Botany and Alchemy in Rêve

Art by Rolland Barthélémy

Rêve: the Dream Ouroboros devotes five pages to botany.  “If one might suppose that every plant that grows in our real world also grows in the universe of Rêve,” the rules suggest, “one might also suppose that others do too.”  While Dream Keepers are encouraged to come up with original plants, several examples are provided, categorized into five groups.

Some examples of Rêve herbs include:  Mercurion (“A blackish ivy which...is one of the base herbs used in alchemy”), Moonflower (A rare alpine plant that – when “picked at night and under moonlight” – can be ingested to recover dream points; its potency is based on the lunar phase when harvested), and Murus (“A kind of minuscule thistle with purplish green leaves,” murus is used for healing; not to be confused with false murus, also used for healing).

Among the Fruits & Berries of Rêve, there are:  Clopinette (Having “very little juice...a neutral taste, not sweet, not even bitter, and...a pitifully low nutritive value” – this fruit is “ordinarily snubbed by the locals, and even wild animals.”  Clopinette is usually “left for Journeyers.”), Floom (The Floom fruit has “an acrid, bitter taste, and is even less nutritious than the clopinette.”  However, “a larval parasite...eats the interior of the fruit...leaving behind a brownish excrement, a sort of oily gelatin...[which] is highly nutritious, although it is most disgusting.”), and Lulube (This is a “small round red fruit whose taste is part cherry, part lemon.”).

Descriptions of Edible Mushrooms include a flavor value “from 1 (bland) to 5 (excellent).”  Some edible mushrooms are:  Dream Trumpet (A very rare specimen “shaped like a dark violet conch.”  Flavor = 5), Primoon (A commonly found, “small mushroom with a white foot and flat green tender cap.”  Flavor = 1), and Tricolite (A rarely found “mushroom with a white foot...and large green cap with blue dots.”  Flavor = 4).

Examples of Poisonous Fruits & Mushrooms include:  Thanatary Amanita (With “lightning-quick deadliness,” this is the most toxic mushroom and also one of the most beautiful...), Hecatomb (“A small red pear with a shiny skin, it has a not disagreeable acidulous flavor”), and Peevle (The fruit of the peeve shrub is not especially malignant; it “looks very much like a clopinette, but with a pearly skin”).

The various Venomous Plants of Rêve “produce swelling around the scratches caused by their spikes or contact with their leaves.”  Other “symptoms are feelings of suffocation, dizziness and cold sweats.”  Examples of these plants include:  Aggravile (“A false fern with razor-sharp leaves producing a mortal venom.”), Basilisque (“While this plant looks like it might be a relative of mint or basil, it  has hive-producing leaves.”), and Ossiphage (“Also called a bonesucker, this climbing creeper has triangular, purplish leaves.  Each leaf has three long spikes at each point of the triangle.  Its venom is so fast that the victim often succumbs in a few steps and dies entangled in the vine.”)

Rêve includes 'Principles of Alchemy' as a game aid.  Alchemy is not magical in that it is not a draconic art.  However, “some alchemical preparations may be enchanted in order to increase their potency.”  As presented in the rules:

Alchemy is a science of colors and textures.  It requires only basic equipment:  fire, a cauldron, mortar and pestle, a funnel, parchment for filtering, and a sealable vial.  Its practice revolves around three characteristics:  Intellect, for knowledge of formulæ and their implementation; Sight for identification of colors, and Dexterity for identifying textures.

Alchemical colors, “which correspond to degrees of heat,” can only be identified by using an Alchemist's Lens.  Such a lens is not among the equipment listed above.  While it may be purchased from an alchemist's shop, a lens can be manufactured using basic alchemical processes.

“The seven alchemical textures, more or less fluid, thick, plastic, etc. have been given animal names:  Fox, Goat, Horse, Owl, Rabbit, Serpent, [and] Sheep.”

There are three basic types of alchemical ingredients:  herbs, salts, and gems.  “Most can be readily found in nature,” but all can “be purchased from an alchemist or apothecary.”

Mercurion, satum, and nevropenthe are the three basic alchemical herbs.

