So Mina LaBerge knew to run through the fields to the edge of the Wood of Kodaris, and thereafter to creep under the canopy, because the forest creatures hear like a child imagines. For between the black beshadowed boughs of the trees, massive spiders spun their webs, wrapping the forest in invisible silk that could trap an eagle if one flew under the dense foliage. But the spiders did not feast on fowl; as the Wood lay near one of the Gates of the Wakened World, loose papers, documents, and even books from the realm beyond sleep would float on forest breezes until snagged on a web, whereupon the spiders would crawl down and consume the texts. If you could see one of these creatures in light, you would find a carapace completely composed of parchment, vellum, cloth, and other sheets of writing promiscuously chosen to adorn their bodies, and even in the sylvan darkness, Mina saw snatches of rag paper dangling from a silhouetted spider's abdomen, in faint contrast with the distant glow of the Gate. Like this spider, Mina too sought a text from the Wakened World, a manuscript which she could recognize by touch alone, and so groped forward under the dense branches of the Wood of Kodaris.
Over such an expanse Mina crept somnambulantly, her level arms extended just to graze the spider's webs. For although the alabaster Gate gleamed from afar, she still could not see the inky threads against the prevailing blackness behind. And the trees before the gloom, dark on dark, seemed sometimes far, sometimes near, so that Mina often clicked her tongue to regain her bearings. When she touched a sticky web, she yanked her fingers away and squinted for a square shape in the fibers, alongside any encroaching creatures equally desirous of it. Web after web, page after page, her pace grew quicker and her footsteps grew louder as she searched for the familiar feeling manuscript, found null, and ventured forward. And the Wood of Kodaris, a forest of information, helped no more than a desert of sepulchral monoliths. And the trees before the gloom, seeming near, seeming far, appeared to her daemonic spirits. And the bark devil skin, and the twigs taloned fingers.
And she envisioned him entwined in the branches, and she feared to encounter it.
Until Mina laid her fingers on a paper and felt the ink move. A second shock-still, she snatched the manuscript away and hugged it. The shifting annotations of variorum documents kept by certain obscure archivists of the Wanderers' Library were unmistakable. He had always reveled in sharing those documents with her.
Above her, a chittering sound disrupted the jubilation. She sprang for a downed tree nearby and squirmed down into a small burrow. A noise between hissing and clicking quickened her heart, but the spiders of the Wood of Kodaris prefer a sedentary existence over pursuit, and Mina was not even prey, only competition. As the call died and calm descended in the burrow under the fallen trunk, Mina began to trace her finger along the lines of the letters and words of the manuscript…
The Dream Well
Somnial Magma
N'dhal kr'lacktal .If I stare long enough, the letters will shift interminably, without ever cohering. Pure dreamerish.
██████ .Roughly translated from High Chameleonine: "Fountain of Monsters". - C. Gatreki, consultant oneirologist ,.Rough is right; more faithful to the original would be "Monstrous Wellspring" or "Wellspring of Dreadful Power" - Soren von Wyrmheim, Pontifex Draconis
Oneiroi .This is how the first texts I consulted referred to it, and thus how I know it. It somehow seems the least charged of all the names, whether in portent or scientific abstraction. Perhaps that's why I prefer it; it invites neither sarcastic dismissal nor scholarly disinterest. I can confront it without illusion. - Moonaros ,.Jesus Christ, I can hear these notes in your voice. - Mina
Conspectus
Within hollow ruins and unhallowed dens, in the sparse fissures joining the worlds of dream, the rare dreamer may encounter the currents of the most potent force across the nocturnal.As typical, a defective word. Implies that all dreaming occurs at night, while half of known creatures slumber during day hours, assuming they perceive time. The word somnium has become popular to describe the realm of dream without assuming time. - C. Gatreki ,.Yet may we not say that all dreaming beings, nocturnal and diurnal, inhabit a collective night? If "day" denotes the time for work and the brightest period of one's real activity, whereas "night" pertains to that period of relaxation in the comparative comfort of dream, then I see nothing wrong with the predominant nomenclature. - Soren von Wyrmheim ,.Waking or dreaming, all I can feel is an omnipresent blue hour. - Moonaros multiverse. Although the conception of this force remains mysterious, its cascading across the dreaming universes implies an original pool from whence this force seeps into outgoing worlds; this proposed origin some call the Dream Well. The seclusion of most who have tapped into the Dream Well vexes its deeper study, but distant whispers tell of the powers bestowed upon its affected. Rumored among these include absolute protection against all other preternatural mental influences, communion with all other beings affected across universes, and even the strength to rupture the stitches between dream and reality..Not to be confused with the so-called Epsilon Wave of sleep, which occurs without will. Stories suggest that the eruption of somnial magma, although sensitive, requires willful action from the affected. - C. Gatreki Yet the size of the Dream Well and the sprawl of its rivulets will ever preclude total knowledge; for those dreamers caught by its waters in the desolate cloisters and desert caves, that knowledge may be all they have..So it feels to me already. I once dreamed I flew a tiny, rickety spacecraft, and collided with an asteroid, where I remained marooned amidst the tempest of cosmic winds. Desperately gripping the rock, hurtling through the void, did I feel more hopeless than I do now? - Moonaros
