Dreamscape

Dream, or the Dreamscape, is a manifestation of Jo's subconscious. Powered by Creative Juices, the centre as we know it is Spindle, where Muses live. The wider geography of Dream is accessed through Hub, where doors lead to various Vignettes along the Dream Connectome. Beyond the point of constructed Vignettes - at the edges of the Connectome - lies Far Dream, where lesser known and less well-formed Vignettes lie. These are often explored by adventurous Muses and “mined” for Tropes, in whatever fashion they can muster.

Creative Juices, colloquially known as 'Juice', is the main form of energy that powers the Dreamscape. It represents Jo's raw creative activity and effort. It appears as a yellow-pinkish glowing liquid, and when left to pool it forms mildly dangerous vibrating puddles with occasional sparks. Muses themselves are made of focused Juice, and are occasionally spontaneously generated where large quantities of it gather - though this can have unexpected consequences.

Most things in Dream, from the powers and basic biology of Muses to Vignettes and the mundane Juicetronic devices (similar to real-world electronic devices) are powered by Juice. A large reservoir of it is stored in the Juice Battery above NFWS headquarters for this purpose, at the centre of the network of pipes that distributes it throughout Spindle. A Muse's internal Juice can also be used to power things when necessary, but attempts replenish a Muse's Juice levels other than through Vignettes have always failed.

Whenever a Muse contributes to Jo's creative output through Vignettes, this generates Juice - some of which replenishes their internal stores. The excess will harmlessly evaporate into the environment, from which it is condensed and stored for further use in the NFWS's Juice Battery.

Most uses of Muses' powers tend to contribute towards Jo's creativity, and thus end up being net positive in Juice used and gained, but if a Muse's internal store of Juice gets too low, they will eventually Fade entirely.

The non-linear route that connects all the stories Jo has known throughout their life. It spreads out from the Hub as its centre. Stories which Jo thinks a lot about and are at the forefront of their mind will be positioned closer to Hub, with their Vignettes becoming easier to access from Hub. Represented by the Door to that Vignette positioned closer to Hub's entrance. The Vignette of a well-liked story also tends to be large with details rendered in high-definition: bustling cities with multiple Impressions, lively and dramatic within their scene. As one travels further out through the Connectome, Vignettes of less well-known or forgotten stories will be barren with less detail and structure to their backgrounds, most of it may seem like an uninhabited jungle, dungeon or desert with half-constructed buildings, abandoned towns or outposts inhabited by Juice-starved Impressions. These Vignettes likely cannot be accessed through a door in Hub and can only be found by travelling through a Transition within a Vignette.

Beyond even these less well-remembered dreams lies the wilder Dreamscape of Far Dream. Here, the thoughts, memories and plots that Vignettes are made from erode like sediment; reshaped and compacted by great psychotectonic forces into a more natural-seeming landscape. Some parts of Far Dream take the form of austere mesas and scrublands, forbidding forests, or bitterly cold tundra - but in each case, they get more bizarre and esoteric the further out you get, with increasingly confusing physical properties and shattered, impossible landscapes. Here and there, amidst the wilderness, large chunks of forgotten Vignette are found relatively intact and lone Tropes manifest, ripe for the picking.

Far Dream is, by all accounts, a spectacularly dangerous place. Wild and otherworldly Impressions pad, flap and squirm in maze-like caves, where the way you came doesn'​t lead back to where you came from, while Impressions ​and Muses desperate not to Fade lurk in old, shattered Vignettes, hungering for and relevancy once again. ​All around them, unknowable landscapes confound with their dimension-warping properties.

The frontier outpost of Between-Wake-And-Sleep has recently been established,​ and offers ready access to Jo'​s ​attempts at surreal fiction and literary postmodernism - though few who head out there have returned.

Nonetheless, Far Dream also represents a fantastic source of riches for explorers and narrative scientists. Over time, the untapped Creative Juices in the air of these wastelands condense into a tangible, solid form - one that represents a source of unique power to the Muses - Tropes. Manifesting as booby trapped dungeons or actual dragons ready to be slain, these scenarios are ripe for the picking by plucky or more often desperate Muses.

Though Tropes can be obtained from Vignettes themselves, another popular (and risky) way of obtaining them is go Trope Mining. This doesn'​t mean Muses go out into the Dreamscape armed with pickaxes, but rather refers to any number of ways a Muse can go collecting Tropes from out in the landscape itself. Whether defeating otherworldly,​ never-seen-before behemoths to obtain The Three-Eyed Demon or earning A Pair of Seven-League Boots - many see this as a way to keep one step ahead of the competition.

Factions are not oblivious to this, either. NFWS use their advanced sensory equipment to home in on unusual condensations ​of Tropes in newly discovered locations, while some in the Free Idea Forum seek unsafe and unstable Trope agglomerations for their own subversive agenda. The Tropes that are found are often decidedly odd - whacky, surreal devices that owe as much to Dream logic as Jo's own creativity - but they are often valuable and serve as useful sources of Juice to keep Spindle going.