Lunatic Documentation

[*Azulfae]

Salvaged from Worgazhul's pack when he arrived in the planes he had a few pieces of documentation left over from educating young Lunatics.

The pieces are rag tag and put together with much holes in the knoledge but there is some good information there and some of it drawn from his own experiences he uses to fill in the holes.

He puts the documents into a leather binding with many blank pages ready for him to add new discoveries and developments to and files it with the higher up Sensates with private faction library material.


Dream Walking: A Lunatics Guide

So you proved your devotion to Mother Luna and got accepted into the family. If theyÂ’ve bitten you and the gift has set in youÂ’ll soon find yourself being able to do things in your dreams that go above and beyond what is possible by normal souls.

Through the gift you shall gain the ability to focus the dream energies around you and the emotions of the dreamer. By controlling the emotions you can control what they dream and thus affect what is in the dream.

This is getting ahead of ourselves though.


Lesson 1: Achieving Lucidity

Some lunatics get this fast, some get it slow. Some of the most successful dream walkers took years to master lucidity. ItÂ’s a big thing and the most fundamental aspect of dreamwalking. If you are lucid you are aware and if you are aware you have willpower. Prior to achieving lucidity, dreamers will be nothing more than emotionally reactive in a dream. In such a state you are like everyone else.

All intelligent life is capable of dreaming but some dream in different ways. Creatures such as elves and fey reverie and seem to be able to keep a slight handle on the world around them as they experience the dream realm. This in some ways explains the high numbers of the lunatics that were of elven blood. Due to an element of lucidity before becoming an Lunatic they found mother Luna and understood her messeges far easier than others. As a race they were able to get to grips with the Lucidity faster than other races yet due to their inability to get utterly lost and immersed deep in a dream the fey blooded and elven people were less in tune with that which is nightmarish and out of control.

In a dream chaos is law and law is chaos. Those who are most absorbed by the order of things are quite often caught off guard in dreams and never totally can place their feet on the ground amongst the chaos due to their hanging on to certain values and concepts. This fact alone gave the lunatics a great advantage over the law obsessed militaries and leaders of great city states. The chaotic mind is wild and wondering always able to concentrate on that which is important at the moment and the relevant emotion of the state of the dream. There is an order in Chaos and an Anarchy in Law regarding dreams. All Lunatics had to let go of rules and restrictions in their mind before they were even capable of lucidity in a dream. White often a group of Lunatics would be holding three or more conversations about completely separate things all at the same time. To onlookers no sense could be made from the insanity of what they were saying.


Lesson 2: The Dreamscape

The only folks other than the Lunatics to achieve similar abilities in the dream scape have ‘tended’ to be Shadow Dancers and certain deities. There was also a certain gnome that created wonderful machines capable of feeding off energy from the dream realm. These machines allowed other, non Lunatics certain Lunatic like abilities in the dream as if they themselves had been bitten and carried Luna’s blessing. The lunatics possessed the machine and used it to take others with them. A certain amount of training was still required to achieve the same things a Lunatic could though and there are some abilities that a non lunatic would of course never have.

The common dream state is entered into by a form of shallow astral projection within the state of ones mind. It is in all essence the creation of a pocket plane within ones own self. What we can do in a dream is comparable to what a God can do in the planes but without Lucidity we are like child gods in a messy room full of toys. It may be our room and our toys but if a Lucid being comparable to an adult were to come into the room disguised as a toy, they toy will be able to well and truly manipulate and haunt you into all manner of emotions and behaviours. The games you play will be as a result of their deceptions and inceptions. The aim of the Lunatic is to become akin to the visitor rather than to be the visited.

Before you can do such you must understand the Dreamscape.

The dream itself is formed utilising the astral matter that seep through all of us. The astral plane connects all planes and this is just as much so between our sleeping conciousness and the dream realm beyond.

As much as this is true the dream realms created by all individuals as they sleep can be accessed in a greater ‘dream realm’. Different Lunatics perceive this scape differently. Some examples are a dark void full of orbs. The void being the space and the orbs being the dream pockets of dreamers.

Another perception could be a corridor filled with many doors. The corridor being the scape and the doors being a way into the dreams of others.

Another could be a great rolling field filled with flowers and each flower would be a dream that when you look down into the centre of you can see into the dream down below like it was a tiny world surrounded by petals.

I have even heard of Lunatics perceiving the dreamscape as a great fog where visages of the dreamers wandered around within and the lunatic could bump into and find the dreamer.

