Dreams of Anteaus

First Visit - A Prodigal Daughter Returns

• (7) A black goat with four horns and seven eyes approaches you in the voice of E’san it says “I will betray you, and Rhea will pay for her near forgotten sins” The goat then departs in the direction you know to be your home despite it being hundreds of miles away, she is domed, it is your fault, and there is nothing you can do to stop it.
• (4) You see your allies, Treldaan, Smilin’ Ash, Sevren, and Jedek all wearing masks of the Black Goat, stabbing at you with obsidian daggers. You feel the icy cold stone pierce your flesh but no pain. The goat itself looms over you and stares down at you with seven eyes all watching you in pain” return to the flesh”
• (4) You are limbless, and crawling on your belly across a gravel floor. There’s no light and you feel the water rising. As you tear your chin up on the unforgiving gravel you feel a scaled tentacle brush against your side and the splash of water. You’re no longer alone here. The goat stands on the edge of your vision. “It’s come to reclaim what you stole.”
• (2) You are in a strange, dark palace, with no stars other than a single malignant star in place of the sun that appears like an insectoid eye staring down upon the world. The structures are made from a kind of dark stone that appears almost resin-like, with iconography worshiping a four-horned figure. The faceless figures stand aside and a goat walking upright like a man, approaches you it bleats at you, but the noise that escapes its maw is clearly human “There is no home, you can never go home.”
• (8) There is a goat, atop a hill of shaggy brown and black grass that appears as fur, it rises and lowers slowly, and each time it lowers a low fishy scented breeze blows over the land, and you. It stares down at you with seven glowing eyes that appear as multiple human eyes, each one a different color this time. It bleats out “No one’s ever really gone, they cling to you like moss to stone.”
• (5) You’re in Shadowfen, it’s not as it once was. The people have goat eyes and avoid eye contact with you. You feel small and powerless, as figures step over you. You hear the clip-clop of hooves right behind you, and you flee your heart pumping hard in your chest. As you crash down a small ledge into cold dark water you rise seeing your reflection, half goat, half Melinoe, and the shadow of the goat behind you. It bleats out as if laughing “There’s no escape from the circle, it wasn’t real to begin with.”
• (5) You dream of fields of men, women, children, elves, and dwarves being grown from fleshy red stalks of exposed meat in the shape of large plants. From them, naked and limbless mortals are dragged out by Goats that walk upright like men, a Black Goat with seven eyes and four horns stomps in front of you with a hook, pulling away the pulpy flesh to expose you to the glaring green blue light of the sun. “It is time child. Return the flesh which you stole.”
• (6) You are alone, clutching the dead body of Rhea and E’san, even holes punched into their foreheads by a Rondal. You hear Jedek and Davos screaming and fighting for their lives in the distance, but you can’t make out where they might be. The stars have died out, and you know they won’t be coming back ever. Thereupon the hill in the distance the Black Goat stares down at you, whispers carried upon the wind filter downhill towards you “There’s no pain here. Return to the flesh and all is forgiven.”
• (8) Black rain pours from the starless sky, the smell of fish rotting in the air. You stand where the ocean once met the shores of Anteaus, they’re dried up, the blood-soaked earth drinking the water as quickly as it comes. Obsidian sand crunches loudly beneath your feet as you wander toward the east. Always to the east. Skeletons of great beasts and creatures you’ve never seen or read about appear littered across the sea bed, but you march on. When you fall asleep that night you awaken miles beneath the cold dark ocean, the taste of blood in your mouth. A black goat sifts through the water and stares at you. “Behold the truth of things, the cold and the dark speak if you listen.”
• (10) You feel light, far too light. You feel yourself drifting away. You are with your friends, Treldaan, Jedek, and Severan but you are fading away. The light changes and you are in a dark land with obsidian hills and oceans of blue fire. You are home, yet you feel alone. The Black goat looks down upon you from a hole in the wall with your comrades. It bleats at you “What is it you want? You cannot have both. You cannot have either.”
• (6) You are surrounded by the stench of fish and rotten apples. Blood fills your mouth and you cough, it spills upwards over your face. You are hanging from the tree of some malformed thing its vines feel fleshy and sticky to the touch. A goat man walks by and grips your hair turning you this way and that. Inspecting you as one would a piece of fruit or meat at the market. It snorts and bleats before a larger black goat man with seven eyes and four horns screams “This one exists outside the cycle, it’s not for you. Not for us. It doesn’t belong. Maggots festering in the corpse of this dead god.” You open your eyes blinking away the blood, the sky is milky white streaked with black gossamer thin lines, and a large black hole in the center of the sky in the shape of a goat’s eye stares down balefully at you. It fills you with dread and hopelessness.
• (11) You are among your family, your true family. Your mother and father discuss tales with E’san and Rhea, speaking of the tales of their youth. You feel warm and at home. As they ramble on you feel a strange discomfort take hold. A splinter in the back of your mind. You turn, and see the familiar image of the goat its faint outline shimmering on the edge of the fields of azure fire. You stumble towards it before you know your feet have begun to carry you in that direction. Your family calls your name, and you begin to run. The shadow of the Goat rises up, seven lights appear where its face should be. In your head, the voice of the goat rings like a bell. “You trade one falsehood for another, in the end, the dreams fade away to distant memory lost to time.”
• (17 in Brierwell) You are wandering through the house of Brierwell in its heyday. Servants, guests, entertainers, and residents make it difficult to see where you are going yet despite this it is not difficult to move between them so spacious is the manner. Some unseen force beckons you to the deepest foundations of the manor, where light has never touched that ancient soil. It is here you see a great stone archway, carved into the bedrock. This doorway dwarves even the tallest and mightiest of giants you have read about. Despite there being no light, you see some unearthly color you have never seen before spilling from the crack of the door, it hurts your eyes yet you cannot look away.
• (2) You feel the sea breeze on your face, you can’t see anything and your neck hurts. Voices sound out below you, they are familiar yet distant, and you can’t make out what they’re saying. You’re not sure they’re speaking any language you are familiar with. A body collides with your own. You feel bone crunch under the sudden and violent impact but there is no pain. A voice, not far away, the first you’ve heard in days speaks “You brought this upon them, unwilling souls to feed the legacy of the Outsider. Dreams of freedom and family lost…” The voice trails away. Another body collides with you, a stitch in your eyelid pops out and you can see through the faint crack. You are amid a swaying host of hanging corpses, your companions all broken and mangled. Below, goatmen man a ship made from blackened bone and gristle, they bray and bark at each other on a sea of putrid blood. A large, black goat man clops along the deck and stares up at you. “The key turns, the door opens, and all you need to do is let go.”
• (9) You have a ‘flashback,’ rising the silver wing banner above the River Lornel while the Kobolds flee broken before your kinsmen. Their twisted druidism left a scar upon the land, but the grove tenders have begun to mend to Thornkraul. Inside, the twisted and mutilated remains of nearly two dozen families are found, left to be trampled in the mud and thorny underbrush. The stench assails your nostrils and you feel an anger rise up in your chest, a deep hate for an entire species. “Bo’kan!” You hear your name called out, and a young squire appears holding a peculiar shaped box covered in mud. As he brushes aside some of the filth, a strange runestone with an eye carved into its face stares up at you. It’s familiar, yet you cannot place it. “Too detailed for their kind, more like a copy. But we haven’t found the original if there even is one. Perhaps just a mushroom-induced vision.” You don’t know why, you understand that there was an original, but your banner will never find it here.

