The forest is immense and ancient beyond reckoning. Its trees stretch so high and so broad that their canopies are lost in mist. Half-heard whispers are borne on the breeze, and the stars are endless rivers of light. This is the Wardwood — or how it would have been if men had never walked the earth.
This is the Dreaming, and guardians wake within it once again.
The Dreaming is a shared consciousness that guardians enter when they sleep.
Though they do not remember their lives in the Dreaming while they are awake (or vice versa), their experiences here are an important source of their wisdom and power.
You do not need a human character or accepted character profile to RP in the Dreaming. You only need a pet!
More information about the Dreaming:
- Guardians are able to interact with the Dreaming when they become fawns. While totems, they appear in the Dreaming as non-roleplayable wisps of light.
For the sake of convenience, all guardians (and other pets) can speak with one another using words inside the Dreaming, even if they aren't awakened.
There are no humans in the Dreaming. The Dreaming's version of the Wardwood exists as if untouched by humans throughout history.
Guardians resume their experiences in the Dreaming whenever they fall asleep. To them, their Dreaming life seems continuous and uninterrupted.
It is rare for guardians to die in the Dreaming, but if they do, they return to the waking world and can never enter the Dreaming again.
The Dreaming and the waking world seem connected somehow. Important events reverberate throughout both realities, often first in the Dreaming, which may give guardians a prescient sense of things to come.
Guardians do not remember their "other life" while Dreaming and vice versa. However, they may experience feelings of premonition, deja vu, and instinctive recognition of and kinship with other guardians in the waking world based on their time spent in the Dreaming.
The Dreaming's version of the Wardwood is unfathomably vast; no guardian has ever reached its limits, barring where it meets the ocean. It contains a variety of features including rivers, lakes, open meadows, hills and valleys, caves, and seaside cliffs and rocky coasts. As one travels northward, the seasonal forest becomes noticeably colder and more coniferous. Mystical sights such as trees grown to immense sizes and luminous clusters of will-o-the-wisps are common.
Ordinary forest animals also live in the Dreaming, but their intelligence level is normal and they cannot speak. It is generally understood that only beings that have been influenced by the magic of the Wardwood (including guardians, companions, and familiars) are able to talk.
Humans know little, if anything, about the Dreaming. Hedge witches occasionally catch glimpses of it while sleeping, but cannot enter it. Some theorize that the Dreaming is the source of all magic, is the ancestral home of spirits, or both.
Totems can arise from relationships in the Dreaming, suggesting that it may, in some sense, be realer than we can ever understand...
Guardian herds
Although we currently don't officially recognize herds through herd land subforums or additions to certs, you are welcome to roleplay your guardian as being in a herd and can organize it however you want. If you're interested, we recommend using the plotting subforum to find a herd, or start your own herd concept thread and begin recruiting. Herds do not require staff approval at this time, but make sure your concept makes sense in the setting and follows the general RP rules!