It all depends on the perception of the dreamwalker and how capable they are at ordering the dreamscape in their mind.

It is a matter of how well one understands the dreamscape as to how they can perceive it. A greater perception and more complex visualisation of the scape would allow one to be more capable in exploring the dreamscape.

For Heidi the New Moon of the Lunatics her perception was diverse and allowed her to see all dreams of all dreamers at any given time and to see what kind of dreams they were having and to be able to sort and order them. Her mind was indeed in tune with the dreamers.

To Worgazhul of the Blue Moon there was a much more sinister aspect to his perception. He was able to delve deeper into a darker place of dreaming where nightmares dwell. This place was far away from other dreams and sometimes a solitary dream would wander lonely and lost in this place for him to find. LunaÂ’s attention was less on this place than any and her protection against nightmares was at itÂ’s thinnest. It is also noted that in this deep place the dream realm drew closer to the realm of darkness or the plane of shadow as it is sometimes called. This was NyctiÂ’s realm. Some pocket planes were created in this place between the place that is death and a dream. In these pocket planes were held the souls of those who were dead but not allowed to move on.

A powerful necromancer sent vast armies against the world of Aesyr whilst holding the souls of the undead in these planes. When their souls were released by the lunatics the armies of undead were drastically shrunken immediately.



Lesson 3: Traversing Dreams

Once a Lunatic knows the dreamscape and can find the dreams of others a lunatic can enter the dreams of another.

At this point we refer to the lunatic as an Interloper becoming an interloper should be done lightly at first. Perhaps only to watch and observe. In a dream the mind of the dreamer is God. The dreamer has the power of a deity and in essence the only think known to have been more powerful than the dreamer themselves has been Luna. Even other deities have had trouble taking on the Dreamer of the dream. In any given plane is is suffice to say the only being likely to be more potent in a dream than the dreamer will be a ‘deity Interloper’ who is of a ‘dream’ or even more, a ‘dream and moon’ portfolio. Other portfolios have some potency in dreams such as Death, Darkness, Light and Magic. Dream and Moon are the two most powerful and Moon only because it is associated with control over Lunatics of which most if not all Interlopers are. Darkness would have such power over the Shadowdancer type and Magic over those who have entered dreams in such a manner using magical mechanisms.

Due to the power of the dreamer in a dream, being an interloper can be very dangerous. Correction: it is potentially fatal. Lunatics have died in the dreams of others.

Dreamers Interlopers should be cautious of:

Powerful beings especially those of Chaos such as Demons and Fey.

Profoundly cruel and evil minds that are likely to dream of committing horrifying acts upon another.

Those that have been trained in lucidity.

Those who have further been trained to detect interlopers and have associated trained dream reactions to an interloper.

Scorcerers, Dragonblooded, Warlocks, Blackguard and anything likely to have allied powerful interlopers of another source already at work in their mind.

Lunatics.



Lesson 4: Hosting a Dream

Hosting a dream puts a Lunatic in a massive advantage over those interloping.

Lunatics are the most trained of all Dreamers with thousands of years of teaching and experience. Many Lunatics are re-incarnations of old Lunatics and when mature have rediscovered memories of their past lives through the dream. The repertoire of abilitys in the dreams of some Lunatics are increadible. If they can imagine it it is possible and their imaginations are vast and trained.

Essentially Lunatics would only host a dream if it were to gather other lunatics and hold a meeting within a dream due to in life being at distance from each other.

There is an element of trust amongst the brothers and sisters and above all else the concept of feeling like family means that a Lunatic would trust and feel safe in the mind of another Lunatic. Asides from this Lunatics could handle themselves in dreams and none would want to actively aggress another Lunatic whilst they were in each others minds. Luna would also intervene and prevent her children harming each other in the dream realm. This may not be the case any longer. Luna has been less accessable since the fall of Aesyr.

Untrained dreamwalkers, those who have not been trained in lucidity and have the gift (werewolf) cannot enter the dreams of another. The gift and the lucidity is a requirement to do so.

The Lunatics were capable of bringing others into their dreams under a special circumstance so that nasty sorts could be dealt with from a position of authority.

That circumstance was the use of the gnomish machine that they aquired.
It is possible that powerful spells or magics could be used to create these circumstances again but the technology behind such would be a wonder.

