Earth-bound Servitors of Dream

[Jason]

Following my lament that it's tough to include PC servitors of Dreams in a corporeally-based campaign (in this thread), it's been suggested that I start a new thread to brainstorm some Word-bound Servitors and/or Servitor attunements that could give PCs serving Dream some added encouragement to hang out on Earth. Please feel free to jump in!

Superiors 3 gives us the newly-named Angel of the American Dream, who has a special rite, but no Servitor attunement(s). Still, there are some good roleplaying opportunities to be had as one of his direct Servitors, including crossover opportunities with Marc's angels of Trade.

Off the top of my head, I feel like there could be:

The Angel of Daydreaming –*Her attunement makes any resonance roll that targets a person also detect something that the person recently daydreamed about. Specific types of daydreams might be searched for by different Choirs: Mercurians could see whom the last person was that the daydreamer was thinking about someone; Malakim could look into what the last noble or ignoble daydream was; Elohim might look for the last rage-fueled or calming daydream; etc.

The Angel of Sleepwalkers —*both to help protect those who move about while in the Marches, and those who "sleepwalk" through life, tired, worn down, without living out any dreams of their own. Not sure what an Attunement might be; perhaps knowing what one thing they could do to guide such a soul to safely "wake"?

(I also thought it would be neat at one point to allow Kyriotates to possess sleeping hosts at a reduced Forces investment, under the condition that they get their "sleepwalking" hosts back to bed before sunrise. Perhaps that could be a Choir-based side effect of this, sort of like how there's a Malakite-based side effect of the canonical Angel of Etiquette's attunement. If the main attunement were about safely "guiding" people with minimal intervention, though, a more sensible Choir-based side effect might be granted to the Menunim...)

[William]

Earthside Fantasists will likely be focusing on dreams interpreted as hopes and ambitions. I really like the notion of an Angel of Daydreams -- did you know that there is a Song of Daydreams in the Liber Canticorum?

Some jobs on Earth for Dreamers will likely include:

* Tether protection and promotion, like all Words

* Fighting Nightmares (with as little violence as possible so as not to frighten bystanders: this Word-conflict is one of the most obvious in which either side pushing too hard risks serious backlash, subtlety in intervention is crucial! Possibly often in concert with angels of Flowers.)

* Promoting artists and creative types, often in concert with Eliites (good for Eliites IST Dreams); Blandine has a strong presence in Bollywood, and seeks to reduce Nybbas' influence in Hollywood.

* Tracking and, when necessary, countering Ethereal influence on Earth. Maintaining minimal working relations with the Hindu and Voodoun tolerated pantheons.

* "Making dreams come true" -- probably the fluffiest and least practical missionset of any group of angels, but having just a few angels whose sole job is to find out near-impossible dreams and randomly do their best to make them happen, staying completely behind the scenes, purely out of the generosity of Heaven rather than fighting diabolic influence... well, like I said, it may not seem to have direct results in the War, and the more serious Archangels might give it the squinty eye as a waste of resources. But if the Archangel of Dreams feels a desire to follow her Word into a mild flight of fancy rather than stay strictly logical, I don't think anyone would gainsay her. Besides, you might have a lot of her angels rotating in and out of this missionset briefly -- it would practically be a holiday for them.

[Jason]

Originally Posted by William

I really like the notion of an Angel of Daydreams -- did you know that there is a Song of Daydreams in the Liber Canticorum?

Thank you, and yes! I am apparently among the lucky few who picked up Liber Canticorum back in the day when it was still in print. So many useful extra Songs! And because there's not as much the Dreamers can do "topside," they are an exception to my house rule that PCs can't start the game with "Secret" Songs.

Some jobs on Earth for Dreamers will likely include: (...)

* Tracking and, when necessary, countering Ethereal influence on Earth. Maintaining minimal working relations with the Hindu and Voodoun tolerated pantheons.

Good points all. I especially like this one for the possibility that there is actually a Word-bound Dreams Servitor who coordinates these operations on Earth. Perhaps the Angel of Fiction or Angel of Legend ... potentially working in collaboration with Christopher's Servitor, the Angel of Imaginary Friends.

