Research Pages

[Sira]

--OOC--

The following thread is going to be a collection of random pages of subjects Sira has been researching during her time in Rhydin. This is to help establish some lore/background for what she is/what she can do as well as just some other fun stuff I can think up.

Most of this research will be done at whatever public libraries exist, I will note if anything is from a private collection. Some information was also from private play, I will also mark that. Feel free to assume anything not marked private is knowledge that is readily accessible.

Much like Wire Bound Pages her actual research notes will be written in code. Unlike her journal she does not always keep it on her.

--IC--

Now that I have some time to myself again I have decided to try and organize the research I have done here in the city. One of the benefits of being in this unusual world is that it is full of information that I would otherwise be unable to access.

I spent a great deal of my first months in the city hiding out in libraries. The stacks of books are very comforting to me. Reminds me of my time in med school studying with my friends. They were very peaceful days, those. My beginning here was not.

It has been a struggle to discover more about what I am. I thought I was just a human who happened to have some unusual abilities. Now I know that I am... not. More on that another time. More on so much.

There are decisions I have to make eventually. I don't have as much time as I would like. Hopefully this will help me.

[Sira]

Dreams

?The dream is the small hidden door in the deepest and most intimate sanctum of the soul, which opens to that primeval cosmic night that was soul long before there was conscious ego and will be soul far beyond what a conscious ego could ever reach.? Carl Jung, The Meaning of Psychology for Modern Man (1934).

My dreams have always been rather vivid. More so than any of my friends. Often they were very benign, but I do recall having a few nightmares in my youth that greatly concerned my father. I cannot recall what they were about, only his reaction. My mother often dismissed my dreams and all of my abilities, really. Since coming to Rhydin I have seen that my dreams have held more and more significance than I ever realized. A pity I did not realize it sooner else I could have started a dream journal long ago.

From I can tell my dreams take three forms:

1. What I would consider normal dreaming.

2. Prophetic dreaming of some sort

3. Dream "walking"

Obviously my "normal" dreams are of no significant concern. I do not put a great deal of stock into your standard dream interpretations. I agree with whoever it was that said that dreams are just a way for our mind to make sense of things we experienced through the day that we are not consciously aware of. I found something recent, but I swear it was an older belief than this:

?t is in the world of dreaming that the unconscious is working out its powerful dynamics. It is there that the great forces do battle or combine to produce the attitudes, ideals, beliefs, and compulsions that motivate most of our behavior Once we become sensitive to dreams, we discover that every dynamic in a dream is manifesting itself in some way in our practical lives?in our actions, relationships, decisions, automatic routines, urges, and feelings.? (Johnson, 2009: p.19)

Except that my becoming more sensitive to my dreams means that I have become aware that not all of my dreams are normal. My dream "walking" is rather easy to differentiate, mainly because instead of watching my dreams like a movie as I typically do, I am there within the dream. I will explore that more later.

For now I will focus on the prophetic nature of my dreams. I do believe this ties directly into my empathy. There exists something called "clairempathy" which is to say... The power to detect emotional resonances from other locations and times. This is not something I believe I can do while waking, however I have never tried. In a way my dreams seem to involve some sort of retrocognition rather than precognition, though I have had dreams that hint at the future.

Often times these dreams are memories of events I experienced in my past, however I am seeing details and feeling things that I am almost certain I had not or could not possibly have sensed at the time. It could be argued that these dreams are truly just memories bubbling up to the surface, however they feel more to me like flashbacks than memories. When I am in these dreams I am there again. I am reliving them, just from an outside perspective. It is like I am projecting myself into my own past and then... using my empathy on myself.

Again, this has allowed me to become aware of things that I had "missed" the first time around. Things that should have stood out to me for a long time as being "off" because my memories were not complete. I know of at least a few occurrences where I was made to forget the events, but have recalled them in my dreams.

It makes me wonder if this skill is my own mind breaking through these blocks or whatever they may be... or if they are still manipulation. Dream manipulation does not seem to be a skill I personally posses, but there are two individuals known to me who do. At least two.

I do not like having to question the validity of my own thoughts.

[Sira]

The Seal

I have had this thing so long that now I sometimes forget it hadn't always been there. It is quite obviously from Kiorventh, that much I am sure of, but what it exactly is, what it means has been a complete mystery. That, an how much time I have left before I become corrupted.

It sits almost directly over my heart. People think that their heart is higher up and more to the left than it is. Truly it is mid-chest, with most of the organ sitting leftwards across the midline. None of this is really relevant, other than it's just where it is on my body. I am comforted that it sits low enough that no one would ever see it while I'm clothed. Lexius asked to see it once. I have reconsidered showing him, but for some reason I doubt that he would know anything I don't already.

Kiorventh I have managed to glean a little information about. Not him specifically, but I have determined that he may be a prismatic dragon. It is the closest type I have come across. My other guess is that he is very, very old.

The star is made up of tiny scales very much like his. I still have a few and they look very similar, just larger obviously. I cannot remove them or feel their edges where they meet my skin. Some have blackened over time, which I fear means the seal is failing. He told me it would eventually give out.

Why a nine pointed star? Why an enneagram? It is present in the Bah?'? faith, but the symbols I have seen drawn for that are different. It is more of an outline or a starburst. It seems to have minimal meaning there, only in that the number nine is significant. It may mean unity. I found some incoherent rambling about it symbolizing a prison or imprisonment of humanity. That almost makes more sense, but the book it came from was so... I don't think it was written by someone sane.

I have been reflecting a lot on what the dragon said to me when I was on the mirror plane with him. My time is limited and I am no closer to figuring out what I need to do. He told me that I needed to become something different to be able to survive. Oriax suggested that I could become undead. Or forge the two parts of my soul together.

This is a subject I am still woefully ignorant of.