Travel Guide to the Dream Polities
The House of Forbidden Knowledge's Adjunct Professor of Anthropological Mythogeography gives a lecture to new students on the geographical layout the traditionally nonphysical realms.
Waking Up
I suppose you’ve figured out by now that pinching yourself to see if you’re awake doesn’t work.
It’s not waking you up right now, is it? Because I can guarantee you that right now you’re dead to the world.
Let’s take a step back and try this from another angle.
If I were running some kind of massive simulation that your dreaming corpse was plugged into to make it seem like you were awake, but you were actually in a fake world of my own devising, the first thing I would do as kind of a fail-safe would be to make another real-seeming fake place for you to “wake up” in if you ever felt the need to try to put any serious effort into breaking out of the main simulation. And next I’d make a whole passel of rumors about ways to break out that, if performed correctly, would simply send you there. Like pinching yourself, maybe, so you can try to wake up if it doesn’t feel right when you do it.
I’m not saying you’re in a simulation, that there’s some sinister sentience keeping you trapped where you can’t cause any serious inconvenience. As if you could. I mean, you might as well be, because what you know about the world you’re in is stripped down to a kind of cartoon built in your head by your limited senses that have been honed by evolution to relay only such data as might be existentially relevant to keeping your meat healthy just long enough to breed, and that has as much relevance to the state of the actual universe as an actual cartoon.
Tricks you’ve learned might change how you see things, but they won’t get you Out.
Going Sideways
There’s nothing supernatural about any of this. By definition. But your current grasp of physics is cartoon physics. Which is understandable. You shouldn’t feel bad. It’s all you’ve been taught up to now. And you’ve made a huge effort to understand it. Huge personal investment. I get that. But.
Imagine that there’s a direction that you can just turn and go—but if you do, you can never really come back. Imagine that going in that direction never substantially improves your feeding or housing or breeding rights or social status in the tribe. Imagine, then, that the tendency to Walk Away is discouraged evolutionarily. Like the tendency for cliff-dwelling mountain goats to suddenly and spontaneously leap to the side while scaling a cliff-face is discouraged. The ability to do so is 100% always present, but the goats that employ that ability leave the breeding pool. Now and then a goat might try it, but they never leave records or descendants afterward. They just join the mist-shrouded vulture buffet at the bottom of the cliff.
If you’re here, you’ve taken that step. So welcome to the vulture buffet, I guess. You will never really, truly wake up again, no matter how much you pinch.
That doesn’t mean you can never again visit the waking world you grew up in. It’s just that there’s a nearly infinite number of worlds just like it, and you’re going to have to work—truly work—to find that specific one, to get back to that specific one, and to stay in that specific one for any real duration. It’s like walking an invisible, intangible tightrope that can pass right through you (or vice versa) without you knowing. If you can see the thread you can follow it, but if you blink, you’ll have to find that thread again among countless others. And then there’s the wind….
Without a firm grip on an anchor there, it will be like a dream to you and interacting with you will seem like a dream to anyone there. The mechanics of all of that, the physics and the math, will all be explained in a future class. There’s no way to avoid all of the weirdnesses and complexities, but we can try not to get bogged down.
The upshot is that people have established colonies in this larger world. And you can visit them. You are visiting them. And you should learn all about that, because your continued survival depends on it.
Naïveté
Some colonies are populated by the descendants of accidental wanderers and some were founded by conscious explorers. Many of these colonies are naive—which is a way of saying that there aren’t many members of the colony who understand the larger geography that separates them from all of the elsewheres—or at least those members who do aren’t taken seriously. Practically no one “goes sideways” on purpose. Some colonies, however, have governing bodies managed or advised by parties who understand the larger geography in some practical way and are in communication with other colonies. For some the contact is tentative and superficial, for others there are trade agreements and treaties and occasionally open warfare.
All of the colonies that actively and knowingly interact with other aware colonies in this larger geography are known collectively as the Dream Polities. It’s in no way a unified body. Most only have relationships—hostile, friendly, or otherwise—with “neighbors” for whom navigable paths have been established, and few have any true idea of the size of the network. A few colonies, however, are notable because of the extent of their connectedness.
