Dal Quor: The Region of Dreams

According to the Book:

Dal Quor is both impossibly distant and remarkably close. Tens of thousands of years ago, the giants of Xen’drik shattered the ties between Dal Quor and the Material Plane. Since then, it’s been permanently remote, and no naturally occurring manifest zone to Dal Quor has been discovered. Not even plane shift or astral travel can allow direct contact with the Region of Dreams. And yet, it’s also the closest of the planes—to visit, just close your eyes. Dreaming is a form of spiritual travel, as your mortal consciousness is drawn to Dal Quor.
Dal Quor is the realm of dreams, a place of imagination where memory and emotion can shape reality. The stories of Thelanis bring people together in a shared tale; by contrast, the dreams of Dal Quor are unique, individual, and fleeting. They’re defined by our experiences and desires, and we rarely remember them when they’re over. Dreams allows us to sift through our subconscious, and they are ours alone—or at least, they should be . . . if they aren’t manipulated by an outside force. The denizens of Dal Quor reflect the secondary theme of the plane, and—for now, at least—that theme is nightmares. The quori prey on mortal dreams, twisting them to produce the emotions they crave. This doesn’t mean all dreams are nightmares—but when a quori takes an interest in your dream, it’ll usually become one.

Universal Properties

Dal Quor is a place where impossible things are possible and the surroundings can change in the blink of an eye. What differentiates it from Kythri and Xoriat is that these changes are drawn from the minds of dreamers, both from the mortal subconscious and the ancient dreams of il-Lashtavar itself. Even when you’re exploring someone else’s dreams, your desires and memories can infect the landscape.
Shifting Dreams. Travellers to Dal Quor have experienced the following effects: a familiar melody can be heard throughout the area (select a player to describe the tune a word appears on a wall; a familiar NPC (friend or foe) appears; a piece of equipment takes on a random appearance; a creature appears to be either a child or a non-sentient creature (no effect on stats, ends after 1 minute a creature has a flying speed equal to their walking speed for 1 minute. Extremely Morphic. The environment of Dal Quor can shift at any moment. These changes are generally drawn from the mind of the current dreamer, but at the DM’s discretion, the thoughts of adventurers might impact another creature’s dream that they’re currently experiencing. Extended Illusion. When a creature casts an illusion spell with a duration of 1 minute or longer, the duration is doubled. Spells with a duration of 24 hours or more are unaffected. Flowing Time. For every 10 minutes that pass in Dal Quor, only 1 minute passes on the Material Plane. While sleeping for 8 hours, a creature could spend 3 days in Dal Quor.

The Turning of the Age

The layers of Dal Quor are shaped by dreaming minds. The quori believe the heart of Dal Quor is itself the dream of an immense, ancient spirit, and that they themselves are simply part of its dream. They call this the Quor Tarai—the Dream of the Age. But there’s a catch: every dream ends when the dreamer wakes up. Forty thousand years ago, the giants of Xen’drik fought a war with Dal Quor—but none of the current quori remember this war or anything that happened before it. They believe this is because the Quor Tarai came to an end. Dal Quor woke from its dream, then immediately returned to its slumber and began to dream again . . . but it was a new dream, with entirely new quori. The quori call this transition the Turning of the Age. They don’t know how many times it’s happened before, and they know nothing about the quori of the previous age. But they believe that each incarnation of the Quor Tarai has its own distinct flavor.
The present Quor Tarai is il-Lashtavar, the Great Darkness that Dreams. It’s malevolent and cruel, and that’s reflected by the quori it’s created. But a handful of quori didn’t fit in this dream. These are the quori that became the kalashtar, who consider themselves harbingers of transformation. The kalashtar believe that the next incarnation of the Quor Tarai will be an age of hope and compassion; they call it il-Yannah, the Great Light. So all quori know that one day, Dal Quor will wake from its dream, and when it does, all existing quori will be destroyed.
This drives the conflict between the kalashtar and the Dreaming Dark. The kalashtar believe their devotions and meditation slowly turn the wheel toward a dream of light. Meanwhile, the agents of the Dreaming Dark believe they can permanently anchor the Quor Tarai in the current age, if only they can control enough mortal dreams—a process begun with Sarlona. It’s up to the DM to decide if the kalashtar can usher in a new age over the course of the campaign, or if the Dreaming Dark will maintain the status quo. If the Turning of the Age occurs, all existing quori will be destroyed and reborn; no one knows what this will do to the kalashtar or foreign creations like the Uul Dhakaan.

