Voting:Level 5's and Up/Influencing and Traversing Dreams

Index > Issues to be Voted on by Level 5's and up > Level 5's and Up/Influencing and Traversing Dreams

As many staff members are likely already aware, the subject has arisen of whether characters on the wiki are capable of lucidly influencing dreams, travelling between dreams, and sharing dreams with others, in leiu of any specific mention of their powerset that they would be skilled at doing so. This is a concept that is present at several levels of the wiki's canon heirarchy - the wiki itself, Rick Riordan's novels, Greek mythology, and even the basis of real life (in the case of specifically influencing dreams, of course not navigating them as a real place).

This vote proposes that we formally accept as an element of our wiki's worldbuilding that dreams take place in a shared location, and that any individual that is sufficicently lucid, with a level of success affected by experience and mental skill, can warp the dreamscape around them, and even navigate from one dream to another to encounter other dreamers and share dreams with them.

A thorough explanation of how this works, based on evidence provided from four tiers of canon with cited sources and direct quotes, is given below. Disclaimer - the document is rather long and rather involved, and is an exerpt from a slightly longer one used as the basis for my counterargument to one of my characters being placed on lockdown, in a separate, staff-only vote. Should details be unclear as a result of the divorce from initial context, I can clarify as needed.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1P4UhJYmtI-QkdmzH8Prcj9iIx9YqH3Mu1j_aYKKDWRE/edit?usp=sharing

To paraphrase several of this vote's key points:

• The dream world is a definite location in the Underworld with distinct entrances and exits (the Gates of Horn and Ivory). All souls' dreams occur within this common space.
• By nature, the dream world is receptive to and shaped from the minds of its inhabitants. Its landscape, as well as the dream-construct people and animals that dreamers encounter, are all directly informed by the presence of the dreamer.
• Because of this fundamental property, anyone can shape and navigate the dream world. No supernatural powers are required whatsoever to do so. Even mortals subconsciously bend the dreamscape around them automatically. The potential to shape dreams, shape one's form in a dream, create projections of people or animals in dreams, navigate from one dream to another, search for a specific dream or dreamer, and share dreams with others is an intrinsic property of the location itself. All of the above is passively down by everyone that enters the dream world.
• One can gain varying degrees of conscious control over the dream world through lucidity, mental fortitude, talent and practice. This is not an intrinsic supernatural power possessed by the dreamer, but rather a direct consequence of how the world of dreams itself works at a fundamental level.
• Demigods typically have a higher innate level of proficiency at lucid dreaming (and the potential applications it carries) than mortals. They are born with a natural talent for it that lets them do so more often and more easily than similarly practiced mortals. Children of death-focused gods like Hades, Thanatos or Melinoe have a slightly easier time picking up the skill than common demigods due to the mythic association between death and sleep, Hypnos demigods have it even easier, and children of the Oneroi (Morpheus, Phantasos and Phobetor) are able to master the skill with ease.
• Despite varying levels of innate talent for it, the difference between any given soul's lucid dreaming proficiency still comes down to refinement of the same fundamental skill. With enough mental fortitude and training, a mortal could hypothetically reach the same skill level as a prodigious demigod.

Lastly, to canonize something more directly relevant to a certain wiki character, which didn't have a sensible place in the doc above:

• Even dead souls can still lucidly shape and navigate the dreamscape. This is because the potential to do so is a property of the dreamscape itself, not the dreamer - the dreamscape responds to your subconscious whether you want it to or not, by its very nature, and even ghosts are no exception. We even have a canon example of this from The Battle of the Labyrinth, where Daedalus tells Percy and Annabeth the following:

"After the daughters of Cocalus killed him, Minos’s ghost began torturing me in my dreams. He promised that he would hunt me down. I did the only thing I could. I retreated from the world completely. I descended into my Labyrinth. I decided this would be my ultimate accomplishment: I would cheat death.”

If passed, this vote would mean that any wiki character could viably roleplay lucid dream sequences and encounter other characters while doing so.

Thank you all for your time, folks.

