Alien Biomass Severity Warning System

You ever have a dream where you get so mad at the sheer incompetence or stupidity on display that you halfway wake up and think about ways to fix it? I just had that.

I was dreaming that a new unidentified bunch of goop that clung to the ground appeared at a coastal city. It was pink to skin colored, and was thought to be alien, appearing along the beach and ocean-front caves. The news made a big deal about how they don't know how it spreads, if it's dangerous, or what it feeds on, when there was a VERY OBVIOUS shadowy indentations just underneath the biomass that were human shaped. I took the picture off the website and opened it in mspaint or photoshop and outlined the shadowy bits that poked out from the smooth biomass floor, and very obviously got human silhouettes, the dark spots where the nose or elbows poke out from people stuck in various poses underneath the carpet of alien flesh, very obviously being fed upon.

I was so outraged by sheer incompetence of the media for not noticing something this obvious that I halfway woke up, thinking about how to better spread the information or give an early warning system for a rapidly spreading alien biomass across the surface of the planet. I had a very simple solution; we'll go with the types of media we already know. As such, this is a 3 step warning system; the alien biomass is defined by whichever it is most similar to; Blob, Creep, or The Thing.

3) Blob
If the biomass falls under blob rules, then it can open up or is heavily acidic, meaning anyone who touches it can be broken down or melted into its mass. This is the least dangerous of the three despite still being incredibly dangerous. In this case, simple containment measures like extreme heat or cold, fire, chemicals, or whatever else could be used to try and keep it contained.

2) Creep
Like Starcraft's Zerg creep, the goop hive stuff Xenomorphs use from aliens, or that one SCP, this biomass version is living tissue that supports other structures or alien encouragement. This one could still open up or absorb people who touch it, but it's differentiated because now it can also support other structures or creatures; such as spawning tentacles to attack low flying aircraft or creating short lived creatures who can expand its influence or go capture humans to add to its biomass collective. It may also be a part of a natural alien ecosystem or be a tool for terraformation, causing more damage to the natural world in addition to just eating everything it touches.

1) The Thing
Obviously, if we're going by the Thing Rules, then this is the worst and most dangerous one. Thing rules are similar to Creep biomass, able to create new living things or morph itself, but with the addition of being universal across all living things and is able to create its own life forms or split into pieces that are long lived and not reliant on the creep's biomass to sustain its life functions. If the alien biomass follows Thing rules, then all bets are off. It might be able to take over biological things it touches, copy life forms, roll up into a ball and become a giant monster, split its pieces apart, etc. Obviously if this was actually unleashed anywhere on Earth it is highly likely it would just destroy the whole world and assimilate anything without anyone able to do anything anyway, which is why it's the highest on the warning system, you're totally fucked on this level, but at least you have something a little more accurate.

Scene from a Dream - The Dwarven Climb

 

You are one of many within the Dwarven army. Your patrol travels through the mountains, when you are stopped at a sheer cliff face climb. The patrol thins to a line as each and every dwarf must climb- the only strange thing is the silence atop the cliff.

As you climb the sheer cliff, you begin to see the carvings. They are names, these ones short and simple. These are memorial runes, for low born soldiers and humble servants. As you climb the cliff, they become more and more ornate, belonging to names from noble families. Your stomach twists into knots as you reach the top and climb over.

At the top of the cliff, you see it. It is a slab and a grave- for the King of the Dwarves. His great green axe sits atop it in memoriam. His long, royal name etched on stone. Your Noble King is dead, killed with his army, before the news of it could return to your unit. You feel the tears well up in your eyes, but must be silent. You weep silently, as all Dwarves must carry their own burdens alone; to cry out or warn those below would robe them the honor of suffering this loss each and all alone.

So, with the rest of your unit, you stand at the top as dwarf after dwarf crosses above, seeing the grave of their beloved monarch, noble and just, and each weeps silently. Every one of you will carry this burden alone, and by each alone, all together.

Heaven's Riders

Catholic priests tirelessly feeding the poor and downtrodden. Police officers and soldiers fallen in the line of duty. Chivalric knights fighting for justice. Dogs jumping into burning buildings to save their masters. What do all these people have in common? They are considered heroes. And most also consider they have a one way ticket to heaven.

But people often criticize theology. The concept that a heaven and a hell can exist at the same time is a bit paradoxical. How could you be truly happy in heaven while there are souls suffering in hell, especially for people as righteous as these?

Ask any preacher or pastor. What happens to unbaptized children? They'll swear up and down that they go to heaven, even if they haven't accepted Jesus. Or even been a good person- they're babies after all! But that's not how it actually works. Why do you think evil satanists sacrifice children and virgins to the devil? Because it sends them straight to hell, even people who have committed no sin. What about Catholics who die just before confession- do they go to hell too, just for bad timing? What about Atheists, swayed by scientific reasoning but were otherwise good people- do they go to hell forever too? Is this really how God's love should work?

