1. Locations

Dal Quor: The Region of Dreams

Plane

Dal Quor is both impossibly distant and remarkably close. Tens of thousands of years ago, the giants of Xen’drik shattered the ties between Dal Quor and the Material Plane. Since then, it’s been permanently remote, and no naturally occurring manifest zone to Dal Quor has been discovered. Not even plane shift or astral travel can allow direct contact with the Region of Dreams. And yet, it’s also the closest of the planes—to visit, just close your eyes. Dreaming is a form of spiritual travel, as your mortal consciousness is drawn to Dal Quor.

Dal Quor is the realm of dreams, a place of imagination where memory and emotion can shape reality. The stories of Thelanis bring people together in a shared tale; by contrast, the dreams of Dal Quor are unique, individual, and fleeting. They’re defined by our experiences and desires, and we rarely remember them when they’re over. Dreams allows us to sift through our subconscious, and they are ours alone—or at least, they should be . . . if they aren’t manipulated by an outside force. The denizens of Dal Quor reflect the secondary theme of the plane, and—for now, at least—that theme is nightmares. The quori prey on mortal dreams, twisting them to produce the emotions they crave. This doesn’t mean all dreams are nightmares—but when a quori takes an interest in your dream, it’ll usually become one.

Source: Exploring Eberron


Mortal creatures come into contact with Dal Quor when they dream (except for elves, kalashtar, and warforged, which don’t dream). The outer fringes of the plane are shaped by the memories and experiences of dreamers. The dark core at the heart of the plane is shaped by the nightmare force known as the Dreaming Dark. The primary inhabitants of Dal Quor are the quori, enigmatic master manipulators that can inhabit the dreams of others.

Tens of thousands of years ago, the quori fought a bitter war with the giants of Xen’drik. The giants ended the war by severing the connection between Dal Quor and Eberron and disrupting the cycle of the planes. As a result, Dal Quor is always remote in relation to the Material Plane, and no manifest zones are tied to Dal Quor. The only way to reach Dal Quor from the Material Plane is through the psychic projection of dreaming, and the quori are forced to possess mortal hosts to work their will on Eberron.

Source: Rising from the Last War

The Struggle of Dal Quor

The Path of Light. The Dreaming Dark. The struggle between the Unknown and the Unknown. What is at the root of it?

The war between the kalashtar and the Inspired has little to do with Eberron. It is a struggle to determine the fate of Dal Quor, the region of dreams. Dal Quor is a mutable plane. When mortals dream, they mold their own pockets of reality along the fringes. The heart of the plane is shaped by a force greater than any mortal soul, a force that can be seen only in the reality that it creates. This is the Quor Tarai, the spirit of the age, and the age it has created is a nightmare. The quori are the children of the Quor Tarai, and they call their creator il-Lashtavar (the Darkness that Dreams, or the Dreaming Dark). The organization known as the Dreaming Dark is composed of the personal agents of il-Lashtavar.

Quori are immortal, yet they don't know their entire history. They have no recollection of events that occurred before the Age of Monsters on Eberron. Studying this, quori sages concluded that Dal Quor itself undergoes cataclysmic cycles. When the cycle turns, the plane implodes and explodes. The Quor Tarai is transformed and reborn, as are all the spirits tied to the realm. Dal Quor and the quori will always exist in some form, but the quori of the future might have nothing in common with the quori of the present. In fact, evidence suggested that the next age could be radically different. One of the wisest of the quori was a kalaraq named Taratai, and she claimed that il-Lashtavar would be replaced by il-Yannah—a great light that would banish the nightmare at the heart of the realm.

The raw energy of the quori might survive the turn of the age, but personality and memory—everything that defined them—would be destroyed. For a race of immortals, this was truly terrifying, and it galvanized the quori to action. They were determined to find a way to stop the turn of the cycle, to preserve the darkness forever. A few quori disagreed, saying that the cycle must be allowed to run its course; chief among these was Taratai. Those loyal to il-Lashtavar hunted these heretics until the spirits were finally forced to flee Dal Quor, in time becoming the kalashtar.

