dreamcrystals | journal // notes

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journal // notes

Sender: Samus Aran
To: Anyone
Subject: Notes

[ The handwriting is incredibly neat. It's clear she's very used to writing like this. It's also abundantly clear that she hasn't quite wrapped her head around the fact that these aren't private.

... Or maybe she has. ]

[ A moment, until she finally writes in English. ]

How would you describe the force that has brought everyone here and affected the surroundings?

( ooc: She wrote it in Chozo. Here's the translation:

Solei: Keeper. Met upon arrival.
Location: Reverein. Metaphysical. Dream world? Investigate
Note: If true, not in physical body. Asleep while here. Theoretically still inside my ship.
Note: Wildlands surround Reverein. Good place to practice current battle capacity.
Dreamwalker: Other dreamers. Presumably from other worlds. Tasked with restoring the world. Unclear how. Investigate
Note: There was a first group of dreamwalkers. I arrived with the second group. Two months apart. Why?

Some strange force is responsible. Capable of crossing time and space. Might not be sentient. If so, much more complicated than previously anticipated.
Note: Phazon and Aeion exposure pertinent. Investigate strange force )

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uhhhhh say what now? are you trying to draw a map or a maze or something? i'm not very good at those!

and i guess all of this feels like a force of uh

waking up in a dream? ever have really vivid dreams before?

[ ... Samus isn't going to admit that she too thought the Chozo were drawing maps when she was a kid. That goes to the grave with her now. ]

It's not a map. It's written in Chozo.

[ But anyway-- ]

I have, yes. What makes you think that?

[All that jibberish totally looks like a maze drawing.]

chozo? like the food?

[That's chorizo!]

that's what I think waking up in this world is like! like waking up in a really weird dream. er i guess it's more like falling asleep in a really weird dream.

[ There's a noticeable pause here. ]

No, not like the food. They're an alien race.

[ What the hell, kid. ]

So you believe that the force that's drawing everyone here is the dream itself then?

ohhhhhh i get it

[He doesn't really get it. Alien speak is cool, though.]

but yeah! that's what i think! this place is a lot like a sleeping world and someone or something had to have dreamed it all up, right?

[ ... In some strange way, the kid's logic made sense. If this was a dream world of some kind, maybe the whims of the dream were dictated by whoever dreamed this world up in the first place. Sure, she had no evidence for this, but that felt like an avenue worth exploring. Maybe the kid was onto something. ]

I think you make a good point.

[That's what he thinks! Dreams don't get conjured up by nothing. Dreams come from someone's thoughts or memories. So this place had to have come from somewhere...!]

I'm guessing you're new here too, huh? I've only been here for a couple of months. It's still all really weird.

I've only just arrived, although I've been told about there being another group of arrivals two months ago. You were in that group, I assume?

yup, that was me with a bunch of others just like us! there's still a lot we don't really know about this place but everyone's trying to work together.

[ Samus had to pause for a second. That phrasing was particularly interesting. ]

What DO you know so far?

uhhh well we know that this place likes to throw us into other dreams? we got tossed into a dream that was just like halloween town once. everything was dark and spooky. then we woke up here again.

everything is dreams! dreams everywhere!!

oh and if you get good at it you can create your own magic with dreams or with your emotions.

[ The more she heard of this place, the more if sounded like some kind of children's story book. Going into other people's dreams? Halloween town? Creating magic? It would've been hard to take seriously... if Samus hadn't already accept that the universe was vast and mysterious and impossible to truly understand.

As it stands, it was more fascinating than anything else. Fascinating in its scope, but frustrating in its ambiguity. ]

Is that what you see dreamotion as? Magic powered by dreams and emotions?

yeah! i guess that's the general jist of it, you know? we use the power of our own dreams to create magic.

[It doesn't make a lot of sense but somehow makes all the sense in the world. But maybe because Sora is used to this sort of thing. Other worlds, strange skills, abstract magic...]

[ Samus wasn't sure just how helpful this was, exactly, but she felt like she gleaned a lot from this conversation. If nothing else, she was getting a better idea of how some people viewed dreamotion, which did a lot to help her understand its impact.

What she was going to do with this information, she wasn't sure. But it was a start. ]

What kind of things have you done with it?

