Black and White Birthday, with Zombie

I was out looking at critters in a pet store, and there were several of my friends with me. We left without me buying anything, as I was concerned about the pool in the back yard (the fish were taking over) and the zombie in the basement. I really didn't have room for pets, and hoped against hope that they weren't thinking of getting me a new pet, as I was having trouble keeping up with the koi in the garden pool. The house wasn't ready for a party either, every horizontal surface was filled up with Lego based game prototypes that needed to be broken down and stored away. After photographing them, I figured, I checked my phone, over 8Gb of memory left, so no problem there. I slipped out of the store and headed home ahead of the crowd, they said they were going to stop somewhere for lunch. I cleared out all the Lego constructs surrounding the pool so that my birthday friends could use the pool area if they wanted. I kept dropping pieces off of the contructs into the pool. I tried fishing out the Lego pieces I'd dropped - a bunch of 1x1 round and cone-shaped bricks in long antennae-like chains, mostly yellow and light blue. (Everything else in the dream seemed to be black and white, mostly.) The fish (Beautiful black spots on white koi) in the pool kept hitting the chains of bricks, knocking them even further apart. After dropping an entire space shuttle model and watching it carreen down the stairs into the basement, bouncing and knocking bits off as it tumbled from step to step. I decided to head down there and deal with the basement zombie so that my guests would have some place to gather. The zombie, wearing a black and white checked clown outfit, would stop attacking if someone agreed to play a card game with him. It was a collectable cardgame sort of thing, and he had the two decks already made up. As long as thew game was in progress, the zombie wouldn't bother anyone. If you lost your game against the zombie, he would eat you, of course. I started the game, then left to finish cleaning up the dropped Legos. As I was taking the Legos back upstairs to my room, I was a little worried about leaving the game table after my turn, but figured the zombie would just have to wait. I heard the house manager saying my guests were arriving and they offered to usher them into my room - which I knew was way to small for everyone. I explained the issue, and as I came back from dumping a few pounds of Legos in various states of contruction, or destruction, into my room, I realized I wasn't even going to have room for me in there. I could only barely make out the fact that I had a black an white checked bedspread and pillow shams. The zebra patterned rug on the floor was barely visible between the desk, printer stand, office chair, file cabinets, book cases, piles of Lego and paper models and my bed. I sighed, wondering how it had gotten all so crowded. I shouted down to the house manager to ask my guests to wait in the frontroom until I could get the fish out of the pond and the Zombie settled. I was a bit worried about the zombie, as I was pretty sure he cheated. I found a couple of decks I'd made up myself many years ago and decided to bring them down. Maybe we could get him to play a four-hand game and that way he couldn't cheat by rearranging my deck. A part of my brain realized that the Zombie had picked the cards for the second player'd deck, so probably didn't even need to rearrange the draw pile. Heading back down the stairs, I discovered that my friends had brought me two black and white kittens from the pet store, they were adorable, and friendly. Also, a black and white puppy (looked like an English Bulldog, too cute) two guinea pigs (also black and white in their little white cage with a black exercise wheel) and a small very musical voiced black and white bird. I protested that I not only didn't have enough room for all of them, but I had no kitty litter, training pads, cat, dog, rodent or bird food for them either. They didn't seem to care about that, and started taking the cages downstairs into the basement. I hoped the zombie was fully engrossed in our game and wouldn't be a problem. The uncaged critters stayed in the front room, playing on the black futon. The little black and white bird fluttered up to my shoulder and sang a cute little song in my ear as I went down to face the zombie, and all of my guests, not sure which I was more frightened of at that point.

Crimson Bullfinches

Several dreams last night, one where I fell again, and this time scraped up my knee as well as twisted my ankle and banged up a hip. But the worst part was that I tore holes in my favorite pair of pants.

The last dream this morning found me in my VR rig at the office, logged into Steam Trunk with my non-development character trying to replicate a teleportation game bug that had been reported, but we were unable to reproduce it with the development accounts. (Probably because they had a different teleport/instance tracking system.)

I was playing in a high mob intensity area, working on a king of the mountain scenario, one of the slightly more common reported trigger areas, when I overlapped the bounding box of an "Extra Large" wolf mob. The sanity teleport kicked in. Then all the teleportation gizmos in my inventory, one after another, began to fire. I was suddenly at the bottom of the hill, then on the edge of some violet and blue cliffs, about seventy clicks away (one of my "vacation" teleports had fired.) Then to a sandy beach, then to a portrait mobile device view of the minimalist map (low bandwidth, icon based for mobile devices) then several others, including the holding area for one of the more popular team sport gauntlet arenas. When I appeared there, I was also in my Crimson Bullfinch uniform, so at least the uniform widget part of that teleport charm was working along with the teleport. The uniform was a sort of padded striped looking armor with a catching mitt on one manipulator and a ranged thrower on the other. I also had the wide angle /medium range helmet. I could see the top down gauntlet overlay showing a match in progress. I noted that both teams were advancing off center from each other in a four by four square, and had passed one another, but just before the match turned into a straight race the cowboy hats at the top of the leftmost square snared the top four of the opposing team and then their strikers opened up, knocking the other team's cargo tokens willy-nilly across the narrow field of play. A sneaky maneuver well executed. As I blinked away from that location I got a message from another player complimenting me on the outfit, and asking what color it was. The last couple of teleport gizmos fired and I was left sitting on the top of a stepped pyramid overlooking a jungle. I made a note that the text communication overlay needed to be improved in the VR interface.

Before debriefing with the debug team I searched back through the messages to respond to the player who asked about my gear. I explained that it was my "Gauntlet" scout/striker uniform, and the team colors were dusky maroon with black pinstripes.

Then I went back to the VR to try to figure out, with the bug fix team, where the heck I ended up, and how the bug had fired not only the usual teleport gizmos I had in my inventory, but even the unopened charms in my mystery loot trunk. The Mystery loot charms weren't even supposed to be generated until they were opened. I looked in the "Mysteries Trunk." All of the items were still there, and all indicated that they were still unopened.

The detail on the "Gauntlet" map was amazing. Also, I seemed to know that Gauntlet Matches were played in teams of Two, Four, Eight, Twelve or Sixteen. The Crimson Bullfinches fielded all of the team sizes. In the top down map, each player was indicated by a top down view of their headgear with their number below it and their cargo token in the center (if it hadn't been displaced yet.) Little icons next to them showed what type of manipulator they had and if your range and sensitivity were enough, you could see active charms by zooming in. The Crimson Bullfinches B-Team was one of the open teams used for pickup games, their uniforms were white with maroon pinstripes. Don't know why my brain thought it was important that I knew that.

