Dream Spawn Overview

Dream spawn belong to the nightmare realm and blend the solid substance of the waking world with the fluid, ghostly stuff of dreams. Whatever their shape, they look like blank molds waiting for a sleeper's imagination to give them form, and they can switch in an instant from featureless figures to an exact copy of something lodged in a dreamer's subconscious.

They fall into lesser and greater kinds, each with several types. The most common are the gray and shadow morphs among the lesser spawn and the ennui among the greater, each described in its own entry.

All dream spawn share one language, spoken in hushed, soothing tones that make waking listeners drowsy. Few but the spawn understand the words, yet travelers who have heard it compare its feel to the lullabies of their childhood. A spawn can also speak the language of whatever dreamer or wanderer it is drawing memories from.

Only wanderers, people physically traveling through the nightmare realm rather than visiting it in sleep, are affected; dreamers are already asleep and immune. The speech of lesser spawn makes a wanderer slow and tired: unless he saves vs. paralyzation he suffers -2 on attack rolls and ability checks, lasting 1d4+1 rounds or until no lesser spawn is still speaking (and doing nothing else). Greater spawn speech is stronger. A wanderer must save vs. spell or be affected as by a sleep spell, except that it affects elves too, and creatures as strong as 6+3 Hit Dice.

Since part of every dream spawn lies outside the physical world, only enchanted weapons can wound it; each entry gives the enchantment needed. In natural form they fight with claw-like hands, with damage and number of attacks given by type.

Dream spawn can take any form drawn from a dreamer's deepest memories at will, and more rarely from a wanderer's subconscious. A wanderer's memories are available only after the spawn touches him and succeeds with its absorption power. Lesser spawn can make one successful absorption per day and greater spawn two. The spawn must hit with a touch from the sucker-like pads on its palms, which causes no physical harm but drains 1d4+1 points of Intelligence, along with every bonus tied to the victim's original score. The loss is temporary and returns at 1 point per day. A character whose Intelligence reaches 0 becomes noncorporeal, his body turned to a dream body, until the points come back.

Changing shape takes one round. The spawn then has every strength and weakness of its new form, not as they truly are but as the source memory pictures them. In human shape, for example, it can be hurt by normal weapons.