Go to the Dreaming Arts

Because all of reality is born from the Dreaming it is possible to explore the threads of your own future. Because the shape of the Dream That Will Be is complex and its paths dangerous to explore, however, even those skilled in the Dreaming Arts will not attempt to approach them directly. Instead, they will reach for the “shape” of the Dream That Will Be.

BASIC DREAMSIGHT

Dreamsight is performed while sleeping (or in a similar state, such as an elven trance). With a successful Dreaming Arts check (DC +1 per hour after waking, minimum DC 12), you can tell whether a particular action will bring good or bad results for you in the time period you’re attempting to foresee. If the check succeeds, you get one of four results:

• Weal (if the action will probably bring good results)
• Woe (for bad results)
• Weal and woe (for both)
• Nothing (for actions that don’t have especially good or bad results)

This basic use of the dreamsight does not take into account anything beyond the time period you attempt to foresee, so the long-term consequences of the contemplated action will not be revealed.

All attempts by the same person to foresee the same topic use the same dice result as the first dreamsight attempt.

You can use dreamsight a number of times per night equal to twice the number of dreamsight feats you possess (minimum once per night if you do not have any dreamsight feats).

DREAMSIGHT FEATS

DREAMING LORE

Prerequisite: Dreaming Arts 1 rank

Benefit: You can perform Dreaming Lore actions using your dreamsight each night, including Query of a Dreaming Lord and Seeking the Hidden Truths.

DREAMING PRESCIENCE

Prerequisite: Dreaming Arts 1 rank

Benefit: Your dreamsight includes powerful Dreaming Prescience, including Dream Echoes and Dreaming Visions.

DREAMING TOUCH

Prerequisite: Dreaming Arts 1 rank

Benefit: When using dreamsight, you can use the Dreaming Touch to perform Dream Spying and Nightmare.

DREAMING VOYANCE

Prerequisite: Dreaming Arts 1 rank

Benefit: You can use Dreaming Voyance actions using your dreamsight each night, including Sight of the Dreaming Eye, Vision of the Dreaming Shadows, and Voice of the Dream.

DREAMING LORE

QUERY OF A DREAMING LORD: During a dreaming night you can seek out a Lord of the Dreaming and ask them a single question by making a successful Dreaming Arts check (DC 25). For every 5 points by which your check result exceeds DC 25, you can ask one additional question. (For example, a Dreaming Arts check result of 35 would allow you to ask 3 questions.)

The questions are usually answered by a simple yes or no, although in cases where a one-word answer would be misleading or contrary to the Lord’s interests, a short phrase (five words or less) or even a brief vision may be given as answer instead. The answers are correct within the limits of the Lord’s knowledge. “Unclear” is a legitimate answer because the Lords are not omniscient.

At best, a Lord of the Dreaming provides information to aid a character’s decisions. The Lord will structure their answers to further their own purposes.

SEEKING THE HIDDEN TRUTHS: Hidden within the layers of the Dreaming are the countless legends of the world – some of them true, many of them not. By exploring the Dreaming, you can learn the legends surrounding an important person, place or thing.

Seeking the hidden truth, however, takes time. If the person or thing is at hand, or if you are in the place in question, it takes only a single night of dreaming. If you only have detailed information on the person, place, or thing, it requires 2d6 dreaming nights (consuming a Dreaming Arts check each night), and the resulting lore is less complete and specific. If you only know rumors about the person, place, or thing, it requires 2d6 weeks of dreaming nights, and the resulting lore is vague and incomplete (although it often directs you to more detailed information, allowing you to seek again with the possibility of better results).

When the required number of dreaming nights have elapsed, make a Dreaming Arts check. The DC is set by the DM. Typical DCs are:

DC 20             Person, object, or place is at hand.

DC 25             Only detailed information is available.

DC 30             Only rumors are known.