Denizens

Dreamers. At any given moment, there are millions of dreaming minds creating islands in Dal Quor. Humans, orcs, giants, dragons— any creature that dreams can be found in this plane.
A rare few dreamers are lucid and in full control of their actions, due to either training or magic; these are capable of leaving their own dreams and moving between the plane’s dream islands and layers. However, the vast majority of dreamers aren’t lucid. They’re driven by their subconscious, and react based on instinct and deep desires; they likely won’t remember the events of a dream clearly. Either way, when a dreamer dies in their dream, they wake up. (ERFTLW, Chapter 4 has examples of some consequences from those dreams.)
Figments and Drifters. When you have a dream and you meet your old drill sergeant, it’s not actually your old drill sergeant, and it’s (probably) not a quori. It’s simply a figment, manifested from the void by Dal Quor. When you wake up—or even just leave the scene—this manifestation vanishes, absorbed back into the essence of the plane. A figment can be anything—a friend of yours, a zombie version of that friend, a demon, a dragon—but the catch is that it’s drawn from the mind of the local dreamer. When you dream about your old drill sergeant, they can’t tell you a secret you don’t already know, because they’re part of you. On the other hand, if you’re in someone else’s dream—or if a quori has taken control of your dream—then the figments can surprise you, because their capabilities and knowledge are drawn from someone else’s mind. A figment could use the statistics of the creature it represents, or it might be limited, as the dreamer doesn’t know what it’s actually capable of. Conversely, a figment goblin could have the statistics of an ogre—in this dream, that’s one tough goblin. Occasionally, a remarkable figment develops the ability to persist beyond the dream that created it—becoming a truly sentient spirit instead of a simple manifestation. Such figments might be useful guides or allies for mortal dreamers, or become predators that travel from dream to dream and prey on mortal fears. Such free-willed figments are called drifters.
The Quori. The quori themselves are figments—figments of il-Lashtavar, the current Dream of the Age. However, these figments are immortal, and don’t disappear when a mortal’s dream ends; if they’re destroyed, they’re simply reborn within the heart of il-Lashtavar. Like other figments, they come into existence knowing the role they are supposed to play: they are shapers of nightmares. Each type of quori feeds on a particular emotion; tsucora quori craft terrifying nightmares so they can feast on mortal fear, while the du’ulora thrive on anger.
When a quori enters a dream, it can create new figments, alter the story’s script, or change its own appearance (though its statistics remain the same). If the invading quori is killed within the dream, the story reverts to the original script, so most quori prefer to remain in the background while shaping a dream; however, some are arrogant and can’t resist playing a starring role. The quori don’t create every nightmare; there are millions of dreamers, while the quori number only in the thousands. But the nightmares they personally create are works of art.
In the first days of il-Lashtavar, the quori had no purpose aside from preying on mortal dreams. Now they believe they’re fighting for their survival, and they use their abilities to manipulate mortals and the waking world. But always remember that the quori began as crafters of nightmares, and consider how each quori’s favorite emotion may color its actions.

Interlopers. Some creatures in Dal Quor are neither figments nor mortal dreamers. Night hags freely come and go, collecting nightmares for their own purposes. Here are some other interlopers. The Fey of the Fading Dream. Taer Lian Doresh is a feyspire, one of the eladrin cities of Thelanis. Long ago, the tyrant empyrean Cul’sir cursed the feyspire and cast it into Dal Quor. Caught in the transformation of the Quor Tarai, these eladrin became embodiments of classic nightmares, and ease their pain by spreading fear among mortals. (They can be represented using shadar-kai stat blocks, but aren’t shadar-kai and have no ties to Dolurrh’s Queen of the Dead.)
Taer Lian Doresh now exists between Dal Quor and the Material Plane. The eladrin of this feyspire can freely pass to both planes, but other creatures can only enter Taer Lian Doresh and return to their plane of origin; they can’t use it as a portal to the other plane. Thus, quori and adventurers can walk the halls of the Fading Dream together, but the quori can’t cross over to physically enter Eberron itself, nor can the denizens of the Material Plane (including eladrin of other feyspires, humans, and all other creatures of Eberron) enter Dal Quor.
The Draconic Eidolon. Many dragons of Argonnessen believe they can attain immortality after death, passing through Dolurrh and becoming divine beings. However, some aren’t willing to take that chance; using an eldritch machine hidden deep in Argonnessen, the most powerful can perform a ritual that tethers their spirits to a psychic anchor in Dal Quor. This Draconic Eidolon, a monument in the Ocean of Dreams, holds the souls of dragons long dead instead of releasing them to Dolurrh. The dragons no longer exist physically; like the Undying Court, they’re a union of spirits, possessing greater power together than they would individually. They can’t leave the Eidolon, but possess vast knowledge—secrets of history, insight into the Prophecy, and knowledge of epic magic. They have much to offer, but what do adventurers have that the dreams of dead dragons might want?

