Lucidity Challenge 50—obfusc8 wins!

Prelude

As is recent tradition, the LC has a silly (read: inane) story stringing everything together involving the host maintaining the illusion of control over the participants. I’ll tuck it behind spoilers to spare those who don’t like reading drivel. :smile:

[spoiler]The hypnagogia moves behind your eyelids seemingly at random as you wait for the dream to start. It swirls around for a while before finally beginning to form coherent imagery. A street begins to form in front of your eyes and then branches out into a gridded network of them. Buildings start to form between the streets; the nearby ones appear to be residences and shops while the far-off ones are massive skyscrapers. A beautiful blue sky with a few clouds forms above all of this.

You become aware of other people gradually forming around you. They appear with the same sort of fascination with the new environment as you have, with many of them looking around at the environment with a sense of wonder. Before anybody speaks to the group, a voice comes from behind you all.

“Welcome to Elcedia, the setting for the 50th LD4all Lucidity Challenge.”

You turn around and are met with a surprising, yet recognizable sight. A small, bipedal creature with turquoise fur, large feathered wings, and several protruding spikes looks at you with a smile on its face.

Everybody stares on in silence until the creature speaks again. “Nothing? Shoot, I thought you LD4all people liked puns. Elcedia, L-C-dia? No? Not even a giggle? Fine, whatever. Anyway, welcome to LC 50! I’m Thorn, your Task Master for the next seven weeks, and—”

A group member suddenly busts out laughing. “I’m sorry, but I can’t take you seriously right now. You look like a stupid Sonic fan character and you’re making stupid puns too?” Thorn looks visibly irritated. He pulls his gloves and shoes off, retracts some spikes on his hands, and suddenly swells into what seems to be some sort of black-furred, turquoise-chested dragon-man that easily has a foot on your height before speaking in an annoyed tone.

"Satisfied? Geez, I try to represent a typical LD4all member without using a dragon for once, and this is what I get… LD4all never changes.

“Anyway, back on topic. I’m your Task Master for the next seven weeks. I’m happy that everybody got here safely. We’ll be spending the entire challenge in this lovely dreamscape, so please make yourselves at home. In fact, the first week’s tasks will be about doing just that! Look around you at all of the city’s residents; what do you notice?”

You look around and notice that dream characters outside of your group have appeared in the dream world. They come in all shapes and sizes, although they are largely bipedal. You see bird people, other dragon-men, catfolk, wolf-men, walking sharks… you quickly come to a realization that you utter aloud.

“Everyone’s half-animal. There aren’t any normal people.”

“Exactly,” says Thorn, “which means you all stick out like a sore thumb. We need to get you to blend in. Why bring your waking life skin into a dream world? Luckily, I have a friend who is perfectly capable of helping out with fixing that little problem. Before we meet him, though, you need to decide what you’d like to be. Yes, you get to choose!” he appends upon seeing some astonished faces. "Just keep it within reason and keep it clean.

“Oh, and if there’s any more laughter at people’s chosen shapes, I will not be a happy TM,” Thorn finishes with a stern gaze.[/spoiler]
Along with your sign-up, you should have a description (or a picture, if you’re an artsy type) of a bipedal, anthropomorphic (or highly specific human) form you’d like to use throughout the LC. While you’re not required to use it for almost anything, you’ll earn 5 bonus points for each task you finish as your chosen form. For other transformation tasks, you’ll earn this bonus by keeping morphic resonance; that is, your transformation is clearly just your character reshaped. For example, I used the following avatars in recent LCs to fit their transformation-based tasks, and all of them contain aspects of the form from the previous pictures—namely, the large horn, prehensile tail, and turquoise coloration.

The idea is to do something a bit more immersive by having you ditch your waking life body for fantastic feats, which should truly separate you from any preconceptions of dream control limitations brought on by being, well, you! You’ll need to provide the following:* Name (if different from your LD4all screen name).

  • Species. What are you? It can be a real species that is humanized or a made-up species (in which case, describe it). If it’s just you as another person, I need defined characteristics that clearly separate it from your waking-life self. Make it dreamlike!
  • Gender. I know some of you gamers out there play as members of the opposite gender. It’s allowed here too.
  • Appearance. Do you have a certain color scheme? Do you have any unique markings?
  • Height. I need a height between 3 feet (91 cm) and 7 feet (213 cm). I give these bounds not to restrict your creativity but to make sure that you can actually interact with things during the LC. If you really want a ridiculously short or tall character, we can always look into making a fitting task for it, but let’s keep it simple for now. I don’t need you bonking your head on doorframes or struggling to reach things at a person’s head level. :razz:
  • Picture (optional). If you have artistic talent or find a character creator online, show us what you want to be instead of just describing it!
  • Mindset (optional). Is there anything you’d care to tell us about your lucid interests? Perhaps your character already reflects some of them!
    Whatever you decide to be, I hope you have fun with it, as the next seven weeks will have extra points for using your creation! If this isn’t your idea of fun, don’t sweat it! It’s only worth 5 points per task, so you can definitely work around it!