Even after hounding the heretics from their plane, the quori continued to study the problem, finally coming to the conclusion that the answer must lie in Eberron itself. One of the few things the quori know about the previous age of Dal Quor is that as it came to a close, the quori entered Eberron and came into conflict with the giants of Xen'drik. The lords of the Dreaming Dark believe that control of Eberron might allow them to control the destiny of Dal Quor. Opinions differ as to how this can be accomplished. The dominant belief is that two steps are required. The first is to realign Dal Quor with Eberron, repairing the damage done at the end of the Age of Giants. The second is to gain control of mortal society and, more important, mortal dreams. Every night, the dreams of sentient beings shape Dal Quor. The lords of the Dreaming Dark believe that if all mortals can be forced to dream one dream, Dal Quor will never change.

It is this philosophy that shapes the nation of Riedra. The Inspired do not conquer for the sake of riches or even power; most quori prefer the nightmare realm of Dal Quor to Eberron. Serving as one of the Inspired is a chore most would just as soon avoid. They do so to preserve the Quor Tarai and thus themselves. Inspired provide their subjects with food, shelter, and security. The price for that is freedom. If the Lords of Dust or the daelkyr achieve their goals, they will tear the world apart. By comparison, a world under Inspired rule would be safe and stable, but without freedom.

The kalashtar are the spiritual descendants of Taratai and her allies. They believe that the Quor Tarai must turn. Furthermore, they feel that the nature of the Quor Tarai reflects on Eberron, and that if they can transform darkness into light, they can bring a new age of enlightenment to Eberron. They have believed that they don't need to defeat the Inspired to attain victory. For most kalashtar, prayer, meditation, and simple survival keeps the world moving on the Path of Light. Recently, however, doubt has begun to rise. Many young kalashtar think that their people must be more active in the world, taking the battle to the Inspired.

When dealing with the kalashtar and the Dreaming Dark, a few important points should be kept in mind. First is the arrogance of these races. Both believe that their struggle transcends Eberron. Most kalashtar are noble persons who seek to battle corruption and evil, but they still feel that humans have no place in their war. The Dreaming Dark, on the other hand, sees humans as tools and playthings. Second is that even the potent quori don't have all the answers. They don't know exactly why their predecessors invaded Xen'drik. They don't know what caused the end of the last age, and this is one reason the Inspired are acting carefully and cautiously. Many feel that the dramatic action of the quori in Xen'drik might have hastened their downfall. So the quori are seeking knowledge in the ruins of Xen'drik, and plenty of mysteries exist that only the DM can answer.

Universal Properties

Source: Exploring Eberron

Dal Quor is a place where impossible things are possible and the surroundings can change in the blink of an eye. What differentiates it from Kythri and Xoriat is that these changes are drawn from the minds of dreamers, both from the mortal subconscious and the ancient dreams of il-Lashtavar itself. Even when you’re exploring someone else’s dreams, your desires and memories can infect the landscape. The Shifting Dreams table provides ideas for how a dream could change.

Shifting Dreams

d8 Dream Event
1 A familiar melody can be heard throughout the area. Ask a player to describe the song.
2 A word appears on the wall. Is it a clue, or just mysterious?
3 A familiar NPC—a trusted ally or despised villain—enters.
4 A creature’s weapon, armor, or other equipment takes on an irrational new appearance—perhaps a giant banana. This has no effect on its statistics, and the effect ends in 1 minute.
5 A creature now appears to be a child or a creature of another race. This has no effect on their abilities, and the effect ends

in 1 minute. 6 | A creature’s beloved pet—perhaps from their childhood— appears in the scene. 7 | There’s a dramatic—and possibly surreal—shift in the weather or apparent time of day. 8 | A creature gains a flying speed equal to their regular walking speed. This lasts for 1 minute.

Extremely Morphic. The environment of Dal Quor can shift at any moment. These changes are generally drawn from the mind of the current dreamer, but at the DM’s discretion, the thoughts of adventurers might impact another creature’s dream that they’re currently experiencing.

Extended Illusion. When a creature casts an illusion spell with a duration of 1 minute or longer, the duration is doubled. Spells with a duration of 24 hours or more are unaffected.

Flowing Time. For every 10 minutes that pass in Dal Quor, only 1 minute passes on the Material Plane. While sleeping for 8 hours, a creature could spend 3 days in Dal Quor.

The Turning of the Age

Source: Exploring Eberron

The layers of Dal Quor are shaped by dreaming minds. The quori believe the heart of Dal Quor is itself the dream of an immense, ancient spirit, and that they themselves are simply part of its dream. They call this the Quor Tarai—the Dream of the Age. But there’s a catch: every dream ends when the dreamer wakes up. Forty thousand years ago, the giants of Xen’drik fought a war with Dal Quor—but none of the current quori remember this war or anything that happened before it. They believe this is because the Quor Tarai came to an end. Dal Quor woke from its dream, then immediately returned to its slumber and began to dream again . . . but it was a new dream, with entirely new quori.

