Gray Raven

Have you suggested a homework assignment, such as having them read the story Call of Cthulhu? That should give them, and him in particular, a strong taste of what the game is about. The strong feeling of lurking fear, the kiss of insanity, and the embrace of grateful death as a means to avoid and escape the despair of facing the reality of the Mythos. Also, there is the wonderful movie adaption of that story made by the H. P. Lovecraft Historical Society. https://www.hplhs.org/mpcoc.php

Lovecraft's Dreamland cycle is more fantasy than horror, seemingly lacking bite and the taste of Cosmic Horror. You should check out Gary Myers's The Country of the Worm: Excursions Beyond the Wall of Sleep, 2020. Those stories are set in Dreamland, but they definitely bite back with a vengeance. Things rarely end well for either Dreamers or natives of the realm - so they are written in the same vein as Lovecraft's Mythos stories. Myers's stories are dreadful cautionary tales of the awfulness that hides in the dark corners of the realm - evoking nightmares rather than wistful sweet dreams of complacency, which is often the case of Lovecraft's own tales.

After successfully making my Libary Skill roll, I uncovered this set of dark deeds that has been cast upon our Mythos texts! Has some dreadful demonic spell been cast to keep hidden knowledge from us, the collective investigators, into the shadowy realm of the Mythos? Is this spell blinding all Keepers from acquiring the needed arcane knowledge? Horrors! Girding my loins and adjusting my spectacles, I, with great trepidation, delved into my arcane library to reveal the hidden horrible truth! In the Fifth Edition, 2004, of the Dreamland rules, the Moon Beasts are briefly mentioned on page 114: Lesser Independent Race The moonbeasts are an alien race inhabiting the Dreamlands’ moon. They serve Nyarlathotep for his favor and enslave other races. They ride great black galleys through the Dreamlands skies. Many of their soldiers are members of various slave races. The moonbeasts have particularly strong ties with the cats of Saturn and the men of Leng. See Call of Cthulhu for a complete description. This is the exact same entry found in my older 1997 Fourth Edition of the Dreamland rule book. Then when I turned to the Seventh Edition, 2020, of the Call of Cthulhu: Keeper Rulebook and turned to the Mythos monster section, behold! No listing for Moon Beasts is found therein! Now, in my 1994 Call of Cthulhu: Horror Roleplaying in the Worlds of H. P. Lovecraft, Edition 5.1.2, on page 114 is found a listing for Moon-Beasts. When I turn to the Malleus Monstrorum Volume I: Monsters of the Mythos, 2020, behold! No listing is offered for Moon Beasts! In my S. Petersen's Field Guide to Cthulhu Monsters, 1988 Edition, there is an entry for Moon Beasts on pages 44-45. In the 2015 Edition of Petersen's Field Guide, pages 114 - 115, therein yet again is found an entry for Moon Beasts. The trouble with all this is that it seems to me, after making my Sanity and KNOW roll, that information concerning these creatures should have been in: 1) Dreamland rules 2) Failing that in the C of C Keeper Guide as stated in the Dreamland rulebook. What arcane magick has hidden this entry??? What diabolic spell had been cast to hide an entry for these creatures from the Malleus Monstronum text? Or is all this just a scribal error? If so, someone needs to take those scribes out to the proverbial backshed and deal with them in an appropriate manner. 🤪

To help understand what is going on in that example, I have copied the text below from page 174 of the 7th edition of the Keepers rulebook for C of C As the book is a flawed and incomplete translation, the reading roll is set to Hard difficulty level. Harvey’s player makes the roll and is rewarded with +3% Cthulhu Mythos knowledge (the Cthulhu Mythos Initial—CMI number for the tome) and reduces Harvey’s maximum Sanity points by a corresponding amount. The player is also informed of a number of spells contained within the book. She then rolls 2D4 and Harvey loses 6 Sanity points. This is more that the five points required to trigger temporary insanity, should Harvey’s player pass an Intelligence roll, which she does. The important thing to note is the rules concerning reading a Mythos text. On that same page 174, it states that Once the investigator has made an initial reading, the Keeper should reward them with the initial reading (CMI) number. The reader now automatically loses the Sanity cost of the tome (no Sanity roll is made)— Note that a successful reading roll of a text, which Harvey did make, and thus: "Harvey's player makes the roll and is rewarded..." Harvey gains knowledge from his reading of the book. However, the rule for reading a Mythos text now takes effect. Which is that the reader "automatically loses the Sanity cost of the tome (NO Sanity roll is made!" This is why the character did have a bout of temporary insanity since the character lost 6 Sanity points according to the Keeper's roll. The general game rule within C of C, as laid down by Lovecraft's writings, is that knowledge of the Mythos is dangerous to your sanity. The more you know, the more likely that knowledge will drive you insane, either temporarily or permanently. This is why the description of the events in the play of the game resulted in Harvey's character suffering from temporary insanity. The character acquired Mythos knowledge from reading the text and suffered the automatic sanity loss that such an act incurs. I hope I have helped to clarify things for you. (Assuming that I have correctly described the working of the rules! If I have not correctly described the rules - please, someone pipe in!)

