Region Of Dreams

Overview

The Region of Dreams, usually simply called Dream, is where dreams cavort, heedless of the waking world. Dreams once dreamt fade into obscurity, but their echoes resonate forever throughout Dream. Carcasses of particularly vile dreams, charged with dark emotion, sometimes rampage from dreamscape to dreamscape, giving rise to terrible nightmares.

Into the Region of Dreams come dreamers, whether they will it or not, every time they fall asleep. Their minds take flight to the Region of Dreams. The edges of Dream expand and contract with temporary dreamscapes as dreamers on every plane sleep and wake. Dream would exist even if there were no dreamers, though.

The many dreamscapes created by dreamers last but a short time, and they rarely impinge on each other accidentally. However, there are those who knowingly walk between dreamscapes, doing as they will. Sometimes such lucid dreamers pierce the very heart of Dream, where average dreams dare not roam.

Properties

Physical
- Subjective Directional Gravity: Within most dreamscapes, the strength of gravity is the same as on the Material Plane, but each dreamscape can pull in a different direction. The subjective gravity of most dreamscapes appears to conform to normal gravity, but other dreamscapes may have wildly different gravity traits. Visitors who master the skill of Lucid Dreaming can choose how the gravity of a particular dreamscape affects them.
- Flowing Time: For every 10 minutes in Dream, only 1 minute passes on the Material Plane. But the nature of the plane makes time spent on the plane less real. No matter what visitors experience, only memories remain when they leave Dream. Spells cannot truly be cast or learned, nor items won or lost, nor experience points earned when dreaming.
- Infinite Size: Dream is infinite, though individual dreamscapes are finite. Even a single dreamscape can seem quite large, however, depending on the nature of the individual dream.
- Highly Morphic Trait: Dreamscapes are born from wild dream-stuff the moment a dreamer’s mind plunges into Dream. Left alone on Dream, wild dream-stuff is as ephemeral as thought. But once a dreamscape solidifies, it has the alterable morphic trait similar to the Material Plane. Visitors skilled in Lucid Dreaming may be able to morph a dreamscape more to their own liking. Beyond the dreamscapes, in the heart of Dream, the quori can manipulate matter with ease, while visitors have a harder time altering the environment.
Energy/Alignment - mildly neutral-aligned
Magic
- Travelers who leave Dream discover that any spells they used on the plane weren’t really cast (they still have them as prepared spells or available spell slots). Similarly, any spells still in effect when a traveler leaves Dream are gone as if they were never cast.
- Spells of the illusion school are extended
- Spells may mutate the more complex they are, consult the given table below
Planar Relations - Remote: the only way to reach the Region of Dreams from anywhere is through the psychic projection of dreaming and the Dream Travel spell

Dream Travel

Transmutation

Level: Sor/Wiz 8
Components: V, S
Casting Time: 1 action
Range: Touch
Targets: You plus one additional creature touched per level
Duration: 1 hour/level (D)
Saving Throw: Will negates (harmless)
Spell Resistance: Yes

You and any creature you touch are drawn along a crystal arc of reverie to the edge of conscious thought and into the Region of Dreams. You can take more than one creature along with you (subject to your level limit), but all must be touching each other when you cast the spell. You physically enter the plane of Dream, leaving nothing behind.

In Dream, you move through a menagerie of thoughts, desires, and phantoms created by the minds of dreamers everywhere. For every minute you move through Dream (which is only a single round on the Material Plane), you can “wake” to find yourself five miles displaced in the waking world. Thus, a character can use this spell to travel rapidly by physically entering where only dreams prowl, moving the desired distance, and stepping back into the waking world. You know where you will come out in the waking world.

Dream travel can also be used to travel to other planes that contain creatures who dream, but this requires crossing into the Dreamheart, where you are subject to the vagaries of violent dream realities. Transferring to another plane of existence requires 1d4 hours on Dream (which corresponds to 1d4×6 minutes as time is measured on most other planes).

Any creatures touched by you when dream travel is cast also makes the transition to the borders of unconscious thought. They may opt to follow you, wander into other dreamscapes, or stumble back into the waking world (50% chance for either of the latter results if they are lost or abandoned by you). Creatures unwilling to accompany you into the Region of Dreams receive a Will saving throw, negating the effect if successful.

Note: Unlike the normal rules for dreaming, items you use, spells you cast, and other consumables are still gone when you return to the waking world after being under the effect of this spell. Likewise, items you gain and experience you accumulate while under the effect of this spell stay with you.

