Elric of Melnibone Dream Realms.pdf

DREAM REALMS

Credits

Contents

Author

Joshua Cole

Editor

Richard Ford

Interior

Illustrations

Jason Banditt Adams,

Vicente Sivera Catala,

Andrew Dobell,

Stephen Fox, Alejandro

Lizaur, Giles Meakin

and German Ponce

Introduction 2

Adventures in Dreams 3

The Seven Dream Realms 10

The Dream Market 26

The Thousand Year Dream 31

A Vengeance Long Dreamt Of 46

Dream Travellers and Other

Personalities

Layout

Will Chapman

Cover Art

Chris Quilliams

Logo

Iordanis Lazaridis

Special Thanks

Michael Moorcock

Tanelorn

Index

without the written permission of the publisher is expressly forbidden. All art and text herein are copyrighted by Mongoose

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thereof and related elements are trademarks of Michael Moorcock and Multiverse Inc.

This game product contains no Open Game Content. No portion of this work may be reproduced in any form without written

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This material is protected under the copyright laws of the United Kingdom. This product is a work of ﬁ ction. Any similarity to

actual people, organisations, places or events is purely coincidental.

INTRODUCTION

‘ B ut we do not wish Prince Elric, for instance, to give his life,

for that would mean he could not fulﬁ l his destiny elsewhere.

So you see, dear Lord Reynard, we act out of necessity, not

sentiment, nor always decently, nor always courageously, in a

highly complex conﬂ ict, full of subtle attack and counterattack.

Imagine a large orchestra, in which every instrument must be

in perfect tune if a particular piece of music is to be played,

also perfectly and at a speciﬁ c moment. Yet each member of

that orchestra can be separated by thousands of miles or even

thousands of years, scattered across the Multiverse, which, if not

inﬁ nite, appears to be inﬁ nite. If only one of our heroes does

not act as he is supposed to act, if events do not happen exactly

when they are due to happen, if Elric and his avatars do not do

what they must do precisely at the right moment, then there is

no hope for any of us. Life will be extinguished. The Multiverse

will collapse into inchoate primal matter , and there will be no

intelligence, this time, to give it form .’

life, to the dreams of the tormented, where a dreamthief ’s

craft can ease pain and make proﬁ t, to your own dreams,

where you may have to defend yourself against sorcerous

attack – the Dream Realms offer power and peril as great

as any found in the Young Kingdoms, and every adventurer

should be prepared for both.

Dream Realms details the titular Realms as encountered

by Elric and Oone in The Fortress of the Pearl and explores

the variations hinted at by the dreamthief during that

adventure. The Dream Realms present different vistas

on every adventure, and the obstacles faced by Sorcerer-

Emperor and mistress dreamthief are only a fraction of the

perils a visitor to those lands might face. Yet certain patterns,

either naturally extant or forced upon the Dream Realms by

the Guild of Dreamthieves, do occur consistently. Only by

studying these patterns and seeking them amidst a mess of

illusions can dreamthieves practice their trade, and other

dream travellers even manage to survive.

- Son of the White Wolf

Dreams play a pivotal role in the destiny of the Young

Kingdoms and the Multiverse. Without the power he

gained from twice embarking on the Dream of a Thousand

Years, Elric of Melniboné would have been unable to fulﬁ l

the role given him by Fate; had he not shared a journey to

the Dream Realms with the dreamthief Oone, he would

have never conceived the aid needed to survive the second

of those millennia-long quests.

Dream Realms also serves as your guide to the enigmatic

Dream Market, where the Guild of Dreamthieves meets to

buy and sell dreams and nightmares alike. Here, travellers

can hire dreamthieves or purchase already captured dreams

from dream merchants, and here those few with the

courage, character and determination to become apprentice

dreamthieves can seek admission to the guild.

Dream Realms details the process by which Elric dwelt on

Earth and visited adjoining spheres in The Dreamthief ’s

Daughter , The Skrayling Tree and The White Wolf ’s Son ,

presenting an alternative means of travel between the

Million Spheres, albeit one that carries a terrible price and

deadly dangers. The entirety of the Multiverse is open to

practitioners of the Thousand-Year Dream; this section does

not detail even a fraction of the worlds one might visit, only

the mechanism for doing so and some of those famously

visited by Elric during his two millennia-long sojourns.

Countless others have pierced the veil between the waking

and sleeping worlds, from the early dreamthieves, who

mapped the Dream Realms and in so naming them gave

them their familiar form, to the Sorcerer-Emperors of

Melniboné, who reigned for ten thousand years on the

strength of dream-schooled sorcery, to less skilled rogues,

who embarked upon slumberous adventures in desperation

or by ill-chance.

Now you too can follow in these footsteps. From the couches

of the Dreaming City of Imrryr, where a small portion of

your soul can be traded for a thousand years of dreaming

Finally, Dream Realms details the mysterious city of Tanelorn,

a mystical dwelling seldom spoken of, and rarely seen.

ADVENTURES

IN DREAMS

T he Dream Realms are the most easily accessible planes

in the Multiverse for nearly every man, woman and child

in the Young Kingdoms visits them! Of course, an ordinary

dreamer has neither understanding nor control of his voyage

through the Dream Realms, rarely remembering more than

scattered titbits of his adventures there, and gaining no

beneﬁ t from his experiences. To truly explore the Dream

Realms is, paradoxically, one of the most difﬁ cult to master

of all the schools and traditions of sorcery.

Dreams in the

Campaign

The Dream Realms present many challenges to those

who brave their depths – none, perhaps, as great as

the challenge their use poses for Games Masters!