Hello, You are missing a bit of nuance in the rules. Let's go over this; here is the page 37 section on INT from the 7th Ed. Intelligence 0: No intellect, unable to comprehend the world around them. 15: Slow learner, able to undertake only the most basic math, or read beginner-level books. 50: Average human intellect. 90: Quick-witted, probably able to comprehend multiple languages or theorems. 99: Genius (Einstein, Da Vinci, Tesla, etc.). Human maximum. 140: Beyond human intellect (e.g. Elder Things, see Chapter 14: Monsters, Beasts and Alien Gods). 210+: Monstrous intellect, able to comprehend and operate in multiple dimensions (e.g. Great Cthulhu, see Chapter 14: Monsters, Beasts and Alien Gods). You will note the highlighted line that says that the maximum human INT is 99. However, the rule book needs to refer to the nonhuman aliens and such of the Mythos. They can and do have a capacity beyond the human. Therefore all NPC and player characters can NOT have an INT beyond 99. But they will encounter beings who do exceed that INT since they are NOT human. I hope that helps. Will check out more of your questions to see if I can offer further insights. Therefore no person - human being can have INT beyond 99.

As I was wandering about, I came across a blog site that mentioned a solo role-playing site called Parts per Million. [https://basicroleplaying.org/blogs/entry/435-looking-at-parts-per-millions-bsrp/] [ https://www.ppmgames.co.uk/ ]When I joined it, here is what the creator of that site replied with: Thank you for subscribing to my mailing list. First of all, this link will take you to the download page for your free copy of the Alien RPG solo rules. Alien RPG Solo (PDF) As a member of my mailing list, you will get tips and advice on solo playing. Most of them come from my own experience, but others have been suggested by other members of the solo community. You will also get discounts, typically 40% off of anything new that I create. I also like to get feedback from fellow solo roleplayers. I value your opinions and experiences. If you want to give me any feedback, all you need to do is hit reply, and the email will come directly to me. Thank you for joining my community. Peter R. His Alien RPG Solo game seems a perfect match for a C of C adventure in space. You could play it straight or switch out the Alien to a Mythos creature- a nice and deadly one and play that out. What do you think?

I would think that the Aliens movie series would fit very well with a space setting for Call of Cthulhu. Possibly simply obtain and use the varying Sci-Fi existing games such as Traveler and play it out with the possibilities of Mythos encounters. There are plenty of space-traveling Mythos creatures to encounter and to find evidence of their ancient or recent presence on worlds that the characters explore. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traveller_(role-playing_game)

I'm clearly a newbie, and as such, I am 'Ranked' as one. As usual, I'm curious: how does this Ranking thing actually work? Does it play out in any way on the Forum, or is it simply a record of your activity history on the site? How does the Ranking increase? Number of posts? Number of likes? Etc. As usual, I'm always interested in the mechanics of a system.

Perhaps limit self-help for the lower Sanity players. It would seem that the higher Sanity players would not believe that they need any self-help at all since they would naturally disbelieve in the Mythos.

Curious, what are the specifics in this situation that you are dealing with? High Sanity players have what amount of Sanity points and what amount of Mythos points?