Working on a Game in My Sleep

I dreamed that I had just gotten a set of plastic pawns, men and women in business suits. They were for a game which I was playtesting with a couple of close friends. There was a board, laid out with abstract representations of several areas. Each color team had several pawns: two tall (Partners) two medium (Detectives/Experts?) and six short (Interns/Paralegals). The purpose of the game was to exonerate your defendant, or validate your plaintiff. The cases were in the form of cards, which were double-sided and the game's mechanisms, how you used your pawns, determined in the "Courtroom" which side of the card was placed face up in the Jury Box. The other mechanisms were based on hand-size mechanics, with the Partners being able to fill their brief case and carry a portfolio (Some cards could be in one or the other or both.) The medium pawns could carry one of either a briefcase or an evidence box. The small pawns could carry either a folder, or an evidence box.

Playing the game itself was a little murky in the dream as the dream focused mostly on the miniatures and how cool and detailed the sculpture was. I was very happy with the shipment, and only wished it had not taken two months to arrive, as there were backers chomping at the bit to get a hold of them. I already had the boards and first eight card decks for release. S was there when the pawns arrived and was eager for me to take photographs of them so he could use them as art in the online version of the game he'd programmed and I'd made available for my earliest supporters.

L said she thought the backers would be delighted when their games arrived, as the pawns were certainly worth the wait.

Olympic Flyers, Musical, Mutants

Three distinct dream events last night.

In the first, I was in KPFM watching a new team Olympic sport, Synchronized Triple Jump, Swim, and Gymnastics Tumbling, which we didn't get to see before the dream ended. My friends and I had a center booth along the wall separating the upper and lower level, we had a great view of the main TV screen. We were following the progress of a double's team from China and the USA. Each had lost their partners just before the competition started, and the Olympic committee agreed to allow them to compete at partners, if their countries agreed. Since neither of them were the favorites in their previous teams, both countries coaches agreed. The had caught the imagination of the entire crowd, however, when they took a chance during the synchronized swim competition.They turned in a beautiful performance that included a one minute section near the beginning of them each going through their previous routine, modified slightly so that it became more and more in synchronization until they finished in nearly perfect synchronization. They stunned the crowd by coming in the top five (and would have been the top three if not for the marks of the Russian Judge...classic bit of history there.) At that time there were still two more events to go. The station we were watching replayed the swim event at least three times while the Triple Jump competitors were running through their paces. It was in the picture in picture box next to the performances of the other Teams as they went through the synchronized hop, skip and jump of the triple jump. There wasn't as much artistic interpretation in this event, but the pairs got an artistic mark, as well as a straight score for their distance rankings. I wasn't sure exactly how balanced that was, but no one expected a world record women's triple jump record out of these athletes. They should have. The mixed team arrived and both had chosen to wear their hair down. The Chinese athlete had trimmed her formerly long hair to match her partner's length, and they had plaited a strand between them. The walked in with their inside arms entwined, and this meant that they had to perform the triple jump by running in mirror image form. (Admittedly some of the previous teams had also done that.)

They ran, they hopped, skipped and jumped, but their jump saw them windmilling their legs in tandem, almost as if they were tied together for a three-legged race, and they just didn't come down. Literally, they kept moving all the way into the observing crowd, who parted for them, and beyond, across the track, and into the most expensive seats in the stadium, where they made it almost to the back row. The crowd sat stunned. One man with long hair and a kilt stood up in the back row and applauded. Every in our group thought it was our friend MS, but I pointed out that this fellow was much shorter and rounder than MS. (MS was there, though.) It took a couple of moments, but the rest of the crowd, including everyone in the restaurant joined in. As the camera panned around the crowd, we spotted our friend and his wife in the second tier seats with other NG employees.

I was coming out of the dream, because the break with the laws of physics was a bit too much, but we soon got a text from MS saying he'd witnessed a miracle and we should turn on the Olympics. The dream dissolved before any of us could respond, though.

_____

In the second dream of the night, I was at a musical performance, wish I could say now what it was about. I was watching the show for the third or fourth time, as a friend of mine was in the show, and I'd managed to make friends with several of the other cast members as well. There was a lot of audience participation throughout the show, and during the intermission the players chose an audience member to come up and sing a song at the beginning of the second act. The person chosen was a little nervous, but she did a great job. After the show, the pianist stayed behind to allow anyone to come up on stage and sing songs from the show. I really enjoyed this after-show, as there are a lot of talented singers out there. I was also waiting for my friend, as I was her ride to dinner with some of the cast and then home afterward. When she came out she insisted that I go up and sing with her. I tried to warn her about my voice (which is a-tonal) but she and her show-mates insisted, so I did. I asked for the mike with the auto-tune (which they didn't have) and that made everyone laugh, but after I sang they decided that might not be a bad idea. My friend said she loved me anyway, she did so in a way that made it clear that wasn't in a "just good friends" way. I was pondering the implications when I awoke.

_____

The third dream was more of a roiling mass of partially clothed madness, it was some sort of overly stuffed pool party and the guests all had multiple extra limbs, protuberances and depressions. I was the only non-mutant looking person there, so some wondered why I had been invited. (Indeed, I did, too, at first.) The party started to go into a decidedly clothing optional direction, which I'm not so sure was a good thing, given how we all were apportioned. It was at that point that I discovered that I was a mutant, too. My legs looked like they had two knees each, and they bent the wrong way back when I crouched. (Short thighs and long feet.)

Diablo IIID, All Downhill

My first dream (that I can remember) started with me waking up to the "You've died" sound in my headphones. I had nodded off while playing the new Diablo IIID game and my hardcore barbarian/ninja (class mixing was now a thing, apparently) had just been killed. Except what I was seeing wasn't the normal death screen, the center was periodically lightening and opening up and I could hear the chanting of my character's name, "Imhotep, Imhotep, Imhotep, wake up, wake up, breathe, time is running out..."

Sure enough, there was a timer down in the life orb, ticking down from 13 seconds. I reached for the controls, struggling to see what was happening to the red misty "death haze" it didn't look good, I was surrounded and the beasts were still milling about hammering on my ancients, who were going to return to their afterlife in just a few seconds. I didn't remember summoning them, but figured I must be wearing an item that did that, and saved me. I looked at the timer bars on my skills, there was only really one chance, jump over the ravine I'd parked myself at, because it looked like a safe place to take a breather. I just had to survive long enough to get my heroic leap charged up then I should be able to jump away.

