I keep having the same dreams. Rather...'episodes' of the same dream. This dream follows the travels of a character who is very strange and is not a normal man, as he journeys through some semi-apocalyptic wasteland called Metaphor. The story is phenomenally complex, but what is eerie is that though it all takes place in a fantasy setting, it is basically a big huge metaphor of my life and the things that have happened to me.
It is strange but the world is so lifelike and the story is so grand that I've started writing a novel about it. And the way it is going, it looks like it's going to become a huge series of over twelve books.
The world in this dream is a manifestation of my experiences and life. I am what the characters in the dream refer to as "the Worldhost." The villains of the story are three disembodied essences of the old gods, Ego, Sorrow, and Envy. Each person in this world is linked to a person up here, you see. I am linked to a person who was born with something called "the Aspect of the Wolf". Basically, he was created to combat the world I live in and to set things right. When I am in good spirits up here and things are going well enough, he is very strong--as shown by the moon in the sky of his world. When the Moon is strong, he's nearly invincible. But the Powers That Were, the Old Gods who had once siezed and ruled the world of Metaphor, are seeking to spread their respective corruptions.
Music is very important in this dream. Children in their world are born mad, aligned too closely to our world during their childhood. They often sing songs and say phrases from our world without knowing what they are. Music is sort of like magic in this world; those who can make music up here, are extremely powerful down in this Metaphorical world.
There are many villains in this story. Ego is a conniving and manipulative malevolent entity that seeks to encroach on the spirit of everyone in Metaphor; Envy is in essence a parasitic harlot goddess who manifests in the hearts of women, and though she is insane and her control divided she is very deadly; Sorrow is the worst of all. Sorrow is completely insane and wishes only to bring torment and suffering to the world of Metaphor by turning fortunes in OUR world with his influence. The sorrows inflicted up here will break the Worldhost's spirit and remove my will to live, which is Sorrow's goal; the more broken down I am up here, the weaker this powerful main person below becomes.
This character was designed to set things right, but he helped breed the worst of his enemies. He was once the main member of what they call a Chord--a group of people which, when brought together, produces a special cohesive bond, called a Harmony. This man, named Rally, was the leader of a large group of close friends before he went on his crusades. Together they forged a Harmony that was so powerful, it brought balance to the world that once was dominated by Ego, Sorrow, and Envy's vast dominion.
Rally was betrayed by some members of this group, and tricked into ousting his truest supporters as betrayers. He was left with only he and two others--the two behind the treachery. They tried to murder him and oust him from the group as well, bringing the mighty Harmony into the hands of their master, Ego. The Harmony became corrupted and dark, and scattered its negative influence throughout Metaphor, poisoning what the characters call "the Great Karma Storm," which is basically their idea of destiny.
In creating this Harmony, Rally had brought balance to the world and the Old Gods' might was sealed in the balance. The corruptors took the Harmony from him and quickly brought in as many as they could into the now-corrupt Chord, trying to maintain it. A harmony cannot last, however, if it is forged in the absence of brotherhood. So the Harmony, though granting Ego enough power to physically manifest again, was badly damaged and slowly decayed.
This man Rally was created by the world itself in order to bring balance back. He rediscovers the members of his great Chord that he himself had ousted, and they forge a new brotherhood. Their Harmony is weak compared the pulsing corruption that the old Harmony had become. Their only chance was to travel the world and stop the corruption of people's essences by these old gods manually, hopefully one day weakening them enough that their bond of brotherhood could once again yield a powerful harmony that could once again balance the world of Metaphor.
There is only one thing preventing the old gods from fully controlling the world again. There is a woman, a girl with no name, who appears to Rally in the dead of night. She is known only as the Radiant, and, like Rally, she is a manifestation of the world--but of its beauty, not its order. He follows her faithfully and loves her deeply, as she does him; but they are the Moon and the Sun, and they are doomed to forever be a day apart from one another. It is the hopeful bond they share that is strong enough to hold the balance intact. If they were to be separated, or lost to one another...then the balance would finally snap and the Old Gods would overpower all things once and for all.
****ed up, huh? I've been having these dreams for over a year now. I started writing them down a while back, keeping track of the "episodes" and what occurs throughout them. The places and people are all the internal versions of people I know, without fail.
Some of the characters and things in this world are amazing. There are a race of nomadic females called the Labian Coitess, who are basically parasitic succubi that survive by infecting men with their lustful desires. There are the Shredlords, who are basically a metaphorical cadre of knights in service to the Will of Ego. Each of them is possessed by the spirit of Ego and is driven by a nomadic self-indulgent desire to be more powerful then the rest of their brethren; using these strange items called "Batteries" (gauntlets that are infused with powerful musics), they are in constant pursuit of Rally and are feared the world over for their ruthlessness. There are also great treasures called the Seven Lyrics, which are artifacts that are imbued with the very conceptual ideas that birthed this crazy world. Wolves are also very important in this crazy world, as they are found in all landscapes and are considered holy symbols of the worldhost.
It's all really crazy. A lot of real world stuff converts to it neatly. The Shredlords, for example, are an explanation as to why there are so many egotistical guitarists in my life (heh). There is even a lot of explanation of things like where intuitions and inspiration come from. Nothing creative in this world stays as it is; if you wrote a fictional tale in this world it would unwrite itself as you went on, fading into the Balance, and occuring in some disjointed form to some person's mind up here as an inspiration. The internet has had a huge role in some of the worst times of my life, and even this is accounted for: the internet exists outside the rules of such things and is a sort of bridge between the two worlds, where Metaphor and Material blur together. There is a place in the story called "The Damning Grounds" that holds the path to the World Beyond (our world), what the characters call "The Never," which leads to the secretive "Great Machine."
I wrote way too much about this dream. It's just crazy. Sometimes it scares me how lifelike it is. It'll probably become the greatest story I ever wrote. I started writing at the beginning of june and already have 10,000 words.
Heh. I must be crazy.