Cursed Dreamcatcher
Erudite Goat
Destitute Dragon
Devouring Dungeon
Dancing lights
Golden Honey
Cave Paintings
Sweet Dreams are Made of Bees
Dragons, like goldfish, grow to fit their environment, and consequently the largest dragon floats within the vastness of the astral plane. Kilometers long, it doesn’t age, spends most of its time asleep, and it has existed for millennia, growing. By one measure, it is the greatest of all time, even though most do not know of its existence, let alone its name.
The bees know. For the bees have found its abandoned hoard and have taken it, leaving the
dragon destitute.
Sweet Dreams is an outline for a fantasy campaign, in which players encounter a sentient swarm, awaken a dragon, and discover the nature of dreams. Each session should present a memorable visual: the DM should work towards the visual without expecting the players to achieve a specific outcome: it’s nice when the visual can come at a session break, but it need not.
Prologue. At a waypoint, the party share a vision. They explore an unfamiliar cavern: moving rocks; clearing sand. They might be archaeologists, as they come across
cave paintings. These shows several figures: though painted ages before, most are recognizable as individual party members on a ragged groundline. Elves and others who don’t sleep (e.g. constructs) are not depicted, but for them there is an amorphous smudge in a different colour (a hint on the nature of dreams). No one has a restful night.
Act One (1-2 sessions?). Travelling overland in a remote and inhospitable landscape (desert, ice, lava flow—somewhere new for the players), the party encounters corpses of lone pack animals, perhaps an occasional humanoid with ripples beneath rotting flesh, shambling in a direction just off their current path. If attacked, they can be destroyed, and out pours a swarm of bees, in the same direction the corpses advance. Following escaping bees or the direction of corpse-travel will lead to a giant throne, on which sits the Swarm. So many separate swarms have gathered, the bees have become sentient, and want to stay that way. The Swarm adopts the casual form of a lonely, brooding monarch, presenting as male. Its resonant telepathic voice, separate from the humming, says, “Take a seat, please. You may call me Lord Dufour.”
Act Two (4-6 sessions?). The Swarm offers to hire the party for a series of tasks (enough for a pattern to emerge, but not so the players become bored). Each task involves combat (clearing an area of the desolate landscape of some monstrous creature) and an engineering problem – taking a giant cable (natural fiber, coiled on a giant spool), and tying it between two points. Those points might be a kilometer apart, the light thin cord, always perfectly measured, needing to be stretched and tied to precise points on other cables.
The Swarm is building a
dreamcatcher, cursed because it captures all dreams and not just evil ones. This won’t be obvious initially. As they work within the cables, the party does not sleep properly. Those that should dream won’t. (For D&D, players might roll 1d6-CON modifier at the end of each long rest, and keep a tally; this is their
sleeplessness, and while it may have no game effects, its existence may create appropriate concern among players).
The filament they is strong and exceptionally light, and if cut immediately begins to fray (a Mending spell can help)—a valuable treasure.
Payment for the tasks is in
golden honey: made not from pollen, but from the dreaming dragon’s gold. The honey tastes transcendent, is very heavy, and needs to be carried in buckets (brought to the players by bee-corpse-mules). Spending it, and transporting it, will be a minor challenge in itself, but Dufour is a generous patron.
Ideally, the players are not initially aware of what they are constructing. Mapping the cords or an aerial view, would reveal the shape. At night zigzagging along the filaments is ball lightning, trying to escape. These
dancing lights are dreams of those currently within the reach of the dreamcatcher, and show it working. If cords are cut, the lights scream and go out. If captured, grappled, the one holding the light can choose to fade and emerge at the dreamer’s location. Exploring this can be fun, as players suddenly emerge in bedrooms, etc. The choice (“you see a vision of ---; do you move towards it?”) risks separating the party, but the choice and the fade-time keep it navigable.
Act Three (2 sessions?). At the center of the dreamcatcher, a different light has appeared: brighter, larger, fighting to escape, radiating menace and clearly threatening, signified by low-level earthquakes that grow in intensity and range. This is the dream of the great gold dragon, pulled from the astral plane, for which the catcher was constructed. It is not what the Swarm was expecting: the dream caught is itself cursed, as few can fathom the wrathful imagination of a dragon who has believed for millennia it is the G.O.A.T. Cutting the catcher now causes psychic screams as the escaping dream bursts ever outwards. The dreamcatcher was a means of finding the dragon, and getting to it, but now waking the dragon is the only way to eliminate its dream. Players may choose to work with or against the Swarm at this point, but eliminating the dream is only possible by waking the dragon, which means walking into its dream.
Some parties might plunder Dufour’s hive and the source of honey, seeing him as a foe: they can trace the hive’s labyrinthine path, fighting swarm after swarm, as bees emerge from hive walls to devour the party, though this ignores the threat of the dragon’s dream.
Act Four (6-8 sessions?). The PCs are again in a long narrow cave, and on the wall they see the same painting as before. Not quite the same: if party composition has changed, that is now reflected in the picture painted long before. The ragged groundline is seen to be part of the dragon’s back, on which they stand. There is darkness ahead, the cave’s exit, which leads to a vast rocky plain under a starless night.
This is the dragon’s back. Waking the dragon from the surface is impossible – it is too vast; it has become landscape. Possibly there are mining towns with astral prospectors. To wake the dragon, the party must enter it (choose an orifice) and attack the pineal gland.
The travelling to the base of the destitute dragon’s skull will be most easily accessed from the esophagus, as digestive juices (along the central row in the map below) seep into clothes and armor, and begin to eat the players. The
devouring dungeon is a mixture of the biological and the metaphorical (as with Pinocchio or Jonah). Rooms correspond to organs:
.......................................................... lungs – heart
..............................................................|
.............intestines – stomach – esophagus – mouth/sinus
..............................................................|
........................long tail – lumbar – thoracic – cervical [pineal] – brain
Climbing the spine to the pineal (in the cervical area) gives a destination: exploration combines with combat as the party bypass antibodies or parasites. If the party has some dreamcatcher cord with them, climbing the spine or following an Ariadne-like thread out becomes easier. Once the dragon awakens (momentarily, before settling back down again), the dream-cave that brought the party here will disappear. There are still two ways to return.
If they approach the heart, each character will see the location as their own personal perfect place. Step into the heart, wish where you will be, and behold! You are there. The dragon’s heart is pure, and on your return, you will be accepted and welcomed to whatever degree you truly desire. This is what Dufour wants, to return to a transformed world where bee-ings like it live peaceably and thrive. The party may want to stop that outcome occurring. If any of the Swarm has come with the party (or gone ahead, or followed behind), that is its destination. Anyone who wants a happily-ever-after can have one, a gift from the gold dragon’s heart.
Or they can enter the brain, which manifests as a huge spellbook, lying open on which they walk. On the next page is a library, the dragon’s memory. Each player finds one book they can take with them: a spellbook, encyclopedia volume, magical manual, scroll of secrets. Work with players to ensure each gets one they like. Here also is a goat, chewing away at a single tome, the covers of previously digested books strewn about. The
erudite goat is learning with each bite, taking the dragon’s knowledge for itself. The goat is an eternal embodiment of the dragon’s ego feasting on itself. If the party removes the recalcitrant goat, the dragon’s pride will no longer be destructive, and a powerful being enjoys a happier eternity. The goat can be reasoned with, and fawning flattery will motivate it to cast a spell to return the party home.
Epilogue. A responsible party will destroy the dreamcatcher, if it still exists. At their next waypoint, a bee-ing brings them a free round of drinks.