Morph [Lesser Dream Spawn]

Of the many kinds of lesser dream spawn, morphs are the ones the court of nightmares relies on most, and gray and shadow morphs are the most common of them.

In its natural form a gray morph is a small, featureless humanoid with long, spindly limbs and pale gray flesh as fluid as water. Gray morphs fill the dreamscapes and drift through the dream borderlands, the shifting zone where waking reality and dream run together, acting as extras in dreams and nightmares. Whether they do the same in ordinary dreams or only in the nightmare realm's dreamscapes is unknown. They become ordinary people, common animals and even everyday objects to flesh out a dream's scenery.

Inside a dreamscape they can change shape at will, powered by the seed, the dreamer temporarily bound to that dreamscape. In the borderlands they must instead touch a living, thinking being to draw on its memories. They speak the dream spawn language and the languages of the forms they take.

Gray morphs are cowards hiding behind their changing faces and run at the first hint of violence. Cornered, they claw for 1d4 points of damage, and they murmur their drowsy language at wanderers. When no dream needs them, they cluster in huddles waiting for new memories to give them parts to play; beyond that they have no society. They resent the greater spawn that rule them, and they keep clear of them too, since greater spawn eat them. They survive by absorbing memories and wearing memory-forms.

A shadow morph resembles a gray morph but is a little bigger, darker, and sharper and more menacing in outline. It takes the starring role in nightmares, becoming whatever horror of 5 Hit Dice or less lurks in the buried memories of a dream seed. Unlike gray morphs, it uses memory-forms deliberately to deepen terror, choosing the monsters or memories that frighten a dreamer most. Shadow morphs have no real society and, like other lesser spawn, need others' dreams to give them shape.

These spiteful creatures delight in pain, wreckage and paralyzing fright. Their horror attack is an awful screech: everyone within earshot who can also see the morph's natural form is paralyzed with fear for 1d6-1 rounds on a failed save vs. spell at -2. The terror of its victims feeds and strengthens it, and it regenerates 1 hit point for each round a victim stays horror-struck. Because they live on fear, shadow morphs seldom kill. Greater dream spawn sometimes prey on them.