.comment-link {margin-left:.6em;}

Fermius Firefly

A Dream Log, whenever I remember the dreams I've had.

My Photo
Name:
Location: San Marcos, United States

Fermius is a pen name drawn from a series of short fiction I wrote when I published the small press magazine Stellanova (on paper.) I play RPG games to escape from my daily grind as a technology wage slave for the state of California. I eat out a lot in order to do my part in supporting our increasingly service level economy. I am butler to 2 feline masters. If you ask them they will tell you I'm not very good at it, late with dinner, don't have enough hands with brushes in them, and sometimes I even lock them out of their office.

Wednesday, December 24, 2008

Plains, Studio, Falling Damage, Forest Flowers

              The first dream of the evening has all ready grown dim in my memory, even the title I thought of to recall it by has vanished. All I remember is low rolling hills covered in a golden shimmering coat of grain, and silvery streams running between them. I was with a group of people and we were mounted on some sort of animal or machine that soared a few feet off the ground at a speed just a little bit faster than a run. We were laughing and chatting, excited to be on our way somewhere for some special event.

              I dreamed I had converted the entire upstairs room into a library/studio. The photo backdrops were on rollers in front of the book cases, for when I didn't want to use the book cases as a backdrop. I had a couple of large digital cameras and a rather wide array of lights and reflectors. My desk was up there as well, the entire surface having been replaced by a large bright touch screen. One wall had several framed photos, and a couple of painting from those photos. LA had done those, I think. There were also a few framed magazine covers as well. I had opened up a skylight in the roof and was having someone use a crane to lower a bunch of potted plants into the studio. A couple of models were walking around in robes, waiting for the clothing lines to go away.

              I dreamed I was playing with a large group of people in a very elaborate setting. There were multiple platforms and the 25 or so of us were fighting the main boss of the dungeon. I was Axelpyre, and was trying to stay out of the way and at my maximum range, as the boss was one of those who randomly charged his attackers before going back to the tanks.
              At a later point in the fight, he became invulnerable, and starts stomping random party members. The raid leader wanted everyone to distribute themselves to the various platforms around the main platform in hopes of keeping him on the main platform with the tanks. I noticed that when he attacked someone who was standing on one of the flower designs, the damage was shared with whoever else was on the flower designs. I asked everyone to jump back down to the main platform and stand on one of the flowers. I jumped first. I managed to pull him off the platform. He fell and I landed, by blinking at the last second. I was hurt, but alive. I started bandaging myself. The rest of the raid hurried to position themselves before the boss could climb his way back up to us. When he got to us he was at about 10%, apparently his immunity didn't apply to falling damage.
              “Make sure to add that to your recount posting,” I whispered the Raid Assistant.
              She sent back a “:P”
              I popped all my defensive buffs and the boss jumped me. Everyone took about 400 damage.
              “It's working, Oh! My gods! It's working!” the raid leader shouted.
              “I wonder if this works even after this phase?” a priest added. (It didn't.)
              The boss attacked a half dozen more times, each time the damage was spread across the raid.
              Soon the boss went back to his normal attack, targeting me. Apparently, the fall damage was on my aggro account. “See you in a few!” I shouted and popped my invisibility. When I reappeared, he was at about two percent and I managed to only get off a half dozen casts before we had him down completely.
              “Maybe we should try that again before Blizzard fixes it.”
              “Are you kidding, that was sheer luck,” I said.
              “Come on, let's at least try it!” came a chorus of voices.
              “OK, Tuesday night, we're on again.”
              I opened a portal for everyone and as they ducked out they each whispered their congratulations, and condolences; the boss hadn't dropped any caster loot.
              About ten minutes into making repairs and putting stuff on the auction house I began to get whispers and invites from people I didn't even know. Apparently one of the raid members had recorded the whole thing, and had already posted it on line.