Servitor attunement for an angel holding such a post? Perhaps a variant on the Seraph of Destiny attunement, whereby the angel recognizes the True Name of any ethereal she touches. (I suppose that's limited in that it doesn't work on everyone, but perhaps it's too powerful by virtue of being an automatic ethereal detector and Rumplestiltskin destroyer...) Alternatively, this could be a variant on the Malakite of Destiny attunement, being able to recognize Ethereal disturbances in the Symphony.

* "Making dreams come true" -- probably the fluffiest and least practical missionset of any group of angels, but having just a few angels whose sole job is to find out near-impossible dreams and randomly do their best to make them happen, staying completely behind the scenes, purely out of the generosity of Heaven rather than fighting diabolic influence... well, like I said, it may not seem to have direct results in the War, and the more serious Archangels might give it the squinty eye as a waste of resources.

This seems like the best way to involve Menunim in a corporeally-based campaign, and meshes well with some of the other ideas mentioned above. Blandine's write-ups mention how she's big on promoting important people's Dreams (as opposed to Yves, who is a bit more of the mind that every person's Destiny is important).

You could even rope in some other Archangels' Servitors this way. Let's say that there's a human who has a Dream, like in the Martin-Luther-King sense, and it's even within her potential to help that make that dream a reality – in fact, it's her Destiny. The infernals know about this human too, though, and the human's Fate may be sealed if her Faith were replaced with actual certainty about Heaven and Hell. The mission: Shut down the demons who want to reveal the truth, inspire the human, do NOT get noticed.

Now we're not just talking Blandine, but also Yves (helping someone reach Destiny) and Khalid (helping someone maintain Faith). If the dream is important to the War, there might be servitors of Michael and Laurence; if it's a drea to "save the planet," we're talking Servitors of Jordi, Novalis, and Eli. And so on. (And you may possibly have to deal with Litheroy's cronies, who are uncomfortable about demons being the ones supporting their Word.)

This thread is reassuring me that Blandine can play nicely with other Archangels (and game masters) when need be.

[Jason]

Just in case anybody I was chatting with about this cares at all where I ended up going with it, here's the NPC I decided would be around to give a more corporeally-oriented attunement to my players' PCs of Dreams...

Broderick, The Angel of Only a Dream
An Elohite of Dreams, Broderick promotes a Word that has long represented the soothing reassurances offered to frightened children who wake from nightmares. In other words, Broderick's mission is to make sure that the boundaries between dream and reality are only as permeable as mortals truly want them to be. As a result, Blandine has tasked him with the honorable/unenviable duty of making sure that ethereals in the corporeal realm remain "only a dream," not interfering with mortals' lives. This is, of course, in addition to the standing orders to dispatch any Servitors of Nightmares he might come across as well.

Broderick has his own Servitor attunement, which he can grant to others: In the corporeal realm, the angel can discern whether a disturbance in the Symphony is caused by an ethereal being. He's actually quite choosy in handing this out, however, typically only granting it to fellow Servitors of Dreams assigned to work under him. His mission (at least as he sees it) is not to deport or kill ethereals so much as to make sure they aren't making a nuisance of themselves. He's not inclined to kill an incognito Santa Claus just because the poor fellow caused some disturbance when he blew a flat on the curb while driving work.

(Now, if only I had a good Servitor attunement for the Angel of Dreams Come True...)

[Acolyte]

I think that's an excellent Servitor Attunement (although those attunements usually have their own name, like Gabriel's Smite or Yves' Library Card) for an intriguing angel. Note that as semi-divine groups, both the Loa and the Hindu gods would be detectable by this angel's servants but offlimits from direct harrassment.

With this Word, though, the angel in question is most assuredly more than passively in opposition to the demons of Nightmares who make nightmares come true in reality. Those corporeally-active demons would make his blood boil.

Another coporeally-focused Word for a powerful Servitor of Dreams would be Patronage (or Patrons), responsible for ensuring that rich people the world over make it possible for struggling artists to dedicate themselves to their crafts while still eating and surviving. It's highly possible that this angel would support even autocratic or dictatorial governments that support large public art programs, making this an unconventionally hard-nosed Fantastist.