Oneiric Encounters I

We
 have just begun to navigate a strange region; we must expect to encounter strange adventures, strange perils...

The Terror, by Arthur Machen

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Oneiric Encounters Table I (1d20)

1. A swarm of beetle-pigs stampedes past. They leave quite a mess behind them.
2. A smallish Oneiric Vortex shimmers and fluctuates in the immediate vicinity for 1d4 Turns, then collapses with a wet popping noise.
3. Six mice in blue surcoats, armed with tiny rapiers, are on a quest for a great green cheese. They scurry past and quickly descend into a rabbit-hole that closes after them.
4. A bed flies overhead. Someone is riding the thing. They wave as they go past.
5. (1d4) Dream Snails have caught your scent.
6. A school of moth-winged fish flutter past. There's a 30% chance that some prowling predator may be following the school.
7. A wave of roiling, boiling Dreamscum rolls across a section of the surrounding area at an angle quite different to your own orientation.
8. A slightly larger Oneiric Vortex swirls into close proximity and spins menacingly for 1d6 Turns before dissipating without a trace.
9. (1d4) Transparent Giant Spiders with 1d8 scowling faces in place of eyes. They are always bickering among themselves. Those with fewer than eight faces are always looking to add one more.
10. A very disoriented Miasmagaster Spawnling mewling and spewing for its siblings. Even in dreams, these things stink terribly.
11. (1d4) Feral Simulacra fight and claw their way up out of some barely coexistent region of nightmare. Each one resembles a distorted version of whomever first observes them. They are desperate to switch places, even going so far as to assault their originators with the intent to cast them into the nightmare realm in their stead. They are naked, unarmed, but will have access to spells equal to their originator.
12. Things start to look kind of wet. Then you realize that you've blundered into the midst of a massive Dream-Jelly. Thankfully it is currently occupied with the frenzied mob it is manipulating in the material regions of some world you're unfamiliar with. Perhaps you can avoid attracting its notice.
13. A 6 HD Mind Slime floats past, completely oblivious to everything. It is under the effects of an Oneirist's Dream-Binding. Interfering will break the binding and release the ungrateful, nasty creature.
14. Foul, miasmic tendrils of gellified madness and congealed hatred twist and writhe within the immediate dream-vicinity of a dying Harpy Tormentor. Come closer. She would appreciate a final victim before her passing.
15. Someone recently cast Oneiric Bubble on a space that impinges on the Dreamscape close to here. You can see it shimmering and shiny in the near distance. There's someone inside. It looks like an Aegogur. The new wand it was trying-out did not do what the Jaladari said it would do.
16. (2d4) Umbral Troglodytes slither out from the Vortex in pursuit of a more physical existence outside of the regions they used to occupy deep within the collapsing umbral-substrata of the Oneiric Cacophony of Zalchis. They thought they had found a point of entry, but that Oneiric Vortex collapsed, trapping half their number somewhere they can't reach any more.
17. (2d4) Grunters are out hunting and gathering on behalf of their Mistress, an ambitious young War-Sow from Kalkendru. They do not realize that they have become disembodied dream-things enslaved to their mistress. It probably wouldn't make much of a difference if they did know the truth of their situation. She did not select them on the basis of their critical thinking ability, only their loyalty.
18. A Rarebit Fiend has noticed you. Maybe they want to be friends?
19. The shriveled black gem-shard of a broken Hasnamuss streaks past on its doomed trajectory. You can almost hear its fossilized screams as it passes.
20. A Saiitii Manifestation has taken root in an abandoned attic lined with Yellow Wallpaper...and there is a Loathsome Mass leaking into the room from next door. This has created a weird oneiro-fungal infestation that has completely baffled every curious oneirist and incautious dreamer it hasn't out-right consumed or infected. Perhaps there are experts and scholars at the Academy who might reward those who alerted them to such a thing?

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Rarebit Fiend

Rarebit Fiend

But my dreams
They aren't as empty
As my conscience seems to be

Traditional Nagrothean Folksong

In Wermspittle the dish known as Rarebit is made using either wood alcohol or Black Liquor (or both), Butterkase, Vermkase or Casu Marzu, and in some cases the milky froth left-over from preparing Hard Candy. The ingredients are melted together and then poured over stale bread (especially ergotized rye), fried slices of bread-pudding, or whatever crumbly-bits of baked good are left on-hand. Some folks like to use the wort left after making a batch of beer, especially after it has been left to rot a while as it works better when it is ripe and alive, or so say the Midwives.

Not everyone has a taste for Rarebit. But for those who do develop a tolerance for this powerful and wildly unpredictable psychoactive delicacy, it is a one-way ticket to power. The kind of power known only to the dream-touched and the damned.

