Lost in Dreams II (OCC)

[the_matrix_walker]

He's gonna tell the truth and no one is going to believe him, lol.

Originally Posted by ericthered

You will be able to improve the you jumper by removing Unconscious Only, drifting, then naked, and you will be able to add some abilities as well. Uncontrollable, preparation, and only when sleeping are permanently part of the ability (and plot).

In light of the leap home.. can I remove any Limitations? I'd love to get to the point where he can keep his clothes.

[ericthered]

Originally Posted by the_matrix_walker

In light of the leap home.. can I remove any Limitations? I'd love to get to the point where he can keep his clothes.

No limitations yet. Somehow I'm not so sure that clothing is the #1 thing he'd like to take from place to place.

[the_matrix_walker]

Originally Posted by ericthered

No limitations yet. Somehow I'm not so sure that clothing is the #1 thing he'd like to take from place to place.

True, but carrying anything requires removing Naked!

[TGLS]

Originally Posted by ericthered

We are always recruiting.

So... Is this still true? I mean you wrote this about five years ago, so assuming yes might be a bit presumptuous.

[ericthered]

Originally Posted by TGLS

So... Is this still true? I mean you wrote this about five years ago, so assuming yes might be a bit presumptuous.

Yes, it is still true. It might be less true if I wasn't posting in this forum. Lost in dreams was intentionally designed to be easy for me to run.


EDIT: Which is to say, I'd love to have you. What sort of character are you looking at?

[TGLS]

Originally Posted by ericthered

What sort of character are you looking at?

Julian Hayden
Not the hall of concise summaries! The only way out here is concise summaries!
Appearance
Julian Hayden has a slight, waifish build, quite literally ninety pounds soaking wet. He stands about a hundred and sixty centimeters tall, and weighing about forty kg makes him look frail and a little boney. He has yet to develop any facial hair, his eyes are grey and his brown hair is kept relatively short. Despite a history of abuse, Julian has minimal to no scarring.

Julian’s boyish looks coupled with his skittish demeanor and smaller give him a cute and harmless appearance. Unfortunately, his self esteem is so poor he doesn’t recognize how his appearance is perceived nor does he cultivate these reactions. In fact, because of social pressures, he is often inclined to act out in ways he is not well equipped for.

His appearance is currently marred by the fact that he has been living rough for the past month or so. He was most recently wearing a filthy and tattered school uniform, mostly because he was going to sleep and wanted to keep other clothes clean.

Biography
Julian Hayden does not remember a time when he wasn’t living in an institution. In fact, his earliest memories are of living in the Charitable Hands Youth Shelter, at the age of six. The steady churn of children through the shelter made it hard for him to make friends, but at the age of eight (and a half!), he made his first long-term friend with Rupert. At ten, he befriended a fellow student, Lloyd.

Both Rupert and Lloyd were kind of bookish, Lloyd more so than Rupert. Rupert kept himself busy with a lemonade stand he ran near the beach, and occasionally had time to play video games. Julian was a little jealous of both of them. They both had family (Rupert’s was his sister Rose), both were taller, and both seemed much more confident than him. He was a lot more jealous of the those who got to leave the orphanage, at least until August 2021.

In August of 2021, Julian learned the ugly truth behind the orphanage. The orphanage’s caretaker, Wyatt Beatty, is corrupt and demand payments from the wards under his care in exchange for not selling them off. He keeps his activities hidden through a mix of intimidation, bribery, and murder. Julian began spent his summer break working odd jobs hoping he would be able to meet Beatty’s demands. Unfortunately, he was unable to make enough money during the summer, and eventually had to take a part-time job at a local café during the school year.

One of his odd jobs was particularly emasculating for Julian and led to unwanted attention from other students at Port Royale Grammar School. This unwanted attention led to harassment at the café, and a poor response by his employer and need for more money led Julian to rob his employer. This did not go well; his colleague and fellow orphan Wilt was blamed, and forcibly disappeared. Beatty took the money back Julian stole with only a warning.

