The Sleeping Lands
Realm of Untamo
Location: Outlands / the Ringlands
Untamo’s realm hides out near the edge of the Ringlands, in a half-real place that cutters call the Sleeping Lands. It’s not a grand palace for a god though. It’s a place of endless twilight. No sun, no stars, just a sky the colour of old bruises and aurorae—the most mesmerising colours. Look out though, because they have a soporific effect on a cutter! Watch them for too long and you’ll slump asleep, and possibly never wake up.
The snowy fields and forests here feel half‑remembered—surreal bits of countless other worlds all blurred together. Sound comes in muffled, like you’re hearing it through a thick pillow. Everything here seems to want you to lie down. You cross the border and your knees buckle. Sleep kind of creeps up on you, like a predator. And once you’re under, you dream, and the dreams take over. The land reshapes around whatever’s rattling in your skull and you experience the realm not as reality, but as a sleeping mindscape.
Visiting the Sleeping Lands might sound appealing, especially if you’re a berk in need of a good rest. But it’s surprisingly dangerous. The most obvious risk is simply falling asleep and not waking up. If you’re on your own that’s a real danger, but if you’ve got company you will probably be able to keep each other awake.
The next danger is that time gets weird. It might feel like you spent five minutes or years there, walking through your own past memories, reliving your own failures, and reenacting things you thought you’s buried, over and over. The memories don’t line up right. Are you actually talking to that dead lover, or is it one of Untamo’s fey minions wearing their face?
Untamo’s presence seeps into you like cold water. The longer you stay, the more reasonable his logic sounds: “Do it later.” … “It’s not your problem.” … “You’ll only make it worse.”
Then when you get back to the Cage or wherever and suddenly you can’t be bothered to finish a job, avenge a wrong, or even protect a friend. You understand the stakes. You just…can’t be bothered. That’s Untamo’s indolent will, that is.
The Sleeping Lands are shaped by visitors’ dreams. Go in furious for revenge or justice, you’ll find the place obligingly conjuring trials, mock courts, burning halls—all tailored to you. But remember: it ain’t therapy. It’s an insidious sedative. The Sleeping Lands offer catharsis without consequence, over and over, until you don’t see the point in doing anything outside the dream.
If you anger him, he won’t smite you—but he. might strand you. The power is too lazy to throw lightning bolts. You annoy him, or threaten his peace? He has far simpler ways to retaliate. He can make your body forget how to wake. You just just appear to be “sleeping” to the healers, but your soul’s caught in his fog. Or he can loop you. Give you a perfect little dream life where everything seems so fine, so convincing you choose it over waking up. So no, Untamo’s not the worst power you could cross. He’s not going to flay you, or chain you in some hellpit. He’ll only ask you to lie down, look at what you’ve done, and then never get up again. So if you must pay the realm a visit, take with you someone stubborn, loud, and irritating. Someone who will drag you out of slumber when Untamo whispers that lying down is “for the best.”
And pay that person better than you paid me. They’ll have earned it.
The Lay of the Land
The Sleeping Realm can be found nestled near Tvashtri’s workshop. Here, the veil between reality and dream is as thin as spider silk, and the landscape itself is a reflection of the subconscious mind.
Upon entering the Sleeping Lands, one is immediately enveloped in a sense of profound tranquility. The air is thick with a soporific haze, and the very atmosphere pulses with the rhythm of a thousand dreams. The sky above shifts in hues of twilight and dawn, never fully committing to night or day.
Tall trees with leaves of iridescent colours dominate the landscape, their branches swaying gently, not to wind, but to the unseen currents of dream-essence. Their trunks are gnarled and twisted, forming shapes and vague faces. Between the trees, mists swirl, forming and re-forming into weird mirages from waking dreams.
The shimmering River of Reverie flows through the heart of the realm, its waters liquid dreamsilk. Gazing into it, a body might see their deepest desires and fears reflected, or catch glimpses of otherworldly vistas. Drinking from the river takes a cutter on a journey deep into their subconscious, where the drinker’s dreams become as real as the ground underfoot.
Within the realm lies the city of Somnolence, translucent and ever-changing. Buildings rise and fall like the chest of a sleeping giant, streets shift and twist like the plot of a half-remembered dream. The inhabitants of this city are incorporeal shades, people who are sleeping in the waking world. They go about their phantom lives, enacting stories born from the collective unconscious of myriad dreamers.
At the centre of the Sleeping Lands stands the Palace of Repose, a structure of impossible architecture, its towers spiralling into the sky like tendrils of smoke. The palace is both there and not there, and can only be found by those who have truly surrendered to sleep.
In the Sleeping Lands, the impossible happens with the frequency of the mundane. Here, a traveller might walk through their own memories as if they were physical places of the mind, encounter physical embodiments of their emotions, or witness the birth of ideas in raw, unfiltered form. Time and space have little meaning here; a step could span seconds or weeks, a journey across the realm might end before it even began.
In the minds cape of the Sleeping Lands, all cutters are Creators, shaping the fabric of their inner realities with the power of thoughts and desires. In this realm, the only boundary is the imagination itself.
Adventure Hooks
You should ask you players for a few paragraphs of what they think their characters might dream of. From there maybe you will find some inspiration—perhaps towards maybe a character’s wildest dreams, or darkest nightmares? Maybe ask the players for a dream and a nightmare they themselves have had? Maybe there’s an entity that’s bringing them there and manipulating their dreams right now?
Canonical Source: On Hallowed Ground [2e] p102,105,173.
See Also: Secrets of Tvashtri’s Vault, by Jotjotiota (adventure using Untamo’s realm as an encounter)
Source: Jon Winter-Holt. Thanks to Long Arms of Reddit for the neat adventure hook idea.