Shadowstalker's Dreamworld Wonderland System

Being Types

Born of Reality

Common Dreamer: Your average dreamer goes to sleep, may dream, and may not remember any of it. They do not control where they start and end each night, and this has little effect on them unless some special dream or nightmare finds them. Such is the way of the non-lucid dreamer. Despite their lack of control over what they do and where they go, their sure numbers make them a sustaining force for the dreamlands and those that live in it. They are not bright lights, but they are many, and they keep everything alive.
Navigator or Navi: The navi is generally considered to be the first step in lucid dreaming. A navi has learned location and has developed a sort of sixth sense that operates during their dreams. They can find places they have been before and even guide other dreamers they encounter. Navis by their nature often occur with other dreamers that may be at the beginnings of their own awakening as lucid dreamers. They are also sought after by those on dream quests that need to get around and not get lost.
Questor: Questors often come from navis that have been put to task with some greater quest. It might be a task needed to save a region of the dreamworld, to save a dream from destruction, or even to aid the muses and other dreamers in a function in the endless wars between light, dark, and Darkness. Upon completion of the task, the questor usually gets some token that has a function in the dreamworld as a reward. They also grow strong enough not only to maneuver like a navi but to also start altering the dreams around them directly often using their charm. For example, Morticon carry's a muse brush from the Whimsy Candice and can use it to repaint reality and dream so long as it is done to inspire someone with the result.
Architect: The rarest and often unsung heroes of the dreamworlds. Everyone wanders dreams and few think about where they come from. Some are made by navi and questors as well as the sea of non-lucid dreamers, but architects tend to produce dreamscapes orders of magnitude larger and more intense than any other dreamer. The poer of the architect is so great in fact that is often disrupts their daily lives. They appear to be creative to the point of madness, and they are constantly trying to 'get ideas out there' both real and in the dreamworld. Dreamers have to experience these new dreams to offload them from the architect. It is a sad truth that many architects manifest with mental illness in reality due to the extreme load they bear in the dreamworld. They themselves are not aware of their effects and you will never convince one that they made anything, but you can tell who made it. Nightmares love architects as they provide a chance to made new and terrible locations that suit them well, and so questors, muses, and others are often sent to protect architects. A second and potentially even more dangerous endpoint occurs with architects who build up so much charge that they literally walk out of reality and into their own world. When his happens, Wonderlands are born.

Borne of Ideas

Muse: Muses are known to keep histories and inspire creation. What most do not know is that muses, with the one exception of Abigail Normal, are not made by gods nor do they just show up, but they are all made by mortals and their creations. When a creator creates what could be called a magnum opus and their purest motivations and joy are put into their creation, there is a chance that the idea behind the creation will become so powerful that it takes on a life of its own. For instance, Candice was created by a painter who say something in someone else's portrait and fix it up to be something that almost seemed to breath on the canvas. When they left, said image did indeed draw breath and walk off the canvas into reality, and she painted her image back in place to cover her tracks. Winnifred was instead spawned from the love of dance and martial arts of a young woman who practiced all the time and just wanted someone that was her equal to play with and practice. So powerful was this pure desire than Winnifred walked out of the mirror and came into being. Ideas are powerful things, and in the case of a muse, they can live on their own.

In the dreamlands, Muses are strange. They are awake in reality but their minds invariably wander around the dreamlands at the same time. They effectively occupy reality and dream at the same time but not always to the same degree. Muses rarely sleep and instead tend to meditate when they are most active in the dreamworld. One of the main rules of muses is that they must inspire others. They cannot create things solely for their own use. Each thing they make should make others want to create or interact with what they have made.
Whimsy: There are few forces in the world out there, but when one places a muse against its nemesis the Nothing, terrible things can happen. Because the Nothing tears a muse apart at the idea level by consuming it in an attempt to fill its void, most muses never survive the encounter. When chance comes that a dreamer, usually a questor level, intervenes before the muse is destroyed, then the remnants can turn into something with all the powers of a muse and none of the rules. Candice White and Miguel are two muses that suffered transitions to Whimsy status. Candice, in a moment of great sorrow, accidentally attracted a Nothing while Miguel found himself put against one on a battlefield. In both cases their lives were saved by an architect and a questor respectively, and both of them went mad. Candice split into multiple personalities and began using her painting to make monsters and other horrors to wage wars across dream and wonderland alike while Miguel's music was twisted into forcing others into conflict with Nothings to try and evolve weapons against them.

Whimsies should be considered one of the most dangerous beings you can encounter because they are not necessarily going to be friends and they can alter the surrounding dreamscape to their own will. Rescuing Whimsies is an extremely rare and dangerous task, but the ability to redeem them is almost always considered worthy of renown. Thankfully they are extremely rare even compared to architects. Spindizzy seems special in that is has two resident whimsies.