Hypnagogian Haze

Just as one would experience a haze over their consciousness when dreaming, visitors to the Region of Dreams experience a similar phenomenon called the Hypnagogian Haze. Visitors without the Dreamtouched subtype must make a DC 20 Will saving throw or be dazed for 1d4 minutes, due to abrupt exposure to the Haze. All creatures without the Dreamtouched subtype experience the perpetual disorienting effects of the Haze until they leave the Dreaming, which clouds their vision and distorts sound. Concentration checks made while under the effects of the Haze gain a -4 penalty, and complex tasks become difficult to perform. All other complex skill checks gain a -2 penalty and require a successful DC 10 Concentration check to complete, with failure resulting in wasted time and effort on the skill check (though it may be re-attempted even if you normally could not).

This Haze is what scholars believe to be the source of the hypnagogia and hypnopompia one experiences when going to sleep and waking up. No one truly knows whether the Haze is created by the plane itself, or if the plane is made from the Haze, as neither can be fully studied without being exposed to the Haze. The only scholars to have studied the Haze to any real extent have gone missing and are reported to have succumbed to the strange effects of the Dreaming.

Dreamtouched Subtype

Once a creature has 5 ranks in the Lucid Dreaming skill, they gain the Dreamtouched subtype if they did not already have it.

The Lucid Dreaming skill is considered a class-skill for you at all times
You are immune to some of the effects of the Realm of Dreams
Immunity to sleep spells and effects

Dream Links

The Region of Dreams is coterminous to the Material Plane and whatever Transitive, Inner, or Outer Planes you desire. The easiest method of reaching Dream is through the Portal of Sleep, which living creatures the multiverse over access without conscious thought while they slumber.

When sleep claims a living mind, the consciousness of the sleeper comes to the Region of Dreams, and the dreamer enters into his or her own dreamscape. The body remains on the Material Plane, but the mind wanders as a discrete entity within a dreamscape. When the sleeper wakes, the mind returns to the body, and the dreamscape usually fades into undifferentiated dream-stuff. Sometimes dreamscapes linger and pass into the Dreamheart, taking on a more permanent reality.

Dreamwalkers—frequent visitors to the Region of Dream—can enter Dream through the Portal of Sleep like any dreamer, or they can pass bodily into dreams by finding rare physical portals into Dream or casting the dream travel spell.

Dream Inhabitants

All manner of creatures are found in Dream, ranging from small animals to abominable nightmares. Dreamers run the gamut as well, though dreamscapes of similar creatures are generally clustered together like archipelagoes in a sea of wild dreamstuff.

The major inhabitants of Dream are the quori, the living embodiments of dreams and nightmares. There are numerous species of quori known, including the usvapna quori, du'ulora quori, the hashalaq quori, the kalaraq quori, tsoreva quori, and the tsucora quori.
Eidolons live along the fringes of Dream, and prey on people's nightmares. Two types of eidolons have been identified: idyllic eidolons and nightmare eidolons.
Finally, there are creatures that are the manifestations of the collective unconscious of the inhabitants of the world. These drifters include hobs and spellshadows.
Night hags may haunt the fringes of Dream, either avoiding the dreams already being influenced by the quori or meddling in the dreams of sleepers with their blessing.

The Quori

The quori claim the "center" of Dream as theirs, where they rule supreme. However, most dreamers never reach the realm of the Region of Dreams, and inhabit the fringes of the Region of Dreams. While there, they may be left alone, or they may be the subject of manipulation from inhabitants of Dream. Under normal circumstances, creatures in Dream cannot harm dreamers; however, it is possible for a dreamers' "dream self" to harm quori. Thus, the quori prefer to attack using tricks and manipulation.

Nightmare Monsters

All manner of creatures can be encountered in a nightmare realm. Any monster a character has ever seen, or even heard of, can appear in his dreams. Every monster that exists in the real world and, many that exist only in fevered imagination or the subconscious mind, can manifest here.

