Dreamer
Long before The Gap, the Barathu of the gas giant Bretheda were sailing the stars within the enormous spacefaring creatures known as Oma. One of their first destinations within the star system was their nearest neighbor, the peach-colored gas giant known as Liavara, and these pioneering barathus found the placid skies much to their liking. But something within Liavara’s composition affected the visiting barathus deeply, and the wheeling and trilling so common to the species took on a new and unique psychic significance. Over an astonishingly short span of time, at least on an evolutionary scale, these barathus underwent profound mental and physical changes. Their abilities to adapt and merge dwindled and ultimately vanished, and their intellect diminished even as their psychic prowess burgeoned. The Dreamers became psychically sensitive in ways their barathu progenitors could have never predicted.
By the time the second oma-ship of barathus arrived in Liavara’s skies, the first arrivals had become markedly different from the entities they once were: nearly feral, silent save for their crooning songs, seemingly oblivious to their surroundings, and yet commanding unparalleled powers of divination. Rather than renouncing their wayward kin, the barathus embraced them, calling them “Dreamers” due to their somnambulant behavior. Ever since, barathus have regarded their Dreamer cousins with a mix of reverence and protectiveness, an attitude that ultimately led to the barathus’ insistence upon administering Liavara as a protectorate within The Pact Worlds. This political status persists to this day, as the barathus continue to do everything in their power to protect the Dreamers.
Whether the Dreamers recognize or understand their progenitors’ attitudes toward them is unknown. Left to their own among Liavara’s gentle clouds, the Dreamers wheel and dance through the skies, mewling incomprehensible songs that nevertheless carry profound psychic power. While ancient pre-Gap records indicate that the Dreamers’ songs once predicted future events with unerring accuracy, their predictions are now less precise— though no less portentous. Even those who make only a passing study of Dreamers’ songs realize that the creatures continue to prophecy some monumental event to come; the lack of detail, however, leaves open questions of the nature of the event, its timing, and whether it will be for good or ill. Some more pessimistic denizens of the Pact Worlds grumble that the Dreamers simply babble nonsense with no real clairvoyance to support their claims. These naysayers are in the minority, though—most Pact Worlders believe and wildly speculate what significant future event the Dreamers might have sensed.
Dreamers pay little heed to their surroundings and other creatures. Even Dreamers within a single flotilla seem to ignore one another, though their flights through Liavara’s clouds weave complex but seemingly instinctive patterns. Those creatures that come to Liavara as supplicants to the Dreamers gain no special treatment; the fact that some such petitioners eventually manifest psychic abilities may simply be a result of exposure to the same phenomenon that converted the Dreamers into what they now are. Nonetheless, this occasional happening has earned the Dreamers a reputation among some in the Pact Worlds as the bestowers of psychic sensitivity, and increasing numbers of pilgrims have visited Liavara in recent years to search for these peaceful, floating sages.
A Dreamer’s defenses are almost entirely autonomic, but when seriously injured, a Dreamer erupts into a furious rage with a debilitating psychic blast. Shortly after such an outburst, however, the Dreamer slips back into its dreamlike trance as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened. Even so, the creatures’ barathu protectors are likely to arrest anyone they find harassing a Dreamer and sentence them to one of Bretheda’s prison moons. Barathus are eminently protective over the Dreamers, as their existence is both an artifact of both their home world and their culture.
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