TDM 001 ● JUNE 2025

[uruz]

TDM: ONE

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PRELUDE

(content warnings: dream horror, loss of autonomy, mild body horror, cult undertones )


You’ve had this dream before.

A moon cracked wide, spilling tendrils from its craters like bleeding silk. A sky starless and slow. And on the horizon: a wave. Massive. Black. Still. It creeps forward every time like sunrise. It hushes before collapse, but every time before this, you wake up just in time.

But not tonight. You can't outrun it even if you tried— it comes crashing down on you at last, swallowing you like a gaping black hole. Saltless, soundless, the water devours. But instead of drowning, you drift, suspended in velvet dark. And in that dark, her voice breathes.

“You don’t have to fall with it.
Let me in.
I can give you everything you’ve ever hungered for.
A place.
A purpose.
Stay.”

She offers. And you— your mouth, your mind— give an answer before you even know you’re speaking. Yes.

The tide recedes. The dark peels away like silk. You awaken beneath a canopy of gold, in a garden that hums with warmth and longing. Soft grass. Strange trees. Fragrant fruits in every color, dripping with light. And a mask upon your face, no straps, no weight, yet it clings to your skin like it was always part of you. You don't want to remove it. You could, maybe . . . But it would feel like tearing your skin away.

She no longer speaks to you, but her orchard breaths a sigh upon your arrival. A force tugs at the edges of your thoughts, beckoning you to contact the web you're now a part of. Welcome, Vessel.

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YOU CAN THREAD THE NEEDLE

(content warnings: sensory manipulation )

An orchard stretches around you in impossible directions, the horizon blurred like wet paint. Trees curl and arch with an elegance that feels practiced— like they’re posing for someone watching. Their trunks shimmer faintly. Leaves flutter even when there is no wind.

You are not alone. Others stir nearby, familiar or unfamiliar, though that distinction begins to blur. You may not know them, or perhaps you have the feeling you do even if you've never met them in your life. Either way, you might wish to know them.

From the strange branches within the orchard hang fruits shaped like stars, teardrops, or glass bells. Each one pulses faintly, waiting to be plucked. Their effects are subtle but powerful, crafted to cater to your desire and wonder:

🍎A pearlescent orb, cool and slick to the touch, whose taste floods you with a future that might be: a fleeting vision of joy, belonging, or beauty you didn’t know you craved. Whoever is nearby sees a glimpse of it too.
🍎A silver-veined citrus, fizzing like champagne. When shared between two, it evokes the feeling of a first time— first love, first rebellion, first triumph — even if you’ve never lived it. The emotional residue lingers between you.
🍎A blood-orange fruit with velvet skin, which when bitten into, causes your voice to harmonize with another’s— even if you weren’t speaking. You’ll find yourselves finishing each other’s thoughts, or speaking a secret you both forgot you held.
🍎A waxen, translucent fig, which grants you a small miracle: something you longed for appears beside you, conjured from dream. It might be a lost keepsake. A voice. A scent. A face.
🍎A smooth, silver fruit with a mirrored skin. When bitten, it briefly reflects the dreamer’s true self — not as they are, but as they wish to be. For a moment, others may see it too. The illusion clings for a time, making the character appear more like their ideal self in body, presence, or aura.
🍎A dark plum that glows faintly pink, almost heart-shaped, and warm to the touch. Its juice runs red and sticky, clinging to the lips. To taste it is to be filled with longing— for intimacy, for sensation, for touch. The desire may be gentle or overwhelming, but it lingers, tuned to the presence of someone nearby. It is not mindless. It is focused.

At the center of the orchard is a fountain, still and inviting. Its water tastes like clarity— and for a moment after drinking, your thoughts shape your surroundings. What you create might intertwine with what another dreams beside you.

Sleep does not speak in words. She breathes through the trees, hums through the soil, stares through your mask. Her voice, barely a whisper:

“Thread the needle, My Vessel.
Want.
Want, and see what answers you.”

You feel it,— if you resonate with another, something will change. Maybe the orchard will shift again. Maybe it already has.

