Encyclopedic Entities: People of the Lantern and Dreams (Patreon)

I know I went into some of the stuff near the start of this series, however after some additional reviewing and consideration I wanted to go back and try to answer some questions that have come up about the nature of saviors and People of the Lantern in general.

Now before we start, it's worth giving the old 'history of People of the Lantern' again for those of you who are not completely familiar with it. 

Needless to say massive spoilers for the core game and lore incoming.

So, the original 1.31 design for People of the Lantern was a story thread that went through Lantern and then into Lantern Festival. Your settlement would deal with the Butcher, the King's Man, the Hand, then slay the Watcher at the heart of their settlement before facing the threat of the King and eventually the Scribe.  We also know that the Great Game Hunters were going to be involved in the Lantern Festival but we don't know in what capacity, so it's hard to speculate on that.

This meant there were two story threads in Lantern, the 'A story' was the King/Scribe story where the settlement is being groomed for harvesting by the King's Man and the Hand while the B story was about The Watcher and its machinations. That is the plot was always moving towards the situation where you would get to punch the Scribe in his stupid face and the Watcher's story ended when it was confronted and either fed (won) or was smashed (became parts). The Armored Strangers and Regal Visits all feed towards this, providing foreshadowing and hints at what the King's preferred meal tastes like.

However, the cancellation of the Lantern Festival and the changes that went into 1.5 dumped on this hard. We ended up with a campaign where the King story was moved to the B thread and the A thread because the Watchers and the Gold Smoke Knight.  In the past I've written about how the Gold Smoke Knight's involvement in the campaign was a failure of storytelling, which is something that was agreed upon by Poots himself - in hindsight more of what the GSK was about and why it turns up was needed. But Lantern has always had badly written motivations for anything outside of the servants of The King, so it's not surprising.  1.5 Lantern is half-baked and while the cracks don't show for the average player, they become very noticeable when you spend a lot of time with the campaign.  

All of this is basically to say that we're not going to be drilling into the Scribe and its minions here - that story is currently dead and also for the record.

Instead we're going to be going into The Watcher, the Gold Smoke Knight, Saviors and one possible villain behind the Watchers - The Ethereal Dreamer?

So, lets dump out the relevant Lore before we drill into the relationships:

Saviors

Saviors are undaunted heroes, single minded and suicidally reckless in their quest to make a change in mankind's horrible existence. In their dreams Saviors visit the domain of the Ethereal Dreamer which grants them wondrous knowledge at a startling price. Tapping greater power causes their bodies to age rapidly. As they delve deeper into the collective dream they leave more of themselves behind. Mighty Saviors will grow frail and appear faded at their edges, vanishing slowly at the height of their power. 

This meteoric existence ensures their lifespan will be short but bright.

Burning Brightest: The Saviors unwavering guiding star is a shared destiny to change the world for the better. Their eyes constantly open to the tormented existence of others, they dedicate the whole of their being to others. Each act of heroism intoxicates the Saviors, delirious from the heady realization of their higher purpose they are emboldened to greater risks to their own safety. Saviors seek to symbolize hope in a dark and drab world, often adopting bright bizarre garb to match their stations as self-appointed heroes of mankind.

Dreamers with Blackened Feet: In their dreams Saviors travel to an entity they call the Ethereal Dreamer. Nightly, they trudge through the twisting scape of the world's collective nightmares seeking the Dreamer's secrets of power and magic. Over time their dream pilgrimage leaves the Savior threadbare; their feet become sooty and gnarled , their faces sallow with deep shadows under their eyes. Saviors who exceed their expected lifespan eventually begin to fade bit by bit, devoured by the dream world that once empowered them. 

The Savior – 20 Years is at the height of her physical strength and coursing with purpose and newfound power.

The 40 Year Savior has traded the vigor of youth for mighty deeds. She is a legend, word of her heroism precedes her and her arrival is a celebration. The soles of her feet are sooted from dream travel but her step is sure-footed and her trail turns sorrow to joy.

The 80 Year Savior is at once potent with power and gnarled by many lost years. Her body decrepit, the strength of her ability tremendous but threatening to erase her altogether. A Savior drunk with power may find herself withered and gray in minutes. Her frail feet are completely black, and her eyes look out past the world to the dream she now mostly inhabits. 

The Super Savior is the vision of their true form that the Saviors take on in the domain of the Ethereal Dreamer. The Super Savior represents the physical reflection of their animus. This form of the Savior is a mystery, revealed only when their companions are unconscious or dead. At this moment, the Saviors manifest the form they take when traveling in the domain of the Ethereal Dreamer. In this guise they channel raw power into the world, burning most brightly but only for a short time before they are burned out completely.

Watcher

Long ago, ravenous beasts searched the darkness, using their keen senses to find their prey. In the distance, they saw a blooming pillar of light surrounded by tasty morsels bustling in their tiny industry. Licking their chops, they approached, but the beasts halted mid-step. The wind carried a foul, menacing presence. Surely the busy creatures were harmless. Yet, the menacing warning persisted, felt in their very bones. Instinctively, the beasts turned away, seeking their meals elsewhere. 