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Upon consuming Wermspittle-style Rarebit, a Save is required.
Those who succeed go on to experience terrible nightmares, lose 1 point of WIS for the next week, and suffer a -1 penalty on all Saves versus Fear or Confusion effects.
Those who fail become Chaotic in alignment, suffer a permanent loss of 1 point of WIS, and permanently gain Dreamsight.
Those who fail their Save three times become Rarebit Fiends.

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Rarebit Fiend
No. Enc.: 1
Alignment: Chaotic
Movement: 150' (50')
         Drift: 300' (100')
Armor Class: 3 (Only take half-damage from physical attacks)
Hit Dice: variable
Attacks: 1 (Touch or weapon)
Damage: 1d6, (Fear or Confusion)
Save: as per HD or Level
Morale: 6 (+any CHAR Bonus)

Special: Passwall (once per day per HD or Level), Dreamshift (enter fully into dream once per day every 3 HD or 3 Levels). When attacking, a Rarebit Fiend can choose to instill either Fear or Confusion in their victim (as a Touch attack) once per day per HD or Level. They can only do one or the other, not both, and anyone who successfully Saves against this special attack becomes permanently immune to that particular fiend's Fear or Confusion effects.

Rarebit Fiends are no longer completely here, nor quite right in the head. They are semi-transparent, resembling a ghost, and have become almost as much some kind of dream as anything material. They can only be seriously injured by magical weapons or spells, all other physical attacks only do half damage, unless the Rarebit Fiend opts to Dreamshift fully into Dreamspace, Slumberland, the Dreamlands, or whatever version, region or strata of the sub/unconscious realms they have gained access to in the course of their transformation. Making this shift to escape damage forces them to remain within the dreaming realms for 1d4 days per point of damage avoided.

They can wield magical items, armor and weapons, however magical armor only gives them half the protection it normally offers. They cannot use potions and must feed upon ectoplasm, oneiroplasm and similar things, including the life-force of living beings, however they are not immediately able to drain life-energy. That is a skill they must be taught, or spend many months or even years practicing, before they ever really get the hang of it.

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Rarebit Fiends really came into pop-culture prominence through the pioneering work of Windsor McCay and his ground-breakingly surreal comic strip adventures a well as some very early movies made with Thomas Edison. The collected Dream of the Rarebit Fiend comic strips are available online at the Comic Strip Library. More than one version of the movies W. McCay did with Edison is available at YouTube, including Dream of the Rarebit Fiend (1906), The Flying House and The Pet. Windsor McCay went on to create both Gertie the Dinosaur and Little Nemo in Slumberland. There's a lot of Little Nemo in how we handle the Dreaming/Dreamstates/Dreamlands/Slumberland continuum...
We're big fans of McCay's animation and comics. Little Nemo in particular has been a very big influence on Wermspittle and is right at the top of the Vermiform Appendix; our list of influences and references for Wermspittle that somewhat parallels the Appendix N of classic D&D.

Oneiric Web

Some spells are more of a nuisance than they are worth. Others tend to take on a life of their own after being cast forth into the world. Reworking the underpinnings of reality, revising Nature itself to suit one's whims or fancies is at the very heart of fiction, art and sorcery.

But the heat of the moment passes. The dire, immediate need for some sort of intervention comes and goes, leaving behind the remains of hastily scripted, urgently empowered expressions of the imagination that most often are then abandoned. Left behind. So much debris and psychic after-birth, to be ignored and forgotten.

But not all such vestiges of such dramatic reworkings of WhatIs into WhatOughtToBe dissipate quietly into oblivion. Some things linger.

Oneiric Web is a modified form of a fairly common, even standard spell most every sorcerer or spell-caster has run across even if they don't include it in their personal repertoire. Where the more basic, preliminary form creates a barrier composed of sticky strands of non-silk, the Oneiric Web is made-up of coagulated dream-stuff. It can, and often does cling to the physical realm, at least for a short while, but it really and truly comes into its own as a defense or hindrance within the Dreamspaces and Oneiric Realms where it adheres to the vague outlines of half-formed shadows, entangles the ambivalent lineaments of dream-things, and serves the caster as a bulwark against the intrusion of figments, nightmares and grue-ful things.

But unlike the more mundane webs cast within the physical realms, Oneiric Webs persist on the peripheries of consciousness, slowly fading in and out of the personal dream-regions of their casters, to drift over into the vast underworld of the collective unconscious where they get tangled up with nameless and unknown things, forming weird connectors and strange attractors deep below the horizon of consciousness.

To those who've ventured deep enough to observe these irrational structures they appear to form some sort of loosely defined region of some indefinable sort.

Perhaps there is something to the wild claims that this is where the Veilsects originate?

