NIGHTMARES
Nightmares should be a frequent occurrence in Barovia. Every night holds the possibility of something troubling entering your dreams. Especially in places where great evil is present, or use to be present.
THE FOLLOWING LIST CONTAINS EXAMPLES OF NIGHTMARES
Vicious dream will haunt a PC of people being ripped apart by wolves as they are trying to run away towards a village. As the iron gates close, the people just barely fail to make it on time and are eaten by the wolves.
You suffocate and die.
You go into a murderous rage and murder a whole family. You wake up as your sword pierces the child's chest and she falls to the ground.
Your family ties you down and tortures you.
Restrained naked by large tarantula spider tieing you up. You are poisoned and awake but can't move, you feel everything.
Sleep paralysis. Demons and monsters dance around you all night. You wake up with marks on your body.
Dragged, abused and beaten to death by a highwayman.
Put on trial for a crime you didn't commit and sentenced to death by hanging.
Torn apart by a zombie only to become one. Eating many people.
Kidnapped by a cult and sacrificed to summon a demon. The demon tears you apart from the inside out.
Tied down and left in the middle of the road. Your head is crushed by the man driving a cart.
The ghosts of those fallen by your hands reach out of the ground and pull you to your death. Your bones crack and break as you are dragged to hell.
You are surrounded by a sea of faces. None you recognize. You feel your arms moving - swimming through this sea of faces. You feel an invisible hand on your head that forces you below the surface. When you resurface the faces are gone but the heads remain. You hear laughter. Not your own. You're drenched in blood from head to toe. It makes you feel... joy... and you swim endlessly till you awaken.
You are strangling your closest friend to death for what seems like hours, but he/she never dies.
A swarm of flies burrows under your skin and they begin to feed.
A gigantic reptilian eye is just barely visible, joined by a demonic voice that claims to want to be your friend.
Your teeth begin to grow longer so they no longer fit together properly. Eventually, you can no longer close your mouth. Later still, your jaw pops off because it can't open wide enough to accommodate your teeth. You wake up.
You're having a normal conversation with someone close to you, who is looking off into the distance. They mention how tired they are and that they should go lie down. When they turn to face you, you see that the half of their face you previously couldn't see has become rotten and infested with maggots. You wake up.
Unlit staircase extending indefinitely. No matter how far down you go, you never reach the bottom. You hear soft child esc crying but your torch light only goes so far. Your footsteps creak on each step for hours until, when standing still, you hear a creek behind you. Turning to see a pale blank eyed face in the distance.
You find yourself in a house with rooms made entirely of human teeth, doors and furniture parts replaced with bones and tendons, and corridors which elongate or change direction.
You watch your best friend commit suicide, over and over again, in increasingly brutal and improbably violent ways.
You are staring at yourself in the mirror. A small basin before you. You watch yourself open your mouth and begin to pull out your own teeth, one by one. You try to stop yourself but you are trapped within your own body- forced to watch yourself as blood cascades from your mouth and you drop the teeth one by one into the basin with a slow, methodical plink... plink...plink...plink
You are with your lover, laying in bed after making love. The room is hot and sticky, and there are an unusual number of flies that buzz around annoyingly. You reach over and run your fingers though your lover's hair : and notice a bump at the back of their head. They ask you what's wrong and you tell them. They roll over so you can see the bump. You part their hair, and in doing so the "bump" opens. Their entire head is hollow and filled with black flies that pour out in a never ending stream.
You are a child with your mother again. She is fixing a tear in your clothing. You watch as she pulls the thread in, out, in, out, until the tear is closed expertly. She looks up at you and says kindly, "one more tear to fix." And takes the needle of black thread and brings it to your face. In, out, in, out, and expertly sews your mouth shut. "There, that's better" she says.
You dream that you are suddenly dropped into a body of water. You swim upwards, flailing your arms, and you feel your fingertips break the surface, but something keeps pulling downwards all around you. Though your eyes sting from opening them in the salty seawater, you can make out the outline of a pillar of water that seems to rise all around you, keeping the open air just out of your reach as a strong current shoves you back down over and over again. As you become desperate, something suddenly wraps around your head, and water pours into your mouth as though it were a living entity intent on filling your lungs and crushing your organs. You awake gasping and drenched in cold sweat.
The party member wakes up and the BBEG and their henchmen are all around them, treating him like an ally. He looks around and sees his party ready to try to kill him, and the BBEG explains the PC was under a Dominate Person style effect. (Use on any particularly heroic characters)
The party member wakes up strapped to a table while the BBEG removes various body parts from them and replaces them with robotic or undead parts.
The PC wakes up fused to all the other PCs as a chimera
The party member wakes up strapped to a table where a huge blade is swinging down towards him on a pendulum.
The party member wakes up hanging from a tree by a noose, with the rest of the party hung dead around them. (Use on Half-Orcs or Teiflings for maximum effect)
