THE DREAM GATE (any suggested elven name?)

Marco Bizzarri (bizzarri@fatboy.sssup.it)
Claudia Rege Cambrin (cregecambrin@list.it)

The construction of the Dream Gate dates back to almost 3000 before
the crowing of Sigmar, in the ancient age when the Elves were
still numerous on the Old World. In that time, a group of them,
followers of the Dream God Sarrel, asked him a place to construct a
town, in his name. The Dream God was pleased, and indicated a place,
telling them that there the Living and the Dream Worlds were much
closer than normal. And he also showed where they could find the stone
which they should use to build it, a strange, black stone...

The Elves constructed the town, using a the stone, black as night,
because they wanted a night where they could dream. And they erected a
temple to the Dream God, to guide them in the oneiric dimension. And
they called their town the Dream Gate, and themselves Dreaming Elves.
And they grew in the lore of the Dream God, and of his realm; and he
welcomed them within it, because they were good, and they didn't use
his gifts to make evil actions.

But they wanted the Dream Kingdom to become more accessible to them;
the thought to construct permanent gates, drawing up the Dream
Kingdom; the first permanent gate was constructed in 3500 B.C.;
unfortunately, they drew up also other worlds, which they should have
left away: the world of the Dead, and the Void.

A few Elves, expecially the clerics of Sarrel, warned their brothers
not to proceed in that way, but most of the Dreaming Elves, moved by
an insatiable thirst of knowledge, were deaf to their words.

And so, the Dreaming Elves grew in the forbidden lores of the
Necromancy and Daemonology; the Dream Gate was filled with walking
skeletons, flesh golem, spirits of the dead, tamed daemons; the Dream
Gate become the Nightmare Gate; and the wrath of Sarrel against them
grew.

And then, one night of the year 2700 B.C., while the clerics were
celebrating the divine services, the light of Morrslieb hit the
temple, making it shine with an ominous light; the temple doors shut;
Morrslieb was engulfed by an inscrutable darkness, and an unnatural
silence fell upon the Nightmare Gate.

And then, the Nightmare began.

The hordes of skeletons, golem and daemons freed themselves from the
domination of the Elves, and revolted against their old masters.
Monstrous cries rose to the sky until, at the sunrise, the temple
doors opened: what remained of the town was ruins; almost all the
inhabitants has been killed, and the few remaining had become mad.

When the clerics left the temple, the doors shut after them: a clear
sign that Sarrel wanted them to leave the Dream Town.

So it was. The clerics came away, to never return.

PHOTOPOLIS, The City of the Lights

Many years passed. There was the fall of the Elves, and the rise of
the Humans. And then, one night of the found_of_ruins, Hellen
colonizers which were looking a place to establish a new colony, saw
strange lights during the night, moving along the coast. The next day
they landed near the elven ruins: it was a good place to construct a
town, with a natural harbour, fertile plains, and good reserves of
water easily accessible.

But no one inhabitated it. They explored the place, and found the
ruins of an ancient black town, destroyed by an unknown power. They
decided to construct there their town, and called it Photopolis, which
in Hellan Classic Language means City of Lights.

But just that night, living dead attacked them, killing half of the
colonizers. The survivors tried to escape from the town, only to find
that their ships have been burned.

They prayed the Lord of the Death, Thanation, and asked him to help
them: they have always been faithful to him, they buried their dead as
he taught them, they never recalled the souls of the dead, they had
never practiced the forbidden arts.

They prayed from the sunrise to the sunset. At the sunset, one of them
was hit by a vision: he saw a place in the ruins, a place where all of
them should go. He guided them there, while the undead once again were
rising from their tombs.  And they arrived at a circular building:
they entered, and as soon as they did this all them saw: the town
around them was not dead, but full of life; man (could they call those
creatures man?) of unnatural beauty walked along the streets, talking
with musical and incomprehensible voices, devoting themselves to
painting, sculpture, and... dreaming.

Eager to soothe the souls of those dead, they erected a new temple to
Thanation, on the ruins of the old one, and consecrated the ground
around the temple, making it a graveyard.

The next night the living dead did not attacked them, neither the
successive ones.

LUCINIA

When Photopolis came under the Remean domination, in the
starting_of_remean_domination, the name of the town was changed from
to Lucinia (the meaning, in Remean Classic, is the same).  The Remeans
did not dare to touch the Thanation temple, understanding it as a
different name for their own Death God, Morr. They enlarged the
original temple, and also the graveyard around it.

LUCCINI

Time passed, until the name of Lucinia became Luccini. One terrible
day, in the destruction_of_temple, an earthquake destroyed the
original temple; the following night hordes of skeletons attacked the
town; the brave clerics of Morr could do few against such a force, and
once again the survivors prayed Morr to help them. The captain of the
local garrison, Don Antonio da Luccini, swore to build to Morr the
greatest temple of all times, if he once again had helped his
followers. With him the people of Luccini swore.

The next night, the hearths of the Luccini people, strong of the Morr
faith, wasn't afraid of the living dead. They fought with valor, and
with the sunrise came also the victory.

They kept their word, and started erecting the Cathedral; it was
interrupted many times during the years, but at last was finished in
the new_temple_finished.

------------------------


Something more:

In my own campaign, Dreaming Elves still exists, even if they've been
cursed from Sarrel, and now they live in a uninterrupted dream.

I've developed some about the cult of Morr in Luccini; the stuff is
not translated, but the fundamental ideas are the following (I know
something of this is also in the Alfred Nunez clerics of Morr, but I
didn't read it when I wrote this stuff, I promise!)

- there're two orders of the clerics of Morr: the Custodes Portarum
(the Guards of the Doors) and the Custodes Vagantes (Wandering
Guards). The first dedicate themselves to the divine services, to the
graveyards, etc.  etc. Most of the Morr Clerics you can found within a
temple are Custodes Portarum (singular: Custos Portarum). The second
is dedicated instead to the hunting of the Necromancers, the grave
robbers, etc. They've no fixed place, and wander all the nations. The
most famous of them is Don Antonio Silari, who became famous among the
people when he wrote the story of its wandering and hunting. The name
of the book is "Al servizio di Morr" (In the Service of Morr).

- the temple of Morr is a large construction in the center of
Luccini. It has four doors, which are always held open. This means
that the souls from all the four points of the world can come to Morr.