              In another dream, I found myself walking alone in the forest, it was spring, and the path was covered with tiny green shoots. Vines, covered with flowers, honeysuckle and roses, mostly, crawled along the path and veered left and right into the forest itself. I could make out the remains of a low stone wall on either side of the path, the walls were completely knocked down in some places, in other places there were obvious drain features, and in others gateways, with the gates long rotted off their hinges. On a whim I stepped through one of the gateways and followed a much overgrown path into the forest, there was even a four inch diameter tree growing from in between the cobblestones.
              After a minor tussle with a blackberry bush, I managed to come to what had been the front lawn of a small cottage. The cottage itself was still standing, but covered from top to bottom with flowering vines. I recognized bougainvillea and honeysuckle, there were old porch posts that now looked like tree trunks, they supported a dizzying amount of wisteria. The effect was like looking at a faerie castle instead of an abandoned cottage.
              I walked around the cottage, noting that the windows had been shuttered when it was abandoned, as though someone thought they might be coming back to the place. I listened to the wind rustling the flowers, and found myself thinking that you could almost make out voices. I had just decided to try to make my way inside when the phone rang.
             

Labels: , , , ,

Thursday, December 18, 2008

Playing WoW in My Sleep

        I ran Mauradon with one of my bankers guild mates. Then, once Id fallen asleep I continued to run the darned thing. We go lost, and everything was re-spawning at a horrendous rate. The darned thing seemed to go on forever. Why arent there any sheepable mobs? I found myself wondering. By the time I woke up the morning all I could think of was press 1, then 1, then 2 then 2 then bing, then press alt-2 then 2, then 1, then press 2, then alt-2.

        The game had completely become focused on pressing the two or three keys in the right order, I didnt even know what I was shooting at anymore, nor where we were.

        I woke up, tried to shake it off, but found myself going over the spell rotation and wondering if this is really all the game is to some people, then why do they keep playing?

        I went back to sleep and dreamed: 1, 1, 2, bing, alt-2, 2, 2, 2, 1, bing, alt-2, 2, 2.

Ad astra per technica,

FF

Wednesday, December 17, 2008

Robes of Command

        I dreamed that I had decided to start making my own clothing. Instead of pants and shirts, however, I decided I was going to start wearing robes. Yes, wizard robes, or vestment style robes. I also made tabards with pockets for tools and such. I decided that I was tired of all the current styles, and how uncomfortable they were.

        I wore my first set of red and black robes to work. I was sent out to a site to work on a couple of misbehaving computers in a music lab. There was some sort of event going on at the site.

I had a set of pocketed vestments, like a tabard that I threw on over the top of the robes. I was adjusting the pockets, and enjoying how warm they were when several people rode up on horses and “assassinated” the king.

Somehow I found myself involved in a LARP or Ren-Faire style event. I couldnt convince the people involved that I was just there to fix the computers in the Music room, which was behind the outdoor stage area they were using for their LARP. They decided that I had to be the next in line, because my robes were very rich looking and therefore I MUST be a high ranking member of the clergy.

Right.

How did you select your last King? I asked, sort of knowing that I was setting them up.

Sure enough, they answered that it was divine province, the lady of the lake.

Listen, strange women lying in ponds distributing
swords is no basis for a system of government.
I couldnt resist.

They were not amused.

Really, if I went around claiming I was king because some watery bint lobbed a scimitar at me; theyd lock me away.

No, we wouldnt.

I slipped out my key ring and opened up the music room. Why not beat on one another a bit and let the winner be king. Have fun storming the castle. As the door closed I could hear swords banging on shields.

Ad astra per technica,

FF

Tuesday, December 16, 2008

Helmet Cat Bed, Bag-o-Parts

        I dreamed I was working on a network install in a very Frank Lloyd Wright house. The man who lived there was a famous quarterback from back when I was much younger. He had a great photo of two small red tabby kittens in his football helmet. He brought the cats, now grown up large, like our own seventeen pound monster, and they immediately took a liking to me.

        I played with the cats and we swapped cat stories. I suggested that we could get an oversized helmet from a store display and re-create their kitten-hood a little bit. He immediately got on the phone and made a couple of calls. While I was finishing up  the network configuration of his four laptops, a courier arrived with the store display. I helped make a stand for it that would be somewhat cat proof, and we put one of the cat blankets in the helmet, along with some of the quarterbacks laundry. Soon enough the cats were romping around in the helmet, just like they did when they were kittens. I had my camera so took a batch of photos of them, in the larger helmet. One photo almost exactly matched the one of them as kittens. I downloaded all of the photos to one of the laptops for him.

        The quarter back invited me and N to dinner at his diner on Saturday, so I accepted.

        When N and I got there, he had a spot for us at his table. I had expected wed have our own table and a free dinner, but it was a full on party. The quarterback had the cat pictures wed taken enlarged and hung on the wall back in his club room. Several of the folks at dinner wanted to make arrangements for me to come and take photos of their pets. (Which I scheduled as best as I could.)