EDIT: A note on this…

[spoiler]To talk a little bit about the whole “character” thing, the intent was to to be a follow-up to LC 47, in which Mew151 had everybody take a title to symbolize his/her dream actions. I originally planned to have everybody come up with a blank slate that would get developed with a few dream powers, some DC friends, and other things over the course of the LC. While I largely got that, I also got creatures from Alien vs. Predator and Anna from Frozen. :smile: I’m not complaining about this and it’s not wrong to have these characters! I just find it amusing, and my goal now is to just screw with everybody who used something that already exists (e.g., I look forward to making Anna shoot fireballs or something).

Knowing this, if anybody wants to create something different he/she than already made to fit the LC’s aims, then go ahead. If you like what you have, then keep it! Just expect that I’m going to mess with you. :happy:[/spoiler]

LC “OMG” 50 Signups! [Name — Personal Goal]

  1. Scipio Xaos — A Flight with Cardia
    Welp… here it is!

Name: Cornelia Xaos
Species: Catperson (Nya! :tongue: )
Gender: Female
Appearance: Like a regular normal human… if you ignore the big pink ears and tail. The ears kinda blend into the pink hair… kinda… Maybe I’ll draw her eventually. :razz:
Height: 172 cm! (Since everyone else is using metric I better too. :razz: )
Picture: TO BE CONTINUED!!! Uh… I mean… maybe there’ll be one here eventually. :razz:
Mindset: Pretty much normal LDing endeavors… Likes magic a lot.

2-Zaibatsu - Full LD on will
This is my 1st entry…hopefully i’ll offer a nice challenge to others :tongue:

LC “OMG” 50 Signups! [Name — Personal Goal]

  1. Scipio Xaos — A Flight with Cardia
  2. Zaibatsu —Full LD on will

FTFY

LC “OMG” 50 Signups! [Name — Personal Goal]

  1. Scipio Xaos — A Flight with Cardia
  2. Zaibatsu — Full LD on will
  3. Letaali — Revisit a dream that had a cool planet

Well, too bad it has to be bipedal and anthropomorphic. Pretty limiting :meh: Anyway! I guess the alien swordsman in my avatar will be ok. I was him in a non-lucid dream pretty recently.


Name: Letaali, for now. I don’t know his name yet. His “class” is Ghost :tongue:
Species: Alien.
Gender: Male.
Appearance: Made of rock/metal. In my dream it was not constricting; it was elastic and dark steel colored. No visible eyes, nose, ears or mouth.
Height: Tall. Lets say 2 meters.
Mindset: I love sci-fi and I love dreaming about cool, alien places. I think my personal goal makes that pretty clear too.

LC “OMG” 50 Signups! [Name — Personal Goal]

  1. Scipio Xaos — A Flight with Cardia
  2. Zaibatsu — Full LD on will
  3. Letaali — Revisit a dream that had a cool planet
  4. En’enra — Use water magic properly

I’m looking forward to participating in a LC again. :content: I chose water control for my personal task because in every LD that I try to use water magic I end up controlling a few drops of water instead of huge waves. Water is my favorite element, so it would be really nice to be able to cast water magic in a dream. :love:

I love the frame story, too. This will be my character:

Name: Voda (water)
Species: river snake // river dragon
Gender: f
Appearance: As in the picture. Dark gold/turquoise theme, battle armor, tail. What’s not in the picture - more scales on her hands. There was no option for that in the creator.
Height (length): 285cm (with the tail)
Mindset: Best suited for swimming. Wants to transform into a winged river dragon. Dislikes fog and anomalous dream characters.

Edit: Chose to change my character, this is a final version.

@Letaali: Well, human characters are allowed too so long as it’s something special and not just your waking-life self, as I said in boldface. Sorry to kill your desire for quadruped dreams, but I really need you to have arms for some of the tasks! :tongue:

@Letaali & @En’enra: Sounds like both of you have characters from outside of the LC on your mind. Hopefully you get a chance to experience them; I’m curious about what made them special to you!