The quori call this transition the Turning of the Age. They don’t know how many times it’s happened before, and they know nothing about the quori of the previous age. But they believe that each incarnation of the Quor Tarai has its own distinct flavor. The present Quor Tarai is il-Lashtavar, the Great Darkness that Dreams. It’s malevolent and cruel, and that’s reflected by the quori it’s created. But a handful of quori didn’t fit in this dream. These are the quori that became the kalashtar, who consider themselves harbingers of transformation. The kalashtar believe that the next incarnation of the Quor Tarai will be an age of hope and compassion; they call it il-Yannah, the Great Light.

So all quori know that one day, Dal Quor will wake from its dream, and when it does, all existing quori will be destroyed. This drives the conflict between the kalashtar and the Dreaming Dark. The kalashtar believe their devotions and meditation slowly turn the wheel toward a dream of light. Meanwhile, the agents of the Dreaming Dark believe they can permanently anchor the Quor Tarai in the current age, if only they can control enough mortal dreams—a process begun with Sarlona. It’s up to the DM to decide if the kalashtar can usher in a new age over the course of the campaign, or if the Dreaming Dark will maintain the status quo. If the Turning of the Age occurs, all existing quori will be destroyed and reborn; no one knows what this will do to the kalashtar or foreign creations like the Uul Dhakaan.

Denizens

Source: Exploring Eberron

The quori, children of il-Lashtavar, are the most numerous of the native spirits of Dal Quor. But quori aren’t the only creatures dreamers can encounter in the Region of Dreams.

Dreamers

At any given moment, there are millions of dreaming minds creating islands in Dal Quor. Humans, orcs, giants, dragons— any creature that dreams can be found in this plane.

A rare few dreamers are lucid and in full control of their actions, due to either training or magic; these are capable of leaving their own dreams and moving between the plane’s dream islands and layers. However, the vast majority of dreamers aren’t lucid. They’re driven by their subconscious, and react based on instinct and deep desires; they likely won’t remember the events of a dream clearly. Either way, when a dreamer dies in their dream, they wake up; however, this death can still have consequences, as Eberron: Rising from the Last War describes in “The Dreaming Dark” section of chapter 4.

Figments and Drifters

When you have a dream and you meet your old drill sergeant, it’s not actually your old drill sergeant, and it’s (probably) not a quori. It’s simply a figment, manifested from the void by Dal Quor. When you wake up—or even just leave the scene—this manifestation vanishes, absorbed back into the essence of the plane. A figment can be anything—a friend of yours, a zombie version of that friend, a demon, a dragon—but the catch is that it’s drawn from the mind of the local dreamer. When you dream about your old drill sergeant, they can’t tell you a secret you don’t already know, because they’re part of you. On the other hand, if you’re in someone else’s dream—or if a quori has taken control of your dream—then the figments can surprise you, because their capabilities and knowledge are drawn from someone else’s mind.

A figment could use the statistics of the creature it represents, or it might be limited, as the dreamer doesn’t know what it’s actually capable of. Conversely, a figment goblin could have the statistics of an ogre—in this dream, that’s one tough goblin.

Occasionally, a remarkable figment develops the ability to persist beyond the dream that created it—becoming a truly sentient spirit instead of a simple manifestation. Such figments might be useful guides or allies for mortal dreamers, or become predators that travel from dream to dream and prey on mortal fears. Such free-willed figments are called drifters.

The Quori

The quori themselves are figments—figments of il-Lashtavar, the current Dream of the Age. However, these figments are immortal, and don’t disappear when a mortal’s dream ends; if they’re destroyed, they’re simply reborn within the heart of il-Lashtavar. Like other figments, they come into existence knowing the role they are supposed to play: they are shapers of nightmares. Each type of quori feeds on a particular emotion; tsucora quori craft terrifying nightmares so they can feast on mortal fear, while the du’ulora thrive on anger.

When a quori enters a dream, it can create new figments, alter the story’s script, or change its own appearance (though its statistics remain the same). If the invading quori is killed within the dream, the story reverts to the original script, so most quori prefer to remain in the background while shaping a dream; however, some are arrogant and can’t resist playing a starring role. The quori don’t create every nightmare; there are millions of dreamers, while the quori number only in the thousands. But the nightmares they personally create are works of art.

