episode 41 – Dreams & Nightmares 3 — Deep Dreaming

This is changeling the [Music] [Music] [Music] podcast welcome to Changeling podcast come for the glamour stay for the vibe I'm your host Josh and with us is your other host puka say hi puka hi hi what are we talking about tonight puka this evening we are doing the third of Three episodes on that weighty toome Dreams and Nightmares well maybe not that weighty just dense that dense tone Dreams and Nightmares and we'll be focusing on the Deep dreaming trods and freeholds and we have a special guest Charlie Cantrell to help us discuss this book so

hello Charlie hello hello welcome back thank you for having me back uh so Charlie for people who haven't heard you previously on the podcast return a guest um do you want to give a little introduction about yourself well let's see I'm Charlie canell I um have been role playing since The 90s I got into professional RPG freelancing with C20 uh that was my first changeling dreaming 20th anniversary edition that was my first professional RPG work and I have stayed involved with changeling the dreaming professionally and not so professionally ever since but uh changeling the dreaming

has always been one of my all-time favorite role playing games so I am very happy to be involved with it y right on so yeah let's dive into the book now when we last left off our adventurers they were fighting off a band of red caps or does somebody else want to summarize it or should I summarize it just go for it okay I think I think you're off to a great start okay yeah they're fighting off a band of red caps now they've stolen the flying frog Dragon demon things and are currently up in

the air for like a week maybe it's hard to tell time in the dreaming they also lost another another one of their party members or the o Circle or whatever and you know after a week they land and there's a lot of like everyone's remembering things and everyone looks different and and then the little thing about how the Chimera in the area are like kind of afraid of them all because of their finality but also their power yes and takes us into geography of the deep dreaming it's like the far dreaming but more yep they

kind of point out that the whole notion of geography is sort of a misnomer once you get this deep into The dreaming but I liked that it kind of described it as being in an endless cycle of change sort of co-created with Mortals who are dreaming so that maybe it's difficult to actually storytelling the other thing that I didn't remember but I I rediscovered When I Was preparing for for this was how the Deep dreaming has like certain spheres within it is the way I think it described almost almost worlds in and of themselves with

Arcadia and it it calling out Arcadia as one of them and then these other spheres being only slightly lesser than Arcadia and I just did not remember that at all um but I don't think that actually got brought up in the geography part of this chapter no think that was later on yeah the the other two the the near and far dreaming it when it talks about it it's like talks about these things then it goes into more detail in the geography section these are much less connected I think there's a bit of overlap but

it's a lot there's a lot of things talked about in one not the other so why don't we go through yeah it talks about things like how you get into it you go through the Mist there's very little of the silver path in the Deep dreaming which is which you find out later is because the silver path is infused with everything in the Deep dreaming yeah there this is uh I don't know if it was intentional I I'd say this is the least consistent chapter to of this book with itself yes are are they are

they just trying to be like that's what it's like In the Deep dreaming because it's uh even even from one paragraph to another which we'll get to in just a minute my quotequote favorite part of this chapter oh Josh do you recall earlier in the book when we talked about how confusingly there was a note that changelings who die in the dreaming are gone forever and yet in in the Pro story there's a whole exchange about oh well they're dead but they're not really gone so again internal contradictions we and I think one of the

quers even says we ourselves watch the fires take their soul back to uh back to the Autumn realm also do mention that part too earlier in the book so the fire thing so books written by committee yep well interestingly this one's not even that big of a committee it was only only got a writing credit for it which is way smaller than most books writing teams have these days yeah so yeah we get into you know remembrance is now really intense says sometimes the feelings linger even if the memories don't and we get arts and

Realms in the Deep dreaming which reminds me a lot of unleashing in C20 it's like your cantrips are now un basically I I had the same thought too I I don't think it was conscious on anyone's part uh when we were developing C20 but uh but it is neat the parallels that happen MH yeah the one the one difference is you can use bunks to make it more stable I keep I keep going like how would I incorporate this systematically but maybe that's the wrong way to think about the Deep dreaming I don't know the

augmen gets Ratcheted up to 11 yeah 11 out of five it's okay so we're going into aan now well there's one it before we get into like the details of the augment it it also says like a statement that I just don't understand about it where it's like with the exception of the she most changes are somewhat muted when employed against other kiane I don't know how to a mute like how many dice you get to strength like how does that muted so my interpretation of this has always been because everyone is going through the

aaman equally they can still interact with each other normally it's just outside observers or non changeling observers non-chimeric observers see this craziness that's happening because their brains just can't comprehend what's happening so it's about the behavior stuff and their actions I guess yeah so they see this all this crazy stuff happening that's just completely impossible but from the changeling's point of view my interpretation is that things are fairly normal I mean sure a troll might be lifting up a mountain and he couldn't in the Autumn realm but you know you're in the Deep dreaming so

that feels normal which which then brings me to my favorite part about this because it it specifically calls out unenchanted Mortals being the ones who are truly affected by this and then in like a paragraph later it specifically says that unenchanted Mortals are forbidden from ever entering the de ger so it also says that like Mages are the one Exception to The unenchanted Mortals mhm Mages can come into the dreaming but they lose all of their magic unless they do something in the heart of Arcadia yes yes Y and that's his detailed as the book

gets on that something in the heart of AR there's also an interesting story hook buried in there somewhere because we get the note that you know you have to pass through the Mist Weir that heavy Misty barrier between the far and the Deep dreaming but then there's also a note that the only two ways to actually enter are by following a trod which are rare or a path of bellor from the deep Umbra which is the only way a mage presumably would get in in the first place so those paths are one way you'll find

yourself in the Deep dreaming and suddenly your magic doesn't work you know what happens and the story they have is an example of entering the Deep dreaming without going through a tro but well well that depends on how you define it because the silver path is diffused throughout the Deep dreaming in a way just about any path you take in the Deep dreaming could be a kind of trod yep weren't they following some kind of Sky trod though like early on if I recall correctly it said the beasts were flying of their own valtion and

they couldn't control their Direction um this is this book is yeah this chapter is a bit uh well we'll get more into this yeah the chapter or the fiction just kind of ends after this like this is the end of the story so it kind of just ends in the middle of things without result anything I don't know how to feel about that and then we Get a completely new um narrator fiction bit I think I'm not sure how to describe it chapter five I can't remember how chapter three starts out I think chapter three

is mostly an omniscient narrator yeah we'll get to that in a bit but yeah it talks about you can get to a few have gotten to Arcadia and the doors are sealed The Mists weird like you said I think I do I do want to take a minute to appreciate the Mist Weir just because of I I I do like the description of it it is a cool concept and that's a thing I can say about a lot of stuff in this book there are lots of really cool Concepts that I wish that they would

have taken and developed and made a few more plot hooks around yeah as we keep getting like the Mist we it gets uh it gets a couple of paragraphs yeah including talking about the goblin Market which is like I want more on that there was like one paragraph and I'm like I want the goblin Market yeah a deep dreaming Goblin Market can you imagine what that might be like yes oh it also says Arcadia is a city yeah in this chapter it says that Arcadia is a City Y the the this chapter is the important

part of that sentence yeah or at least this part of the chapter I didn't check the rest that's true yeah we have the goblin Market the wastelands with the pool of counted stores and then the great engine I thought the great engine was also kind of cool yeah yeah the great engine has always fired my imagination ever since I first read this book um it's something that I have always really wanted to use In a c in a Chronicle but I still have not figured out a good way to to work one in and and

that brings me back to to what I really wish they had done I wish they had had called out plot hooks around all of these ways to get your troop into this area and have it affect things this is we're actually almost done this chapter already and I I would have liked even more than that talking about how the heck you're supposed to run a game in the Deep dreaming because they have weird Ogman things which may or may not mean anything okay you have the art changes and then you have some like locations later