As I ponder this even more, perhaps Sanity should also take away Mythos knowledge and points. Just as Mythos is a threat to sanity, so too is sanity a threat to seeing and believing in Mythos. The more sane you are, the more unconsciously fearful you are of holding onto that fragile grip of belief in so-called normality. The higher the sanity, the more you would doubt and thus refuse to see and acknowledge Mythos. I do mean literally see in this statement. Seeing is an act of belief; seeing is a participatory physical and cognitive function. It has been academically shown that you can fail to see something that you don't wish to see or don't believe is there. There is the famous experiment with trying to cope with seeing a red ace of spades when it is flashed before your eyes. Many people could not see it as either the color red or as a spade. They had to distort what they saw into something that fit their preconceived views of what is acceptable. Thus, a high sanity character might not be willing to notice sights, sounds, smells, etc., danger signals of an approaching Mythos being or such. This would make them more vulnerable to attack - more easily surprised by any Mythos creature. Perhaps a rule that says that having 70 Sanity points is the threshold for retaining Mythos points. Therefore any gains after 70 in Sanity points could result in a loss of 2 or 3 Mythos points. This could also mean that the high Sanity character would not remember magick and would tend to remove any Mythos and Magick texts that they once had from their collection since having those texts would threaten their hold on their high sanity.

Please post when it is available! Post a link to the site where it can be purchased as well!

Hmmm... How many Mythos points do they have? Does not the number of Mythos points a character has decrease that character's sanity points? "Thus current Sanity points can never be higher than 99 minus the amount of Cthulhu Mythos Skill." pg 46 of Fifth edition in the section of Sanity & Insanity. It would seem that having 90+Sanity would mean a near disbelief in anything Mythos-related, i.e., no Mythos points. This should mean that any actual confrontation with a Mythos creature or any other tangible and verifiable evidence of such a thing would send these sane characters reeling since they could not handle the challenge of their disbelief in such things. Thus their own sanity rolls for the extremely sane characters would be highly penalized, more so than the others who have Mythos and thus have the protection of lesser sanity. The more you know, the closer to insanity you are; however, the more adept at handling the challenges of Mythos since you believe in them and can readily act to defend yourself from such threats. Thus exceptionally sane characters would have no practical ability to cast any sort of magick or use or carry an Elder Sign. (Though whether that is effective is questionable according to some texts.) These characters might also interfere with the other less sane characters, being annoyed and even angry at the less sane characters for acting so dangerously foolish as to believe in the Mythos, use magick, etc. Does any of this help?

Now, on page 27 of the Fifth Edition of Dreamlands, it states: "Eons ago they came to Earth’s Dreamlands and subjugated the men of Leng. At first they only used these pitiful creatures for food and slave labor in the ruby mines of the moon." First implication: The so-called Moon Beasts are not native to Dreamland and the Moon? "Eons ago they came" there. Presumably on those Black Galleons that can sail the seas and the interstellar oceans, since it does travel from Dreamland to the Moon. Second Implication: As soon as they arrived there, they subjugated the men of Leng. How did the Moon Beasts travel from their point of origin to the Earth's Dreamland? On page 44 of the Fifth Edition of Dreamlands, it states: "At first the moonbeasts used the men from Leng for nothing more than food, but as man spread across the face of the Dreamlands, they began to find other uses for their slaves." First implication: This seems to mean that the Lengites were a food source in the beginning. Does that mean the Moon Beasts built their own cities and temples, and only "as man spread across the face of the Dreamlands" did the Moon Beasts finally get around to enslaving the Lengites for labor? On page 60 of the Fifth Edition of Dreamlands, it states: "The moonbeasts are skilled in the arts of torture and can keep a victim alive for many months while he or she endures the tender mercies of the captors." First implication: If they have such skill, does this not mean that they can sense the torment they are inflicting on their victims? On page 148 of the Fifth edition of Dreamlands, it states: "THE BOOK OF BLACK STONES: in Moonbeast, by unknown moonbeast authors. A series of plates of black stone, laced together with thick wire to form a sort of book. The book is inscribed in a series of strange hieroglyph-like symbols which are the language of the moonbeasts." First Implication: If the Moon Beasts have a written text conveyed in symbols, that means that they must be able to sense them. Do they have sight, or is it more like a form of braille?

