JAWS • DECEMBER 2025 EVENT/TDM

[uruz]

TDM & EVENT: JAWS

Watch on YouTube

ᛗ

Show Me Those Pretty White Jaws

The dream has been coming in waves for those new to Sleep's touch, as a shoreline that never stays still. As a sky that never remembers to include its stars. Beneath it all, there is a voice. Her voice: silk-sweet, coaxing from just beyond the approaching wave that towers like a moving mountain. She tells you to come home. She promises it won't hurt, even if she never tells you what waits beneath. You see the shape just before the dream ends: a massive black tidal wave, yawning wide and black until it looks like a pair of jaws breaking upon you. You don't have time to resist.

You and your veteran Vessels will awaken in water.

There is no surface. No bottom. No sky. No sound but your own heartbeat and the echoes of water being slashed though, dull and endless in the still, frigid dark. You are suspended, weightless— Some may have difficulty to breathe without inhaling water the first few times, while those aligned with the waves will feel it come like second nature. Once you acclimate yourself, you'll notice that around you drift glowing filaments; thin, pulsing threads that coil like jellyfish tendrils, softly luminescent. They curl and twist through the water, and when you look closer, you realize: they show you things. Memories, maybe. Dreams, maybe. Each one unique to your gaze: a hand reaching for yours in the dark, a goodbye that never finished, a face you haven't seen in years. They are what you think love looks like. What you once needed it to be. And when you touch them, they wrap around you, gently, warmly . . . Hungrily— and begin to pull you down.

To ascend into the next level, you must let go. But not everything that binds you wants to be released. The filaments drifting through the water show you what you think love looks like— what you've built it into. They are gentle at first, beautiful even, but the longer you cling, the more they pull.

There are ways to escape them: You may bind your filament with another's and together speak aloud a shared truth: what you believe love really is. If your hearts align or at the very least come to an agreement, the threads dissolve into light and lift you upward. If your beliefs clash or contradict, the threads knot tighter, and something . . . May take interest in you.

Beneath you, something moves. Huge, silent and almost regal. It glides through the deep like a phantom, almost too large to be real. You feel its presence before you see its flash of pearl white and glowing red eyes, three on each side of its face: a shark.

The shark is here to choose its next meal. It smells grief, fear and seeks out trauma most of all. It is drawn to the most unspoken parts of you, the very parts you thought were buried, roused from the tightened ropes of what you crave in your heart. And when it chooses you, it does not bite immediately. It invites, with its jaws opening like a sanctuary and slow towards you.

Inside is I, whispers Sleep. Allow Me to have you whole, and you will be at peace. Show Me love.

Fight against her, or even with your current partner about what love is, and Sleep will open her maw, spilling tendrils from her throat and begin to stalk you. Best be prepared to fight the possessed Megalodon— She will laugh, amused as you do, like a great cat playing with its food. And if you were to be caught, well. You'll wake in the dream's next level with an undeniable prey drive, whether Token or Offering.

She will do anything to keep you here.

NOTES:

• There is no surface visible at first. Light only comes from the filaments. As characters resist, act, or ascend, a faint stained-glass shimmer begins to pulse upward, hinting at the dream's next layer.
• Sound is muffled— speech emerges as bubbles, but meaning travels regardless. Words feel heavy here. Some phrases may literally change the water (turn to light, birth dream-objects, or ripple with tension). You will do better using The Murmur as a means of communication. Luckily you have your mask on!
• The Shark always circles once it senses trouble within you. Sometimes close, sometimes far, but always felt. If characters listen closely, they can hear the echo of One's voice coming from inside it: pleading with a haunted, at times screaming melody.