Lurking deep within the alien, impossible landscapes of the Region of Dreams, however, are some creatures that are not the products of a dreamer's mind. These horrors were not dreamed into existence but are natives of the dreamscape-otherworldly horrors spawned by the very stuff of which dreams themselves are made. They haunt nightmares across multiple worlds, often appearing first in the dreams of the mad but slowly finding their way through the dreamscape to other, more lucid dreamers. And just as physical beings can use plane-traveling magic to enter the dreamscape, so too can these creatures sometimes use their own magic to manifest in the material world. Mechanically, nightmare creatures do not differ substantially from others except in the following ways:

Nightmare creatures can only manifest in the waking world so long as they remain near someone who is dreaming, because they use that individual as a doorway to the Material Plane. Should the sleeper be awakened, the creatures are driven back to the dreamscape.
Nightmare creatures in the physical world deal nonlethal damage, since they attack an individual's essence rather than his physical form. However, anyone who gains sufficient nonlethal damage in this manner to exceed his hit point total becomes mentally enslaved to the creature. This slavery cannot be broken except by spells such as break enchantment or greater restoration, and even these function only if the caster can succeed on a caster level check against a DC equal to the nightmare creature's HD + 11.

The primary difference between nightmare creatures and standard monsters, however, is one of behavior and motivation. Because they were spawned from the stuff of dreams, nightmare creatures are completely alien in thought and desire. Even most aberrations have some needs in common with humanoids: sustenance, comfort, and the like. Nightmare beasts might not. Their goals can be unfathomable to the human mind. In other cases, they want nothing more than to cause pain, suffering, and fear-precisely what one might expect from creatures that are literally bad dreams made manifest. Some see the waking world as a threat, something to be destroyed so that its inhabitants will cease to encroach mentally on the dreamlands. Others see the waking world as new territory to enslave and conquer, a world peopled with feeble entities that are easily manipulated or slain.

Movement and Combat

Movement within a dreamscape is often like that on the Material Plane. But the rules can vary from dreamscape to dreamscape. In one dreamscape, every creature might fly from place to place, and in the next, swimming might be the only mode of transport.

Moving between dreamscapes is intentionally done only by dreamwalkers who have entered Dream via dream travel or who are using the Lucid Dreaming skill. A traveler can hop from dreamscape to dreamscape or aim for the Dreamheart itself. Although dreamscapes don’t usually overlap, dreamwalkers can find places where the borders are thin enough that a single step transfers the traveler from one dreamscape to the next.

The passage between dreamscapes is a gradual change, not a sudden wrenching. As the traveler approaches the border of the dreamscape, the surroundings become more and more like the neighboring dreamscape, while features of the current dreamscape are less noticeable. Eventually, the dreamwalker has passed wholly into the new dreamscape. A dreamwalker, like any dreamer, can “wake up” to leave Dream entirely.

Waking Up: A dreamer or dreamwalker can attempt to wake up from a threatening dreamscape as a moveequivalent action by succeeding at a Wisdom check (DC 10). When the dreamer who created the dreamscape awakens, the dreamscape bursts. Any other visitors are sent headlong into the nearest dreamscape. When a dreamwalker wakes, the dreamscape and the original dreamer are unaffected.

Features of the Region of Dreams

When an average dreamer enters Dream, she retains all her abilities and even gains dream-stuff equivalents of carried or worn items. Likewise, her hit points, ability scores, and all other values are exactly as they were before she fell asleep. For example, if she is a 5^th-level wizard with a wand of lightning, she can use both her spells and her wand in Dream. When she wakes up, she’ll find that she neither cast any prepared spells nor expended charges from her wand.

If a dreamer or dreamwalker dies in a dreamscape, she wakes immediately with a hammering heart but is otherwise unharmed. A dreamer or dreamwalker pulled slain in the Dreamheart also dies on the Material Plane. Worse, their spirits are snared forever at the heart of Dream, so raise dead and resurrection spells don’t work.

Magnificent domed cities called up from the formless void of dreamstuff spread across the inside of the ring of dreamscapes, allowing the quori who live there easy access to their food supply: the psychic energy of dreaming mortals. Beyond the cities of the quori, a roiling boil of dream-born landscapes melt, burn, grow, and dissolve without any rhyme or reason.

Dreamscapes

The plane is ringed with dreamscapes—small pockets of pseudo-reality where people's dreams play out. Many dreamscapes are small—no more than two or three rooms in a drab building, a small clearing in a stormwracked forest, or a mist-shrouded rural crossroads. Other dreamscapes extend for miles and contain all manner of oddities, architecture, and inhabitants. However, all dreamscapes share one feature: the dreamer.

The dreamer’s unconscious mind forms the dreamscape, which the dreamer then moves through, usually unconscious of the fact that he is dreaming at all. The dreamer alters large or small aspects of his personal dreamscape, though he never does so consciously unless trained in Lucid Dreaming. Dreamscapes usually burst when the dreamer awakens, although occasionally dreamscapes linger or survive permanently under unusual circumstances or magic.