Although Moon Beasts are mainly encountered in the Dreamlands, the fifth edition of that sourcebook fails to give a detailed description of them. "The moonbeasts are an alien racing inhabiting the Dreamlands’ moon. They serve Nyarlathotep for his favor and enslave other races. They ride great black galleys through the Dreamlands skies. Many of their soldiers are members of various slave races. The moonbeasts have particularly strong ties with the cats of Saturn and the men of Leng. See Call of Cthulhu for a complete description." From Fifth Edition of Dreamlands, 2004, pg. 114. It seems a bit odd that these creatures native to Dreamland and Dreamland's moon are not fully described in the Dreamland text. It would seem a simple thing to repeat the section from the C of C text within the Dreamland text. These creatures are also left out of Malleus Monstrorum: Cthulhu Mythos Beastiary, V. I, Monsters of the Mythos by Mike Mason, Scott David Aniolowski, Loïc Muzy, and Paul Fricker, 2020 edition. My S. Petersen's Field Guide to Cthulhu Monsters: A Field Observer's Handbook of Preternatural Entities, 1988 edition; does describe the Moon Beasts on page 44. "Typically, this is a large, grayish-white oily being which can contract and expand its body volume. A Moon-Beast's general shape is toad-like. Though it lacks visible sense organs other than a quivering cluster of short, usually pinkish tentacles on the tip of the snout, the creature's high intelligence and utter ruthlessness compensate for the handicap." If I read Prof. Petersen's text correctly, he is stating that these creatures are intelligent, and those curious tentacles are perhaps sense organs. However, he is not clear that this is what they are. Now, the Moon Beasts are not only intelligent but capable of great craft and artistic and architectural feats, such as building their cities on the Moon and crafting a huge idol in the Temple of Mnomquah. "TEMPLE OF MNOMQUAH: Near the Crater of Mnomquah, on a low hill, the moonbeasts have erected a huge idol of their god. Within the hill itself lies their temple." From Fifth Edition of Dreamlands, pg. 79. This, to me, at least implies these creatures must indeed have sense organs to enable them to craft and build such structures, as well as presumably the Black Galleon fleet. Now, of course, Moon Beasts had eventually enslaved the Lengites from Dreamland and do, in fact, not only eat them but use them as slave labor. But I presume, and here I am asking for input and clarification, that the Moon Beasts built their cities and temples on their own prior to enslaving the Lengites. Or am I mistaken? My specific question is: Do Moon Beasts have sense organs? Are those tentacles coming from their snout, in fact, those sense organs? What can they sense? Some part of the electromagnetic spectrum? Sound waves? Or???? I think knowing how they sense things will determine the nature of an encounter with them by characters in the games and in stories. Can anyone find sources that offer clues to this question?

A Dream Within a Dream BY EDGAR ALLAN POE Take this kiss upon the brow! And, in parting from you now, Thus much let me avow — You are not wrong, who deem That my days have been a dream; Yet if hope has flown away In a night, or in a day, In a vision, or in none, Is it therefore the less gone? All that we see or seem Is but a dream within a dream. I stand amid the roar Of a surf-tormented shore, And I hold within my hand Grains of the golden sand — How few! yet how they creep Through my fingers to the deep, While I weep — while I weep! O God! Can I not grasp Them with a tighter clasp? O God! can I not save One from the pitiless wave? Is all that we see or seem But a dream within a dream? For the average Waking World individual, we often barely pay attention to the time we spend in sleep and in our dreams. For the ordinary Waking World individual, we are like Poe’s sleeper who, upon leaving our dreams, can barely retain them. They slip away easily like sand through our fingers, seemingly fading from our grasp no matter how hard we try to keep and save them from the pitiless waves of coming wakefulness. This difficulty and its subsequent reality are reflected in the Dreamland rules. “Any time an investigator awakens from a dream, he risks forgetting much of what he learned therein. To simulate this, after the investigator wakes, have him attempt an Idea roll. If it succeeds, then he can remember what happened in his dream as if it had occurred in ‘real life’ If the Idea roll fails, however, the dream experiences and discoveries are not clearly remembered.” From Dreamland: Roleplaying Beyond the Walls of Sleep, Chaosium Inc., Fifth ed., 2004, pg. 16. This makes sense if the player character is an ordinary Waking World sleeper and has entered Dreamland unexpectedly by stumbling upon the doorway leading down to this realm in her ordinary sleep. There are those of the Waking World who have more skill with their dreams. Those individuals who have consciously cultivated the art of recalling and writing down their dreams systematically in a dream journal will retain more of their ordinary dreams and thus should be able to do the same with the extraordinary experiences of being in Dreamland. To simulate this, a Keeper should increase that idea role percentage and thus enable more or even all of the memory of Dreamland to be retained by the Waking World character. There are Waking World individuals who have spontaneously had a lucid dream experience and/or cultivated that skill and ability. The first individual to write about lucid dreaming was Hervey de Saint Denys. Hervey de Saint Denys was one of the earliest oneirologists (specialists in the study of dreams), and is nowadays regarded as "The Father" of modern lucid dreaming. In 1867 there appeared as an anonymous publication a book entitled Les rêves et les moyens de les diriger; observations pratiques (Translation: Dreams and the Ways to Direct Them: Practical Observations). “In the psychology subfield of oneirology, a lucid dream is a type of dream in which the dreamer becomes aware that they are dreaming while they are dreaming. It is a trainable skill. During a lucid dream, the dreamer may gain some amount of control over the dream characters, narrative, or environment.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucid_dream These individuals have gained the ability to be consciously aware and active within their ordinary dreams, and they have gained even more. Thus, these lucid dreamers can not only actively explore their ordinary dreamscape and environment but can actually shape that experience. They can control their ordinary dreams. They have essentially gained and cultivated the skill of Dreaming. A Waking World lucid dreamer would have no trouble at all retaining knowledge of the experience that they have had in Dreamland since, to cultivate the skill of lucid dreaming, they would have already practiced the ability to retain the memory of their ordinary dreams. Therefore, a lucid dreamer would not need to make an Idea Roll to retain memory of what took place for them in Dreamland. They have already cultivated the skill of retaining the memory of their ordinary dreams, and this would serve them to retain the experience of what happened when they ventured into Dreamland. A Waking World lucid dreamer actually already has the skill of Dreaming. “The investigator receives this skill the first time he enters the Dreamlands, whether he dreams to get there or arrives physically. It starts at a percentile amount equal to the investigator’s POW. The investigator gets one experience check in this skill each time he re-enters the Dreamlands and remains for more than a dream week, the skill increasing in identical fashion to any other game skill.” Dreamland, pg. 12 Thus, I would submit those who have practiced the skill of lucid dreaming would enter Dreamland with not merely a percentage amount equal to their POW but perhaps POW plus INT to simulate their lucid dreaming skill. If you are interested in learning and cultivating the Waking World skill of lucid dreaming, I recommend Dylan Tucccillo, Jared Zeizel, and Thomas Peisel’s book, A Field Guide to Lucid Dreaming: Mastering the Art of Oneironautics, Workman Publishing, 2013.

