Three posts here: this one has the task, while the next two have optional, bonus exercises. Read them all! Also, here will be the official scoreboard!
Task 1: Power Up!
Okay, let’s get started! As many people from LD4all’s chat already know, the theme of this LC is dream control, and we’ll start dealing with that right away.
Dream control isn’t just about using sheer willpower to twist the dream as you see fit. It’s also about using some trickery. Everybody has schemata defined by their experiences, and we can use them to do something small in-dream that will lead to something big. A popular schema can be observed in the “lucid pill”: we “know” that the pill will give us some ability or makes the lucid dream more stable or clear, and thus instead of creating the ability or changing the entire dream, we need only summon the tiny pill, swallow it, and let the schema handle the rest.
Your first task is to take advantage of such things. Drawing from things you’ve seen in television, video games, literature, or even in your own imagination or in past dreams, create/find/summon an object that changes you or bestows an ability upon you. Maybe it gives you a superpower, maybe it changes your shape and/or size, maybe it lets you access a world parallel to our own… whatever you desire, “know” that the object will grant it.
To prevent any abuse of an arbitrary distinction being made in this task, some definitions are being set. We define an “object” as some solid, liquid, or gas with which you can interact, whether it comes out of your pocket or from thin air; we’ll exclude visible magic spells, futuristic laser beams, drawing from spiritual forces, etc. for now and get back to such things in future tasks. We define an “empowering” object as one that gives you an ability and doesn’t require you to keep a hold of it, e.g., Mario touches a Super Mushroom and doubles in size as the mushroom ceases to be — he doesn’t need to keep contact with a mushroom to maintain his size. An object that you keep on your person is defined as one that is portable and must be taken with you to use its power, e.g., if you have a magic watch that stops time in your dreams, the watch needs to be on your person to use it. Objects that can be both empowering and kept will be considered to be kept if there is any aspect that must be physically kept with you for continued use.
The following points can be earned only once:
- Create/find/summon an object that empowers you on touch or by consumption: 20 points
- Utilize the above object and experience an effect: 20 points
- Create/find/summon an object that you keep on your person from which you can draw power or with which you can affect your dream in an unrealistic way: 20 points
- Draw power from or affect your dream with the above object and experience an effect: 20 points
The following points can be earned once per object after your first object of a type:
- Recreate ALL of the effects from empowering objects from prior Task 1 attempts (optionally WITHOUT recreating the objects), then successfully use new empowering objects: 10 points per new object
- Find that ALL of the objects you kept on your person in previous Task 1 attempts are STILL on your person, recreate ALL of their effects, and then acquire new objects to keep on your person and experience their effects: 10 points per new object
As you can see, you may be able to earn the “only once” points in your first dream very easily if your dream control is good. The dreams after that are worth less and will require an extra action every time they are repeated, so everybody can score well but only the good LDers will get a few steps ahead before Task 2!