[Etraya] Application

[hypnagothic]

⏵ player information
name and pronouns: Eryne (she/they)
age: 25+
contact: DM this journal!

⏵ character information
name: Dream of the Endless
canon: The Sandman (TV series)
age: No explicit canon-age, but is slightly younger than existence itself, something like 10+ billion years old, appears in his ~30s
canon point: Pulling him from after episode 11 of the TV series (corresponds with issue #18 of comics), but info/background/details are supplemented with original comics canon, interviews, and Neil Gaiman's Q&As
history:

canon history:
official wiki entry, fan wiki, and Dream's character entry on fan wiki

The City CRAU history:
Dream was pulled into The City unexpectedly which made him tetchy for two reasons: 1) having been forcibly pulled somewhere and held without his knowledge or consent, yet again, and 2) the majority of his powers being nerfed. Despite being weakened and in a new place, he luckily found he had a few friends from his world with him, Hob Gadling and Johanna Constantine, to help make the experience at least bearable, and in his time there with them eventually became a little more open and forthcoming with them about himself and even some of his vulnerabilities.

Through some of the antics that The City threw at its new residents, he also met and became familiar with Vanessa Ives, being drawn to her due to her unique existence and being a magic user as well as meeting repeatedly the longer they stayed and encountered one another. Some of the events also exposed old wounds for each of them, allowing the other to bear witness, and the two of them found themselves quite unexpectedly in love. They spent a great deal of time together then, up until the game closed.

abilities:

As the personification of dreams and sleep, Dream has authority and control over dreams and everything linked to them:

• Oneiromancy: can make people sleep or wake up, give people pleasant dreams or nightmares, can send messages and visions through them, and can track and locate people through their dreams
• Creation: can create living beings and things that exist in his realm/in dreams
• Illusion Generation: can create projections of Illusions so real that he and others can physically and verbally interact with them (has said that dreams and reality are much closer to each other than many realize)
• Magic: can use magic, spells, and enchantments
• Teleport: can go anywhere on Earth or realm easily (can also simply ~appear~ across the room for cheap tricks), can open inter-dimensional portals to travel between worlds via his magic sand
• Shapeshifting: can shapeshift at will, altering his own appearance and clothing
• Perception: can shifts a person's perception of him, allowing him to be perceived or to go unnoticed
• Immortality: has existed since the beginning of creation, he cannot get sick, age, or die from weapons (if an Endless is killed or destroyed, their personality and powers will be passed on to someone else, taking their place and incarnation in the universe)
• Superhuman Strength & Endurance: has higher and tougher strength than an ordinary human, does not need food to live, can heal his own wounds and injuries quickly
• Persuasions: can persuade the minds of others people to obey his compelling suggestions, especially in dreams

personality:

Upon meeting Dream of the Endless, most people find him to be cold and humorless due to his not catching or ignoring sarcasm or jests, speaking archaically and formally. He can also appear as rude and insensitive, either unknowingly or purposefully, because of his blunt assessments and statements, not pulling any punches when he speaks even if and especially if a topic is sensitive to those around him. He also comes across as self-obsessed and prideful, caring more for his own affairs and realm over anything else, even his own family.

For the most part, all of that is true to his nature. Being as old as he is as well as the absolute ruler of his realm, he is naturally archaic and formal, being a king through and through and remaining mostly the same from one millennia to the next. Dream is constantly aware of his responsibilities and is detailed and exacting in their fulfillment, both to other people and to his realm. It is only recently, after his capture, that he has become more aware of his faults, and he has come to desire to atone for his past behaviors. He can be kind, in his own way and within the scope of his abilities, though it may not be perceived as kind from others.

Having lived as long as he has and experienced billions of years of events, Dream can remain cool and collected in most emergencies, knowing his own abilities to confront or fix them. He has near-infinite patience and can out-wait a lot of things in order to get his way or for a certain outcome. Having said that, his chosen method of handling emergencies and stress is not exactly one would call healthy. He tends to rely on himself, either not trusting or even not thinking of asking others for help or aid, taking in everything to make himself solely responsible. This has happened to bite him in the ass every once in a while, but not enough to make him change his set-in ways. Even after his capture, he behaves in a way that shuts others out even when they are willing and even want to help. Another stress(or) that he creates himself is that by compounding the problems he takes on himself, he then thinks himself alone because no one else came to help him.

The majority of Dream's regrets stem from the actions he himself makes (even if he refuses to see it as his own actions), especially in regards to his relationships with others. One example of his actions leading to regret was the handling of the very first dream vortex, a being if left alone would destroy everything by pulling all things into one massive dream, where it is Dream's responsibility to kill the vortex before it can get that far. To his regret, he did not kill the first vortex when he should have, and an entire planetary system was lost before he took action, costing more lives than just the one vortex. This lead him to take his responsibilities more seriously, fulfilling them to the letter. Another example is the relationship with his son, Orpheus. Because he refused to help his son journey unto the underworld to retrieve Eurydice, it could be argued that it led to his dismemberment and "death". With this relationship, as well as his more romantic relationships, he tends to push those he loves away even though he claims to still love them, holding them at fault for whatever perceived slight he feels before forgetting about them entirely for millennia at a time. It leads him to being alone and lonely, and then the cycle repeats once he finds his next lover.

samples: Etraya TDM, Sandbox with Johanna Constantine