I would assume that the Keeper had spent more time studying the C of C rules and thus had committed them to familiarity. C of C was spawned in 1981, whereas the Pulp Cthulhu rules are of a recent creation, they arrived in this world in the year 2016. This newness is the source of the issue. They would be new even for the Keeper. Those new rules would just not be as ingrained in memory and familiarity and thus easily overlooked in running of the game.

First off, you need to decide how powerful these Earth-based Gods are. I posted on this topic, and my idea was that all Earth-based Gods were Great Ones and, thus, not at all very powerful on the grand Mythos scale of things. Check out the specs for Noden and Bast in the C of C rulebook since they are both one of the Elder, which may or may not be the same as a Great One. Also, compare the specs of Hastur and any of the Great Old Ones to give you the context or limits of an Earth-based God.

I agree that Dreamland is not as grim as Lovecraft's Waking World, ala Call of Cthulhu and the Cthulhu mythos cycle of stories. Dreamland was a fairy tale/Arabian Night/Dunsany kind of place and atmosphere. Thus potentially not filled with cosmic horror outcomes and consequences. However, in Gary Myer's stories, things don't always end so nicely and beautifully for natives or Dreamers. In my own variant of Dreamland it was created either originally or over time by Nylarthotep to be a sort of sanctuary for Waking World humans. A means to escape either the human-created suffering and horrors or even to give to some extent an escape from the Mythos-inspired horrors done by creatures in the Waking World. Even with that being said, my own Dreamland still runs parallel to the Lovecraftian Waking World of Cosmic Horror. Thus, a Waking World Dreamer lives two intertwined lives, one in the Waking World with its consequences and problems and the other in Dreamland with its special consequences and problems. The consequences of living a double life bleed over in both directions for a Dreamer.

I agree that perhaps beings from the Great Race might be able to enter Dreamland directly. I also agree that a specific Great Race individual, say R'lph, could inhabit a Waking World person in 1910 and then travel to Dreamland, then later R'lph inhabits a different Waking World person in 1930, and so on. Thus, R'lph would have access to the differing time periods of Dreamland. However, the Waking World person would still be locked in their own specific time and place. When they inhabit a Waking World person, the Great Race does not transpose that person in time; they just study that person in their time and place. At least as far as my reading of The Shadow Out of Time. Therefore, I don't think that some Waking World human in 1980 could directly enter the Dreamland of the 1930s, i.e., Lovecraft's described version with its specific history. Unless a Waking World person gets access to a Time Machine or a Time traveling spell. Always remembering the important Rabbinic principle of 'Your mileage may vary', and thus, your own variant of Dreamland could function differently than I'm describing. I'm just trying to say that I prefer a consistent set of the laws of physics to describe how the Waking World and Dreamland would function.