She was created for the LC, so I’m hoping that the challenge will make her special to me. :content: I changed her name, though, since I don’t think I would respond to “En’enra” in a dream.

LC “OMG” 50 Signups! [Name — Personal Goal]

  1. Scipio Xaos — A Flight with Cardia
  2. Zaibatsu — Full LD on will
  3. Letaali — Revisit a dream that had a cool planet
  4. En’enra — Use water magic properly
  5. James_UK2008 - Visit another planet

Name: James (ugh, did yauja even have names? Unoriginal I know :razz:)
Species: Yautja
Gender: Male
Appearance: Scaly skin, black claws, shin/thigh/chest armour, a Biomask for enhanced vision modes, armed to the teeth with wrist blades and a shoulder mounted laser, dreadlocks and a face only a mother could love. :razz:
Height: 7 feet

We have five sign-ups so far, which is pretty good! I will say that I wasn’t expecting to get a bunch of super-tall aliens. I honestly expected some animal people or some sorcerers/wizards… not that going against my expectations is a bad thing! Do what you want!

Again, if we have 10 participants, we’ll start Friday afternoon ET to give people a one-week break after the last LC. If we get to 15, then we’ll start sooner so that people don’t get distracted or bail out.

LC “OMG” 50 Signups! [Name — Personal Goal]

Scipio Xaos — A Flight with Cardia
Zaibatsu — Full LD on will
Letaali — Revisit a dream that had a cool planet
En'enra — Use water magic properly
James_UK2008 - Visit another planet
Coasty - Meet a specific Dream Person, god damn it, just happen already

[b]Name[/b]: Arthur
[b]Species[/b]: Archangel
[b]Gender[/b]: Male
[b]Appearance[/b]: Refer to my avatar. In short: Armor, wings, sword, all with a purple theme. 
[b]Height[/b]: My height, as this is an assumed state, something I would ascend to, not a different person. The armor and sword would materialize around me.
[b]Mindset[/b]: Control. All I need is control. Arthur is the embodiment of power, control and knowledge. The Rightful King of the Land. Power itself manifests in his sword, all of the dreamscape bows to his command. His word is law. That is the fate that I want for myself. Just let me get into my dreams for a little while, let me assume this ascended state, and my mind will be bound by my command. The mindset of a conqueror. The mindset of the True King. That is Arthur's mindset.

Man, I was expecting way more characters that were clearly just whipped up in an instant for the sake of the competition, but people seem to be putting in a lot of effort! Heck, lots of people are describing certain mindsets they’ll have with their character that they wouldn’t have normally. Good on you for being so immersed!

We have six sign-ups right now, and if all of the people who told me they want to sign up do so, we’ll have ten exactly. Starting on Friday is looking very likely.

LC “OMG” 50 Signups! [Name — Personal Goal]

  1. Scipio Xaos — A Flight with Cardia
  2. Zaibatsu — Full LD on will
  3. Letaali — Revisit a dream that had a cool planet
  4. En’enra — Use water magic properly
  5. James_UK2008 — Visit another planet
  6. Coasty — Meet a specific Dream Person, god damn it, just happen already

FTFYA :razz:

LC “OMG” 50 Signups! [Name — Personal Goal]

  1. Scipio Xaos — A Flight with Cardia
  2. Zaibatsu — Full LD on will
  3. Letaali — Revisit a dream that had a cool planet
  4. En’enra — Use water magic properly
  5. James_UK2008 - Visit another planet
  6. Coasty — Meet a specific Dream Person, god damn it, just happen already
  7. Mew151 - Play DDR Dream Mix

Name: Miu
Species: Pseudo Catperson
Gender: Female I REFUSE TO BE CONFINED TO YOUR GENDER ROLES, CISGENDER SCUM
Appearance: Hair is styled to resemble cat ears. Looks like a Mew, so pink hair with blue eyes and overall pink design.
Height: 147cm
Mindset: Exploration and meeting with other LC peeps.

Scipio, you stole my original OC character design! You will pay!

Anyway, I chose a Mew-like character because Mews are less than 3 feet tall most people see me as an actual mew in dreams anyway. I chose to go with a female transformation because it seems like an interesting transformation that also keeps me in a familiar human body. Also mostly because when I was imagining a humanized Mew character, it was easier to imagine a girl than a super handsome macho tough guy like myself.

The challenge hasn’t started yet, so no points obviously, but last night’s non-lucid dream was about the Challenge, I think. In it, Thorn had reconstructed a vintage arcade cabinet and dressed up in a spacesuit from a “Golden Age” science-fiction comic.