        Before the evening was out, we were being introduced as new friends. We felt comfortable with the whole group of people, and despite not being particularly athletic, seemed to fit in just fine.

       

        Later, I dreamed I was at a gaming convention. I had Spare Parts rules on several different colored sheets of 11x17 paper and had a bag of nuts, bolts, knobs, washers and other hardware that I was using as both game counters and miniatures in a scenario I was about to run for the convention. I had a couple of battle mats all rolled out and ready to go. N was hanging out on the side, as well as A and S. They were just there to observe, though, and to take notes. Part of the deal was that the players could only read the one sheet of rules and ask one another about how to play. I was then going to run them through a few encounters with some medium RP while the observers would take notes on how easy or difficult the players found it to get the gaming system. I was pretty nervous about things, but was calmed by the fact that my game testers were finding the nuts and bolts of the miniatures system to be funny and useful at the same time. I let them discover using washers and nuts to mark their character cards for fatigue and damage, and everyone seemed to get the system. A couple of players were overwhelmed by the sheer number of potentially useful skills, and wanted to try them all.

I had foreseen this so had set up a bunch of pre-made characters to run for the first go round. Most of them wanted to customize their characters so I let them trade skill cards around the table as long as they could make the argument from a character standpoint as to why they should have that skill. We then got rolling on a sort of search and rescue mission that I had crafted to allow all of the skills to be used, and to even allow enough use that some of the characters skills would increase during the demonstration. The play testers really liked the skill increases that popped during their first encounter. (At this point the paper character sheets had been replaced by online sheets, the players were using their PDAs or cell phones.) I was periodically taking a shot of the battle mats and uploading them to my game server so the spectators would be able to follow what was going on.

Ad astra per technica,

FF

Monday, December 08, 2008

And Another, and Another...

        I dreamed I went back to a school site, where I was in charge of the Educational Technology Support Office. First period of the first day of school went well, very quiet, only a couple of problems, easily fixed via remote desktop.

        Second period began with a trio of student aids arriving to check in. They had schedules, and I was indeed listed as their instructor. One of my former students popped in, he was the cousin of one of my new pupils. We visited for a bit, when there came a knock on the door. Two more students showed up with their schedules in hand.

        Well, this is starting to look interesting. We may be able to set up a full configuration shop after all. I welcomed my new minions and got them introduced around.

        About the time we were moving some of the furniture, and requesting a couple of new chairs, the door was knocked on again. There were students six and seven, I had a feeling that this wasnt the end of things, so left the door open. Sure enough, soon I had about 30 students standing around outside my rather small office. I checked next door, and discovered that the video production studio was empty during second period, so went and opened that up, just so kids didnt have to stand around outside.

I got them all together, with BA manning my phone for me, and told them what the position was supposed to be like. I then explained that we might find that there wasnt enough work for all of them, so better come prepared to do something else with the time. A few minutes into my talk the transfer students began to come in, the ones who didnt like their previous assignment, or who were new and didnt have an elective on their schedule.

It was obvious that a couple of them were on their third drop in. I sent one over to counseling to let them know that I didnt have a facility for all of these students. I would be happy to keep them, if I could just have a place to stage them from.

When I woke up, I had five of the eight inside cats curled up on my body and legs. I could barely move. It was pretty obvious where the theme for this dream came from.

Ad astra per technica,

FF

Thursday, December 04, 2008

1024x768

        I dreamed the disembodied repetition of multiple screen resolutions: 1440x900, 1600x800, 1200x900, 1024x760, 800x600, 1280x1024, 1600x600, 2560x1024, 2560x2048, etc. Sometimes there was a floating monitor with an image on it that was of those dimensions, (The monitor was some much larger dimensions that I couldnt figure out.) Most of the time just the numbers rumbled across my brain with no other visual or sensory context.

        I woke up, spent several minutes while awake trying to sort the resolutions by actual area.

        Confounded brain, what the heck?

        I went back to sleep.

        It started again and lasted until I got up to go to work.

Ad astra per technica,

FF

Wednesday, December 03, 2008

Warehouse of Former Doom

        I dreamed I was in the city, the dream city that seems to be one of a few consistent locations in my night life. I had been called to investigate a warehouse that had suddenly appeared on a street where it had not been seen before.

