Don’t ask me where I got the Crystallizer, by the way—until I can
be sure its guardian will not follow, I must never speak of it.
—Ramsey Campbell, “The Render of the Veils”
These guardians appear in the Waking World and its Dreamlands as shadowy silhouettes—vague half-images. Looking much like ghostly, floating jellyfish, the Guardians of the Crystallizers of Dreams bob silently and cloud-like above the ground, long, graceful tentacles dangling from beneath a dark and stormy sack-like body. Featureless except for a pair of yellow cat-like eyes that glow menacingly, the guardians are a weird and ominous sight to behold.
These creatures, whose responsibility it is to guard the fabled and bizarre Crystallizers of Dreams, exist in a dimension somewhere between the realms of dreams and the world of the waking. When one of the strange whistling, egg-shaped crystals is used improperly, or taken wrongly from its owner, Hypnos sends forth the Guardians to retrieve the enigmatic jewel and slay the offending party.
The Guardians are attracted to the Crystallizer’s whistling and each use of the artifact has a cumulative +1D10 percentiles of attracting the creatures. At first a rolling, oozing, puddle-like spot of shadow forms in the air. A few moments later one or more of the guardians waft through this spatial disturbance and into this dimension toseek out the Crystallizer of Dreams and its imprudent user. Crystallizer guardians have no scent and make no sound, so they almost always attack with surprise.
Guardians attack by entangling victims in their shadowy tentacles and dragging them back through the portal to that place between dreams and reality. To break free, a victim must roll his STR against the creature’s POW on the Resistance
Table. Those taken by the Guardians are later found in a deep sleep from which they never awake. The dream-essence of such offenders is trapped forever in the realm of the Guardians and
their sire, Hypnos. These creatures may appear and attack in either the Waking World or any of the worlds of dream.
Due to their shadowy consistency, Guardians have no STR or CON as understood by humans. These creatures’ hit points are equal to their POW.
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