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THE DAYLIGHT RECEDES

(content warnings: grief, loss, emotional vulnerability)

The orchard is gone. In its place stretches a landscape of ashen grass, supple and fragrant underfoot, warmed by a pale light that doesn’t seem to come from the sun. All around, a soft breeze stirs the fields— endless, loamy, and quiet. The air smells like soil after rain. It is peaceful here. But not happy.

Scattered across the fields are half-buried remnants: old beds, cracked record players, wilted bouquets, melted candles, notes scrawled on napkins— things lost in the moments between love and loneliness. Everything here feels half-remembered, yet painfully familiar. If a character reaches for one of these objects, they may hear a voice whispering a name they have tried to forget, or one they wish they'd remembered sooner.

In the distance, a shrouded figure walks the fields, unhurried, always just out of reach. Their back is turned, but their presence pulls like gravity. Some may choose to follow. Some may wait. And some may realize they’re walking beside someone else— a stranger who seems to carry a memory they, too, once held.

This is a moment of reflection. Interactions blossom from shared worries, slow confessions, or uncanny synchronicities. Characters might recognize something in another, such as a gesture, a phrase, a scent— and feel that thread begin to tug. Best follow its lead . . . You won't be able to leave unless you do.

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EVERYTHING WE LOVE RESETS

(content warnings: body horror, transformation, loss of autonomy, psychological horror, cosmic dread )

You awaken— or perhaps you never truly slept. The orchard is gone. The fields have withered. All is silence now, and the air is soaked in dread.

A still, uncanny plane stretches out before you: rotted soil, stagnant pools, shattered glass trees that hum with an almost-familiar voice. Echoes of what the dream once offered—sweet fruit, blooming things, beauty— remain only as scars on the land. Their pleasures have fermented into menace. The dreamscape is collapsing.

Sleep, ever present, ever watching, does not weep. She has already taken what she wants, and you see her teeth stretched too wide in the shadows. In the reflection that splits back at you. In the soundless breeze with much more bite and possession than the gentle caress of invitation. She whispers, from the shadows between dying stars:

"You said yes. Now let me see what you become."

The mask on your face tightens, no longer decoration. A binding. You are no longer merely dreaming— Your skin may change fluidly, or break down through the bones violently. Your flesh may split, brimming with power, or your blood could burn like lava oozing through your veins. You may even experience it again, and again, and again; a different beast or burst of magic each time. Whether painful or painless, You are now either Token, or Offering. You may not yet know what that means— But your body does.

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EVEN WHEN WE RUN WITH DEATH

(content warnings: body horror, fungal infections, parasitism, loss of agency, cosmic horror, violence, death, cult imagery)

Your surroundings bend and break with growing instability: The sky splits open, revealing a bleeding red moon, weeping tendrils like raw nerves. It feels wrong in a way you have no words for. It sees you. And it beckons for blood.

The dream does not want peace now. It wants performance. It wants pain. And above all, Sleep wants you all to herself. She watches from the broken heavens, humming in delight as you run, as you fight, as you fracture under the weight of your becoming. Perhaps you turn on each other, frightened with what you have become or too frazzled to control yourself, or the newfound power you possess.

There are other things to look out for, though. Creatures stalk this unraveling plane: malformed creatures with mutated faces and fungal blooms bursting from their orifices, or tendrils slithering from what were once mouths and eye sockets. Once Vessels. Hosts. They may speak with familiar voices. They may try to barter, or bite. Those with hands and fingers may try and force your eyelids to part, to tilt your gaze to the sky above you, chanting in tongues that drill into your brain stem. Hushing in song. Whispering Look at her. She is Beautiful.

If you are caught, if you gaze up at Her for too long— you too will suffer the same fate. Fungal bursts and tendrils will spurt from your mouth, invade you from the inside and reach out to her in sacred reverence. It's a horrible way to go. If this is an end you find, you too, despite your pain, may begin to smile. You might have even more reason to attack your fellow Vessels. They too, must see Her beauty like you do.

The song stutters. The dream recoils when you succumb to the worst of Her parasitism, even though you don't lose consciousness. It is not Sleep who speaks next. In your last few seconds of awareness, you hear in your ears, in your mind, in your soul, snarling and thick with fury:


“What have you done?”