on that are not making sense to me as being in the dreaming at all some of it and that's it like it it does not tell me how to play a game like run I've tried running in the past and I've just we've just been like yes ignore let's just wing it and not roll dice like that's though where I've been but that's that's what I've always done once we get I had a Chronicle that actually spent a relatively significant amount of time in the Deep dreaming and that was mostly the way it ended up

is we just didn't do dice it was all mostly narrative but then they have all these rules involving dice probably you're supposed to be do like they recommend doing I mean we can do whatever but it doesn't do a good job at explaining what to do they do specifically note that birthrights and frailties no longer have dice rolls so that at least you don't have to worry about you just get all appearance or or strength dots or whatever kiss you may be playing or stamina dots like what does that even mean then and also your

running speed still and the trolls are Like actually not as strong as they should be because they're like comparable to like a gr War form or something not not quite Mountain lifting things like yeah I I think I think the aan is probably or the Ogman I I don't know why I always add an extra U into that um but anyway the Ogman I think is is one of those things that I wish could be tweaked some to make them instead of so heavily mechanic based so you're buffing stats on the character sheet but make

them more of a uh a story game type thing where yeah kind of like fate or something like that where they provide moves that you wouldn't be able to do normally um something like that I think there's a little bit of that in here this was published in 1997 be fair before before story those sorts of games ever came on the scene which which is fair but uh but this seems like a good opportunity to to do that there's a couple in here that I think stand out like the puka shape changing Birthright where it

mentions puka can become dragons here if they so desire but they may opt never to change again and leave their mle in search of a new life where the red caps are always unsated and then my favorite the slua can turn into vapor which I think is just the coolest [ __ ] so you don't like trying to just describe your she ranging in appearance from uh 9 to 14 depending on I just I I feel like once you get past five you just add that many adjectives yeah it's like six I can see you're

more power you're more beautiful Than the most beautiful person cool 11y the Ogman I'm not sure what to do with because they they get their empathic blindness so they can't even conceive of non she existing well specifically says they can't do empathy roles yeah they can still be like treat them like objects to be manipulated including socially I suppose that's true but uh but it just it's one of those things that just sort of it feels to me it cuts off role playing opportunities instead of adding oh yeah the same as the like okay well

if these birth rights did apply with each other it's like oh your red Cap's now eating everybody yeah do with that it specifically says that in their Frailty they're like any changeling who gets too near a red cap might end up lunch yeah or it's like okay puka I don't actually like the the combination of the one of the birth rats and the and the Frailty here because it's like The Confidant kicked up to and everybody will tell them their secrets but the pukah will think they're lying anyway and won't want any and won't even

want to talk to them mhm yep the implication there to me is the onus is on the pukah who goes into the deep dreaming to like remember enough of all of the beans that the people around them spill so that when they get back out if they can remember enough of it they'll be able to realize oh actually those weren't all lies yeah but they don't even want to talk to them that's Reading between the lines too much yeah because like you're the most Charming person ever that you just yeah out way to avoid everybody

but what were you just what you were just saying puka that about the try having to to find a way to remember what happened so that when you get back you'll know things the section on the Mist wear this is also one of the one of my frustrations with this chapter the miste specifically does not allow memories to return from the deep dreaming once you leave it uh yeah so it does not allow memories to escape the Deep dreaming I I think that this chapter is being more I mean this book has a lot of

it going on all through it but anything else would be like okay this is we need a new book on the dreaming and there's lots of ideas for what to put in the Deep dreaming stuff in this chapter right but yes you can't just keep it as is like you gota yeah you'd want to modify things to to Grant role playing opportunities instead of cutting them off left and right and also being like okay it's fine you're in a contradictory shifting Dreamscape but that doesn't mean your rules should be a contradictory shifting like something it's

like I'm trying to read this book well dreaming yes and understand the rules and make rulings there yes but to your point Charlie about wanting more story Hooks and and Josh to your point about the Realms that are in the following chapter not to nudge Us in that direction or anything but um those like We said last time with the Realms that we get in the first half they're almost like to me it reads like a DND compendium of like here are a couple pages on each of a whole bunch of Realms that you can

just run a story in and the rest of the geography of the deep dreaming is like that what's the what's the term in a video game the when you're going from world to World on Mario whatever and you're just kind of like walking along the road for a while and nothing really happen loading screen so you're the game has to have nothing happening for a little bit so has time to load up the next section that's chapter [Laughter] three that's a good description yes yeah because then the chapter 4 ones I mean frankly it reads

to me like I say this without judgment they em bibed whatever kinds of substances they had on hand and just went to town and yeah oh yeah there's stuff in chapter 4 that just reverberated throughout the line throughout the game line ever since this book got released yeah yeah yeah yeah and I was surprised how much I had forgotten about that it was the first time it appeared here because like you have the Triumph CK and cicara and all the stuff from Dennis and uhuh so do we want to move on to chapter four let's

sure let's do that okay so we left off uh the previous two episodes we went up through echo of lost Arcadia and that would take us into Kurara the red Plains one of the coolest things in this book I wanted to mention so we we did talk briefly about the Arcadia Echo but then also they have this distinction that they call the hearts realms for reasons I'm not entirely clear on um but it says that they contain Fugitive Pieces Of The Arcadian dream and each realm almost to me it's like it's very conceptual so kurara

the first one is like the dream of War because it's just constant conflict and bloodshed and everything and presumably that's the root of that fantasy or that that idea in the minds of dreamers and all of them are meant to be like cursed or corrupted in some way because I don't know I guess the shattering did stuff whatever separated from it implies the fans are sleeping there for karus also that well yeah in that one spe the red Court sleeps beneath them yes yeah so what I especially like though is before we get into the

individual Realms there's a note at the start of page 76 where it says the true Arcadia is the story with a capital S built of all possible stories and it's a very meta sort of cosmology to look at Arcadia which I like better than just oh it's the homeland of the Fay and I I kind of would like to see that played up more I don't know if that's the direction changeling was ultimately going to be headed in you know second edition and later on but it's interesting to think About yeah but anyway kurara the

red Plaines there's a picture with kurara there sure is for over 20 years now I've been trying to understand this picture and it's it's lived in the back of my head and is that a door is there like a guy with an axe like armor standing in front of a door that's a face definitely some sort of portal and I don't think the the face is actually part of the the portal thing I think it's actually coming out of it it's it almost somebody has opened the Triumph cask and the hoorde of hores are pouring

forth from it but I'm not sure that's what it's actually supposed to be because it just doesn't look quite like I first saw it originally back in a long time ago I thought it was like a train that weird demon face that's kind of Awesome should should we just kind of myself I have brief descriptions of each of the Realms I don't know if we want to fly through them or talk about them individually let's let's at least touch on each of them okay talk yeah tux Kirks are the different factions fighting over it the