But the specific DC may be higher or lower, depending on the rarity of the information being sought. If the person, place, or thing is not of legendary importance, the DC of the check will usually be radically higher.

If the check is successful, you have discovered legends (if any exist) about the person, place, or thing. These may be legends that are still current, legends that have been forgotten, or even information that has never been generally known.

DREAMING PRESCIENCE

DREAM ECHOES: The creation of a dreaming echo is like a deliberately induced sense of déjà vu. With a successful Dreaming Arts check, you can create a dream echo that can be activated at a time of your choosing within 24 hours. Activating a dream echo is a free action that can be taken at any time.

Moment of Recognition (DC 15): You can immediately reroll any die roll that you just made. You must abide by the second roll.

Moment of Awareness (DC 25): For 10 rounds + 1 round for every 5 points by which your check result exceeded DC 25, you gain a moment of awareness which warns you of impending danger or harm. While under the effects of a moment of awareness, you are never surprised or flat-footed. In addition, you gain a +2 insight bonus to AC and Reflex saves (although this bonus is lost whenever you would lose your Dexterity bonus to AC).

Moment of Prescience (DC 30): You gain a bonus on your next die roll equal to your ranks in the Dreaming Arts skill.

Moment of Fate (DC 35): For 5 rounds + 1 round for every 5 points by which your check result exceeded DC 35, you can gain a moment of fate during which the consequences of your choices are laid out before you like a network of silvery light. While under the effects of a moment of fate, any time you make a die roll you may roll twice and then select which die roll you wish to use.

DREAMING VISIONS: Similar to basic dreamsight, with a successful Dreaming Arts check (DC 15 + 5 per day after waking), you gain a useful piece of insight concerning a specific goal, event, or activity that is to occur within the time period you’re attempting to foresee. The advice takes the form of a short and cryptic vision within the Dreaming. If you don’t act on the information, the conditions may change so that the information is no longer useful.

Go to Dreamsight (Part 2)

The Dreaming is a realm which lies “beneath” or “alongside” the world as the mortal races know it. It is a wild and dangerous place, an ever-shifting forest whose shadows and glades hold the greatest of wonders. Mortals sometimes reach it, unwittingly, in their hours of deepest dreaming, and it is said to be the place where all dreams are born. In the Dreaming, one may leave a city forged with towering spires of the finest crystal and lose sight of it within three paces, never to see it again. Or one may be tempted by strange, dancing lights, and never wake from their dreams.

This is what the Dreaming is in words. But what it is in truth is not so easily expressed. To understand the Dreaming, one must learn to feel the Dreaming. To trust the Dreamsong.

THE NATURE OF TIME IN THE DREAMING

The elven scholar Falnafeshnae described three orders within the Dreaming: The Dream That Was, the Dreaming Moment, and the Undreamt (or the Dream That Will Be).

THE DREAMING MOMENT: The Dreaming Moment is now. It is the moment of existence. It is the present tense. It is fleeting. It is ever-changing – it is always present, but it is always passing and it is always going.

In life we rarely live within the moment. Our thoughts dwell in the past or wish upon the future. But in the Dreaming, such wandering ways are dangerous. In the Dreaming it is the Moment that is the touchstone of your experience. It is the bedrock upon which you stand.

It requires absolute mental precision to maintain it. But without it you will be lost.

THE DREAM THAT WAS: Within the Dreaming all things that ever were exist… but also many things that never were or merely might have been. It is uncertain to us whether all of thought originates within the Dreaming and passes through our hands to become reality, or if thought comes from us and then passes through the Dreaming and thus into the waking world. But that is how it is.

THE DREAM THAT WILL BE: Just as all that was lies within the Dreaming, so too is there everything that might be. But such realms are dangerous and uncertain. We will return to them later.

But the secret of the Dreaming is that there is no true distinction between past, present, and future. All are as one in the Dreaming, even if we are not capable of understanding it in totality. That is why we must be careful. That is why we must stand upon our bedrock in the Dreaming Moment that is.

