Ceramic Metal Machines

It's the future after some kind of apocalypse. Most of the creatures we encounter are these zombie like things, but I know they're some kind of alien or different species that's not human. I'm with a group of about 20 people and we find an old mansion to live in.  We block up the doors and windows to the main street and leave open the back yard, which is mostly enclosed by fences.  The grounds for the mansion are huge and we do patrols every day to search for supplies.

The mansion is covered with moss and vines, some of the windows are broken just from the elements.  The inside has leaves and plant debris in it.  We clean it out for the most part though.
One day I am exploring the grounds looking for supplies and I find a giant structure covered in vines.  I chop them away and find some kind of vehicle under everything.  As I uncover it I find that it is a sort of jet-ski shaped device, that you stand behind like a chariot.  There are handles shaped like a motorcycles steering column.  And foot pedals with buttons to press with your toes that do other functions.  It is made of some sort of ceramic metal.  It's a light brown/tan color and seems very light.  It's made of a material similar to the robots of Laputa.  When I grab the handle and rev it the machine bursts to life and jumps forward out of my grasp and then immediately drifts to a stop.
Eventually I jump onto it and rev the engine.  It's made for a being a bit shorter than the average human so it's a bit awkward to stand on it but it holds my weight.  It's a hover craft and when I rev the engine it rises and then jumps forward.  It's incredibly fast and has weapons that can shoot from the foot pedals.  This changes our technique completely for finding supplies and allows us to thrive.

Eventually we find 2 more machines that help us.  I cant remember them but one is larger and can carry at least 2 people.

The Guard

Friday Night, stayed at home, room was warm.

Setting

Medieval style society.  All the buildings are circular and topped with domes.  The city is centralized around a giant circular courtyard that is at the edge of a cliff where water pours off the edge. The cliff is actually a giant floating rock.  Circular courtyard has many levels, like an amphitheater but each level is big enough for 5-6 people to walk on side by side.  There are small tents and shops and in the center is a big fountain.  At the top level are doors that lead into the city, the city is inside for the most part. The city is mainly composed of stone(limestone, or marble.) It's pale and glows in the sun. The rooftops are oxidized copper, and there are gold designs etched into the stone itself. All the hallways are circular in nature, like scales coming from a central source.  Inside it's dark but quietly lit with torches that are not made of fire.  They glow on their own.  A lot of the doors are made of glass, or a combinations of wood and glass.  Outside the City there are streets, more people live out here, it's a quiet village type feel. Grass all around, and a light breeze.  Roads lead out to smaller villages and towns.  

One village had a central hub that functions as a religious/medical area.  Also seems like an Inn?  People can come be treated for their ailments by "nuns".  They are all very nice and pleasant.

Story

I am a guard in the city.  A King's guard I think, or just a royal guard. I'm high enough up the ladder to garner respect, but it's respect that is easily given. My armor is sleek but still has a "knight in shining armor" feel to it.  It's very ornate but has a lot of  power behind it.  I think it's gold, or a silver gold. My main weapon is a sword, but I have others on my person.  One day there is a small "seed" like thing found in the castle, it's about the size of a lemon, smooth, and shaped like a pebble, it's light green and seems to almost beat like a heart, like it's alive.  Our scientists take it to run experiments, they find out that it seems to be some type of living creature, it grows and consumes meat.  They destroy it for the greater good as they dont know what it is.  Soon there are more found throughout the city, people bring them in, there have been reported injuries from handling them or trying to catch them as they seem to grow into small creatures that are carnivorous.

Soon we find larger "pods" shaped like dark rotting pomegranates.  They have a gas that slowly spews out of them from a slit at the top. We crack them open to find them full of the smaller "seed" type creatures and when probed they quickly try to escape.  We make an effort to capture as many of them as possible.  We crack them open and destroy the insides.  We find the best technique to be either fire or ice.  We have devices that attach to our arms, when we move our hands the right way flames spew from the end of it.  We have a similar device that spews Ice.  When sprayed the seeds scream and change but ultimately die.