The attention Julian received wasn’t all bad. It led to a relationship with Aura Perry, a rich and popular girl in an upper year. Aura gave Julian an entrance into an in-crowd of careless and wealthy students. Julian began to rob them too, stealing loose cash and electronics (he eventually found a buyer for these, by the name of Hendry). Aura wasn’t in the relationship purely out of infatuation or love, she knew that Julian would be easy to manipulate. She pressured him into intimate activity, including taking naughty pictures, by offering him small sums of money. Julian wasn’t entirely comfortable but participated anyway.

Rupert had been paying Beatty for a much longer period of time than Julian. Beatty had begun extorting Rupert over his sister since she was eight years old. Rupert began to spend his savings trying to keep both him and his sister afloat, and eventually asked Julian to pay for his sister Rose, if he was taken away. This came sooner than Julian expected, as in February of 2022, Beatty had come to take Rupert away. The only thing Julian got trying to stop Beatty was hurt and poorer.

Rupert’s disappearance put considerable strain on Julian, so much so he ended up spilling everything to the new math teacher, Ms. Rivers. Ms. Rivers was too new in town and made the mistake of threatening Beatty. If she weren’t quick thinking enough to take the wrap for Julian telling her everything, Julian would have been done for. Instead, he just had to dig a grave and live with her blood on his hands. Between the late hour he got back to the orphanage at, and under intense self-loathing, Julian decided to snub Aura. This was a mistake. A couple days later when he met with Aura again, she was very mad. She told him in no uncertain terms that if he left her, all the pictures she took would come out. Aura began to grow more demanding and forceful, and Julian had no choice but to accept.

Julian eventually had a dream. He called them “pins and needles” dreams, because they left him with the strange pain in the neck the morning after. In this dream, he saw pearls on the ocean floor. This gave Julian the idea to free dive for valuables to sell to tourists. It would be legitimate form of income, and probably more lucrative than the café. As an accomplished swimmer, he figured this would be reasonably doable. Over the spring break, Julian began his attempts at gathering these pearls. There were hiccups along the way (including an encounter with a shark) but he made a tidy profit off the pearls he gathered. He decided to begin again once the holiday season resumed in December.

As the parties began to die off with the end of tourist season, and Beatty’s demands spiked again after he took on Rupert’s responsibility for paying for Rose, Julian began looking for a replacement source of income. He eventually made the decision to rob the now mostly unoccupied summer homes in a relatively remote part of Rattan. While most valuables were removed from the summer homes (and others were simply not portable for a teenager without a car), he did manage to steal many bicycles and power tools and turn a meaningful profit.

Between the demands of Aura, café work, and theft, Julian was left with very little time to spend at school. His grades began to steadily decline, and his relationship with Lloyd became more frayed. He only barely passed Year 8. He had another strange dream, where he learned about a necklace at the bottom of a cove. The necklace gave him the familiar pins and needles feeling, and he was reluctant to sell it for this reason. This was until a man who gave him the same feeling offered him an enormous sum for the necklace. Only a few days later, the body of a kid of similar appearance to Julian was found in the cove.

While the death was disturbing, it didn’t really bother Julian, until Aura tried to pressure him into going to the cove for an intimate encounter. His flat refusal led her to release the enormous library of embarrassing pictures Aura had gathered on him. He soon lost his job at the café, he almost pushed Lloyd away from himself completely, and he passed out at an assembly that everyone knew was prompted by the pictures of him. The school organized sessions with a therapist for him, which he ducked out of to meet his financial obligations.

In December, he once again went hunting for pearls. He purchased a rebreather to extend the time he could search for pearls underwater. He managed to find an enormous number of pearls, perhaps enough to pay Beatty for a year! Then, a pair of corrupt officers began accosting him for a “permit”. When he refused to pay, they smashed his rebreather and stole his entire catch.