        I walked along the street and found a narrow yellow/orange building in what was previously and empty alley way. I stepped up onto the porch, and the world shifted slightly. The warehouse was nearly a half a block long, and sat adjacent to another old broken down looking warehouse. The alley was on the other side of the building. There was a strong space compression field at work here; I wondered how it kept people from piling up on the street out front.

        I opened the door and entered the building. The warehouse was full of shelves, rows upon rows of shelves. I could see a set of offices up some stairs in the back, the windows dark and covered in dust. Everything inside was covered in a layer of dust as well. The interior walls, though dusty, were once a very cheery yellow. There were old incandescent lamps hanging from 15 foot wires spaced evenly about the warehouse.

I found a large knife switch. I blew out as much dust as I could and waited for the cloud to settle out before throwing it. The lamps burst to life, some sputtering and a couple going dark with a loud popping noise. Still, there was now plenty of light. I walked along the rows of shelves, each full of wooden boxes, each box carefully labeled with a number and a short description of the contents.

Anomaly, WWII, Lyons, a date, unreadable due to the dust and a description Skeletal Remains.

I rolled the box out of its place and lifted the lid. There was a human sized skeleton, only it had a tail and the shape of the skull was completely wrong. There were nodules of bone just above the temples. I covered the box and rolled it back into place.

I walked down the row, there were lots of skeletal remains, I randomly opened the boxes. Some of the skeletons were of younger people, most had the nodules of bone and the tail, a few actually had curved bone horns. All of them had a narrow face and a long extended brain case behind the horns. A few of the skeletons showed signs of having bones broken or scarred with some sort of edged weapon.

Another row, and this one from a town a didnt recognize, the boxes contained smooth ovals of metallic materials, they shimmered, even beneath a light coating of dust. There were warnings on the crate, so I didnt touch them, but I could feel the energies in them, looking for some sort of release. I searched for the catalog, and found it locked up in the office. The metallic orbs had been found inside nearly every skeleton, low in the area of the hips, they varied in size very little and weighed far more than seemed reasonable for their volume. The cautions were related to the original team whod been assigned to recover them. Many of the team had come home to the States, and immediately tried to get surgeons to implant the objects in their abdomens. The DOD intervened and confiscated all of the devices, as they called them. Many of the team had to be institutionalized for their own safety, one had even tried to do the surgery themselves, insisting that the orb would heal the wound.

I counted the orbs in the catalog, and the orbs in the warehouse. They were all there, a sign of either immense government restraint, or incompetence, I couldnt really tell. Nothing I found in the place made me think anyone knew it was here. I found a set of shelves dedicated to Foo Fighters and found that it was full of aircraft parts, all of which had odd oval depressions in them, or strange fractal like burn marks. The metals were brittle, and on closer inspection the damaged edges looked crystallized in some fashion. At the end of the row, nearest the wall, was a crate that contained the remains of an actual craft.

The entire craft was about the size of a childs wading pool, no more than 5 foot across. It was made of a crystalline substance, and there were caution stickers all over the crate and the packing materials. The craft had been opened, and stored in two crates. Inside was a form fitting couch, with a place for a tail. I understood why these things were all together, now. There was another crate or two with foo fighter parts, but it looked more like piles of crystal debris. Apparently the scientists of the day had not made any progress, and had suffered a number of injuries and illnesses from handling the remains.

I searched a little bit more, and discovered a crate that contained the remains of a foo fighter pilot. The remains had been preserved in a glass case, and the alien nature of the being could not have been more obvious. It had grayish brown skin, and large eyes, horn stubs protruded from its head. It was slender, and its tail was a narrow bony appendage with a sharp looking spike on the end. The very classic image of an imp or devil.

I surveyed more of the warehouse, but could find nothing that indicated that there was any interest or activity in the place. It was remarkably free from insects, birds or rodents. I could feel the force keeping them out, but it didnt seem to apply to me. In fact, there seemed to be an expectation or sorts involving me. I went back to the crates full of carefully packed orbs, and then I knew that was what I was there for, to recover the orbs, and eventually deliver them.

There were a few dozen of the orbs, when I finally got them all in a single crate on a dolly, the weight was well over my own. I decided to bring my car around to make moving them easier. I wasnt sure how I was going to lift them into the back, but figured I would deal with that once I had the car in the warehouse.

Ad astra per technica,

FF