The “seven common alchemical salts” are, in order of increasing value:  Candricle, Boralm, Green Obbyssum, Grey Obbyssum, Obadion, Nartha, and Chramaelium.  The first four can be found in nature; for instance, candricle is “a white powder found under the barks of numerous trees.”  The last three common salts require alchemical processing.  For example, “Obadion is a bluish powder obtained from the alchemical extraction of an ore called obadine, a kind of peat.”

Gems are measured in terms of size and purity.  Each grain counts as one unit of size.  Purity is represented on a scale of 1 to 7.  Size × Purity = cost in sols.  (For purposes of comparison, the price of a bastard sword is 30 sols; a saddle horse is 40 sols.)  A jeweler can add value to a gem.  The rules list “twelve gems [that] are the most sought-after.”  Some of these gems are:  Aquafane (deep green), Scarlatine (clear red or orange), and Turnmoon (violet or blue).

The rules describe seven common alchemical formulæ that are “assumed to be known to all characters with at least mastery in Alchemy” (i.e., level zero).  Each formula requires several skill rolls.

As one can only know at the very end whether a given procedure was successful or not, the character is assumed to perform the entire operation continuously and then makes all rolls together at the end.  If any one roll is a failure, the entire operation is ruined.

The described formulæ include basic operations, such as Alchemist's Lens and Alchemical Pulverization, as well as three potions, Strength, Dexterity, and Double Healing.  (A Potion of Double Healing increases the effects of a healing potion.)

Humanoids in Rêve

Humans are not the only playable race in Rêve – there are several humanoid species in the setting.  In Rêve, “Humanoids are those creatures who are both roughly anthropomorphic (head, trunk, two arms, two legs, etc.) and have language.”  The characteristic 'scale' is the same regardless of species.  So, as the rules state, “An ogre with a 10 Strength is as strong as an average human, but below average with regard to ogres.”  Just as with humans, 160 points are allocated among the fourteen characteristics for humanoids, but modifiers are applied that may take the final values beyond the human range of 6 through 15.

Cyan:  As their name suggests, cyan have blue coloration.  They live in nomadic tribes and raise small dinosaur-like creatures.  Each cyan is connected to all of his or her incarnations, past and future, so they have multiple personalities.  Also, “they are incapable of recalling people or places for more than 7 weeks” except when under the thrall of their luminous dreams.

Droll:  Drolls are also known as trolls.  Although misshapen, they tend to be larger than humans.  Aside from Size, they have positive modifiers for Constitution, Agility, and Hearing.  Drolls have negative modifiers for Sight, Smell-Taste, Intellect, and Empathy.  They have “2 points of natural armor” and possess “an ability to cast the evil eye.”

Faun:  Unlike traditional fauns, Rêve fauns have goat heads.  “War is their natural state,” the rules tell us, “Ferocious and cruel, they subsist on a vegetarian diet but drink the blood of their enemies.”  Fauns have heightened Constitution and Strength, but reduced Intellect and Empathy.

Feracat:  “Feracats are small, hairless, oily, simian humanoids with large, pointed ears and yellow slitted eyes.”  They have reduced Appearance, Will, and Intellect; however, they have enhanced Agility, Dexterity, Hearing, and Smell-Taste.

Gigant:  Gigants can be as tall as 2.5 meters and weigh as much as 300 kilograms.  This increased height and mass gives them two points of armor.  Gigants have increased Constitution, Strength, and Agility, but they have decreased Intellect.  “They speak a whispering tongue (to avoid avalanches).”

Gnome:  As mentioned previously, in the Rêve setting, gnomes discovered magic.  They “are the smallest humanoids, averaging 90 cm tall and 30 kg.”  They have a negative modifier to Strength, but positive modifiers to Constitution and Agility.  We are told they “are excellent swordsmen in spite of their small stature.”

Hounder:  “Hounders are dog-headed humanoids...[including] several races capable of crossbreeding:  bulldog-headed, spaniel-headed, greyhound-headed, doberman-headed, etc.”  They are slightly larger than humans and have a bonus to Constitution.  “Humans of the Hounders' worlds...live in abject slavery...[and] Kept naked, they are raised in herds as beasts of burden and are considered animals.”