The world begins to scream. You begin to fall.

The dream is over.

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NOTES

➤ Welcome to Somnia’s first TDM! All TDMs will be considered game canon.
➤ You are free (and encouraged!) to experiment with the Tether mechanic as well as Vessel options and the Network to your liking; this is a dreamscape, so multiple/different situations for you to really test which option you like most is possible.
➤ All TDMs take place within a dreamscape, meaning characters can interact with the setting without needing to apply. Come have fun with us!
➤ Mod invited players may currently extend one invite per player. Interested players who do not have mod invites or a friend to get an invite from may comment to the appropriate top level to solicit one, or, solicit one from the mod here. Please keep in mind that soliciting an invite does not guarantee one.
➤ Questions? Please direct them to the designated questions comment linked below!

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Comments

osamu dazai | bungo stray dogs beast

[unaliveyourself]

i. prelude cw: mentions of suicide/suicidal ideation

[He closes his eyes as he falls. One turns out the lights before going to bed, after all, and he has been waiting for this sleep a very, very long time. The darkness cloaks him, and he welcomes it gladly; the dizzying blur of the Yokohama streets disappears, snuffed out like dead stars, and there's something comforting about the encroaching water that replaces it, pulling up the covers to hold him snug. It's appropriate; the Greeks believed the river Styx to be the boundary of life and death. He doesn't have a coin for passage, but that's alright, isn't it? He's hardly ever counted as human to begin with.

A voice sings to him like a lullaby. Yes, he says, yes, he'll stay in the dark. He's finally finished, after all. His long journey -- four years the first time, and another six more -- has come to an end, and he is ready to rest.

But the darkness doesn't linger. He feels first the weight of other lives in his mind; it's nothing new for him, having borne the burden of too many possible worlds for too many years, but it nags at him like an alarm at one's bedside, blaring on repeat until you're forced to open your eyes and address it. He wakes to a garden. He wakes. His expression twists into something impatient.]

Ah. This isn't what I had in mind.

[He turns toward the nearest person, feeling a tug foreign and not.]

Who are you?

ii. thread the needle cw: grief, likely death mentions

[There is absolutely no good reason to eat the fruit. It's baked into every piece of literature he can think of, blaring forbidden with all but neon signage.

He plucks a pearlescent orb without hesitation, all the same. It's a mistake and the best choice he could've made, because the vision that surrounds him is the counter of an old rundown bar, a glass of whiskey, ice sphere bobbing up and down with the press of a finger, the sound of jazz in his ears -- but most importantly, there's a book laid out on the table. The title is obscured, but the byline isn't. It reads Sakunosuke Oda.

Dazai goes very still, breath stolen away as though he's found himself tossed out an airlock into the vacuum of space. He swallows tightly.]

We're to be the Lotus Eaters, mm? ...So be it.

[He raises the fruit to his mouth again, ready to prolong this vision as long as it will last.]

iii. the daylight recedes

[It's when he reaches for a worn out matchbook that he hears the voice whisper a name that is only spoken in his memories of another life. Odasaku, it calls.

(Don't call me Odasaku, he'd said, gun drawn and leveled right between his eyes. My enemies have no right to call me that.)

He follows it anyway, because he would always follow it. For one more time, one more chance, one more drink. Odasaku is alive and writing a novel and it's all he needs, all he wants. A good life is one in which you have someone you can say goodbye to, a farewell that makes you lament from the bottom of your heart. It's enough. He doesn't need any more, but he follows it, because he has to.

It isn't Odasaku, of course. Someone else is here, seeking the same thing -- one more time. One more chance. He laughs a little softly. It sounds like shattered china.]

"If you’re brave enough to say goodbye, life will reward you with a new hello." I suppose that's what this is meant to be.

iv. wildcard

[Write up your own prompt, or hit me up goodluckmodes to plot something ♥]

( iii )

[offseers]

You think you're brave?

