Friday, May 11, 2012

The Dream Queen

Inspired by the Fievel Goes West song "Dreams to Dream", particularly the lines, "When the world goes wrong, I can still make it right. I can see so far in my dreams. I'll follow my dreams Until they come true. Come with me. You will see what I mean. There's a world inside no one else ever sees. You will go so far in my dreams. Somewhere in my dreams your dreams will come true. There is a star waiting to guide us, Shining inside us, when we close our eyes." The initial idea came from the "you will go so far in my dreams" part because, taken by itself, it can seem like a threat more than an opportunity. The Dream Queen is a powerful witch/sorceress/fey creature who takes an interest in one or more of the PCs. I like the idea of a fey queen falling in "love" with one of the PCs (fey love is not like our love nor is fey love for a mortal like love between two fey). She starts to invade his dreams, giving him fitful nights of poor sleep. Later, however, she begins to pull him into her dreams. Because she is fey, her idea of a good time with a mortal involves weird things like turning him into a horse to ride across a dreamscape plane or transforming into a giant Lolth-like spider to wrap him in a web cocoon (whereupon he wakes up). Just weird, twisted, non-overtly sexual fey activities (while there can be an undercurrent of sexual imagery, as with the horse, I am not purposefully putting it there). As the song says, there is an opportunity to go far in her dreams and make his dreams come true (some bit of useful information or a dream artifact he can bring into the real world or unlocking strange new abilities having traversed the dreamscape). Part of that will be following a star that may or may not belong in the Queen's dreamscape but shines ever before the PC as he seeks surcease from sorrow in his morphean prison.