Ruler: Soros, the Dreamlord Centerpoint: Castle Lacarrel Inhabitants: Morou, Dreams, Nightmares, Waukir Places of Interest: The Dreamstorm, the Brin, Kiruwanne Castle, Castle Arduwyn, Castle Lacarrel, Mirai Township, the Goldenwoods.
The Shifting World lives up to its name, from its sky to its terrain. Almost all of its expanse, including some of the places of interest, are constantly in flux between forms. Anyone who sleeps and dreams on either Halci or the Hollower's Throne has seen glimpses of the Shifting World; this is the only realm of the Children of Night that encompasses the Hollower-side of the planet. Crossing into the Dreamrealm is a whole different matter.
It is impossible to reach the Dreamrealm without the guidance of one of Soros's children, the Dreamwalkers or Morou. Morou tend to be either whimsical or dark, and have strange ways of leading non-Morou into the Dreamrealm, from blindfolding them to drugging them to...more pleasant ways. Some flashier Morou even decide to shock their charges by widening their mouths and swallowing them. The body of the Morou is the conduit into the Shifting World, and it can shape the path any way it wishes.
Most people come to the Dreamrealm to find Soros; even its fellow deities have to ask the help of a Morou in order to enter the Shifting World. Some few others, mostly Magi, take vacations in Mirai Township and the Goldenwoods, while dark Morou love to drag the unwary into the Brin and the Dreamstorm.
Mirai Township, often called the Twisted City, is usually situated in the blue-green depths of a valley, though it has occasionally been seen sprawling along the sides of a mountain or with its spires barely peeking up from the water of a lake. It is one of the most constant places in the Shifting World, as the terrain changes all the time but buildings tend to stay more or less the same. It is a huge, chaotic expanse of manor houses, hovels, statues, fountains, towers, churches, barns and beerhalls from a thousand time periods, drawing on the architecture of both Halci and the Throneworld, as well as a few strange bits from Ynith Cree. The buildings morph slowly into different styles; it is not unusual to come across a tavern whose west side is in painted, blocky High Ruenic style and whose east side has the soaring arches and spiny crenelations of the Hollower Lieres.
Large swaths of the Township are in ruin from the long-ago attacks of the Dreamraker Discordants, and since the Morou were decimated by those attacks as well they never bothered to rebuild those sections. Walking among them is an exercise in weirdness, for some of the stones bleed and others are in the process of melting slowly into the ground, while strange blossoms spring up around others. Small Nightmares make these ruins somewhat hazardous to explore.
The natives of Mirai Township are mostly Morou, but there are both sentient Dreams and Nightmares (both called Waukir) and visitors from other realms. Beyond that, life goes on just about the same as in a normal city.
Bordering the Township wherever it happens to be is the Goldenwood, which is only occasionally a forest. It gets its name from the faint golden glimmer that surrounds everything within its confines, even when it decides to be a seacoast or a glacier field. Most of the time it manifests itself as a mixture of grasslands and autumn-colored deciduous forest, and is home to a large assortment of wild Dreams and minor Nightmares. It is more dangerous than the Township ruins, but usually not deadly even to the unwary.
Kiruwanne Castle is always situated on the side of a mountain, though which mountain is subject to change. It is a massive collection of spires and sweeping buttresses, built of red and violet stone and a strange material that shines like burnished bronze. The sky above it is always in the late stages of sunset-color, no matter what color the rest of the sky is being at the moment, and the ground around it is always carpeted in tiny bronze-colored blossoms. The base of the castle itself becomes less building-like and more plantlike, the stones and bronzework meshing into roots that disappear into the ground. A portcullis shaped like an immense bronze spiderweb closes off all entry into it, though on rare occasions a petitioner at the portcullis will be let in by a stooped, dark-skinned woman in a deep violet robe. It is the home of the eldest Morou, according to legend, as well as the archive of all the dreams ever dreamed on Halci and the Throneworld.
Castle Arduwyn is a very different place. It always overlooks Mirai Township, though from a distance; no matter where the Twisted City is, the landform known as Arduwyn's Ridge arches up from the ground so that the master of the Castle at its pinnacle can look down on the other folk of the Dreamrealm. The Ridge is only twice as wide as the path that leads up to the castle, and twists and winds unnaturally. Its sides are smooth and glassy black, entirely sheer. The Castle Arduwyn itself is a single white tower surrounded by a filigreed wall half the height of the spire. Its master, the Duke of Winter, is a Nightmare Waukir from the time of the Elven Descent, and rides out frequently on his ice-colored horse with his ice-colored hounds to capture Morou and mortals and warm his castle with their blood. Sometimes he even manages to cross over into the waking worlds.
Castle Lacarrel used to change form as much as anything else in the Dreamrealm. However, since the time of the Demon Wars, it has been obscured almost entirely by the Dreamstorm crafted by Soros's brooding and rage.
The Dreamstorm is perhaps the most frightening thing on any of the Children of Night's demiplanes. It has carved a desolate swath out of the verdant, colorful landscape of the Shifting World; the strip of land around it--the Brin--is barren and grey and flecked with the white bones of dead Nightmares, and the sky above it is equally colorless. Its epicenter is Castle Lacarrel, and occasionally the spires of the castle can be seen peeking out of the very center of it, but usually the Dreamstorm is too strong for it to be visible.
The Dreamstorm itself is a spiral storm with a vortex at the center, a whirling grey mass of wind, dream-debris, dead Dreamraker souls and dying Nightmares that scours the land and wails with the Dreamlord's million throats. Phantasms form and dissipate within it, voices whisper below the constant cacaphony... Any mortal who comes within sight of the Dreamstorm will be drawn toward it inexorably as it shows him or her the faces of lost loved ones and calls out with their voices. Morou and Dreams avoid it like a plague, for they feel the same pull; Nightmares are drawn to it equally, but they can harness the power of its rage and grow stronger if it does not suck them in and obliterate them first. If a mortal resists the Dreamstorm's attempt to pull them in, it will notice them and lash out with the closest spiral arm in an attempt to pull them in physically. Any terrain an arm of the Dreamstorm passes over becomes another stretch of the Brin, flat and featureless and grey; any being that it touches is drawn within to feed its wrath. The distance between Mirai Township and the Dreamstorm grows smaller and smaller each time the Township changes position, and many Morou suspect that it will eventually engulf all of the Shifting World if Soros is not pulled out of his mourning in time.
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