I really do like Gaiman's Sandman series. I loved the Netflix live version they did of it. However, Gaiman's Sandman would not match up with Lovecraft's Dreamland since Morpheus and the other Endless beings, I think, would conflict with Lovecraft's Mythos Gods and how they work and the kind of power they have. I don't see that Morpheus would be willing to subordinate his power over Dreams/Dreamland to the Lovecraft Mythos Gods. Obviously, a GM could incorporate elements into their Dreamland as they see fit.

Donald Tyson's Necronomicon: The Wanderings of Alhazred, Llewellyn Publications, 2005, I found to be a very interesting and 'realistic' English version of the fabled text.

Now, someone may ask, what about the priest guardians Kaman-Thah and Nasht? Are they immortal? In my own version of Dreamland, these two natives of Dreamland are, in actuality, the titles of a role assigned to that position by Nyarlathotep. Thus, from the moment of creation of the realm of Dreamland, there has been assigned two natives to take on this role. The natives have a natural life span; the specific individual eventually retires and is replaced by another to take on that role. So long as Dreamers who come to Dreamland perform the rites and participate in the public rituals associated with the Temple of the Outer Gods, these roles are being given the power to do their job. However, if Dreamers who come to the realm fail to participate in the rites, then there can come a time when Kaman-Thah and Nasht can no longer keep out certain Dreamers. In my version of Dreamland, in 1933, this very thing happened, and anyone could venture into Dreamland from that year forward. This sets the stage in my version of Dreamland for some interesting conflicts, issues, and dangers for natives and Dreamers.

G33K wrote: Affixing Dreamlands to progress according to the Dreamers' eras seems interesting & probable; but not to be strictly-adhered-to!!! Dreams from any given era could be suffused with degrees of ancient histories, myths, faerie tales, "golden-age" romanticizing over the past, etc etc etc... All changing with both new archeology & paleontology but also as pop-culture & fads push different memes & tropes into people's consciousness... of late, dreams-of-cthulhu (largely unrelated to any reality of mighty Cthulhu; just the pop-culture imagery!) likely exist in the Dreamlands, as do the currently-popular "Zombie Apocalypse" tropes. But equally, dreams and speculations about the future, both wondrous and horrific. 1950s-1970s Dreamlands likely had sections of blasted nuclear wastelands, crawling with mutants. Technophiles of all eras likely dream of spotless gleaming utopias (that undoubtedly feature prominently in the nightmares of those more -phobic than -philic with their techno- ). I agree! Legends, myths, and tales are all influences that would shape Dreamland when a Dreamer enters the realm. Those myths, legends, tales, etc. would be part of the conscious ideas of natives and the conscious or unconscious ideas of Dreamers who visit the realm.

G33K wrote: You don't need to rule-out rare/occasional immortalities, in order to have the Dreamlands largely follow the progress of the Waking World: adopt roughly a "one dream, one vote" policy, and even very-powerful immortal Dreamers cannot hold much sway over the Dreamlands formed by the collective dreams of the mortal magnitudes. Even if you say an immortal Dreamer is a thousand years old... that's nothing in the face of the hundreds of millions dreaming their modern dreams. (however, such a thousand-year-old Dreamer may be a very-dangerous foe to an individual adventurer-dreamer, or an adventuring-party thereof!) Ahh, but I do fall into the trap of consistency. Even the realm of Dreamland should operate according to come set of rules/laws of physics, even if they are different than the Waking World physics. Since in the Waking World, Dreamers do die, it makes sense that their Dream selves will also cease to exist. I agree that under extraordinary circumstances, with the Aid of Mythos Magick, a mortal Dreamer could leach out the life force of others to maintain their existence. Thus, if King Kuranes and or Randolph Carter are immortal - they are so because they are using Mythos magick to sustain their continued existence - draining the life force of others. Now, since in my version, I do not consider either King Kuranes or Carter to use such magick, I, therefore, conclude that they do die and cease to exist. Which is why a Dreamer in 1980 would not encounter them.