-Toxy

But if you can fool them, even for a second...  The world is simple, miserable, solid all the way through.  

For (+11)

1. But if you can fool them, even for a second...  The world is simple, miserable, solid all the way through.  
2. I’m known to be quite vexing
3. Yikes o.o
4. ♥ Karma is only a bitch if you are ♥
   
5. Although only breath, words which I command are immortal. - Sirene​​
6. Such is life~ lol. Broken
7. Who's that lady? That foxy lady? Wait...Nevermind it's just Astrid!
8. FILOKSENIA
9. Manolo ye ye ye ❤ Special:EditCount/Zany Knave
   
   
10. Oli Move over sis, it's Jan! ❤
    
    
11. the way to my heart is through my stomach.- elfie 21:50, May 13, 2020 (UTC)

Comments

This vote looks reasonable, although I do have a note- with the way powersets are set up, it seems fair to note that ghosts would no longer count as "demigods" under this structure. Meaning, yes they can lucid dream, but they would no longer have the same finesse with it that they would being a corporeal demigod or having parentage that helps, and not the remaining soul. Of course skill is factor, so they could likely still build skill while being corporeal that they could transfer to spirithood, but any innate skill would likely be lost.

Manolo ye ye ye ❤ Special:EditCount/Zany Knave

I think my biggest question right now is: how will this be regulated across the wiki to ensure the experience and skillset (or heritage, in the case of Hypnos, Morpheus, underworld deities, etc.) is realistic enough that characters can access the dreamscape freely? Furthermore, something I'm struggling to understand - and forgive me for it, because English comprehension genuinely isn't my strength - is the dreamscape a physically accessible place within the Underworld? You allude to it at the start of the argument, but I wanted to clarify that that's what it meant, as it may or may not open the doors to a whole new set of questions; is it a location that will be allowed in quests, what would be the requirements to access such a location, etc.
FILOKSENIA

To Yorkie, I do agree. I brought this up at some point to... someone, today, but at this point I honestly can't remember where. The issue comes with separating what degree of a someone's skills is intrinsically bound to their natural talent, versus what is transferable skill that could have been achieved regardless. Since this trends awkwardly close to a genuine IRL nature-versus-nurture debate, I'd personally err to ghosts' credit and let them keep their skillsets. I don't think anyone would argue that an Athena ghost would suffer a noticeable drop in IQ due to no longer technically being a demigod, for example.

how will this be regulated across the wiki to ensure the experience and skillset (or heritage, in the case of Hypnos, Morpheus, underworld deities, etc.) is realistic enough that characters can access the dreamscape freely?

Honestly? I don't have much of an eloquent answer to this. At a basic level, it's no different from trusting users to make their own judgement calls about if their characters could, say, dodge attacks from a monster.

A convenient rule of thumb could be that mortals and average demigods would need to have a particular interest in their lucid dreams to realize it were an option and start practicing, maybe requiring ~six months of practice, and techniques like keeping a dream journal or such, to intentionally induce lucidity. Death gods and up could be more likely to notice the possibilities naturally over the years, without needing as personal or persistent a routine to improve.

is the dreamscape a physically accessible place within the Underworld?

Yes! This is demonstrated in the second given Odyssey quote. The Gates of Horn and Ivory are subject to a curious dichotomy. They are metaphysical in a sense, where sleeping souls "pass through" them at a spiritual level when entering the dreamscape while leaving their physical bodies safe and sound, but they are also real corporeal gates that one could physically travel to in the Underworld. Reaching them would require accessing the Underworld itself of course, then somehow locating the Gates in its far reaches, beyond Hades' normal infrastructure. But hypothetically, if a person were to physically reach the gates, they could walk through them and enter the dreamscape with their real bodies.

Personally, if someone wanted to make a quest where a group of demigods physically entered the dreamscape, I'd love to see it. The doc mentions offhand that I vaguely remembered a quest having done exactly that, once upon a time. I just wasn't able to find it.

But if you can fool them, even for a second...  The world is simple, miserable, solid all the way through.