Mathias Braun
After sleeping for a while, the characters awaken in a forest. Their first impression is that the light is very strange. Indeed it is, for in the twilight all colors are shades of red. It looks like an old black-and-white film filmed with a red filter lens. After walking for an hour or so the characters come to the edge of the wood. This opens an even stranger vista to them:
They look on a valley where a stream of blood-red water flows gently. On the horizon a dark red light, which must be the sun, glows unnervingly. Everything is shaded in red: the clouds, the grass in the valley beneath, even the sheep which are herded by a little boy not far away. Down in the valley at the blood river lies a small city. Farther away, on the hill that the river springs from, rises a tower, glowing unholy red in the eerie light.
1 Do vampires dream? Yes they do! This is the domain of a whamphyri lord. (For details, see Brain Lumley's "Necroscope" series. Or, just assume they are a weird kind of vampires, but that's only half the fun.)
In the vampire's long unlife, he has had more than enough time to dream, shaping a whole nightmare realm in the Dreamlands. It lies in the middle of the Stony Desert on a high plateau. He is something of a counterpart to King Kuranes, having created an entire realm out of nothing. The vampire has made himself a retreat in the unlikely case that vampire hunters should kill his body. In his domain he is a god-king. His seat is the Citadel of Blood, the unholy red tower on the hill. He is a very cruel ruler.
The characters have been drawn to this plateau because, against all odds, another dreamer or dreamland's wizards has visited this place and seen how the subjects of the vampire lord are suffering. But, the vampire lord, also called the Witch King, is a mighty foe, so the dreamer/wizard can not face him alone. Therefore he has tried to summon helping hands. On the outskirts of the city he looks for the saviours...
2 The characters are not in the Earth's dreamlands, but in those of an alien world. They are archaeologists or geologists and in the waking world have discovered a strange meteor. This meteor is of a stony material in varying shades of red. Everyone touching the stone will dream of the planet from which the meteor comes. How is the curse broken?
3 After watching a horror film named "the mad butcher", with much blood-spilling, and then eating lots of pizza, the characters have a simple nightmare. But, why do they all have the same nightmare?
Copyright (c) 1997 Mathias Braun