Mockturtle:  The Rêve mockturtle (one word) is based on John Tenniel's depiction below (from Alice in Wonderland).  While they have increased Will, they have decreased Size and Intellect.  “Their carapace affords them 3 points of natural protection.”

Ogre:  Ogres are almost as large as gigants.  Like gigants, they have increased Strength and Constitution, as well as reduced Intellect.  They also have a point of natural armor.  Unlike gigants, ogres have decreased Empathy and increased Smell-Taste.  They have “yellow eyes” and “have no hair on their bodies except their eyelashes.”  Ogres occasionally devour small human children, but fail to understand why they are hated.  “They think of themselves as gentle and good...”

Proudarm:  These humanoids are smaller than ogres, yet still larger than humans.  Male proudarms are “extremely muscular with large upper bodies and arms,” but are also microcephalic.  “Females, on the other hand, are a bit smaller than males and morphologically opposite:  their heads and upper bodies are human-proportioned, but their legs, thighs and buttocks are huge.”  The provided characteristic modifiers apparently apply to males:  increased Constitution, Strength, and Agility; reduced Dexterity, Sight, Hearing, Smell-Taste, Intellect, and Empathy.

Repvile:  “The most terrible of the humanoids, repviles are slightly smaller than humans, with scaly bodies and spiky growths at their elbows and knees.”  Their heads have lizard-like as well as frog-like features.  “In broad daylight, they protect their sensitive bulging eyes with a whitish nictitating membrane which does not impair their vision.”  They have positive modifiers to Constitution, Strength, and Agility, but negative modifiers to Intellect and Empathy.  “They benefit from 3 points of natural armor.”

Saurian:  Although saurians are air-breathers, they “can hold their breath long enough to stay underwater for several tens of minutes...”  They have slight positive modifiers to Size, Strength, and Agility.  “They benefit from 2 points of natural armor.”  Saurians weave silk “from the cocoon of an insect known only to them.”  This silk “is magnificent and greatly prized.”  However, saurians rarely engage in commerce (with non-saurians) due to their bellicose nature.

Snork:  “Snorks are porcine-faced humanoids endowed with snouts, hence their name.”  They serve as the Rêve equivalent of orcs.  These humanoids have slightly increased Size, Constitution, and Strength; however, they also have significantly reduced Intellect and Empathy.

Sylvan:  Although gnomes are considered to be “the smallest humanoids,” sylvans have the same Size modifier.  A sylvan's Strength, however, is not reduced as much as a gnome's.  Sylvans have enhanced Sight, Hearing, Smell-Taste, and Empathy.  They seem to be the closest thing to fairies that the Rêve setting affords.  Sylvans “wither” if they leave their forests.  Although female sylvans are “generally well-proportioned, pretty, adorable little dolls,” male sylvans affect “a somewhat diabolical appearance with small horns growing out of their foreheads, pointy beards, and curly locks.”

Magic in Rêve

In Rêve, “Magicians are called High Dreamers because they perceive the complexities of reality differently from other creatures.”  Magic is accomplished by using the Draconic language to influence the Dragons' dreams.  However...

Draconic is...not a language in the common sense.  It cannot be spoken, phonetically uttered, and no syllable can express it.  It cannot be written, and no symbol, rune, hieroglyph, or ideogram can transmit it.

Low Dreaming “is the common reality which all creatures perceive.”  High Dreaming “is the realm of those beings referred to as the Dragons.”  Between the Low and High Dreaming are the Dreamlands, representing “a mental state, a sort of trance which allows the casting of magic.”  Only High Dreamers can visit the Dreamlands; they do so via astral projection.  In the Dreamlands...

...the slightest error can have catastrophic results.  Such a mental state, which places the High Dreamer's consciousness close to the Dragons', demands great discipline and is fraught with peril.  The high Dreamer may confront his own doubts, failings, dreams of past incarnations, vortices which may lose him, monsters which he must defeat or repress.

Projecting into the Dreamlands is called trancing and requires concentration, “takes a full round, costs one Fatigue point, and requires a Dreamlands encounter check.”  There are various types of 'terrain' in the Dreamlands, some examples of which are:  swamps, wastes, mountains, sanctuaries, cities, and necropolii.  The Dreamlands are represented in game terms “as a symbolic map divided into hexagons.”  A corner of this map is displayed below.

