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Enchanted Trinkets Complete--a hardcover book containing over 500 magic items for your D&D games!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="RangerWickett" data-source="post: 2959997" data-attributes="member: 63">Avril, the plane of dreamsAvril is the moon of Trema, visible from the ground just like the earth’s moon, but Avril is not a tangible place once can simply travel to, even with the most powerful magic. Avril is unincarnated dream, floating within one’s awareness, but impossible to touch or claim, and if one were to try to make her real, one would find she was not there at all. Metaphysically, Avril is distantly coexistent with Trema. Anyone’s mind can travel to her while asleep, and many mages find ways to tap her power by leaving part of their minds in a perpetual dream state, but Avril has no physical substance. Indeed, attempting to give physical form to mana from Avril or to Avril herself is fruitless, because Avril’s essence is that of change and possibility. It is easy to change something’s form with magic from Avril, or even to change its very nature, but such magic is difficult, dangerous, and seldom understood. To all but the most devoted scholars of dream magic, however, there is little difference between using dream magic to reshape reality and using dream magic to create entirely new matter. Ultimately, it is hard to say much specific about what Avril is. It is much easier to explain what roles she has played in the world.Sentient creatures have regular interaction with Avril every night in their dreams. Here lies one of the strange contradictions of dream magic. While it is impossible to create anything physical from dream magic, when one’s mind travels to Avril, one perceives the world as wholly real and tangible. As the two worlds are coexistent despite their apparent physical separation, the dreamscapes of Avril often closely resemble the physical world of Trema, and it is not surprising that sleeping travelers can encounter people they know, enacting elaborate and impossible possibilities.  Most creature’s don’t easily dream, however, and so their memories of these journeys are vague, and mostly harmless.Sometimes, however, mana from Avril becomes tainted, and the changes it wreaks on Trema are horrifying, nightmarish. From ancient history comes the tale of Mazokan, a man who sought to bring his dead wife back to life. He used a kidnapped woman as a template, and infused her with mana from Avril, hoping his dream would be fulfilled and his wife would return to him. Instead she became a monster, roaming unleashed across the world, said by the superstitious to be the cause of nightmares today.Similarly, in more recent years, a young dragon named Trilla who possessed psionic abilities – powers known to be tied closely with the realm of dream – was tortured and experimented upon by dark elf diabolists, infusing her with demon essence. Her dreams began to manifest in the world, transforming inert matter into psychically compelled constructs that lashed out violently in their savage infancy. An attempt was made to infuse Trilla with angel essence to cure her, but this instead had the effect of empowering her dreams, strengthening them so they could survive long enough to grow into sentience. Eventually her own incarnated nightmares took her hostage and dragged her into unseen depths of the world.Psychics tap into the realm of dreams, using it as a conduit into the minds of others, or to see how the future might change, or how the past has already changed. This method is easier to learn than true temporal divination, but the results foggier. The most feared psion of history was the master of the Temple of Echoed Souls, a man who became so embittered with his life that he used dream essence to consciously reshape his soul into the darkest, most evil form possible. He then used his powers to reach into the souls of others and twist them as he had his own.As you can see, Avril has been the source of many monsters, and it seems every month on the black moon some new creature arises in response to the uncontrolled dark desires of the frightened and the weak. However, Avril is also the source of many great blessings, and unexpected boons often manifest in the world on the nights of the full moon. Always desperate to find good luck, many people use the full moon as an excuse to try out their oddest fantasies, hoping that perhaps Lady Avril will favor them. The first magic of the world is said to have come from the unpredictable weal of Trema’s moon, and – nightmarish abominations resulting from failed resurrections excepted – she is cherished by lovers around the world.It is said that if one travels deep enough into the caves beneath Trema’s surface, one will find the world is a hollow shell, and that its core is the physical body of Avril. There it lays sleeping, a giant goddess of incomprehensible vastness, waiting for the day it will emerge from possibility into reality. For the few of you who recognize the name, I finally found a place for my old friend the goddess. Check in tomorrow for the Sun, which is more than just a mass of incandescent gas.</blockquote>

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