D10 Black Books: Opium Dreamer Edition

 Bandwagoning from here and here. Why "Opium Dreamer"? Because all of these are inspired, in one way or another, from entries in my dream journal. Keeping one is nice, I recommend it.

 

1. Children of Wood
   Unpublished notes from philosopher Georges Bataille, written as a reinterpretation of the Golden Bough through his personal thoughts on death and the erotic. Examining the similarities of fertility rites around the world, the notes fixate on a recurring ritual for healthy children featuring the slaughter and taking the role of a goat.
     
2. Shadows over Archezabrazil
   Memoirs of a woman who survived the destruction of her farming community during World War One. Besides the obvious inconsistencies, such as fighting in South America and advanced bomber aircraft relative to the time, it also describes several encounters with "bright-eyed men" that devoured language.
   
   
3. Architecture Issue 300
   The June 1920 issue of Architecture magazine, largely focusing on a small architectural group's efforts to revitalize the flagging style of Art Nouveau. Taking inspiration from Cambrian fossils and one member's visits to ruins on the Pacific coast, their reimagining has a strong nautical bent compared to the more earthy original style. They managed to build one building, the Rota Opera House in Boston, which now has the highest deaths by drowning per capita in the United States.
   
   
4. Become Like Rose Petals, Blowing Free!
   55k word fanfiction of the anime Revolutionary Girl Utena. The first three-quarters roughly follow the plot of the show, although with various continuity changes such as the shadow puppet girls more directly interfering with the plot, the emphasis of the prince as masked, and the replacement of the Black Rose Duelists with the Knights of Naotalba. The final quarter focuses on Anthy's search for Utena after the conclusion of the show, with them reuniting at an airport in Yhtill.
   
   
5. Bound on the Cross
   A pop theology book that attempts to reconcile Protestant Christianity with the BDSM lifestyle. Would be largely unremarkable if not for its extensive quoting of the Book of Maphon, an apocryphal 3rd century text on cosmology which spoke about the existence of a second moon, and whose copies were thought to all be lost in the Great Fire of London.
   
   
6. On Our Lady of The Seven Days
   A book that claims to share various true stories of time travel, and more specifically the Virgin Mary's role in them. Stories include Marian apparitions in "temporal trances", the retroactive applications of miracles with only the receiver knowing of the previous events, and of course, people praying to her being sent back in time. A recurring element is of seven swords piercing her breast, each representing a day of the week.
   
   
7. Project BLACK ANTLER
   CIA documents revealed by Wikileaks detailing experiments done during and after the Korean War. Noticing several Muism artifact's effects on human fertility/virility, the experiments attempt to shape conditions to create a new breed of human, servile and strong. The experiments were a limited success, although the experiments were halted after later children began to age quickly and reproduce asexually.
   
   
8. Explodierender Kopf!
   German electronic music zine dating to 1997. In between a tongue-in-cheek review of rave locations and a hand drawn PSA on safe ecstasy use is a list of songs, presented in speech bubbles from a 3D modeled head, that help establish a connection with the nervous systems of followers of the worm god.
   
   
9. The Wheelings of Ants
   16th century necromantic texts discussing ways to partition and communicate with or cut off portions of the soul. The book discusses how the shallow pleasures of Aphrodite and Dionysus separate humans from true joy, and speaks of ants as the one kind of being freed from their influence, the partitions meant to achieve a more antlike state.
   
   
10. Dolphins in the River Styx
    A book written by a friend of John C. Lilly building on his work with isolation tanks. Using a combination of sensory deprivation, LSD, ice-cold water, and partial drowning, attempts were made to tap into the portion of the noosphere where the thoughts of the dead lingered, both to help comfort loved ones and gain otherwise-lost information from military operatives. The process was nearly perfected, but funding was cut due to lack of useful results.

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