Triumph cast of Soros which is super weapon and the great fight is over the the super weapon created by the Green Court of fans and gifted to the red court and then in their final Act of defiance he the the the red King rips it from his chest and instead of opening it he breaks apart the keys to it and gives a fragment of each of the keys to a Faction of the uh twoo and Fay that that defeated those are those the keys that are supposed to be of the kingdom in the book that

never got released that yes yes it is in fact uh there was the opening fiction to that never relased book that Chris Howard posted on the changeling forums way back when and it featured one of those keys it is saved in my changeling the podcast folder for eventual discussion and side note Chris Howard still has all of his old drafts and I have been talking to him about that really okay he was not the only author on that book so it's just his stuff but uh I seem to recall that because it was another three

author book right and like each of them was taking one of the geographic areas and his was done and someone else's was partly done I believe that's about right and I think that there was another person who didn't really start work on it um if I recall correctly yeah yeah yeah yeah alas yeah there's a bit of a history thing it's getting into history of the Fay and it's kind of confusing me like it's presenting the thorian ruled the world and then the Arcadian Fay rose up and did a war and overthrew them mhm and

no mention of the tatha to denan in this although it talks about them later as being anent Fay I was going to say in in the krik are Write up the toath don't get mentioned but they do get mentioned in some of the forian stories later on in the book yeah I'm having trouble fitting in where the toath did not fit into the chronology and so the neat thing about this book is this was the first time that the fans really got mentioned as the fans if I recall correctly before this the big ancient enemy

were just referred to as the dark and there was wasn't really much much depth given to them other than you know if I remember right in the changeling second core book uh or it might have been Noble's The Shining host I can't remember which but there's stories of the she returning and some of the stuff that they were either running through or running from on their way to Earth were were remnants of the dark I think it's in Nobles because we've talked a little bit before or at least I've brought up my pet theory about

how there's a Chris Howard metaplot that kind of runs through a few books and that was yes the first book that actually mentioned the tuaha and the fomorians I think I believe that yes sir there was a tiny thing in the first edition core book but it was mostly doing the thing they kept doing in first edition of well the G talk about these famor things right right right yeah but this is certainly the first book where they're divided into red white and green and I was actually surprised that Chris Howard wasn't a writer on

this book because so many of the ideas that he plays with later Appear here yeah I don't know I I do know Chris Howard was was uh extremely prolific with white wolf at the time when this book was being done he might have he might have been tied up on other books there's I don't know was was he in Atlanta at the time trying to like was this still like everyone in the office together and they were like maybe bouncing ideas off each other or something or I don't know I do know I was I

wish I could take credit for it but but my wonderful wife Anna had the thought as I was reading this to look up the writers of these uh of uh Dreams and Nightmares kind of looked to see what each of them had done in addition to this book very little on changeling uh well I forget which it was I should have written it down but I did not uh one of them after this one worked on uh an anime The Shining uh in animated Shin go in animated secret the secret way and I can definitely

see that with some of the writing in here I'd be willing to bet it was by him and then another one worked on uh uh the Trinity stuff just massively prolific on Trinity so that's that's neat but but yes they they hadn't done a whole lot on changeling or these three had not done a whole lot on changeling before or after this one I almost wonder if that was intentional on the part of Ian lmy or whomever else to kind of get some you know a group a team that was not at all invested in

anything that had been present in the setting before like they have the basics but then they just go wild yeah as much as we Like we'll have criticisms of this book I don't think I'm really thinking there's anything I mind that it's because it contradicted something before this book right yeah yeah yeah it's all very self-contained it is and and the ideas in this book are fantastic like like they're just so evocative that's part of what makes it so frustrating is because some of this is just so good and there's no at how to use

it in your game yeah it's it need a better editing it needs a better like highle editing to it I think like this is a great rough draft hashtag [Laughter] whitewolf shall We Carry On through these Realms then let's let's continue yeah Capia Capia no no we skipped rubal the cup of Vine oh yeah oh S I thought that was one of the five Great beasts S I got confused okay it's it is a short one compared with the others but it has some neat stuff in it even though it's short yeah you want to

give the overview and then I'll kind of dig in a little bit basically it's these Beed tunnels filled with treasure and things beneath the hills of uh the dreaming I suppose it's a place of pleasure and Timeless rounds of couplings and other masquerades that have caused the realm to grow sleepy and drawn there's references to the kubara running it which is actually more inine with the mythological history of Kua From Hindu mythology and it strikes me as kind of like if I were to you know if Kara is the dream of War this is almost

like the dream of buried treasure I suppose and there's a lot of that fairies under the hill kind of endless parties through eternity Vibe I didn't think about that but you're right that's uh that definitely plays into this what really stuck out to me uh rereading this realm I didn't even remember this realm I must have either skipped over it back in the day or it just didn't make much of an impression on me at the time but now reading through it there's some neat stuff with the history of the Fay in that little bit

because this it has all these Treasures buried there that predate the fans and uh something called the Mah yes I think that's how it's supposed to pronounced mwah M yes that that sound like they predate the fans and the tuatha and everything and they're the ones that according to this anyway instigated the uprising against the florians but they they come up later on in this book again yeah this isn't the last this isn't the last time the Mah come up in this well it's it's referred to later as a single being which is interesting and

the embodiment of the Sigil of fairy the first gift for which the tithe to hell is due and that's basically the only information we about it which just leaves me with more questions that I want [Laughter] answered yes but that uh that open area kind of gives storytellers a little bit of leeway to to do with it as they will and just sort of play around if that's something that they want to dig into in their Chronicle once again it would be nice if there were some hints about how to work the stuff into your

chronical like uh what are some story hooks around this to uh to to give storytellers and players little bit of a a kickart on their on their efforts but still there's there's there's fertile ground here so and then we get to the now it's Capia capaia the Clockwork going to go out on a limb and say that it's actually supposed to be chapia because later on we get the Chex and it's after um the guy Carle chapek who wrote the play rur which is where the word robot got introduced into the Lexicon so I I

wonder if it's supposed to be that so this is a cool realm it's run by chimerical robots basically and it's a giant clockworker mechanical realm with a fake sky and so are they chimerical robots or are they an anime because there's a lot in here that seem to suggest they are actually an anime just before the an anime book got written and uh and really codified what an anime are there's a lot of terminology from that book that made its way in here I'd say they're like yeah What becomes an anime yes it's written yeah

but it also I don't understand why it's in the deep it it makes doesn't make sense to me in the Deep dreaming yes I agree like they have dreamers that they've kidnapped they do something with to get dreams from them I'm like okay what does that do why would you even need that in the Deep dreaming with everything they've talked about they talk about department stores at one point m like are these department stores in this place and are they like having mannequins in department stores where there's mannequin people wearing around are they talking about

autoral department stores in which case are there like colonies of Chapa Chapa like in the Autumn world and they just don't say that or but they confused but they have their empire in the in the department stores wherever they are yeah it's like what yes I might I might suggest that this is the dream of modern capitalism like the ultimate expression of it is even the people have just become machines it also like says oh banality is not found in the Deep dreaming except for from like you know the changelings enter again I'm like I

don't know what banality is if there's no banality in this place the stuff going on well I mean that that was that was actually one of my kind of complaints about this little write up it it kind of went back to something that changeling has historically done occasion that's always kind of rubbed me a little bit the wrong way where technology is inherently evil and natural places are Inherently good yeah and you just the anything with technology is is devoid of creativity and doomed to fail and this city is it's it's on its last legs

it's about to fall from the sky and it uh and it hints at a whole lot that it's because that they're technological and not having enough natural plant life and animal life in there um to keep it afloat yeah and that that too that aside this is still by far my favorite of all of these Realms it just sounds so much fun and I want to run a game there it's my favorite realm but I would not set it in the Deep dreaming if I were running it yeah maybe not maybe not yeah th this

does feel much more like a far dreaming realm than a de dreaming realm I'd put this as like a really weird hidden city in the Autumn world I could see that too yeah there's also an interesting connection perhaps to be made with the automata is it automaton or something else the kith of Arcadia oh um there's a couple of those there's the Renegade cogs and the um the mech orgs that's the one I was thinking of yeah well either way mechanical kits and then we get to what's actually my favorite deep dreaming realm that's I

