Chapter 1: The Plane of Dreams
T
*The Plane of Dreams is morphic, malleable to the perception and the will of the beholder. Within its expansiveness, it not only holds everything that has ever existed, but also everything that has ever been imagined. Anything you wish for may be sought in this plane, if only you can navigate its bizarre terrain.
-- Alucindor, Psion and Guide to the Plane of Dreams
The Plane of Dreams, more than any other plane in the multiverse of Dungeons and Dragons lore, holds the most opportunity for unique experiences. Nowhere else could one visit the Nine Briarlight castles of the Feywild, explore nightmarish dreamscapes tinged with shadow, and delve into the very origin of imagination: the Heart of Dreams. This realm can be made into anything a creative Dungeon Master wishes, from a comedic romp through candy land to a perilous journey through a recurring nightmare. This plane can be used to add any genre, tone, and purpose to a campaign; it's a landscape of completely unknown wonder and mystery.
Using this Guide
What you take from this guide and what you discard or use from this collection is entirely up to the Dungeon Master. For some, this supplement will contain the necessary rules for psionics in 5th edition; some will use it for locations and monsters to inhabit their own dreamlands; and others still might use the new school of spells as a fun way to reward their spellcasters. Regardless of purpose, this guide is not relegated to any adventuring genre or style and should be used in whatever way the Dungeon Master wishes.
The Plane of Dreams
The Plane of Dreams is the place where all the dreams of the multiverse are collected. No matter how twisted, bizarre, or outright surreal these dreams are, they can be found somewhere in its infinite expanse. For most, the plane of dreams takes the form of a great sea, known colloquially as the Dream Sea, where demiplanes known as Dream Pearls or Dream Isles float until they dissolve once the dreamer awakens. These Dream Pearls often form small clusters based on the location and similarity of the dreamers.
Within the plane of dreams, few things are permanent; objects taken from dreams quickly fade if not immediately used to create new items; entire Dream Pearls dissolve and resurface as people drift between sleep and consciousness; and what few landmarks exist appear in random locations and intervals throughout the plane. Anything that is permanent is often permanent due to a powerful individual's strength of will, whether they be monster, deity or something far stranger.
Dream Pearls
Dream Pearls are the demiplane each dreamer visits when they slumber. They appear as impenetrable bubbles of ivory, floating in the Dream Sea alone or in clusters. These clusters can be created by several factors, but the most common are proximity of the dreamers, like settlements or villages; by similarity of dreamers or dreams; or by the psionic individuals. Dream Pearls dissolve into the Dream Sea upon the dreamer waking, but can be preserved through determination, becoming an adamant dream, or resurface if they are a recurring dream. Otherwise, they only take anywhere from eighteen seconds to two minutes after the dreamer awakens to dissolve back into the Dream Sea.
Experienced, knowledgeable or lucid dreamers can create holes within the impenetrable surface of a Dream Pearl, allowing for astral travelers to enter their dreams. This practice is quite dangerous: though anything that enters your dream cannot kill you directly, they can enter your mind, which can be far worse. Dream guides may be able to identify some characteristics of a dream within a Dream Pearl, but only through powerful magic can the dreamer be identified from the outside of a Dream Pearl. As well, all magic save for the wish spell and some of the spells later in this supplement cannot affect the dreamscape within the pearl, being unable to pierce the demiplane's outer shell.
Dream Pearls are classifiable from the inside, however, and can belong to any of the following types of dreams:
Questing Dreams
Dreams wherein the dreamer must achieve something, reach something, or go somewhere, but there are obstacles in their path. Despite the grandiose name, these dreams can range from epic adventures to simple tasks made more difficult by external factors, like chasing someone but being unable to run no matter how hard you try.
Dreams of Desire
Similar to questing dreams, these dreams fall into the domain of desire because they come from a place of want or need, not as a goal that must be achieved. They may be a dream about one's love interest, a dream of wild riches, or a dream of something else of value to the dreamer. These wants are sometimes protected or blocked by something dangerous.