There’s no formal board for admission as a recognized polity—at least not this week. There’s always an ongoing attempt to form an official organization, but it always accidentally snubs one group for being too small or too hidden or intentionally excludes another for being a bunch of known troublemakers and ends up causing more division and chaos than it prevents. But sometimes it’s fun to watch the power-seekers and do-gooder idealists try.
Places to Go
Faerieland
Occasionally a newly arriving student will perk up and ask questions about the Lands of Faerie with a hopeful spark in their eye and…I have little on that score but sad news.
Stories of the Fair Folk have origins in oral traditions, passed down from darker-skinned rustics in Brittany and the British Isles, but the cruel, tall, beautiful people with strange customs and made-up-seeming rules and silk clothes and the leisure class’s love of flavor over substance and music and dance and diversion and amusement at all costs, who kidnap the beautiful and talented they find alone in the woods to take home as playthings, are merely the bored colonizing aristocrats, as seen from the viewpoint of smaller, darker, working-class rustics.
These country folk passed their stories down to the children of the aristocrats that they were hired to tend and feed and entertain, and those children never got the joke. At the same time, however, the governesses and nannies would tell the children about the little brown folk that lived in the wild woods, proud but hard workers, et cetera. The Lands of Faerie, it turns out, was just the manor house and the surrounding countryside just about everywhere where there was a manor house or minor castle and surrounding countryside.
For the most part.
That said, just about every civilization has stories of hidden people of strange customs and appearance that one can stumble across from time to time, sometimes by following a non-reversible path under certain questionable circumstances of weather or astronomy. Usually these paths just lead to small naive enclaves that are dying out or drifting farther away, becoming more and more inaccessible and more and more bizarre with time. These enclaves might be of interest anthropologically or ethnographically but hardly count as polities. Usually.
Many of these “outlying colonies” (from a typical human perspective) share ancestry with modern humanity, having branched off at various points in history or prehistory. However, some branched off the evolutionary tree a very long time ago indeed and discovered dreaming on their own. At least one polity thinks of the world of modern humanity as the lost tribe that wandered away from their enclave around 70,000 years ago during a glacial maximum, which is a viewpoint as valid as any other.
Sometimes the hidden paths are tended and kept clear, if guarded. Sometimes a hidden population grows organically. Sometimes a hidden location is maintained as a refuge for people with a certain heritage, with certain political or religious viewpoints, with certain talents, or for certain types of monsters, human or otherwise.
Perhaps some of these places have now and again been conflated with some overarching Realm of Faerie, perhaps even by some of the residents. There are rumors of a time not too long gone where there were at least four simultaneous competing ersatz Seelie Courts—and probably all of them were elaborate pranks or confidence schemes.
It doesn’t help keep things straight, faerie-wise, that old Norse legends referred to two or three different tribes of jinn as elfs and/or dwarfs, and the various tribes of Scandinavian troll-kin or huldufolk—some naive, some aware—are something else entirely. It isn’t frequent that any of these groups gather in enough numbers to consider themselves a polity, however.
Dis
Dis, by virtue of the collection of dead who gather here who maintain connections with their places of origin, is one of these notably connected polities—especially with the presence of the First University, where such things are studied, and the associated faculty, who tend to inspire respect and/or terror in some combination, and who traffic extensively in favors. Dis’s influence is not inconsiderable, although the stance of our host city is rarely very aggressive or ambitious.
You will come to learn that Dis has a reputation for vast wealth, but there are no ostentatious displays. It’s not a “streets paved with gold” kind of place. But wealth tends to originate underground, coins steadily arrive in pairs—typically of the lowest denominations, however, although they do stack up—and numerous unique items of tremendous value tend to turn up here now and then. At the University we believe that the most valuable hoard is the contents of the Library, which collectively includes the practical knowledge in the forms of the faculty and the brighter students, which are also, technically, part of the Library. We tend to be free with the wealth of the Library under most circumstances, but people seeking gems and precious metals tend to find that disappointing.
