Dream World, Ahlam: Place and Time

Definition, Location and Entrance:

The Dream World, or Ahlam, is a plane of existence born of, and reliant on the continuation of mortals dreaming in their sleep. It is reachable only from the natural world via portals found in the lucid dreams of mortal creatures. To enter safely, a creature from the natural world must leave their physical existence in a sleep or meditative state and travel to Ahlam with their spirit. To make the trip there and back, one requires extensive training in lucid dreaming, extended maintenance of a sleep state, and navigation of spiritual portals. Failure may result in nothing but a headache, or a lost soul. Demons, in this regard, have the advantage of being mostly spiritual beings to begin with, unlike Humans who are mostly physical. Another way to enter Ahlam is by entrusting one's soul to a native inhabitant of that world, who will carry the spirit and prevent it from being lost in the portal.

Time and Space:

In Ahlam, the reference of day, and time of day is a location. For example, Wednesday is a country. Wednesday Noon is the central most location of this country. If you are at Wednesday Noon, the sun is standing still in the center of the sky.

If you move East, towards morning, the sun will move Eastwards with you, and if you continue, you will travel the morning of Wednesday until you reach a place called Wednesday sunrise, and further still, the sun will keep disappearing into the horizon as if in a reversed morning. If you stop at any point, the sun stops from your perspective as well. If you move back Westwards towards noon, the sun will follow, climbing up in the sky, and past noon, it will fall Westwards until you reach Wednesday dusk.

If you move North, or South, it will seem as if the sun is moving in the opposite direction, but it is simply not moving. As if the sun is a light bulb in the sky, and you are traveling North or South in a seemingly open space.

With that in mind, Ahlam is a world spanning a full week. Seven day countries, and seven night countries. For example, the day country Sunday, is neighbored by the night countries Satnight to the East, and Sunnight to the West.

Each day country has its own representation of the sun, and each night country has its own representation of the moon.

Time in Ahlam has a relationship with time in the natural world. This is represented by the appearance of portals when mortals dream. Whenever a creature in the natural world has a dream, at say Sunnight dawn (from the creatures perspective), a portal to that dream will open somewhere at the location Sunnight dawn in Ahlam. This portal will slowly move towards Monday sunrise and morning, until the dream ends, at whatever time in the natural world, which is a place in Ahlam, and the portal closes. This is the only way to estimate - with a 24-hour margin - what day of the week it is in the natural world while in Ahlam.

However, the moons in the night countries mimic the state of the moon of their specific nights for that week; crescent, half moon, full moon, etc. The position of these moons in the sky and their visibility changes constantly through that night according to from where the majority of portals are opening from the natural world.

There is no rigid representation of seasons in Ahlam, or a reliable way to count years other than memory and inscription.

Type

Natural