Archived from groups: rec.games.int-fiction (More info?)
Here's some more analysis of _Dreamhold_, in particular, the third
ending (the one with the mural and the moon).
I'd really like this to be the start of a discussion - the conclusions
I make below are really tentative, more hypotheses than answers.
S
p
o
i
l
e
r
w
a
r
n
i
n
g
The third ending (I'm not counting the various deaths as real endings)
is in a sense the simplest, most traditional IF ending: collect some
stuff, wear it, enter a portal, win.
But it is also the strangest ending because of the questions it
raises: How does it fit into the story? What's the significance of the
mural? And what with the "regalia" you have to collect?
I'd like to make the connection to the various myths included in the
game, which are prompted when the player examines the
constellations. Like in Greek mythology, the constellations are
connected to the stars, and the PCs ultimate fate in this ending -
literally entering the heavens, joining the stars, and presumably
becoming a constellation himself - is a common one in myths.
So the apparent meaning of this ending is that the PC transcends his
former existence and becomes some sort of mythological hero. Or,
perhaps, he was one all the time - although his actions as revealed by
the latter flashbacks seem more like those of the "silver demon" of
the list of dynasties (this may be a reference to the PC's silver
hair, as suggested by David Goldfarb).
The various myths that are told when you examine the stars could
perhaps be considered just embellishment - if there is a starry sky
and a planetarium, of course you should be able to examine the stars
and get a nice story - but the "dome" section of the game places
rather too strong an emphasis on celestial phenomena for this not to
be important. (And in a Plotkin game, it seems that everything is put
there for a purpose.) There is also the connection, pointed out by
several posters, between the myth, and constellation, of the Crutch,
and the PC's son and his use of the crutch as a banner.
In this interpretation, the mural is a depiction of the mythical hero
- either the PC, or the mythical hero which the PC strives to become -
and the strange circumstance that it "was there when I built the room"
seems less strange: the myth is not one of the PC's memories or
inventions.
It seems that most (or all) people who have commented on the mythical
aspects, at least so far, have assumed that the myths are external to
the PC and his dreamhold: either they existed before the PC, and
somehow the events with his son parallelled the myth of the Crutch, or
the myths were created based on his life.
But what if the myths, like so many other things in the dreamhold, are
in fact internal, creations of the PC?
I'd like to suggest that the myths - like the masks and the various
artifacts of the dreamhold - are aspects of the PC's mind; his dreams,
perhaps.
In that case, the myth of the Crutch may be an idealization of his
relation to his son. Note that the myth is much more innocuous than
the story put together from the flashbacks. Perhaps this is how the PC
would wish things to have been, or wish them to be remembered, rather
than the actual grim story?
And the PC's own myth - the one depicted in the mural, and his
eventual apotheosis? My theory is that this is the PC's own view of
realizing his inborn potential - this is what the boy who could hear
the stars sing was *really* supposed to become, not a brooding
wizard-king who does terrible deeds? The significance of the
pre-existenc of the mural is that it depicts the potential that was
there all the time; the PC built the room - developed into the man he
became - afterwards, but the mural was there from the beginning.
And in connection with the myths' being constructs of the PC's, I
can't help wondering about the sky - or skies, rather.
It is easy to take for granted when playing the game that the starry
sky taht appears when you first light the fire in the small dome is
the real thing, and the red sky with four moons is strange and
unnatural. This is, after all, the PC's first reaction (as seen in the
room descriptions). And the red sky clearly seems artificial, and the
moons seem like projections (you can ut your hand through them).
But this is a Dreamhold, a mental construct (at least partially), and,
as in all Plotkin's work, the distinction between reality and
imagination is very blurry indeed. Inside the domes, there is an
orrery, a model of the four moons and their motions, as well as a
planetarium, a device that projects images of the stars onto the
dome.
The planetarium is activated by lighting a fire. Lighting another fire
"turns on" the starry sky outside. Changing the fire into cold fire
changes the outdoor scene to a projection of the orrery. The parallel
is striking.
The point with this seems to be that the "real" constellations are
also just mental constructs - which supports the idea that the myths
associated with them are also constructs. The sky outside is a
projection of the inner sky, the myths projections of the PC's
dreams. Everything is part of the dreamhold, everything aspects of the
PC's personality.