The Library contains plenty of information about where to dig, how to dig effectively and efficiently, and how to smelt and refine, but it seems that certain sorts of treasure seeker don’t like to get their hands dirty.
You can invariably get to Dis by finding a hole in the ground and going down as far as you can go. Even untrained amateurs can make the journey. Famously, untrained spelunkers get there the quickest. There is a rear exit in every casket, they say. As you have determined firsthand, bringing your body along is substantially more difficult. Your body will be, must be, substantially changed in order to survive in Dis for any length of time. For some the process is reversible, after a fashion, but frequent visitors don’t tend to bother, as the process of adapting is extremely unpleasant and a properly Dis-adapted body can survive almost anywhere.
Il-Qasma tal-Biża
Il-Qasma tal-Biża is another well connected polity, though they like to keep their fame to a minimum. Il-Qasma is literally, physically present in many cities across the polities, especially port cities, with the overlaps—a building or two here, an office there, half a block somewhere else—sharing locations in their host cities but also contiguous with il-Qasma’s own space. Many seedier types attempt to use il-Qasma for shortcuts for travel through the polities, though the native governing body frowns mightily on this practice. Il-Qasma is tolerated to the extent that they are because they do not willingly or knowingly provide transit for spies, thieves, assassins, and enemy soldiers. Il-Qasma administrators work to preserve this tentative sufferance.
Many also seek to use il-Qasma’s vast network for black- and gray-market trade operations and…this is much less frowned upon as long as goods are not moved in economy-destroying, enemy-making quantities.
Il-Qasma is insidious. Their own spies and agents get everywhere and make a business of selling information and secrets if they aren’t somehow encouraged not to do so by dint of some other arrangement. But they also provide the informal channels that allow polities to interact and repair relations—or at least cooperate on ventures of mutual benefit—when all official channels have collapsed.
Il-Qasma incursions frequently have lesser echoes—locations that seem like il-Qasma incursion sites but aren’t—where the naive travelers tend to end up if they don’t truly know how to interact with il-Qasma or its citizenry and agents.
It is a mistake to think that the citizens or agents of il-Qasma have a type. As a city-state polity, they are quite diverse both in citizenry and architecture—but they know the value of a good decoy and encourage the prejudices that make such decoys effective.
The bulk of unbilocated il-Qasma has a coastal North African feel, or possibly a Mediterranean islandy flavor, with a mix of both ancient and modern elements depending on how you approach it. The aristocracy that manages the chaos descends from pirates and merchant princes, and so does their general governing philosophy.
At the University we like to say that in Dis everything has a value, but in il-Qasma tal-Biża everything has a price. It turns out that the people of il-Qasma like to say that too, even though I’m fairly sure we intend it as criticism, if not an outright insult. Perhaps they do as well. It’s not a crime to complain about things there as long as your license to complain is paid up and current. Or a key personage in charge of prosecution of such things owes you favors.
There is a glyph that marks the location of every il-Qasma interface site abroad. It is designed to be hard to notice, but it is also not intended as a label. Those infected by a particular type of psychological plague find the glyph intensely disquieting and can’t bear to remain in its presence.
The most effective way to train someone to spot the glyph is to infect them, but that typically doesn’t have a good outcome. Also, training someone to spot the glyph the hard way has been known to spontaneously instill the infection. Most il-Qasma agents and those with whom they do business just use maps and addresses, like sane people would under these circumstances.
A Few Others
The First University and the governing body of il-Qasma tal-Biża maintain their own lists of polities with which they wish to remain in contact, and of which they wish merely to remain aware, and certainly of which they wish to avoid contact. Periodically these lists are exchanged, and both parties assume that the lists are edited to conceal relationships best kept private and occasionally salted with a few traps for the unwary as payback for previous pranks.
Both lists include Madinat Almuluk Alsabea (“مدينة الملوك السبعة”), where outsiders are not tolerated, but where even the kings themselves are happy to meet even the lowliest of visitors outside the gates for a cigar and an espresso in the outer market to exchange rude jokes and exquisite verses.