Of course using the machine to bring a hostile and trained mind into one of their own dreams meanÂ’t capturing the person and bringing them into the castle and putting them into the machine. This also came at great risk.



Lesson 5: Dream abilities of the Lunatics

The brothers and sisters of the Lunatics had some special abilities in the dream. These they discovered, some together and some apart and taught to each other. The curse was often only seen to outsiders to turn them into a terrible beast. This was only one side of the face of Luna and an expression of far greater and complex powers in the dream realm.

Emotional Lucidity: Unlike other dreamers the Lunatic can discern from the emotions of the Dreamer and their own. They can observe choosing whether or not to loose themselves in the story of the dream or to remain detatched. ItÂ’s very hard to have a Lunatic carried away and fooled in a dream.

Flight: Many Dreamers (not only lunatics.) can fly in a dream if they are lucid enough to do so and chaotic enough of mind.

Polymorphing: To become things other than ones self in a dream. The first form learned by most Lunatics is to become a wolf in their dreams, next their werewolf form.

Traversing the Dreamscape: The Lunatic can walk into the dreams of others.

Manipulating the Dream: To manipulate a dream is part imagination but more than that it is to evoke the emotions in the dreamer that forces them to accept what you have placed in their dream. If they dislike or disbelieve it it will be unbelieved and disappear. If you put an emotional state in them that makes them feel a certain way they will be unable to perform a dissolution.

Emotional Evocation: Certain Lunatics can eminate powerful emotions in the dream. It is usual that a Lunatic who had lead a certain kind of life or is born of a certain biology is increadibly familiar with a certain emotion or group of emotions. These Lunatics are specialists in a certain kind of dream. Lunatics can evoke all manner of emotions in a dream state but it is their speciality that they stand far and above others in. Some specialists are such in very opposing Emotional Evocations. It can be that such Lunatics could become dire enemies or infact the closest of friends. It depends on the emotions specialised in, the personalities of the two and the circumstances of their lives.

Metaphysical Manifestation: Much like the Signers, Lunatics have been known to manifest objects in the real world. This essentially is a product of their mind creating the object that once was dream and bringing it into reality. Many Lunatics learn the ability to bring an object out of the dream realm but it is not to be taken lightly as such a talent is still a very hard thing to do and considered to be advanced.

Lycanthropy: As a result of mastering Polymorphing in a dream and also Metaphyscial Manifestation the Lunatics mind becomes capable of transforming their physical body in the waking world into that of a Werewolf. The more adept at this they become the more powerful their werewolf form becomes. ItÂ’s power in the waking world is derived much like that of a dream. The properties and abilities of the form are thus dream like. Increased strength, stamina, abilities, regeneration and healing properties.

Metaphysical Transposition: This has only been achieved a very few times ever and only once in living memory. The ability to pull an Interloper from a dream. The result being the death of the Interlopers sleeping body which crumples to dust and the production of a new body that awakes with the dreamer as they awake.
This is extremely dangerous and it thought to have worked only because the interloper was a powerful Lunatic. The Lunatics did not dare do such a thing if not for the most desperate of circumstances. It is thought that if tried on the untrained sleeper that the attempt would fail or worse result in neurological damage or even death.

Advanced Metaphysical Transposition: This is only theory and has never been achieved. It is believed to be impossible. For an interloper to awake and draw from the dream world the body of the dreamer who was hosting the dream. It is thought that the body of the dreamer would dissolve to dust and they would awake in the arms of the waking interloper. If this were to fail, and the dreamer were to die it is thought that the Interloper would either become Lost or die aswell.

Metaphysical Character Manifestation: This has been achieved once and was the most terrible event. The Lunatic Worgazhul of the Blue Moon attempted to draw his mother from a dream. She was no longer living and the person in his dream was not an interloper with a physical body. She was not in any way a dreamer but either an imaginary figment of his own dream or a soul crossed over from the veil, visiting from death into his dream. When he pulled her from the dream she did manifest in his arms but very suddenly decomposed in the most traumatic way.

Fighting: As a dreamer attacking an interloper will hurt them as much as you can believe it will. This is not as easy as it sounds but a trained mind can be devastating to an interloper and can utterly harm them. Wounds inflicted in the dream can manifest on the body of the interloper.
Highly trained Dreamers that are trained or possessing of abilities to trap interlopers within layers of a dream could make the dream a maze and very hard to escape from for an interloper. To be attacked with the dreamers belief to harm the interloper in such a dream can even be fatal. The damage done to the body of the interloper in the waking world is much aking to negative energy burns and so some kind of resistance to negative energy and magical resistance also can reduce damage to a waking body. It is still possible that the mind can be damaged though.

