Nightmares
You can’t fight nightmares, because they aren’t real. They can’t be hacked up with a sword, or burnt to a crisp with a spell. They are one of the few things that powerful player characters can’t simply destroy on a whim. And so they are one of the best places to strike a little bit of fear into the hearts of your players. Today’s article explores 10 potential nightmares.
1: Walking through a thick fog. You are walking through an incredibly thick fog. It is all but impossible to make out your surroundings. You pass dim shapes, little more than shadows, which are barely visible just a few feet away from you. At first, you are confident that these shapes are trees, and that you are in a forest, but as you continue walking, you start to notice that some of the shapes appear to be moving, out of the corner of your eye. You begin walking towards one, only to discover that it moves away as you approach, so that you never quite get close enough to see it. Suddenly, you feel the hair on the back of your neck rise, and are certain that you are about to be struck from behind, and then you awaken.
2: Navigating a shrinking maze. You are wandering through a stone maze, surrounded on all sides by worked stone. There is no sign of an exit, and you’re unsure how long you have been here. You feel an ominous grinding beneath your feet, and a rumbling sound seems to come from all around you. Though the movement is too slow for you to see it, you are certain that with each step you take, the walls and ceiling of the maze are slowly compressing, leaving you with less and less space. Eventually you are forced to crawl through the maze as the passageways are reduced to tiny, cramped tunnels. Finally, you realize that you are stuck, and cannot move forward, and then you awaken.
3: Confronted with your double. You are floating comfortably in a vast, empty void, which is soothingly warm and pleasantly quiet. After some time, the peace is disturbed when you notice another figure floating towards you. As it approaches, you realize that it is you, or, rather, some other version of yourself. You note minor differences: its hair is nicer than yours, it’s in better shape, and its teeth are even whiter than yours. As it gets close, you become certain, though you’re not sure how, that it is also smarter than you are, and perhaps even kinder, as well. You are certain that this is no imposter, but rather this is the real you, and that you are a usurper in your own reality, somehow making the world a worse place by merely existing, instead of this other version of yourself, and then you awaken.
4: Standing before an ominous door. You are standing in a dark room, lit only by two large torches that rest on either side of a massive iron door. The door is engraved with a depiction, larger than you are, of a strange animal that you have never seen before. You aren’t quite sure how to describe it, and each time you look back at it you seem sure it has subtly changed, though you’re not sure how. You hear noises behind the door. A terrible, recurring pounding, which echoes through the room. You reach out to touch the door, and then you awaken.
5: Brimming with spiders. You feel an uncomfortable itch on your chest and stomach, coming from your armor or robes. You scratch at it, but your apparel is thick and sturdy, and doesn’t allow you to relieve your itch. It only grows worse, and so you begin to undress. It is difficult and time consuming, as there are many layers. The itching only continues to worsen. When you finally remove your garment, you look down at your chest, and see that it is open, and hollow, and that your body has been filled with hundreds of thousands of tiny spiders, which begin to rush out of you, and you see yourself collapsing, nothing more than an empty skin freed of its spiders. And then you awaken.
6: Searching a library. You are wandering through a library. The bookshelves reach nearly to the ceiling, and are arrayed in strange patterns, so that the place is almost mazelike, and navigating is hard. You seem to be alone. You know that you are searching for something specific, but you aren’t sure what it is. You look at the spines of books as you pass them: they have nothing on them, and are apparently blank, but somehow, this seems right to you. You reach a dark and forgotten corner of the library, shrouded in gloom. A hooded figure—the librarian?—nods to you, and you nod back. You reach out to the nearest shelf, and pull out the first book your hand touches. It has your name emblazoned on the spine with gold leaf. You open it to a random page, but it simply has the phrase “nothing can be done,” written over and over. All of the pages do. You close the book, and then you awaken.
7: Slaughtering an animal. You are on a farmstead. It is familiar to you, even though you have never seen it before, that you can recall. A herd of cows stands before you, silent and attentive, all lined up in a row and looking to you expectantly, waiting. You point to one. If asked, you couldn’t say why that one in particular; it just feels right. The cow walks over to you, and you heft a large axe that was resting nearby for this purpose. The cow nods its head, and speaks. “Thank you for choosing me,” it says. You lift the axe and swing downwards, and then you awaken.
8: Trapped in a burning building. You are in your childhood home. It is on fire. Flames roar at you from all sides. The exits are blocked. You look this way and that, trying to find a way out, as you feel the heat rolling over you, wave after wave, like a hot, dry tide. Everywhere you look, the flames curl and twist, taking the shapes of men and women. You recognize them distantly, and know that you should recognize them, but you do not. The fire people glare at you malevolently, and reach out to touch you. In the hiss of the flames, you hear their voices, sibilant and whispering. They are blaming you for something. Something you did. Something you can never undo. And then you awaken.
9: Eaten by puppies. You sit on the grass on a beautiful day. A swarm of puppies appears, each more adorable than the last, and they rush up to greet you, licking you with their long, wagging tongues, and pressing their cold, wet noses against you. You laugh, as they tickle you, and begin to pet them. They pile over you, and you are pushed playfully onto your back. You continue laughing, the tickling sensation growing more intense. Finally, the puppies move on, and you look down at yourself, to find that wherever their tongues or noses touched you, your flesh is gone, and only bare bone remains. And then you awaken.
10: Reviewing your day. You see yourself, viewing in third person. You watch as you go through the day’s activities in reverse, beginning with when you went to sleep just moments ago, and working backwards, through every single moment of the day. Sometimes things move a bit faster than you think they did, other times everything seems to become unnaturally slow. As each event unfolds, you hear voices discussing it, questioning the wisdom of your decisions, deriding your physical and mental limitations whenever you fail, and questioning if you’re really doing enough even when you succeed. Finally, after what seems like an entire day or longer, you reach the morning, watch yourself crawl out of bed in reverse, and shut your eyes, and then you awaken.