Somnambulists (Wermspittle)

Somnambulists

The lady sleeps! Oh, may her sleep,

Which is enduring, so be deep!
Heaven have her in its sacred keep!
This chamber changed for one more holy,
This bed for one more melancholy,
I pray to God that she may lie
Forever with unopened eye,
While the pale sheeted ghosts go by!
The Sleeper (1831)
Edgar Allen Poe



Somnambulists are of many kinds and sorts, but in general they are those individuals who are deeply entranced, their minds locked away deep inside or extracted altogether and their sleeping bodies turned into automaton-like slaves of unscrupulous sorcerers. The process of suppressing the victim's psyche is alleged to have been developed from efforts at countering mezmerists, hypnotists and demonic or other contramaterialist forms of possession. The method of extracting the psyche of a victim is rumored to be similar to the synthetic metempsychotic process employed by the Soulless, but this has never been verified or acknowledged by a credible authority, so it is considered to be so much idle speculation. There are also rumors that there might be Somnambulist connections to the Hasnamusses...but again, that's unconfirmed and decidedly difficult, not to mention terribly dangerous to investigate. It is far safer, and much easier to note the similarities between Somnambulism and Zombism, especially since dozens of treatises and monographs have been published detailing their very clear and direct connections and areas where the two fields overlap more than a little. Indeed it is specifically because of this overlap that the third option of Necromesmerism was first developed during the last years of the so-called War of Thorns.

Not What It Used To Be...
Once, the practice of somnambulism was quite wide-spread, with quite a thriving trade in customized cabinets that catered to the whims and fancies of each and every Somnambulatory Adept with money, but it eventually, as with all such fads, fell out of favor. Most of the certifying bodies that once boasted of hundreds of professional members have lapsed into obscurity and neglect, if not outright foreclosure and discontinuance. The field of Somnambulism is in profound decline. Standards have fallen drastically, and it is no longer under the close scrutiny of the Medical Profession and has slipped into the hands of sleazy cabaret managers, rogue theater directors, and ethically-impaired charlatans who prey upon the gullible and vulnerable, enslaving their victims within a terrible living non-death.

Sorcerers have always had access to the methods, techniques and body of work surrounding the field of Somnambulism, but it has only been in the last hundred years that any real progress has been made along the lines of re-developing the banned, damned and censored techniques surrounding the development of somnambulistic soldiers, such as those employed by the Sleeping Legion and the forces rallied to the lost cause of the Violet Banner. Outlaw Oneirists have been showing up at estate sales and auctions and one of the things that always attracts their attention are those things pertaining to classical forms of somnambulism. Perhaps the Violet Banner might arise once more?

Disreputable & Dubious
Somnambulism has become synonymous with slavery and degradation, it is no longer considered a sort of pathology nor even a medical technique of dubious merit, but rather an out-moded form of abuse and an antiquated approach to sorcerous subjugation. Where once certain deviant Nobles might have engaged somnambulistic servants or slaves, what were once derogatorily referred to as 'cabinet-dwellers,' nowadays only pimps, pushers and morally bankrupt innkeepers and rathskellar proprietors bother with such things. Or at least that has been the prevailing perception for several decades. But Somnambulists aren't only found in brothels or beer halls. The bodies of three confirmed Somnambulists were recently recovered from the Near Depths by the Sewer Militia. One of them showed distinct marks of having been used in some sort of capacity by an Ungeziefer, but not in the usual manner of those wicked things. It had not been converted into a Cacozombie. The Under Marshall is personally calling for an expedition-in-force to deal with what he views as a quote; "...very real threat brewing right below our very feet..." Endquote. Unfortunately, due to the lack of any further compelling evidence, there is little chance of such a major operation being approved. Besides, the experts all disagree as to just what was done to the three recovered bodies and since their summary cremation due to a clerical error, no one but those on the original crew really know just what it was that they actually discovered. Too bad most of that crew soon perished in a freak gas pocket explosion while continuing along their appointed rounds. Perhaps, once again, a few small bands of contractors and freelancers will bravely muck around in the Near Depths, sparing the Sewer Militia the expense of mounting a full-scale offensive upon something that might, or might not even be down there.

Mykal
One night, not three weeks hence, a man staggered out of the Burned Over District into the wan glow of Koponu-cages hanging across the barricades where a group of Wall Guards kept watch. He was in a terrible state, his bare feet were raw and worn down to the bone in places, there wasn't a square inch of his skin that wasn't lacerated, bruised or crudely stitched back together in a clumsy attempt to address the more grievous injuries. An assortment of chisels and wood-working tools were cunningly inserted and lashed into the flesh of his left hand with strands of what appeared at first blush to be rawhide. It was clearly infected and seeping a grisly yellowish pus. The right hand was hideously burned, as if from grasping a hot iron rod.

