The Dream-Feaster

From Introduction: Ill-fated are those who drift off to sleep within the bounds of certain ancient ruins, for the old world is not as dead as it may seem. In dreams, the sleeper finds himself gazing upon a magnificent palace — that which once existed, but now is lost. Then, from out of his peripheral visions, he sees the black and furry form emerge. It turns its brilliant, colourful head to peer in his direction, and then it lopes forward slowly, bounding through the air as if time itself was stretched thin. The Dream-Feaster is not a creature of the physical world. It lives only in the phantasmal realms of dreams and nightmares, where it feeds on the hapless minds of mortals. Those that never wake, that go mad from seeing “visions” when what they really wanted was hidden treasure, those that emerge from the ruins with neither treasure nor their own memories — all of these are victims of the Dream-Feaster. Known to ancient sages and historians since time immemorial, numerous tales have been recorded of famous heroes battling the Dream-Feaster, or creatures like it. Fallanthrix the Magus of Hyrnaceus was plagued by a black and furry nightmare during his sleeping pilgrimage to the city of Moudiasma, before the Dawn King reigned over his homeland. Kallasina, the great bard and huntress, once wove a spell that required a feather from a fire-faced darkness which lived only in devouring nightmares. Some heroes outsmart it, some even defeat it outright — but how can these tales be accurate? What false legends and wishful thinking these tales must be, for here is the Dream-Feaster today, still preying upon the minds of this age, just as in the days of old.