With one exception, all the artefacts needed to complete the
myth-quest are defective or deficient - the gauntlet in the mural is a
common gardening glove in the dreamhold, the belt has lost its silver,
the buckle has no strap, and so on. This may reflect the discrepancy
between the PC's potential and actual abilities - despite being about
to join the stars, the PC is deficient as a human being.
The exception is the dagger - while it is blunt and not usable as an
ordinary dagger, it appears perfect for its purpose, whatever that may
be. It seems to me that the dagger is the really important thing here
- all the other artefacts more or less happen to be lying around in
various hard-to-get-at places, but the dagger is the centrepiece of a
scene of weird, poetic beauty, which for me felt like one of the
climaxes of the game. Given the great care put into presenting this
scene, and the steps leading up to discovering it, I can't help
thinking that the dagger is one of the most important objects in the
game.
So what is its purpose? When you take it, it leaves behind a sort of
rift in space itself, in the fabric of "reality" (whatever that means
in the context of a dreamhold), and trying to enter this rift ends the
scene, putting you back in a fairly mundane cave.
What I think is that the dagger is the means of destroying the
of the dreamhold, cutting through the weave of illusions and finally
escaping.
Because the other endings don't actually escape the dreamhold. The
first ending (restoring memory) restores too much; the PC is back
where he started. Redrawing the portal seems to make the PC leave the
dreamhold itself - but he ends up in the same kind of world, a world
which seems to be an expanded, less limited version of the
dreamhold. He's free to wander the worlds, but the worlds are part of
the same universe. Only the third ending seems to offer a real
possibility of escape.
Which brings me to the nature of the dreamhold. Early on, the game
hints at the dreamhold being not just a memory palace - a mental
construct having no independent existence - but something more, and it
also refers to it as a wizard's house. If the PC is indeed stuck in
his dreamhold, it is far more than just a mnemonic device. It seems
the dreamhold is made up not just of the PC's memories, but his entire
personality, his history, and if that is the case he is trapped in the
prison that is his own mind; not in the pop-culture meaning of
insanity, but in the sense that we are all prisoners of the limits we
put on ourselves - habits, guilt, memories, regrets and ambition.
By transcending this, cutting through the fabric of the dreamhold,
the PC can finally free himself and fulfil his inner potential; join
the stars.
--
Magnus Olsson (mol@df.lth.se)
PGP Public Key available at http://www.df.lth.se/~mol
Here's some more analysis of _Dreamhold_, in particular, the third
ending (the one with the mural and the moon).
I'd really like this to be the start of a discussion - the conclusions
I make below are really tentative, more hypotheses than answers.
S
p
o
i
l
e
r
w
a
r
n
i
n
g
The third ending (I'm not counting the various deaths as real endings)
is in a sense the simplest, most traditional IF ending: collect some
stuff, wear it, enter a portal, win.
But it is also the strangest ending because of the questions it
raises: How does it fit into the story? What's the significance of the
mural? And what with the "regalia" you have to collect?
I'd like to make the connection to the various myths included in the
game, which are prompted when the player examines the
constellations. Like in Greek mythology, the constellations are
connected to the stars, and the PCs ultimate fate in this ending -
literally entering the heavens, joining the stars, and presumably
becoming a constellation himself - is a common one in myths.
So the apparent meaning of this ending is that the PC transcends his
former existence and becomes some sort of mythological hero. Or,
perhaps, he was one all the time - although his actions as revealed by
the latter flashbacks seem more like those of the "silver demon" of
the list of dynasties (this may be a reference to the PC's silver
hair, as suggested by David Goldfarb).
The various myths that are told when you examine the stars could
perhaps be considered just embellishment - if there is a starry sky
and a planetarium, of course you should be able to examine the stars
and get a nice story - but the "dome" section of the game places
rather too strong an emphasis on celestial phenomena for this not to
be important. (And in a Plotkin game, it seems that everything is put
there for a purpose.) There is also the connection, pointed out by
several posters, between the myth, and constellation, of the Crutch,
and the PC's son and his use of the crutch as a banner.
In this interpretation, the mural is a depiction of the mythical hero
- either the PC, or the mythical hero which the PC strives to become -
and the strange circumstance that it "was there when I built the room"
seems less strange: the myth is not one of the PC's memories or
inventions.
It seems that most (or all) people who have commented on the mythical
aspects, at least so far, have assumed that the myths are external to
the PC and his dreamhold: either they existed before the PC, and
somehow the events with his son parallelled the myth of the Crutch, or
the myths were created based on his life.
But what if the myths, like so many other things in the dreamhold, are
in fact internal, creations of the PC?
