The Longest Journey Prologue - Of Dreams and Dragon Eggs

The Longest Journey (and the Dreamfall games after it) begins with a prologue, so that's where my playthrough shall as well. Even this comparatively short bit of game is long on me rambling (especially with the pictures) so if you wish to read on, continue below the prologue title.

"A lion is in the streets"

Odd title, isn't it?  There are several things I can think it might refer to, but they both relate more to Chapter One rather than the Prologue, so I'll discuss them then.

We begin here:

This is recognizably the place from the "End Journey" drawing from the menu.  The two people on the ground are evidently visitors (I really wonder from where.)  They ask the older woman to tell them a story, a true one.  She assures them all of her stories are true.

They ask for a tale of the Balance, but after she's says that's way too long, she says she'll tell them of a crucial turning point in the Balance, that sent in motion "wheels that are still turning."

"Like all good tales, it begins where it ends...in a tower, in a realm that is no more..." With that, we get the opening credits, and we get to see this tower, eerie and empty, stone and organic.  Two stone dragons eating their tales rotate around a runed disc.  A naked man floats in a beam of energy.  Suddenly, he seems to awake, and leaves.  One of the dragons skips ahead...

The sight and sound of this science fiction cityscape is quite the transition.  (Sidenote:  I really like both science fiction and fantasy, and I like works when they mix or brush shoulders, as it were.)

We zoom in to a young woman sleeping in her room.  Then, in a neat effect, her room and bed fall away behind her, leaving her standing in a fantasy landscape:

April begins the game by complaining about her weird dreams like this, but notes how pretty the mountains are.  Walking over a bit, there's some rumbling, and an egg rolls out of its nest to be precariously caught on some roots.  April assumes she has to save the egg (she's not wrong, for a lot of reasons.)

Exploring around a bit more, April can nervously note the reptilian nature of the egg and nest, and also notice the dead tree, probably because the cliff has somehow been rent and a little stream diverted.

Upon taking a twig from the tree, the Spirit of All Woods within awakens.  Having coming to comfort the tree as it dies, it's a bit of a downer.  It does reveal the Mother (of the egg) was battling "Dark Chaos" and that's what broke the cliff.

Using the twig and a scale from the nest, April makes a funnel (she's very proud, and why not?) to revert the stream, which instantly heals the tree.  (Magic in the water, perhaps?  Because this is not just a dream.)  The cynic in me notes that funnel isn't going to last forever, though.

Anyway, upon talking to the now-joyous Wood Spirit, the tree'll move the egg back into its nest.  Then the Mother arrives, a dragon burning with white fire (another neat effect.)  She addresses April as daughter, and also as "the mother of the future that might be" and says "in the end, you are on your own."  We'll see how true this will end up being.

It amuses me that, in a sense, the White Dragon spoils a bunch of surprising information right here in the game's prologue, but it'll be awhile before it's addressed again.  And there's also the question of exactly how literal she is.

Finally, the cyclical nature of the White Dragon is also fully on display in this conversation as well--she mentions how April "always was" afraid and how it's beginning again.  Between this and the egg and circling dragons in the tower and the narrating woman's comments about stories beginning where they end, that's a lot of cyclical imagery right at the start (or is it the end?)

April's conversation with the White Dragon is interrupted by a globby mix of darkness that scares her off of the cliff.  (Was it part of the storm seen earlier?)  With that, the prologue ends.