The timer hit zero, just after the Ancients vanished. My health rocketed up to 50%, then immediately began falling. I tried to move out of the bad stuff, but I was immediately hemmed in. I switched over to an area of effect melee attack, just for the life steal, it helped, but not enough. The jump skill button lit, and I flicked my cursor over to the shelf on the other side of the ravine, hoping against hope that the rift was jumpable, and not the actual edge of the map.

I jumped out of the mass of attackers, and sailed across the ravine. I gulped down a healing potion and moved as far away from the milling mass as I could. Several of them broke off and flew across the gap, chasing me. At least now it was only four on one and not twelve on one. I discovered that there was a cliff face half a screen away from the ravine, and that was the edge of the map. There was, also a group of about thirty mobs, not elite, fortunately, but so many that I was going to find myself unable to move again if I wasn't careful. I looked at the timer on my Ancients, and realized that if I jumped into the middle of the mobs, I could probably fight long enough for them to act as sort of a meat shield, assuming the flying beasts had to land to attack me, which they did. A few hits and I was down a third of my life. I jumped away into the middle of the regular mobs, and the elite critters bunched up outside the edge of the mobs, apparently not able to launch and land in the midst of the mobs like I could. Lucky break for me. I switched over to single target attacking, only using the AOE when my health dropped down to fifty percent or so. Every time I used the AOE, a ring of mobs would die, and the dangerous ones would grow closer. I felt like I actually had a chance to make it.

All Downhill

This morning's dream (after getting up at the first hint of light to rattle the cats' food around in their bowls) I was more a silent incorporeal observer, though the woman did seem aware of my presence as she was talking to me much of the time. She was dressed for adventure, heavy pants and shirt, lots of pockets, a thin pack on her back and a pair of shoulder satchels, though I'm pretty sure one of them was essentially a purse, just adventure grade. She was also wearing a pith helmet, covered in the same heavy material. Her long dark brown hair was tied back and mostly trapped under her pack. She had a survival knife, which she was using to stop herself from sliding too far.

We were apparently lost.

We had spotted flowing water at the bottom of a steep slope, and rather than follow the edge of the slope, and looking for an easier way down, the woman had decided that she wanted to refill her canteens, and get cleaned up now. So, she immediately began climbing down the slope. I tried to keep her from anything that was really cliff-like, but since I was incorporeal, I really couldn't know how slippery some of the soil was, nor how sturdy the vines were that she was using to climb down. At a couple of points she used a rope looped through a root to lower herself twenty feet or so, then would pull the rope loose and coil it back up in the big pocket on the side of her pack. When we got within about sixty feet of the water, I flew out to see what it looked like.

There was steam coming off of it in places, and there were some pretty big crocodiles lounging down stream. Nothing near the steam vents, though. I tried to get the information to the woman, but couldn't actually communicate to her, so was forced to fly close and then away towards the safer choice whenever she moved towards the crocodiles. She moved her climb to come out at the edge of the water across from a fumarole. She did stop and look, as I placed myself at the edge of the shore and bounced up and down, and she slipped back into the brush quietly when she saw the crocodiles. There were lots of little animal skeletons there, but no sign that the big crocodiles came this close to the hot water. She moved upstream a bit and the water was actually cold, downstream, the water had an odd smell and was nearly boiling (we could see it boiling further out in several placed in the middle of the stream.) She decided to fill her canteens and take a bath in the cold water. She waded in fully clothed, unfortunately. I did notice a lot of dirt came off of her and out of her clothing. I circled around and up the slopes on either side of the stream. There didn't seem to be, with the sixty foot radius I could travel, to be a very clear path out of here, and following the stream down past the crocodiles didn't look like a very good option. I didn't find any signs of the crocodiles upstream as far as I could see.

Guest Announcer

I arrived at the stadium and was met by a smartly dressed woman (in blue and gold) and given a quick tour of the new facility. It still had the open breezeway's between levels and the centralized staircase pillars, two per side and one on the north end of the field. The concrete floors had been tiled over with an industrial beige textured material, and the metal safety rails and fences were painted bright red (not the electric blue like I was expecting.) The other end of the field had the Giant Display, which was currently showing the view of the bay from the camera on top of the screen. The sun was just heading into a low marine cloud bank, but the sky above the bay was bright and clear and reflecting off the glassy smooth waters of the bay. A large sailboat slipped through the water it's wake rolling silently away. It would be a great advertisement for the city, I thought.

We made our way to the announcer's booth, the local booth was open but under a long overhang, so no matter the weather, it would be comfortable. There were closed broadcaster's booths a couple to either side and there was a green room across the open breezeway, tucked between the bar and the souvenir shop. When I got to the booth, the people there greeted me, and handed me the Blue blazer with the bolt on the back and lapels. It complemented my Jelly-fish shirt quite well. I was also handed a baseball cap with the team's logo, but I was wearing a knit cap with the logo already, so I just set it on the desk, taking it out of the bag and making sure the logo was facing the camera pole outside the booth. Instead of the teleprompter, they had a long glossy paper scroll for me to read from. A memento of the occasion.

I sat down at the mic and we did a mic check, I read through the script, which they recorded (in case I would freeze up.) As the script started to make no sense, I realized I was dreaming and deliberately looked away from it, focusing on the people on the field getting it ready for the game and the stands. It worked, I drifted deeper into the dream. The stands filled, I was having fun watching the closeups of the folks on the large screen, especially as the people I'd invited started showing up. There were a lot more of them than I thought there would be. (The team assured me that my section would be full, no matter how many of my friends and former co-workers showed up, or didn't show up. I was a little sad that the team still had to give tickets away to fill up the stands. Well, after several minutes, it looked like they were opening up the overflow reserved "buffer seats" on either side of my section as we got closer to the opening of the game, so I guess I shouldn't have worried. It seemed like I pretty much recognized everyone, or at least one or two members of each of the larger family groups.

I got the queue and launched into my announcements. Just like practice, I added in some of my own comments, which garnered some laughs and even applause. After the National anthem the regular announcer introduced me as the former voice of PUSD's Help Desk, and said I would be staying on for the rest of the game. That was a surprise. I did, even taking turns reading the "color" statistics from the second teleprompter. About a third of the way into the first half, the producer handed us a note. One of the car dealerships had asked if it would be okay if I read their ad instead of the owner. There was a number written on the paper. I asked what that was. "Your pay, if you want to do it."