Meditate upon these things. Seek the truth of them within yourself.

THE LORDS AND LADIES

MINOR SPIRITS, LORDS, AND LADIES: House spirits are the most common of the “minor spirits” which you can see manifestly in the world, but they are far from the only ones. These minor spirits, also known as rivera, can be found almost anywhere. The world around you is filled with a spiritual life. Those who smile upon the spirits are blessed by good fortune, while those who do not will find their lives cursed by them.

Above the minor spirits of the world there are the Spirit Lords, who each possess dominion over a common family of minor spirits. For example, Pegana, the Lady of the River, rules over the spirits of stream and brook. They were first worshipped by the trading clans. Their ancient representations can also be found on the charm tokens of the northern barbarians.

LORDS OF THE DREAMING: What the common man does not understand is that the Spirit Lords are, in truth, powerful lords of the Dreaming. It is through the Dreaming that these Lords have power, for they are of the Dreaming.

It is overly simplistic, however, to consider them as individuals. They are not gods. They are more fundamental than that – they arise of the Dreaming, and the Dreaming arises from them. The Pegana one meets in the deltas of Duvei is not the same Lady of the Rivers one might meet in the spring thaws of the Great Glacier or the mountain streams of Hyrtan. She might not even be the same Pegana you’d meet in the next river valley to the west. She might not even be the same Pegana you met last night in the very same place. Or, on the other hand, she might be.

SHAPING THE SPIRITS: Few take these beliefs literally any more, but they remain a part of their philosophical outlook. For example, many believe that a person’s outlook on life “shapes the spirits” around them and has an effect on the fate that life brings them.

In this there is truth.

GUIDES: The Spirit Lords serve as guides and signs. We have learned to trust them, although not completely. Some are more trustworthy than others.

When a Spirit Lord seeks out a Dreamwalker, however, it is always a matter of great import – an event which will change the Dreaming and thus the world in ways unforeseen and unknowable.

And for a Spirit Lord to seek out one who is not yet trained in the Dreaming Arts, as the Lady Pegana did with you, is something rarely if ever seen.

DREAMING ARTS

Dreaming Arts is a new Wisdom-based, trained-only skill. Dreaming Arts checks are made in conjunction with the three different paths of the Dreaming Arts.

DREAMSIGHT: The Dreaming is the wellspring from which all of reality is born and the grave to which all of living memory returns. As such, those who can see the Dreaming with unclouded eyes can perceive deep truths of the world around them.

Game Mechanics: Without any training, you’ll be able to use Dreaming Arts checks to duplicate the effects of an augury spell. With a feat you’ll be able to unlock more powerful divination abilities (that you’ll use with your Dreaming Arts check).

DREAM PACTS: The Lords of the Dreaming are powerful and fey. Those skilled enough in the dreaming arts can turn their own souls into conduits through which the Spirit Lords can be made manifest in the world around us. But following such a path requires supreme self-control, for the Lords of the Dreaming will reshape your soul.

Game Mechanics: There is a class dedicated to forming dream pacts. In order to form dream pacts, you would need to multiclass. By channeling different Dreaming Lords, you will gain a variety of powers.

DREAMSPEAKING: Those practiced in the dreaming arts can reshape the Dreaming around them. Those who are masters of the Dreaming, however, can reshape the world around them by reshaping the dreams from which the world is born. These arts have been perfected into the dreaming tongue – a primal language which not only describes the most fundamental aspects of reality, but can be used to transform it.

Game Mechanics: These are a suite of feats you can take, giving you mastery over various parts of dreamspeak. Dreamspeaking essentially allows you to reshape reality or yourself – essentially minor spellcasting.