In extremely rare cases, a dreamscape ruptures, sending its pieces and visitors into other dreamscapes or onto the Material Plane. Objects from ruptured dreamscapes usually last 1d% hours on the Material Plane, but 1% of them achieve permanent reality. An example of a permanent dreamscape is described below

The Dreamheart

The dreamscapes, in all their infinite numbers, are only the edge of Dream. They border the Dreamheart, a realm where dreamers can die.

The Dreamheart is a roiling boil of dream-born landscapes that melt, burn, grow, and dissolve without any rhyme or reason. Balls of fire, pockets of air, chunks of earth, and waves of water battle against each other. Amid the chaos, half-melted dreamscapes drift—lakes, buildings, streets, strange creatures, and small islands. Some provide shelter against the tempest, but others are open to its deadly effects. These are dreamscapes that have been pulled into the Dreamheart, usually after their dreamers have awakened.

Waking up in the Dreamheart is more difficult, requiring a Wisdom check (DC 18). In the Dreamheart, a random flare of fire, electricity, or flood can take the life of a dreamwalker at any moment. Likewise, a dream-born creature can swoop out of the chaos and eat an inexperienced traveler. When death comes in the Dreamheart, it affects the physical body as well.

Dreamheart Tempest: Unless sheltered by a solid dreamscape, exposure to the tempest deals 25 points of damage each round: 5 points each of sonic, electricity, cold, fire, and acid damage.

Like any storm, the tempest of the Dreamheart has an eye. If there is any mind, deity, or purpose in the Region of Dreams, it can be found in the Eye of the Dreamheart Tempest. But each character who visits it comes away with a completely different understanding of what lives in the eye—some meet deities, others find long-dead loved ones, and others achieve unparalleled personal power or insight. No one account can accurately encompass the Dreamheart, much as no dreamer can completely understand all dreams.

Spells in the Dreamscape

Due to the unpredictable nature of nightmare realms and dreams, any spells or spell-like abilities used therein might not work normally. The more complex the spell, the greater the chance it will go wrong. Each time a character casts a spell, roll 1d20+the spell level. If the result is 21 or over, the spell is twisted by the mutable nature of the nightmare realm. Roll 1d20 again and consult the following table to determine the impact on the spell.

d20	Result
1–5	The spell functions normally but is cosmetically changed (different colors, flashing lights, odd sounds, and so on).
6–7	The spell functions as 1d4 caster levels lower than normal.
8–9	The spell functions normally, but affects a target or area other than the one the caster intended, determined randomly.
10–11	The spell does not function; instead, the caster produces another spell of the same level, determined randomly; this need not be a spell the caster knows or has prepared.
12–13	The spell functions as 1d4 caster levels higher than normal.
14–15	The spell does not function; instead, the caster produces another spell of 1d4 levels lower, determined randomly; this need not be a spell the caster knows or has prepared.
16–17	The spell does not function; instead, the caster produces another spell of 1d4 levels higher, determined randomly; this need not be a spell the caster knows or has prepared.
18–19	The spell simply fails to materialize.
20	Roll twice, ignoring this result if rolled again.

New Skill: Lucid Dreaming (Wis; Trained Only)

Use this skill to realize that you are dreaming, consciously direct elements of a dream, and move into other dreamscapes. Creatures with 5 ranks in this skill gain the Dreamtouched subtype if they did not already possess it.

Check: Making a Lucid Dreaming check is a standard action that provokes an attack of opportunity.

*You must first successfully grapple your opponent. Then, instead of attempting to pin him or her, make a Lucid Dreaming check (DC 25) on your next action. If you succeed, you and your foe tumble into the Dreamheart.

Change Aspect: An aspect of a dreamscape includes background features such as lighting, terrain, architecture of a given building, vegetation (or lack thereof), and other relatively innocuous characteristics of a dreamscape. You can’t use Lucid Dreaming to make a bolt of lightning strike a foe or open a pit below an enemy.

Change Appearance: You can adopt the outward appearance of another creature within two size categories of your own. None of your abilities change, just your appearance.

Retry: You can make a Lucid Dreaming check once per round.

Task	DC
Realize you are dreaming	5
Change one aspect of your personal dreamscape	15
Change one aspect of another's dreamscape	20
Change your personal appearance	20
Depart one dreamscape for another	15
Depart a dreamscape for the Dreamheart	25
Pull another with you into the Dreamheart	*
Leave the Dreamheart	20