Bottled Sleep

"You will never forget the smell of sleep. It is lavender and chamomile and water in the desert, found by a man dying of thirst."

— Gouliélmos Vaféas, a member of the Burj Alhikma

In the great city of Tarshish, there is a small neighborhood known as the Sūq al-Nawm, or Sleep Market. There are only a few vendors there, tucked at the far edge of the Great Bazaar. Their shops are filled with tiny bottles of dark blue glass, each containing a strange and precious commodity: bottled sleep.

This substance is remarkable. Each bottle holds a swirl of silvery vapor, which must be inhaled immediately upon opening. Inhaling it grants the user the full benefit of a night's rest - without ever closing their eyes. With bottled sleep, the hours of darkness may be turned to pleasure or business, as one desires. Actual sleep becomes unnecessary, so long as you have the means to buy it, one bottle at a time. Many of the wealthy and powerful depend on supplies of bottled sleep, both from within the Malikate and beyond.

A Product of the Bāgh-e-Azīm

On the outskirts of Tarshish lies the Bāgh-e-Azīm, the great alchemical gardens. In certain plots within the Bāgh-e-Azīm, a rare plant is cultivated: the Khwābchīn. This is an old Nagari name, most readily translated as Dream-Thief. This vine is found nowhere else in the world and is almost certainly the product of some ancient magic; none of the alchemists who tend it admit to knowing its true origin. It possesses the peculiar ability to steal the effects of sleep from those who attempt to rest nearby.

When an animal approaches the Khwābchīn, it often grows drowsy. This is due to the perfume exuded by the vine's flowers, a potent soporific capable of putting a human into a deep sleep for up to sixteen hours. Once the creature has fallen asleep, the vine begins to harvest their rest. The exact mechanism by which this occurs remains unknown, but one fact is clear: when the sleeper awakens, they feel none of the benefits of having rested. In fact, they often feel more exhausted than before.

But on the section of the vine closest to the sleeper, a silvery-green pod will have appeared. This pod is filled with a vapor that contains the full restorative essence of many hours of slumber. If pierced and inhaled, the vapor grants the user all the benefits of a full day's rest - instantly.

The alchemists who cultivate the Khwābchīn have long known that it can steal the rest of any animal - but the resulting vapor is most effective when the donor and recipient are of the same species. Cross-species usage is nearly worthless: while it may offer a slight sense of refreshment, it pales in comparison to the potency achieved when victim and consumer are properly matched.

While the vapor can be consumed directly from the pods, this method has several notable drawbacks. If left on the vine, the Khwābchīn will gradually reabsorb the harvested rest over the course of a single day. While this is sometimes permitted to maintain the vine's health, it renders the pod commercially worthless. Harvested pods fare slightly better, with a natural shelf life of about a week before the vapor begins to degrade.

However, the alchemists of the Sūq al-Nawm have developed a method to preserve the vapor for far longer - an innovation that made large-scale trade in bottled sleep commercially viable. Those trained in this secretive process can extract the vapor from the pods and seal it within specially prepared vials of dark blue glass. The technique is a closely guarded secret of the Sleep Market, and the resulting vials can be stored for years, so long as the seal remains unbroken and the bottle is kept out of direct sunlight.

The Sūq al-Nawm

There is a steady stream of customers seeking to purchase a night of rest. Some dream of what they might achieve if the hours spent asleep could be put to better use; others, suffering from acute Insomnia, rely on bottled sleep simply to survive. To meet this growing demand, the merchants of the Sūq al-Nawm have long employed professional sleepers - individuals who spend much of their lives unconscious beneath the Khwābchīn vines in the Bāgh-e-Azīm.

This occupation is regarded with a mix of envy and pity. While less physically demanding than many other forms of labor, it robs the sleeper of a third or more of their waking hours. Most professionals spend eight hours sleeping beneath the vine, then return home exhausted and sleep another eight, leaving only a narrow slice of the day to live their lives. They have little time for relationships with friends and family, and are often strangers to their children. Although sleepers are paid enough to support their families, many choose to leave the profession after a few years, yearning for a richer and fuller life than the vine allows.

The merchants of the Sūq al-Nawm are among the wealthiest in the city. Nowhere else can sleep be bought - and they know it. They set the price of a night's rest as high as the market will bear, and those who need it pay whatever is asked.

Long-Term Consequences

While the occasional use of Bottled Sleep is harmless, the same cannot be said for habitual, long-term use. Each vial contains trace remnants of the donor's psyche - fragments of dreams, stray thoughts, and shreds of identity. In most cases, these are too faint to notice. But over time, they can accumulate within the user's Eidolon.

For those who have used Bottled Sleep regularly for a decade or more, the consequences can be severe.

The first sign of trouble is usually nightmares. These are not ordinary dreams, but horrific, extraordinarily vivid experiences, often terrifying beyond reason. In some cases, they even leave physical marks on the body - ligature marks, bruises, and shallow lacerations. These nightmares occur only when the user attempts to sleep naturally, which is a rare event for many habitual users of Bottled Sleep.

Over time, the dreams instill a growing phobia of sleep itself. The user comes to believe that natural sleep is not only a theft of time, but also dangerous. They begin to fixate on tales of people who died in their sleep, or who were driven mad - or even killed - by their dreams. This fear soon becomes justification, even comfort, in abandoning sleep altogether.

The next symptom is dissociation. Users begin to experience periods in which they feel like observers of their own lives, rather than participants. Conversations unfold without their conscious involvement, actions are taken without intention, and emotions pass through them as if belonging to someone else. They watch their lives happen around them - unable to intervene, detached from both their own behavior and the world itself.

At first, these episodes are brief. But over time, they grow in frequency and duration, eventually encompassing entire hours, days, or even longer stretches.

Eventually, dissociative episodes give way to total blackouts, during which other personalities seize control of the user's body and pursue their own aims. By this stage, the shreds of identity contained in each vial of Bottled Sleep have begun to aggregate into one or more pseudo-eidolons - fragmentary personalities embedded within the user's true Eidolon.

These invaders are incomplete. Though they may appear coherent on the surface, they usually lack one or more essential qualities: empathy, logical thought, impulse control, or any grounding in the user's real memories or values. When a pseudo-eidolon takes hold, the user may behave in ways utterly alien to them, committing acts they would never consider in waking life.

When the episode ends, the user awakens wherever they happen to be - disoriented, frightened, and entirely unaware of what occurred over the previous minutes, hours, or even days.

Recovery at this stage is rare and arduous. It requires total abstinence from Bottled Sleep, along with weeks or months spent retraining the body and mind to accept natural sleep once more. During this period, the symptoms - blackouts, dissociation, and nightmares - often grow worse before they improve. Many find the suffering unbearable and return to the blue bottle, desperate for relief from the relentless demands of sleep.

Few survive the first year of abstinence. And even those who do may face lifelong relapses, as fragments of the pseudo-eidolons linger, surfacing in times of stress, exhaustion, or vulnerability.