Later we our sensors detect incoming objects from space.  We bring it up on our display and it shows this massive army of alien creatures.  The "seeds" were just the scouts, and the army is now here.   They have giant 50-100 foot long "wyrms" that are plant based.  They have spikes and chains on them, and we cant tell if they are a creature or a machine.  There are also giant mechanized almost humanoid shaped machines.  They are a bight golden-orange color, they are the size of 3 men and could easily take out our own mechs.  There are hundreds of them where as we only have 4 or 5.  And finally there are the motherships that are the size of our city.  They hail us asking if we are ready for a fight, they ask us about our numbers, and we are not sure what to say.  We boast saying we have many more in reserve, but the mothership does not care.  In response to our bluff they send down many more mechs than we can handle.  We quickly sound the alarm to evacuate the city.  The ships and mechs, and wyrms land in the circular courtyard and begin attacking.  Civilians are directs to leave the city and move to the nearest villages and towns that are not affected.  We demand that any civilian with room in their vehicle must take as many passengers as safely possible to a safe place.  It's almost a kind of "Taxi" system.

I am in the courtyard and I scream at my comrades on the mounted guns to first take out the Wyrm.  It's huge and can easily destroy our mechs and men which we need if we are to have a chance.  I tell them to only shoot it and ignore anything else.  But we are already being overwealmed.  I run to help my friends who are busy fighting an enemy mech.  We are getting slaughtered, the mechs are too powerful and seem to feel no pain despite seeming organic.  I then hear a high pitched scream, a child has wandered into the courtyard after getting lost. The mech I am fighting turns around and sees her, it goes after her, she runs back into the door she came from.  I run after the mech.  Inside I throw some type of small sticky grenade at the mech and it stops and turns it's attention to me.  The girl tries many doors but they are all either locked or head into dead end storage rooms.  

I fight the mech by myself.  It's 3 times my size but it's slightly damaged from the fight outside.  I fight it but I'm losing, it can easily pick me up and throw me across the room.  I slash at it with my sword, and make dents in it's armor, I just need to get past the outer shell. As I'm fighting I can feel my ribs breaking and my bones fracturing.  But I am slowing it down. The girl runs down a hallway screaming, I know it's the wrong hallway and that it leads to the childrens nursery area. The mech runs after her again and I throw a device at it.  The device starts out as a ball but when thrown it turns into a rope.  The rope wraps around the mechs legs and it falls to the ground.  I tie off the rope and run after the girl, I dont have much time, I know the rope will break soon.  I grab the girl and I tell her she's running the wrong way, that it's scary but I need her to run down the other hallway, I point to the direction.  She needs to run past the mech to get there but the mech cant reach her right now.  She cries and says she cant do it, that it's too scary.  Just then I hear the rope snapping.  I toss the girl to the side, into the direction I need her to run all the while screaming at her to run.

My armor is all but scraps on me now, my sword is chipped and my helmet is gone.  I'm bloody, my knees(now exposed) are gored and dripping with blood, my hip is shattered.  My breath is ragged and I can feel my broken ribs moving inside me.  As the mech breaks free I am lucky in that it's legs are still tied.  I lure it back towards me.  I slowly back up in the hallway towards where the childrens nursery is.  I dont know if anyone is inside it still but the lights are on and books are open and toys are strewn around.  The Mech limps after me and I limp away from it.  The girl is still too scared to leave, I am screaming at her all the time telling her to go but she stays still watching me, crying.  The mech makes a lunge at me but the girl throws a book at it.  Just as it gets distracted I take my chance, a last ditch effort.  I have two daggers at my sides, I pull them out and stab at the creatures back, I pin it into the ground with the daggers and begin tearing at a chink in it's armor.  I break off a chunk of it's shell, and in a berserk rage I keep tearing and pulling with my bear hands.  I pull out it's insides, it's wires, it's what seems to be organic flesh.  I keep digging and digging until the machine gives it's last death wail and dies.