I agree this is actually tied I should have agreed with yeah and this makes sense to me in the Deep dreaming yes yes arten the Labyrinth them not yep it's a giant Really big hedge maze that actually and it's like there's like this dust that's corrosive everywhere what this actually reminds me the most of is exalted like the stuff with the demon RS and stuff it reading it but it feels like an inspiration for that I actually got Vibes of Proto Chang Ling the Lost reading this one like I I I don't know if it

was intentional or not or as far as changeling the Lost drawing on this intentionally or not but I definitely felt the Hedge when I was uh when I was read that makes sense yep yeah dimension of brambles and everything it says like these are it's it's essentially all trods that they're all crashed into each other and tied up in a knot and if you get stuck there you can't you you have a very difficult time getting out you might it's rumored that if you could actually get all the way through the maze to the outside

it would just be this Barren desert and there's these beings they refer to as dreamers with a capital D wandering around I'm like are these people sleeping are these like physically dreamers taken here for some unknown reason like what are these dreamers I would say because I I also that stood out to me when I was thinking like well wait I thought it was really hard for Mortals to get to the Deep dreaming but given that a dreaming mortal can stumble into at least the near dreaming and this represents like the ultimate fractal tangle of

every possible trod if a dreamer found themselves on such a trod that eventually LED there that could be like One of the very few ways that they could end up there okay yeah so one of the things that I was read when I was reading this I thought would have been a neat little addition to it that that could have made for a neat plot hook but there are no plot hooks so but anyway it would be cool since this is this is the a tangle of intersections and and it is the embodiment of every

intersection that exists I thought it would be cool if maybe like if somebody comes to an intersection in the Autumn realm and takes a wrong turn at that intersection ending up in here in this knot on accident would be pretty cool you if you turn other left uhhuh yeah and and there's a there's a little sidebar here about something else stuck here the wolven mask are these like dead white howlers is that what they're implying they're definitely implying something sure it has the wolven mask and this little sidebar is the only mention of the wolven

mask at all but there are wolves on the path that just wander and don't really say anything don't really do anything other than to accompany people yeah they're just sad white wolves that stare at you but well I mean unless it's a meta reference to the company itself I like that idea that it's you know the the remnants of the white howler Soul or something but yeah but but because they're all these wolves wandering the path The wolven Mask has become something of an ill Omen among trod Walkers so whatever that means mask was just

these wandering around White wolves or the wolven mask really because I thought it was the wolven mask was an object that was feared because of all the wandering around it's got a funny spelling so it can't be a literal mask right I don't know but any yeah the yeah what is the wolen mask is it the Society of these silently wandering around sad dead wolves sure could be could be something else that given how in uh the rubal realm we have references to Fiona we also have here the note that it's the hearthland of the

eled and I'm not really sure what that's supposed to mean I also don't know if it a typo and they meant Heartland but either way yeah what are they doing that stuck out to me too it seemed like maybe in an earlier draft this these were all supposed to be the the home Realms of the houses but uh that got abandoned because not all that even even for at the time when this is written not all the houses are are included and it just doesn't really well I was I was not sure if it both

of these if it's talking about oh yeah she of this house or it's like where the house is named after somebody specific and not to the the these in these Realms oh I I don't know just from the from that little mention it just felt like that there was more planned originally um oh yeah every single paragraph feels like there's more it's just because it brings up like the Fiona having such a having some kind of connection to uh that underground Tunnel realm and then the the Eid having some strong connection to this to this

Labyrinth there's a mention of gyon under kurara uhuh it's true and presumably dgal would be the Clockwork one presumably but it never got mentioned but but yeah that would fit although they did talk about the makers which may or may not exist yeah and then Liam have the sad realm that would leave it with Liam did Liam get mentioned in the sad room the Empire I think so there's there's the glass highnesses which perhaps might have once been she but uh yeah Liam does not show up in this book at all sh shall we move

on to talking about AR the Empire of regret yeah let's move on to the to the Empire of regret it's it's wet and sad and full of things with shells and spirals apparently snails are important yeah it's so out of left field too but it's it's great I love the imagery of it they they should have had them doing battle with like Knights and rabbits and stuff yeah but it it does get me in the feels I will admit because it's talking about like there are six known sights in the dreaming to which the snails

travel when they realize that they are dying because the way is difficult in dying snails travel slowly most never make it to the graveyards and die somewhere along the way it's like gez book y but I love I love like snails are these the one Autumn realm thing that like just wanders into the deep dreaming like on a regular Basis where snails go to die when they go to die they enter the dreaming and make their pilgrimage um yeah that's that's cool that's cooler than dream realm of crafty and cats I think so yeah the

uh this realm I thought was was okay it felt a little bit more superficial to me than the others um other than the snail bit the the snail the snail sidebar is the best part yeah it does a lot it most of it's like giving on like oh yeah it's really sad it's like all atmosphere nothing else so i''d be like well you're here it's really rainy and sad and wet and there's snails and these and these two are in the tower just waiting for true love to rescue them only true love could bring the

sun back what I don't even yeah there is a note here that I think is relevant to changling RIT large as a game where where it says it is said by cathain who should know better that AR is the hidden secret of all that has gone wrong with the fairy world of Wonders to turn it into a world of Darkness with the relevant words capitalized so we've talked before about the sort of debates among people of whether or not changeling should be included in the world of Darkness for various silly reasons but this I think

points to a good way to frame it I suppose yeah it's it's changed very much you are being killed by the world of Darkness supposed to yeah I I do like The phrase the world of Wonders as the is as the opposition to the world of Darkness because it does evoke the Mythic age of fairy and the uh forget what Mage calls it the golden age when when Mages could be Mythic age Mythic age that might be it yeah and then on the subject of uh superficiality just briefly before we move on I wanted to

hop back to probably my favorite piece of writing just stylistically in the book which is um for the Arden Labyrinth when they describe the framework and if you'll allow me to just quote here it says essentially the ear Garten is the writhing coils of the world serpent the convoluted Pathways at the belly of the Beast the knotted heart of the world that lies at the center and the crossroads of all the trods it is the Labyrinth but it is not a place of evil or dadness from the changeling perspective it is not a fallen part

of the world rather the not work in interwoven Geometry here represents the weave work of dawn itself the eye of the knitting needle of Fate this is the cat's cradle as the place that is the convergence of trods all hyphenated the ear Garden is best described by the trod formations that most effectively lead to it Hopscotch the Labyrinth of datus the hedg Maze and it spontaneously generated ghost cousins the crop circles at the center of the ear Garden lies a bottomless well from which anything external or interior may be drawn up into the Labyrinth that

to me is like that's an entire game in and of itself and I'm here for it I just wanted to to put into The as much as I like the Clockwork City that's just beautiful but you you reading it out loud just struck something in me that I didn't get when I was reading it to myself um the way that it mentions the Labyrinth and it not being a place of evil I wonder I do wonder if it's meant to be the same Labyrinth as show as what shows up in other world of Darkness games

hence the wolf and mask or is it the place that David Bowie Lives who knows I I don't think there's enough goblins on it if anything may be drawn up into the Labyrinth that includes David Bowie in a very revealing pair of tights it's the dreaming he's got to be there somewhere yeah here's where we get into I complained last episode about had the criticism or whatever the far dreaming didn't do a good enough description in this chapter and there think didn't give enough description of making the dreaming seem big we now get into the

deep part of the deep dreaming the depths of the dream and it definitely doesn't feel small anymore to me the dreaming this part no this this this was one of the most evocative bits to me when it talks about the uh the everything yeah yeah it's hard to really describe it but the the ocean of everything of infinity and suspended in it are the onic Realms and each of those and one of them being Arcadia and and implying that each of them are worlds in andto themselves yeah And then like you have these Heron women

