Dead and Dreaming: The Beginning

The storyteller representing the People of Dreams begins:

"Once there was a royal maiden, a princess of the great city Njaaluwe-in-Dreams. When she was a child, her dreams were playful phantasms, calliopes of sound, color, taste, and feeling. As a beautiful young woman, she was:

(choose one)

A. the Drifting Carnival of New Joys, which swept through the streets of the capitol like a flood in the rainy season, carrying off unsuspecting bystanders in a whirl of awkward adolescent pleasures.

B. the stilt-legged dream-beast Monolith, on whose multi-shouldered back were carried the raven-winged Ever-Restless Marauders, sky pirates of the city's tallest towers.

C. [a sizable, impressive, fanciful thing of the storyteller's choosing].

The princess was pledged to marry one of the most noble Keepers Of The Pattern, thus ensuring a continued relationship between Njaaluwe and the southern reaches. However...

There was also a humble craftsman, a dreamer of:

(choose one)

A. shoes such that your feet would rejoice to wear them.
B. cats, the most luxurious and graceful in the city.
C. candies, each more wonderous than the last.
D. [an artisinal object of the storyteller's choice].

[Describe his wares.]

And so it came to pass that the craftsman and the princess cultivated a secret love and thought never to be seperated, one from another. They conducted the tryst of the age amidst Njaaluwe's wildest revelers, the masquers being much too preoccupied with each other to object, and avoided the displeasure of the city's most powerful dreamers.

But then the princess and the craftsman began to dream of a child, full of laughter and song, one that represented the best and worst of each of them. They did not speak of this hidden dream but each one treasured the concept in their hearts and so the child was concieved, the child that would bring woe them both."

And here play begins in earnest.