I said sure, a couple of hundred bucks would come in handy. I did all of the announcements during the half time show so the regular announcer could take a break. Then I took a break. While we were reading the car commercial, they put the three of us up on the large screen. By this time I was fully aware that I was dreaming, so was milking the experience for everything it was worth.

Woke up refreshed and happy, such a fun dream.

Reset

I dreamed that whenever I reset my game, Giles went from the cat bucket on the foot of the bed, to standing next to the trash can in the garage. The only way I knew that is that he would give out the same little "Where'd everybody go?" meow each time. I was going to write the game publisher about the glitch, but then wondered if that sort of thing was actually covered. It seems that whenever I restarted this particular game, no matter when I restarted it, I went back in time to the last time I started playing. I realized that I had quite the thing here, if only I could remember anything that had happened outside of the game session.

Most Amazing Game Ever, Carrying the Baggage

I woke from a great dream about the greatest tabletop game, ever. I was certain that the game would rocket my game publishing from nearly obscure niche market to "get one in every department store, and bookstore as well as your FLGS" status.

I woke up telling myself that I would write it down as soon as I woke.

Then I went back to sleep, certain that all my future financial woes would be well taken care of....

The second dream I had found J and I at some sort of convention center together. We weren't actually attending the same event. I was presenting SP Online, and had my presentation notes in a binder with a thumbnail of each slide and video as well as my speaker notes, and places, more importantly, to take notes based on the audience reactions. I wondered why I had a binder instead of a tablet, but when I was showing the binder to someone in the halls, I pulled out a page and held it up to the light. The little images of the slides were transparent, like old 2x2 slides, and they were also animated. Very cool tech.

J and I met outside her big presentation room. I had my display storage box there, with mostly her bags and notes from her sessions in it. I managed to squeeze in my binder, but couldn't find room for my stand up, so gently rolled it into its case and tied it to the handle of the box. Closed, the box was a little over a foot square and about five feet long, so a little awkward to carry because of its size, and now, weight. Fortunately I had attached a set of small latches on one end, so I could latch the closed case to a plant caster. I had painted it black as well, so if you didn't look too close, it looked like it was part of the case.

J had one last seminar to go to, so I walked her to her seminar, and then slipped down to the car to drop off the case. I had just locked the car when J called, she needed something from inside the case.

I unloaded everything and finally made a video call so she could tell me where, in the case, the item was. Turned out it was in her purse, she'd found it when she'd put her phone back.

I put everything away and ran back up to catch the last part of a design panel before I had to go to the next panel I was speaking on.

When I woke from this dream, which was one of my hyper real seeming dreams, I realized it was so intense that I had completely forgotten what my earlier "life changing" game idea was.

Water Damage, Virtual Damage

I dreamed profusely, but only remember two little snippets. The first was being pushed into the water at a lake. I got out quickly, but my medicine bag was wet. I quickly dumped the contents, but wasn't able to prevent the water from getting into the pill box. I didn't care about the Benadryl as I had a sealed bottle in my car, but the sildenafil I didn't want to go to waste, as they were the only one's I'd brought on the trip. I scooped them out before they were just mush and was going to take them.

"You can't take those NOW!"

"The effects last a while, we'll be back to our cabin in a couple of hours."

It was a pretty funny moment.

-----

Just before waking I was playing a video game. The game was a sort of World of Warcraft and Defiance mash up with a little bit of Diablo III or Torchlight thrown in. There was the steam punk sort of vibe mixed with the gun show and over the top magic effects all thrown in. Characters could be "pure" or mixed, and the system seemed pretty balanced except for certain challenges. I was showing one of those challenges to J. A mission where you cleared out a cave and defeated the boss, but when you went to leave, there were nearly a hundred regular mobs outside, rushing the cave. If you didn't have an Area of Effect spell or ability, it was very difficult to get out. I showed her with a Magic using sort with big AoE spells, and it was easy to let the enemies bunch up and then blow them up, retreat, and repeat until you got out.

I then showed what it was like for a non-AoE character. I had beaten the boss, then was showing how you had to lure the bad guys in and then lead them through the tunnels to thin them out so you could take them on one or two at a time. As the first bunch approached the entry to the cave, I suddenly saw the flash of a green/gold enchanted blade sweep through my character from behind, killing him in one shot. I sat, stupefied, looking at the creature with the golden glowing name over its head, it was doing a victory dance on my corpse. J was asking "what's wrong, can't you just start over?" I'd done this mission a couple of dozen times, and something like that had never happened.

A rare champion creature had spawned, without notice, right behind me in the entrance. I hadn't even had the chance to notice it was there before it struck. The game popped out to the "Your Deeds of Valor will be Remembered" screen, where it displayed the one hundred forty plus hours and all of his gear as well as naming the mob that had killed me (a golden named unique creature.) This particular character was a "hard core" character, and his death was final, no restarting, except to restart from nothing and build back up again.

"Ah, Sweetie, I'm going to need a moment..."

Druid Civilization Game

I dreamed that about a dozen couples had gotten together for a long gaming weekend in a secluded park area. There was one main cabin, with lofts and four full bedrooms, so a couple of couples would have to share the pull outs in front of the large fireplace in the sunken living room. We got ourselves settled in and I retrieved a card game. It was a civilization building game, that had a Celtic or Druid centric theme.

The goal of the game was to build a series of villages and then to link them up in a way that made them, as a whole, self sufficient. The world you played in was different every game, as there were cards that determined the layout of the world you had to settle. It was a competitive/cooperative game, as there were certain thresholds that needed to be met by all the players in order to survive the sorts of catastrophe's that might be pulled up out of the deck. We played a round, then everyone went outside to enjoy the woods and the various rocky hillsides nearby. As we were exploring the area, several of the people pointed out that the layout of the rocks and hills and cabin and little stand of woods was very much like our game. We decided to play a live action version of the game so broke up into teams of four. One team took the stand of woods near the house, another a nearby hill, and our team took the stand of rocks and the rocky caves in them about three hundred yards from the house and hills.