When entering the Dreamlands (and every round spent therein), there is a one-in-seven chance that the High Dreamer will have an encounter.  The Such encounters “usually represent the High Dreamer's own internal psychological problems, as well as the terrifying proximity of the Dragons' consciousness – but they can also offer assistance.”  With an encounter, a High Dreamer must attempt mastery, disengagement, or suppression.  In the event of an encounter, percentile dice are rolled to determine the specific encounter in a given terrain.

Some of the possible encounters include:  Violet Lotus (if mastered, can increase dream points), Steed (if mastered, transports the astral body to a chosen Dreamland), Whirlwind (if not mastered, transports the astral body to a random Dreamland) and Breaker (if not mastered, breaks the High Dreamer's concentration).  It is also possible to encounter a Dragon; mastery of such an encounter can result in a 'Dragon Gift' while failure to master it will result in one or two 'Dragon Tails'.

“Dragon Gifts are extraordinary benefits magicians sometimes gain in the pursuit [of] their calling,” the rules state.  They remain with the character for life and can include:  characteristic increase, the ability to detect lies, animal empathy, limited poison resistance, et al.  Dragon Tails represent “the mental perturbations High Dreamers sometimes experience as a result of bad magical experiences.”  If not repressed, Dragon Tails can cause selective amnesia, obsessions (including “only speak in animal noises,” “carry around rocks,” “blacken one's face with ashes,” or “crawl about on all fours”), or mad whims (including “dance naked in the rain,” “kiss a pig on the snout,” “break a glass object,” or “urinate in a violin”).

The High Dreamer must travel to a particular terrain type in order to cast a given spell.  For example, a Light spell can only be cast from a Plains hex and a Sleep spell can only be cast from a Swamp hex.  Normally, moving to an adjacent hex takes one round.

There are four Draconic skills (or 'Draconic Ways'), each representing a distinct interpretation of the language of Dragons and each reflecting a different 'type' of magic.  The Way of Onerios affects the physical world and its spells “include the ability to create heat or light, or transform wood to metal or air to fire.”  The Way of Hypnos represents sleep and permits the High Dreamer to affect the minds of others.  With Hypnos, a High Dreamer may “cast a spell of sleeping, or seem to be invisible, or conjure a powerful warrior.”  The Way of Narcos “represents torpor, inertia...[and] is the way of enchantments...”  Finally, the Way of Thanatos is “of nightmare and necromancy:  curses, metamorphoses, and animation of the dead are the tools of the practitioners of this dark art.”

Monsters in Rêve

Jabberwock illustration by John Tenniel

Just in time for Halloween, here is a selection of monsters from the Rêve role-playing game.

Contrary to Tenniel's depiction above, a Rêve jabberwock (also called a bandersnatch) “has the appearance of an enormous toad, with a horse head, burning red eyes, bat wings, scaly hide, claws like daggers, pointed spines along its back and sides, and a hideous burbling roar.”  It weighs more than three tons so it cannot fly.  Since the jabberwock “hates all light,” it “inhabits the lightless depths of the deepest caverns, leaving only to hunt on moonless nights.”

The bane looks like “a small, grey-green hippopotamus” except it has two rows of sharp teeth in its crocodile-like mouth.

There is “a kind of giant roach” called chrasm (pronounced 'krasm').  It has “a crab-like carapace and hairy joints.”  Also possessing “strong and sharp mandibles, it is feared for its mortal poison.”

“The zider is a flying reptile akin to the pteranodon, having large membranous wings.”

A felorn is a talking cat “with grey-mauve fur.”  Its bat-like wings (“covered in downy fur”) permit the felorn to fly great distances.  “At first adorable,” we are told, “a companion felorn can soon become rather tedious.”

The gleepzook is a green monkey that seems to have a language; however, “gleep and zook are the only two phonemes used, and these are pronounced with a great variety of tones and in infinite combinations.”

The gong looks like “a huge toad, with scaly skin and claws and fangs.”  It is named thus because “it makes a sound almost exactly like the tolling of a bell.”

