Difference between revisions of "Belerin's Codex Of The Planes 4"

Revision as of 13:40, 19 January 2003

4

While the ability to see reflections of the physical world proved of great
use to the early dream walkers, it still suffered from limitations.  Nothing
found in the Dream could be brought back to the mortal world by the dreamer.
And, while dreamers have the powers of their mortal selves, it was apparent
that powerful residents of the dream had some ability to simply ignore such
effects.  (A possible explanation for this is that dreamers have an
incorporeal, illusion-like existence there, so its most powerful denizens
can simply "disbelieve" in their existence!)  Finally, dreamers were limited
by the odd nature of the flow of time while sleeping.  Sometimes, their trip
to the Dream would seem to last months -- others, merely a few breaths.  

There is some evidence the alatharya had an interest in the Dream as well,
and brought back a plant native to the Dream to Avendar.  This plant, a
mushroom known as 'ketsari fungus', has a wide variety of unusual
properties, most relating to the Dream.  It is an open question whether the
alatharya used the fungus in the way that we moderns do, but I am of the
opinion that they did not, in fact, intend it for the use we put it to, for
reasons we shall discuss shortly.  

Ketsari fungus tends to grow in unusual places.  Oddly, there appears to be
neither rhyme nor reason to the conditions under which it will flourish. 
Those who tend it claim that they can sense where it will grow, and plant
accordingly.  Other scholars, of whom I am one, believe that ketsari fungus
thrives in places who have some correspondence to the places in the Dream
where ketsari fungus thrives.  Thus, if ketsari fungus grows only in a two
feet plot of soil on the edge of a forest, perhaps this is because in the
Dream, the same spot is a rotting stump covered by wild ketsari.