This will be shared with the Council of Aunties (Makime, Matsu, Otaku, and Anjing) on Day 4, as well as Hoto-Hori. Hiruma Naraku also knows this now (up to him who he shares it with).Canary wrote: ↑Mon Nov 06, 2023 3:56 amSatsuki finally gets through the cipher, and it is a chore. Whoever wrote the document seemed to change the cipher every so often, making her have to figure out the trick all over again. Fortunately, they're all relatively straightforward.
I think I've cracked it, how to make this work. Naturally, it all comes back to will and stories, like anything with Yume-do.
The festival hones one's will over time. At this point, because of the past four festivals, most people in the village are skilled lucid dreamers. Properly directed, their will could power this enough to be able to bind this whole area if the barrier between Yume-do and Ningen-do is thin enough. It could be done with fewer people, but... well, I'll go into that in a bit.
I struggled for a long time with the idea of "how do you lock down a dream"? How to set it down in physical form.
It finally hit me last night - stories! A dream in physical form is a written story. Therefore, a dream like what we're dealing with should be able to be bound into its own tale.
So here we have it. Four scrolls, each with a part of a story strong enough to contain this area and its two future inhabitants. The four directional animals as guardians, using the power of their existing stories as extra force to keep everything locked down. Separate them into the proper directions, and it should keeps things relatively safe.
The story needs to be strong enough to hold them, so it needs to be something both impressive and believable. If people blow it off as a fantasy, the binding will likely be weak. With what's coming, that's not acceptable.
The trick is getting the time to be able to set it up. Everything will be focused near the end of the festival. If I can get free long enough
The writing abruptly ends there. It seems to have been done after the diagram was finished, which makes much more sense with explanation - it seems to be designed to be on the back of the four story parts she mentioned, such that it will match if they're put together.
To me, this seems like a way to erect a barrier around this village that will "lock down a dream in a physical form", meaning it would make the Harbinger and Champion (the two future inhabitants referenced by the document) draw into the physical world instead of hiding on the outskirts of the dream realm.
My thinking so far is that we create these four scrolls, with four stories, each connected to the Four Guardian Beasts of myth ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Symbols ). To do this fully, I'd suggest leaning into the theme as much as possible, which also means drawing on the elements relevant to each Guardian, its cardinal directions, colors, and maybe even something more solid like figurines or statues (rough ones since we don't have much time, but something safe and symbolic for the scrolls would be good).
I think Tiger-Kai will be a great help here. Shang maybe too for the story part. And at least four shugenja to cover the four elements, hopefully Ryoshun Huan as our only active Ishiken too to balance it out?
Status: 4.0 (possibly Togashi's Heir) 
