Dreams and Dreaming

Apropos of sleep, that sinister adventure of all our nights, we may say that men go to bed daily with an audacity that would be incomprehensible if we did not know that it is the result of ignorance of the danger. - Baudelaire

Dreams are transitory. This is one of the axioms of dreaming. A normal person will dream several independent dreams every night, often forgetting them even before awaking. A dream which is forgotten will quickly begin to dissolve. Dreams which are remembered are given some permanence, but the waking mind will order it and rationalize it into a linear pattern, essentially calcifying it to a memory. However, a dreamer can keep a dream alive for some time, or try to give it some independent existence.

The most important thing for a dreamed dream is its dreamer. The dreamer is its creator, ruler and upholder, and the dream only exists in his mind. The dreamer (or rather his subconscious) is almost all-powerful in the dream, being able to dictate its course and its laws. Most people are so dream-illiterate that they cannot influence their own dreams, and the dreams become images created from their subconscious. This means that the realities they create are formed by their own fears, expectations and desires, often making them highly individual. The reality is quite often not that far from static reality, although significant changes in the axioms often occur (like the ability to fly or breather underwater). A Dreamer can easily get paradox by trying to do work magick effects in sleeper dreams if they are not allowed by the current paradigm. It is essential for a good dreamer to quickly be able to understand the often strange laws inside a dream to be able to use magick.

The use of magick in the realm of dreams is not entirely straightforward, since its realities are so varied. A mage is nearly omnipotent in his own dreams, since he can decide the laws of reality (and thus give it a rating of (say) 5 in Forces at a whim). All magick inside his own dreams is coincidental as long as it doesn’t involve anything from the outside. As mentioned above, inside other peoples dreams the mage is limited to what is currently allowed, although clever mages usually can manipulate the dreamer to dream reality into the desired form. Magick is generally needed to create changes in other people’s dreams. To magickally influence across the barrier to the waking world or into other dreams, the mage must be careful to create coincidences. To kill somebody in his sleep is entirely possible as long as its done coincidentally (e.g. the mage suffocates the person under a mountain of dust, and in real world he is suffocated by a pillow or his own tongue). Reality in the free dreams is usually rather stable, although generally free, and in the Chimerae most magick is coincidental, as long as no Dream Lord vetoes it.

Dreams don’t contain much Quintessence, and dreamed Quintessence isn’t real. Real Quintessence is quite powerful in the dream-world, since it can make dreams more real, but is not necessary to create a dream. For that imagination is enough. The person who dreams a dream sustains it by being aware of it, and if he lapses it will fade. However, discarded dreams have their uses. Some are remembered and will generally calcify. Others are collected by Dreamers and sustained by Quintessence. If enough Quintessence is fed into the dream it will become a permanent realm in itself.

However, the great majority of surviving dreams drift off into the Deep Umbra where they join the aptly named Chimerae, the dream- lands. The dreams of the Chimerae are stable for some unknown reason. Some attribute this to the existence of a powerful being, a true Dream Lord, who is aware of them all and thus keep them in existence. The dreams in the Chimerae link up together into a complex agglomeration filled amazing denizens and fanciful places. They all seem to link up a bit according to content, creating large areas of roughly similar content (like great cities, archetypal forests, infinite oceans and the labyrinthine dungeons where the nightmares live).

The inhabitants of the Chimerae range from the beings and persons of peoples dreams over Dreamers (both Awakened and Asleep) to the Dream Lords, as they call themselves. These powerful mages or beings all seek to control at least their part of the Chimerae. Some, like the Warlord of Khem, seek to gain supremacy over the entire Chimerae. Their fights are legendary, wrecking dreams and ripping apart the loose reality of the Chimerae. Usually they have to restrain themselves to avoid creating too much damage, or risk incurring the wrath of the hypothetical True Dreamlord. Most such Dreamlords were originally powerful Dreamers, and often seek to snare unwary Dreamers to suit their own purposes.

Finding the way among the dreams is very tricky. Just orienting inside a single dream can be rather complex, as the landscape constantly shifts and changes according to the whims of the dreamer. Correspondence is very popular among Dreamers not only to find their ways, but also to move to their destinations. Another way to reach a dream is to travel into the Chimerae and try to find a way into the destination dream. This requires much intuition, and the profession of being a dream guide is popular among many inhabitants.

To dream is dangerous, although only the Dreamers understand it truly. While a normal dream at most can frighten a person awake or make them feel uncomfortable for the rest of the day, a magickal dream can kill. In a normal dream the dreamer cannot be killed, he will just regenerate and continue dreaming (unless he is sufficiently scared about death, which will awaken him with fright). This is often true for other inhabitants of his dream too, which is quite safe. A mage whose dream-self is killed in a sleeper dream is usually thrown back into his own dreams with little real damage, and often he can return immediately. But weapons and objects enchanted a la Empower Dream can do “aggravated dream damage”; while they still cannot hurt the person in the waking world, they can hurt even the dreamer of a dream and give him real pain (although most sleepers are so incompetent dreamers that the pain is not felt as strongly as usual). If a dreamer is “killed” with empowered weapons he will start awake, briefly filled with pain and fear. Usually some phantom pains persist for some time (coincidentally explained by muscle stretchings or minor cramps).

However, a mage can also use magick in the dream to reach out an actually kill a person in real life. This is not completely easy to do coincidental, but creative mages have found ways to make people coincidentally die in their sleep (the Euthanatos have discovered that an amazing number of people have heart problems, and there are persistent rumors of a sect of Euthanatos causing sudden baby death). A special danger to Dreamers are sleeping mages, who can use their magick against them in their dreams, and even accidentally kill them. Meeting another mage in his own dreams is very dangerous.

Another danger is the strange creatures which live in the dreams. Some have their own powers, and can be quite dangerous. Many of these beings originate in the Chimerae but range into the dreams of sleeping people. Most are of course harmless, like the rotund Gluttony who appears wherever it can find dreamed food and voraciously devour it. Others are more insidious, like the mind- controlling Cuckoo, which plants “eggs” into the dreams of people, forcing them to dream its young into existence until they can hatch into new dreams. Even worse are the mental parasites which seek out dreamers, imprison their dream-selves and possess their bodies to experience the pleasures of the physical world.