Out of the Box D&D Encounters, Series 2, #24 – “Perchance to Dream”
November 24, 2017
Out of the Box introduction
When creating encounters or trying to place the same, the concept of the location can become the choke point of the issue. Sometimes it’s not about where something happens, but when. Special (or even mundane) moments in time can be made truly special by inserting unexpected circumstances or interactions.
A meal, whilst sleeping, the birth of a child, gathering water from a stream, attending a funeral, or another normally expected event can become surprising when given the right touch of mystery or the supernatural. Imagine what difference it would make when expectations are shattered because those sleeping have the encounter and the one (or ones) awake do not. Doing so would allow such an encounter to occur anywhere (in practical terms), while making the actual encounter occur in any number of dreamscapes. This also means the challenges within the dream do not have to follow conventions, and can allow for any number of things to happen.
It also follows that the terrain inside the dream could be practically anything, and the events therein as fantastical as the Dungeon Master chooses. It also means any chosen foes or challenges could look like one thing, but behave like another. This may be more of an advanced technique for those who choose to do so, as it requires a bit of extra work. However, for those comfortable with building encounters on the fly, it means anything could be anywhere.
One could also chose to have the sleeping characters all participate in a collective dreamscape where a single task must be accomplished in order to wake up. If this is the path chosen, then this kind of encounter is ripe for the picking when a DM has an absentee player and wants to carry on. They can simply have the absentee player be the character on watch at that time. This allows the other players to participate, and the main storyline or concept remains undisturbed. This can set up situations where the player characters have uneven XP, or you can run this as a narration, letting the PCs ask questions afterward. Their investigations can eat a lot of time. The following example uses the latter version of these choices.
For those willing to put in the work, these dreams can also be portents of possible futures, clues to the past, struggles against personal flaws, or any number of things. Dreams might be a way to access the Feywild. They can also be straight up mind-bending experiences raising more questions than answers. Sometimes a dream is just a dream.
Environment
Dreamscape (in this case, it’s dungeon-like, but it an be anything)
Level
Any (in this example, it’s 7-9)
Description
Laying down for the evening, some characters trust their safety to their companions. The day and the road have been long and rough. A rest is not only needed, but welcome. The smell of the smoke and glow of the campfire serve as warmth and comfort as the world swirls away and the darkness creeps in.
Your breathing slows and you tuck in close to preserve body heat. Your eyes close. Rest at last.
Or not.
As if reality had turned over a hidden card, you awaken next to the other companions who laid to rest, but things are not as they were. You each awaken with your feet attached to a rounded surface, rough and rubbery. Try as you might, you cannot move your feet from the surface you’re on. Your fellow sleeping companions are with you upon this weird surface, and are similarly immobilized from walking, jumping, or any other movement that would separate your feet from it.
For each sleeping character, there’s also what looks like a long tentacle issuing from this globular surface, ending in what you swear is a massive eye.
All characters are eyestalks, equidistant from each other and intermixed so as to make sure that, if at all possible, no two of each type (character or eyestalk) are next to each other. Each character or eyestalk, also if possible, is roughly 30 feet from each other.
If this wasn’t weird enough, the world passes by as if an enormous scale. The globe you’re attached to appears to be moving through enormous caverns. Stalactites appear as massive inverted mountains.
Despite the darkness all around the characters, they can see without problem or issue. The gargantuan subterranean world passes by silently. The neighbouring eyestalks pay the characters no mind, seemingly accustomed to this affair. Characters can communicate normally with each other, but spells do not work, and they are without any equipment. The characters can try to communicate with the eyestalks as well, but only respond with blinking and wriggling. Should they try to communicate telepathically, all eyestalks will look at the source and cease blinking. They will take no other action. However, a voice will rumble from below their feet.
“We remember.”
At that moment (or any time after, should the players not possess telepathy), the world will swirl like bubbles stirred in a soft drink, and the outer world will change again.
The characters will still be attached as before, but will feel sluggish and dazed. They will see a new world around them – strange and bizarre. They will be in a vast chamber beyond anything they’ve seen.
The walls will be littered with sharp platform structures like giant bracket fungi. Rounded pillars like smooth bees’ nests will dot these platforms, issuing strange lights of yellow purple and green. As the rounded surface the PCs are attached to shifts, they will become aware of what appears to be a great lake, vast and oily. It wriggles with unknown and disturbing life.
Figures will come into view of a alien nature. Dark purple with tentacles for mouths, garbed in strange clothing and exuding malevolence, they are giants to your size. Multiple four-fingered hands grab the surface below where the characters stand and place your horizon into the oily fluid below. The characters may feel like they are going to fall in, but their feet hold them fast regardless of the odd angle. The eyestalks wriggle in a frenetic fashion. The oily fluid below teems with movement, like fish jumping at insects at the surface of the water. Characters who succeed on a Dc 15 Wisdom (Insight) check realize they are panicking.
Your global surface shudders violently, shaking the characters so hard they fear they will break loose and fall into the lake. Then it falls very still. The eyestalks fade in colour from their original light purple to a pink. The eyes lose their pupils and become a milky white. When this change occurs, they also behave differently. They become calm and sway as if in an unfelt breeze.
You watch as your fellow characters also become like eyestalks…fading to pink…their heads becoming milky white eyes…
The PCs will awaken with a start. It will either be the next PC(s)’ turn for watch, or morning, which ever comes first. For the next 24 hours, the characters who were asleep will have telepathy in a 30 foot range and will speak Deep Speech. After another 24 hours, these abilities will fade.
The PCs will have lots of questions. Depending on if you have a sage with the right specialty, a ranger with aberrations as a favored enemy, or a skilled character with a high Nature or Arcana skill, success on a DC 17 Wisdom (Survival) or Intelligence (Nature) or (Arcana) check will reveal a few things, but not everything. A successful DC 20 check may reveal the tentacled figures were mindflayers (illithids). They might even realize that they were eyestalks on a beholder of some kind.
A successful DC 25 check might even reveal the birth of a mindwitness. It might even reveal that beholders can affect their reality with dreams. Were they actually eyestalks? Why did the beholder reach out to them? Was this an event in the past? Is it in the future? Is it happening right now far away and below them?
Only the DM knows. What they do with this information is up to the DM and the players.
Monsters
A nightmarish dream
Treasure
Information to the skilled and the mad
Complications
The first complication here is the players are along for the ride. If they are not into long narrations, I would avoid by this sort of encounter. However, if it’s a once-in-a-long-time sort of thing, then this kind of encounter can break up a lot of dice rolling sessions, and gives the players a lot to think about. PCs can tend to take information like this in a lot of directions. Heck, it might not even mean anything to your campaign at all. It could just be an echo of a past even long dead the PCs just stumbled upon for any number of reasons. That’s totally up to the DM in question.
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