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.