't do it too well - didn't even hurt the monk - but he was still terrified, 'cause he apparently knew that this was a sign of some great and terrible evil, or something, so he took off.

The next thing we did was check out one of the big pools. It had some kind of structure inside, and I realized that I could use my new-found powers to lift it up - so I did. This is one of the most video-gamey bits, though, 'cause I'd stretch out my hand toward it, and flex my magical lift-it muscle, and it would lift up, but only for, like, 10 seconds before falling again. It was always the exact same amount of time every time. So when I lifted it up, the other kid went in, but he wouldn't get far before it started to sink, so I had to lift it up again as quickly as possible so he could continue searching. We had to do this several times, and the other kid was thoroughly pissed about it. But that's OK, 'cause he got to take it out when he emerged as a huge dragon. He only ever poked out his head, but that head, draped with wet grasses from under the water, belched this combination of sludge and fire. I don't remember if there were any persuing monks who were unfortunate enough to experience the sludgey fire first-hand or not.

The transition between him as a dragon and him as a kid on land again isn't clear to me - but we had another destination - one of the four monk-orders' temples. As we approached, I stopped the other kid, 'cause I found a little fountain which clearly had something in it - I made it rise up, which trigged some gears and made a little door open, but then it fell back down again, so I did it once more, and the other kid quickly reached in and grabbed whatever was inside. I don't remember what it was he got - probably a High Potion or something :P

This next monk temple place was really disturbing. They weren't quite marionettets, but there were a lot of dolls running around on these little tracks which were cut into the floor. And they made up this scene of a tavern or restaraunt, or something, with lots of people coming or going, and we were trying desperately to avoid being seen by them. There really were tons of them, and we'd slide around pillars, only to have more zip by on that side, and it was crazy. The other kid thought he was caught by one, so started to lift his hand to do something to it, but then it really did see him, and turned toward him and grabbed him, at which point I started to pose for some fire of my own, but then I was spotted and caught as well. The marionette-things put us into a ring, and I don't remember how the conversation went, but we were supposed to fight things in order to get out, and it was somehow revealed to us that the use of magic is what they could detect, and that's how they caught us, and was the idea of the whole setup.

I don't remember how that bit was resolved. The next thing I remember is a scene in which some monk lady was talking to an older monk guy, and she was very worried about what was going on (with me and the other kid), and thought that she should set up some kind of thing particularly to use against us, but the monk guy absolutely forbade it, that they mustn't sucumb to this and that, I don't really remember. But she didn't listen, and... this is even more video-gamey, but I had a view of this temple from above, as if the roof wasn't there, you know like some kind of 3D dungeon game, but this temple was very tile-based - each space was definitely a square. Anyway, so after the monk guy left, the woman turned around and went through this door, and, then suddenly the three squares of solid wall behind this door were now clear, and then she turned, and started clearing a path. And I could see, but she didn't know, that the path she was carving was taking her toward some random empty space in the temple walls that contained a glowing blue ball thing. Once she did find it, she was very excited, and I know she had to hide it from the monk-guy. And then... I don't remember how, but there was this room of four other glowing balls, and either that woman, or me and the kid, got to one of these four, or that first blue glowing one, but when we did there was this kind of cut-scene where the other ones grouped together and faded away... this whole scene, I really don't clearly remember what lead to what.

Bah, well, that's all I can remember. Running around the open corridors of that monk city, blowing shit up, was pretty fun... though we were evil... eh. Weird stuff.