We used our cell phones to show the other teams the challenge cards, and ran back to the house to get new hands when needed. The first game went pretty well. So well we decided to do a second game, even though it was coming up on sunset. When everyone got back to the house, I collected up the cards to shuffle them up and redistribute them. I dropped them into one of my bags accidentally, and we started to gather them back up. Multiple hands in a tupperware tub at the bottom of a small bag made the process far more difficult than if I'd been allowed to do the task alone.

Sunset was rather faster than we anticipated, so we ended up working from flashlights. The cards had swollen up in the humid air, and the stack seemed to be nearly twice the size it was earlier. Fog started rolling in, and the group decided that we were hungry. I noted that there was a nice fire pit near the stand of rocks we'd taken as our village in the previous game, so we agreed to gather there and heat up dinner over an open fire. I decided that sitting around an open fire with greasy fingers wouldn't be good for a card game, so started packing the game up. The swollen cards wouldn't fit back in the box. I ended up taking my breakfast cereal out of its bag and using that to hold the box and all the extra cards. I agreed that we might need to find a different printer to make the next set of cards.

I remember next to nothing about the actual play of the game, other than the cards controlled resources, messengers, and challenges. The number of cards in your hand was based on the population of your village. In the live game, the players took the messenger and resource cards from group to group across the actual countryside. (Which is why we decided not to play after sunset.)

Game Bunnies

I dreamed that I was showing several of my games at a convention, and I had employed several attractive and friendly game "bunnies" (of both genders) to manage our demonstrations. At one point J and I returned to our rooms in the evening, and when I opened the door, my "bunnies" were mating like, well, bunnies. I quietly closed the door and told J that we might want to make more noise coming up to the rooms so they had time to get to their bedrooms instead of bouncing all over the living room of our suite.

Courthouses and Castles

Two great tastes...

The new RPG from...

Interesting evening last night. There were many and varied dreams but two of them had a bit of plot to them, and stick with me, even after a full day of work.

In the first of the two, I was at work, plugging away at sending out emails telling folks they forgot to push the "Publish" button on their sites, when one of my co- workers came down from upstairs with a couple of huge envelopes. Each one looked like a US Post prepaid envelope, but stuffed with what had to be a full ream of papers each. It was obvious that they had been opened and the pages rifled through, then put back, but. like many things, they didn't quite fit properly. Both envelopes were from the District Court and both had instructions that I was supposed to read the material and appear at the appointed time if I wanted to be present for the arguments of the cases. The nearest date was for half an hour from the time they landed on my desk, but at least there was a week before the next date. I showed them to my boss and ran out to the car, one ragged and inexpertly taped together envelope under each arm.

When I got to the court, the judge was standing by our president and attorney. She looked at me as I rushed in asking "Why are you late, sir?"

"I got these..." I set the envelopes down and pulled out my phone, "Forty six minutes ago."

"Well, you missed it, then."

"That was fast."

Our attorney explained that the other side had offered to settle, stipulating that everything we'd claimed was true, but not, somehow, admitting any malice in the events as detailed. I wasn't sure that was going to play so well for them, as it only left incompetence and stupidity to blame, not altogether a better characterization of them. (In the dream I knew what all this was about, but I can't remember now.)

The judge wanted to know more about my envelopes, and if I had received them in the condition they were in now. She then indicated that they hadn't gone out of her office like that, and had been sent over thirty days ago. She called her administrative assistant and they verified the return receipt had been sent back, three days after they had been mailed. It was my name on the receipt, but most certainly not my signature. I even pulled out my driver's license so they could compare them. The judge didn't look very happy about that, and gathered up her bailiff and assistant for a quick consultation. The bailiff left the courtroom at a run, talking into his radio.

Our attorney was smiling a very satisfied looking smile as the judge and her assistant vanished back into her chambers. "So, do you think they photocopied the whole thing?"

I shrugged, "I don't know why they would, wouldn't they have a full copy of everything, too?"

"Their attorney's would."

"So why wouldn't they get copies from them?"

Maybe it was someone who wasn't supposed to have them. I looked at him, thinking 'how was that even possible,' when he pulled out a document that was an order from the court not to discuss the contents with any outside of the governing board and our attorneys.

"Oh..."

The bailiff instructed the attorneys, who'd apparently not made it out of the building to sit back down, when they looked over and saw me, and my ragged envelopes they just rolled their eyes and both of them started calling people on their cell phones. I thought that was interesting, as they clearly weren't expecting to see me here.


In the following dream, it was another one of those where I was involved in playing a game, but somehow it was also happening at the same time. Sometimes I was traveling on my little brown pony through a deep, dark forest, and sometimes I was standing over a very detailed map, looking at a yellow meeple on a brown Lego horse. J and several others were at the keep as we adventurous few loaded up our supplies and mounted our mounts, my chocolate brown pony, TC on a white draft horse, like an albino Clydesdale, and our third member, whose identity kept changing, on a Dorse or Chocobo like critter. (The miniature for it was a keyfob, I think.)

We left the keep, waving goodbye to our companions and set out for the Castle of Perilous Perils on the the other side of the Mostly Impassible Forest. The dice were with us as we traveled through the forest, nothing of note was encountered, and finding myself the smallest of the group, no more than a meter tall at best, I was disinclined to go looking for trouble. During the forest travel the dream had shifted into the first person mode, so by the time we arrived at the Castle of Perilous Perils, we were dirty and smelled a great deal like our mounts and oiled leather mixed with week old Cheerios. In other words, not pleasant. As we rode directly up to the gates of the first tower, I offered to scout around the perimeter of the castle. Oddly enough, the castle was entirely made up of the one tower, and the scouting trip was so short that each of my companions repeated the journey, just to make sure I wasn't playing some sort of practical joke on them.

We considered for a moment that we weren't in the right place, I mean, a tower is not a castle, and a castle couldn't really be just a tower, right?

The game master, frustrated that we might just go merrily on past this place blurted out that the castle was mostly underground, then fudged up some knowledge rolls to say that I knew that. And so, suddenly back in the first person view, I said, "hey, I remember that most of the castle is underground."

My companions seemed completely unaware of the GM interaction and we dismounted to check the door for traps and to see if I could pick the lock. I had to remount to do that. Once inside there was a quick encounter with a couple of ghouls, each with a burlap sack full of limbs and mildly interesting loot. I peeked out of the entry room, and suddenly had a quick flashback of another adventure, the rooms to the right, I remembered, had been full of creatures well above our ability to handle, and the left had been nearly an empty and straight shot to the widget we needed. I asked my companions to hush and wait while I snuck out into the hall. I looked down the cooridoor to the right, more ghouls, and something in the distance flitted between the corbled walkways in flickering torch light. I could hear the clanking of metal on metal and deduced that there were many heavily armed and armored foes in that direction.