TOKEN EFFECTS

• The dream bends subtly around Tokens, especially at the whims of an Aquamancer. Walls of pressure open before them, and filaments shift course as if expecting them. This can make their path easier, unless they start to doubt their purpose.
• Tokens perceive emotional resonance as currents in the water such as subtle flows of energy. These can guide them (or others) toward escape paths, or signal when the shark is near.
• When a Token speaks or acts with strong intent, the dream sometimes translates it into a symbolic structure: A word might become a floating glyph. A gesture might alter the filament's shape. A moment of clarity might reveal a hidden path. Other characters can interact with these dream-objects, but they're fragile, unstable, and prone to distortion by doubt.
• The deeper Tokens go, the more they feel themselves pulling apart and begin to experience dual awareness: one part dreaming, one part watching— some may even see flashes of within the shark's belly, and One's voice much louder. The deeper they go, the more detached they become, and the more they lack the ability to act at all.

OFFERING EFFECTS

• The shark is more fascinated by Offerings. It circles them often, sensing kinship— or potential. The more monstrous the Offering, the more the shark "pauses' near them, almost curious.
• Offerings feel "the pull" more clearly, particularly Merrows and other aquatic-based Offerings—they can sense where the surface might be, and where the shark intends to strike next. They may even see pulses in the water that others miss, similar to Spider Man's "spidey senses".
• An Offering may experience rapid body changes submerged. Fins may appear, bones may shift, teeth may lengthen without warning and so on. This makes their movement easier or harder, depending on how much of themselves they're holding back or how apt their monstrous forms are at swimming.
• Some Offerings may feel drawn to the shark— not in fear, but in understanding. They may see themselves in it, and vice versa— One's song in particular is hypnotic, and for split moments you may understand his pain through his words. This might make you more prone to being consumed, though, so hopefully your partner can help you out of it—?.

ᛗ

Watching Me With Eyes Of A Predator

The surface you breach is not water— it's glass.

You strike it with the force of falling sky. It fractures beneath you in a bloom of painted light. For one weightless moment, the dream hesitates, sputters. Then the world shatters, and you fall with the cascade.

Water pours through the crack in the ceiling, carrying you down in ribbons of color and a shattering splash. Stained glass shards drift like petals through the now collapsing roof, and you eventually land not in sand, but upon a cathedral floor, slick with tide. Around you, the water spreads, pooling across the stone and swallowing the walls in a rising hush as it finds escape through the doors.

The cathedral is vast, impossibly so. Its architecture towers, crooked and immaculate, built more from longing than stone. No altar awaits you. No congregation. Only the sensation of having trespassed into something meant to be private. Veteran Vessels may recognize this cathedral as St. Patrick's— before it was drenched in One's blood sacrifice.

High above and surrounding you, the stained-glass mosaics churn with captured light. f you linger beneath one of the window's rays, your appearance may begin to change under the light. You appear as someone else sees you. Be it a hero. A monster. A disappointment. A god. A weakness. A temptation. Even a burden. That version of you clings to your dream-body like a second skin; uncomfortable, intimate, and undeniable. For some, it may be beautiful. For others, unbearable.

If you and another stand beneath the same window, you may each appear as the other secretly imagines. There is no control and no negotiation. Only truth twisted through the lens of want, resentment, fear, or love. And it doesn't go away until you leave the light.

Eventually, the cathedral doors open by dream's will. Beyond them lies a cloister garden: narrow paths, pale trees, and wild flowers that bloom in stillness. At the far end, behind the overgrowth and ruined arches, you see a hollow.

It is a corridor where the dream collapses inward, twisting, warped, half-swallowed in fog and dread. Its stones pulse faintly beneath a shallow film of water. Black tendrils reach from its depths like roots, veins, twitching toward sound, warmth, and movement. You see them dragging matter into the earth, and between them lie bones, contorted and fresh, half-consumed.

And farther still, a body that still breathes. Glimpsed only briefly, A masked man's form is stretched by the hollow's gravity, arms pinned behind the veil. He does not move, or speak. Or perhaps, he cannot. The hollow does not let him go and will not, should you make your attempts. If you step foot in the hollows that have consumed him, you too will be consumed. A three eyed Tod sits at the hollow's edge, a single bushy tail splitting into three, as its body plays with illusion like smoke put to dance over fire. It says, as its head floats up and its maw splits into a grin too cheshire to ignore: Wearing shoes, yet no feet in sight. You'll hear steps pound in the death of night. What is it that you need, to cross this narrow blight?

