The Hypnagog

You've seen the Hypnagog: that morass of chaotic shapes, landscapes, faces, and voices that comes when you're just about to fall into proper sleep. Settings and shapes swirl in and out of existence so quickly that you can't get your bearings. The room around you may come into full clarity, even though your eyes are closed. The shadows in your peripheral vision disappear when you turn around to get a better look. Flashes of insight between connected-yet-disparate ideas, sudden bursts of lucidity on the verge of sleep, and sensory illusions are all examples of the Hypnagog slipping into the awareness of the Self (or the Self slipping into the Hypnagog).   In this proto-dream State, symbolism is indistinguishable from actuality (and there is some debate over whether the entire Hypnagog is symbolism or actuality).   An infinitesimally thin layer between the Quondamarie and...well, just about every other plane, the membranous Hypnagog is well-known to interdimensional travelers and sight-seers, even as it befuddles regular conscious beings going about their mundane mono-dimensional business.  
  The Hypnagog lies like a greasy conceptual buffer between relatively stable planes and the rolling wave functions of the Quondamarie. The particular physics and grounded energy of nearby Connodoi, along with the projected memories and expectations of the conscious minds which inhabit them, subject the Quondamarie’s chaotic potentiality flux to multiple pressures which push and tug and mold it, pulling the possibilities into the briefest flashes of actuality.     Long-term survival in the Hypnagog is difficult for beings whose health and sanity require a relatively stable, predictable reality, but there are a few species who thrive in this environment. Collectively, these beings are classified as Anthroneirioi Ambiguum (or “Proprium”), though it is thought that there may be thousands of creatures within that phylum. As researchers must necessarily limit their expeditions to their native plane, reliable data is scant, and most of what we know comes from hastily-scribbled bedside notes and fragmentary entries in dream journals.   Planewalkers sometimes use the Hypnagog as a short-cut of sorts: its borders touch nearly everywhere, so if you know what you're doing, you can slip through it to any destination you have in mind. Of course, this requires a delicate balance of perception, will, and focus, and a careless traveler will most likely find themselves lost among the planes or drifting aimlessly within the Quondamarie, stranded until they happen upon some random 'Node or other chunk of reality (hopefully before their very sense of Self loses all cohesion and their atoms disperse into the Slurry).   Besides, as we said, you've seen the Hypnagog. Have you ever tried to hold any of those wondrous visions long enough to study them, let alone step into them? Even the Somnicists, masters of willpower and reality manipulation, will tell you that it's usually more trouble than it's worth. If you've got somewhere to be, stick to the portals.