Grindlings are small larvae “about 1 to 2 cm in length.”  We are not told what the larvae turn into but, when their “tiny translucent scales” rub together, they generate “the sound of chalk grating on slate, but a hundred times louder and more wearing on the nerves.”

The killerbeast is thus named supposedly because its “raspy and guttural cry sounds like the word kill.”  (I wonder how this creature was named in the original French.  According to Google, 'killer beast' translates as tueur bête, neither part of which I can imagine being pronounced in a raspy and guttural manner.)  Anyway, “The killerbeast is a simian-like creature covered in spiny scales.”

“The razorfly is a giant dragonfly, some 2 meters long with a wingspan of three meters, with wings as tough and sharp as razors, beating at prodigious speeds.”  We learn that the razorfly “can cut through a 3 cm diameter bamboo stalk without slowing down.”

While anthropomorphic, stonebones “are not humanoids, as they do not have a language.”  They are “covered in a mineral-based, shell-like carapace” and “their heads have a stony crest.”

The necromorph is sometimes referred to as “a false ghûl or a black ghûl.”  It “is a human-sized, anthropomorphic, bipedal, upright animal, with a leathery, hairless grey-black hide.”  I suppose that – like the stonebones – the necromorph fails to qualify as a humanoid due to the lack of a language.

A turntooth “is an enormous [three meters tall and 800 kg] bipedal monstrosity, vaguely anthropomorphic, covered in extremely hard, overlapping horn plates.”  The plural of turntooth is turntooths, but this may be a translation choice since, in French, the word for tooth (dent) is made plural by the usual means – adding an 's' (i.e., dents).  Its arms, having 360° articulation, end in mouths “filled with sharp, pointed fangs.”  A turntooth “has no head, only a large blister in its place with a yellow eye 'in front' and one 'behind'.”  It seems that turntooth “genital glands” have commercial value; perhaps fortunately, the rules do not expand on this.

All of the above are 'creatures', meaning that each individual is dreamed by a Dragon.  Aside from creatures, there are 'entities' which come from the “collective unconscious.”  They are “the product of currents of the Dreaming, which, when they become too dense, spontaneously incarnate.”  Entities are categorized as either 'dream' or 'nightmare'.

Dream entities include the chimera (which can travel to any dream) and the unicorn (which can inflict curses or – with regard to an individual having “only the purest of intentions” – grant a boon).

Nightmare entities can be either embodied or disembodied.  Embodied nightmare entities include such familiar monsters as kraken, shadows, skeletons, and zombies.  Other embodied nightmare entities include:  coqmares (three-meter tall roosters whose cries, at sunset, can result in “hideous nightmares”), death dogs (they appear only at night), and sludgehammers (“like a great mud man...with two long tentacles for upper extremities”).  Disembodied nightmare entities are spirits that “appear as phantom specters with humanoid silhouettes.”  These entities attempt to possess corporeal beings.  Three of these entities are despair, fear, and hate.

Character Creation in Rêve

Art by Rolland Barthélémy

There are fourteen primary characteristics for Rêve characters –

Size:  “overall mass”
Appearance:  “charisma and presence, in no way related to beauty”
Constitution:  “health, vigor, resistance to shock and disease”
Strength:  “muscular power”
Agility:  “overall coordination, graceful harmony of movement”
Dexterity:  “manual dexterity, eye-hand coordination and tactile sense”
Sight:  “More than visual acuity, this characteristic encompasses visual memory and especially observation.”
Hearing:  “Partly the auditory sense, but mostly the correct analysis and interpretation of sounds, as well as auditory memory.”
Smell-Taste:  “Detection, analysis and interpretation of smells and tastes.”
Will:  “force of will, character, courage, ego, morale”
Intellect:  “intellectual faculties...disposition to acquire knowledge and use it...[and also] memory.  It is in no sense...intelligence.”
Empathy:  “intuition, the ability to feel, to be spontaneously consonant with one's environment”
Dream:  “The faculty of dreaming and remembering dreams...It's a kind of 'Power' characteristic.”
Luck:  “how lucky a character is”

Players have 160 points to allocate among a character's primary characteristics.  The initial, minimum value for each characteristic is 6 and the initial, maximum value is 15.  The human average is 10.  Strength cannot be more than 4 points over Size.  We are told, “Only creatures and dream entities can have characteristics above 20.”  As an alternate rule, there can be a Beauty characteristic with a default value of 10.  This value can be increased using some of the 160 points; however reducing the Beauty score does not net additional allocation points.

