Governance

[Praetorum]

Date: 4th of Vhalar, Arc 719

Status: Experimenting

Weapons: None

Armor: None

No Current Magical Effects

Praetorum pushed open a pair of large, ornately decorated doors, and stepped into the stately opera house, striding down the isle amidst quiet chatter in the bits before the performance began. As he glanced down at the ticket that had manifested into his hand, he saw that his clothing had changed once again into that fine military coat he had dreamed of before, all blue and gleaming gold.


This place was exactly like he remembered; after all, this was his dream. But Prae was fairly certain the real thing hadn't been quite so large, and he suspected the walls must have been far more ornately decorated, and the people much less. 



Still, he had only been a boy the last time he'd come to this place, and it seemed his childish recollections were all his dreams had to go off of. Prae looked around as he took his seat, slightly perturbed. The subtle strangeness of the room, warped as it was through the blurry memory of a young ithecal, bothered Prae a little, but it didn't matter; this seemed like it would be a peaceful sort of dream, and Prae was happy to just see it through.



At least, at first. 



But as the dream trundled on, as sweet melody after thrilling harmony paraded through Prae's ears, the warped space started to grate on him. It just... wasn't right. The angles were wrong, the shadows were flat, and the whole thing just made him so uneasy to see. And everything was so large, too; not quite as massive as they must have been to his six year old self, but still just a little too big, enough that he felt dwarfed again. 



His chair bothered him. It wasn't just that the seat was too wide, and the backrest too tall—those were minor irritations, easy enough to ignore—it was that the armrests were too high. He remembered as a child figuring out that if he slouched, he could fit his shoulder under it and wedge himself in the chair to sleep. Prae had endured much worse things than a slightly too high armchair, but right now it was here and pressed right up to his bicep and it bothered him.


And then it was fine.


Praetorum stared, then gingerly laid his arm along it. The height was perfect, just what he was used to at home. And all the others were the same, as if they had never been ridiculously tall to begin with. 



Had he... done that?


Prae narrowed his eyes, then turned to the figure next to him. A bland looking human—dressed in a fine silken suit and far too much jewelry—watched the stage in admiration, not paying Prae the slightest attention. Giving the man a quick once over, Prae settled his focus on a gaudy diamond ring, and willed it away. 



It didn't vanish. Nothing in Praetorum's vision changed at all, in fact. It was simply that there was no ring on the human's finger, and never had been, whatever Prae's memory claimed. 



How far did this ability extend, Prae wondered? For all that he could feel dreamwalking took nothing from his ether reserves, Prae couldn't help but worry about overstepping, and resolved to take on this experimentation one step at a time. 



Focusing on the ornate, velvet covered chair he was sitting in, Prae closed his eyes, and pictured the simple wooden stool that his father used to read to him on. And when his own chair changed, Prae tentatively set his gaze on the whole row ahead of him, imagining a dozen stools set side by side. Then he kept going.

[Praetorum]

Date: 4th of Vhalar, Arc 719

Status: Still Experimenting

Weapons: None

Armor: None

No Current Magical Effects

It shocked him, as he watched the whole seating area change under his gaze, just how easy it was to change things. To affect this large of an area with, say, defiance, would have taxed him heavily. But altering his dreamscape barely seemed to take any effort at all, only desire and vision. With just a little thought, he could make the whole dream shudder to a stop, the musicians on stage freezing mid song, the audience still as stone while Prae studied them, considering the possibilities here. 



Did he have to stick to the general theme of the dream, he wondered? Or was he able to change absolutely everything? 



He couldn't feel any drain on his ether, any sort of strain from stopping time for so long in such a large space. So he began to make bigger changes, staying mindful of his own state. With the audience and performers still frozen, Prae began to shift the stage downwards into the ground, and and curve the straight rows of chairs around, dismissing the roof to reveal a clear blue sky, fluffy white clouds, and a pair of half shaded suns. All the fancy chairs and stools merged into one, and then melded with the floor as Prae slowly changed the ornate opera house into a common amphitheater. 



Some part of Prae had wondered if he would have to change and imagine every individual detail of the new location, but it seemed not. This dream appeared to draw directly from his memories in forming the ampitheater, dressing the performers appropriately and increasing the size of the audience to match what Prae had seen in the Empire. When the play began, instruments melting into props to match the scene, Prae saw that they were doing a comedy he had watched with his fellow legionnaires once. Boredom was a soldier's worst enemy, so they'd organized a rendition of a ridiculous, ribald play to pass the time while they waited to be deployed. 



Prae smiled slightly at the memory, then shook his head. Now that he had a good general idea of just how much he could change.... Prae closed his eyes, focusing, and then wiped the dream clean. So far, everything he'd changed the original dream to had been a mix of something he actually remembered, but he wanted to see if he could create something entirely new. Prae thought for a moment, before finally settling on a scene.

[Praetorum]

Date: 4th of Vhalar, Arc 719

Status: Playing the biggest war game in Emea

Weapons: None

Armor: None

No Current Magical Effects

Beneath his feet, the ground turned into dry soil, cool between his claws. A soft breeze danced across Prae's hide, bringing a tickle of dust and sand with it, and when he opened his eyes, he was standing atop a gently sloping hill, watching as down below, two armies gathered. Prae sat, considering the tableaux he had created. 



This was a battle that had never happened. Prae remembered how, as they had marched towards the enemy, they had received orders to turn back, that there was a more pressing battle to be had back at the imperial fort. 



But if the battle had happened, Prae thought it might have looked something like this. 



The legion was around a thousand strong, all on foot, while the Nashaki forces were only one third of that, but mounted. The Nashaki were, he was quite certain, more used to fighting on sand than solid ground, but it didn't matter that much, he supposed. In a space like this, wide open against an enemy far more mobile than them, the Legion would probably have had to rely on their shields quite a lot. If this were a smaller scale battle, they might have gone for a turtle formation, but with a thousand warriors, that was near impossible. 



Instead, Prae arranged them into a circular formation, with around half of the legion forming a shield wall along the outer perimeter, while the other half settled behind them, weapons alternating between polearms and ranged weapons. The Nashaki were mostly close range fighters—Prae didn't know if that was the reality of the battalion they would have faced, but since this was his dream, he got to decide—so Prae figured a second layer of shields wouldn't be needed. 



Sitting back, Prae considered the frozen scene beneath. Technically, he'd already answered his earlier question of how much he could change. He didn't need to watch this battle play out in full. 



On the other hand, Prae had never really had the opportunity to make tactical decisions on this scale before. Even if it were just in his own mind, the chance was just too good to let pass. 



"Alright then." Prae said out loud. "Let's begin then."

[Abra]

Praetorum

Rewards

Knowledges:

Skill:

Detection: Figuring out what feels wrong about a dream
Detection: Checking for ether drain
Investigation: Trying to figure out how far an ability goes
Tactics: Infantry vs Cavalry
Tactics: Hollow Circle formation
Tactics: There’s a time and place for the turtle formation

Loot:
Injuries:
Wealth:
Renown:

EXP: 10

Feedback

It was awesome to read about Praetorum finally gaining the power of Governance. I wonder how, if at all, this will affect his dreams in the future since it is so exceedingly powerful in ones own dreamscape. Interesting choice on using the power to make a battlefield. It looks like he won’t have to travel through different dreamscapes as much since he can create exactly what he wants from here on out. Enjoy the rewards.