Dream lens

Dream lens

(Magic item)

Type

Artifact

Source: Lost Cities of Golarion, pg(s). 12

The dream lens was created by the xoarians of the Darklands city of High Ilvarandin as a means of obtaining host bodies from the surface world. It is mounted in apex of the city's Grand Spire, under the supervision of Lens-Keeper Tiluatchek.

Powers

The dream lens has a very specific purpose, and as a result its powers are very narrow.

A person who has drunk the exotic drug midnight milk falls into a deep sleep, and begins to experience vivid dreams of the Darklands. The dream lens serves to draw the dreamer's psyche deeper and deeper into the Darklands with each dream, until it eventually reaches Ilvarandin in the depths of Orv.

Once the dreamer's psyche reached Ilvarandin, the dream lens causes it to inhabit the body of one of the region's denizens and see life from that creature's point of view. In itself this is harmless, but if the body happens to be inhabited by a xoarian, the creature is immediately aware of what has happened.

The xoarian then races to the Grand Spire. If the xoarian reaches the dream lens before the dream ends, it is able to use the lens as a physical conduit to the dreamer's brain. As is the nature of the race, the xoarian will then try and eat the brain and take over the body of its victim. If it is successful, it can then promote the xoarians' agenda on the surface world, or try and return with its host to High Ilvarandin.

Usage

The lens can be focused on a specific surface location, currently Magnimar, where Tiluatchek has fostered the secret Midnight Dawn society and uses midnight milk to lure the city's residents into becoming slave warriors for the xoarians' war against the neolithids of Denebrum.

Some of Ilvarandin's xoarians believe the lens is better used to find a surface settlement to which they could potentially escape if their ongoing war against Denebrum becomes unwinnable.