Aside from primary characteristics, there are four derived characteristics:  Mêlée (average of Agility and Strength), Missile (average of Dexterity and Sight), Throw (average of Strength and Missile), Stealth (average of Agility and the inverse of Size [i.e., 21 – Size] ).

There are also a few values categorized as “Points & Thresholds.”  Life Points function as hit points; the number equals the average of Constitution and Size.  Constitution Threshold is “an indicator negative Life point level that equals death.”  It is figured by looking up Constitution on a table; values range from two to five.  Damage Modifier ranges from –1 to +2 and is determined by averaging Strength and Size, then consulting a table. Encumbrance Threshold is the average of Size and Strength.  (“As Encumbrance is often measured in tenths of points, do not round off this value.”)  Sustenance Threshold is the amount of food and water a character must consume on a daily basis.  It is based on Size and is either two, three, or four.  For each point of Sustenance a character must drink 0.2 liters of water and consume the equivalent of an “average inn meal.”

Endurance is either the sum of Size plus Constitution or the sum of Life plus Will, “whichever is better.”  The rules tell us, “Endurance may be lost due to strenuous activity (running, swimming), asphyxiation (drowning), weakness (starvation or illness), or trauma (wounds).”  Fatigue is twice Endurance and represents a number of boxes on eight rows appearing on the character sheet.  As rows are filled, the character suffers a penalty on all physical and mental actions.  Endurance loss also counts as Fatigue loss, but there are activities which cost Fatigue but not Endurance.  A complete loss of Fatigue causes the character to fall asleep; a complete loss of Endurance causes the character to fall unconscious and lose a Life point. 

Approximately seventy skills are listed on the Rêve character sheet, grouped into seven categories:  General, Mêlée, Missile & Throw, Specialized, Arts, Sciences, and Draconics (i.e., magic).  Discretion (which is described like Stealth) and Vigilance (“The talent of always being on on[e]'s guard”) are among the General Skills.  There are thirteen Mêlée skills – most of which equate to weapon use but also included are Dodging, Hand-to-Hand, and Shield.  There are eight Missile Skills – all of which are weapons – including Blowgun and Whip.  Specialized Skills include Commerce (“Evaluating the value of goods, services, or local currencies”) as well as Pickpocket, Riding, and various Survival variants.  Among the Arts, there are Navigation, Surgery, Swimming, and Gaming.  (However, Singing and Dance are General Sills; Acting and Music are Specialized Skills.)  Some of the Sciences are Writing, Medicine, and Legends.

Each category of skills has a base value (either –4, –6, –8, or –11) and each skill must be improved from this negative value.  “Level zero represents mastery in a skill” and while skills do not have an “upward limit...skills beyond +11 are exceedingly rare.”  Skill values are typically indexed against characteristic scores on a Resolution Table to determine a character's percentile chance of success for any given action.  For example, riding a horse would pair Riding with Agility but calming a horse would pair Riding with Empathy.  A starting character has three thousand points (!) to distribute among Skills.  However, all costs are in multiples of five so – hypothetically – the allocation pool could have been 600 points (which is still an intimidating volume).  Some examples of skill costs include:  'Polearm' at 0 would cost 80 points, 'Thrown Axe' at 0 would cost 100, 'Juggling' at –5 would cost 45, 'Running' at +3 would cost 120.

The Rêve character sheet has a section for “Peculiarities,” such as Age, Gender, and Handedness.  Also among the Peculiarities is Birth Hour.  In Rêve, each day consists of twelve hours; each hour has 120 minutes.  “The hours have been given the names of the constellations of the zodiac” and the “same names are also used to designate the months of the seasons.”  (These names are indicated in the graphic below.)  A character's Birth Hour is similar to an astrological sign.  It has some bearing with regard to magic and can modify Luck rolls.