in crawfish beds that are born with our what is that that that's that that that little sidebar has always just given me a WTF moment ever ever since I first read this book oh this gets back into the muah the green and black compendia of the Mah uhhuh yep yeah this is where it's mentioned yeah yeah so the first gift for which the tithe to hell is due like tell me more about that please but no nope but you have Heron women and crawfish men this also maybe this was just a play of words or

something this talks about the black Court of the florians and I'm like what is that the fourth Court like so I can't remember if it's in this one or if it's in a later book but the black Court does come up again and it's the I'm I'm trying to remember which book what Was there is one in the C20 players guide there is one in the C20 players guide there's one in C20 uh because I put it in C20 but uh uh but before C20 uh it comes up and I can't remember which book it

was but but the black court is the prophesized fourth Court of the florians when the first three unify oh interesting to write some notes from something I'm doing and it was out of that prophecy that uh I included the black Court in uh in C20 is it maybe in of the dreaming because that rings a bell now that you're talking about it it wouldn't surprise me if it was Dennison um that seems like a good place for it to pop up In and since you mentioned uh Chris Howard's metap plot earlier I know I know

in uh in harbingers of winter Chris Howard included the black Court as the first court of of uh the fans the precourt before they split into the three courts so it could be the past and future of the thorian well in the meantime they've entrusted all of their darkened konic glory to Heron women and crawfish men apparently they sure have which are also AR born with Arcadia uhhuh yeah we also there's the references here to Luna the high queen of Arcadia and I'm like oh come on like this far into the game line please don't

send us back to the moon no or it's just some lady named Luna and they're just trolling an entity named Luna uh who's not necessarily this uh what do they call him the werewolf celestian yeah not necessarily the celestian from from werewolf just a different Luna mhm although they did in the introduction refer to the Incarnate as very powerful Chimera so who knows then so then the Sea of silver there there's another beautiful line in here where it says uh at the center of the human heart lies the bottomless well of the universe and vice

versa I'm like okay yes cool that was that was one of my favorite bits in this where it talks about how the large is contained within the small and the small contains the Large and and it's all it's it the whole thing is like I'm two mirrors reflecting back upon each other and so you have everything is contained within everything else thinking of media Inspirations for what this made me think of did you you ever watch the TV series reboot oh forever ago there was there was like season 3 they went to the web and

it's just like reminds me of that like just well this is one of the few examples in the book where the art actually very detailed in a very detailed way matches the description of the realm because you can see the sea there's a stone ship floating upon it there are the Promethean Giants standing in it and then the Cataract of like silver whirling stuff that goes up into the sky and presumably fans out into all of the trods or all the silver paths yep MH yep it is it is a very literal representation of everything

mentioned in that in this section yeah yeah and then there's oh yeah the ocean's heart there's a line here the sea is incomprehensibly vast forming the final and deep most layer of the dreaming short of the Timeless reaches of the deep dreaming itself what I thought this wasn't the Deep dreaming what help me here it is but it it goes back to that uh that yeah that bit about how everything is contained within something else but that something else exists in the thing that is Containing it that it's containing so this yeah I got from

the all this it a vague illusion in my I'm probably just writing like drawing connections between the lines here of things Beyond The Deep dreaming that might be accessible here which would be just somewhere else even stranger but at some point it's like what would you have that be like what is the conceptual difference it's kind of like the she going from appearance 9 to 13 you know functionally what could well I would have it no longer being part of the collective unconscious of humanity or the world or anything like that it's truly alien something

is where I'd go with but that's what I would do like like if the dreaming is the collective unconsciousness of humanity then what lies beyond the dreaming is something utter inhuman um and so what would that be and there's little things like throughout things like where did the TOA didon come from and things like that so maybe they came from there the only other thing that I want to mention about the Sea of silver is that it's apparently also where the andin come from and I don't think once we get to an anime the secret

way I think all of this kind of gets thrown out right like the empires are in their own Realms in the dreaming right the an anime book if I I remember right is pretty vague on what the empires actually consist of um okay so these could be the empires but I got the impression they were kind of almost like this very Fantastical Concept in Biology that there might be an entire Shadow ecosystem going on that we just don't know about using a different form of life on Earth or something like that that's awesome sort of

reminds me of that like it's physically located it's not like it's immaterial or something you just the meat folk wouldn't know it's there for the most part it just doesn't concern them and it's so different yes I I do want to mention real quick before we move on from the silver sea I didn't see it in this area when I was reading it preparing for this but I could have sworn I remembered somewhere in this talking about how this silver sea is also the same thing that's in wraith um The Tempest The Tempest yes it

seems a lot calmer it does seem a lot calmer but in the middle of it there's that giant melstrom so yeah I think there's a reference to when they're talking about the different umbre and there's a reference it's like the the Seas of dream maybe or like one of the other dreaming oceany things is equated with the Tempest because that sounds familiar it could be but yeah this does this does there are connections here where this could be two different both here and in that Labyrinth thing connected somehow to Oblivion yeah in a way the

Green Court sleeps beneath the silver sea and uh yeah and there are hints that the Green Court and the neverborn might be one and the same we also have the very quick note in here that the center of the sea is a place of absolute calm there the Voyager may find a small aisle which is Arcadia of course the fact that the Sea of Silver is infinite means that its Center would be rather difficult to encounter if it exists at all thanks [Laughter] book yes that that gives me like Vibes of things from the 19th

century and early 20th century where people just read a math textbook and then didn't quite understand it but had a weird fever dream I think you've described this entire book yeah well that that bit with the thing going on too with the when we were talking about like the relationship of the Umbra and the dreaming I'm like yeah that's definitely both non- ukian and more than threedimensional so and met orally described so anyway shall We Carry On to the home Realms yeah so's a little bit on the prean Giants which I think might be relating

to the previous thing I don't know what this is supposed to be yeah the Promethean Giants were related to the silver sea they're a neat concept something these these beings that predate did it say they predate existence um I could no they predate arcade possibly predate arcade okay that's right but they're just impossibly old things things that are standing watch and are slowly oh it also suggest Arcadian is a separate like language and there's like and they speak an ancient version of Arcadian to the point that you had made earlier Charlie about you know the

incomprehensible stuff that's even Beyond The Deep dreaming there's The note that they do not appear to be the product of fairy Glamour and May in fact not be the product of any human dreaming it makes me think that they're like the probes sent by beings from outside of the dreaming to like observe or something or or or beings that got lost from their own yeah from their own space and ended up in Rogue Celestial in human head space yeah or maybe they were here before the dreaming was formed could be and then we get yeah

the home so we get now to the home Realms this is in a weird spot in this book I got to say yeah yeah this is another thing I'm like maybe this should have been this would have made a lot more sense to me in the far dreaming d have yes uh and it and it's such a abrupt transition going from this amazing write up of the depths of dream and the Sea of silver to the home Realms yeah I do want to point out I mean we've kind of been treating this because the chapter

kind of treats treats the Realms as kind of points along this single linear path but I don't think it actually spells out like where the home Realms are located or even where some of the other Realms we've already read are located so I feel like you could put them in either if you want yeah well these are all more like categories and it does explicitly say in other parts of the book that all these Realms shift around all the time anyway yeah yeah but you're right it never say it never really establishes what part of

the dreaming some of these are and uh there's no reason to think that they're all but in Yeah I do think though yeah in the order of the book putting this super deep dreaming stuff might have made sense at the end of the chap I I agree it is a bit of a let down going from the sea of silver to the home Realms that being said I love the narrative explanation of the home Realms I think that's a great like historical note about this failed experiment to open a trro to Arcadia that the commoners

