March 3rd, 2004 CE

I dreamed of a strange fantasy world.

It seemed free of history; there was an existing set of cultures and structures, but it seemed as though nearly everyone was new to this world; nobody had any jobs or roles in this world, and seemed unsure of who they were or what they were supposed to be doing. It felt much like the beginning of a roleplaying game.

My point of view jumped around quite a bit, from one disconnected scene to the next. In one, I was one of a group of young orcs, such as you might see in the Warcraft series, learning what we were capable of and how to fight. Another one had me in the role of an elf who was fighting for his life against an intelligent talking wolf with an elaborate wooden staff, smashing its head over and over again as it came charging at me. There were other less clear scenes; one in which a man was talking about looking for a job with one of his fellows, who in turn pointed out that all of the guard posts were still looking for guards to man them.

Eventually, there was a point at which I saw the entire world as if from space, and it appeared neither large nor spherical; it reminded me of one of Mars’s moons, and the individual castles were visible on its surface even from the distance necessary to view the entire world. There was a bit of narrative, for lack of a better word, at this point, about how the gods had become displeased with the deficiency of the people of this world, and had decided to flood it. I saw water rising up across the lowlands of the world without any apparent source uniformly, and then, as people made their way to higher grounds, these areas also flooded.

An indeterminate amount of time then passed, which seemed like it must have been centuries, and then the waters receded, leaving a bare ball of rock visible. The next thing I saw was a fellow who was reminiscent of Wolverine – claws and all – standing at the mouth of a shallow cave which was set into a cliff wall on this world. It seemed as though he was fully aware of what had happened here, and was here to see what, if anything, was left of this world. At the far end of this cave was a high-tech looking doorway set directly into the stone wall. I felt as though this was an access point into the inner workings of this world, perhaps left here by the ones who had created and then destroyed it.

Bracing himself against the rock, he used his claws to cut the door open, and he was instantly caught in a high-pressure spray of water from within, which quickly receded as the chamber beyond this door emptied itself of fluid. The room had an industrial look to it, like the innards of a submarine, perhaps, and were predictably run-down looking. At the far end was another door much like the one which had just been opened. This fellow walked over to it and opened it up without difficulty.

Immediately, the focus of the dream changed. The setting was the same, but the action was now following this group of five gnomishly small humanoid creatures with odd, wasted looks about them, large eyes, hands and feet, with elaborate armour worn piecemeal across their bodies. There were three males and two females, and as I watched from a disembodied point of view, they began stalking along the industrial-looking corridor which had just been opened up. Weirdly, my POV then deliberately shifted down into one of these creatures, who was loping along much like a gorilla; his knuckles down upon the ground, wearing elaborate blue metallic gauntlets, which seemed to serve both to protect his hands and enhance traction.

So, the five of us (as I was seemingly now one of them), were stalking along, as though exploring this place much as you would an unearthed ruin, and came upon a doorway set into one of the walls which led down a flight of stairs. One of the females detached from the group to peer down. She blanched at what she saw, and came running back to the rest of us and described it as a wall of living, pulsating flesh, as red and slick as a human’s internal organs. Not liking the sound of this, we hurried on. Soon, we found another such door and I peered down, only to see what the female had described. I asked her to have a look at this and tell me if it was the same thing. She shook her head vigorously, insisting that she didn’t want to see it again.

Then I woke up.