  1. Scipio Xaos — A Flight with Cardia
  2. Zaibatsu — Full LD on will
  3. Letaali — Revisit a dream that had a cool planet
  4. En’enra — Use water magic properly
  5. James_UK2008 - Visit another planet
  6. Coasty — Meet a specific Dream Person, god damn it, just happen already
  7. Mew151 - Play DDR Dream Mix
  8. Susan_Y - See the sky

I don’t have a particular character I really want to transform into. Given last night’s dream, 1940’s vintage clothing and (e.g.) Dale Arden from Flash Gordon comes to mind, but maybe that’s not a significant enough transformation. Instead, I’ll stick with a character I used for some of the tasks in the previous LC:

Name: Anna
Species: Disney Princess (you’re not going to tell me real human beings have body proportions like that…)
Gender: Female
Appearance: Red hair. (Will appear as a mid-tone when I’m dreaming in greyscale, orange-ish when dreaming in reduced colour). It should be tied in pigtails to look like the movie, but I might wear it untied sometimes. Leather boots; warm stockings; dark blue ankle length skirt with a Nordic floral pattern at the hem; light green long sleeved sweater of a fairly thin material; dark corset with floral pattern worn over the sweater (What is it with Disney and corsets? Why can’t we wear something more like Dora the Explorer?); purple cape worn over the shoulders
Height: About 5 foot, I guess

Okay, we’re up to eight people! If we get two more by tomorrow, we’ll start then.

To talk a little bit about the whole “character” thing, the intent was to to be a follow-up to LC 47, in which Mew151 had everybody take a title to symbolize his/her dream actions. I originally planned to have everybody come up with a blank slate that would get developed with a few dream powers, some DC friends, and other things over the course of the LC. While I largely got that, I also got creatures from Alien vs. Predator and Anna from Frozen. :smile: I’m not complaining about this and it’s not wrong to have these characters! I just find it amusing, and my goal now is to just screw with everybody who used something that already exists (e.g., I look forward to making Anna shoot fireballs or something).

Knowing this, if anybody wants to create something different he/she than already made to fit the LC’s aims, then go ahead. If you like what you have, then keep it! Just expect that I’m going to mess with you. :happy:

Also, all of you should yell at LC greats drd and obfusc8 to get in here. :razz:

  1. Scipio Xaos — A Flight with Cardia
  2. Zaibatsu — Full LD on will
  3. Letaali — Revisit a dream that had a cool planet
  4. En’enra — Use water magic properly
  5. James_UK2008 - Visit another planet
  6. Coasty — Meet a specific Dream Person, god damn it, just happen already
  7. Mew151 - Play DDR Dream Mix
  8. Susan_Y - See the sky
  9. obfusc8 - I AM GROOT! (Treant transformation + growing branches and stuff.)

I know this sounds ridiculous from a veteran roleplayer; I’m having trouble deciding on a character. One that springs to mind would fit perfectly with my persistence goals but he looks like a standard human, albeit much better-looking than me. His uniqueness comes from special abilities rather than appearance or different forms, which seems to be what Thorn is driving at.

Anyway, my recall is sucky at the moment, but hopefully the challenge will bring motivation to get it back.

^ A standard human is fine if it is a specific one with defined characteristics. What I do not want is for something so generic that people claim the five points in every dream. I need characteristics that can actively be examined to say “I am this person/being,” whether they are visual or otherwise. That’s part of the reason I started by requiring an anthropomorphic character; I figured it would be very obvious if you managed it or not! :tongue: However, many participants wanted certain people that were special to them, so I yielded on the half-creature requirement and allowed humans.

Also, if you get a chance, can you elaborate on what you did try to make last time with LC D&D before giving up? Not that I’m guaranteeing I can pull off such a thing, but if the LC does get active, it is quite tempting to have small games of sorts alongside it, and admittedly a tabletop game would fit well with the setup of this LC.

We only need one more sign-up before we can start!

LC “OMG” 50 Signups! [Name — Personal Goal]

  1. Scipio Xaos — A Flight with Cardia
  2. Zaibatsu — Full LD on will
  3. Letaali — Revisit a dream that had a cool planet
  4. En’enra — Use water magic properly
  5. James_UK2008 — Visit another planet
  6. Coasty — Meet a specific Dream Person, god damn it, just happen already
  7. Mew151 — Play DDR Dream Mix
  8. Susan_Y — See the sky
  9. obfusc8 — I AM GROOT! (Treant transformation + growing branches and stuff.)

:razz: