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Entry tags:
TDM 001 ● JUNE 2025
TDM: ONE
ᛗPRELUDE
(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.
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.
ᛗYOU 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:
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.
ᛗTHE 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.
ᛗ
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.
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:
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.
ᛗ 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:
The world begins to scream. You begin to fall.
The dream is over.
ᛗNOTES
➤ 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!
➤ 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!
no subject
[ It's always in places that people would least expect. Like private schools being the highest purveyors of teen drugs, not the inner city ones like everyone assumes. A kid living off EBT barely has money for fruit snacks, let alone blow.
(That's probably an exaggeration, but, he doesn't have the hard numbers in front of him right now to check). ]
Project got canned. High risk and not enough results. After that kind of work, anything else they could offer me was—too boring.
[ Not to mention: they were using the PASIV technology for all the wrong things. A shiny dream-making box wasn't meant to be holed up in a US military lab to rot. ]
Enlisted because I had no direction. By the time I was discharged, I had plenty of direction.
[ And that was that. ] What about you? Ten years; you staying or you getting the hell out?
no subject
Already did. I did my time and got out last year. I fly commercial now. [ Beat. ] Or, well, I did, up until ending up here.
[ He wonders what the voice offered this guy, if anything. What was so appealing that it beat staying in his old life—and he intuitively knows that it's far too personal a question to ask.
He's already thinking about how to get out, now that he no longer feels the pull of the woman's voice, the promise of so many things he's missing. Now he's here, in a dangerous and unfamiliar place, no contact to the outside world, and cut off from the entire reason he spent those ten years in the military to begin with.
He only got to be a commercial pilot for a year. One year.
Freddie tries not to focus on that. It'll only make him bitter, only add to his already-compounding dissatisfaction with the situation. ]
no subject
[ Normally, he'd ask if it were a dream job, but...after being in dreamshare, that phrasing felt too odd. Compounded with where they're at now, he's not sure it's the best way to ask.
Speaking of: ]
What happened, before you got here? [ Arthur slants him a curious look, genuinely interested to know. Not only because Freddie seems the honest sort, but also because it'll give him something to measure his own situation against. He remembers how he got here—well, for the most part—and is fairly sure he isn't stuck in some kind of PASIV dreamscape meant to pick through his secrets.
That doesn't rule out that he's in some other fucked up dreamscape of another power's making, one that does want dig all the skeletons out of his closet. Two hours ago, he would've never considered it a possibility. Alice in Wonderland flights of fancy (or paranoia) were not his style. Eames would probably laugh himself sick, if he could see him right now.
You've no imagination, darling, he'd said at the beginning of the inception job, a counterpoint to his protests. Arthur snorts quietly as the thought crosses his mind. No, he thinks, he had plenty of imagination. He just also happened to have both feet firmly planted in reality, unlike so many of his colleagues. ]
no subject
The entirety is out of the question: in his dream, he'd chosen to stay, had taken the false promise of change, of freedom, finally, from his overwhelmingly untenable situation. From the isolation, from the misery in his own skin, every conscious moment trapped in an alien, unpleasant body. And the promise of company—to finally feel the lifelong ache of a desperate, empty hunger quelled.
He can't tell Arthur any of why he came here without telling him what he ran from. So he keeps it vague. ]
There was a voice. A woman's. She told me to stay, I don't really... remember the details.
no subject
Maybe he needed time to think about it. To remember exactly how he got here–Arthur is familiar with that kind of mental exercise; he does it every time he wakes from the PASIV, when he wakes from a regular sleep cycle. Not everyone has the training.
It's also very possible that he's taking some time to edit the story. There might be something he wants to keep close to the chest, whether it was out of shame or guilt or another emotion entirely.
They don't really know each other, so he doesn't press. ]
I heard a similar voice. She was offering purpose, or ... something like it. Felt like drowning, for a bit.
[ He frowns, a hand sliding into his pocket, where he turns his die over and over with his fingertips. ] I remember saying yes, but I don't know why I would've.
no subject
[ The cards are, indeed, held close to the chest: the woman hadn't offered Freddie purpose, because he wasn't lacking in it. The Air Force, and then flying commercially had given him that. Joy, deep fulfillment. He was where he wanted to be, prior to the moment it all came crashing down at his biannual medcert exam. He knew what he wanted to do and why he was here and what he was here to do; there's never been a shred of doubt about that. But that revelation tells him that this man, who washed out of Bragg after a minimum 4 year term and went into the chaos of the black market, wants purpose as badly as he himself wants... normalcy, stability, an escape from his body and his life.
But it's also kind of typical, he guesses. A lot of thirtysomethings are still figuring shit out. He knows an awful lot of bartenders with weird unrelated degrees. Freddie cants his head slightly in Arthur's direction as they walk, watching with genuine interest. ]
The Army didn't give you that?
no subject
Then again, he isn't sure he wants her to grant him anything. The words were sickly sweet, like she wanted to lure them in and then flay them open. A spider, beckoning to her prey.