Born of the Dreamlands

Dreams: This is a very broad category that could be said to have as many classifications as it does members. Dreams often come in themes though including flying dreams, dreams of glory, dreams of love, and so on. in general, dreams are separated from their negative cousins the nightmares mostly by intent and how they make one feel. In general, dreams are pleasant and they can be sought after by lucid dreamers. Dreams grow strong when they are shared, and so they tend to behave in ways that welcome dreamers to take part in them. Specific dreams must normally be sought after though as they will not actively go forth and gather new dreamers. They benefit from being fed from the three sustaining elements of love, faith, and hope. The last of which can sustain almost any dream for good or ill.

The origins of dreams tend to come from mortal minds However, they can be spawned by many other entities with architects being major contributors and longer lived species like muses and gods. Some of the most confusing dreams come from Gravitas as they often carry with them messages of some importance but remain somewhat vague due to communication issues that muddle the imagry that can come from Darkness such as Gravitas trying to handle more delicate mortal minds. Of course, as primordial elements, love, faith, and hope can create dreams of their own.
Nightmares: Nightmares and dreams share a great deal in common. In fact, they share the same sustaining factors, but nightmares fuel themselves differently. While a dream could happily sustain itself as the means to a dreamer's ends, nightmares generally choose to take a far more active route. Instead of luring in and tending to mortals, nightmares are hunters by nature. They roam about and seek vulnerable dreamers that they can ambush and even trap over long periods of time. This forces the nightmare into the dreamers waking thoughts and can result in a very rapid growth in the power of the nightmare not only over an initial host but many. Not all nightmares are clever enough to know when to back off, and they an end up losing their power source when they drive the dreamers to madness. The most powerful nightmares avoid this risk by preying upon fears that affect a broad rage of dreamers without wounding them irreversibly.

Nightmares, like dreams, tend to originate from dreamers with architects adding to the pool heavily. Darkness however can often be found corrupting dreams to make controllable nightmares in their efforts to destroy the chaos of the mortal world. Because they are targeting elements they want to delete, many of the Darkness driven nightmares cause madness and even death. Even as dreadful as Darkness can be, Primordial Fears still command the most dangerous nightmares of all, an their illuminati like hidden hand command of them makes them very hard for lucid dreamers to lock onto them and clear them.
Esper: Espers are a relatively uncommon sentient entity that can best be described by comparing it to a dreamer or a muse. Like a muse, they exist in dreams and reality at the same time, but for the Esper, dream is home. Espers dream and project into reality while dreamers project from reality into dream. This makes a symbiotic link that strengthens both esper and dreamer. Espers almost always take the form of vehicles or parts of them, but there is little limit to their expression. The most common are things like aircraft, cars, space ships, etc. They are things that welcome in those of the real world and make bonds with them.

Because espers span reality and dream, they are often targeted by ambitious nightmares thinking they can steal the vessel and have a stable way to live in reality. The result is generally the destruction of the nightmare at the hands of dreamers and esper. Espers are one of the more powerful beings in the dream world, and some of the strongest can project power into reality such that the vessels seem magical.

It is worth noting that no esper has ever transitioned entirely from dream to reality much as most dreamers cannot do so without special equipment like Morticon's mirror. A ship with an esper that is entirely inside reality would be a halfway point for any dream being to cross over to reality and perhaps even adapt to reality. Such an esper would be incredibly special and coveted by many.

Primordial Elements

Primordial Fears: There are a number of fears that are nearly universal among mortals and even some immortals across the cosmos. Fears such as the Unknown, Death, Isolation, Rejection are just a few although these four each cover a wide number of classes. Primordial fears don't tend to cover every phobia that is out there but instead tend to be masters of greater shared fears that almost anyone can understand. Unknown is one of, if not the, most powerful of all primordial fears. It covers everything from not knowing what lurks in the shadows while you walk home alone to not knowing if you will have a job tomorrow. Some consider death to be a variant of Unknown, and while some aspects of fearing Death do include Unknown, Death tends to be invoked more often in cases where the method of pain is known and drives nearly all fight or flight responses. Death is a stalker and killer, and it is often known that it is coming in whatever form it chooses long before it can sink its fangs into the dreamer.

No one knows if a Primordial fear can be destroyed or even contained. Originally spawned the moment the positive virtues came to be, balance demanded a equal counter force be present. Virgil Murphy is often blames for their existence, but both Gravitas and Aina 13 Zoey will attest that it was no more in his hands than anything else he has done. Through Virgil all things are possible, but that means good and ill as well.

Darkness has a particular hatred for the Primordial Fears. Because they possess the power of dreams, they have the ability to do great harm to Darkness. Unknown in particular is hated most because it causes people to imagine new things, especially false things, and that is a major driving power that ruins how Darkness lives and the world it wants to return to. So great is this hatred that Darkness is willing to aid other mortals in battling Primordial Fears.