[ the words slip out before noah can recall them. he bites his tongue, annoyed with himself. his mood is — well. it would be fair to say he doesn't feel like himself. the mask chafes his very heart. as if he looked in a mirror long enough, he'll see . . . he'll see.

ghosts and echoes. as an offseer, the departed are the departed. they don't speak. they have no voice. but here they were. in his shadow. in his wake.

no. he can't imagine anyone being brave enough. ]

[unaliveyourself]

Mm...resolute, perhaps.

[He's not sure about brave, necessarily. He certainly hadn't felt brave in that bar, saying goodbye to Odasaku for the final time. He would've given anything not to have had to. Resolute, though ... yes. He was a man who did what needed to be done, no matter the cost or consequence -- even say goodbye, when everything was finished.]

[offseers]

[ resolute. noah bows his head. he thought he had it. resolve. they had made it this far. they got to live . . . so much longer than they were supposed to.

but the end is the end. ]

I don't think we're the ones who get to decide that.

[unaliveyourself]

Oh?

[He tilts his head a little like a bird, one uncovered eye watching Noah's face.]

What makes you say that?

[offseers]

Because no one truly speaks for the end.

[ an echo of crys' words, engraved on his heart. ]

Only those who remain speak for them.

i.

[richesse]

Just a girl. I’m more curious about who’s asking.

[unaliveyourself]

[Who's asking is a more involved question than perhaps she even imagines. Possibilities upon possibilities across infinite worlds, wrapped into his mind from the time he connected the worlds' fragments. Even the straightforward answers have multiple choices. The boss of the Port Mafia. A detective with the Armed Detective Agency. The man in black. Usurper, monster, friend. A shadow haunting the dark. A stain on the pavement.

He hums, softly.]

Nobody important. [Not anymore.] But you can call me Dazai.

[richesse]

[ Ah.

How familiar. Are they both the type to keep their cards to their chest? ]

Lortel. Can I ask what you did have in mind?

cw: suicidal ideation

[unaliveyourself]

You recall that endless blackness, just before you heard the voice, don't you? When we were asked to stay? I wanted to stay in the dark. To pull up the covers and sleep.

[In another life, he'd have tacked on a "just kidding, of course" to the end. Gone off on a tangent about dying in dreams and the biological mechanisms involved. Lamented the lack of a beautiful woman to die with, or perhaps asked her to join him.

Pushed it all just far enough never to be taken too seriously. But save the one on his face, he's tossed away all his masks, now. He thinks if he ripped this one off there would be nothing left underneath.]

[richesse]

You wanted to die.

[ she just states it baldly, in a matter-of-fact sort of way. ]

You’re that disappointed about surviving?

[unaliveyourself]

Have you ever been reading something and reached a point where you thought, the story needs to end here? Where any more would be unnecessary, or even ruin the whole thing?

[His expression is hard to read, but he doesn't look sad. Dazai has always lived close to death, after all, in every possible universe.]

It's something like that.

[richesse]

… of course I have. More than once. Still, what a depressing outlook. Or should I be offering my condolences?

[ that he … didn’t die. like he wanted. ]

[unaliveyourself]

Mm, neither. I was still able to write the ending I planned. Everyone knows a spin-off is never quite as good, but as long as it can't affect the original, I'm quite satisfied.

[He chuckles quietly.]

The human mind is a pretty remarkable thing. This could all be the last misfirings of neurons in the moments they're deprived of oxygen as my heart stops beating. Did you know, coma patients are said to be able to dream? Some who've come out of such a thing have even claimed to remember different worlds and people and relationships entirely!

[He leans back against the grass, head pillowed against his arms.]

The only evidence that we're awake right now is that the both of us can confirm it to each other. It's an idea called "consensus reality"! So there's no reason for condolence, you see.

[richesse]

[ After a long, considering moment, she’ll sit on the grass beside him, not too close but not too far, her skirt tucked carefully beneath her. She pulls her knees to her chest and hugs them loosely, looking out over this surreal, dreamlike expanse. ]

Then I’m afraid I’ll have to hope you very much lived. I’m not ready to die, you see. I’ve got so much to do.

[unaliveyourself]

Of course. When you give up on the things you want, you might as well have already stopped living.