I'd like to suggest that the myths - like the masks and the various
artifacts of the dreamhold - are aspects of the PC's mind; his dreams,
perhaps.
In that case, the myth of the Crutch may be an idealization of his
relation to his son. Note that the myth is much more innocuous than
the story put together from the flashbacks. Perhaps this is how the PC
would wish things to have been, or wish them to be remembered, rather
than the actual grim story?
And the PC's own myth - the one depicted in the mural, and his
eventual apotheosis? My theory is that this is the PC's own view of
realizing his inborn potential - this is what the boy who could hear
the stars sing was *really* supposed to become, not a brooding
wizard-king who does terrible deeds? The significance of the
pre-existenc of the mural is that it depicts the potential that was
there all the time; the PC built the room - developed into the man he
became - afterwards, but the mural was there from the beginning.
And in connection with the myths' being constructs of the PC's, I
can't help wondering about the sky - or skies, rather.
It is easy to take for granted when playing the game that the starry
sky taht appears when you first light the fire in the small dome is
the real thing, and the red sky with four moons is strange and
unnatural. This is, after all, the PC's first reaction (as seen in the
room descriptions). And the red sky clearly seems artificial, and the
moons seem like projections (you can ut your hand through them).
But this is a Dreamhold, a mental construct (at least partially), and,
as in all Plotkin's work, the distinction between reality and
imagination is very blurry indeed. Inside the domes, there is an
orrery, a model of the four moons and their motions, as well as a
planetarium, a device that projects images of the stars onto the
dome.
The planetarium is activated by lighting a fire. Lighting another fire
"turns on" the starry sky outside. Changing the fire into cold fire
changes the outdoor scene to a projection of the orrery. The parallel
is striking.
The point with this seems to be that the "real" constellations are
also just mental constructs - which supports the idea that the myths
associated with them are also constructs. The sky outside is a
projection of the inner sky, the myths projections of the PC's
dreams. Everything is part of the dreamhold, everything aspects of the
PC's personality.
With one exception, all the artefacts needed to complete the
myth-quest are defective or deficient - the gauntlet in the mural is a
common gardening glove in the dreamhold, the belt has lost its silver,
the buckle has no strap, and so on. This may reflect the discrepancy
between the PC's potential and actual abilities - despite being about
to join the stars, the PC is deficient as a human being.
The exception is the dagger - while it is blunt and not usable as an
ordinary dagger, it appears perfect for its purpose, whatever that may
be. It seems to me that the dagger is the really important thing here
- all the other artefacts more or less happen to be lying around in
various hard-to-get-at places, but the dagger is the centrepiece of a
scene of weird, poetic beauty, which for me felt like one of the
climaxes of the game. Given the great care put into presenting this
scene, and the steps leading up to discovering it, I can't help
thinking that the dagger is one of the most important objects in the
game.
So what is its purpose? When you take it, it leaves behind a sort of
rift in space itself, in the fabric of "reality" (whatever that means
in the context of a dreamhold), and trying to enter this rift ends the
scene, putting you back in a fairly mundane cave.
What I think is that the dagger is the means of destroying the
of the dreamhold, cutting through the weave of illusions and finally
escaping.
Because the other endings don't actually escape the dreamhold. The
first ending (restoring memory) restores too much; the PC is back
where he started. Redrawing the portal seems to make the PC leave the
dreamhold itself - but he ends up in the same kind of world, a world
which seems to be an expanded, less limited version of the
dreamhold. He's free to wander the worlds, but the worlds are part of
the same universe. Only the third ending seems to offer a real
possibility of escape.
Which brings me to the nature of the dreamhold. Early on, the game
hints at the dreamhold being not just a memory palace - a mental
construct having no independent existence - but something more, and it
also refers to it as a wizard's house. If the PC is indeed stuck in
his dreamhold, it is far more than just a mnemonic device. It seems
the dreamhold is made up not just of the PC's memories, but his entire
personality, his history, and if that is the case he is trapped in the
prison that is his own mind; not in the pop-culture meaning of
insanity, but in the sense that we are all prisoners of the limits we
put on ourselves - habits, guilt, memories, regrets and ambition.
By transcending this, cutting through the fabric of the dreamhold,
the PC can finally free himself and fulfil his inner potential; join
the stars.
--
Magnus Olsson (mol@df.lth.se)
PGP Public Key available at http://www.df.lth.se/~mol
.
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