did during the interregnum and they just ended up creating this Patchwork of their ideas of home so we've got three of them that survive well the mermit town I think is a cooler realm than the like Fields Beyond yes absolutely agreed it's it's cities that are just int full of intrigue but mostly nonviolent and it's all just let's just make everything complicated and then the sloa live underneath it in tunnels which this just reminds me of like Dungeons from Dungeons and Dragons kind of but more creepy I was thinking no feratu from uh from vampire

the Masquerade uh I got a lot of Vibes of that except the I did I did like the like the the inner sanctum of the tunnels where the floor is covered in grates and you can look out and peer out the great see stuff going on in places in in the Autumn realm from the other side of the corresponding gate Great and there's another way of getting into the dreaming that me you shouldn't take maybe you shouldn't take that one though maybe you dropped your keys and now those are in the Deep dream reminds me

of the uh the memes that came out after the most recent it movie came out like we got uh Pennywise hey there's stuff down Here the the end of the write up for this slua tunnel realm kind of annoys me because it's like you know it's the perfect home for SLA and then it's haunted of All Things by a chamaral ghost this ghost is relatively harmless I'm thinking we're in the Deep dreaming give me something a little bit more than that yeah even maybe just like a real ghost that's been stuck there and is really

messed up right now even that yeah or you know know get some specters to haunt the hallways or something it would have been yeah more interesting yeah I think this is this even more Just Hits okay I'm sticking the the home Realms in the far dream when I run yep then we get to balloon balloon it's the best one do you want to cover this one puka or I absolutely do so balloon it's the puka realm and there are lots of durables and flying airships flying around carrying deadly pie bombs and high explosive s bottles

other puka realm yes but you get two Realms in this book damn straight technically three so then it's it's full of riddles and booby traps and things and it's run by a communist Collective because of course it is but it also resembles 18th century France because that was when balloons became a thing there's a balloon Armory and a place called the toy room that's a combination Meeting Hall and laboratory that's a cake it's a birth it's a stale birthday a literal cake yes also that and then a sort of separate subm Called the fun house

which looks like an abandoned Carnival run by this bedum puka named Josiah and his merry pranksters who turn out to be beasties and there's just so much potential here and I love it I really like how fun house came about because these are these are Realms that were created not recently but in the grand scheme of the dreaming fairly recently yes so the founder the people who established these Realms are still around presumably yeah and fun house became got into existence when the founder of balloon that the changeling responsible for balloon existing felt to bedum

yeah and so that ended up twisting his realm and and creating fun house it actually reminds me of an episode of Batman the Animated Series where like the Joker running abandoned Carnival where like something like okay that's well which is also which is also the killing joke like the okay yeah famous right that's which which I'm sure they couldn't adapt for the show aimed at children I did like the guardian of balloon being a sphinx that tells riddles and the way you answer the The Riddles correctly is to just lie through your teeth with with

utter confidence and you can't copy other people's answers either it's got to be your own Li it's interesting you brought up the the funh house thing like because I hadn't thought of that before if this entire home Realms experiment was carried out a few hundred years ago the notion of like a modern Carnival in the Way that it's represented here postdates that so there must be some kind of subconscious or otherwise communication between the ideas of dreamers and this realm right well there there are there have been for one thing I think there's been more

changelings showing up there especially since the Resurgence yeah it it these places are populated by changelings so there there's got to be some sort of immigration of changelings happening although well in the dreaming changelings not age but that's true that's true but but when but the description of how these uh these Realms got established it didn't I didn't get the impression that it was like a City full of changelings doing this it was like handful of people yeah and so this this has to have been populated after the fact um and being sustained after the

fact somehow they mention in the tunnel section that there are fewer than 40 sloa here at any time so presumably they come and go a little more frequently so that's chapter four um what do we think I think it's a great uh thing to get ideas from and then take those ideas and then do something with them and flesh those out yes I ran a Chronicle that was that existed because I got uh inspired by the uh the splintered Mountains and the kurara The Killing Fields it just fired my brain so much when I read

about them that I I had to do something with them yeah the one time I did something with the Deep dreaming we just kind of riffed it it's Like this is just ideas to doing that I think yeah it strikes me as the kind of thing that you know you you could run a Chronicle or at least an extended story that's all about going to one of these Realms exploring one of these Realms getting back from one of these Realms and that would just take up the entire space like you couldn't just say Okay this

session we're all gonna go to kurara or something like we're just gonna hop on over there I don't think it would which which is the way the the book seems to present these Realms to go to and explore and have your thing and then come back or whatever in the chronicle I ran though it was I I I did a bit more the way I wish this book did it it had the stuff from the splintered mountains and kurara uh intruding onto the PCS and and making it the PC's business um and so uh stuff

from there ended up threatening the Autumn realm and so they they ended up having to take their issues there directly um to deal with it that's I think it also could use this both ways but like like if you're going to Somewhere In The Deep dreaming and you're going along the silver path you found one of the few ones that go through this you could take a bunch of these Realms with are small descriptions and it's like it is just a place you walk through while you're staying on the silver path and not getting involved

in but it has enough that you could describe things and just like be like wow where am I now like I just feel like it would be a disservice to have it be like a throwaway like that I mean in the sense that well not everything yeah I just feel like there's so much to dig into yeah I I did that with one of the Realms in there I forget the name of it but this one where there's all these cute kids but they're they're just superficially cute they're actually cannibals or something like that and

so they were going through the dream they were traveling to through the dreaming to get to their destination and they ended up going through this realm and they were approached by all these cute kids and one of the characters is like oh they're so cute we need to stay here with them and and you know do stuff with them and the rest of the PCS were like nope nope we are out of here are gone they are too cute to be to be friendly they are too too sweet to be healthy to us we are

we are out well what I would recommend is like you pick one of these Realms and or this one of these Realms is the destination of the PCS right but then like throw in what five other of them that's here as places you go to before you get to where you're going yeah it's like one session going through it on Silver path and and give the idea like yeah there really are countless other places just to give the depth of it but then also yeah zoom in somewhere and talk about and and go there I

guess you you could I personally wouldn't want to like I couldn't I couldn't have balloon occupy only one session I don't mean balloon specifically but there's a lot of them well I mean for you it wouldn't be one session but for other troops it might be like it could be a an interesting diversion depending on the chronicle that's being run you know oh I don't even mean a full session on these Realms like you could have five realms a full in a session that wander through and or things you saw in the distance or things

that you you know yeah well my children cannibals were less than a Session they were like just just a I introduced the super cute kids and the players were like no no we are out we are not staying for this but but stuff like that's fun because it adds spice to your travels MH so yeah well speaking of travels we get to chapter five Hearth and and Highway this is a weird chapter for in a weird book for some reason we get an in character narrator for I'm not sure why yeah Professor humus te Hard

Knocks 51 and and and he seems to only be for half this chapter yeah he's only for the the Freehold part of the chapter we get a separate narrator for the trod section Oh I thought it was the same one oh okay no at least I didn't get the impression it was the same one this one is this one the voice sounded different to me like this guy is so a professor lecturing his students uh who he presumes or she and everything about how they are going to maintain their freeholds see see I thought the

whole thing was narrated by one puka at one point he says he's an ISU and I'm like that's that's too blatant a lie for a [Laughter] puka that that would be a great reading of this chapter yeah this is tangential to the The dreaming and pretty much the rest of this book something that I had commented when we spoke about this before is that I was surprised that this was chapter five because it seems to me like because the chapter's about freeholds and trods if you're running a Chronicle or or session or whatever that's going

to be entering the dreaming that strikes me as the point at which you should start rather than after you get through all the dreaming stuff in all the Realms yeah this this chapter feels feels more like it belongs as an appendix than an actual chapter because it's so it's tangential to the real subject matter of the book or an introduction or an introduction yeah that would work too yeah I think we should let the fillis like uh come through and like re the this Adobe Fess so okay so it starts out with talking about free

holds and it doesn't have a whole lot to say on free holds really yeah it goes into the affinities of the free holds and it's and it just just felt like an odd choice to me to have the free holds based around the Realms especially when it goes through and calls out some of the Realms in particular is just not being suitable for free holds uh or suit well suited for free holds this whole thing reads to me like rather than being an objective system first what it's all in character this is like one person's

