Earth's Four Quarters...

Four dreams come upon you in the night, all of which are incorporated into your memories come dawn. Each deals with one of the quarters of the Earth, and with one of the other four elements of the system used in Cathay: Fire, Wind, Water, and Wood
The dreams of the North-Western quarter are dreams of Wood, tall and enduring stands of the greater pines, vast and impressive in thier services to the legions of the Free People of the world. There you soar free over peaks and valleys and rivers endless in their profusion, with a mighty wing of your-own hatchlings soaring behind you...

The South-Western Quarter is a place of fire and distrust, brothers and sisters **** their fathers and mothers at the behest of tyrants and traitors who have been given fel powers by the arts of demons. There you fight back-to-back with the knight you captured the day before and her squire-cousin, now both bedecked in armor made from your shed scales and each wielding a pair of icy blades cold-forged from the deep-iron. You are beset by foes on every side, and you can not help but feel that this moment is your final stand against some terrible thing beyond the scope of this dream, yet, which if you fall now, not only will you all die, but everyone and everything you have ever loved or felt affection for...

The south-eastern quarter is a domain of water; and poison. Deep in the heart of a swamp tainted by the most disgusting and venomous poison and illness you face a harsh choice, cling to a tainted sense of Honor and justice, Or purge from your mind the mental poison which holds you trapped in the matrix of the mind where your sense of superiority leads to the loss of that you held most dear by attempting to make it remain as it was, instead of accepting what it is now...

The north-eastern quarter is a realm of possibility and harmony: again you see the knight and her cousin, but this time they sit beside you at your right and left hands reading books in a great and comfortable library. They both are old, being tended to by shadowy black figures who you somehow find comforting, rather than frightening, and who are speaking to them words you can not understand, but which you can sense are words of affection and care. This is the land of Air, for while the room is dominated by a roaring fireplace greater than any other you've ever seen, blazing with rank-upon-rank of split logs, beyond the room an icy wind is howling and clawing at the shutters such that the shivering and shaking are producing a rattling din to accompany the wind's howling. Yet in the room the air is warm and comfortable, as you bask in the familiar feeling of love surrounding you...