The Seven Jinn Kings and certain members of the University faculty go way back. There are also many lesser jinn outposts and a number of smaller tribal colonies that track the movements of herds and flocks undetectable to normal human senses.
Also there are the largish folk of the cold wastes known by a number of different names, who are never normally found below the treeline (alpine or arctic), who have at least one enclave that counts as a polity and a number of nomadic families that are typically independent and ignorant of the larger world except for stories and legends in their largely oral traditions. Reputations for opportunistic cannibalism are common.
You must keep your mind open as well as your eyes. You are an unexpectedly clever, inexplicably sentient being. Any self-consistent reality that you can enter freely will thus be an environment where cleverness and sentience are allowed by the local physics to pop up unexpectedly. Failure to keep this fact in mind will inevitably cause a political incident.
The fact that the creatures you met ten minutes ago were violent savages does not mean that the identical-seeming creatures you will meet ten minutes from now won’t be enlightened and hospitable. It means nothing that honeysuckle vines aren’t sentient where you grew up. Tread lightly until you are familiar with where you are walking.
Things to Do
Get Lost
You should be aware that you can find yourself just about anywhere when you dream, in the presence of large varieties of objects and artifacts and creatures. Familiar locations come and go, familiar faces come and go, and sometimes a familiar face has an unfamiliar personality behind it, or perhaps a different familiar personality behind it, and then an event occurs that reveals that the person is a complete stranger, and then you go off in search of yet another location, probably a restroom.
This is what it’s like to wander unfocused and unanchored, lurching and flailing about into nearby tangent realities, interacting minimally and only with other unfocused fragments and castoff shells that are no more coherent than you. You have done this your entire life. It’s time to stop.
The mechanism for basic travel is an outgrowth of your lucid dreaming skills, and the key skill is consistency, starting with your own form. If you are no more substantial in your dreaming than a whiff of ectoplasmic marshmallowy fluff, the only realities you will find yourself able to visit will be those where the existence of indistinct entities of ectoplasmic marshmallowy fluff are consistent with the local physics.
There are plenty of those—an infinite number—but they’re not very interesting to visit and you rarely visit the same place twice.
The nature of your own form is the key to where you can go, of course. The more you understand your form down to the tiniest detail, the more you can ensure that you are intact enough to visit an actual more-or-less permanent established colony or polity instead of some sort of twisted and ephemeral dream-copy that no one you know has ever been to and you’ll likely never find a second time because its internal inconsistencies will make sure that it ravels as soon as you stop paying attention to it.
Go with no anchor and you will get lost. A lot at first. But the body you brought with you is now an anchor to Dis and the large network of places that are Dis-compatible (including your old home on the surface, though many will find your current form repulsive). Your student contract is yet another anchor, should something happen to the integrity of your physical form. You will always be able to find your way back to the University—unless you are the one of your class who will eventually be released.
My advice is to practice getting lost. When you lose focus, when your attention drifts, don’t panic. Look for and map the differences. Try to push your way back to where you were previously. And when that fails the first few thousand times, come home. In the rare case that you eventually succeed, be aware that you will likely fail the next few thousand times. It’s no big deal. Staying focused, recovering focus, just takes an enormous and truly unreasonable amount of practice. Like juggling or tightrope walking, except possibly more so.
I’d say you must get to the point where you can do it unconsciously, but that’s not accurate. You must get to the point where you are never unconscious of any detail, where you can stay conscious of where you are at all times, even when you would otherwise be distracted, exhausted, or overwhelmed, and that’s a bit different. Most people can’t do it even in their native waking world.
Find Yourself
You may eventually notice that even when you’re extremely lost, the place that you end up is still a place, though possibly not all that stable. But as a place, it will still have a location with respect to everywhere else you’ve ever been, even if there’s no direct path. Even if the distances and directions are ever-shifting, like celestial bodies in orbit. With a few extra dimensions.
In your ordinary mortal days, you probably never had much trouble finding your way back to your body after dreaming. Now things are a bit looser, and perhaps you can walk in your body—or a body—where you used to go when you dreamed, but your current body has conformed to the vicinity of Dis. This means that there is an instilled tropism for the comfort—if such a word can be used—of the sunless cavernous environs in which Dis is located. You can learn to listen to your body to feel this pull as you walk.