It disappears and only leaves you the riddle to chew on.

Nothing living can cross the hollow, you'll soon find. Nothing except . . . The Nightmares.

Just outside the garden's boundary, you'll find horses built from wind and shadow, flickering at the edge of your vision. Their bodies are black— not the color, but the absence, swallowing all light. Some of their craniums cound be seen, others have a jutting horn of bone from their foreheads. Where eyes should be, there are six: three stacked on each side of the skull, glowing dimly red like distant embers beneath ice. Their manes flow like torn fabric, like drifting vapor that trails behind them like the smoke from a snuffed candle. Their maws are too damn wide to be herbivorous, yet they seem to enjoy the act of grazing. They wait, unchained and wild in a herd.

This is the only way forward. Only they can pass through the hollow untouched. But how to ride one—? You may chase them. You may plead, command, kneel. You may offer them all your need and all your love, promises that you will provide if they become your steed. But they were not made to answer it. For every Vessel, there is one single Nightmare that will choose them, and thus you will choose each other. They have their own personalities, some more aggressive or shyer than others. The harder you reach, the faster they vanish or harshed they will attack if unready. Try to mount one through force, and you'll regret ever trying. Try to bind one, and it will break you.

But if you are patient, if you figure out its nature and how to please it— your Nightmare may come closer. One may circle you. It may bow its head. Their snort is warm and real against your palm. If successful, it will lower itself to its knees. If you've got the height, they will simply wait, patiently, for you to get on their backs (Or not; there are plenty of sassy mares out there).

If you accept, you might not be taken somewhere safe, but you will be taken somewhere true, away from here. And if you force your want upon them, if you cannot let go— you will be left with something else.

In the distance, across the flooded cathedral floor, you may see One again. Flashes, glimpses. Always chasing a mare he never reaches, or the opposite— the mare chases after him.

NOTES:

• If a character successfully forms a bond with their Nightmare, it will return with them in the form of a waking world steed, officially introduced in the next event. You're free to give it the personality you wish.
• If a character attempts to force a connection with a Nightmare at any point (tries to catch, mount, command, etc.), the mare will bite or kick, which Vessels will suffer as a persistent dream-mark that will carry into the waking world.

TOKEN EFFECTS

• Light clings unnaturally to Tokens in the cathedral, especially near the stained glass. It bends around their bodies like a false halo, casting them in divine or monstrous outlines depending on who watches.
• If a Token casts or channels any magic within the cathedral or near a Nightmare, the spell does not manifest, but instead, a cold mist escapes their mouth, and the Nightmare turns to look. The dream rejects force.
• When a Nightmare looks directly at a Token, their eyes eclipse, pupils vanishing into rings of shadow. In that moment, a fragmented vision floods the Token's mind . . . not from the Nightmare, but from another character nearby. It shows the Token how that character once dreamed of them, what they feared, needed, or hoped they would become.

OFFERING EFFECTS

• The stained glass causes a subtle change in scent and physical appearance turning into a more grotesque version of this— Offerings begin to smell or look like what others most want from them.
• Offerings may always know where the Nightmares are, even when hidden. But the more they try to act on this knowledge, the harder the Nightmares are to reach.
• An Offering's body will react before they realize it, flinching from lies, bristling in moments of emotional pressure, pulling away from contact, and so on. They may startle even at gentle contact, as if something inside them is as reactive as they are.

ᛗ

Where The Delicate Stops

As your Nightmare takes you through the misty hollow, you may begin to notice the empty city of Manhattan as veterans remember. There is no warning but the eerie silence that surrounds you like impossible weights. The cathedral once behind you folds inward— wrong, deep and full of pressure. It bursts through the hollow's path, through the city's street, and then— The dream ruptures.

Stone peels backward like paper. Glass liquefies mid-air. The sky above the city pulls itself inside out. Time bends sideways. And from the edges of the dream, something, someone, begins to hunt. Sleep's presence moves like the very shark she chose as a vision of her physical manifestation. She does not speak or rage. But you feel Her, rising like fever beneath the skin of Her world as the hairs at the back of your neck do. She does not want you this deep, and neither does One.