Lonely Tree

There was once a woman who loved a sad man with a hole in his heart. The harder she tried to fill it, the more drained she felt. When there was nothing left of her, she killed herself under an old tree and let its roots drink her blood. Soon after, the sad man disappeared from the settlement. The tree bore a tear-shaped fruit.

If you can see the Lonely Tree for what it really is, it's probably too late. This carnivorous organism hypnotizes anything that comes near, luring prey with hallucinations of their innermost desires. Once they draw near, the hallucinations turn to ceaseless dreams, while the roots consume the victim in their sleep.

With each meal, a grotesque bulge, appears on the Lonely Tree's branches which slowly swells and takes on certain qualities of the devoured as they are digested. This "fruit" of the Lonely Tree is its true prize, as eating these conglomerations of phytohormones and human gristle can have beneficial (albeit bizarre) side effects. However, make sure to handle them gently while they are close to the tree, as the chemical volatility of the unripened morsels doubles as the Lonely Tree's primary form of self-defense! 

[Upon eating the Lonely Fruit] 

The survivor paused in the darkness, crippled by an unknown feeling of loss. Their eyes swelled with inexplicable tears. A hole opened in their heart. A warm hand slipped into the survivor's. Looking up, they saw something they never expected. Although the survivor could not understand the stranger's words, they saw the truth in the stranger's eyes. They felt an identical hole in the stranger's heart. The survivor wanted nothing more than to protect her. Hand in hand, they returned to the settlement. 

Lying in each other's embrace, they felt the warmth of love fill their hearts and wrap around them. Together, they dreamed a perfect dream. They dreamed of the future. They dreamed of fulfillment. They dreamed of a life together. When the dream ended, the stranger awoke with a cry. The stranger's stomach was full and she was alone. She felt something she did not want to accept, something she would forget over and over again. 

The hole in her heart could never be filled. There was no love for her, only hunger.

Overwhelming Darkness 

You glimpse a nightmare whale swimming overhead. Your heart shrivels. Lose half your survival rounded down and gain the Post Traumatic Stress disorder.

A massive whale swims overhead. Your guts quiver with its booming cries. You vomit in fear, but keep a brave face. Gain -1 evasion token. After this event, all other survivors gain +1 survival from your bold display.

These two events are BOTH new to 1.5, they were not present in 1.31.

Ethereal Pact

Take some time and digest all of this. Cause we're going to be diving into it a lot, and yes, the Lonely Tree does seem to have some connection to all of these, even if it's tenuous.

The Nature of Monsters

Right now, based on the game mechanics we know that all survivors in are mutable tabula rasa, they can take on the traits of monsters and they learn only via knowledge given to them by the monster at the heart of the campaign (The Innovate action is printed on the location that holds the monster in each case - The Sun, The Throne and The Lantern Hoard respectively and there are other indicators of this, such as the death of the Watcher halting the ability for survivors to innovate).

Additionally the changes that happen to the survivors, Warriors of the Sun, Constellations and Saviors are linked to the circumstances that surround that specific campaign. You don't get constellations in Sun, you don't get warriors in Lantern and with the exception of the Drifting Dreaming Fruit (which we'll discuss later), Saviors only appear in People of the Lantern.

So, how do saviors come to term? Is it the Watcher who is responsible directly or is it something else? Well, we can drill in and find more evidence that points to the culprit and we find a the smoking gun called Black Lichen.

Black Lichen is a part of the catalyst used in the "oxidization" process, however it is not found in the Lantern Hoard, instead it is gathered by killing level 3 monsters who are native to the Plain of Stone Faces - this is the entire monster quarry cast apart from the White Lion, who is not native to the Plain, but instead comes from the Holy Lands (like it's partner in crime the Manhunter). It seems that every monster that spends a long length of time in the Plain of Stone faces becomes corrupted by Black Lichen.

This Black Lichen we know comes from the Ethereal Dreamer, as you can see above, the Strain Fighting art Ethereal Pact comes from the following Strain.

So as you can see, saviors come from midi-chlorians high-jacking the survivor's brains and turning them into shitty Jedi (well even shittier than Jedi already are, cause everyone knows Jedi suck at their job). Essentially the Plain of Stone Faces is very close to the Ethereal Dreamer's realm because it's deepest, darkest parts are covered in the Lichen and the spores get everywhere.

But we get to see even more in the Ethereal Pact fighting art, if you look at the artwork you'll see that a Whale is superimposed over the picture of the mage developing her savior traits. It's actually passing right through her. Also, in the 1.5 Overwhelming Darkness text, the "nightmarish Whale" was added to the events, this is a signalling change which happened between 1.31 to 1.5, the original Overwhelming Darkness text made no mention of the Whale at all.  