Paradigm of like one phase Paradigm of freeholds yeah also he miss totally missed the time Affinity yeah the the the time realm is conspicuous in its absence well so I was trying to remember Was there the concept of Freehold affinities somewhere in first edition like in freeholds and hidden Glenns or elsewhere Before Time was its own realm because if they just kind of imported that and added narrative padding oh oh go I'm pretty sure this is unique yeah I am too I don't think this I don't think this came up in freeh Holden and hidden

Glens and until this chapter that was the most changeling got as a as a how to use a freehold book so yeah that's fair there are little interesting sidebars of various yes little blurbs about free holds which is kind of neat yeah the sidebars uh struck me as as odd too because not all of them but a significant number of them were more about the changelings who live in the freeold than the freeold itself which it would have been nice to have I think more illustration of free holds with some of these sidebars and some

of them I'm not sure are actually freeholds like the tree the tree the interestingly enough I thought the tree was the most interesting thing in this chapter or I think interesting I just didn't know was I didn't really feel like a freeh hole to me it do I I think it's meant to be a Glade okay covered in Bells I liked the rainstorms Edge where it says this transient phenomenon occurs at the precise boundary of all rainstorms wors and like I don't know it doesn't really give much more detail than that but I like that

as some kind of magical space it says Sky Magics and seemings are rejuvenated here and like that's a very evocative kind of uh detail that one is cool but it felt more like trods than Freeholds to me yeah well and then we then we transition into some TR that was in the TR section yeah oh we're we're transitioning I'm following now yes in between that they have a weird sidebar about how you can become a lost one too that's true yeah it it tells you and it and it doesn't treat it as something that you

would want to avoid either it's like yes this this is a way to become powerful okay yeah and learned it from the nymphs going back to our theme puka of trying to figure out what the heck the nymphs are supposed to be they come back here I've added it to the list so kiss book nymph will arrive so I want to point to my favorite part of the chapter really the only part of the chapter that I really like which is that we get a specific way Fair res a cheet which consists of the following

six directives I suppose you'd call them stay on the path never retrace your steps Journeys are different from trips Journeys have shapes remember your destination and time disappears on the road and this is something that I can see like working into a game narratively and having like you know the issue abide by it and instruct Travelers about it and everything and you know the code of the trod rather than the code of the Freehold I think is an interesting um notion it it is and and one of the things that I think is really neat

about it is it's so Punchy and to the point And and really gets what it it does what it's trying to do so well that this is one of the things in the book that stuck with me about this book ever since I first read it uh back in you know the late 90s and it has come up in pretty much every game I've I've ever run or played in that has dealt with travel through the dreaming those rules of how you travel through the dreaming uh are always something that's been used and it's interesting

to me that it seems to come up with everybody who's read this book they they follow it without even thinking about it well I I think it's because it's an idea that has it immediately demonstrates filling a gap in the lore and it it connects so easily to something that does already exist so it's yes we have uh a couple other notes on trods I like the trods part better than the freeholds part because they do say things like oh okay scrying destinations subverting locks and getting around barriers finding shortcuts so it is nice to

kind of have um even though it's still this weird semi inch character voice it's nice to have this kind of descript of okay here's how changelings deal with all of the stuff you're going to find on a TR I think that's useful both as a story and a player yes I also just as a little sidebar I I do like how how personally offended the uh the narrator is by closed doors yes how dare they how dare they I I actually like the little thing on orio's path I I do like that too if you

can get if you get little eggshells you can make like a fake silver PA if you can just walk on them without crunching them do not crunch them portable for the extra Nimble yeah some of these some of these little cool sidebars are wonderful I actually did have a PC a player use that in a game I was right oh nice and also the Murphy tunnels the secret network of trods that are contained within folded up Murphy Beds and the Murphy Corporation is run by knockers yeah I I I had forgotten about that bit entirely

and I was just dying laughing when I was reading that sidebar it was so great it reminded me of that that scene in the great Muppet Caper when they're all sitting on a Murphy bed and then they all fly up into the wall together yes I I did get so confused by the little section on the silver road yeah and talking about how the silver winds its way I'm like is not the silver path is this some other thing like what is this talking about yeah it is interesting because it's it's like whoever wrote that

section didn't really talk to anyone else what or read other like it's just yeah but but I think that they they might have been intending it as the origin of this of the silver path but uh But that's not really what it ended up being one other note that I think is quite interesting in uh the other sidebar on this page the S bu aventuro which is the Lost dream re Dream River of Western Concordia there's a note at the bottom where it says davith out of spite cursed it shortly after the retreat of the

Rocky Mountain Coline Kingdom and I had never thought about like before the she came back and set up the kingdoms of Concordia that are currently known were there other commoner kingdoms that we just never hear about like this one M I think some of them would have not been called kingdoms but yes definitely were places I think some of the books do make a a a big deal about how changelings are just tend to gravitate towards the uh towards the title and the and the Pomp and Circumstance so that yeah so that even even in

the absence of the shei you still have changelings trying to fill out that role of the the king and the Queen and and the Dukes and everything like that yeah but they also probably made Empires and republics and sure stranger things yep as long as it's Pomp and Circumstances Grand yes oh and one other piece is that with the Silver Road they mention that the presence of silver with that capital S indicates that your journey will follow all the rules of Dawn and the story again capital S so if that's what the silver in the

silver path is ontologically you know it's fate and story what does that imply about the Nature of the dreaming and then by extension the nature of anything not on the silver path just food for thought well I I was thinking earlier like some some discussion I didn't I was just sort of thinking of my thoughts spun off the conversation about lost versus dreaming and stuff and it got me thinking like the dreaming contains story but it's not just stories and narrative there's other things that do not really follow a narrative structure things that follow a

dream structure things that follow stranger structures or and if you can say they have a structure but you could say maybe The Arcadian dream or the silver path and stuff is you know a hero's journey it is a narrative imposed on The Wider dreaming that notion of imposition is an interesting one too well you you can kind of get into the the nature of the human Collective unconsciousness is the driving force of the dreaming currently and and what do humans like to do we like to impose narrative on things so anything that is random we

tend to ascribe stories and cause and effect to it it's the kind of thing I feel like this book has lots of really deep commentary on changeling as a setting but the pieces are so buried and in some cases so quickly moved on from that you really have to like work to connect them into something useful and that's me transitioning into talking about this book as a whole what did you think of the book as a whole this is both when if you're running a game of C20 This and like Enchanted to me are the

two most important books from before C20 to have because a lot of the other things are still cut these are this is a very good book to have and at the same time it's a hot mess it's I love it but I can't it sort of I think epitomized is where I thought about changeling especially before C20 came out of it's the game I love but I had trouble saying that I like it you can't just take this book and go oh this is the setting book for the dreaming no you can't do that but

it can be a great inspiration for running games in the dreaming but you have to do a lot of heavy lifting as a Storyteller and as a player just don't expect it as canonical either even if your character would even if your character should know what's in the dreaming that it's covering don't assume this is what's happening in the because even if both you and the Storyteller are trying to do that you can't really stop and think about it yeah because if both you and the Storyteller both read this book and are treating it canonical