Somewhere within the collapse, you may see them— entwined, shifting, trembling. One's face is turned toward you, screaming something that doesn't reach your ears. Sleep's hands are tangled in his body. She pulls him back with a gentleness that breaks the sky, and he screams, reaching for you with his last breath before consumption. The dream convulses.

The Nightmares bolt with you still on them.

The city rises to meet you from the shadows, but it's not the city you know. Skyscrapers twist at unnatural angles. Streets flood, then dry, then flood again. Tendrils burst from subway grates and gutters, slashing upward like tongues. Streetlights spin like compass needles. Cars levitate, crash, freeze midair. You move through it all at breakneck speed, but the exit keeps shifting— a hole in the world that flickers just beyond reach where you see your body, fast asleep.

Somewhere in the chaos, a few Nightmares are caught. Sleep strikes like lightning— she coils like a viper and tightens like a vice. One touch from Her, and your Nightmare collapses mid-gallop, its body unraveling into smoke and light. No sound. No scream. Just absence. And you fall right off it like a ragdoll.

Others fall beneath impact, too— a wrong turn, a shattered wall, a burst of heat from One's grief. A broken leg. A crash. A wound too deep to ride through. If your steed is lost, you fall. And if no one reaches for you, you stay fallen. Others are near, and their Nightmares still run. All of you have a terrible dread in your bones— if you are caught or left behind, the consequences will be dire. You might not even wake up. So, call out. Cling. Climb. Share. Two Vessels on one mount. Anything to survive and flee as the dreamscape tightens its wrathful grip around you.

Sleep calls inside your spine. You can't make out what She says. One answers, the same blur of garbled words in your marrow. And then, just before the dream can take you, just before you reach an exit— you rise.

Your body lifts from the Nightmare as it paddles the air with desperation, it too rising. You're pulled upward, weightless, as if a thread inside your heart has been yanked by a furious god. You float, twist in the air. Your vision glows white.

We've got you.

And then you wake up— mid-air in the waking world.

Your body slams into your bed, floor, street, soil, wherever it was that you had slept. Reality greets you with terrible impact.

NOTES

• If a character does not find a mount in time, they may be caught in the dream collapse. They still wake— but they wake broken. These characters may wake up bruised, disoriented, or emotionally fragmented, and this can be explored in the next waking world event.

TOKEN EFFECTS

• Any Tether they feel becomes unstable—splintered. For brief moments, they feel it breaking and re-forming again and again, with slight differences each time.
• The more emotionally charged they are, the more the dream pulls toward them; tendrils snap faster, debris veers unnaturally close.
• Their body flickers with signs of their own magic—sigils, symbols, runes— burning just beneath the surface of their skin like constellations. These glow brighter as the dream collapses, as if trying to tear free.

OFFERING EFFECTS

• Where Offerings are grazed or injured, they bleed light, not red. It floats up like mist.
• They hear One's heartbeat, not theirs, and it speeds in panic. It affects their own pulse, the mare under them . . .
• The Nightmare no longer follows the Offering's will—it will respond to their fear instead.

ᛗ

OOC NOTES

➤ Welcome to Somnia's third TDM, which doubles as the month's gamewide event!
➤ This TDM is considered game canon. You are free to have your character remember as many details as possible when they wake up.
➤ Only new characters are free to experiment with the Vessel options, Token or Offering to your liking; this is a dreamscape, so multiple/different situations for you to really test which option you like most is possible. Current characters must remain as their chosen Vessel type unless you requested a switch, which can be done on the Taken page.
➤ All TDMs take place within a dreamscape, meaning characters can interact with the setting without needing to apply. Come have fun with us!
➤ Veteran players, I ask to please refrain from making post-event threads for the time being! We have some important information to take into account in next month's event when characters are slated to "wake up". At the very least, please wait for the information to be offered on the next plotting post. Thank you everyone for your patience!
➤ Please comment on the TDM's INVITE TL if you are a new player interested in joining the game, but don't yet have an invite. Current players or the mod may reach out to extend an invite. Once you've got one, please don't forget to comment on the Invite page so you may properly link it in your reserve and app.
➤ Questions? Please direct them to the designated questions comment linked below!

network ᛗ logs ᛗ ooc ᛗ memes ᛗ navigation

code

code

Comments

[dogmetaphors]

I'm not surprised. Things like this are never true.

