Interfae

Yesterday upon the stair
I met a man who wasn't there.
He wasn't there again today.
Oh, how I wish he'd go away.

Ever met someone in a dream who was both there and not? Those were these people. The interfae exist only as interference patterns of identity that occur when two dreamscapes brush against each other. The fact that they have a continuous species at all is due to the fact that, while they exist, they manipulate the dreams they inhabit with the goals of ensuring that all participating dreamscapes have a future tendency to touch other dreamscapes again, in whatever manner gives rise to an interfae. To this end, they have several spell-like abilities which they use freely on their hosts, leading many of the few sages who know about them to regard them less as creatures and more as a sort of magical disease.

The same interfae exists whenever the same set of people, usually a pair, touch dreamscapes, and only communication with an interfae during such a conjunction can access any memories of prior existences. It's therefore possible to have hosted more than one interfae in your life, and in fact theoretically -- with the right manipulation -- you potentially hold as many interfae as there are sets of other dreamers in the multiverse.

This tenuous hold on existence means that an interfae is neither alive nor really dead in between its moments in dreams. They're probably outsiders -- certainly no one has seen the soul of anything like an interfae in the Outer Planes. (Indeed, given their vanishing rarity and the difficulty of communicating with them, almost no one even knows the species exist.) Perhaps they simply never exist again. The interfae themselves, asked about the matter, have an extremely vague religion about it which sounds mostly like wishful thinking: that perhaps when their hosts die and become outsiders who no longer sleep, their lost dreamscapes becomes a ground state where the interfae can exist eternally itself.

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An interfae will only be encountered when two rare conditions are met: first, two dreamscapes must be touching, and second, the characters doing the encountering must be within one of the dreamscapes, and able to act consciously. The GM sets conditions for when two dreamscapes are in contact, though if one being has any active psionic power or spell affecting the others, such as dream, a charm effect, or something similar, and all involved are asleep, this should be very likely to induce contact. Characters sharing an item like a bracelet of friends are also likely to be in contact. Otherwise, good friends and lovers will commonly brush dreamscapes, especially if sleeping while in physical proximity. Being active in a dreamer's dreamscape involves various spells and powers, or possibly a trip to the Plane of Dreams with a skilled guide.

An interfae so encountered will possess many of the personality characteristics, memories, and skills of the dreamscapes it is part of. Regardless of its alignment, interfae will almost always seek survival and reproduction. Survival requires that its component hosts survive and remain in contact, so it is interested in keeping its hosts alive and on good terms. Good-aligned interfae will thus generally rationalize their actions in terms of having a common good with their hosts, while neutral and evil interfae will simply act in their best interests as they see them. Very lawful interfae may attempt to strike a deal with their host to use their abilities to the host's benefit in exchange for the host's willing support; this has all the usual effects of a target agreeing to drop resistance to someone's spells.

Over the long term, the ideal environment for a purely selfish interfae would be immortal hosts in eternal slumber, connected by permanent magical spell, in an extremely well-defended locale, giving the interfae a long-term existence and the chance to establish some sort of influence on the outside world via a network of dreams. Alternatively, an interfae may seek a similar mode of existence in some way that manages to be independent of its original hosts.

Treat an interfae, when required for the purposes of spells or powers, as an outsider with HD equal to the highest of its hosts, and an arcane caster level of 20. It can never leave the region of contact of its hosting dreamscapes. It is permanently and un-dispellably invisible. If detected by any vision power, it appears to be a hollow outline blurring between the forms of its various hosts. It can speak any languages known by any of its hosts, but it is never literate in any of them even if its hosts are. All interfae can use the following as spell-like abilities:

At will: charm monster(including on hosts), dream (if another interfae is the target, treat this spell as telepathic bond), nightmare (a method of making war on other interfae)

3/night: modify memory. This can be cast on a host, and in fact is the interfae method of reproduction. A new interfae comes in to existence if the interfae chooses someone the host knows, modifies various memories the host has of them, and later the host's dreamscape contacts the other person's dreamscape.

1/night: awaken, mass (on host)

Different interfae may have collected different abilities if their hosts are more powerful, or if some member of their ancestry was hosted by a spellcaster who knew spells useful in an interfae's mode of existence. Evil interfae may be willing and able to use harsher control methods such as dominate monster or geas. They may be able to act more intrusively on a host's memory and personality with programmed amnesia or any of a variety of psionic powers.

Interfae in a healthier relationship with their hosts may be able to defend the hosts and provide memory services, with spells such as Rary's mnemonic enhancer (if a host is a wizard; the host would wake up able to prepare extra spells), banishment (used to defend the dreamscape against invading entities -- like the PCs), or break enchantment (good to counter control by competing interfae). Fear-inducing and sleep-inducing spells would be appropriate; dream intruders who are caused to sleep would depart the dream, unable to further act tonight.