Dreamsight – Dream Pacts

IN THE SHADOW OF THE SPIRE

SESSION 14A: MANY UNHAPPY RETURNS

January 5th, 2008
The 3rd Day of Kadal in the 790th Year of the Seyrunian Dynasty

They returned to the surface just as the sun was slipping behind the Spire. They walked home in the Spire’s shadow, arriving as true evening fell and Ptolus’ second dusk began.

They weren’t sure when they had begun to think of the Ghostly Minstrel as home, but as they washed their bloody clothes and bodies in the stables, that’s how they thought of it. And all of them were looking forward to a long and well-deserved sleep in their own beds.

But before they could get there, Tee voiced a thought that was on many of their minds: “We need to talk.”

“Can it wait until morning?” Elestra asked. “Breakfast?”

Tee shook her head. “No. We need to talk now.”

They retired to Elestra’s room – the room that had once been Agnarr’s. Once the door was shut behind them, Tee turned to face Elestra: “What happened down there… That can’t happen again. You nearly got us all killed.”

“It’s not that simple,” Elestra protested. “My snake—“

“It is that simple. That door had to be closed. Agnarr knew it. And you kept opening it.”

Agnarr nodded, and then Tor joined in: “And this isn’t the first time. This is life and death. You have to be focused. If you ever put us in that situation again, I’ll kill you myself.”

“I don’t know about that,” Tee said.

“Better one of us than all of us,” Tor said bluntly. “Dominic can always heal her wounds if we survive.”

Tee didn’t have a response for that. She turned back to Elestra. “Look, you say you care about your snake, but you keep sending it into dangerous situations. And its gets us all in trouble.”

“I understand that,” Elestra said. “But what am I supposed to do?” (more…)

(click for PDF)

This PDF collects the mission types listed for each crew type in Blades in the Dark on to a random table that can be used as a procedural content generator. As detailed below, it’s particularly effective when used in conjunction with the more specific procedural content generators already found in the core rulebook.

USING THE TABLE

FIRST: Roll 1d6 + 1d4 to generate a mission type. Option: Roll 1d8 + 1d4, with results of 7 or 8 on the d8 defaulting to the crew’s type. (This creates a result that will be biased towards the crew’s type, while also leaving open a sizable opportunity for other mission types.)

OPTION #1 – USE OPPORTUNITY TABLES: Roll 1d3 + 1d6 on the appropriate crew’s opportunity table and combine with the mission type.

• Assassins, p. 103
• Bravos, p. 107
• Cults, p. 111
• Hawkers, p. 115
• Shadows, p. 119
• Smugglers, p. 123

Example: “Smuggle Arcane/Weird” + “Union organizers want to arm factory workers in advance of a strike” tells you what kind of weapons the union organizers are looking for.

Example: “Sabotage” + “A master assassin has come out of retirement for one more job; many would pay well to know who their target is” means your mission isn’t just to figure out who the target is, but to prevent the master assassin from carrying it out.

OPTION #2 – USE WORK TABLE: Rolling 1d4 + 1d6 on the WORK table may seem superfluous, but can also combine with the mission type in unexpected ways (e.g., “Disappearance” + “Hollow or Revivify” resulting in a job where you need to kidnap a corpse in order to revive it).

• Blades in the Dark, p. 306

Example: “Accident” + “Burglary or Heist”. It’s that much harder to kill someone and make it look like an accident when you ALSO need to purloin something from their person/house.

Example: “Augury” + “Poison or Arrange Accident”. Cult mission types can be difficult to interpret for other crews. In some cases, the crew may just be engaging in cult-like activity (attempting to gain a powerful augury by giving a noblewoman a very powerful poison that causes prophecies regarding their blood relations to appear as blood welts on their skin). You might also invert the scenario so that the crew is seeking to prevent a cult from carrying out the mission. Or the crew might be hired by the cult to do the mission.

FINALLY: Flesh things out with the other SCORES tables.

• Client/Target, p. 306
• Connected to Person/Faction, p. 307
• Twist or Complication, p. 307

Play Blades in the Dark!