The truth is that the battle between good and evil is a battle. It's not something God can just sit back lazily and let it sort itself out. Battles need soldiers.

The Nature of Heaven

When people die and go to heaven, they are reborn in an ageless, flawless, perfect body. Imagine if you actually exercised and slept the amount that physicians recommend. Imagine if you did all that almond milk detox yoga shit. Imagine if you ate and drank nothing but the purest, freshest most natural ingredients. Imagine if you grew up free from stress or carcinogenic chemicals. That flawless, perfect body in heaven is that body. It's the body you would have had on Earth, if life wasn't so messy and full of unknowns.

This perfect body is ageless. You live in heaven with it until judgment day, when God's children will retake the Earth from Satan, and live on it peacefully forever. This perfect body, however, is irreplaceable. You only get one. More importantly, it is still human. Anything that can kill a human can kill this body. Of course, it is very strong, healthy, and eternally young- but it can die. So there is a risk that, if taken out of heaven, you can “die” again. And once that body dies, you'll be stuck as a spirit, never able to reclaim the Earth as a chosen one of God. Never able to enjoy the pleasures of sex or food ever again- never able to bear children and help repopulate the world after the rapture.

This is the risk that the Heaven's Riders must take, to save the souls of the innocent from Satan.

Heaven's Riders

These are the souls of heroes- who cannot sit idly by and let the souls of innocents suffer. They fight back against evil in the only way a mortal soul can- by stealing them back. Remember- God will win the fight in Good against Evil. But the assumption that he will win easily, handily, or constantly is a human invention. It is a feel-good belief, not a factual one. Remember, a third of all angels defected with Lucifer. The forces of hell are powerful- especially compared to a poor human.

Using the power of Heaven, these brave men and women ride “horses” made of angelic metal and powered by prayer. They cannot reappear on Earth- they're still dead already. But they can risk their new, one-and-only true body in battle against the devil. They ride down from Heaven, through the twisting gates of purgatory and the veil, through the realms of the haunting, down past limbo, and then into the fires of hell. Some of them practice on the easier souls- the slip ups who tumble just down to the realms between heaven and hell. These are the easy saves, a good way to get your feet wet and practice with your awesome machine. But when it comes to actually raiding Hell, the training wheels come off and you'd better be ready.

They fly past a soul, holding out their hands and grasping it, snapping them from the clutches of damnation. Skidding over rocks at breakneck speeds- only the reaction speed of a perfect, flawless body and eyes that can see distant valleys could possible pilot this machine. Once the victim is in tow, they must return them to heaven. Do you think demons just let this shit fly? No way. They return in hot pursuit- out of hell, up limbo, through the realms of haunting, past the veil, up through the twisting gates of purgatory- and stop short right at the pearly gates of Heaven. They can't enter, of course, so once you return the soul to heaven, you're safe.

So it's a race on the way back too, and these devils are mean. They'll fire at you with advanced and primitive weapons, blazed with hell fire. They'll try to crash your ride, or even just steal the soul back with bloody chains of evil. If they corner you, you'll die again, and lose your true body for good. The Riders don't bring weapons with them- it's not in God's plan for mortals to destroy evil in that way, and besides, anything you bring along would just weigh you down and make it impossible to escape, especially with a soul in tow.

Of course, everyone knows God will win in the end. Peace on Earth will be restored one day, the wicked souls punished, demons banished to the abyss, and all the innocent will rejoice. But when will that day come? Nobody in heaven knows- not even the angels will say. How long will innocents suffer Satan's wrath? How long will unbaptized babies and tribal people born before the revelations of Christ suffer from hellfire? Even one day of torture would be too much- what about years? Centuries? Millennia? Any amount is an injustice. That is why we ride.

The Houses in my Dreams (ACTUAL DREAMS)

The reason why I put (ACTUAL DREAMS) up there in the title is so you didn't get baited into thinking this was a post about tabletop games with a weird or evocative title. It isn't. This is a post about my dreams, specifically, the houses in my dreams. I've written about my dreams before, and how they offer inspiration to tabletop game content, but this time this is just pure writing.

The Horror-House in my Dreams & Inside the House in my Dreams

This house is arranged a bit like a carnival ride. It may actually be a carnival ride. I've had this one twice, or one and a half times. I either walk or ride an airboat on a tract like an amusement park- but with scary things. Every room is a jumpscare. I get used to it pretty quick, though I'm pretty sure the ghosts are real. Eventually, I start getting excited about it- the room wide mirror becomes a new opportunity. I can feel the ghostly woman appearing and I know she will scream, the hair on my back rises as I smile.

Once, the dream was on an air boat ride. The air-boat ride went down into the scary basement- the current pushed us towards the end of a large rectangular room. The door behind us was closed; the water was freezing cold. The spikes at the end of the hall were real. I don't remember what happened next.

