Dream walking and world-jumping in the Wonder setting

A concept that is introduced right off the bat in Madness and Wonder, and is an important mechanic throuought the Wonder setting, is the ability to leave your body while unconcious and travel to other worlds.

Rosie and her friends think of it as dream walking and, except for Rosie, have only used this ability to travel between each other’s dreams. Rosie has been dream walking to a fey world since she was a small child, but doesn’t realize it’s a real place until she meets Hatter.

Hatter, on the other hand, has been living in Wonderland as long as he could remember. He’s been world-jumping as long as he can remember too, but memory was a hazy thing for Hatter until he had Rosie to remember.  (…But that’s their story & if you want to know more about them you’ll have to read Madness and Wonder.)

Though they think of it differently, they’re both doing the same thing. In the Wonder setting, dream walking is a form of astral projection, where the spirit can travel at the speed of thought to almost limitless destinations.

Wonder where Fey-born with dream walking talents go? The answer is only limited by imagination.

Most worlds are fleeting, and attached to a dreamer. There are so many Dream worlds that they seem limitless, but it’s a constantly changing selection because the worlds disappear when their dreamer wakes. These fleeting worlds can be anything, from scarily disturbing to full of wonder, but dream walkers usually don’t know what they are walking into until they’re there. Dream worlds are the most common, but not the only kinds of worlds dream walkers can visit.

There are also worlds compiled of common dreams and subconcious desires that become stable places for Longer periods, tapping into the sheer number of people thinking about them currently. For example: Opening weekend of a blockbuster movie may inspire a compiled world until its popularity ebbs, or a long running TV series can have a world that lasts decades.

Even rarer are stable places that have been around long enough that it’s hard to tell if they were inspired by imagination or if they inspired man kinds imaginations. In Madness and Wonder two of those worlds are Wonderland and The realm of Fey. In the (still being written) next book, Wonder in the Prime, you’ll get to discover the plane of lust, and… Sorry… Spoilers.