Layers

The Ocean of Dreams.

A vast expanse of psychic space surrounds il-Lashtavar, home to millions of mortal dreams. The islands in the Ocean of Dreams range from the complex dreamscapes of sentient creatures, humans and dragons alike, to the simple dream of a dog that’s imagining chasing a ball. From the outside, these islands appear as glittering bubbles, each with an image of its dreamer within it. They’re loosely arranged based on the physical location of the dreamer, so there’s a stretch of the ocean that contains dreamers near Breland, another for Thrane, and so on—including regions for any dreamers currently on other planes.

The Riedran Sea.

Over centuries, the Inspired have built a network of monoliths in Riedra, psychic anchors called hanbalani altas. These allow them to control everyone’s dreams over a vast radius. Dreams are typically tailored to the region, including local news and instructions. However, if they choose, the Inspired can broadcast a single dream to all of Sarlona. Within Dal Quor, this manifests as a distinctive region of the Ocean of Dreams—an array of hundreds of thousands of islands, dream-bubbles arranged in perfect symmetrical rows, with identical images in each bubble.

The Uul Dhakaan.

Jhazaal Dhakaan united the dar through an act of epic bardic magic. When the dar dream, they don’t create their own islands in the Ocean. Instead, they are drawn to a vast, ongoing dream—the Uul Dhakaan, as discussed in chapter 4. This is a vision of what the Dhakaani Empire could and should be, and it encompasses many cities and fortresses. In addition to the spirits of dreaming dar, this enormous dream is filled with countless figments—both background soldiers, artisans, and facsimiles of legendary champions whose memories have been preserved. Most dar aren’t lucid dreamers and they don’t fully remember the time they spend in the Uul Dhakaan, but it reinforces Dhakaani values and traditions. If adventurers want to experience what the Dhakaani Empire was at its height—and what it could be again—they can find it here. Chot’uul guardians maintain outposts throughout the dream, along with a great monastery in the capital city. The magic woven into the dream ensures that the throne in the imperial palace remains empty—for now. But when a new emperor is chosen and has the support of the majority of the dar, they’ll hold the throne in the Uul Dhakaan as well as in the Material Plane.

Il-Lashtavar.

The dark heart of Dal Quor, il-Lashtavar, is the current incarnation of the Quor Tarai. This vast dreamscape, orbited by the Ocean of Dreams, is the source and home of the quori. It’s a menagerie of nightmares, a showcase of terrors that haunt the dreams of mortals. On the edges of il-Lashtavar, corpses dangle from the trees of a haunted orchard. Blood drips from the leaves of a terrifying topiary maze. While the basic form of these nightmares is stable, they feed on the psyches of nearby mortals. Adventurers walking through the orchard see the hanging corpses as the people they most care about, or even as themselves—whatever is most disturbing to each intruder.
Those who press through this outer ring of nightmares find the great fortress-city of the Devourer of Dreams, the kalaraq quori who coordinates the actions of the Dreaming Dark on Eberron. The quori spirits tied to agents of the Dreaming Dark and the Inspired can return here whenever they choose, reporting to the Devourer and coordinating with other quori. The flowing time works to their advantage, as an hour in Dal Quor is just a few minutes on Eberron. The fortress itself is ever shifting; it might be formed from black twisted roots, or the walls could be blood-soaked spiderwebs. At the very center is a pool of shadows. It’s here that newborn quori emerge when they’re reincarnated, and here that the Devourer of Dreams descends into the pool to commune with the Great Darkness.
Il-Lashtavar is the most dangerous place in Dal Quor. At any given time, there are hundreds or even thousands of quori here. The Great Darkness doesn’t act directly, but its presence can be felt in how the environment shifts to showcase the nightmares of intruders. Dreamers who die in this place can be trapped the same way kalaraq bind the souls of their victims. Only the most powerful and prepared adventurers should enter il-Lashtavar.
In those regions of il-Lashtavar that appear to be outdoors, adventurers may notice a dark, nearly invisible moon in the sky. A sage with considerable skill in History or Arcana may recognize this as the moon Crya, thought to be destroyed in the Age of Giants. Perhaps it was thrown into Dal Quor and could somehow be returned, restoring the plane to its proper orbit—or perhaps this is only il-Lashtavar dreaming of the lost moon.