Interlopers who are well trained can strike a dreamer and harm them too but only mentally. Dreamers who were not trained or capable of defending themselves have been psychologically harmed, manipulated or even sent into a vegetable or comatose state by a malicious interloper. It is very dangerous to do so due to the vulnerability of the Interloper in a dreamers dream and also the untrained mind is even capable of unpredictable things. There is no safe way to meddle in another personÂ’s head.



Lesson 6 : Interpreting the Dream


Some would think this the most basic ability of the Lunatic and also something that all dreamers can do. This is not so. Many folk can be haunted their entire life by a dream and never be able to interpret it when the dream itself is a product of their own mind!

Interpreting dream is the most complicated and sophisticated of arts. One personÂ’s mind can work and manifest things in a completely different manner to that of another and that can be within a family where two people are very similar. Cross the species line and minds start working very differently. Lunatics as active interlopers gain a lot more experience with seeing the dreams of others than most. Some of the oldest Lunatics have wisdom that cannot be taught. Their presence would be essential in certain kinds of dream. Unfortunately most of them, perhaps none but Worgazhul have not been seen since the end of Aesyr. It was a common thing for confused and haunted individuals to stand below the great castle calling to the Children of Luna for guidance over a dream they had had.

Common interpretations in dreams:

The Moon: Luna
Falling leaves: Associated with death and passing.
Rain: Sorrow, heartache and loss. (Taya)
Fire: Rage, passion or hate, sometimes even love of a certain kind.
Darkness: Death, loneliness, the unknown.
Blood: Murder, Vampires, Victims (Vaya)
Light: Prior to clarity or enlightenment, sometimes the presence of good.
Air/Wind: Travel or flight
Sound: Secrets and hidden messeges. Often ignored or not noticed in dreams. Lunatics hear things in dreams that the dreamers are often missing even though they are aware of.
Bones: Usually symbolise someone from the other side trying to pass a message to the living.
Skulls: Skulls are not good. Lunatics will usually advise waking when a skull is seen. Skulls commonly are noticed if the Dreamer is turning hostile to the Interloper.
Animated Skull Imagery: ItÂ’s probably too late at this stage. Shit doth hitteth the fan. If a skull is animated and aware of you the dreamer is aware and lucid and is actively going to tear your soul apart and likely knows how to do so.
Birds: Freedom, hospitality. Different birds can mean different things as with other animals. Animal symbolism is as the culture of the dreamer.
Ravens: Feature commonly associated with Shadow beings
Wolves: Can be cultural symbolism or Lunatic associated.
Bears: In dreams bears are nearly always protectors, especially of children or the very vulnerable. A dead bear is a very troubling sight in a dream.

[*Azulfae]

Triggers:

It is advisable to have triggers. If one becomes lost in a dream and cannot find their way out a trigger can provide a door or a handle to wake ones self up safely without mental harm.

The Lunatics took LunaÂ’s sorrow for her lost sister Taya as a trigger to awake. Taya was goddess of the rain and her loss was such to Luna that rain in a dream symbolised that all was lost and hopeless. When in such a situation in the dream when the emotions of the lunatics would turn such rain would be common place and it would be a punch into Lucidity that they needed to focus and awake.

The more experienced Lunatics were more practiced at holding Lucidity but the younger sorts could often become easily lost and need to remember certain triggers for certain things so as to regain their lucidity and control in certain situations.

Learning the common interpretations of dream states can help one place triggers.

I shall expand the list as I remember and experience more.

[*Azulfae]

[Worgazhul slips a poem in the folder of notes.]



Dreaming is a dance,
Upon shadows of the mind.
Rising up inside us,
Our true selves shall we find.

Dreaming is a dance,
Not a fight my friend.
When we dream together,
Dance we shall until the end.

Dreaming is a dance,
IÂ’ll show you all the steps.
Beautiful you are now,
Dance with me some more.

[*Azulfae]

Nightmares.

Nightmares are terrible things. This is the point of them, to be terrible and to cause terror. They will then feed from the negative mental state of the victim. The best effect a nightmare can have on a victim is to cause them to awake from the dream in sheer terror. When the dreamer does so, they leave a part of themselves behind in the dream world. A piece of their fear.

