The poet's eye, in a fine frenzy rolling,
Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven;
And as imagination bodies forth
The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen
Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing
A local habitation and a name.
—William Shakespeare, "A Midsummer Night's Dream"
The Dreamlands are a place between — everywhere, and nowhere. Mortal minds brush its edges every night, but few dare to venture into it bodily. This is wise, for the Dreamlands are a place where imagination runs wild, the wonders and fables and nightmares of mortalkind made manifest — and the power that brings these shades to life is a thing both ancient and alien. The Dreamlands are a place of beauty, but they are also a place of terror — and increasingly, over the last thousand years, they have become a place of war.
Cosmology
"Each person's dreamscape sits on the borders of the Dreamlands, the realm between ours and the Heavens and the Hells, like foam on the ocean. That's why the ritual is even possible in the first place. The Dreamlands are always just under the surface."
- Natalie Grace in Dreams of Change
The Dreamlands are an infinite plane that touches on every part of the material world, yet also stands removed from them.1 To a mortal observer standing in the plane, it appears to be flat, stretching out into infinite distance in all directions, but two points on the Dreamlands may be very close together and still correspond to vastly different parts of the material world — or vice versa. To make matters worse for a would-be navigator, the Dreamlands are a fluid plane; roads need not lead to the same place tomorrow that they led to yesterday, and the forest or river that you passed an hour ago could be right in front of you, even if you traveled in a straight line. To the natives of the Dreamlands, this is usually no hindrance, but a mortal attempting to pass through the plane can become lost disturbingly fast.
In addition to touching on the material plane, the Dreamlands also border on the First Heaven and the First Hell. These other planes were once bound to the Dreamlands by the Axis, a glowing column of light that served as a metaphysical lift tube to transport the aedra and daedra between planes. Merai Starchild destroyed the Axis when she cast the fiends and celestials out of the outer planes that they had created, thus ensuring that no one would be able to access the enormous stores of power contained within them. For all practical purposes, the Nine Heavens and Nine Hells are now inaccessible, though some believe that the barriers could be pierced with enough energy and the right spell to harness it.
The Numen
The Dreamlands are pervaded everywhere by a powerful creative force that responds to the imagination of mortal minds. Some scholars call this force the Numen. Just what the Numen is is not really understood, but it is known to be different from mana, the substance that fuels mortal magic. Some believe that it is raw creative energy left over from the formation of the universe; others believe it is the scattered essence of the Creator-god itself. Whatever it is, it spontaneously reshapes itself in response to the thoughts of imaginative, creative minds.
Most of the time, the thought-constructs formed out of the Numen are only temporary, and can only form when the mortal's mind is asleep. But if the mortal believes in his creation enough — or is willful enough to insist that it shall be — then the thing he envisions can spring into true existence within the Dreamlands, whether the thing envisioned is a place, an object, a beast … or a person. But regardless of what was envisioned, it never turns out exactly like its creator expected. The Numen is powerful and chaotic, and anything made from it will be wild, temperamental, and at least a little alien to the mortal mind.
Geography
The topography of the Dreamlands is so fluid that maps are meaningless, but certain areas are more stable than others. Here are a few of the better-known areas of the plane.
Faerie
Most of the more accessible parts of the Dreamlands — the parts closest to the mortal world — comprise the land of Faerie. This land is strongly tied to the natural world of Earth; it has forests, hills, fertile meadows, lakes, rivers, and more. Before the coming of the Dreamlands War, most of it was wild and unspoiled, and the Fae who inhabited it lived a simple, pastoral existence. The sidhe had their great halls under the hillsides, and some even crafted artful towers that rose high into the sky, but the relentless march of progress in the mortal realm meant nothing to these creatures.
The war changed that. With the arrival of hordes of celestials and fiends, each side bent on destroying the other, the Fae learned a hard lesson quickly: if they wanted avoid being trampled under foot, they would need to lead, follow, or get out of the way. Some of the most powerful Sidhe Lords chose to collaborate with the outsiders, offering their cities as bases of operation in exchange for having a say in how the war was waged. Many lesser Fae enlisted in the war effort, driven by a variety of motivations — glory, bloodlust, or simply the desire to defend their homes. Many more simply decided to run, retreating from the battlegrounds and into more remote parts of the Dreamlands — or even into the material world.
Today Faerie bears the scars of 1300 years of ceaseless war. Some parts of this realm are so ingrained into the mortal imagination that they have been regenerated again and again after being destroyed, but other parts have been ravaged beyond recognition. While Faerie has fared far better than the mortal world would have in the face of such a war, it is still such a source of distress to the Fae that most of them will never forgive the Starchild for what she did to them.
The First Battleground
The place where the Axis once passed through the Dreamlands is now a charred, blackened crater. Much of the geography around it hasn't fared any better, for this is where the exiled celestials and fiends first arrived in the Dreamlands after being cast out. The two sides fought fiercely for days before being forced to withdraw — the celestials to the realms of Summer and Morning, the fiends to the realm of Winter and Evening. The area around the Axis has been a no-man's-land ever since.
Mufaltar
This is a great city that lies at the crossroads between Faerie and a dozen other realms. It is a place for merchants and spies, traders and travelers. Different parts of Mufaltar resemble cities from all different times and places in mortal history; indeed, some people believe that Mufaltar is The City, a cosmic gestalt of all of the mortal dreams of what cities are, have been, or ought to be.
Mufaltar is neutral ground in the Dreamlands War, and both the fiends and the celestials have agreed not to make war within a day's walk of the city. This works to the advantage of all sides, as it provides a safe place where business can be conducted. Both sides spy on each other relentlessly within Mufaltar's borders, and countless third parties engage in business with one side or the other (or both).
The primary inhabitants of Mufaltar are the Bachuri, a tall, humanoid race with some bestial characteristics. They are consummate businessmen and are never squeamish about dealing with anyone, be they mortal, outsider, or Fae — as long as they have something of value to trade.
The Nightmare Realms
The Nightmare Realms are the part of the Dreamlands that comes closest to the Underworld, and as a result they have been partly corrupted by its influence. This realm is associated with the primal fears of mortalkind, and the creatures within it become more fearsome and maddening the further they are from the site of the old Axis (the Dreamlands' subjective center). The nearer parts of the Nightmare Realms blur into the territory of Winter Court of the Fae, and both the Unseelie Sidhe and some daedra find this part of the Dreamlands hospitable. Further out, however, the plane is home only to the creatures of nightmares, and the influence of the Underworld is more keenly felt.
Author's Notes
from Twitter on 7/16 by Etherius: "Dreamlands are where imagination becomes reality, fueled by raw god-stuff from a dead creator." This is a… simplification of the Universalist view.
Source: http://transform.to/~ravenb/stories/mk2k/bible/dreamlands.html