[Torg] A Torg Dream

[Jones Jasyn]

I was dreaming last night, a Torg dream, if you can believe it. When I  
woke up (about 30 minutes ago), I had to write it down and share it.

Unlike most dreams, it isn't nonsensical or hallucinatory, so if dream  
sequences bother you, this isn't one of those. This is the dream, as  
exact as I can remember it, not enhanced or embellished.

###

My family, all of us younger than we are today, were in an old house.  
We were getting dressed in costumes, so we could look like locals. My  
mother walked around, making sure everyone was dressed, magically  
altering clothes for appearance or fit. (My mother does not, so far as  
I know, work magic in the real world.)

My father entered the house. My sister asked him for a copy of a book.  
He said she would have to wait for the first printing, because he had  
sold the fantasy novel, written by Frances Cyzikium on another world,  
to a local printer.

"That's so cool," I thought, "To sell a book bought in another world,  
to this one." I felt bad that I couldn't read the novel, though. I had  
been looking forward to it.

We got dressed and went outside, walking along a gravel path, lined  
with white fence posts, down a slight incline towards a road. Beyond  
the white fence posts, on the right and left, were fields. A few leafy  
trees were planted along the path, and across the road at the end of  
the path were many more. It seemed like spring time, the grasses,  
trees, and fields were green and lush.

We got to the road and I turned to my left and saw two big boulders,  
mottled with red and blue. Across the road sat a third.

I turned and said to my sister, standing beside me, "Remember that  
roleplaying game I used to play? I know what this is, it's eternium."

I pulled a few pieces of rock off the boulders. Even though the rock  
looked like a solid boulder, the pieces came off in flaking chunks,  
like mica. Each piece was red and blue all the way through, the colors  
weren't painted on.

I held up one piece and concentrated on it. White light began glowing,  
along the borders between the red and blue, and I felt a warmth inside  
me.

"I must be spending a possibility," I thought. "So that's what it's  
like."

Immediately, my sight grew much better. The trees and fields were more  
clear, and I could see further than before. Also, I was able to  
noticed things I had overlooked.

A long way off, down the road, I could see men riding sleighs, on a  
route that would take them around the back of the farm. They were  
dressed in rough clothing and caps, like peasants from 1800's France  
(or the cast of Les Mis).

I concentrated harder, and the rock glowed more intensely. Now, I  
could see the men more clearly--as they drove, a colored light limned  
their shapes, so I could see where they were, even when hid by trees  
or rocks.

There were four sleds and twenty or so running men (I couldn't count  
them precisely, but I knew the exact number anyway, which I thought  
was due to the eternium). They had circled the farm and were coming  
around towards the road. Other men ran towards them, and I knew the  
two groups were going to fight.

I yelled for everyone to run for the house, and most of them ran  
quickly. My sister ran away, towards the men, maybe in panic or maybe  
because she had dropped something.

I yelled for her, concentrating hard while I did, and she abruptly  
turned and ran for the house. Eternium, again, making me far more  
persuasive than I really was.

One of my brothers ran past me, into the house. Another brother, the  
last of us who wasn't inside, ran towards me, a sleigh crashing  
towards him and not far behind. I ran forward, time seeming to slow  
down, and grabbed him, pulling him out of the way of the sleigh. The  
speed of my reflexes and my strength were much increased.

The sleigh crashed past us, and we turned towards the house and ran  
inside. As I turned to shut the doors, another sleigh pulled up the  
path. In it was a grotesque, gray-faced woman.

[I know sleighs don't run on gravel, but it was a dream and that's  
what happened.]

The gray-faced woman yelled at the doors, but I couldn't hear her. She  
was angry, though, and tried to pull the doors open. They didn't move.  
I held up the mottled rock, whose power had barred the door, so she  
could see it clearly.

I could see on her face that she knew what the rock was and knew I was  
using it against her. She glared at me, not in anger, but in a way  
that meant "I know who you are. You are now an enemy to me. I will  
seek retribution."

###

This was when I woke up.

It is funny to me, looking at the dream, how many ways the eternium  
was used. Other than combat, most of the ways you could spend a  
possibility were covered. It almost reads like an introductory piece,  
meant to show players all the uses for possibility energy.

The usage of it, how the usage materialized (the eternium's glowing  
light, a nimbus around people, etc.) are much more interesting than  
any description I'd come up with in the past. If I ran a Torg campaign  
again, I definitely borrow heavily from this.

Jasyn Jones
jasynj (at) gmail (dot) com

"To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield."
Ulysses, Alfred Lord Tennyson