The Sigil of the Dreamlands is an arcane design, used by
mystics, astrologers, and augurs to thin the vale between
the earth and the mirror world of the Dreamlands which human travelers
will find both familiar and strange. The Dreamlands
can be a place of beauty and wonder as travelers sail
on galleys across the bright blue Cereneria sea, across the
sky to the cloud kingdom of Serannian, to the glowing moon,
and even through nebulae beyond. But, the Dreamlands can also be a place of
danger and dread, especially if one passes
into the realm underfoot that is illuminated by the mysterious
death-fire phosphorescence. From the Great Abyss,
to the Vale of Pnath, to the Vaults of Zin, the underworld
is home to ghasts, gugs, night-gaunts and
much worse. The sigil itself is emblematic of
planetary alignments and of a lodestone that might help guide
wonderers on their journey across the Dreamscape. Though humans
often interface with the Dreamlands through sleep, this sigil is used to mark
physical passages to it. Those passages are often only found
in dangerous and inaccessible areas of the earth.
This sigil's orientation indicates passages to wondrous cities,
the black underworld, or to some other alien and exotic
landscape. Pay no head to counterfeit conjurors
who claim to commune with the shade of Houdini, the Dreamlands are not
the land of the dead. They are much less, and yet simultaneously
much more. Further, give no
credence to roadside fortunetellers, mystics, and mediums
who claim this sigil confers upon them some gift of foresight.
The vagaries of the Dreamlands are too robust to be contained in the
tarot or Ouija. No clockwork simulacrum or
mechanical Turk, even when blazoned with the sigil of the Dreamlands
could channel the apparitions of those resting in their graves.
Be forewarned, those who call upon the power of the sigil to
wonder the Dreamscape must take care, lest the drift into
blissful, yet fanciful, rumination of a world unattainable
and never return.
"The Sigil of the Dreamlands" - an excerpt from the "Encyclopedia
Magicka" written by Jasper M. Griggs, professor
of anthropology at Miskatonic University.