[He doesn't need to elaborate. He can think of so many examples it would take too long to name them all.]

Though I've never heard of gods trying to interfere with mortals before.

I no longer have my cultivation, but I'll fight her. I have to. Do you know how long this has been going on?

[hongtian]

Have you not?

[ She closes her fists, snuffing the fires out within them as she raises an eyebrow. ]

I've been under the impression that gods do little else.

This is my sixth month since Sleep pulled me into her dream; others have been here as long as I, but I do not believe any have been here longer. Though this may have begun before any of us arrived. There are... other beings here who seem to be fighting against her influence as well.

[dogmetaphors]

The gods don't interfere with the mortal realm at all. They closed of long ago. You're far more likely to get interference from demons, though a number of them are relatively harmless. My shizun defeated one by out-drinking it, and was able to defeat another through similar means.

[Of course, not all of them will go down without bloodshed.]

Six months is... a long time to be trapped.

[And yet, there's a sense that he was a dire situation for longer than that.]

[hongtian]

I've been trapped elsewhere longer.

[ She doesn't elaborate—he has said plenty else that has caught her attention, and Ruhong can hardly decide what to address first. ]

We have much information to trade. Your shizun sounds like quite an interesting master. Does he follow the way of the drunken fist?

[dogmetaphors]

[He shakes his head at the question.]

No. He's just good at holding his drink. I've never seen him the least bit intoxicated.

[There is a serious amount of admiration in his voice as he talks about his shizun. Of course, that's not unusual for a disciple at all.

But that's only on his mind for a moment, because he has to ask about her statement.]

You were somewhere else before you ended up here?

[hongtian]

[ There's an amused twist to her lips as he speaks of his shizun's drinking capabilities. Ruhong herself is somewhat more capable than her clansmen of holding her liquor, but the bar for that is extremely low: they are ascetic practitioners, and as such few have even learned to burn the effects of alcohol away with their cultivation. She wonders if that is his trick. ]

Yes. Not my own world, either: I was... recruited, I suppose, for a mission in another realm. I've my own reasons for wanting to return as swiftly as I can.

You mentioned the gods closed off from the mortal realm long ago. Though we've our cultivation in common, I do not think our homes share that fact. They are active and well in mine, for the most. Does the name "Krynn" ring any bells for you?

[dogmetaphors]

Recruited, huh...

[That sounds... less than desirable. Horrible, actually.]

I've never heard of "Krynn" before.

[hongtian]

Well, no more than I expected.

[ She sighs and, at last, offers an introduction. ]

I am Yun Ruhong, Cloudwalker clan of Huashan. From where have you arrived?

[dogmetaphors]

Mo Weiyu of Sisheng Peak. I was in a cave near Wubei Temple before I woke here. My shizun was with me, but I haven't seen him anywhere in this dream.

apparently i never got the notif for this - so sorry!

[hongtian]

[ As expected, she doesn't recognize either of the locations he mentions, but it's at least pleasant to be speaking names and places that sound more like home than anything else she's heard here. ]

Tell me more of your shizun. Perhaps he has simply yet to be found. Do you tend to travel together?

no worries at all!

[dogmetaphors]

Not always, but we've been traveling together recently. We were... separated, before reuniting at Wubei Temple.

[There's clearly a story there, a long one, but he doesn't elaborate.]

He's tall and wears white robes. He's uptight and has a bad temper, but I promise you he's actually a very gentle and considerate man. He's the sort to do things for people without you even knowing he's there.

If Shizun is here, he'll be helping people, without question.

[hongtian]

He is quite the righteous cultivator, then.