I looked to the left. The halls were pitch black, I waited for my eyes to adjust, I could just make out a sort of dim outline, empty halls, nearly a mirror image of the halls full of enemies opposite.

I reported what I had seen and we decided to head left. I think I am the only one who heard the disappointed sigh. We found a largish room down the ramp that could be barred shut, and the shifting character and myself barred ourselves off from the rest of the dungeon, er, castle, while TC took a heavy crossbow and a large shield and struck out based on a sketch I'd done to see if there was a path to our objective. I warned that it wasn't a good idea to split up the party, but TC promised that he would run back at the first sign of trouble.

We waited a bit, then I got fidgety and went outside to bring our mounts into the tower...castle. I used all of TC's extra shirts and pants to tie makeshift pads to all of the animals' feet. Stopping to admire my handiwork, and picture how TC would look when he found out, I listened intently to see if the coast was clear. As I did so, I stooped low around the corner to see what the critters on the right side of the corridor were doing. The ghouls were munching on whatever was in their sack lunches, and the armored patrols were patrolling further along. They'd obviously seen and heard nothing.

The four of us snuck back into the barred chamber. SCV (currently playing our third adventurer) asking how I managed to get past the bars. I just shrugged and carefully took off the rags, folding them neatly and putting them back in TC's saddle bags just as he came puffing back into the room.

"I got it, the McGuffin of Enormous Worth, let's get.... How did our horses get here?"

I grinned.

"Well, good, I might have angered a small mob back there." Sure enough, I could hear voices shouting in the hallways in the distance.

We mounted up and raced out of the basement...castle. I was falling further and further behind, my pony being significantly less long-legged than the others' mounts. I waited until the pack was on my heals and then shot down a side path, hoping they would follow me and allow the McGuffin to be ensconced in its receptacle and thus solve the problem of the un-dead once and for all. By this time, however, the GM had begun tossing dice into the "shame" pool, skipping over the penalty box entirely. So he declared that they "didn't even see your diminutive form on the tiny pony" and raced after the group.

I stopped, and turned around, where I then began thinning the mob out one at a time from the rear with my Wand of Wondrous Webbing.

Even in the first person mode, I was sure I heard swearing and laughter coming from the sky. J's giggle was clearly audible.

Now that was a fun dream. I loved how even in first person mode, I could sometimes make out the grid lines on the forest floor or in the Castle. If virtual reality were like that, I don't know that I would ever want to leave.

Battle Hardened Veterans

I dreamed I was playing a table top game using  rules I created. War Hammer style orcs (Battle Hardened Veterans - 10 each squad) and an alien menace, played by TC, comprised of rubber BEMs from local vending machines. The orc miniatures were each identical in stats, but his force was individualized down to every item on every squad member. I remember I had done this to test the real-time duration of the game, could you have a miniatures game that took place in just two to three hours using my rules?

We set the game up on my tall table, and pulled it out into the center of the front room so people could stand at the table and watch the game.

Too Much Diablo IV

Been playing a lot of Diablo III, so it really isn't a surprise that there would be a Diablo IV dream, the VR version of the game. Nice lightweight headset and gloves made up the VR rig. There was only a little noticeable delay - but only on character movements, the backgrounds were rock solid for the head tracking. There were some polygon lighting oddities but overall it looked pretty darned good. The camera position was fixed and the game itself was still pretty much the isometric view we're used to, but closer and thus more immersive. There was, oddly, still no first person view. The game controls involved hand movements and finger gestures or touches. The gloves had the pressure points in them, and the item you held in your hand was just there to provide some weight and resistance.

Cool game play, and this time the game was focused on less world shattering fare, recovering reputations for your DIII companions, finding lost relatives, freeing imprisoned sisters, and going up against a corrupted order of Paladins intent on storming the High Heavens and taking control from the Angels, some of whom have been less than supportive of humanities newfound importance. In other words, it carried on right from DIII's middle stories. The one thing I found missing was going after Chen's jewel, (to be fair I haven't played the new acts and it may be covered there....)

In the dream I worked up quite the sweat swinging around and attacking things with spells and weapons both. There was a lot of voice chatter from other players, and that was disorienting, as the sound wasn't as well coordinated as the video for some reason. I was using five pound weights as my resistance grips, which made for a pretty aerobic game session. I was not completely blown away by the graphics, but they were certainly well done, with lots of variety that helped make each location stand out in a way that made navigation without the map possible for some of us, anyway, a couple of my companions kept asking me to drop a flag so they could find the rest of the group. (In real life that would more likely be me, I always seem to be the slowpoke in the MMOs I play.)

Where the game design really shone was in the Special Effects, amazing fire and smoke as well as other elemental effects. Also, Combat Engineers! Yes! I was able to build Golems, like the old Necromancer, beef up peoples' weapons and armor, make barricades, bridges and weapons of mass destruction- bombs and traps ala Demon Hunter. There was also stealth, and rapid transit (Zip lines! Hooty hoo!) I was a happy camper. (Note to Blizzard - you can completely steal the Combat Engineer idea, and I'll still gladly pay you to play it!)

Why is it Raining in Here?

Seriously, what's with the rain, inside a video game, that takes place indoors. The dream would have been quite interesting if it could have continued, but my brain just wouldn't go along with the whole "it's raining inside" thing. The only bits of the dream I really remember other than the dark blues and blacks of the walls and the reddish brown color of the floor tiles is the stupid interior rain. Interesting lighting, too, coming as it was from the eastern windows set in long rows of slender tall paned windows with a pointed arch at the top. I can't remember the name of the shape now, but imagine the inside area of a wish-bone. None of the windows had curtains, but there was a thick layer of dirt and cobwebs that almost made it seem like there were curtains.

Despite the rain, the floors didn't look wet. That was a puzzler, too. I have no idea what the plot, theme, or genre of the game even was, though I am sure I knew it in the dream.

Un-Handy-Wipe, Broken Stat Display

In the first dream offering of the evening, I was trying to clean up after my slightly incontinent cat, who I still don't have the identity of, so there are still six suspects. To aid my "quest" I had purchased a new type of Handi-Wipe. I took the first one out of the bag, and it was about six feet tall by four feet wide. Everything was good until I bunched it up in the sink full of hot soapy water. I sucked up the whole two gallons or so of the solution, and then, of course, it was too heavy to try to hold it by any edge without it tearing. I finally figured out I could wring out most of the solution, and was smart enough to know not to throw it on the floor flat, as I would never be able to slide it around without tearing it apart (and for some reason tearing it apart didn't seem like a viable solution at the time.) What a wrestling match, it was like hand mopping the floor with a small blanket.