The guards quickly sent for assistance and within the hour Mykal was safely ensconced deep within the fortified and protected grounds of the Medical College. Sixteen hours of surgery and dozens of spells later, all the worst was past, at least physically. For Mykal.

According to those who make it a point to know about such things, or at least to put forth learned opinions in the absence of concrete facts, as a public service, the strange man now known as 'Mykal,' was a former refugee who had been abducted from the shanty camps and forcibly converted into a somnambulistic gladiator or pit-fighter. It would appear that several gangs of Feral Children have begun to cooperate, if only tacitly, to kidnap and use adults taken from the shanty camps in their latest round of games. How and why they are converting their victims into Somnambulists is something of an open question. Some suspect the involvement of Outlaw Oneirists. Others argue that it is a clear sign of the evil machinations of an Oddling or rogue Prodigy. So far, no one really knows, save maybe the kids, and so far, they're not talking.

Sources: The most obvious inspiration is The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari, which can be seen in its entirety at YouTube, via Google, or Movies Found Online, among dozens of other such sites. You can also download a copy from Archive.org, if you'd prefer. There was a remake, of a sort, attempted (or not?) a few years ago that incorporated live actors with footage derived from the original movie; the trailer is still available at Google. There is also a fun 'Exquisite Corpse' style project that produced two brand new and very different soundtracks for this classic movie that some consider to be the very first Horror Movie. The Sleeping Legion might have been inspired by Kate Bush and her song Army Dreamers, maybe. The Sleeper, by Poe is a natural fit, in a suitably phantasmagoric, slightly backwards post-Gurdjieff sort of way. Various Somnambulist Sub-Types will no doubt present themselves as things continue to develop.

Gloomswallow (Wermspittle)

Gloomswallow
No. Enc.: 1
Alignment: Chaotic
Movement: 90'
Armor Class: 7
Hit Dice: 3+3
Attacks:
Damage:
Save: F4
Morale: 11

Special: Passwall, True Seeing, Discern Emotion, Locate Dreamer, and ESP at will. Most can also cast Shadow Theft, as well as 1d4 random spells, usually those of an Oneiric, Umbral or Ectoplasmic nature.

Gellid and tentacular masses of noisome oneiric filth, the Gloomswallows are only vaguely aware or in any means sentient. More than anything they are rancid parasitical prowling-things that move around at the very peripheries of consciousness, seeking to scavenge fragments of dreams, cast-off figments and vulnerable memories or denied sensations. They are drawn in particular to repressed memories, suppressed urges and deeply buried emotions -- denial is nectar and meat to them and they seek it out in all its myriad forms.

These creatures move freely through the lower astral/ethereal regions, the Oneirium and related zones. Physical barriers mean nothing to these writhing horrors who mock natural bilateral symmetry in their every motion due to some twisted and abstract expression of reflection. This mockery of the natural order leaves these things vulnerable to mirrors and the sorcerous predation of dopplegangers, contrarials and other such reflectomorphic beings and beasts.

Gloomswallows attack with their spells until such time as they feel they can score an easy hit with their translucent tentacles. Should the Gloomswallow's tentacles hit their target, the victim must make a Save or have the tentacles infiltrate their flesh and begin to drain away their emotions. It generally takes only 1 turn per level/hit die of the victim to drain it of all emotion. This effect will persist each day that the victim fails a Save. Each day of being devoid of emotion there is a cumulative -1 penalty to the Save. Those victims who fail more than four such Saves are rendered permanently emotionless, requiring them to re-roll their WIS with a -2 penalty, and re-roll their INT on 4D6 with a +1 bonus (discarding the lowest roll), and they become cold, calculating, logical and rational to an extreme--and utterly devoid of all emotion, warmth or affect.

It is hinted at in certain texts that it may be possible to restore or recover the emotions ripped away by the Gloomswallow's attack, but it requires the cooperation of the victim and many of them are so changed by their ordeal that they see no reason to make the effort, indeed some are quite a bit better off than before the attack, as they see it. Their friends, family and associates may not agree.

Gloomswallows are especially attracted to lonely mathematicians, monasteries, convents and prisons all of which they prey upon with vigor and great appetite. There are also those driven to achieve greatness in fields of intellectual endeavor who willingly seek out these things that they might gain some edge over their rivals. Most of the time this ends in tragedy. Truly emotionless beings are not completely human any longer, and society is ill equipped to accept them as anything other than freaks, emotionally deformed caricatures, or bogey-man villains. Far from being a boon to research, the soul-deadening embrace of the Gloomswallow tends to kill creativity, stifle invention and impair the imagination.

ESP and strong emotions unhindered by doubt, denial or artifice can be used to inflict damage upon a Gloomswallow and will often be enough to drive them off, for a while. But anything intense enough to drive them off is also exactly the sort of thing that they most wish to prey upon given half a chance.