[His smile turns a little sharp, the last remnants of the Port Mafia's boss, the embodiment of nightfall seeping through.]

For what it's worth, though. Different universes are real. I can confirm this for a fact. Your survival and mine are not necessarily connected.

[If it turns out they are, though? That this liminal nexus space has something to do with the Book? Well.

🔪

(He'd expect nothing less in return.)]

[richesse]

A fact, hm~. How interesting. Are you some kind of wandering god, uncovering all the secrets of the stars?

[ she’s mocking him, but coolly, without much bite. it’s more like a passing observation than a barb. ]

Then, why do you think we’re here?

[unaliveyourself]

[She's mocking him, but he laughs all the same, as though she's told a funny joke that he's in on.]

Godhood wouldn't suit me. I don't have enough interest in the world for that.

[he shakes his head.]

Stumbling upon discoveries that change the shape of the world isn't exactly the province of gods, though. The discovery of penicillin, for instance? Very much an accident!

...As to why, I could waste hours crafting countless theories, but none of them would affect our present situation, would it? Whatever this space truly is, your body and mind will react as though you're truly alive. Haven't you ever wondered why you can't die in a dream?

[richesse]

A nihilist with a death wish. What interesting people I’ve run into.

[ she leans back on her hands, her eyes on the strange, familiar/unfamiliar sky. ]

I can’t say I have. Dwelling on dreams is a bit of a luxury. But you’re saying as if I should treat it like it’s real… hm~. I already believed it was. This is all too vivid to be a dream.

[unaliveyourself]

Mm, is that so? What about you, then? What all is Lortel-chan too preoccupied with to spend time on dreams and fantasies?

[It reminds him, just a little bit, of someone "he" worked with, in the Agency. She seems less easily rattled, though, which is simultaneously a little disappointing and yet more interesting.]

ii

[summonbeasts]

... Lotus Eaters?

[Forgive her for sounding a little dazed. For a moment something had jumped into her vision, a sight she couldn't quite comprehend but felt good all the same? A book, a name she didn't know and now a term she didn't know either.]

[unaliveyourself]

They're part of a story from ancient Greek mythology. The Odyssey. On the hero's long journey home, he finds an island to rest after a fierce storm. Its inhabitants subsist on nothing more than the fruit of the lotus flowers, which, upon being consumed, allowed a person to let go of everything driving them forward, but also holding them back -- leaving them in a state of peaceful oblivion.

[He takes another bite of the fruit, unconcerned.]

To continue on, Odysseus found himself forced to drag his men forcibly back to his ship, over their tearful protests. It's an interesting concept, don't you think? You can make arguments for his actions being both cruel and kind, depending on your point of view.

[summonbeasts]

[Maria is quiet throughout the explanation. She's never been one for mythology or fairy tales to be perfectly honest, her powers having displayed themselves early and her focus being on mastering them. It's an interesting story however and Maria allows herself to turn it over in her mind a moment before she replies.]

That sounds more like a trap than anything else.

[She's still a teenager viewing things in chiefly blacks and whites after all. Those shades of gray in between are only now beginning to come into focus for her and most of them are draped in the figure of her mother.]

[unaliveyourself]

Does it? A trap requires intent and an objective. Don't forget, these are people who have lost their connection to all earthly concerns save to rest comfortably amidst the flowers.

[Another bite of the fruit. It doesn't give him any more of the book, but the idea of its existence is enough for him, all the same.]

Can a poppy be blamed for its narcotic properties? The belladonna flower for its poison? Nature will exist as it is. The choices of humans are theirs alone. Some might call it their distinguishing feature!

[summonbeasts]

[She pauses a moment there and obviously seems to be thinking all of this over. She's not seeing any other visions at least so it leaves her mind clearer to turn the questions around.]

Can nature not have an intent or objective as well? I can't say I know a great deal about flowers but I'm quite familiar with animals. Many of them are as you say products of nature and developed features to suit their needs. Claws, teeth and so on.

So then is the way the lotus fruit produces forgetfulness or the belladonna produces poison not also done with intent?