The girl runs over to me and helps me up.  I tell her we need to get her somewhere safe, that i need to go to a hospital because I'm no good as I am and I think my ribs are broken.  She helps me hobble out the correct way.  I can hear the battle and death wails of my friends echoing in the empty halls.  We finally reach the outer rim of the city and exit.  We sit on the bench where the designated "civilian taxi" pick up is and wait for a ride.  I decide that we need to get her to a safe town, even though the hospital in the city would be more qualified to treat me, her safety comes first.  

Soon a taxi pulls up and we get in, no one knows who I am because I lack my armor, I'm covered in sweat and blood and barely recognizable. We are taken to the quiet town outside the city with the small hospital/religious center.  I have been there before and hope that the "nuns" will remember me.  We walk in and are greeted by a "Nun" she recognizes me and I tell her I need to have medical attention.  She brings me and the girl into one of their exam rooms and she's strangely terse with me.  She seems to have no compassion anymore.  She looks at me and tells me I'm fine, I tell her to please look me over because I know my ribs are broken and that I must have fractures.  She is rude and tells me that if I had a broken rib I would surely know about it.  Another "nun" comes in and takes the little girl away, offering her a bed and bath and a warm meal. I let her leave thinking she is safe.  Still the "nun" helping me is rude.  She tells me that if I really think I need it I should wait with the others that think they are hurt until it's my turn.  

She brings me to a door in the back when the door opens this dark miasma flows out of it.  The room seems to be filled with a greyish blue smoke.  She ushers me in and I see hundreds of people sitting at rows and rows of tables.  They look lifeless.  The "nun" shuts the door and tells me to have a great stay, and just as she leaves I see past the illusion, I see her possessed by some kind of plant creature, and I turn and see others that are sitting are having their life drained by the smoke. 

 And just as the closes the door I wake up.

Stranded on a Strange Planet

Tuesday Night, Stayed at my house with Derrick, heat is on high.


We have crash landed on an uninhabited planet, the plant life is wildly over grown, like walking through the amazon rain forests of Earth, but the leaves are strange and the sun is surprisingly cool.  As we try to survive we discover that the fauna of the planet seems to only be carnivorous.  In addition to that the FLORA is also carnivorous, plants will entangle you and secrete acid to digest you slowly alive.  Or even go to far as to swallow you whole, but thankfully only as soon as the sun sets.  While the sun is out the plants become as harmless as the ones on Earth, and the animals seem to have no interest in us.

Eventually we come upon a strange "bunker" of some kind, or at least that's what we call it.  Slick, black, slimy, rock or maybe some kind of metallic alloy?  It's surface was rough once, with some kind of pattern or maybe language, but the algae and moss and lichen have softened it.  It rises out of the ground about 3 or 4 feet, just tall enough for a human to fit into but with no discerning entrances.  It is vast, and so covered with green that you might almost miss it if you weren't looking carefully.  We walk around it's perimeter, desperate to get inside to hopefully get one night of restful sleep while the plants and animals feast upon each other.

We finally find several entrances, decide which ones are the easiest to block off and which one is the safest to travel through.  We decide on a tunnel that slowly descends into the bunker, an average sized human can only make it through by laying on their stomach and dragging themselves by their elbows.  It is best to go feet first as once it reaches inside there is a short drop off.  Once inside we see that the bunker is completely abandoned.  Nothing remains inside, it's dark and made of the same black, rough, rock like substance, there are small pools of water near what we can only assume are ventilation shafts though we cannot see them.  But the rest of the bunker is covered in dust and dirt.  We manage to get a torch going as the only beam of light before was from the small shaft we entered through and it only pierced the dense black for a few feet around us.

