In The Realm Of Dreams...

"WAAAAAAAAAAGGHHHH!!!!!" The Orcish Warcry echoed across the valley as 20,000 Orcs poured from the surrounding woods to fall upon the Roman legionaries who had come across the Minty Mountains into the dark and needle strewn pines of the Horde Lands in The Dreaming. The Roman Legionaries hastily rushed to grab weapons or strap on armor, determined that if they were to die they would die as warriors. The surging wave of dark green skin and bright blue woad continued to pour forth in a seemingly unending tide and the legionaries knew fear. Deus-Consul Romulus had sent them to test the power of his sister Kurvanug's "Horde", now in a half erected fort a Legion 3000 strong would have to try and stand against a "Wild Hunt" of over 20,000.

Many miles away, and yet right in the thick of it, 'Dream of the Endless' watched the conflict of the previous day between his eldest daughter and her youngest brother play out between their dream realms. The Horde would in all likelihood carry the day here as she had in the real world, the power differential was simply too great. Kurvanug was more experienced in dream wars than her brother, and had a broader power base in the real world feeding her the energy of worship. Tens of thousands of people world wide had erected shrines to her in their apartments and houses, "The Hero-Goddess of the Horde" they called her, and all the time they were singing her praises, for she made it a point to help out young Orc characters in the game with equipment and training. She, after all, was no longer concerned with gaining experience, she was at level cap long since and had a personalized custom gear set which she had gained by a write in campaign by half the game's Orcish player base.

Now that power was evidenced in the bolts of green lightning arcing between her warriors in the dream and forming up into an electrical cage surrounding the fort and starting to arch over it. When it completed it would strike down in a dozen places setting all the wooden walls and towers alight, at which point the legionaries would be **** to face the blades of their Orcish Enemies without the limited benefits of their fortifications or burn to ****...

Daniel sighed and turned his attention away, for though in The Dreaming he was both everywhere and nowhere when he chose to be, his full attention could still only be focused on one area at once.

He decided he would go off to construct a new nightmare with which to bedevil that hideously annoying man Barry Cormack, who was determined to find a way to **** him to open up his town to outside scrutiny. Daniel didn't want outsiders horning in on his private business in Danielton: it wasn't that he was hiding anything: or at least not much, just the fact that one of the Endless was walking among mortals, but outsiders meant outside ideas, and those could cause his worshipers to question their faith in him and his family, that he would not allow. Barry, however, would not stop harassing them, and Daniel had had enough of it, quite some time ago. Though Barry didn't know it his housekeeper was actually a Dream-Speaker working for Daniel and had replaced all of the sugar in his house with Dream Sand. Thorough it Daniel would keep sending him a fresh nightmare every night until he quit trying to 'expose the corruption of Daniel Hill and his Godless Hell Cult'. The fact was there was nothing to expose, Daniel ran a tight ship and other than arguably 'poisoning' this impertinent mortal and casting a few dozen wicked and EVIL men to wander the realms of dream until they starved to **** then ejecting their corpses via the dreams of some whales under the North Pacific Gyre to decompose where no one would ever find them he had done nothing wrong: and most certainly was not the child molester Barry believed him to be.

Daniel went to one of the blank patches of sand at the hazy borders of the dreaming, where he started building the nightmare, he began by forcing the sand down and down till it formed a large depression, then willed water to flood up into the area. Taking his pouch of dream sand he flew over the lake he had created filling it in with islets of sand until it became a swampy morass. He then focused the power of his emerald on it until it overgrew with swamp-life of all kinds, including Gar and Snapping Turtles and dozens upon dozens of large mangrove trees and rushes and reads of every description. Into this "Skerie" as he called the distinctive and stable sub areas of the dreaming, he placed a number of stereotypical elements of modern folklore, a voodoo priestess's hut, a tribe of first nations werewolves who were not fans of the Belegana invading their land, a gigantic gator that had a taste for human flesh, and unsavory inbred rednecks who thought anyone who wasn't family was pig-food and anyone that was family might make a nice boyfriend or girlfriend, and if they shot you down there was always some sow in heat in the pens...

Though Daniel wouldn't admit it most of the time his creations were very derivative and uninspired, he couldn't have come up with anything as truly horrifying as a natural nightmare if his life depended on it. However he was getting better, and as he coated this slice of stereotypical Louisiana bayou with a layer of fog he had a stroke of brilliance. He added to the swamp roving squadrons of mosquitoes that carried all manner of pestilence, diseases that would leave the target shaking with chills and burning up with fever, so that they would have to try to find shelter, and no one here thought they were worth helping. He then divided the swamp into five zones, the Vhoudoun practicing ex-slaves and their zombie army in the south, the inbred rednecks in the east, the werewolves in the west, the center the domain of the wildlife and enormous gator that he dubbed The Rugarue, and to the north... He wondered what to do about the north only for a minute: then figured it out. By day it would seem a safe haven and place of refuge, then as night fell, everyone would die and come back as hungry ghosts.

It was all set to unleash on his unsuspecting enemy, but suddenly there was an interruption...