Nightmare
Not blind hungering shadows. Nightmares are the warden-souls of Torio — the original people the machine harvested seventeen centuries ago — released from the shroud each day to play their old roles in the yoki-hijo prison-towns. By night, with the machine's grip slack, they lose shape and slip into the cities of the nomads' descendants, drawn to dreaming minds in a half-mad search for the lives they have lost. The painters of Kilahito have always been fighting people. STD:YNP:Ch 39
Semi-sapient voids of darkness that creep out of the shroud into Kilahito. A fresh one is barely more than a wisp of ink; with each successive intrusion it gathers form and substance, building toward a shape pulled from the minds of its prey. The role of a nightmare painter is to find each one early — within its first dozen forays or so — and paint it into a harmless shape before it grows dangerous. STD:YNP:Ch 1 superseded at STD:YNP:Ch 39
Known facts
- dozen-trips-to-formEach nightmare starts as little more than a smear of ink and gathers shape across its first ten or so excursions out of the shroud. It takes roughly a dozen trips before one has enough substance to threaten a person, and each must return to the shroud to renew or evaporate away. They have no faces — only a deeper black on the head that drips like wax — and they can pass through walls.STD:YNP:Ch 3
- feeds-on-strong-thoughtsNightmares sense the thoughts and emotions of those nearby and gravitate toward the most powerful and raw of them; a placid mind is of little interest. The first lesson of a painter's training is to clamp down on fear and think calm thoughts when one is near.STD:YNP:Ch 3
- fell-from-skyThe nightmares of Painter's world are said in fragmentary accounts seventeen centuries old to have come down from the sky in a catastrophic event that left the survivors writing of black ink, faces of loved ones taken in tar, and a terror from above. Society on the planet collapsed; what rebuilt it was the hion and the corps of painters working under it.STD:YNP:Ch 5
- stable-after-ten-feedingsA nightmare that has fed roughly ten times begins to coalesce into a stable shape — solid enough to leave gouges in stone, capable of attacking and persisting rather than dissipating. Once fully stable, it can feed on a victim's conscious terror as easily as the formless fear of a dream.STD:YNP:Ch 7
- can-feed-on-painter-ghost-as-hionA nightmare on a fire escape sees Painter in ghost form just as Design does, ignores its sleeping victim, and feeds on him directly — his essence twisting into twin vortices of hion, one magenta and one azure, which the nightmare consumes as energy. Yumi's scream is what frightens it off.STD:YNP:Ch 25
- nightmares-are-pure-investitureNightmares are pure Investiture in raw form — not creatures with bodies but souls without one. Raw Investiture responds to thought and emotion, especially from highly Invested beings; this is why a painter's perception can force a nightmare to take a chosen shape, and (according to Design) why nightmares should in theory be terrified of Yumi.STD:YNP:Ch 32
Events
- STD:YNP:Ch 25 Perches arachnoid on the headboard of a sleeping elderly woman with twisting smoke legs caging her body — fifteen feet across when fully extended, with pinprick-white eyes — turns toward Painter when it senses his voice, and feeds on his ghost form as hion until Yumi screams.
Backreferences
- summarySTD:YNP:Ch 1
- factKilahito
- factThe Shroud
- factNightmare Painters
- summarySTD:YNP:Ch 3
- factNikaro
- factNightmare
- factNightmare
- factNightmare Painters
- summarySTD:YNP:Ch 5
- factNightmare
- factSukishi
- summarySTD:YNP:Ch 7
- factNikaro
- factNightmare
- factStable Nightmare
- summarySTD:YNP:Ch 8
- factNikaro
- summarySTD:YNP:Ch 19
- summarySTD:YNP:Ch 20
- factThe Shroud
- summarySTD:YNP:Ch 25
- factNikaro
- factNikaro
- factNightmare
- factStable Nightmare
- summarySTD:YNP:Ch 26
- factNikaro
- summarySTD:YNP:Ch 27
- summarySTD:YNP:Ch 28
- factNikaro
- summarySTD:YNP:Ch 29
- factNikaro
- factStable Nightmare
- summarySTD:YNP:Ch 32
- factNightmare
- summarySTD:YNP:Ch 34
- factNikaro
- factYumi
- factStable Nightmare
- factThe Stacking Machine
- summarySTD:YNP:Ch 35
- summarySTD:YNP:Ch 36
- factStable Nightmare
- factFutinoro
- summarySTD:YNP:Ch 37
- summarySTD:YNP:Ch 39
- factStable Nightmare
- summarySTD:YNP:Ch 40
- factNikaro
- factNightmare Painters
- summarySTD:YNP:Ch 41
- summarySTD:YNP:Epilogue
- factYumi