We find and confirm that this place is completely empty, but strangely there seem to be almost no signs that anything once lived here.  Rooms upon rooms, some large with high hanging ceilings, and some small and compartmental.  The bunker goes deep as well, while only a few feet high above the ground it goes many, many levels deep into the ground.  There are no signs of furniture, or even art, but there is one thing, electricity, wired into the rock and walls.  Though deep in the heart of the bunker where the source of it once was, is burned out and rusted, there are no hope of repairs here.

Eventually over the days we find materials to create solar panels, we line the top of the bunker with them and slowly rewire it to them and a battery system, so that once the sun disappears beyond the horizon we will still have light and safety from the nocturnal hunters.  When the electricity is first turned on, the inside of the bunker is lit with a soft, bright light that mimics the sun, if you didnt tell anyone they would have probably just assumed it was sunlight.  The source of this light is something that remains a mystery to us, when the power is switched on suddenly light appears everywhere as if from nowhere, soft beams with dust floating through them, but no source.

At some point in our explorations we find what seems to be a flying machine.  We power it up with the reserves of the solar panels to find that it indeed does work!  The controls are different but every flying machine has at least the 4 same basic controls.  We pilot it out of the bunker come next morning, if we can get a lay of the land we can use this machine to gather materials and supplies, maybe even find the others.  For the first few weeks we find only the essentials; food, water, more materials to make solar panels and furniture.  But no sign of humans.


Eventually one day we do find them, small groups of 2 or 3, and after some weeks we have a small group of about 20 or so people to help us.  We work in shifts, we teach them how to build more solar panels and how to wire them to accommodate for the larger supply of power that we need.  Not all of them are so willing to learn, a few of them are perfectly content to eat and sleep and to take the flying machine out on hunting and gathering missions, but they do not contribute to the society.  We never let them take the flying machine alone, as it is our only source of safe exploration.  

Soon our population numbers in what might be the hundreds, the top of the bunker is covered in solar panels, and while we must conserve there is no general worry that our power will run out.  One day on a mission strictly for exploration, we take a group of 7 people.  One of which is one of the less desirable people of the group, but everyone should get an equal chance to prove their worth.  He's not young, but he's brash and immature, he thinks the world can never harm him as long as he has his rifle with him, and he unfortunately inspires others to follow his way of living/thinking.  While on this mission we land in a clearing far from the bunker, and begin surveying the land, most of us are working but He and group of 2 others are off on the sidelines goofing around.  They proudly boast that they will go off and hunt a creature, I tell them not to venture in to the wildness alone, everything we know of is nocturnal but we haven't done much research on that since we have no safe way to really accomplish anything useful.  They ignore my warnings and go off anyway.   


After a few hours I decide it's time to pack up and start heading back,  the sun will start to set in 3 hours and I want plenty of time to get back.  Just as we're packing up the flying machine, one of the 3 that went off comes back, he's dirty and looks like he's been attacked by something, his eyes are wide with fear and he yells and motions wildly for me to follow.  I am hesitant but eventually I do follow only after telling the crew to be fully packed up and ready to go when we return.  

The boy is scared and can barely talk but he keeps muttering something about blood.  We venture deep into the forest where the ground is laden with vines and a tangle of roots.  I trip over what I think is a large vine, but when I turn to look I notice it is the arm of one of the 3 that left, ripped off straight from the shoulder, still with his blue sleeve on.  When I see this I tell the boy I'm following that we have to go back, if there's an arm here the other 2 are most likely dead and it's safer for us to just return.  He is delirious and confused but he insists that we keep going, that we save them, he breaks off into a run.  I catch up to him, tell him to get back to the ship and push him in the opposite direction, he slowly backs up and then runs off towards the ship to escape.  I stand alone in the forest and I feel the presence of something.  I slowly stalk into the forest trying to be as quiet as possible, I see blood spattered ever few feet and sometimes other body parts, all with the same blue suit. 

