Ruby City App

[phobophage]

PLAYER
Name: Kaja
Age: 33
Personal Journal: kajarainbow
E-mail: kaja.rainbow@gmail.com
AIM: kajarainbow

CHARACTER
Name: Deimonea
Age: As ancient as humanity / twenties
Appearance: Red-eyed, dark-haired, and unnaturally pale-skinned, build usually average, usually wearing a black suit with red tie and highlights. Tends to lean forward toward things that interest me, sometimes creepy or outright unnatural smiles.

Chosen PB: Ozoi, an imageboard character with no associaated canon

Personality:
From the very beginning, the Queen created Deimonea to be inquisitive and independent, and Deimonea carried those qualities beyond her expectations. Present her with a mystery and she will seek to unravel it. Attempt to control her, and she will seek to escape it.

Deimonea tends to directness in going for her desires. She has no real sense of embarrassment or shame, though what she considers the stupidity of her earlier carelessness and wastefulness still rankles on her. She can be rather gluttonous in fulfilling her desires and will often ignore others' complaints.

One particular mystery she's taken an interest in is the workings of the minds of Dreamers. She understands fear easily and naturally, but the other parts of Dreamers' thoughts, emotions, and behaviors are intriguing to her. And she's never before had a chance to observe Dreamers in their natural habitats, instead of in the surreal disruptions of their routines experienced in dreams.

Deimonea preys on fear as a Nightmare, and has no regrets about it. Her encounters with Berry taught her some self-restraint, but she still enjoys savoring the fear she causes in others. As much, she rarely makes any effort to ramp back her inherent creepiness, since the nervousness that causes in others are like tasty little popcorn snacks to her. At night, she prowls dreams creating and feeding off nightmares.

And yet her interest in Dreamers causes her to be fairly friendly and even cheery, since she's found interacting with them to be one of the best ways to learn about them. Rudeness doesn't particularly bother her, since her main criteria of 'fun company' are interesting people, and she appreciates honesty and fearlessness. Braveness is one of the better ways to make her think of a person as more than just someone to frighten.

As such, her demeanor can sometimes switch quickly between creepy and friendly. To her there's no particular disparity between those behaviors. Sometimes scaring someone is just her way of making a cheery hello. After all, the only social norms she knows are those of dreams, which can be wildly inconsistent and arbitrary.

Deimonea tends to prefer nonlethal solutions simply because every dead dreamer is one less food source, though this doesn't stop her from using illegal or immoral nonlethal methods. But Berry's taught her that any Dreamer might turn out to be unexpectedly interesting. As such, she's been learning to treasure their potential.

She lacks certain normal human reactions. For example, she's largely indunated to fear and so tends to react to terrifying situations with more caution than fear.

Like most Dreams, she might seem bizarre sometimes to people from less surreal worlds, sometimes following seemingly irrational dream logic in her behavior (and giving justifications that make sense only if you're high or in a dream). Bizarre events are more matter of course for her, while mundanity seems rather surreal to her. But she's gotten this far by being resourceful and eventually she will adapt.

From the very start of watching the Queen's creation of the Dream World, Deimonea's had a high interest in creative expression and even her dream of one day creating worlds is just the ultimate expression of that. Because of the exceptional visualization required to create the level of details in the dreams she creates, she's got a fair deal of artistic ability.

A lot of her curiosity is directed toward opening up new artistic methods, including learning to understand the workings of reality so that she can play more directly with that reality (for example, taking an interest in the physical sciences). By understanding how the world works, she hopes to unlock the secrets of creating a new world, however immeasurably long that will take her.

World Information:
The Dream World is full of dream-like geometry, odd isolated patches, and more. It has no real layout, instead being connected by whatever works for the dream. As such, travel tends to be stumbling through scenes until one finally arrives (or fails to arrive) at ones destination.

The Dream World is ruled by the Crystal Queen, who created the current incarnation and constantly remakes patches of it to satisfy her changing whims. Usually she busies herself with the process of creation, only occasionally taking time off to deal with other business. So she has her more devoted followers handle the extremely little royal business that there is in the Dream World.

Every Dream has their existence sustained, much like food, by performing particular activities that are part of their natures. For example, Dreams specializing in particular roles, or causing particular emotions in Dreamers such as arousal or fear. Those activities are considered normal and acceptable (including the unpleasantries of the Nightmares), unless they cause lasting harm to Dreamers or cause very large-scale chaos.

For those who get out of hand and cause such harm, the Crystal Queen handles some of them and leaves most to the Dream Saviors, essentially magical girls (and boys) taken from the ranks of Dreams and Dreamers alike. Even the Dreamers who become Dream Saviors tend to become a bit odd, as they have to embody the workings of the Dream World into their minds to use their powers. After becoming Dream Saviors, Dreamers become closer to Dreams and Dreams become closer to Dreamers. Dream Saviors who've been in duty for a long time end up permanently halfway between the Dream World and the Waking World.

Those Dream Saviors tend to have powers that bend and break the Dream World in surreal ways, rearranging damaged parts into more healthy new arrangements. For example, Dream Savior Berry's Strawberry Dream Twister pulls and twists the local dream into spirals with strawberries everywhere. Even healing powers leave their mark.

