Sewer Slimes and the Armory of the Mind

Session Summary: 01/15/2024

Ahhhh, even in the dreamscape, the SEWERS are unpleasant! The heroes progressed through Gregor's mental architecture with the efficiency of a group that has been doing this work long enough to have developed instincts for it. Three sewer slimes, manifested from the specific unpleasant memories of the manor's actual waste infrastructure, lurched out of dreamscape-darkness with the oozing determination of creatures that exist primarily to be an obstacle. They were destroyed with fire and determination and the shared understanding that being slowed down by sewer slimes in the dream-version of Pendergrast Manor was not how any of them wanted this story to go.

The armory was more concerning. In the physical manor, the armory had held weapons inscribed with the Yellow Sign and ritual implements, but in the dreamscape its contents reflected what Gregor BELIEVED those items meant: weapons of legitimacy, tools of righteous purpose, the arsenal of someone who had convinced himself that everything he had done was justified. The two clockwork guards here were not merely defenders but representations of Gregor's conviction, his certainty that he was entitled to take what he wanted and punish those who stood in his way. The heroes destroyed them and felt the armory's confident wrongness deflate like a held breath released.

They reached the sixth level of their power as they worked through this session's challenges, a recognition that their growth had been consistent and that the dreamscape's trials were themselves a form of education. Charles found his faith operating with greater clarity here than it had in the waking world; Sarenrae's warmth was unusually present in this space of dream and memory, as though the goddess had opinions about Gregor's self-justifications and was pleased to have her champion DISMANTLING them. Kiren found that her shadow-self's instincts were sharper in the Dreamlands, the horned reflection she had been trying not to think about quietly but effectively useful in locating the vulnerabilities in each chamber's architecture. Diana moved through the dreamscape as though she had always half-lived in it, which perhaps she had!