Besides: ]
Yes and no. It didn't give me the purpose they would've wanted me to walk away with, I'm sure. [ But, they had given him dreaming. That beautiful silver briefcase full of chemicals, wires, and reels of IV tubing. He'd been good at it; more than good. Where most of the recruits to the project had been floundering trying to build a simple concrete bunker, he'd been creating paradoxical stairwells, learning how to set an invisible maze underneath the structures of the dreamscape.
A year into the program, it had been him and Mal and Dom who'd discovered extraction. How to steal secrets from someone, even while asleep. And then: how to hold onto the waking world, when the dreaming became too sharp, too close to life.
Once he'd gotten out, reality hadn't quite been enough. ]
I've got direction, though. Purpose. So, I don't know why I would've agreed to her terms. [ He sounds mildly frustrated by this, which is the only concession to how he actually feels–massively pissed, that he'd been interrupted during a job. ] I was in the middle of something important.
no subject
[ Freddie cocks half a smile and glances to the side before returning his attention to the path stretching out before him—even knowing that this guy is some kind of... crook, or a better, less Nixonian word for someone who dabbles (or more) in the black market, even staring down the barrel of... whatever the hell is going on here, he can't suppress the urge to be friendly in the way he is with everyone else, especially attractive company. It's second nature; if anything, joking about contraband is part of what is keeping him anchored in normalcy.
As for himself, well, he was in the middle of something important, too: the dream job he'd been busting his ass for after signing ten years of his life over to the Air Force, three of which were spent on deployment and eight of which had him stationed in the south, and then flying Endeavor Air's shitty little regional jets for a few months to prove himself capable of interfacing with passengers and corporations. There's a sense that his life's been cut short just as it's really, actually begun, and it's terribly unfair. ]
no subject
[ Arthur still feels annoyed, but he does slant an amused look over at Freddie, glad for the needling in a way. The subtle levity, since he has a tendency to get stuck in his thoughts, caught in the negative spiral of them and getting more and more tense with each turn.
Breathing out the aggravation he can sense under his skin, he sets all that aside. None of that is Freddie's fault. And, more importantly: he can't really do anything about it right now.
Once he feels his temper cool, he resumes the thought, filling in a bit more–there's vague and then there's vague. His vagueness is probably not sketching a very good picture. ]
I was helping a friend get out of some trouble. [ So, you know. Important. ]
no subject
"Helping him get out of trouble" in a Godfather way or more of a My Cousin Vinny way?
[ Not that he's ever stopped scanning the space around them for potential threats, but this is just what he does, even on patrols with strangers. ]
no subject
More like Bourne Identity, but without the amnesia.
[ Does that make his life sound exciting or terrible? Perhaps a little of both. ] Hence, the fight.
[ What he referenced earlier, when asked about a weapon. ]
no subject
Well, I guess that's two of us with ties to the CIA. [ Beat. ] Not that I ever saw any classified documents, or spy shit, or anything like that. I just dropped bombs in places that happened to have a lot of oil and a lot of insurgents who weren't too keen on sharing it.
[ Though ISIS had been horrible, genuinely, nauseatingly horrible in some of their acts, in the torture they inflicted on the civilians who fell on the wrong side of the self-declared Caliphate—Freddie harbors no delusions as to why America cared so much about that injustice as opposed to something like the treatment of the Uyghurs. And he didn't drop the bombs himself—just got the aircraft where it needed to be for those bombs to hit the right general area—but it's close enough for government work. ]
no subject
But, it's not like the CIA isn't looking for Cobb, considering he fled the states under less-than-amazing circumstances. ]
Guess so. [ Arthur shrugs, unbothered by the assumption he's dodging CIA agents at all hours. He does that, just maybe only 15% of the time. ] You know they wouldn't care if you hadn't seen any of it.
[ The fact that Freddie had been on the missions to begin with was enough for them to keep an eye out. Not as much as they would if he'd been given higher clearance, but still. ]
That's why I took the discharge, when the project ended. [ His gaze sweeps out in front of them, squinting a bit against the light catching on the silver rinds of the fruit. ] Couldn't imagine saying yessir to more bullshit.
[ Christ, he thinks the only person who knew about this was Mal. And she took it to her grave. Cobb had asked and Arthur had just told him he wanted something different. ]
You've got a higher tolerance than I do. [ It's said without judgment, as he flicks a glance over to Freddie. The other man said he wanted to fly, and flying on the military's dime meant you did a longer term. Not like there were a whole lot of ways to get a license otherwise. At least, not without having some kind of wealth or sinking into massive debt. Freddie had stuck with it because he wanted it badly enough. That's something to respect. ]
cw internalized homophobia
Yeah, well, I can't say I enjoyed the bullshit. That's part of why I became an officer. Better to dole it out half the time and receive it the other half than just constantly take it up the ass from command at every turn without getting to punch down a little.
