LEARN ABOUT THE DREAMSCAPE UNIVERSE!
The Dreamscape and Dreamwalking
Several species in the galaxy have powerful telepathic abilities, though only a Neo-Etruscan Priestess, the religious leaders of the planet Etrusci, possess the ability to heal mental, physical, and spiritual wounds.
In addition to communicating mind-to-mind, this telepathy permits people to "Dreamwalk." This ESP technique allows them to examine things in their own subconscious minds while Dreamwalking. More powerful telepaths can actually step outside their bodies and move from place to place with their mind. This is useful for them to look around.
Belief is critical in the Dreamscape. If a person doesn’t believe he or she can do something in the Dreamscape, such as fly or walk through something, they will not be able to do it. Conversely, when someone is attacked in the Dreamscape, weapons directed at them don't really exist. Therefore, the victim can only be harmed if they believe the weapon can harm them. This makes the ability to disbelieve an important defense against someone's attack. However, believing and disbelieving require years of training to discipline one's mind. As Jarek (an expert at Dreamwalking in Dreamscape Warriors Series) said, "the slightest doubt could kill you."
While moving around, one’s own subconscious uses very little energy, communicating over a great distance or moving outside the body uses energy more rapidly. When a person is exhausted, the Dreamscape seems filled with fog, to the point that they might not be able to find their way back to their body.
Related to Dreamwalking is the ability to "Step Out of Time." This technique enables a warrior to slow the time around him without it affecting him. In battle they can move very rapidly, giving them a distinct advantage over their enemy for a limited time. However, like Dreamwalking, it uses energy, and a person can be dragged back into regular time once they become tired.
History of the Dreamscape Universe
Most of the action of the Dreamscape Warrior Series takes place approximately 1000 years in the future. This is a period of interstellar civil war between the Galactic Alliance and the Rebellion.
It was already going on for hundreds of years when the Rebellion’s leader, Azurius, inflicted it on human space. The novels center on the family of Liam, foster son of Marcus and Lidia, son of Seámus and Deirdre, who takes the name of his Finnian birth mother’s family, O’Connor, after the events of Price of Vengeance.
DREAMSCAPE UNIVERSE SPACE TRAVEL
According to Albert Einstein, a spaceship cannot go faster than the speed of light. It is the universal speed limit. Science Fiction authors fall into two camps. "Hard Science Fiction" writers adheres to this rule, and their characters must live within it. They use suspended animation to keep the crew asleep until they reach their destination, or they use a multi-generational ship where the descendants of the people who started the journey are the ones who end it.
Then there are other writers who find that too limiting and workaround the speed limit and time dilation. Their stories will involve a journey from point A to point B and back where they travel faster than the speed of light. Star Trek uses the warp drive. The ship generates a warp bubble, including the space around it. This is a deviation from Einstein's rule, since space can go faster than the speed of light. Star Wars has a ship enter a space dimension where the rules do not apply. In the Dreamscape Warriors Series, it makes use of "Interdimensional Drive," which is akin to the warp drive.
How are such ships powered? Star Wars takes there ships into hyperspace. Star Trek, however, make use of matter-to-antimatter annihilation. The principle is sound. When a particle of matter comes together with a particle of antimatter, they violently cancel each other out, producing energy. To make sure this only happens when desired (i.e. it won’t vaporize the ship), their power plants would have antimatter stored in a magnetic bottle.
In Star Trek, losing antimatter containment is one thing that starship crews fear most. When one thinks about it, this would hold true of anyone using matter-to-antimatter annihilation to power things. Astrophysicists hypothesize that in the early universe, matter and antimatter were together in a stable state. It was only when the universe had sufficiently cooled that they separated.
In the Dreamscape Warriors Novels the question is asked, “What if…”
What if matter and antimatter could be stored safely in their stable state. The results are the substances Neodregen and Neodreleum used in the Dreamscape Universe. These are by combining Hydrogen and Anti-Hydrogen and Helium and Anti-Helium, held together in their stable states. Neodreleum particles are stored in a special chamber. When the power plant is operating, the particles get drawn into a separation chamber, where a special laser separates them. They travel independently by magnetic field and come together in the combustion chamber, where matter and antimatter do what they do best—coming together and exploding. In this universe Neodregen is the first combined fuel discovered and was less stable. It fell out of use when Neodreleum was discovered.
DREAMSCAPE UNIVERSE PLASMA BLADE
Energy-Based Sword
When people hear about the "Plasma Blade" in Kurt's book series, they can be forgiven for comparing it to the "Lightsaber" in Star Wars. Both are energy-based swords that require skill to use. When people ask what the inspiration was for the his energy sword, Kurt's answer the "Covenant Energy Sword" from HALO, used by the Sangheili elites. While schematics of a Lightsaber's inner workings exist, how it functions as a sword is never really explained. The Sangheili Energy Sword (which the Dreamscape Universe sword is based on) has a clearer explanation. The blades are comprised of superheated plasma contained in a tightly configured magnetic field generated from the hilt.
In the Dreamscape Warriors Universe, the Plasma Blade is constructed similarly. Plasma and a blade-shaped force field project from the hilt. The “edge” of the blade is where the plasma leaks through just enough to create a cutting edge. The blade is adjustable, so in addition to cutting like a sword, it can be used as a tool, such as an awl, to enlarge a hole.
The militaries described in Kurt's novels that use Plasma Blades standardize them for most soldiers. The Neo-Etruscan Military, for instance, use short blades based on the Roman gladius on Earth. Finnian Military plasma blades are based on the leaf-shaped swords from the Hallstatt period (1200-450 B.C.) in Central Europe, which is when we first identified a style as Celtic.