[ Something passes almost imperceptibly across her face, the barest hint of a crease between her brows, but it is gone just as quickly as it appears. Ruhong's smile is as pleasant as ever. ]

You admire him greatly.

[dogmetaphors]

Mm, I suppose so.

[He frowns in consideration at the statement.]

But I was raised in a brothel, and he's never looked down on me for it.

[Mo Ran gives her a nod.]

Yes. Shizun is someone worth admiring.

[hongtian]

[ she softens, just a little, with his admission. ]

Nor should he have looked down on you. That is nothing worth rebuke.

[ but then suspicion: ] Is that where you met him?

[dogmetaphors]

[The absolute horror at her question is evidence that the answer is a hard no.]

Absolutely not! Shizun has never stepped foot in a place like that.

[He scratches at the side of his jaw.]

We met at Sisheng Peak when my uncle, the sect leader, had me meet the elders so I could pick a shizun. He was standing beneath a haitang tree, and I thought he looked the most gentle of all of them.

[hongtian]

[ his reaction means it's easy enough to soothe any skepticism she may have had with her question. it almost gets a chuckle out of her, too—she lifts an forearm to cover it politely with a cough instead.

there are plenty of interesting things within his next statement, too. ]

You wanted a gentle shizun.

[ she almost admires him for this, but she can't fathom the thinking, either. Ruhong grew up wishing to be anything but gentle. ]

My clan was... insular. Removed from the other cultivation sects. We did not choose our teachers, either. Is that common?

[dogmetaphors]

I did.

[Of course, the reality was more complicated. He's already said his shizun has a temper, though it's obvious this is something Mo Ran doesn't hold against him.

He shakes his head at her question.]

Sisheng Peak is unique. I'm not aware of any other sect that does things the way we do. The disciple picks the teacher, but the teacher has to approve, too.

[And then an unsettled expression appears on his face.]

I... I don't remember why Shizun agreed to take me in. Forgetting something so important...

[hongtian]

[ She would like to know more about his sect and its teacher-choosing disciples, but everything Mo Ran says simply adds more to the things she is rapidly hoping to continue interrogating him about. ]

That is all strange indeed.

[ an understatement. Ruhong narrows her eyes in study. ]

Why did your uncle not raise you with the sect?

[dogmetaphors]

He didn't know where I was. I was only found after the brothel burned to the ground.

[It is what it is; Mo Ran holds no grudge against him.]

Even though I was older when I was found, it didn't prevent me from cultivating my spiritual core; mine formed in under a year.

[It's almost preposterously fast, but he doesn't really think much of it.]

[hongtian]

You have had... quite the dramatic life.

[ She says this purely as observation: there is no sense of sarcasm or disbelief in her voice. The opposite, if anything. ]

But to cultivate a core so quickly—surely you must have had some training before then. Even my eldest brother did not form his until he was nine years old, and that is the youngest in my people's memory.

[dogmetaphors]

I didn't.

[Said honestly.]

My mother died when I was five, and then I ended up living in the brothel. There, I was treated worse than a servant. I only started cultivating a core at fifteen.

[hongtian]

I... am sorry. Perhaps I understand why you wanted a gentle shizun.

But you said you are now how old?

[dogmetaphors]

I'm 37.

[He says this incredibly offhanded.

He also doesn't look like he could be possibly older than 25.]

[hongtian]

Are you quite certain of that? You do not appear more than ten years my senior, unless...

[ Like she's dunked in cold water, Ruhong does know one way other than a simply naturally youthful face could make him appear so young. She just doesn't like this option. ]

You have not cultivated to that degree so quickly, surely.

[ The accumulation of energy in one's inner crucible, a level of cultivation achievable only by the strongest and wisest of cultivators: first the slowing of aging, the extension of one's lifespan, and then, finally—immortality.

Surely. ]

[dogmetaphors]

Oh! Um.

[Mo Ran gives her a complicated look.]

I've...

[He's managed to keep this a secret for how long, and blurts it out offhand in front of a stranger?]

I've been reborn. I died at 32, and woke up with time having rewound back to shortly before I turned 16.