Dreamlands

"The landscapes within the Dream are as varied, and as dangerous, as the imagination permits" - Hypatios

The Dream is the realm of ideas, thoughts, and imagination. Every thinking being is participating the Dream all the time, and their thoughts combine with the thoughts of everyone else across all the worlds to create the Dreamlands. These are regions within the Dream that form around a particular idea or collection of ideas, and become internally consistent worlds that Dreamwalkers can visit. The variety of Dreamlands is potentially endless, but they can mostly be gathered into a few categories.

Echoes

Whenever a thinking entity observes something in the Physical Realm, it creates a echo of that in the Dream. These are known as echoes, and are the most accessible kind of Dreamland. They are populated with the eidolons of the people who inhabit the physical space, and on the surface appear to be perfect mirrors of the location in the Physical Realm.

Further examination will dispel this impression. The echo is imbued with all the ideas about a place in addition to what can be physically perceived. Houses are homes (or not). Hopes, dreams, and fears are an integral part of every object, building, or creature within the echo. Additionally, the echoes are the natural home of many forms of Numina, those creatures born out of the beliefs and thoughts of others. When a Dreamwalker slips into the echo of a place, they can try and examine all the ideas and emotions that are bound up with the location. But experienced Dreamwalkers quickly learn to be careful about this process - it is very easy to be overwhelmed by all that a place contains within the Dream, and sometimes you regret what you learn.

Memories

A little deeper into the Dream, we find the dreamlands known as memories. These are very similar to Echoes, and grow out of them over time. A Memory is the idea of a place at a particular time. The specific details of a memory tend to become less distinct, and are made up of hundreds or thousands of Echoes that have collapsed into a dreamland comprised of the aggregate ideas about the place during that period.

There are many types of Memories that can be accessed by the Dreamwalker. Some of them are permeated with nostalgia, the collection of childhood memories collapsed into a single day. Others are more harrowing, such as memories of tragedies and battles. Many memories contain other memories inside them, sometimes with a drastically different nature, but associated in the minds of those entities that recall them. So an idyllic summer day in a village might suddenly shift to a violent nighttime encounter when entering a particular street or building. The memories that are most thought about will be dominant and manifest most readily to those who walk the Dream.

One important thing about Memories is that they are not reliable. Like all things in the Dream, they are subject to the impact of the Egregoric Force, the power of belief to create and shape everything within the Dream. Memories do not reveal what happened in a place, but the aggregate idea of what people believe happened, including those people who were never there to witness it. If everything thinks a horrible murder happened in the old house years ago, that scene will be present in the Memory - even if it never happened in the physical realm.

Legends

Deeper still within the Dream are the lands known as Legends. As Echoes form Memories, so do Memories fade into Legends. These lands still represent the idea of a place and time, but filtered through the lens of history and story. No living person (except for Dreamwalkers) has direct experience of the Lands of Legend. They tend to collect ideas from across a broad span of time and space, joined together by the ideas people have had about them, and the stories that have been told. They have little relationship with history, for they are as much story as truth.

The world of the Million Islands has connections to many lands of Legend, but the best known is Old Elmet. This realm is inspired by tales of Llywelyn the Dragonslayer, and is the foundational myth of the current Kingdom of Elmet. You can read more about Old Elmet here.

Fantasies

These are realms that never were, or at least never were part of the Physical Realm. Born entirely from story and myth, fantasies can manifest as anything, with ideas and characteristics drawn from worlds across the Dream. They tend to be strange places, filled with strange entities. Reaching a fantasy in the Dream can be a dangerous process, as you must follow a path of ideas that draw the mind towards the idea of the fantastic place. Not everyone can hold the right ideas in their mind and make the journey, and letting your mind wander while in the Dream can set you on a different path altogether.

In some places, Folk Magic has created more stable paths to particular Fantasy Realms, which can be followed somewhat safely. This is the case on the island of Oileán Fiáin, where connections to the Dreamlands were experimented upon by the sorceress Celestina. The best known of these connections allow people to travel to a realm of fairy tales known as The Dolphin Islands, and the Faerie party city of Baille Mel. You can read about these Fantasy lands here.