I grew a bunch of tomato plants and my friends and me worked on building a whole treehouse for us to stay in while we're here. do you know how hard it is to make a whole house in a tree? pretty tricky when you're using weird dream magic too!

and i guess i made fireworks

Soul magic.

I have no prior familiarity with magic, but that is what I have come to think of it as. This place has an innate ability to summon souls and those souls in turn take an impact on the environment that is itself infused with that magic. That seems most logical to me.

[ This is the second person she's met that sees it as magic. Which was particularly fascinating, given they even admitted to having no familiarity with magic before this. Maybe it was just easier to process this place if whatever Dreamotion was could be explained away as magic. Sadly, Samus wasn't interested in things being easy. ]

In your opinion, what makes it magic specifically instead of just energy?

[Well, that's some interesting gibberish. Almost as good as the ancient tongue back home.]

Bad luck. Or it could be good depending on your circumstances.

If you want a more technical answer, I'd say some kind of super freaky strong ~~arte~~ spell that's letting part of our brains take magical vacation. Or something.

[ Again with the magic. Samus is almost starting to think that maybe she's the one who's wrong here. ]

Do you have experience with magic?

[Even that's a rather loaded question. How to answer...]

Kinda? It's not something I can really do on my own without my spirit friends, but I've seen a lot of magic in action. Last place I was at had it in spades.

[ Maybe the problem was that Samus hadn't had enough exposure to magic, aside from a few things here and there than could be explained away as abnormalities. ]

In my travels, I've had very few encounters with magic, so I'm not an authority. But so far, it seems a majority view this world and the force in control of it as magical. Circumstantial evidence seems to support this.

[ But somehow, she isn't quite ready to believe it yet. ]

Edited 2021-11-10 16:52 (UTC)

It does seem to be a popular element. Maybe like attracts like and all that?

[It's as good an explanation as any in her book.]

The technology level of where I'm from is seriously lagging behind a lot of others from what I've heard, so from my perspective all the crap that's happened could only be the result of magic. Don't think anybody's invented a physical catapult that can yank peoples' consciousnesses out of their bodies or toss them into other worlds yet.

I've witnessed and fought ghosts and phantoms. I've explored separate planes of existence. I know there will always be things in the universe that will defy explanation, no matter how much we search for one.

But to me, chalking it up to magic feels... [ There's a significant pause before she writes the word: ] Cheap.

[...and here Rose thought she'd experienced a bunch of weird crap. "Planes of existence"? Yeesh!]

Does it? Huh. Guess I can see why. A lot of magic has its own rules and restrictions, though, and can't (always) be used to just whip up things willy-nilly. Shouldn't that kind of make it a science of its own?

[Normally she wouldn't bother with these headache-inducing discussions as they tend to go way over her head, but if they can figure out how this place works then maybe it'll result in useful discoveries Like a method of getting in touch with people who aren't here.]

[ Sometimes, Samus could get a little poetic with her language. All the same, the sentiment remained. She'd experienced plenty of unexplained phenomenon, and she knew better than to believe she could understand it all. But writing it off as magic felt... lazy.

And to an extent, it sounded like this person at least understood that sentiment. ]

In a sense, yes. Where I come from, things that are considered magic are things that we simply do not fully understand. Maybe they really are magic. Maybe they're not. But all the same, whatever it is clearly follows its own set of rules we're not made aware of.

That's what I want to find out.

Edited 2021-11-10 23:06 (UTC)

In that case cooking and most mechanical gizmos would be magic to me! Pretty sure that's not what you're going for though since we're talking stuff like spells manipulating nature and such.

[A notion which until a few years ago is one Rose would've dismissed with a uneasy laugh. But now, as freaky as it is to be in some kind of dream land, "magic" seems like a valid, almost sensible reason for everything at this point.]

Not that I have a clue how we'd go about figuring out said rules. This doesn't seem as simple as figuring out we're on a floating island with nothing below by chucking somebody off it. [Don't ask.] I will say it doesn't feel like I could tap into the magic I had been using, whatever that means.

Have you tried?

