New Dream Adventures of Raven Knight

12/29/10 Happy Birthday MoSh!
Plans: MoSh wants to have a party tonight, I don't really feel up to it, but I will attend because it is for MoSh's birthday and I don't want to miss that. So now I am trying to think of a gift to get MoSh... Q has found some interesting information for Asuka if she will trust in it to work... basically it's a symbiant, it maintains a steady energy flow, in exchange it feeds off of a small portion of that energy to live. The purpose of the symbiant is to keep the host from losing control of their energy. And before that happens, Q is going to remove Walms' AoH since Asuka seems so paranoid about it…

Happy Birthday, MoSh! The Cake Has an Asuka Filling!
I am at a party, I look around and see quite a few different people around, though I don't immediately recognize any of them. I am lucid, though I don't remember how I became lucid. I remember the purpose of the party… it's to celebrate MoSh's birthday, so now I am looking for the birthday boy. I make my way through the party, there is music playing but I don't recognize the band, so I keep looking after I grab a Coke off of a table with various refreshments. I take a drink and discover it's a Coke and rum, but that's not a bad thing for me. I finally find MoSh, he is talking to a couple of people, I think one of them might be Nomad, though I don't actually get a chance to look really closely at him before he disappears. I get MoSh's attention, and I tell him I have brought him a big 'ol cake! I don't actually have the cake yet, but I figure that isn't a problem since it is a dream. I summon up a massive cake… what a cake…

there are multiple tiers and cupcakes around it and candles and it's brightly colored… and it wishes MoSh a "Happy Birthday" in big letters. It is like the cake here, but there aren't the gifts on top, instead it has a third tier. I summon that cake up and say "Happy Birthday" to MoSh as I present him with the cake. He looks at it, but before he even has a chance to respond, Asuka comes jumping out of the cake and lands right in front of him, completely covered with cake and laughing like a school girl. My cake… I look at the ruins of my cake all over the ground now, or at least part of it is on the ground… the rest of it is on Asuka… Asuka suggests MoSh eat the cake off of her, and adds that she is not wearing anything underneath… ok, that is definitely TMI. I form the mess back into the original cake, except for the part on Asuka… I would prefer to have a piece of cake that has NOT been in contact with Asuka's ass… With that thought in mind, I am finding I have lost my appetite… so I just go back to the beverage table and grab another Coke and rum.

Puff the Magic Dragon
I am at school, I am running late for class. The problem is that I am also hungry, and I don't really have time to stop to get something to eat. So I run into the cafeteria and grab the quickest thing I can, which turns out to be a glazed donut and a raspberry Danish, and then I run straight to class without even stopping to pay… though I also notice that no one seems to care if I walk off with the food. Run off is more accurate, however, as I am late for class and I run down the hall so fast I run right past my classroom door. I have to skid to a stop and go back to the door, then I enter and take one of the few empty seats left in the room. I set my backpack down beside my desk and reach inside to get out my book. I also find I have a couple stuffed animals in there, one of them is a dragon. I set the dragon up under my desk, at my feet, so I can look down and see it looking back up at me. It's cute, and that distracts me from the rude comments that seem to be coming from all around me. Comments about why did I even bother coming, comments about those who are close to me not wanting to be that close to me, comments about me being disgusting…

The instructor continues droning on, not paying any attention to the fact I came in late, and I am trying to catch up with what is being said. I take a bite of my donut, but when I lift it up to take a bite, everyone stares at me as if they are angry that I would even consider eating something in there. So I hide the donut back under my desk again and just take covert little bites. I notice that the donut isn't getting eaten up… it seems to be getting bigger somehow, and soon the donut is approximately the size of a pool life preserver ring… I can't eat all that! I pull off a piece and eat it, then I pull off another piece and feed it to the stuffed dragon under my desk. I hear a couple people behind me, a couple of guys, laughing loudly that I am feeding donuts to a stuffed animal, how retarded is that? I ignore them as best as I can, and I continue eating the donut and feeding the dragon. Strangely enough, the pieces of donut I am giving the dragon are disappearing, actually being eaten! The idiots behind me continue laughing until the dragon actually comes to life, flies out from under my desk, and bathes both of them in a blast of fire. The fire doesn't prove lethal, but it does leave them with soot blackened faces and no hair remaining on their heads…

A Friend for Asuka
Note: MoSh suggested that, to help Asuka learn to be more confident in controlling her own powers so that she will be willing to actually defend herself, maybe we should seek out a trainer or trainers that can help her with her specific issue - which seems to be a fear of losing control. Q took this task on, and he discovered there is a group of people living in a world, they live a lot like monks tend to live… they are called the Teshnons, and their focus in life is training, learning, and achieving balance with all things. There was once a major obstacle to the peace they seek, however. They have a considerable power level which they focus into their fighting style, which they will use when necessary to defend themselves and maintain peace. The problem was that many of them found it difficult to keep control of that power, they found when in a fighting situation, even just training, they could lose control, so they were considering banning one of their most valued traditions due to the fact that many of them would lose control of the powers they were trying to use only for protection, only when absolutely necessary.

Then disaster struck, or they thought it was disaster at the time… an alien race, called the Nes'tulk, came to their world. The Nes'tulk are a parasitic race that latch onto another species, implant themselves in their host much like a Goa'uld, and they drain the host's energy to replenish their own. When they drain all of the host's energy, they break out and seek another host. So the Teshnons and the Nes'tulks were at war for a while until it was discovered that many of the Nes-Tulks didn't really want to harm their hosts, they just wanted to survive… but they were forced to drain as much energy as possible from the host, as quickly as possible, or the host would fight them off and kill them. Once it was discovered that many Nes'tulks would prefer peace, the Teshnons and the peaceful Nes'tulks defeated the war loving Nes'tulks and then a truce was called. Each Teshnon would accept one Nes'tulk as a symbiant, the Nes'tulk could implant itself in its Teshnon host, and take what energy it needs to survive… which the average Teshnon can easily afford to provide without any harm to themselves. In return, the Nes'tulk will regulate the flow of the Teshnon's energy so that it is no longer a problem for any of the Teshnons to keep control of their power. This has remained a mutually beneficial arrangement for the past 150 years in their world. Enough of the background info… on with the dream.