Illustration
Painting of the long-abandoned Monastery of Pnoyok in Far Kir-Bishou, believed to hold one of the few known intrusion points of the Dream Well in our local dream system..I must remember a faint star above the twin mountains. You will be my Polaris. - Moonaros ,.Remember when we sculpted ranges of snow as kids, and you pretended to have found Shangri-La between two peaks in the Himalayas, like in that old movie? If I somehow meet you again, I must remember to ask. - Mina
Knowledge
Traits: If one could describe the Dream Well and the extent of its reach, consider the antique definition of God, a circle whose circumference is everywhere but whose center is nowhere..This clearly confuses an oft-quoted, though never accurately sourced, notion, which appears earliest in the medieval Liber XXIV philosophorum: "God: an infinite sphere whose centre is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere." - Soren von Wyrmheim ,.Not necessarily, or so presumptively. Consult Volume 1.65.B-02 of the Schema of the Patriarchs; it's significant for Cogwork Orthodoxy faithful that their MEKHANE lacks a current center. See also analogues in the Arboreal Analects, recently translated from Osier by Arden Ringfellow. - C. Gatreki ,.If those groves could feel the white heat of God's breath without catching flame, perhaps they would alter their mistake, and such purveyors of trivia as my co-editor would focus on relevant and reverent matters. - Soren von Wyrmheim This dearth of certainty regarding its origin owes to the nigh-impossibility of inter-universal dream travel. It is not like the Ways of the Wakened World; for those asleep, they may either remain asleep or awaken in the world from whence they came..Far into the Ruddy Heath, in the heart of the Citadel of O'olshnikai, I've heard high priests speak of extrasensory transportation to other universes. But their mouths have shrunken to minute points, their eyes have receded to the backs of their skulls, and their skin is ghastly purple. And they never wake up. - Moonaros Yet more mysterious than the Dream Well's location, the cascading of its leaking waters throughout the sleeping multiverse seems impossible. Inhabitants of uncountable waking worlds speak under their breath of this force within their dreamlands, yet none have mustered a force equally powerful to follow the stream to its source. All remain certain that it springs from outside their dreaming world.
Nature: [nachur]
History & Associated Parties: [historee]
Approach: [abroach]
Observations & Stories
[Insert stories]
Doubt
[press x to]
I'm gonna write down all this stuff so that it's not just swimming around in my mind.
So, what does this revolve around? The Oneiroi: An immensely potent psychic energy, spread across an immeasurably vast number of universes, that overrides all other psychic influences and enables its subjects to channel it toward anomalous ends. Furthermore, you're psychically connected with every other being affected by the Oneiroi across every universe, though direct communication with most of these beings is impossible. Its origins are unknown, its ultimate size is ambiguous, and most people affected by it have either disappeared or have become completely reclusive. Those who've become connected through the Oneiroi consider themselves partially guardians and hapless victims of it; some call this group of affected beings the Oneiroi Collective, or just the Collective.
Although the Oneiroi remains obscure in the world of dreams, some dreamers still seek out its connection, or desperately avoid it. Why might someone become part of the Collective?
- Some may hear of the immense power that the Oneiroi affords, by its vastness and power, and intentionally search for a way to become "inducted". Such people may have previously sought the recourse of any amount of magical schools, but their ambitions have brought them to the incomparable treasury (and vortex) of the Oneiroi.
- Some may seek the protection of the Oneiroi, e.g., when their worlds have been surfeited by a powerful psychic force. Yet those who seek refuge in the Collective find cold company.
- Others may seek deliberate isolation from their peers and tether themselves to the Oneiroi to avoid contact with the outside world. Is it the comfort of infinity they seek, that makes their world so small, or minuteness, that makes them small compared to the world?
- Most, I think, end up part of the Collective by accident, but a certain personality type gravitates towards the pockets where Oneiroi proliferates. One must be the kind of person to investigate long-ruined temples or sail forbidden seas, seek the furthest reaches of dream and go further.
Monroe Atkinson (AKA Moonaros); tries to destroy the Oneiroi from the inside and exploderizes himself in the process.
Mina Atkinson; is attempting to prevent an intrusion of the Oneiroi into this universe, isolating it from its effects.