Dreamers

A soulsliver is an extradimensional shapechanger that lurks in the half-dimensions behind mirrors. It watches creatures on the Material Plane through reflective surfaces, assumes their likeness, then crawls through the mirror to kill and feast upon its prey. Whether they are bizarre offshoots of the doppelganger race or originate from some aberrant magic used to create a demiplane, soulslivers are responsible for many unsolved murders, and their mirror travel makes them hard to catch. A soulsliver causes trouble for a short while in its assumed form, then retreats through the mirror to its home plane. Its native plane is an aspect of the Plane of Shadow, with reversed and grossly distorted creatures and scenery from the Material Plane.

Nightgaunts haunt the deepest and darkest chasms of dreams. They lurk in the shadows that loom at the edges of sane slumber, but are ready at any moment to snatch a blithe dreamer away, carrying it off into realms of endless nightmare and tickling it terribly all the way. They appear as stooped, emaciated humanoids, yet possess a remarkable strength in their sinewy limbs. With inky black skin, batlike wings, a long spiny tail, and demonic horns protruding from its skull, a nightgaunt is a fearsome foe—yet the lack of any facial features is what makes it truly nightmarish. A typical nightgaunt would stand 7 feet tall if fully upright, and weighs 175 pounds. Nightgaunts feed on emotions, preferring despair, horror, and nervous laughter. They enjoy carrying their prey high over the mountains, tickling their prey to create a mix of emotions, and finally dropping their victims in remote areas where other monsters can stalk and kill them. Some creatures pay nightgaunts to serve as guardians or carry them from place to place, though the nightgaunts are prone to turn on their employers at the smallest slight. Most nightgaunts have little interest in anything other than sating their hunger on sleepers, and gather in colonies to entertain each other by sharing emotion memories through strange caresses. They sometimes war with the other creatures found in their desolate realms.

Inhabitants of the Dimension of Dreams, dream nagas fly through dreamscapes as part of an unknowable plan to alter the destiny of the multiverse. Most creatures that encounter dream nagas do so while they sleep, as their dreams provide convenient shortcuts for the dream nagas’ paths through the various dreamscapes. Even after these dreamers awaken, the sight of these beautiful creatures remains ingrained in their minds. Many cultures consider seeing a dream naga a sign of a special destiny. But when a dreaming creature gains the full attention of a dream naga, it is no mere chance encounter. For convoluted and arcane reasons that only they truly understand, dream nagas enter dreams and interact with the sleepers—sometimes relaying knowledge to the sleepers, and other times tormenting them. Such dream encounters often don’t make sense to the dreaming creature until some point far in the future, if ever.

These hunters of the Dimension of Dreams seek to wreak nightmares on sleepers and make existing bad dreams even more terrifying. Nightmare dragons often work with night hags in their grim collection of sleeping souls.

These self-styled masters of the Dimension of Dreams hunt that strange plane’s shifting expanse.

Bokrug, the Water Lizard, dwells in a distant and forsaken corner of the Dimension of Dreams, in a land that was once heavily populated but is now a desolate and barren realm surrounding a nameless lake—a realm once ruled by mighty human empires, but now ruled only by the hideous amphibian minions of the Water Lizard. Bokrug himself is a vast creature, a vaguely iguana-shaped monster with a beard of writhing tendrils and a long tail tipped with a stinger. The scales that cover his body hide long spines that Bokrug can extend or retract with near lightning speed. Bokrug spends the majority of his time slumbering far down in the depths of his submerged lair. No rivers feed the lake, nor does it drain into the sea. Yet the still, ominous waters are neither stale nor brackish, implying that they connect somewhere deep underground, and. By way of these dark, secret waterways, Bokgrug has access to the lakes and rivers of the Dimension of Dreams, and his ability to plane shift allows him access to other realms as he wills.

BOKRUG’S CULT
Bokrug is worshiped more out of fear than adoration, and when traveling dreamers come across his cult in their nightmares, they can unknowingly spread this fearful faith into the waking world. Bokrug’s temples are often found on the shores of remote lakes or hidden away in large swamplands. Though humans worship him, so do boggards, lizardfolk, marsh giants, and other swamp dwelling races—particularly those who have suffered at the hands of aggressors, such as invading armies, rival tribes, or adventuring parties. Though Bokrug is chaotic neutral, almost all of his worshipers are chaotic neutral or chaotic evil. Only a rare few chaotic good worshipers of Bokrug exist— most of these being delusional heretics or apologists who seek to keep Bokrug calm, ensuring he continues to slumber. These heretics and outliers of the faith are remorselessly hunted down by his more zealous and traditional worshipers. Bokrug’s cult is associated with revenge, storms, and water, and its sacred symbol is a green lizard with a long, coiling tail—an image of Bokrug himself. His greatest shrines feature unusually realistic statues of his form, statues the cult maintains Bokrug can see out of and even animate from his distant lair to take sacrifices. Bokrug’s clerics have access to the domains of Chaos, Destruction, Water, and Weather, and to the subdomains of Catastrophe, Oceans, Rage, and Storms. The Water Lizard’s favored weapon is the ranseur; his followers often forge their ranseurs’ blades to resemble the Great Old One’s stingered tail.