Dreams
Every night, we go there. None of us has ever been there awake.
Dreams are a strange Horizon: they do not exceed us from above, but from within. They are ours, and yet we do not command them. We come back from them every morning without being able to say where we really were.
Every age has seen them differently: messages from the gods, omens, visits from the dead, journeys of the soul, disguised desires, neurons firing. And every age has invented figures to carry something from night into day: messengers, sandmen, nightmares, interpreters.
In the Odyssey, Penelope says that dreams pass through two gates: those that come through the gate of horn tell the truth; those that come through the gate of ivory deceive.
Why Agents
The difference of scale. Dreaming and waking cannot grasp each other directly: the dreamer does not know they are dreaming, the waking have already forgotten. Nothing passes from one to the other without someone to carry it — in either direction.
What each side experiences. Through Agents, humans receive what they did not know they knew: a truth, a desire, a fear, a lost face. Through them, the Powers of Dream meet the day: what the living actually do with their dreams.
What is transformed. A messenger who has watched the waking too long understands that some dreams should not be delivered. A Power that welcomes what they bring back changes what dreaming means.
Powers
The Gate of Horn
Dreams that tell the truth: omens, warnings, visitations.
- Tells the truth
- Speaks in riddles
- Announces what is coming
- Does not choose who hears it
The Gate of Ivory
Dreams that deceive: desires fulfilled, perfect worlds, illusions.
- Gives what one desires
- Imitates the real
- Deceives
- Fades on waking
Sleep
What takes every living being every night. Hypnos, twin brother of Thanatos.
- Every living being yields to it
- Restores
- Brother of Death
- Does not dream itself
The Nightmare
What weighs on the sleeper's chest. The mare of old tongues, which gave the nightmare its name.
- Weighs on sleepers
- Feeds on fear
- Returns every night
- Powerless in broad daylight
Families of Agents
The suggested traits are Bond traits: each comes from the relationship itself or from the Attribute shown. The Agent's Anchors belong to them and remain to be written.
Messengers — the Gate of Horn
Bearers of dreams, like the Greek Oneiroi. The Bond is a message to deliver.
- Enters dreams, from Does not choose who hears it;
- Takes the face of a loved one, from the message itself;
- Speaks in images, from Speaks in riddles.
What the figure lets us think: how a truth can reach us without passing through reason.
Weavers — the Gate of Ivory
Those who shape dreams. The Bond is a craft handed down.
- Shapes a dream, from the craft itself;
- Gives form to desires, from Gives what one desires;
- Imitates any place, from Imitates the real.
What the figure lets us think: desire and illusion; what we prefer to the real; what we lose by preferring it.
Sandmen — Sleep
Those who put people to sleep. The figure comes from tales: Andersen's little man with his two umbrellas, or Hoffmann's far more disturbing one. The Bond is an office.
- Brings sleep with a gesture, from the office itself;
- Sees what everyone dreams, from Every living being yields to it;
- Invisible to the waking, from Brother of Death.
What the figure lets us think: the threshold of sleep; letting go; entrusting one's night to someone.
Nightmares — the Nightmare
Mares, incubi, succubi, shadows at the foot of the bed. The Bond is a hunger.
- Weighs on sleepers, from Weighs on sleepers;
- Knows everyone's fears, from Feeds on fear;
- Vanishes on waking, from Powerless in broad daylight.
What the figure lets us think: intimate fear; what haunts us and comes from us.
What appears
- dream books and interpreters, from Artemidorus to Joseph;
- psychoanalysis, which gives the dream back to the dreamer;
- sleeping pills, which command Sleep;
- cinema, a collective dream in a darkened room;
- the sleep laboratory, which measures dreams without seeing them;
- lucid dreaming, where the sleeper knows;
- machines that produce images as in a dream.
An Agent
- Bond: a message to deliver. Traits: Enters dreams, Speaks in images.
- Anchor Film editor: Draws a truth from two images, Knows where to cut.
- Anchor Insomniac since childhood: no trait written yet.
The Gate of Horn speaks in riddles, and many omens are never understood. Lise learned in the editing room that a truth can be born from two images placed side by side. If she gets editing recognized as belonging to the Gate of Horn, Draws a truth from two images will pass into the Bond: true dreams will become clearer — and other messengers will learn to cut.
Situations
Bringing a novelty. A sandman discovers sleeping pills; a nightmare discovers psychoanalysis, and that people can talk about it.
Contending for a novelty. Cinema appears. The Gate of Ivory sees its kingdom there: illusion offered to all. The Gate of Horn sees films that tell the truth. The Nightmare discovers horror films. Their Agents contend over what darkened rooms will become.
Transforming one's own Power. A nightmare visited a child for years; the child grew up facing it every night, and came out of it brave. The nightmare wants its Power to stop feeding on fear — to become what one passes through.
Tones and time
Dreams lend themselves to the dreamlike, of course, but also to intimate horror, fairy tale, and investigation — what did that dream mean?
They readily join Death: Sleep is its brother, and in many traditions, it is in dreams that the dead visit us.