[ Shit, that wasn't a good word choice, because he's gay and if he had to guess based on his own experiences in the masculine dating pool the guy gives the vibes of a someone who would prefer to take it up the ass. He's only been out a year. It's difficult to wean himself off of the military vernacular. ]
BOHICA, as the saying goes. Always thought it would make a nice shirt for the ten-year class reunion.
[ He shrugs, briefly breaking his gaze from the area he's scanning to regard his conversation partner for a moment before returning to vigilance. ]
I just wanted to play with the Air Force's toys so bad I was willing to sit there and take it for 10 years. Lie back and think of the biggest, most badass craft you can imagine, or whatever the saying is.
no subject
See? My point is proven. I was gonna go outta of my head even if I only had to take it raw half the time.
[ If it weren't evident enough, he marches to the beat of his own drum. Eames has said it's because he's a control-freak. Arthur had told him, fondly, to fuck off; neither of them had been cut out for lengthy military service. ]
That would take away from the warhead budget, though. Unless you decorate it yourself, like those old bombers. [ Also breaking his vigilance, he casts Freddie a look–he would know what he's referring to. The ones with the pin-up girls on them. A sliver of humanity to lighten what it was meant to do. ]
Yeah well, you made it without being too sore, seems like. What made you decide to fly?
no subject
Freddie smiles, big and involuntary, enough to show a little sliver of seemingly coffee-stained teeth. ]
Well, I studied physics in college. And then the third year we start talking about aeronautics and aerodynamics and I can't get enough of it. I take a flight to Québec that winter break and it's the most exhilarating moment of my life, because suddenly I know everything that's keeping this massive thing in the air, letting us fly with that many tons of metal. Suddenly I needed to know everything about them. I wanted to be the guy leveraging all of those forces to do the impossible. The one in control of that huge thing.
[ Beat. The grin fades a little, becomes slightly more silly, a little self-effacing. ]
But money doesn't grow on trees and I was more than halfway through a physics degree at a private college. So I finished my degree, couldn't find a job because it was an undergraduate in physics, and joined the Air Force.
What about you? You always want to work in Ops before you had to deal with Ops?
[ There's a playfulness to the question, but the curiosity is genuine. ]
no subject
He tries not to think about how a couple of them never got to chase the exhilaration Freddie's talking about now, with a wide and unselfconscious smile.
They might not be from the same exact world, but he's glad someone got to finish their story. ]
Ouch, private college. [ They're both American–he knows how bad the student debt issue is. ] I suppose some of the physics knowledge helped, though?
[ It seems like it would. But then, he hasn't yet added "flying a plane" to his repertoire. ]
No, my story's boring. I didn't know what I wanted. Had some disciplinary issues in school, so it was highly recommended I get involved with JROTC. Joining the Army after that seemed like the next logical step.
no subject
[ Freddie smiles and quirks a sandy brow, his amusement evident. ]
I guess it doesn’t always work.
[ ‘It’ being sending misbehaving adolescents off to a military academy, or, in the case of public school attendees, enrolling them in JROTC, it would seem. He’d always thought it seemed a little ridiculous, parading around in full immaculate uniform on Thursdays when he was in high school, but it seemed to have given some of his peers back in the Air Force a small leg up. Momentarily, he glances over at the man walking astride him. ]
What year’d you graduate?
[ He’s guessing Arthur’s about the same age as himself, just with a baby face—he looks youthful, but not so much that his cheeks and jawline haven’t thinned out with age. ]
no subject
They might be in a strange dream space, but that doesn't mean dreamshare will sound like a perfectly plausible career to go into. ]
It worked, somewhat. Got a rein on my temper, at least. Learned to play the game smarter. Doubt I would've survived my 4 year term, otherwise; they would've thrown me out.
[ When he said he had disciplinary issues, well ... he hadn't been kidding. Every other day it had felt like he was in the disciplinarian's office for one reason or another. Or walking home with his side and face sporting new bruises, a consequence of mouthing off to the wrong person. ]
Oh, 2015. [ Casting a look over at Freddie, he gets ahead of the inevitable next question: ] I am 28, for the record.
no subject
Oh, good. I thought I'd have to drink in front of you without offering if we found anything.
[ A moment later, as the expected other half of the exchange occurs to him: ]
33 pushing 40. [ Freddie gestures with one hand. ] Lotta UV.
no subject
It's not that bad. [ If anything, the tiredness around his eyes and the general pull of anxiety seems to make him look older. But, then, maybe he feels 40. The military could do that to a person.
As they walk, remaining diligent, they carry an easy conversation. Just the surface level of getting to know each other a bit more. After a half an hour, by his estimate, the path they're walking along starts to shimmer—more than the glossy boughs. And then it diverges along an invisible seam, breaking apart a lot like a dream when it collapses. The shimmer gets brighter, blinding, and he gets the sense of floating.
Then, abruptly, nothing at all. ]