Dreams of Despair
These dreams are dreams of hopelessness, where nothing can be done to stop some sort of disaster. This could be the replaying of a traumatic event, an imagined paranoid scenario, or a fear for a dark future. Dreamers often wake the moment before their worst fears are realized, suddenly and in a cold sweat.
Dreams of Madness
Though all dreams are affected by the strange logic of the Plane of Dreams, dreams of madness are those that are so surreal and symbolic that they make no sense, even to the dreamer. Entering one of these dreams means that anything in all the multiverse or beyond can appear. Piecing together these dreams may be possible for the dreamer, depending on how the dream was induced.
Dreams of Pursuit
Dreams where the dreamer must escape some threat, known or unknown, before they are harmed by it in some way. The dangers of these dreams may be physical, mental or emotional, but if the person is caught, that is often the worst-case scenario. These dreams also tend to awaken the dreamer the moment they are caught, killed or harmed, as their dream avatar is destroyed.
Temporal Dreams
These dreams are concerned with time: the past, present, and future of the dreamer play out in strange ways based on the laws of the Planes of Dreams. These dreams can be prompted by anything from a terrible memory to a hopeful outlook to the future.
| d6 | Dream |
|---|---|
| 1 | Questing Dream |
| 2 | Dream of Desire |
| 3 | Dream of Despair |
| 4 | Dream of Pursuit |
| 5 | Dream of Madness |
| 6 | Temporal Dreams |
Use the above table to randomly determine a dream within a dream pearl, or to randomly decide what dream to narrate to a player in your campaign.
Everlasting Dreams
Though most dreams disappear after their dreamer wakes, everlasting dreams can remain long after. Whether it is because it is a particularly vivid dream, a recurring dream, or some other foul play forces it to become persistent, these dreams require certain conditions to be met to disappear. Sometimes astral travelers can enter the dreams of someone caught within everlasting dreams, helping to resolve the dream to allow both the traveler and the dreamer themselves to escape. Many of the prominent locations of the Plane of Dreams are everlasting dreams, including the Shining City or the Dream of Worlds, found in this chapter.
Though these
dreams are everlasting,
they have a unique property:
when the dreamer stops dreaming about it, the dream within the pearl dissolves, but the pearl itself remains intact. This means that those trapped in these everlasting dreams find themselves within a featureless prison, with no certainty of when or if they ever have the chance to escape the dream.
Traveling the Plane of Dreams
The easiest way to access the plane of dreams is through sleeping, but this presents several problems for adventurers. Traveling through sleep means they are unable to interact with the plane itself or keep anything they find within. As well, traveling the plane during sleep requires intense focus, mental energy, and psionic ability which few have the patience and luck to attain. Spells like gate and plane shift are the only way to fully access the plane via arcana.
There are other ways to enter the Plane of Dreams: Mystics, psionics who guide groups into the Plane of Dreams, are the best way to travel to the plane. These individuals can navigate the plane, as well as ensure that all the members of the group stay together. Since the Plane of Dreams is so malleable, exploring the plane can be different based on each guide's willful perception of the plane. However, spiritual entities like mystics rarely have need for currency, and instead require a group to complete a task or find a rare item they desire. Furthermore, they might wish to visit a location in the Plane of Dreams with the armed help of that group. Many groups find that they are in for more than they bargained with their dream guide, but this is the necessary cost to safely traveling to and through the Plane of Dreams. Though one can travel without a guide, it is much harder if they want to find a specific place.
The infinite morphability of the Plane of Dreams makes traveling difficult within the plane. One must simultaneously be ready to swim, run, or even fly depending on how the plane appears to them. This is another key reason for the use of a guide: by channeling psionics, a guide can focus their perception of the plane to others, so that everyone is able to work within the same reality. This perception changes from mystic to mystic, but always remains treacherous as the plane tries to fight back against the will of the mystic.