In the second dream I found myself on an island with a number of other players/crash survivors. It didn't take long to get the hang of the controls, as they were the same as real life: walk or run to walk or run, pick things up to look at them or use them.   Everything was the same as real life except for a stat display floating just above eye level, I could concentrate on it to bring it into focus, only there was no actually readable information there. We all were commenting on how real everything felt in this "game" and a couple of us wondered if this was really a game. We got moving and discovered a sealed door of the submarine hatch variety. There were some numbers etched around the rim of the hatch. Someone pointed out that this was just like the TV show "Lost." Those who knew the program found themselves suddenly in high regard.  I instantly regretted not watching the show.

Otherwise I might have known about the large alligator.

I had slipped on a log as we crossed a shallow stream, and a large alligator roared up out of the water. I slammed my hands against the creature's bottom jaw, forcing its mouth closed before it could do so with some of me inside. It then pinned me against the rotting wood. He'd apparently not eaten in some time as he was surprisingly weak, I was able to hold his lower jaw up against his upper and therefore was able to keep my head atop the log where I could breath. "Little help, here?"

"We're trying to figure out how to access our spells and abilities."

"How about hitting it with some big sticks?" I was holding my own, but just barely. The thing might have been a little weaker than me, but it was at least twice my size and with far more pointy bits. I did a quick glance at my head's up display, but it still had nothing useful, other than to turn an amber color when I looked directly at the alligator. I was focusing on staying alive, because I was pretty sure this game was in "hardcore" mode, I heard some of the people complaining about how wet the water felt, or how slimy the mud was. I didn't have a good feeling about my chances with this group.

I hope when I vanished under the water and floated out of the game with my arms wrapped around the alligator's head, the rest of them figured out how to play. I was pretty sure I wasn't going to be able to hold my breath longer than the critter.

Robot First Person Shooter

I dreamed I was involved in a first person shooter that had one roaming around a large ruined city shooting at giant robots and their human controllers. I had a sidearm, but my primary weapon was a giant robot that I controlled with a game pad. A game, in a game.

I was having a great time taking down robots left and right, while my robot seemed to be nearly indestructible, at least until I accidentally stepped into a pit and my robot buddy stopped in its tracks, apparently out of range of the controller. The enemy bots made short work of him. I managed to avenge him, and one of the other players jumped down into the ruined basement to confront me. Our guns did nothing to one another, even firing point blank in the head.

I mentioned that this was a very frustrating game, since it echoed one of my nightmare frustrations - having a gun to defend myself and finding out it was utterly useless against a living antagonist. I woke up in a heart racing post nightmare state, even though I didn't really see the dream as a nightmare.

Diablo IV MMO

In a dream a couple of nights ago I started playing a character who was part Necromancer and part Sorcerer. While I don't really remember much of that dream, other than lots of minions and a long burning beam of liquid fire. I know that last nights dream was a continuation of that game character and game world.

I was in a huge underground system of tunnels and caverns with decorated pillars supporting the redish decorated roof and a fairly open set of paths between the large encounter areas with blue and silver inlaid tile floors and large firepits with piles of ash and only occasionally bonfires. There was a large "dig" area at the entrance to the zone, and there were numerous other players there. I had made my way around to where the final boss was, but when I had him down to about 60% he spawned the four horsemen of the apocalypse, and being a bit squishy I decided to kite them out of the room, and in so doing got almost back to the "Dig" site before I could finish the last one. I raced back to the final room, but the boss had reset, and my minions who'd been engaging him were just standing around.

I hopped on the chat and asked for any sort of tips, only to be told that my character would never be able to solo the end encounter, sorry, but no one had done it with a Necromancer. I ported back to the "Dig" just in time to take part in a server event where diggers uncover a mummified demigod, mad, of course, and they were really glad to see me as, apparently, this was an event that could not be beat without a Necromancer character like myself. Apparently I was the only one of my class online out of the nearly a hundred folks currently playing. We went to war with the mummified undead and their spell summons. I rapidly discovered why I was needed. I could wrest control of their minions from them and allow them to decay or send them back into the fight (I was of the latter sort of Necromancer) and the battle was glorius and detailed and ebbed and flowed for the better part of an hour. When it was said and done, I had nearly seventy minions!

One of the characters, a Sorcoress offered to port me and my minions anywhere. So I opted to go back to the final boss room. When we got there my minions were arrayed in a semi circle around the landing zone in five platoons of fifteen critters each, very elegant looking. The encounter went far better than expected with that many minions, I managed to get him down to about two percent before I had to evacuate the room. Apparently the death penalty in D4 is quite severe (I know I wasn't playing in Hard Core mode, so not as severe as it could have been.)

The player who was playing the sorcoress apparently had stayed in observer mode the whole time and met me back at the Dig. I asked if she had any advice, and she said that looked amazing, the only thing she could think of was to let her know the next time there was a mummy event, she would contact her guild and they would come in and make sure I was able to get every possible minion out of the event so I could try again. She also offered to group up to do the event, even though the awards wouldn't be as good and I wouldn't get the solo badge, I could at least move on into new content. I accepted the first offer, but asked if I could take a rain check on the latter, at least until the next expansion was announced. I really did want to solo the event if I could. "Well, you'd be the first Necro to do it, so that would be cool." She then threw up a guild invite, saying "I know you're a casual player, but I'll vouch for you, we'd be glad to have you along whenever you can make it."

All in all a very positive wishfull thinking dream adventure.

Hidden House, Not the Chosen One

I dreamed again of the large bookshelf lined dome house, with its long spiral stair up to the second floor which was open to the floor below, with a grand round promenade that looked over the center of the house below and up into the sky dome above. The house was being rebuilt, and not everything was in place. There were unruly piles of furniture and books waiting to be sorted, a stack of floor lamps awaiting repairs and transportation back to their proper locations. Because of this there were large pools of darkness on the floor below, lending an aura of creepiness to the stillness. The house should have been buzzing with activity, but I'd sent the workers home, just wanting to sit and relax quietly under the moonlight coming in from the sky dome.

