Divine Overview
A baseline of Chaotic Neutral that never actually holds still.
The Dreamkeeper's disposition, and by extension, the disposition his clerics are expected to answer to, turns with the moon itself:
Dreamers, wanderers, and anyone who's ever needed a safer road between two dangerous planes than the Astral or Ravenloft could offer. Devotion to the Dreamkeeper asks very little of the waking world, most of what it asks happens after the eyes close.
The Dream Realm & the Tree of Dreams
A pocket dimension built around a single, cosmic tree, and every dream ever dreamed hangs from its branches.
The Concentric Rings
Travelers who enter the Dream Realm never arrive at its center. They arrive on a misty outer perimeter, and from there must cross a series of shifting, concentric rings, each fifty to a hundred miles wide, to reach anywhere that matters. Above it all, the sky stays dark and starry regardless of the hour, wrapped in a soft cosmic mist that never quite burns off.
The Great Spire
From anywhere in the realm, a single colossal mountain is visible in the distance, narrowing as it climbs until it pierces the upper sky entirely. At its core stands the Tree of Dreams itself, a cosmic entity so vast its canopy stretches past the stratosphere and into the deep void beyond.
The Falling Leaves
Every leaf on the Tree is a living dream, currently being dreamed by some sentient being somewhere in the multiverse. As mortal minds wake or drift off, leaves sprout and unfurl into lush green, wither through autumn shades, and fall to the ground like brown snow, the whole Tree in constant motion, never the same twice in the same place.
The Layered Branches
The Tree's massive branches function as self-contained planar states, stacked vertically roughly every mile, each with its own landscape, weather, and cloud cover. Whole layers have been colonized by outsiders, demons, devils, angels, yugoloths, cosmically drawn to the realm and now governing entire branch-states as their own territory. Crossing a layer that isn't yours takes either real stealth or real power; the locals do not care which plane you started your journey on.
A Safer Crossing
For travelers who need to move between planes without the baggage of Astral silver cords or the outright hostility of a place like Ravenloft, the Dream Realm offers a dynamic, if unpredictable, alternative gateway.
No Time At All
Time does not exist inside the Dream Realm. Visitors don't age, don't starve, and can linger indefinitely without consequence, which is exactly the trap. The realm's endless, surreal loops have swallowed more than one traveler who meant to stay an hour, the resident "Lost Boys" faction chief among the cautionary tales of what happens to those who stop trying to leave.
Gallery
Depictions of the Dreamkeeper and the Tree of Dreams, as rendered by mortal hand.
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