So the conclusion we can draw from this is that the Ethereal Dreamer's physical form is that of a big old humpback whale and it takes excursions through the sky the same way that all the other Sky Fish do. While it does this it spreads spores everywhere, infecting the place with its "dream virus".  

Another indicator that this is the case is the Abyssal Forest - while we do not have much information on the place at the moment, we do know that it has a strong canopy and that there is no mention of the Whale once you're past the forest gate. Which would make sense if the top of the forest blocks things.

Who Watches the Watchers?

So, in addition to this and all the Birth of a Savior and Savior lore text I think we can firmly lay the existence of saviors at the flippers of the Ethereal Dreamer. It's responsible for them, but is it also responsible for the Watchers?

All Adam has admitted so far is that they are linked to an Entity, but he has been coy about which one. I think we can narrow it down to one of two candidates, the first is the Parasite Queen - and we'll likely get confirmation if she's the culprit when her expansion drops, but it's something I'd guess is to do with the Lanterns directly, not the Watchers/Saviors. So instead, for the moment we're going to take a look at the possibility that the Ethereal Dreamer is the power behind the Watchers.

We already have the fact that in both of the other campaigns, the source of innovations and the source of the survivors' "super form" is the same source - a monster, so one would assume that as the original campaign, Lantern follows the same format because it provided the template. 

This means, if we're going to find a link between the Ethereal Dreamer and the Watchers there needs to be thematic links between them - this is how Poots operates, every monster is themed in some manner and there are always links to these themes threading through everything. For example as we discussed before the Tyrant is a celestial creature, both as a holy Christ-like figure and as a literal fallen star.

If we examine the Watcher, we should find some themes that sit in concert with the themes of the Ethereal Dreamer. So for those of you who haven't listened to the Watcher Great Game Hunter's podcast, or haven't listened to it for a while, here are some interesting themes that the Watcher has:

• Biophoton Feast
• Brain based attacks
• Memory Theft
• Nothingness
• Harrowing
• Stolen Dreams 
• Inhale/Exhale
• Void
• Warping
• Horripilation in the post watcher world

Before we drill into this, it's worth letting those of you who are not in the know, horripliation is the fancy name for goose bumps! However, I think we can already see where this is going, but what if I told you there was a second theme hidden in plain sight?

Take a closer look at the hit locations and you'll see words like gastrodermis, hydrostatic, polyp and most tellingly of all tentacle. You see, the Watcher is based on a combination of invertebrate aquatic animals, including stuff like coral, but most of all the jellyfish. Once you see it, you can't not un-see it. It's a giant memory/dream sucking jellyfish, one that is erasing history/memories from existence, feeding on things that are similar in nature to (and include) dreams.  It's rather like they seed the survivors with ideas and then feast when things are at full fruition (which is a mirror of the King/Scribe plan - and it's interesting to note that the Sun and the Tyrant both do not have this same goal).

The memory/dream connection and all of the brain linked mechanics and lore just cement this further. All of this gives us all the themes we need to be able to link it strongly to the Ethereal Dreamer, who is another dream based aquatic creature - with a way of generating spores that affect the brains of the survivors and change their nature. 

Lonely Tree:

I said I'd get to the Lonely Tree, and here we are. First of all, the Drifting Dreaming fruit handing out savior abilities happens because the Lonely Tree sometimes devours saviors (and that's often how I activate the event, it's either a savior or a pleb) and the various fruit are from certain survivor types (as per the lore blurb above).  

However, I'd go further and speculate that the Lonely Tree is what it is because it has been corrupted by the Ethereal Dreamer, the same way that the other isolated trees in the Plain are "Nightmare Trees" - it's introductory event is even heavily based in a dream feeling somewhat real - both for the survivor and the lonely lady. So it has closer ties to People of the Lantern than one would think. We'll see what Campaigns of Death does to expand this further (if anything).

Summary:

I think all of this here is sufficient to make the case, the Ethereal Dreamer is the entity that the Gold Smoke Knight is directly trying to oppose in its destruction of Watchers and settlements that use technology based from watcher corpses. The GSK is having a hell of a bad time trying to sort this out because the Dreamer flies and this means it's air/water based against a creature that's fire/earth based. So the GSK pretty much has a losing battle on its hands until someone enters the dream realm and harpoons that whale in its stupid corrupted nightmare face.

However, why it's doing this and why its minions are erasing history over and over is something that we don't really have enough information to understand why it's minions are suppressing memory and history in favor of the dream realm. That's maybe something that'll come out in the future, but the next step is to understand just what part the Parasite Queen plays in all this, she appears to be behind the hands and lanterns.

**Note I think the badly named "Oxidization" process is a reference to how metal rusts when put in contact with water. As someone who almost pursued a career in science, I find the naming use here rather abhorrent and irritating. But what can you do, Poots' Technical Mind is gonna Poots.

**Another note: If you're not sure why the Ethereal Dreamer is a Whale. Remember Poots is a massive Nintendo-Hard fan and that this boi exists.

May you have more luck hunting the Whale than Captain Gold Smoke Ahab has!