Dream History
The Great Loss
It was a day just like any other in the City of
Underlight. In Threshold experienced Dreamers and the
Newly Awakened met and intermingled. In the Houses
meetings were being held and reports were being made. In
the lands Mares were being hunted and essences
collected.
And on the fringe of the Dreamstate, a team of Master
DreamSmiths and Dreamwrights called the Overscanners,
led by a Master DreamWright Elder named Ibioc, were
trying to find a way to repair the city walls and keep
the Mares out once and for all.
The Overscanners began their effort by forming a group
meditation and reaching out with their minds in order to
probe the weakened sections of the city walls. They had
no idea that the pressure on the other side of that wall
had grown far stronger since the onset of the Nightmare
Wars. The City of Dreams, an encapsulated object within
the mass torrent of chaos, was under severe pressure and
ready to pop.
And that's just what it did. Before these Master
Dreamwrights could realize it, the city walls blew apart
and a roaring wave of consciousness flooded into
Underlight! The Overscanners were torn asunder, and
their minds blasted apart within the space of a
heartbeat.
The Dorsal Rift was born.
The monstrous wave of consciousness slammed through the
Dream, blowing through the portals and rushing toward
Threshold. Dreamers caught by it's sudden onslaught were
also utterly slain, their very souls shredded by the
waves of raw psychic essence! The wave hit the Houses
and even their mighty walls could not hold it back. It
reached Sanctuary and wiped through it before the
screams could even take the air.
Within a period of minutes, every single Dreamer in the
city was utterly slain.
The city itself began to spread and shake as the Dorsal
Rift grew. Alerted to the disaster while in the waking
world, the remaining Dreamers and Master Dreamwrights
entered the Dream. There they found utter carnage; the
Dreamstate rippled with raw uncontrolled power and the
death essences of Dreamer and Mare alike littered the
lands.
Fighting the continuing waves of consciousness, every
surviving Master DreamWright - the last of their kind -
gathered and forced their way outward toward the Dorsal
Rift. Among them were FreeSoul, Illuminate and Free
Spirit alike, joined in a last-ditch effort to save
Underlight. The City was quickly being pulled apart and
would soon lose all cohesion if the rift wasn't closed.
Arriving at the Dorsal Rift, the Master Dreamwrights
found a massive gape in the City, and beyond it roiling
and angry chaos. All that had been accomplished in the
Dream since it's first day was on the verge of being
lost.
The Master Dreamwrights did as their fellows the
Overscanners had done that very day... they formed a
group meditation and began to focus on the rift. They
reached out, pulling at the edges of the rift as they
strengthened the city walls. With a heroic effort of
will, this group of Master Dreamwrights stopped the
Dorsal Rift from spreading and began to pull it closed.
For hours they labored to gain control of it, pulling it
tighter and tighter, until the moment came when they
might completely seal it.
It was in that moment that they were lost. Again the
Master Dreamwrights had failed to understand the ways in
which exterior pressures bear down on the city. In the
moment they made their last thrust to close the Dorsal
Rift, a second rift blew open in the exact opposite side
of the city... and the Caudal Rift was born. A second
wave of consciousness erupted from it, this one crashing
down the lands, through Threshold, and straight into the
Dorsal Rift. The Master Dreamwrights who had nearly
succeeded in closing the Dorsal Rift were caught up and
destroyed, their psyches ripped apart and blasted out of
the city. This wave of consciousness, while somewhat
smaller than the first, was just as deadly to the
Dreamers caught in its path. Large teams of Dreamers, at
work collecting the essence of their slain comrades and
trying to repair damage done were caught in this second
wave and slain.
The Great Loss is aptly named. Nearly every Dreamer had
been killed, and the realms of Cloudsbreak were a
relative wasteland, populated only by a few fortunate
survivors.
Now, months later, those who've newly Awakened into the
Dream find the city called Underlight a land of
opportunity and danger. As the Great Houses are rebuilt
and research into the nature of the Dream continues, as
the Mare menace grows and new threats arise, new
Dreamers must ask themselves where they stand... and
what they'll fight for.