In the first days of il-Lashtavar, the quori had no purpose aside from preying on mortal dreams. Now they believe they’re fighting for their survival, and they use their abilities to manipulate mortals and the waking world. But always remember that the quori began as crafters of nightmares, and consider how each quori’s favorite emotion may color its actions.

Interlopers

Some creatures in Dal Quor are neither figments nor mortal dreamers. Night hags freely come and go, collecting nightmares for their own purposes. Here are some other interlopers.

The Fey of the Fading Dream. Taer Lian Doresh is a feyspire, one of the eladrin cities of Thelanis. Long ago, the tyrant empyrean Cul’sir cursed the feyspire and cast it into Dal Quor. Caught in the transformation of the Quor Tarai, these eladrin became embodiments of classic nightmares, and ease their pain by spreading fear among mortals. (They can be represented using shadar-kai stat blocks, but aren’t shadar-kai and have no ties to Dolurrh’s Queen of the Dead.)

Taer Lian Doresh now exists between Dal Quor and the Material Plane. The eladrin of this feyspire can freely pass to both planes, but other creatures can only enter Taer Lian Doresh and return to their plane of origin; they can’t use it as a portal from to the other plane. Thus, quori and adventurers can walk the halls of the Fading Dream together, but the quori can’t cross over to physically enter Eberron itself, nor can the denizens of the Material Plane (including eladrin of other feyspires, humans, and all other creatures of Eberron) enter Dal Quor.

The Draconic Eidolon. Many dragons of Argonnessen believe they can attain immortality after death, passing through Dolurrh and becoming divine beings. However, some aren’t willing to take that chance; using an eldritch machine hidden deep in Argonnessen, the most powerful can perform a ritual that tethers their spirits to a psychic anchor in Dal Quor. This Draconic Eidolon, a monument in the Ocean of Dreams, holds the souls of dragons long dead instead of releasing them to Dolurrh. The dragons no longer exist physically; like the Undying Court, they’re a union of spirits, possessing greater power together than they would individually. They can’t leave the Eidolon, but possess vast knowledge—secrets of history, insight into the Prophecy, and knowledge of epic magic. They have much to offer, but what do adventurers have that the dreams of dead dragons might want?

Layers

Source: Exploring Eberron

Dal Quor doesn’t have layers like other planes. Instead, it can be seen as a vast ocean. When a mortal dreams, they fall into that ocean and create an “island”: a dream pocket, shaped by their memories and desires. When they wake, this island disappears. So at any given moment, Dal Quor contains millions of islands, but none last for long. A passive dreamer can’t leave their own island, but a lucid dreamer can find ways to travel between them. Typically this involves portals, doors within a dream that have a psychic connection to the destination—but it’s also possible to break through the psychic border of an island, to fly to another island on a ship of dreams or an imaginary winged beast.

These flickering islands orbit the stable core of the realm, the dark heart of the Quor Tarai. In addition to the regions discussed below, there may be other permanent islands in the Ocean of Dreams, following the example of the Uul Dhakaan and the Draconic Eidolon. Who created the island, and what sustains it?

Planar Manifestations

Ever since the Age of Giants, it’s been nearly impossible to physically interact with Dal Quor from the Material Plane. This forces the quori tied to the kalashtar and the Inspired to act through mortal agents. The only denizens of Dal Quor that can easily enter the world are the fey of the Fading Dream. The plane is always remote; undoing this damage would be an epic quest, potentially returning the thirteenth moon to the sky. But even at a distance, Dal Quor can affect the waking world.

Dreams

The primary way that Dal Quor manifests in the world is through dreams. Chapter 4 of Eberron: Rising from the Last War discusses the roles that dreams can play in a campaign.

Manifest Zones

The metaphysical damage caused in the conflict between Dal Quor and the giants of Xen’drik broke the ties between Eberron and Dal Quor. There are no naturally occurring manifest zones to Dal Quor, and even plane shift won’t allow travel there. However, though natural manifest zones don’t exist, anything is possible with an eldritch machine, whether in the hands of the Dreaming Dark pursuing subtle conquest, or simply an eccentric artificer seeking the advancement of arcane science.