[ A simple question, but it mattered right now. The only thing Samus had been able to figure out so far was that she could replace aeion with dreamotion, so she was curious how far that could extend. ]

[ Carefully written in the margins are several blocky characters from the ancient Sheikah language. A few characters in Samus's Chozo text are underlined everywhere that they repeat. The closest visual matches between Chozo and Sheikah characters are drawn next to each other. ]

The language is known as Chozo.

[ She wasn't sure what exactly Zelda was doing, but Samus could take a guess or two. ]

Is it similar to a language you know?

[ Ah, whoops. She probably shouldn't be doing this where it might bother someone. This is what her private journal is for.

Welp, too late for that. ]

Remarkably so. There is an ancient language in my world that is written with similar square-shaped characters. I was wondering if there were any matches.

This is just the writing style I grew up with. I've seen other styles of writing in other planets. The last mission I was on had the letters in triangular shapes. It's not a style I'm familiar with, but the letters themselves were still direct matches, so I could still read it.

I assume you haven't found any direct matches?

[ A language with more than one writing system isn't too unexpected for Zelda. The modern Sheikah language has three different alphabets, none of which look similar enough to the ancient Sheikah script to help the princess learn it. ]

Actually, I've found a couple. The Chozo

matches the ancient Sheikah

matches

, and

almost matches

.

(ooc; D = !, N = 5, R = 0 (almost).)

[ ... Well that's interesting. ]

Tell me more about the ancient Sheikah.

Unfortunately, very little is known about them, and much of that is legend. The ancient Sheikah lived more than 10,000 years ago in my homeland, Hyrule. They developed technology to fight back against an ancient evil ravaging the land; machines that, even now, eclipse our own technological prowess by generations. Though their machines saved Hyrule, the king of that era feared the Sheikah and their knowledge. He exiled them from Hyrule, ordered their technology buried and their records destroyed. As a result, a schism erupted between members of the tribe: some chose to remain loyal to the king while others broke away and swore vengeance.

The tribe disappeared long ago, but their descendants still exist.

[ There's a lot of parts in that backstory that reminded her of the Chozo. The ancient technology, and the fact that their technology eclipsed modern technological advancements, in particular. It wasn't enough for Samus to start wondering if there's a connection, but it was certainly enough to make her curious about said technology. After all, if there was one thing she was good at, it was the discovery of ancient technologies. ]

The Chozo have some similarities. They're an ancient alien race with very long lifespans. They're also responsible for the most advanced technology in the galaxy, technology which eclipses anything our current technological standards can produce. I specialize in finding and collecting that technology, when my missions call for it.

[ There's an unexpected number of similarities between the Chozo and the ancient Sheikah, enough that Zelda wouldn't feel completely off base hypothesizing that there might be a connection between them. It made her especially more curious about the Chozo's technology. Despite what little she had seen, Samus's armor already seemed to be a technological marvel, drastically more advanced than Hyrule's or even possibly the ancient Sheikah's technology. How far, then did the Chozo technology dwarf that? ]

You are an archeologist, then? What sort of technology have you uncovered in your travels?

I'm not an archaeologist. Not exactly.
I'm a bounty hunter, but I'm in a unique position when it comes to Chozo artifacts. I was raised by the Chozo, and my suit was custom-made by the Chozo. I have insight and technologies that the Federation lacks, and my suit is adaptive enough to be compatible with most Chozo artifacts.
In other words, I don't look for Chozo artifacts to study. I look for them to expand my arsenal and complete my missions.

[ A bounty hunter? Zelda has never met a bounty hunter before. (They aren't exactly the sort to arrange a royal audience with a princess.) She's always imagined to them to be rough, battleworn older men with fierce eyes and mean dispositions, not attractive young women. Clearly she needs to revise her expectations. ]

I see. Please forgive my mistake.

[ Zelda has a number of intrusive questions that she wants to ask: If Samus's armor had to be custom-made for her, how do the Chozo differ from her? What manner of race is Samus, anyway? She seems humanoid, but maybe she's actually a lot different under her armor. How did she come to live with the Chozo, and what was it like to grow up with them? But Zelda keeps all these questions to herself. ]

What sort of missions does a bounty hunter undertake? I imagine there's a bit more to it than simply tracking down criminals.

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journal // notes

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Sender: McGillis Fareed

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