The most obvious problem with a dream quest is

that it seems to require a dreamthief, either already

in the party or temporarily attached to it. The former

restricts dream adventures, while the latter is an

imposition some players prefer not to deal with. Why

Do You Dream? on pg. 8, suggests several ways to

involve dreams and the Dream Realms in an adventure

without the direct intervention of a dreamthief.

The most experienced dream travellers are the Guild of

Dreamthieves. Law-sworn walkers of the Moonbeam Roads,

the dreamthieves painstakingly studied their dangerous –

but lucrative – art and mapped the miasmic Dream Realms,

either cataloguing or creating their present shape.

The rules for dreamtheft can be found on page 123 of Elric

of Melniboné . For more on the dreamthieves themselves, see

Chapter 3: The Dream Market.

Even when one of the adventurers is a dreamthief,

involving the rest of the characters in his profession

seems superﬂ uous at best, irresponsible at worst. Most

people are ill-equipped to handle the Dream Realms,

and the Guild of Dreamthieves knows it well. Dream

Companions on pg. 7 provides one solution to this

problem.

Non-dreamthieves cannot participate in actual dreamtheft

and ﬁ nd it dreadfully difﬁ cult to join another’s dream, but

they too can learn to achieve a certain lucidity and purpose

within the Dream Realms. Certain curses and traumatic

events may force this state upon a non-adept, but with

practice, a person of exceptional willpower or sorcerous

strength can impose his waking mind upon the Realms.

Games Masters and players should also be conscious

of the different types of challenges posed by the

Dream Realms. Adventurers cannot simply steamroll

their way through a dream quest, no matter how

powerful their swordsmanship or sorcery may be in

the waking world.

Alternatively, by use of a dream couch of Melniboné,

anyone can use a powerful form of dreaming to explore

the Million Spheres – for the price of a small portion of

his soul. This form of artiﬁ cial dreaming entirely bypasses

the Dream Realms, using the same method of transfer to

instead deposit the dreamer’s consciousness on another

plane, where he can live and study for thousands of years in

as little as a night’s unnatural sleep.

Dreamscape

Within the Dream Realms, the form of matter is malleable

and subject to the will and whims of dreamer and dream

traveller alike. Experienced dreamthieves and sorcerers,

as well as certain philosophers and warriors who practice

For more on the dream couches of Imrryr and some of

the worlds the Sorcerer-Emperors of Melniboné have

habitually visited with them, see Chapter 4: The Thousand-

Year Dream.

Controlling the

mental as well as physical discipline, can use this mutability

to their advantage.

–40% when he enters each of the seven Dream Realms. If

successful, the dream traveller changes signiﬁ cant portions

of the dreamscape to match his own: creatures, individual

inhabitants, settlements and terrain type can all change to

conform to his memories and desires; the Games Master

makes these alterations. If unsuccessful, the dream traveller

has no large-scale inﬂ uence on the Dream Realm, although

any temptations the Realm sends against him will still be

tailored to his own psyche.

Changing the Trappings

When a character enters the Dream Realms, whether as part

of his own dream or another’s, he changes how he and others

perceive those Realms. Consciously or unconsciously, he

moulds the vistas he encounters to conform to his memories

and imagination. A conscious manipulator of the Dream

Realms can use this ability to create terrain favourable to

him and any companions he may have.

Dreamthieves, and others skilled in the manipulation of

the Dream Realms, consciously adjust each Realm as they

enter it. A trained character is one who has the Dreamtheft

or Dreamcrafting advanced skills. Upon entering each of

the seven Dream Realms he may choose to make a test

of one of these skills to alter the form of that Realm. If

successful, he may choose to alter any number of aspects

of the Dream Realm.

Unlike an untrained visitor, a skilled dream traveller can

also choose not to alter the Dream Realm beyond giving

speciﬁ c form to its temptations.

Manipulation of the Dream Realms

Aspect Manipulated

Test Modiﬁ er

Change cosmetic elements only (e.g.

the colour of the sky and dirt, the

facades of buildings)

+20%

Change nonliving elements (e.g. the

type of terrain, the shape of buildings,

the course of rivers)

When a character dreams, he generates a version of the

Dream Realms whose essence conforms entirely to his own

psyche. If his memory is full of deserts, then deserts the

Realms will be, interspersed with oases and camel trails

and nomad camps. If he hails from a coastline, he might

sail slumberous oceans in a ship of dreams. The guardians,

monsters and inhabitants of the Realms also take on forms

appropriate to their surroundings. Each of the seven Dream

Realms imposes certain requirements of function, but the

form is the dreamer’s to mould.

Change animals and plants (e.g.

substituting one monster for another)

–20%

Add or remove animals and plants

(e.g. creating horses for the dream

traveller to ride, removing interposing

monsters)

–40%

Change intelligent creatures (e.g.,

making the inhabitants of a Dream

Realm friendly, reducing their combat

skills)

–60%

When a dream traveller visits these Dream Realms,

however, he also imposes something of his mind on them.

His presence impinges upon the dreamer’s imagination

and generates, or discovers, new lands and peoples within

the dreamscape.

Add or Remove intelligent creatures

(e.g. giving the dream traveller an

army, removing guardians)

–80%

The dreamer whose dream is being visited cannot resist

the alteration of his Dream Realm unless trained in such

manipulation. If both dreamer and dream traveller are

trained, the Dreamtheft or Dreamcraft test is opposed.

A character with no formal training in the manipulation of

the Dream Realms automatically makes a Persistence test at

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