Suddenly I hear a scream from in front of me, and I see Him, the guy who took the other two boys with him, the brash one.  He's running from something, yelling at me to shoot, shoot at it, but I refuse.  I turn around and start running towards the flying machine, it's already started and ready to leave I tell them to take off as I grab onto the landing gear.  The ground is shaking and the trees are rumbling with something that is chasing us.  As we take off I hear more screams and  a ripping sound, we fly over and away from it and the whole forest seams to roar.  High in the air I can see the sun is beginning to dip below the horizon, we're just over the bunker, I tell them to land the machine as close to the entrance as possible.  As the machine lands the whole forest is shaking and twisting and reaching towards us.  The last rays of sunlight are just touching the  edges of the bunker.  We abandon our supplies, we all go through but the last girl gets stuck, a plant wraps its vines around her arm, but  when we hear her screams we grab both her legs and yank as hard as we can to get her inside.  Somehow we break the vines grip and she plummets onto the ground.  We close the hatch and engage a system of rotating blades that chops up anything that tries to get in.  We hear it blending away at something as we run inside to safety.


The rest of the dream is about the human culture inside the bunker, but it's pretty much exactly the same as it is now.  There's a high enough population that people form relationships and choose who they want to be with.  We have teenagers who do silly things like try to impress boys with make up and adults who know better.  

Knight in a Tall Grass Field.

Sunday Night, Stayed at Derricks house.

I'm a Knight fighting in a field.  The Army around me stretches out for miles.  It's just before the sun is setting, the sky is orange and the clouds are a dark purple and swirling around moving fast in the strong wind that's swirling around me.  The wind picks up the seeds and pollen in the grass, small particles of flower petals and fluffy seeds float in the air, and the grass comes up to my knees.  Dew sparkles on the grass in the strong red sunlight as it billows in the wind.

I am dressed in typical knights clothing, jerkin, mail, and plate over everything.  My armor along with most of the armor from the army has a deep blue hue to it, some people including myself have red headdresses.   I'm in the back ranks, I cant see the enemy but I know it's the mortal army of an angry god.  The god is the one who is causing the storm.

The army that we are fighting is just a distraction for us, the god is really set on destroying a near by City/Castle.  As we are nearing the end of our long battle(and winning) we notice that the wind has changed while we were distracted by  the army.  The wind is now moving towards the city and a storm starts to form in the clouds over head.  Thunder sounds and blue lightning starts traveling from cloud to cloud.  As this happens the point of view zooms out to a Game of Thrones intro style map where you can see our location the storm moving and then the city/castle off in the south.  As the storm flies off towards the city the captain of the army and the high commanders come running over to me.  I pull out a device from somewhere, it's a kind of tablet device that shows the map of the land along withe topography and rivers, all the necessary geography.  I tell the commanders that I can try to send out a warning drone and hopefully it will get there faster than the storm.  I program it's flight into the tablet and send it off.  The drone is shaped like a beetle.  Black and shiny with 6 legs, it can fly, it's about 3 or 4 inches long.  We watch in silence as the drone flies off, we watch it struggle to fight the wind, and when it's out of sight I turn to the tablet device I have.  I watch as the drone is moving at a snails pace fighting the wind, and decide that if I can avoid this route the god might not notice it as much.  I plan a much longer route but my plan succeeds and the drone gets there a few moments before the storm, it lands on a tree and broadcasts video back to me and it's radio warning signal.  We look on as we see the maelstrom slowly descending on the castle.

The castle is situated in the middle of the city, raised high above the rest of the city, like a mountain.

Back in the field I tell them that the drone was successful but the storm is almost on the city.  An older knight who is the Lord of the castle and city that is being targeted comes up to me and the other captains and tells them how we must hurry back to the city to protect it.  He has a new young wife who is inside of his castle who may be pregnant with his only heir, as his only other two children(grown men) were killed in this long war.