Dream Journeyers

Art by Rolland Barthélémy

According to its glossary, “Rêve is a game of the Journey, a game of eternal quests: journeys by road, journeys across dreams, journeys to the depths of oneself.”  Most people in the Rêve setting develop a wanderlust “in their twenties” and undertake the Journey (thus capitalized).  Some return to their starting point; others, “having found a favorable site, may found their own villages.”  In fact, “most villages or towns of any importance were founded by former Journeyers.”  As a result, many villages have a Journeyers' House:

a kind of inn where, when the custom is observed, itinerant Journeyers are lodged and fed for free.  It's a common way of helping those who are still on the road, and of showing that even if the Journey is no longer in the legs of some, it remains in their hearts.

There are cities, but very few.  We are told that most cities date “back to the Second Age.”  Yet having survived the cataclysm of the Great Awakening they have been “significantly warped in one way or another.”  More specifically, “Whether it's a weird superstition, garbled legends, or absurd cults, each city is characterized by some folly or other.”

At the end of the Second Age, the Great Empire ruled over most of human civilization.  “Over the centuries,” the rules state, “the varied tongues spoken there eventually melded into a single language, with local variations in accent and vocabulary, but nevertheless a single, common tongue.”  Rêve intimates that 'Journeyer' – the common (human) language of the Third Age – is based upon the Empire's linguistic tradition.

A rift is a type of passage between two distinct dreams.  They “are never truly fixed” and the passage is one-way.  Rifts appear as “a colored flickering, a moiré in the ambient air.”  A violet moiré represents the open end of a rift and a yellow moiré represents the terminal end.

Page 140 states, “Player Characters are by definition Journeyers.” Actually, they are 'authentic' Journeyers:

...they have at least once had the experience of passing through a rift...As a result, they are not in their world of origin and they know that their chances of ever seeing home again are infinitesimally slight.

Aside from being a Journeyer, each player character is either a True Dreamer or High Dreamer.  The primary difference is that High Dreamers are magicians.  Since it is generally believed that magicians caused the end of the Second Age and are responsible for the ensuing cataclysm, “in many places High Dreamers are ill regarded.”  It so happens that, “In some cities, anyone even suspected (or accused) of practicing this crime [is] immediately put to death.”  However, death in Rêve is not the end of the line for a player character.

As indicated in last week's post, the death of a character means that the Dragon dreaming the character wakes.  The Dragon will eventually resume its slumber and the character will return (just not in the same scenario/dream in which the character died).  From the perspective of the player character, she merely wakes up in a new life and his or her prior existence seems as if it was a dream.

She may not be the exact same age as in her dream, is surely not dressed the same way, and may not even know how to do the same things.  But it is her.

Thus the character is reincarnated after a fashion.  “If the character dies again,” according to page 58, “she will awaken again from what she thought was reality only to realize it was a dream.”  Her characteristics will remain the same as they were in the previous existence.  If a given characteristic was improved by experience, the improved value will carry over to the next incarnation.  The character's skills, however, are reassessed.  A True Dreamer might become a High Dreamer in a subsequent life, or vice versa.

Each character has an Archetype:

A character's Archetype is his essential self, the sum of everything he has been throughout his supposed anterior “lives”.  The Archetype contains all of his acquired knowledge, his global memory.
In order for a character to be complete, his Archetype must be created.

An Archetype is created by assigning 'levels' to the various skills available in Rêve.  It is important to note that, “A character's current level in a given skill has no necessary bearing on a character's Archetype.”  However, if a character's current level in a skill is less than his or her Archetype's level in that skill, the character may be able to improve said skill via an experience method called Archetype Memory:

When subjected to stress, fragments of a character's former lives inhabit her nocturnal dreams.  These stress induced dreams are so powerful that upon awakening the character will recall actual experiences – and hence skills – of a former life.

Your humble host is reminded of TSR's AMAZING ENGINE® system wherein player characters are derived from Player Cores:  an array of dice pools that can be improved and used in creating subsequent characters in the same or another “universe.”  However, given the variety of AMAZING ENGINE® universes, Player Cores are limited to determining attribute values and do not affect skills.

