The Nightmare Flood Incident in Morkovar

Disaster / Destruction

A gifted but unstable scribe named Vranomir defied temple law to perform a forbidden ritual beneath Morkovar, seeking to merge the dream realm with reality. On the winter solstice, he and twelve followers opened a catastrophic breach between worlds, unleashing living nightmares upon the city. For seven days, Morkovar was consumed by horror, and many were slain, transformed, or lost — including the Bezdusnici, soulless ones who mimicked the living. A final counter-ritual by the Dream Wardens sealed the rift at great cost, ending what survivors came to call Roztvorenie — The Unmaking. The event was erased from history, but the fear lingers, hidden beneath salt, silver, and silence.

A brilliant but troubled temple scribe named Vranomir Kargan became obsessed with not just recording dreams but manifesting them physically. His theoretical work suggested that the barrier between dreams and reality was thinnest during certain astronomical alignments, and that properly prepared inks infused with dreamleaf and darksilver could create a bridge between worlds.

The temple elders discovered his experiments and forbade him from continuing, sealing away his research. Undeterred, Vranomir continued in secret, gathering followers who believed his work would elevate human consciousness to a new level of existence.

On the night of the winter solstice, when darkness was at its peak, Vranomir and twelve followers performed their ritual in the underground chambers beneath what will be later known as Temple District - Khramdistrikt . They had prepared massive quantities of their "nightmare ink" - a forbidden combination of Dreamleaf , powdered Darksilver , and their own blood.

As midnight approached, they entered a shared trance and began painting a massive circular pattern designed to open a permanent doorway to the dream realm. What they didn't understand was that their ritual didn't connect to the dream realm alone - it created a three-way breach between reality, the dream plane, and the Shadowfell.

The ritual succeeded catastrophically. The barrier between worlds ruptured, and a flood of living nightmares poured into Morkovar. These weren't merely illusions - they were physical manifestations of the darkest dreams and fears of the city's population, given form and terrible purpose.

For seven days, Morkovar experienced what survivors would later call "Roztvorenie." The nightmare entities defied natural laws:

• Children awoke to find the monsters under their beds had crawled out and were waiting with too many teeth and limbs
• People found themselves unable to scream as shadowy versions of themselves peeled away and began hunting loved ones
• Buildings twisted into impossible architectures, with rooms that led to places that shouldn't exist
• Some victims were found turned inside out, but somehow still alive and whispering secrets in languages never heard before
• Others simply vanished, only to have their voices echo from walls or their faces appear momentarily in pools of water

The worst horrors were the "Bezdusnici" - citizens who had their consciousness torn out and replaced with nightmare entities. They looked normal except for their eyes, which showed swirling darkness. They would approach friends and family, acting almost correctly but not quite, before revealing their true nature and harvesting more victims.

Reports claim that nearly a third of Morkovar's population was lost during these seven days, either killed, transformed, or simply... gone.

On the seventh night, as hope seemed lost, the High Priestess Temnara led a desperate counter-ritual. Nine temple guards volunteered to consume a mixture of purified water, Dreamleaf , and blessed silver. The mixture allowed them to perceive both the physical world and the breach simultaneously.

These "Dream Wardens" fought their way to the ritual site where Vranomir and his followers were found - no longer recognizably human. They had become living conduits for the nightmare energies, their bodies twisted into living ink that continuously birthed new horrors.

The Dream Wardens sacrificed themselves to close the breach, using blessed water to dissolve the nightmare ink and their own lifeforce to seal the tear between worlds. As dawn broke on the eighth day, the nightmares dissolved like ink in rain, leaving behind only their victims and the psychic scars on survivors.

The Temple of Vranmatka declared all research into dream manifestation forbidden. Vranomir's writings were supposedly destroyed, though rumors persist that some fragments were preserved as warnings. The entire incident was gradually removed from public records, transformed into cautionary children's tales or vague religious prohibitions.

The underground chamber where the ritual took place was sealed with silver and salt, then built over with the current temple complex. The surviving Dream Wardens' descendants were granted special status in Ravenmoorian society, though modern citizens have forgotten why certain families receive this honor.

To this day, temple scribes are taught that certain combinations of ingredients are blasphemous, without being told the specific history. Only the highest temple authorities know the full truth of what happened during the Nightmare Flood.