Julian had no choice but to revert to stealing. Unfortunately, he picked the wrong house, and the owner caught him in the act. The owner recognized him, and he attempted to assault Julian. Julian stabbed the man and was unable to raise enough money to pay Beatty. He chose to flee than face the consequence of not paying Beatty, giving Rose what little he had, so she would have something to pay Beatty with. He then began living on the street for two weeks, before jumping to another world, and being lost in dreams…

[TGLS]

Peculiarities
OK, these are things that I have weaved into Julian’s longer biography that might butt up against setting assumptions you may have (actually, I just reread the first post so I’m sure most of them butt up against them). Just listing them off:

• Julian keeps a diary. The diary is special or something because it follows him as he jumps between worlds. This is for two reasons: one, having Julian go looking for a pen and paper all the time so I can fulfill a quirk would be a pain; two, because Julian does not appreciate the transience of all things and would probably give up keeping a diary after the second jump.
• Julian begins to use some of the abilities (the supernatural detect, dream clairsentience) in the package for quite some time before the first jump.
• The supernatural detect is mostly used to detect dream clairsentience. It is also set off by the diary, at a cove, a strange necklace in the cove, and the buyer of the necklace. It manifests as a “pins and needles” feeling in the back of the neck. He pays attention to these feelings, but hasn’t a clue what the feeling is indicating, beyond “pins and needles” dreams tend to happen.
• I use dream clairsentience in about three times in the story I had written out. The first leads Julian to the diary. The second shows him pearls under the sea, giving him the idea to go diving for pearls. The third leads him to a strange necklace, which he later sells.

If any of these are too much, I can remove them. If the first one is problematic, then I’m probably just going to drop the keeping a diary bit entirely. Would be a shame; it’s half done.

Timeline Differences
Julian comes from a close parallel of Earth. Divergence point is in 1650, when an unseasonal storm defeated the Spanish force that had come to evict the English settlers and pirates from the Bay Islands of Honduras. The islands were eventually ceded in the Treaty of Madrid (1670). This has had three repercussions:

• The colony established by Claiborne in 1638 steadily grew and eventually began to thrive. Thus, the names of the islands and cities are different. It was periodically attacked by the Spanish throughout the 18th century during the Anglo-Spanish wars.
• William Walker didn’t travel to the Bay Islands to instigate rebellion against Honduras. He instead joined the Confederate Army, and was shot by a union soldier, coincidentally named Noel Salmon.
• The Bay Islands remain a British Overseas Territory in the present day (January 2023), with an economy like the Cayman Islands (Tourism, Finance). The Bay Islands has a slightly rougher character, and more of a reputation for organized crime.

Despite the relatively early divergence point, there are very few changes to events and persons far removed from the Bay Islands. There’s no COVID on this Earth, but most other 2020s era Earths don’t have it either, so that’s not notable.

Extraneous Setting Details
Development of the Bay Islands was periodically interrupted by hurricanes, which in turn led to delayed self-government. The Bay Islands use the Bay Islands Pound, which tracks closer to the GBP because it achieved self-government following decimalization. The Bay Islands have a screwed-up school calendar, with holidays starting the first Monday of December, April, and August. School resumes the first Monday of September, January, and May.

---

Just as an aside, I plan on completing the diary entries first so...

[ericthered]

We've had an ally travel with Peter, a book and pen can also work.



A custom world is unusual... I can work with that.


The other three items are fine as well: he can be using his abilities before hand.



He is living in the bay islands, yes?

[the_matrix_walker]

Looks like we may have another kid!

How old is he? FYI - Peter is 14 (just a few weeks from 15)... his original concept was for 12 years old, but Eric wanted to bump it up to 14.

Originally Posted by ericthered

We've had an ally travel with Peter, a book and pen can also work.

I wondered if we might circumvent the naked limitation for specific items with signature gear.

Peter's loyal dog Goliath has been of great comfort to him, and a great help! He's a 100% point value ally, so he's a very impressive animal.

[TGLS]

Originally Posted by ericthered

We've had an ally travel with Peter, a book and pen can also work.

Yeah, figured that would be the answer.

Originally Posted by ericthered

He is living in the bay islands, yes?

Well I'm not one for conservation of detail, but it would be an oddly specific detail to mention if he didn't. Especially the extraneous details section. So yeah.

Originally Posted by the_matrix_walker

Looks like we may have another kid!

Admittedly the seed was planted with "What would a character who'd have the exact opposite of Peter's reaction to arriving right in front of his home?" and then I went on from there.

Originally Posted by the_matrix_walker

How old is he?

Well, he was born 2008-09-15, so that puts him at 14 years, 4 months.