Phantasms
The instinct-driven manifestations of strong feeling and archetype in the Dreaming Veil, among them the Nightmares and the Muse-Spirits.
Overview
The Phantasms are the things that strong feeling makes in the Dreaming Veil: manifestations of emotion or archetype that are not sentient but act on instinct. The fear-born Nightmares are Phantasms, and so are the Muse-Spirits that grant visions, and the Echoes, fragments of old dreams that lingered too long and became half aware.
Appearance
They take the shapes of what made them, which is to say the shapes of feelings: a Nightmare is shaped like a fear, a Muse-Spirit like a longing. What they share is that each is too much itself, a single feeling drawn without shading.
Habitat and Range
They arise wherever feeling runs strongest in the Dreaming Veil, around dreamers and in the dreamscapes many dreamers share.
Behaviour and Temperament
They act on instinct, without thought or choice: a Phantasm of fear hunts, one of longing beckons. Their instinct is the feeling that made them.
Uses and Dangers
Some of them give, as the Muse-Spirits do; some take, as the Nightmares do. Travellers learn to tell them apart quickly.
Lore and Belief
Dream-readers on Caeldon sort the figures of dreams into kinds and read them as omens, and some of those kinds may come from travellers' tales of the Phantasms. Whether every dream-figure is a Phantasm, or only the strongest, is argued.
Where It Appears
In the Writers’ Guide
- The Planes FoundationsThe Ten Harmonics
- Drowse-Wings A Bestiary of CaeldonUses and Dangers
- Muse-Spirits A Bestiary of CaeldonBehaviour and Temperament
- Nightmares A Bestiary of Caeldon
- Phantasms A Bestiary of CaeldonLore and Belief