Lucid Protocol

YOU ARE AN ONEIRIC MERCENARY. You don't carry a gun. You carry a deck of Emotions. Your target? The subconscious mind. Your goal? Extract the Memories hidden deep within the layers of a dream.

🧠 The Subconscious Grid

The mind is your battlefield. Study the layout carefully before you make your move.

Navigating the dream isn't just about moving; it's about economy. The numbers on each block reveal the cost of interaction:

• Memories: The loot. The number displayed is the Lucidity Cost required to extract it.
• Nightmares: Mental defenses. The number represents their Strength (HP). Their presence inflates the cost of everything else in the layer — destroy them to lower the cost.
• Rifts: Cracks in the dream. The number shows the Lucidity Toll to dive deeper into new layers.
• Wake-Up Point: Your exit ticket. Trigger this to escape with your loot. If you run out of Lucidity before waking up, you fall into a Coma.

⚡ Lucidity: Your Time is Running Out

Lucidity is both your Health and your Ammo. Every emotion you trigger and every memory you steal drains it.

🎭 The Emotion Deck

Your weapons are emotions. The deck consists of 6 emotion types (like Joy, Fear, Disgust) with strengths ranging from 1 to 8.

These aren't random suits. They follow the Wheel of Emotions. The position on the wheel defines your strategy. Neighbors (like Joy & Trust) form specific Harmonies, while Opposites (like Joy & Sadness) create entirely different effects. You must master every combination on the wheel to succeed.

Emotion Harmonies

Don't just trigger emotions one by one, combine them. Combining specific emotions creates Harmonies. A "Balance" harmony will deal significantly more damage to a Nightmare than a simple "Singularity."

Note: Your emotional output floods the entire layer. Damage is distributed among all Nightmares, not targeted at just one. A powerful hand might be safe when fighting a crowd, but dangerous against a lone enemy.

⚠️ The Stability Threshold

The mind is fragile.

If you hit Nightmares too hard and deal damage over the layer's Stability Threshold, you destabilize the dream and shatter the very Memories you came to steal.

You must be precise. Too weak, and the Nightmare survives. Too strong, and you destroy your reward.

📜 The Contract

Contracts are your missions, each has a specific conditions like a specific amount of lucidity you could have during the hack, stability threshold of the host mind, and more importantly the number of required memories you need to collect before wakeup.

The Shop

You usually accept and start a sequence of missions, and after each mission, you have the chance to upgrade your tools by buying protocol extensions using extra memories you have collected during a mission.