Eight Edenic Truths of Eventide

By Oliver Ryan

1. DREAMPUNKS ARE HALF-DREAM, HALF-REALITY PEOPLES DIFFERENT FROM THEIR COUNTERPARTS. Though they bleed, eat, and die like everyone else, dreampunks are different at a spiritual level. Half-dream and half-reality means they weren’t evolved or created like other races throughout the cosmos. Likewise, the rules that govern many dreampunk races—like Yuan-Ti being evil—do not apply to this surreal Eden. That being said, dreampunks do have one core difference compared to other races: they do not dream when they sleep, and no one knows what happens to their souls when they die. Necromancy doesn’t work to bring dreampunks back to life either, nor do spells like speak with dead ever reach them.
2. THE EDEN UNDER EVENTIDE IS ECLIPSED BY A PORTAL TO DIFFERENT PLANES. Yet another of this world’s mysteries is its constant eclipse. No magic nor device has ever disturbed its path, and it never fails to at least partially eclipse the Eden’s sun. This eclipse is also the source of most of the world’s life. The immortals of antiquity fell through, and now the Realities enter the plane through this same entrance. While attempts have been made to block this hole, never have they succeeded, and it is a fear for many dreampunks that eventually something will invade that will spell their end.
3. FEY COURTS PLAGUE THE DREAMPUNKS WITH CRUEL TRICKS OUT OF A NEED FOR SUPERIORITY AND LOVE. Before the dreampunks were born, the Glass Court haunted the half-asleep immortals. Though they’ve long since lost their precious toys, they continue their games with the dreampunks, kidnapping them, trapping them, and torturing them until their prey either loves them or is killed for entertainment. A second fey court, the Court of Wine, does much the same to the dreampunks, but also wages a fairy tale war with the Glass Court. The debaucheries of these Outsiders is the source for many of the dreampunks’ collective woes.
4. THE WEAVE IS WARPED BY THE HALF-DREAMS OF DEAD IMMORTALS, MAKING MAGIC STRANGE. So great was the combined magical force of the dying immortals that their pent-up dreams disturbed this plane’s Weave. Mutations in magic are frequent. Non-traditional forms of spellcasting, magic manifests most often such as psionics are disturbingly common—and extraplanar influences, particularly from the entreated Mechanus, leaking Far Realm, and the courts of both fey and genie alike, all of whom are attracted to this plane’s wyrd magic, has led to unique understanding of how the Weave works. Should this power ever be mastered by the dreampunks, the potential they have to affect both their world and the wider multiverse is nearly beyond compare.
5. LITTERING THE EDEN UNDER EVENTIDE ARE SOMNOLENT SUPERNATURAL DANGERS LEFT OVER FROM A NIGHTMARE WAR. The warped Weave has littered the Eden Under Eventide with countless supernatural regions and unearthly roads. Many dreampunks throw themselves into these places hoping to learn more about their shared experience, while others stick to the arcane pathways which bind all outposts to the central City. Much of dreampunk society is based on trying to control, live with, or gain mastery over these supernatural regions—an impossible task for a likewise impossible people. Also known to the dreampunks is the reason for the violent themes shared by many of these supernatural regions. The shadar-kai call it a Nightmare War, which played out early in the evolution of the Eden Under Eventide. What this Nightmare War exactly was it never fully detailed, though rumor speaks that this is the reason shadar-kai teach the Half-Light Trinity as they do.
6. THEOLOGY KEEPS THE DREAMPUNKS BOUND TOGETHER JUST AS WELL AS IT KEEPS THEM IN CONFLICT. It is well known that the Raven Queen, under her many occult names, is what led to the genesis of the Eden Under Eventide. It is also known that she is not present in the world, having left behind only Her feathers—the shadar-kai themselves. These shadar-kai have made the central City of the world a theocracy, binding together the many dreampunks with faith in the Half-Light Trinity. Though this religion promotes a feeling of shared community and experience, the looseness of it creates wildly varied interpretations. Driven by their own beliefs in the Monarch, the Soothed, and the Sublime Light, dreampunks sometimes find themselves on evil paths or (literally) becoming monsters themselves. If this bothers the shadar-kai, they show it not; and a few rumors tell that these diametric and warped understandings of the Half-Light Trinity are subtly encouraged.
7. BLUE-SKY COAL IS WHAT KEEPS THE DREAMPUNKS SAFE IN THEIR TWILIT CITIES. When mortality washed throughout the glooming forests of the Eden Under Eventide, the elements themselves became a churning, chaotic swirl. Water broke apart stone, wind blew down forests, avalanches crushed all manner’s of budding flower. And, for the first time, ancient trees were burned, and across half-dreamed eons all that was left behind was deep-reaching veins of phantasmal, blue-sky coal. Burning this coal has led to a mystical and industrial revolution. The central city has grown gargantuan, the power of coal-fueled light beating back the darkness and giving the dreampunks agency over the night-sworn reaches of their world. As technology continues to grow side-by-side with magic’s warping, the dreampunks stand poised on the cliff’s edge, preparing to hurdle themselves into the void that is a future built from their dreams and not those of their ancestors.
8. TRAGEDY IS COMMON, BUT ALWAYS LEADS TO PEACE. The most common stories in the Eden Under Eventide are tragedies in all their many forms. A somber mood is one held by most dreampunks, even if it is sometimes buried under a hoard of wanderlust or hope. The shadar-kai teach this as good, for it means that the dreampunks lives have meaning—for themselves, their descendents, and for the Raven Queen too. Mayhaps, they say, if the dreampunks can find a way through all the tragedy, they too will become divine and join the Sublime Light. Though this teaching is considered by the dreampunks to be foolish, it has created a special mindset: one that seeks to turn all woes into future weal.

By L-E-N-T-E- S-C-U-R-A