Dreams are not an uncommon trope in fantasy settings, but the first recorded nightmare haunts us to this day.
Picture by Carl Richard Lepsius - Denkmaeler aus Aegypten und Aethiopien, Band V, Neues Reich, S. 69, Public Domain, File:Giseh Traumstele (Lepsius) 01.jpg - Wikimedia Commons
The first reference to dreams appear in non-royal Letters to the Dead around 2100 BC. These mssives were written on pottery, left in tombs of dead relatives, asking for favors for the living. Of those, two letters mention dreams. The first is on behalf of a widower, appealing to his dead wife to visit him in a dream in the hopes that she will cure his illness. But the second one is far more sinister, and it's nothing less than the origin of nightmares.
Heni addressed his letter not to Seni, but to his dead father. He asked his father to stop Seni from tormenting him in nightmares, in which the servant was always "looking at" him. "Do not allow him to do me harm," wrote Heni.
Did Seni stop visiting? Did Heni's father intervene? Was Heni haunted until the end of his days? We may never know. But we do know that Seni is the first recorded reference to a nightmare, and in that gray space of guilt, fear, and accusation is a setting rife with possibilities for nightmares and dreamscapes.
H.P. Lovecraft merged his Cthulhu mythos with that of the Dreamlands, a fantasy world overlapping the modern one. Lovecraft's work, exemplified by the Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath, set the standard for rules of how dreaming worked (dreamers were functionally immortal in their dreams) and blurred genres, with ghouls becoming friendly allies, cats who speak their own magical language, and weird creatures like zoogs, gugs, ghasts, and moon-beasts.
The Plane of Dreams, introduced in 3.5 Edition of Dungeons & Dragons' Manual of the Planes, was coterminous with the Prime Material Plane, and it was here that the dream travel spell allowed dreamers to traverse massive distances.
Originally inroduced in the Basic version of Dungeons & Dragons, the Demiplane of Nightmares featured creatures of twisted horrors borne out of the Region of Dreams and the Ethereal Plane. It was later connected to the Far Realm and the Forgotten realms. It was the home plane of several creatures that are more common in D&D today: neh-thalggu, diaboli, feyrs, nagpas, and maelephants.
The Fifth Edition of D&D largely ignores what's gone before, with oblique references via the dream spell and the night hag's Nightmare Haunting ability.
The Ancient Dreamers
Ancient Egyptian's viewed dreams differently than how we view them today. The most common word for dream, "resut," means "awakening" -- a noun, not a verb. There was no verb for dreaming; it was considered something to be actively observed, a dreamer "awakening" in another world. From the Ancient Egyptian perspective, dreams were omens about the future.The first reference to dreams appear in non-royal Letters to the Dead around 2100 BC. These mssives were written on pottery, left in tombs of dead relatives, asking for favors for the living. Of those, two letters mention dreams. The first is on behalf of a widower, appealing to his dead wife to visit him in a dream in the hopes that she will cure his illness. But the second one is far more sinister, and it's nothing less than the origin of nightmares.
Seni, Father of Nightmares
Meet Heni, a priest in Ancient Egypt. Heni beat his father's servant, Seni, but he justified that abuse because he wasn't the first to do so. Despite Heni's arguments of innocence, it's clear the treatment haunted him, because Seni came back to remind him.Heni addressed his letter not to Seni, but to his dead father. He asked his father to stop Seni from tormenting him in nightmares, in which the servant was always "looking at" him. "Do not allow him to do me harm," wrote Heni.
Did Seni stop visiting? Did Heni's father intervene? Was Heni haunted until the end of his days? We may never know. But we do know that Seni is the first recorded reference to a nightmare, and in that gray space of guilt, fear, and accusation is a setting rife with possibilities for nightmares and dreamscapes.
Dreamscapes in RPGs
There are many ways to incorporate dreaming into tabletop role-playing game settings, although they tend to be more of an abstraction since role-playing an imaginary character having their own imaginary adventures may be too meta for some players.H.P. Lovecraft merged his Cthulhu mythos with that of the Dreamlands, a fantasy world overlapping the modern one. Lovecraft's work, exemplified by the Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath, set the standard for rules of how dreaming worked (dreamers were functionally immortal in their dreams) and blurred genres, with ghouls becoming friendly allies, cats who speak their own magical language, and weird creatures like zoogs, gugs, ghasts, and moon-beasts.
The Plane of Dreams, introduced in 3.5 Edition of Dungeons & Dragons' Manual of the Planes, was coterminous with the Prime Material Plane, and it was here that the dream travel spell allowed dreamers to traverse massive distances.
Originally inroduced in the Basic version of Dungeons & Dragons, the Demiplane of Nightmares featured creatures of twisted horrors borne out of the Region of Dreams and the Ethereal Plane. It was later connected to the Far Realm and the Forgotten realms. It was the home plane of several creatures that are more common in D&D today: neh-thalggu, diaboli, feyrs, nagpas, and maelephants.
The Fifth Edition of D&D largely ignores what's gone before, with oblique references via the dream spell and the night hag's Nightmare Haunting ability.