The Dream Saviors were created by the Queen in response to the threat of the forces of Despair, who thrice tore apart the Dream World by driving Dreamers into despair and self-destruction, causing heavy depopulation of the world. Each time they then went into hibernation waiting for the next opportunity to wreck the world. So the Queen recruited the Dream Saviors, specifically picking the form of magical girls and boys to counter the despair that is the adversaries' primary weapon.

Lucid dreamers do have considerable power within the Dream World if generally less than the stronger Dreams and Dream Saviors (the latter especially since they're avatars of the Queen's will). In addition, there exists Dreamers with mental powers such as telepathy, emotion manipulation, astral projection, and similar types of powers. Many 'ghosts' are deceased Dreamers sticking around and exerting what intangible influences they can muster upon the waking world.

History:
Deimonea was born during the creation of the current Dream World, as the Crystal Queen drew her out of the primordial dream-foam, assembling her from the salvaged nightmare-remnants of a long gone feverish dreamer. She floated with the other Dream Worlders waiting for the remaking to be completed, until the Queen's labors attracted her attentions. She escaped from the pen she was confined in for her safety and narrowly avoided getting woven into the underside of the Dream World by a preoccupied Queen.

Watching the weaving, she learned much. About the workings of the Dream World, what it was made out of, how it was put together. This gave her a better understanding of dreams than most Dreams and awareness of how to manipulate them in ways that only the Queen and the most powerful Dreams and Dreamers could.

Deimonea ran freely, causing havoc amongst the Queen's creations, until the Queen finally noticed and plucked her out to force her to work on designing nightmarish landscapes. From this prison Deimonea escaped too, by tricking another Nightmare into performing her tasks.

Deimonea's life thereafter was a life of responsibility evasion, casual hedonism, and terrorization of everything in sight. A Dream Savior named Berry put an end to this, forcing Deimonea to see the larger picture of her interdependence on the Dreamers, the other Dreams, and the Dream World itself.

Deimonea was pulled into a team with Berry, teasing her and being teased in return. The two of them played a part in the first Dream War against the Adversaries, completing covert missions and dropping in to help out other Dream Saviors. In the final assault on the Adversaries' three castles housing dead Queens and a King from the three previous destroyed Dream Worlds, Berry was scattered across the dreamscape from using a massive combination attack to destroy a castle.

For a fair while, Deimonea gathered up Berry's scattered essence to reassemble her. She'd come to think of Berry as her first good friend, and it was an interesting challenge. Finally, after returning Berry to coherence and having only the occasional patrol to mop up Adversary remnants, Deimonea started working on a better understanding of the Dream World in an attempt to learn how to create her own version.

Abilities:
She can travel into and through dreams freely, except for those with strong mental defenses. Within those dreams, she can warp and shape them fairly casually. She can even create minor dream entities (essentially mook-level entities).

She can present all kinds of illusions to others. Even her very appearance is itself an illusion. Any powers that completely negate illusions or reveal "true forms" would show a horrifying amalgam of nightmares in a vague humanlike shape. Of course, illusions can be at least somewhat ignored if one figures it out.

Those with vulnerable minds (such as already sleepy people), she can drop into a sleepwalking state, manipulating their actions while they're trapped in a dreaming state. However, such sleepwalkers can be woken by anything that would ordinarily wake them up (including sharp impacts and pain).

Because of her nature as a Nightmare, she will generally sense when others're feeling fear and closely related emotions and can understand the details of that fear (things like what they're feeling afraid about at that moment). With deeper digging, she can discover a person's hidden fears.

As an immaterial psychological being, she cannot affect the physical world directly but neither can she be touched.

She is capable of holding an inhuman amount of complex information within her mind, including detailed nightmare designs and so forth.

Network/Actionspam Sample:
[An unnaturally pallid woman with red eyes and black hair shows up on the screen.]

Interesting! Almost as interesting as it is annoying! Not only do I find myself in the Waking World, but I can't detect any Dream World. I find myself on a train without knowing why. I would almost think this one of the Queen's annoying tricks, but this's just too off.

Besides, I don't think even she can make the Dream World disappear. Now that's quite vexing.

What's really fascinating, though, is this device. It attaches to me just fine, so it can't be physical material. But I can't disassemble it so it can't be dream material. Not only that, but it returns to me when I leave it behind. Interesting!

I see that I'm not the only one who's been shanghaied away like this. I'd be really interested in hearing answers from anyone who actually knows anything. But I'll be seeking them myself.

Oh, and I'll tell you something fun. [And suddenly her face changes and there're too many eyes and her eyes have eyes within them.] I'm a Nightmare. I'm sure you can figure out what I mean when I say sweet dreams.

Prose Log Sample:
Perfect. It has to be just perfect. Mildly dissatisfied, Deimonea makes further adjustments to her work. A few more violet spiders, a little less orange.

The tower shifts as she works on its design within her mind. It is only natural for it to move, for it is constructed solely from countless spiders. Even the clock hands are spiders clinging to each other.

It is a simplistic work in terms of terror, drawing solely off the fear of spiders. There isn't any existential dread in it or anything other than primal repulsion and fear. But nevertheless it is a labor of love. The arrangements have to be just right. Not only the patterning of the tower, but the patterns formed by the spiders falling as the tower collapses upon the dreamer. She had labored hard to make it just as beautiful as it was terrorizing.

She pauses. It is done. It is good enough. She slips into the soon-to-be victim's dream and, grasping the essence of the dream, she twists it into the looming tower she had designed. Then she stands back in the shadows of the dream, waiting for the screaming to begin.