Also, while your contract is in force, it will always pull you to the Gate while you still have obligations.
But much more than you will feel places, you will feel flows. That push, this pull, they all have different flavors and, as you will learn, various names in various places. You will learn to taste not only the flavors of the flows themselves but also the places through which the flows have passed, even if the flow is a pull.
The more you get lost, the more you will learn these flavors, learn to feel them like moods. The further you wander from Dis, the more you will become aware of the pull of the Abyss—“l’appel du vide,” as we jokingly refer to it at the University—and the pull of salt Tiamat beyond. The other flavors that will feel the most familiar to you will be the push from the sun of your youth, which will feel different from other suns due to the spite of the 19 zabaniyah inhabiting it to which you have become unconsciously accustomed, and, of course, the oscillating push and pull from your deranged and inconstant moon.
The suns and moons of other places will feel different, of course. But any place with a starry sky will have in it the distant howling void that you know from your old home as Sagittarius A* as well as the winking red flux from baleful Algol. They will have different names in different places and different orbital paths above and below, but you will learn that locating them will be helpful to finding yourself.
The best thing you can do to orient yourself under strange skies in many cases is to lie on your back and relax, listening for familiar voices. Be aware that they may be beneath you. No mere planet will stop the flows.
If you take the time to relax and listen, you will learn to hear other landmarks as well. When you are underground you will also open yourself to feel for the various presences below—the heartbeats of familiar mountains, the mind-shredding shrieking from Tartarus (fortunately distant from anywhere you are likely to go), the rumble of rivers of molten rock and the roar of the sea of liquid iron.
Make copious notes and, once you make it home, consult the maps and orreries in the Library. They will help you figure out where you’ve been.
Make Space for Yourself
This will be a lifelong project, so you may as well get started.
You will eventually find it useful to have a place to store resources, tools, material wealth, and possibly a comfy place to rest or recuperate in the case of traumatic injury, and perhaps eventually set up a little kingdom. Real estate, if one can use the term here, can be hard to come by, especially if you care about safeguards concerning accessibility and convenience to other places you might care to visit on a regular basis. The truth is that everything changes eventually and nothing is safe forever. Thieves, burglars, and marauders are a constant—especially when you include the minuscule agents of rot and decay.
But the bigger thieves are forgetfulness and instability.
Is a place that you dream of created by your dream or do you just discover the path to it through the infinite possibilities? The same question could be asked of any creative process. But the people who live in the places you will go have an opinion on such matters. They experience and report continuity—unless you end up on the fringes where things rarely make sense. But the less stable places seem to spawn themselves just in time for you to show up and last just as long as you are there, and then fade. This appears to be true of the vast bulk of what the larger world is made of, and certainly true of the bulk of the places visited by untrained dreamers.
One theory has it that much of the “missing mass” of the universe, detected gravitically but not by any other senses or measures, is this transient fluff.
The more you learn about the physics of these places, the more you’ll learn to predict how long a place can last, and how to construct or tune your location to be compatible in the long term with the objects you’d like to store there.
One of the best ways to anchor a location is to bring objects there with properties that require a certain sort of physics to function, and use these objects to fashion an analog of a body for the spirit of the place—a kind of genius loci, perhaps—that will dictate the terms of stability.
For populated places, the genius loci can be (at least in part) the collective organism of the population, for as long as the people are unified enough for the organization to have enough of the standard characteristics of an organism. But then, as the population changes, the place where they are can experience a bit of drift, and populations that split can lose track of each other forever.
You’ll know you have achieved a bit of stability when the geography calms down—when the directions become consistent and predictably mappable, when reversing your steps takes you reliably back to a previous place. When static objects stay put.
At that point you’ll have a secret to keep and geography to defend—a bit of space for yourself, should you find it acceptable—for as long as you can encourage it to last and keep it stable.
Connecting this new place to other established places can be nearly automatic for places that are similar enough, but there’s a separate class for passages and portals, and this topic will be discussed more in that class.