Creatures of the Plane of Dreams
Though their statistics and details will be covered in a later chapter of this guide, it is important to make a note of the general inhabitants of the Plane of Dreams. Anything can and does exist within the plane of dreams, as even things imagined but never real may be found within the plane. However, there is also a large selection of creatures that naturally inhabit the plane, created through its strange, reality-warping laws. For example, pearlbearers resemble gargantuan whales, floating through the air and siphoning the energy from the dream pearl affixed to their backs.
Some creatures also attempt to find their homes in the plane of dreams, attempting to settle or travel the ever-changing landscape. A sect of Kuo Toa infamously found themselves in the Plane of Dreams after they attempted to transport themselves to the plane of their god and still exist there to this day. Nomadic crystalline dragonborn travel the waves of the Sea of Dreams, searching for treasures inside of dissolving dream pearls. And further still, countless worlds are all contained within the expansive mind of a child trapped in their own dream, known as the Dream of Worlds.
There are many advantages to living in the Plane of Dreams, however. The power of dream magic and psionics are amplified within this plane, especially near the heart of dreams. If you can create new items out of the dreamstuffs plundered from a dream pearl, you can keep that item indefinitely, meaning that anything can be created in the plane. Sights never before seen and potentially never seen again can be found within the plane as it churns the unconscious of all beings in the plane.
Though creatures that do not sleep or dream like warforged or the undead, they can still make it into the Plane of Dreams. They must be taken by a mystic, use plane shift or use gate. For creatures that do not dream, the plane appears as a pitch-black limbo, with random objects appearing and disappearing at random around them. They must have a shared vision with a mystic or another sufficiently powerful spellcaster, or they will not be able to visualize it.
The Mind's Eye
Though many cultures scoff at the idea of a third eye, this spiritual eye does exist, and directly relates to dream magic and the Plane of Dreams. The mind's eye controls a great many aspects of the plane of dreams and must be trained to allow for the use of dream magic or psionics. In relation to the Plane of Dreams, the mind's eye is what is used to perceive the terrain of the plane, so it must be trained to try and wrangle the plane into making sense. For some races and cultures, using the mind's eye is an easy act. It may have many names, but it is trained in the same way. Visualizing or imagining with a focus on detail is the best way to train the mind's eye and is what allows for a person to apply the laws of reality successfully to the Plane of Dreams.
Though it is not common, some cultures are cognisant of the Plane of Dreams. Some use the mind's eye itself to reach the plane; others lucid dream or 'dreamwalk' through it; others still have found informal ways to become mystics and guide others using their innate gift.
Death and the Plane of Dreams
Some who visit the plane of dreams do so in a much grimmer fashion: those who die after extended comas or supernatural sleep often find their soul ensnared in the last dream they had. These dreams are likely to become Everlasting Dreams, as the soul's dream must be resolved to allow it to leave the plane. The dream pearl's shell will also appear black, as opposed to the usual shining white. These dreams are also tinged with death: they might be related to the last waking moments of the dreamer, could involve the repeated death of a loved one replaying endlessly, or otherwise involve death in its many forms.
Being within a dead dreamer's pearl can destroy one's very soul. Unlike other pearls, these dreamscapes actively absorb the essence of all living creatures, meaning that few creatures can survive more than a few hours inside. These dreams also contain more hostile and dangerous elements than other pearls, save for the everlasting dreams that circle the Heart of Dreams. Some gods of death also may appear within these pearls, as they must account for the lost soul that is trapped within. They rarely stay for long, but it would be easy for planar travelers to get into these dreams in the wrong place at the wrong time. This all being said, some groups still make it their goal to help these trapped souls to pass on to their afterlife, seeing it as a sacred duty.
Traveling Mechanics
Adventuring Locations
Below you will find a list of one-page locations found within the Plane of Dreams. These summaries are here to stimulate the imagination, and to provide a series of jumping-off points for players to find their backstories and dungeon masters to create their next great adventure.
TESTING