Second Visit - A Race To Find Rhea

• (14) You’re sailing along a blue river, there’s nothing amiss, yet there is no shore. You know it to be a river but the light doesn’t ever seem to reach the edge of the water. As you gently paddle down the river, E’san, Rhea, Davos, and Jedek are all there and one by one fall asleep at the helm leaving you alone. The river comes to an end and a familiar goat paws eagerly at the ground awaiting your arrival. “Hark, and well-met daughter.” before it smiles, with gnarled and cracked flat teeth that hardly fit in its mouth.
• (2) You are surrounded by vines with fangs and teeth, the warmth of blood dripping down over you from high above. The faint screams of the others still drawing breath can be heard but it doesn’t matter. You pull the vines apart and force yourself further, every cut drawing a wince of pain but you cannot make a noise. Not now, not when you’re so close. “You’re doing so well my dear! Just a little further. You’re the one I have faith in you know!” The last vine is pulled away revealing the strange fetish in the chest of a mangled black goat, its heart beating fast, the seven eyes gouged out. It rasps painfully. “Will you drown the world in blood for his dreams?”
• (2) You’re among a sea of pale corpses, almost as if they were carved from marble. Save for a few droplets of crimson fluid you would believe this is some grim art piece, all displayed in various positions, many dismembered to replicate flowers or other figures. Among them all, a large antlered figure kneels down rearranging Jedek, Severin, and Treldaan’s bodies into a corpse boat replica. “Not quite to scale but I think the message gets across don’t you my dear? A bit heavy-handed perhaps, but it is the grand finale.”