I'm trying to leave the house, or trying to see every room. The only way forward is to go through tight places. It's like that power from modern Wolfenstien- I can go through impossibly tight pipes. They start wide enough for me to crawl, then I'll hit a smaller hole. I squeeze through by pushing my face in- it's like my eyes are my whole body. I move by just pushing. The Freudians might attribute this to some kind of symbolic desire to be birthed, but it's more like getting pissed out a really long dick. Gross. But I don't think of it like that in the dream- I'm not so concerned about getting stuck, moreso just concentrating on the effort, perhaps even elated.

The Cars in my Dreams

Side note- the cars in my dreams are fucked up. I know hating the “subconscious fears and desires come out in dreams” thing is the new vogue, but there's gotta some truth to it. At least, things you think about are more likely to manifest in a dream, OR you just remember those dreams that are poignant to you. Right? Or I thought I read somewhere that dreams are ways to prepare yourself for things in the waking world? Only way I can explain it- because my brain must think I really need to practice driving more or something. My dream car is fucked up. I'm always slamming on the breaks and rolling through red lights as though my car is sliding on ice and not decelerating. It gets up to speed and doesn't stop- often times I'll turn backwards and be driving my car in reverse. I takes my car like two full city blocks to slow down, so it ends up I run through two lights or one and a half lights and finally slow down in the middle of a busy intersection. I don't think I ever really hit anyone, just run a lot of red lights and get honked at a lot. I think I'm more scared of my mom finding out then the police, which is weird because I've lived alone and driven my own damn self around for over 7 years now. I guess it's like getting in-class dreams years after you graduate.

In these “car” dreams I'm usually trying to get somewhere, and using my intuition of the homes and buildings around me to find my way through a mixture of residential and commercial zones. These neighborhoods are often like the ones from my childhood, but the houses are all different. Not different as in “weird” just different in that they aren't what I remember. I'll circle a neighborhood trying to pick out my grandma's house from the line and I'll come back a second time; all the houses are different. It's like the streets overlap, not that anything has consistency when not observed in dreams. It's a very strange feeling to be aware of the unreality of everything and the vagueness of form in a dream and knowing that it's not solid when you stop looking at it; but not being aware you are in a dream.

Often these dreams blend into each other. I often get disappointed when I wake up and I can't go to the fictional fast food places in my dream world. But sometimes I'll try to take a shortcut, or drive through a shady, tree-filled residential zone. And that's the last dream I'll talk about today.

The House at the End of the Lane

It's not a specific dream, but it's a specific place in a dream. I've had this one twice, I think. I'm driving down a road in a residential street- an area where its hard to see out into the city and know where I am or where I should be going. I just want to drive down this road until I come out the other end. But the road keeps getting smaller, more isolated. It feels like I'm squeezing through the pipes, but cramped up in a car instead.

Then I reach the end. The road keeps going until it stops at a residential foot path, closed up with a big fancy metal gate, looking more like the entrance to a golf course. It's like the end of a cul-de-sac but there's no turn about. There's no easy space to move, the road just ends. For some reason, I think there would be two houses here, one on each end, but I always remember the left one the most.

This house is big. It's the house at the end of the lane. It's nice, it's a two story ones you see in the nicer neighborhoods. I don't know why I'm so pissed at this house. Maybe it's a disconnected sense of jealousy towards the obvious wealth of the owner, or the nice greenery and local privacy of where they live. Maybe I just blame them for not letting the road go all the way through, for some reason.

This house is very reminiscent to me. I drew it when I first woke up that night. It had large dark bay windows with potted plants, a nice front lawn with a reddish brown stone path leading up to the house, and away from a central dais to the side yard, which was also fenced. The house itself was light blue in color, with white siding and stylish supports. It was a nice and “fancy” house, but had no pillars or anything like that. It was a respectable upper-middle class home. At least, that's how I would define it. The roof was made of dark blue tiles, giving the whole thing a very handsome look.

I remember this house very well, because I thought I imagined it. Now this could be the part I lie to you and tell you some long story how I saw this house in real life and I bought it like it was destiny, or then I learned it was a real house connected from me somehow through a long lost twin or something. Sadly no such luck. I had however assumed I had made the house up. But it was only a day ago at the time of me writing this- I looked outside my front door and right across the road and a little vacant lot from where I live and there was the house. Not a house though- it's not a real house. But there is a group of apartments with the exact same color- the baby blue and white almost nautical theme for the paint, the dark blue matching roof shingles, it's just like that. I had this dream some time near the end of 2017, and it was only now, years later, that I actually realized it.

Note- I'm not claiming at all my dream somehow influenced reality- I've lived here years before and after that incident. I know full well the house in my dreams was taken from this real life place; I don't claim some kind of supernatural power or precognition in the slightest. I just find it crazy after I finally where the inspiration for that house in my dream came from. I see those homes, those mini-houses, every single day when I leave my home. They were hidden in plain sight the whole time.

And that's all the Houses in my dreams.