The Plane of Dreams, usually simply called the Dream World, is where dreams cavort, heedless of the waking world. Dreams once dreamt fade into obscurity, but their echoes resonate forever throughout the Dream World. Carcasses of particularly vile dreams, charged with dark emotion, sometimes rampage from dreamscape to dreamscape, giving rise to terrible nightmares.
Into the Plane of Dreams come dreamers, whether they will it or not, every time they fall asleep. Their minds take flight to the Plane of Dreams. The edges of Dream expand and contract with temporary dreamscapes as dreamers on every plane sleep and wake. The Dream World 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 the Dream World, where average dreams dare not roam
Traits
- 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 the Dream World. Spells cannot truly be cast or learned, nor items won or lost, nor experience points earned when dreaming.
- Infinite Size: The Dream World 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 the Dream World. Left alone on the Dream World, 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.
- No Elemental or Energy Traits.
- Mildly Neutral-Aligned.
- Normal Magic: Spells can be cast normally, but travelers who leave the Dream World 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 the Dream World are gone as if they were never cast.
Links to Other Planes
- The Plane of Dreams is coterminous to the Material plane and all other planes sentient beings reside (including the Far Realm). The easiest method of reaching the Dream World 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 Plane 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 Plane of Dream) can enter the Dream World through the Portal of Sleep like any dreamer, or they can pass bodily into dreams by finding rare physical portals into the Dream World or casting the Dream Travel spell.
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 archipelagos in a sea of wild dream-stuff.
Features
Your dreams can indeed hurt you. Of course, most mortals live out their lives without coming to any harm in the great untamed wildness of the Dream World, but some are not so lucky. When an average dreamer enters the Dream World, 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 5th-level wizard with a wand of lightning, she can use both her spells and her wand in the Dream World. 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 the Dream World, so Raise Dead and Resurrection spells don't work.
Dreamscapes
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.
The Dreamheart
The dreamscapes, in all their infinite numbers, are only the edge of the Dream World. 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 Plane 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.