In the solitude, I began to hear noises, like conversation. Either someone had left a radio on, or someone hadn't gone home. As the sounds drifted up to my ear I could tell the tones were conversational, male and female, so decided it must be the latter. I made my way downstairs and followed the intermittent noise, made difficult by the acoustics of the dome. Eventually I found a doorway that led to an older part of the house. It had been covered in the rubble of the original disaster and had not yet been cleared. I dug it out, remembering that it went to an older, underground portion of the house. There was a back door of sorts, in the hillside across the berm that covered the servant living/storage quarters and separated my property from the graveyard property. I made my way down the long dark hall, now empty of its angry ghost, into the brightly lit yellow and white gingham kitchen, and there was N and her boyfriend, who she introduced as Derek.

I'd never seen him before, but was amused that he was a chubby, crew-cut, suit wearing sort. He was obviously older, but just as obviously was dying his hair, and scalp, where his hair was thin. The complete opposite of everything she had previously found desirable. Even though I was angry to find them in my home, this made me laugh.

Laughing as I told them to pack up their junk and leave made Derek angry. Fighting angry. He came at me swinging, but I backed up and tapped him on the nose over his missed swing. He went down with a howl. I politely suggested that he not get up for a moment. N made some comment about how I'd never fought for her.

I suggested that if I'd known about Derek when we were married I would have done far worse than merely bopping him on the nose like a bad puppy. I told her it's far too late to give me the opportunity for fight for her, so he's all hers and to take him away with the rest of her crap. It was a very tense dream moment, but also, oddly, satisfying when they picked up their stuff and began stacking it outside the door.

-----

This morning, I dreamed I was playing a mash-up World of Warcraft, Diablo III sort of campaign, and soon it was real, rushing around trying to avoid the undead, unleashing powerful magics and then leaping huge distances to clear surrounding hordes of evil undead. I raced through the map, avoiding creeps where I could and engaging from a distance where I couldn't. At the conclusion of the conflict I somehow managed to return home victorious. Others were gathered there, and greeted me as the "chosen one" who would lead them all to final victory. Now, I'd actually come to report my successes to the person who previously had been considered the "chosen one" and asked him to straighten everybody out. We went out to the crowd, who pointed out that I fit the prophesy.

I pointed out that I didn't. Their leader was the one with the one handed companion, not me. I didn't even have a companion!

A little gnome jumped up with a large axe in her hand, "I'll be your companion!" Then she raised the axe to chop off her hand.

I intercepted the axe and took it away from her. "I'd love to have you as a companion, but you can keep your hand."

"I'll just tuck it here in my belt, then." Well, she missed a little and her hand went right down the front of her pants, her big gblue eyes went wide at the error, causing a ripple of laughter through the crowd. I put down my magic bow, then knelt down and hugged her.

"It will be good to have help in the coming conflict, I'm honored."

A different Gnome picked up my bow, and held it aloft. It was an oddly designed thing, more of a harpoon gun than a crossbow, and so it had but a single large cocking lever outside, as the works were entirely internal. "Look, a one-armed companion to me!" The Gnomes in the crowd all hushed and then after the laughing stopped, a silence fell across the whole crowd.

"We should go plan your final campaign," the real chosen one leaned over to me. My Gnome companion took my weapon and, even though it was half again as tall as she, held it aloft and fell in behind us. I would rather have strapped the weapon back on, as I felt a little exposed without its heft at my side, but the pride of the Gnomes seemed wrapped up in my weapon, which I realized was likely an ancient Gnomish design (and proably why I had kept it and continued to add enchantments to it regularly.) "It appears you have fulfilled another part of the prophesy."

"How so?"

He looked over his shoulder, which prompted me to do the same. "That sure looks like you raised the whole Gnomish Army in a single minute." And there was indeed an army's worth of grim faced gnomes gathered respectfully in the courtyard behind us.

"I am not the chosen one. I don't even believe in the chosen one."

"It's not about what you believe at this point." He paused at the top of the stairs to look out over his outer courtyard. Portable forges were being set up everywhere. Gnomes, Dwarves and Men were working together to arm and armor the Gnomish host following us. "They have chosen you, that MAKES you the chosen one, by definition, really, it's quite simple."

That made me sad, because I was pretty sure that I wasn't even going to pick up the game again, as my subscription had run out and I didn't think I played enough to warrant the expense.

Dreamlands, Dinner and a Movie

Another open the box game dream, this one set in a big transportation terminal full of lockers. (The last one was dressed in Victorian/Steam Punk garb and then going through a Warehouse 23 style building trying to collect various sets of arcane or mechanical objects, customize appearances, and eventually to find other secrets man was not meant to know.) This game was set in a static pseudo 3D playing field, which during the course of playing, shifted to be a real terminal building. The game itself was soon forgotten, and I caught a lift on a cargo plane and soon found myself flying, piloting an auto-gyro which had been rolled out of the back of the cargo plane. I sputtered and bounced in the turbulence above the mountains, and then across the desert south and east of the Dream City. I landed with a steep decent and a wide flare at my favorite small town airfield restaurant.

From there I joined a group of friends and we drove up into the nearby hills to go to a dinner party. It was all couples except for myself and N. We were seated together, as our hosts apparently didn’t know we were long divorced.

After dinner we were treated to a pre-release viewing of the host’s latest movie offering, and again N and I were seated together, making her very unhappy. It seems her still very married boyfriend was there with his wife, but that didn’t matter, N wanted to be seated next to him, not me. She had tried to get the wife to trade seats with her at one point and had been, I thought, rather politely rebuffed. She was not at all pleasant to be next to after that, though. Openly complaining about being seated to the “fattest most disgusting” person. Since I was, except for her boyfriend, one of the thinnest there, this garnered more than a few surprised looks. I leaned over and made loud nuzzling noises at her neck, creating a great deal of laughter. She was not amused.

This morning I fell back asleep after certain cats woke me at 4 AM for cuddles. My dreams were of running through a jungle like area, and then riding a rough dugout down a burbling stream and out into a waterfall that dumped right into a salt water bay. I could smell the salt in the air as it replaced the damp earth smell of the jungle just before I went over the falls. The drop was close to fifty or sixty feet, and I kicked myself away from the boat so I landed in clear water a ways out from the falls. The boat was broken into two pieces and some sticks when it finally surfaced from the foamy water at the base of the waterfall. I didn’t know if I had enough materials or tools to put it back together, so started swimming towards the beach.