The nightmare is then left alone in the dream world with this little piece of spirit to feed upon. Nightmares are essentially demons of the dream realm doing with their food exactly what a demon of the abyss would do with a mortal soul if they aquired it.

A dreamer will heal of in time, perhaps become weaker, perhaps become stronger. It may take moments to heal, it may take years. It is of little consequence to the nightmare but of course a dreamer who becomes weaker might be worth a return visit. A dreamer who becomes stronger might also be worth a return visit. That would depend on the nightmare.

To behave as a nightmare in the dream world could be the result of a great many things. A soul of a dead person might hold on to existance in the dream whilst their body is dead and gone. In essence feeding as a nightmare does keeps them in the broadest sense 'alive' and from passing on to the other side.

A living person, a dreamwalker could behave as a nightmare. Why would they want to? For power of course. It is a certain kind of person that seeks power over others and such people are the same when dream walking as they are in life. The interloper may not want power though and nightmarish behaviour could always be just to achieve a goal or aim in the dream. Learning nightmare behaviour could of course be the first steps to becoming a true nightmare in the afterlife when a person dies.

A sense of dread or terror is not neccessarily a nightmare it could merely be a manipulation or a means to an end. The Lunatics commonly utlised all manner of emotional states in dreams to gain effect and stimulate lines of thought in a dreamer.

Fighting a Nightmare?

There is no fighting a nightmare. You do not fight in a dream. A dream is a dance when between dreamers and one action is merely a set of steps and movements to which the other will respond.

I step in and you step back,
you step in and I step back.
We both step in and come together,
Both step away and fall apart.
I raise your arm you spin around.
If you don't?
I'll step in and hold you close.
Push me away or hold me back
The moment will never last long
The dance continues
Steps like thoughts
Rolling from one to the next
On and on
Until we wake or drift away.

The terror of a nightmare is merely a step in a dance. A trained dreamer will not get caught up in the emotion of the nightmare. They will see it as it is and form steps around it. This essentially diffuses the power of the nightmare and returns, the fight and agression, of the dream to being a dance.

I have seen a nightmare try and take a young man in his sleep with sheer terror. She lured him with love and emotion and lust and desire and when he came close and she had him in a position of vulnerability she revealed her malevolent and evil nature becoming as a hag to him, holding him in a dire embrace not allowing him to escape.

The boy it seemed was a cunning one and his mind focussed, he embraced her back and without a method to fight her, with her pressed against him, he used his will and pressed his lips against those of the hag. His love shone through her and she became the woman she was in life, fair and beautiful, melted by his charm and affection.

She fed that night on a greater emotion than terror I am sure, though it was not my business, I left them to their dream.

The dream world is a funny place. I have seen mortals bring gods to their knees, gods born and die, the first dreams of a new born child and the last dreams of a senial old man.

Nightmares are a simple thing, predictable at most and in the greater scheme of things, easy. One only needs will and knoledge to handle them.

'Emotion' is the bigger picture in dreams. Negative emotions are cheap. It is easy to forget this when you are wrapped up in them. The emotion of a moment speaks far louder than the image presented.

I admit now that my teachers and mentors are gone, I have realised this and how small I must have appeared to them always caught up on this cheap form of power. Chaos, Worg, the nightmare lunatic, the beast that becomes a beast. They were my balance and now they are gone so it is time to grow up and be all things. There are no phases of Luna now, no new moons and full moons and gibbous moons, there are no blue moons either. There is just the Dreamer and what Luna left behind in me. Lunatics held a piece of her in themselves and so I hold that now I know. It's where I reach to when I sleep but this part of me is a part of me as a part of a parent given to a child becomes the child. Being born of and raised on the bossom of a goddess does not make one that very same god. It makes you, you and through you they live on.

The others hold onto their gods. They pray and insist they are still with us. I know they are gone. Luna is gone like a dead mother. She is but a memory now. Always a dream to me.

The dream world borders on death and things from there seep back into us now and again. Only from the dream can the void be touched but one must be careful, for reaching beyond the dream can mean death or letting something back from there.

Such are true nightmares and that is where they belong.

Nycti's followers, those like Darramar, will tell us so. The dead are dead and that is the way of things. The end is possibly the most important part of a thing and there is no reason to fight the sadness of this. In death comes completion and a life becomes whole. There is honour in such a thing.

Fear not death and nightmares will have no hold on you.

Easier said than done I guess.