The Teshnons and the Nes'tulks
I am in MoSh's inner world, and I am there with Asuka and MoSh, and I am once again lucid even though I am not sure when or how I became lucid. It looks like the party is over, I remember there being a party there earlier for MoSh's birthday… and now MoSh and Asuka are looking at me expectantly as if I am supposed to do something… but I am not sure what they are looking for me to do. Finally, Q appears next to me and says he will take all of us to see the Teshnon masters, to see if they will be willing to accept Asuka as a pupil. If they accept Asuka as a pupil, she will be given a Nes'tulk symbiant, and the Teshnon masters will train Asuka to fight while keeping full control over her power with the assistance of the Nes'tulk symbiant. He says before anything is to be done, of course, Asuka, the Teshnon master who is to train Asuka, and the Nes'tulk who is to be her symbiant will all have to be in agreement that this is the course they want to take. I notice that Asuka looks a bit skeptical, but Q adds that he thinks everyone should meet each other before anyone makes any final decisions, just meet and talk things over, then if anyone is uncomfortable with the arrangement in any way, we look for another potential trainer. He says that while he feels the Teshnon masters would be ideal to train Asuka and the Nes'tulk is just what she needs to keep control, there are many other trainers and techniques out there to explore. He asks Asuka if she will agree to meet with the Teshnon masters, she pauses, then says she will meet with them, as long as MoSh comes along.

Asuka says that before we go to meet anyone, she still wants to get rid of Walms' AoH that is inside her, and those damned strings that could be used to control her power… the last thing she wants is for Walms to have access to control her powers whenever he decided he was especially annoyed at her. Q says he looked at the control strings carefully, and there is no sign of any foul play associated with them… they do what Walms said they do, nothing more, nothing less. Additionally, no one could take those control strings without Asuka's permission… so unless she gave Walms permission to take them back, it wasn't going to happen. And as for the AoH itself, there is no harm in that, either… So Asuka and Q spend a brief time arguing about whether the AoH and control strings are meant to cause harm to her, she says after all, Walms had already tried to kill her once. Q gets sarcastic at this point and says sure, whenever he really wants to kill someone he poisons them and then contacts friends of that person and tells them how to cure it. Q rolls his eyes and has a look on his face similar to the look I've seen on Q in the Star Trek series when he is trying to get a particularly obvious piece of information to become obvious to a particularly dense and cranky Piccard.

Asuka looks impatient, and apparently Q decides it's not worth arguing about. He says he will remove the control strings and the AoH, he adds that to be honest, he's not sure how the AoH would interact with the Nes'tulk symbiant. He says that the removal of the AoH isn't the most pleasant procedure, so a very intricate system would have to be set up to do it… first he will need a ????? (I didn't understand the word, so I can't type it.) and a ????? so they could alter Asuka's energy flow to match the frequency of the ????? at which point they could… by now Asuka is just staring at Q with a blank look on her face… Q continues, he says they can invert the ????? of the control strings themselves in order to ????? a ????? to the AoH and then… RIP! While Q had been talking, he had been fiddling with some energy strings of some kind… apparently the control strings… and now he gives a sharp pull on them, which pulls something out of Asuka, leaving a wound just above her solar plexus. Q contains the thing he pulled out in an energy sphere and puts it away. MoSh is mad, he asks why Q had to do that, Q says sometimes it is just easier to pull a Band-Aid off in one quick tug rather than try to take it off gently. He heals the wound and asks if everyone is ready to go. MoSh says Q could have at least warned Asuka, but Asuka says it's ok, she prefers that it is taken out quickly… now it's gone.

So Q now takes all of us to the Teshnon masters' temple, which is where the masters live and train the various Teshnon pupils once the pupil is of age to receive a Nes'tulk symbiant. We go to meet one of the Teshnon masters, he is a very old man indeed, though he also looks very strong. He says they are a peaceful people, they are focused on martial arts, energy control, and seek to achieve both inner and outer peace with all things. We all talk for a while, the talking and information seems to put Asuka a bit more at ease. The Teshnon finally says he thinks Asuka would be an excellent candidate for their training, and even now they have a couple young Nes'tulks that are reaching the age that they will need a host. MoSh questions that if they are young, will they know how to keep Asuka's powers under control… The Teshnon master says of course, that is actually a natural instinct of theirs, and by the time a young Nes'tulk is ready for a host they are more than capable of keeping any energy flow stable and under control. So at this point I think things are settled… until the Teshnon master says something about setting up Asuka's quarters there at the temple. Asuka says she won't be living there, but the Teshnon master says she must stay with them if she wants to get the most from her training. MoSh also doesn't like the idea of Asuka being away from him. I think that might be a deal breaker, but then I remember the connection between MoSh's inner world and Hogwarts… and I suggest setting up a similar connection to the Teshnon masters' temple. Everyone is quiet for a bit, and I wonder if maybe I said something wrong… but finally the Teshnon master says that would be acceptable for their part, as long as Asuka can focus on her training and the gateway is kept secure. Q says it would have to be secure. So finally everyone is in agreement on a plan, all I can do is hope they will be able to make this one work.