An Oneiric Fantasy

Art by Florence Magnin

Last month, I mentioned Rêve de Dragon, a game that merits some attention.  Originally published in 1985, I feel it qualifies as “old school.”  Of course, lacking any affinity for the French language, I must rely upon the English translation, Rêve: the Dream Ouroboros, which is based on a later edition.  (This translation is available at Lulu.)  Still, the setting remains the same and the setting is the subject of today's post.

The “reality” of the player characters is a gestalt of the dreams of Dragons (thus capitalized).  The rules employ the analogy of “collective unconscious” in describing the concept.  Each entity within the dream is an avatar of a Dragon.  “When a creature dies,” the rules state, “its Dragon (the one who dreams that creature specifically) has just awoken.”  The rules continue:  “Nevertheless, as this creature also exists in the dreams of all Dragons, the awakening of one dreamer has no other effect.”  Most entities are unaware that they exist as part of a dream.  Incidentally, in Rêve, the official title of the game master is “Dream Keeper.”

With regard to the Dragons, chapter 15 claims:

The Dragons are infinite...And if the Dragons dream the world – that is, the world from which the players' characters hail – they also dream an infinite number of others, like so many parallel worlds.

In game terminology, the word 'dream'...

...carries a double meaning.  On the one hand it means what is normally meant by the word dream, on the other it also means 'world', 'imaginary time or place', or 'adventure' or 'scenario'.  Thus by changing scenarios one changes dreams.

A 'world' might only consist of a region with anything beyond that region being part of a separate dream.  Thus, “the geographical continuity of...journeys [of player characters] are a mere minor concern.”

The history of the Rêve setting spans three ages.  In the First Age, the Dragons dreamed of themselves and also, “they dreamed a race of beings especially destined to serve them:  humanoids.”  These humanoids were usually either humans or gnomes, “but some more eccentric Dragons also created other avatars...”  Gnomes eventually discovered magical dream stones – the tears of Dragons.  As a result, humanoids began to employ magic.  The Dragons did not take kindly to this development:

In order to rid themselves of this new nightmare, they awakened en masse.  The world suffered terrible cataclysms, and nine-tenths of all creatures died.  And thus ended the First Age.

When the Dragons returned to sleep, the Second Age began.  Magic became widespread:  “one in ten humans was a magician.”  Abuse of powerful magic caused rifts in the dreams.  Eventually, this led “to a crescendo of upheavals and raging cataclysms.”  The Dragons awoke again, ending the Second Age.  We are told that...

in the Great Awakening not all the Dragons opened their eyes at the same moment, some just waking up as others were falling back asleep.  There is some continuity therefore from Age to Age in spite of upheavals and ruins.  This is why, in the collective memory of humanoids, the 'Other Age' is still remembered.

Activity in Rêve is intended to take place about one thousand years after the onset of the Third Age.  “Between a few pockets of more or less autonomous civilization lie vast wildernesses filled with ruins and mystery,” the Third Age is described.

Pages from Spellbooks (part II)

As a continuation of last week's post, here are nine more spellbook pages.  All of these images are adapted from 'real world' sources.  Again, Thoul's Paradise bears no responsibility for magical complications caused by its readership.

The Watchtowers of the Order of the Golden Dawn (such as the Great Western Quadrangle of Water, below) remind me of circuit board diagrams – as though a wizard could use such a talisman to trace a thought process for fashioning various magical effects.

The Great Western Quadrangle of Water

Similarly, the 'spirals' below might indicate the required sequence of concepts for casting a given spell.

The Dragon-Book of Essex (collage)

Spellbooks would likely provide information regarding the identification, cultivation, and preparation of material components.

Voynich manuscript

In the French role-playing game Rêve de Dragon, the spells that a magician may cast are limited by which “dreamland” the magician's astral body occupies.  For game purposes, there is a map of the Dreamlands where each dreamland is represented by a hex.  The so-called Zoroaster's Telescope reminds me of the Rêve magic system.

Telescope de Zoroastre (collage) and Enochian characters

Here are a variety of images for which I do not have particular commentary.

Magia Naturalis et Innaturalis (collage)

Sefer Raziel HaMalakh

Crowley's Goetia

Sphinx Mystagoga (collage)

Tabula Smaragdina