Primoridial Virtues: Just as there are ancient fears there are also ancient virtues. Faith, Love, and Hope all bear different forms and command legions of their own dreams. To think of how many flavors they can come in, just imagine the kinds of love you can come up with. Love in a family, love that is passion, love that is compassion, love for an ally, love for patients that rely on you to save them, love of your country, and so on. Faith doesn't just count for religions. You have faith in the people around you, in those keeping you safe every day, and so one. These elements can spawn and strengthen dreams, and dreams tend to get their attachment to these primordial elements based on who came up with the dream. The virtues represent the power of the first light, the light that has driven Darkness nutty every since. Some even attribute the Chodonex to these elements with Echo embodying Faith, Flare representing Love, and Ritz being the virtue of hope.

Hope is different from Faith and Love because it has nothing as a prerequisite and so can come from anything in any form. Faith implies there is a construct of some kind whether religious or societal, and these structures can collapse and cause a loss or crisis of faith. Love needs its interactions with others be they people or some other things, and these positions can become weak points to be exploited. Hope, however, needs nothing on which to start. Hope can drive both faith and love, but the truly hopeless are lost to the faith of those around them or the love of someone trying to help them. It can be a cruel think in that it makes a mortal keep trying even when there is no chance of success, but Hope is what can keep them alive. One can always hope something will get better, and even that little hope can grow into something much stronger. This is why Hope can heal and power all dreams and even nightmares for that matter. It is the most powerful force of change because it asks nothing and gives all.

Dreamlands vs Wonderlands

The dreamlands are a more or less continuous region that shares boundaries with divine domains, the realms of the dead, and of course the mortal realms. They may not seem to have such, but there are some base rules it operates on even if no one is sure exactly what they are. This is known because of the constants that still rule nightmares, dreams, and even the degree to which dreamers operate. The rules are loose though, and that is what creates the idea that in dreams anything can be real.

Wonderlands, however, operate on their own rules. They almost invariably have a mortal at their core. While architects of maddening power are probably one in a billion, almost every Wonderland of mortal origin has an architect as its core. This is similar to black holes having come from supermassive stars. The amount of creative power unleashed creates a pocket dimension where all the rules belong to the architect even if they don't, and they rare do, known they possess this power. Wonderlands are usually defensive structures meant to keep the architect safe. Those with the sense for it can often detect the architect because it will be the only full mortal and soul while all else will be dream with few exceptions that involve the architect pulling someone into its realm with them. Powerful questors, Darkness, and potentially Primordial Elements, in the wonderland fall under the rules of the core. If they weren't generally treacherous some might think them an ideal place to engage enemies if you have the core of the wonderland on your side.

In short, if you enter a wonderland be wary. What you see as the rules may not hold true, and a wonderland invariably behave in a manner that will protect its core.

Example Wonderlands

Cheshire: As Abigail Normal would put it, the story of Alice in Wonderland was based on her retelling of actual events in the live of another muse, Candice White. The Wonderland known as Cheshire, also known as the Looking Glass World, came to be when an architect. Thomas March fell in love with Candice. When he realized Candice was not aging and he was, something exasperated by him finding the original painting that spawned Candice, he lost his mind in trying to deal with all the implications of having an immortal wife. Because she is a muse, she also inspired Thomas a great deal, and she should have left long before the ideas built up inside to such a degree as they could no longer be controlled. Thomas collapsed inward on himself and left reality behind in favor for his version of Cheshire remembered along with a mix of all sorts of strange stories he heard as a boy. Childish nonsense became the law, and nothing could be taken for granted expect for that it stayed quite British.

The Cheshire region has its own species of nearly every creature you could imagine living in the British countryside along with fantastic creatures that were Candice's work including the mock turtle and the bandersnatch. Most of the rest is true to the book except that Candice is Alice, a White Queen, and the White Rabbit.

Harmonic Wonderland: The Harmonic Wonderland is a spherical structure made of hollow shells with an outer shell radius roughly the same as Saturn's orbit. Made from a blue crystal that is itself the stuff that dreams are made from, the massive structure has a capacity to store nearly ever dream that has been and perhaps will be. However, it is always growing out and shedding the outermost layer into space where it goes on to create the Dreamscapes. This structure represents them work of Virgil Murphy to protect Gravitas from her Darkness kin. One of the rules of the Harmonic Wonderland is that sound and song are the most powerful forces, and harmony of sound yields incredible results. At the very core of the wonderland are two planets orbiting each other. One is blue and the other black and ash gray. These are the homes for the souls of Virgil and Gravitas in their largest forms, the Frozen Phoenix and the Mournful Raven. Generally seven layers protect the core with dreams and dreamers inhabiting the outer and inner edges of the layers.

The rules for the harmonic wonderland are generally the same as the dreamworlds as a whole, and this has lead to the idea that all of the current dreamscape once came from this massive wonderland before it was cast off and allowed to grow on its own. Careful analysis of dream trends do seem t indicate that similar dream types cluster in waves, and the waves originate from a common source. Trying to pinpoint the location of a wonderland is difficult, and so no one can be entirely sure of where the Harmonic Wonderland is. Others would say this is expected as it is a land made by the forces of chaos itself in an effort to protect the first love of of two fools.

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