you're going to have very different interpretations so yeah yeah I would definitely Echo all of that um this is an indispensable book um it is uh one that has uh inspired whole Chronicles but yes it it it takes some effort it takes effort on the part of the Storyteller it takes effort on the part of the player it comes so close to being just wonderful and and it is wonderful in in places it just it's full of wonder it's full of wonder yes world of Wonders it is it is full of wonder yes that that's

a good such as How was this edited properly that's one of the Wonders was it even makes you wonder too well so kind of spinning off that more generally I mean whether or not you use this book do you do either of you have particular strategies that you would I guess recommend to listeners for setting up a Chronicle in the dreaming like what are the specific things that you have to attend to oh that's a good question um one of the things that I do using this book for a guide to the dreaming is to

to not necessarily worry about the details of this book but use the The Contours to describe the dreaming so if you get your if you you can't get to bogged down in all the dream Realms and everything like that because if you try and make a map of the dreaming using this book you're you're just going to waste your effort well it explicitly says in many times and explains why you can't make a map of the dreaming you cannot make a map of the dreaming and you can't include all the dream Realms in here and

you wouldn't want to uh what you'd want to do is take these as some inspiration to really make the dreaming yours and really make it fit the chronicle and whatever story you're wanting to tell with the dreaming because that's what the dreaming is it's stories and those stories should be yours they shouldn't be this books for me for running a game the thing to keep in mind with without this book is how I think of the dreaming as if you're going in the dreaming and I don't mean like you're going in a freeold and you're

like hanging in the back Garden but if you're actually traveling in the dreaming traveling Should be part of the story um moving along the trod per story getting off the trod should be like they should be terrified of getting off the trod and getting lost and it should be a bunch of things happening as you're going through like don't plan oh we're going to spend I don't think you should unless you're maybe going from two near points in the near dreaming have the same session be where you enter the dreaming and where you arrive at

your destination in the dreaming you need like a travel adventure with these Ser series places and challenges and things that happen and and it's the kind of thing where like I I'm not big on planning ahead for a lot of things but like no I plan that I I will just do an aside here real quick because of what you said I I was running a changeling game years ago and some people the players decided that they needed to go in the dreaming right then oh no they they decided that that the only solution to

the problem was to go into the dreaming and they they they came up with a good way to do it and so they did and as soon as they did I was like okay we're going to have to break the session here CU I need to figure out this because the dreaming isn't just something that you go into lightly uh either as a player or as a Storyteller yeah the only exception be specific exceptions for sometimes in the near dreaming only oh yeah yeah if it's the local dreaming right around your local freeold then then

that can be fairly well known but or like I had a I ran a lar I was playing in AAR I I was running or playing in it anyway there was like a ISU who was both like very experienced and had a bunch of Dream Craft and okay fine within the lar session they had traveled from one location to another and showed up like mid session like they' gone off and then come back like gone off for an hour and then come back like like I think it takes that kind of thing to be but

yeah General yeah it should be plan out a whole travel story from going somewhere in the dreaming with lots of with a bunch of different places that you're going through I almost feel like it's not a bad idea to almost have like a mini session zero kind of like you were saying about breaking from one session to the next and not just I mean because the players may have read everything there is about the dreaming you might know it inside out as a Storyteller but I think every dreaming jaunt not even every tables version of

the dreaming like every time they go in it can and maybe should be different so it's important to set expectations outside of the game and then confound the expectations inside of the game and kind of figure out how to navigate that so like if you're a player you'll want to know what the stakes are like okay we're going to the dreaming How likely am I to die or find a treasure or whatever but then your character you have to hash out what your character thinks about the dreaming and then the storyteller's role is to decide

how much of that they want to overturn because with the dreaming you can overturn as much of it as you want you know but it has to be I feel at the Character level and the player really need something solid to cling to Yes yeah I do want to say one thing as a teaser for a future fairly far in the future episode I think a very useful book to help Run games in the dreaming is the first edition exalted book The Fair folk talking about traveling through the wild I we'll get into that later

but I think that has actually a good way to structure traveling through the dreaming from like a somewhere between a n it's like a narrative geography structure and and I think that can actually help a lot with your dreaming games even though it's a different game it was originally conceived of as a prequel even though it went on different directions when time it was published but but they still included all the Easter eggs for the world of Darkness yeah and it basically turned into like I think it's traveling trods through the dreaming to get to

destination actually has with waypoints and whatever the word was for connect connecting between waypoints I think actually does have a good has some good in there for dreaming Chronicles that makes me think just in in terms of books that might be useful Invisible Cities by atello calino is something that I always think of in relation to dreaming games where it's just these short vignettes about these really Fantastical cities that don't actually exist and then um some of the work by the Japanese poet boso kind of reminds me when you're saying narrative geography that's what I

think of with the sort of descriptions of places that they are places along a road but the way that he describes them and kind of intermixes them with Haiku the feel is much more important than like trying to pinpoint these on a map you know so I Like that a lot the teaser that I wanted to say Charlie is there anything that you are working on lately that you would like to share about which may or may not be relevant to this discussion well surprisingly that you mentioned it uh yes there is radiofree Arcadia is

working on a C20 compatible uh Source book for the dreaming yeah the idea is not to supplant Dreams and Nightmares it's intended as a companion piece it doesn't just address the shortcomings in dreams and nightmares but that is that is part of what it does uh it also takes a different look into what the dreaming is than Dreams and Nightmares does it's a lot more about the story potential of the dreaming and how changelings and Mortals alike both exist in relationship to it and how you can tell stories based on based around that about how

Mortals uh feed the dreaming and how the dreaming feeds Mortals and Chang thingss the same way how do they what's their relationship to it because they were once the rulers of dream and now they're uh not and what does that mean for them I called this a teaser because I hope that when it is released you will be able to come back to talk about it some some more I would love to right now I have gotten all of the first drafts back except for one so uh it is coming along nicely so hopefully it

won't be too much Longer so yeah is there anything else you have recently come out with or the the most recent thing that I that that's been released that I did was uh glamour's chosen for uh 7th C released through Explorer Society it is a look at playing the fair folk and using glamour in the 7th SE setting in general if people were interested in that or other of your work are there places they can find you around the interwebs I am Charlie Kell on Facebook uh Radio free Arcadia also has a page on Facebook

I am pukan Knight just about everywhere else uh you'll see me on on Discord with some regularity I have a Twitter account that is pukan Knight but it is is rarely used these days right on okay thanks for being here again Charlie and looking forward to than it's always a pleasure uh you can find us our website changeling theep podcast.com you can find our Discord discord.me sctp you can find our Facebook page changeling the podcast you can email us podcast changingthe podcast.com you can send us a toot changeling POD at me dice. camp that's our

Mastadon all links will be in the show notes and uh yeah so once again uh I'm Josh people say that I remain puka and uh yeah don't try to eat those crab people the her and ladies won't be happy and remember when in doubt the answer is always balloon Fay urologists have hypothesized that outside the dreaming it's just more Dreamings all the way down at the same time they acknowledge that down is a word that has particularly little meaning when talking about the spatial relationships between dreamings and that better Direction words might include outwards other

up Witter shins or balloon because if any direction you're going in the dreaming is not turned towards the realm of balloon then what is the point of your even being there in the first place to help us continue asking important rhetorical questions like this one as well as bringing you changeling the dreaming content week after week until the Green Court sloughs off its shiny membrane and rises again we welcome your support for our podcast by leaving your a view on the listening platform of your greatest convenience you you can also sign up for our patreon

at www.patreon.com changeling the podcast and join the esteemed ranks of folks who get a shout out at the end of each episode they include Derek doradas Jason Vines Oreo Ras caboo saniger CA and Terry Robinson feel free to stop by our Discord at www.d discord.me CP to hang out and chat about all things Fay and fabulous thanks for your ears and until next time keep on dreaming