Underworlds

Underworlds are a special class of Dreamland, where the eidolons of those who have died will go while they still persist in the Dream. An underworld may also be any of the previously discussed kind of Dreamland, although the majority are classified as Fantasies. A particular Eidolon will find themselves pulled into whatever underworld the Egregoric Force dictates for them - if the collective belief is that the dead person should go to a particular underworld, that is where they will go.

Like all Dreamlands, the nature of a particular underworld can vary greatly. They are frequently (but not always) depicted as being below the living world, which is why they are called underworlds. In the Great Ring, they are often described as being at the bottom of the ocean, or even somewhere beneath the ocean floor. But an underworld could also be depicted as being in the sky, or just behind the rainbow, or anywhere else that can be imagined.

While most eidolons go to these underworlds after death, it is not the only possibility. You can read more about the fates that await the dearly departed here.

Alien Dreams

All things that think to any degree participate in the Dream. Some of the beings in the Dream are alien to our minds, and envision things that we cannot comprehend. Even something as mundane as the slow dreams of trees can be difficult for many to grasp, and there are Dreamlands that are far stranger than anything a physical creature might imagine. Visiting these alien Dreamlands can be very dangerous, and distort the minds of those incapable of understanding them. Some of these dreams are infectious and take up residence in the minds they enter and will even rebuild the mind into a more hospitable environment for it. Dreamwalkers are advised to avoid any alien dreamscapes.

Many of the most dangerous alien dreams exist beyond a vast and disturbing gulf within the Dream that is known as The Silence. You can read more about this phenomenon here.

Type

Dimensional, Pocket

Inhabiting Species

• Numina

The Memory of Sange

After the sudden and mysterious destruction of Sange, the famous dreamwalker Kailo Moana attempted to investigate the disaster by visiting the Memory of Sange within The Dream. What they found there is unknown. When Kailo Moana returned from that trip, they founded the O le Feagaiga specifically to keep any other dreamwalkers from visiting this Dreamland, and the group continues to patrol the edges of Sange in the Dream to this day. You can read more about the O le Feagaiga here.

The Dreaming Lighthouse

Dreamwalking is dangerous, and getting lost in the Dream can easily be permanent. To help those who are lost in the Dream, the Order of the Lightkeepers have built the Fáros Óneiro, the Dreaming Lighthouse.

The Fáros Óneiro is the oldest and largest lighthouse in the Great Ring. Its echo is extremely powerful, and can serve as a guide to those lost in the Dreamlands. According to dreamwalkers, anyone who seeks the Fáros Óneiro with hope in their heart will find it on the horizon, and any who travel towards it will eventually make their way there, if they can overcome whatever dangers lie between them and lighthouse. The Fáros Óneiro is the beacon that guides lost people home, and is one of the most sacred buildings in the Great Ring. You can read more about it here.

Accessing the Dreamlands

Travelling into the Dream is not as simple as traveling in the physical realm. The only ways to get into the Dreamlands are through the Wild Places of the world, where the three realms are more tightly entangled and a person may step across the boundaries. You can read more about the Wild Places here.

Once in the Dreamlands, navigating them can be a challenge as well. The Dream responds to the thoughts of the Dreamwalker, and will shift the environment around them based on the ideas in their mind. For those without the training to deal with this phenomenon, the shifting is extremely disorienting and overwhelming. Those who stumble into the Dream frequently find themselves wandering into strange nightmare realms, guided to them by their own fearful ideas.

Among the Mu'o'a, there is a type of shaman specifically trained in the art of Dreamwalking, known as a Fai Tala. You can read more about them here.

Building a Dreamland

The gods of the Million Islands are Numina, born of the Dream and the Egregoric Force. For stability, they will anchor their Eidolons to specific physical locations, and can be found in the Echoes and Memories of those places. The anchor provides them stability in the face of changing beliefs, but it also limits how far they can manifest or exert influence upon the world.

The gods have examined a few ways to extend their powers beyond the locations where they are anchored. One way is to bind themselves to mortal agents (making them into Avatars), who can travel the world and carry out their god's agenda. But another way is to create a special kind of Dreamland dedicated to bringing the various gods together.

These places are known as Eclectic Temples, and are constructed to create a special kind of Echo within the Dream, one that permits the manifestation of all the gods who are worshipped there. You can read more about Eclectic Temples here.