Quori Artifacts

While it’s rare to encounter objects on Eberron that come from Dal Quor, the Inspired of Sarlona create objects using quori techniques. The primary substance used in quori objects is a form of solidified emotion called sentira. It has an opalescent, organic texture similar to polished horn; the color depends on the emotion used in its creation, and the wearer can feel that emotion as a constant background presence in their mind. As a material, sentira is light and extremely strong, similar to mithral; an agent of the Dreaming Dark might wear armor that’s functionally mithral armor but actually made from sentira. Quori items generally enhance telepathy or other psychic effects; a ring of mind shielding or crystal ball of mind reading would be logical creations of the quori.

Quori Stories

Chapter 4 of Eberron: Rising from the Last War provides story ideas related to dreams and the Dreaming Dark. Adventures can also use the kra’uul and uul’kur from chapter 7 of this book.

Familiar Figments, Figment Familiars. The adventurers discover their dreams all share the same figure, appearing regularly to each of them. It could be humanoid (a childhood friend, an old mentor), a shapechanging raven, or a talking purple cat. It was once merely a figment of one of their dreams, but it’s become a drifter, able to move between dreams. It could offer advice, carry messages to characters when they’re separated from friends, or warn of things it’s seen in the dreams of their enemies.

The Treacherous Whisper. A single fortress in the Uul Dhakaan has become infected by a daelkyr curse, turning the figments within it into aberrations. Can this be contained and cleansed before it spreads and destroys the dream itself?

The Fortress of the Fading Dream. Taer Lian Doresh exists on the edge of Dal Quor, where mortals and quori meet face to face. The tsucora Astaleth has recently turned to the Path of Light and is hiding within the fortress; if she leaves, she’ll be consumed by il-Lashtavar. Can adventurers find a way to save the rebel quori? Why is the leader Shan Lian Doresh allowing her to shelter in his hall?

Eidolons

The quori claim the heart of Dal Quor as their realm, and dreamers rarely reach that center. Instead, dreamers prowl the fringes of the plane, shaping the mutable environment with their subconscious desires.

Characters most often encounter eidolons in the fringe realms of Dal Quor. Much like an illusion, an eidolon is an imaginary creature conjured to play a role in the dream. While an eidolon might appear to act in an intelligent manner, an eidolon possesses no sentience. It simply fulfills a role in the dream, reacting in the required way to meet the needs of the story. Although mindless, eidolons react as if they possessed intelligence. and thus mind-affecting effects affect them normally.

An eidolon can appear as any creature and typically possesses that creature's standard statistics. However, two exceptions exist: nightmare eidolons and idyllic eidolons. Nightmare eidolons have far greater power than the creature they appear as, whereas idyllic eidolons are remarkably easy to defeat. A nightmare eidolon uses statistics from a creature more powerful than the apparent creature (as measured by the creatures' CRs). while an idyllic eidolon uses the creature statistics of a much weaker creature. If you intend to have the PCs dream without the players knowing. you should use statistics for creatures with roughly similar abilities. If the PCs face dream monsters and their players already know it (or you don't care if they figure it out), use whatever statistics you wish. 

Drifters

In between the purely imaginary eidolons and Dal Quor's true children (the quori) lurk the drifters—bizarre creatures emerging from the collective minds of Eberron's inhabitants to prey on dreaming souls. Drifters possess sentient intelligence and can exist outside of a dreamer's imagination. but they have no common characteristics with one another. Drifters do not reproduce naturally: they emerge fully formed within the fringes of Dal Quor. The following two drifters represent merely the tip of the iceberg.

Hob

The predatory hob feeds on the fears of mortal minds. Solitary by nature, hobs roam the fringes of Dal Quor searching for prey. The inscrutable mind of the hob makes it immune to mind-affecting spells and powers. and as a result, hobs sometimes pose threats to quori; hunting parties of tsucora and Mora quori occasionally roam the border realms, exterminating any hobs they find. Some sages believe that hobs occasionally find a way to reach Eberron, and encounters with hobs might account for more than a few folk tales.

A small humanoid creature in its natural form, a hob has a hunched posture, long arms, and a vaguely feline head almost as large as its torso. It typically tuns on all fours.

Hobs can communicate telepathically with any creature with a language within 100 feet.

Spellshadow

The spellshadow feeds on the knowledge of wizards and other arcane spellcasters. Some sages assert that spellshadows manifest from the thirst for arcane knowledge—that wizards' desires for mystical power take form in Dal Quor and feed on their creators.

Unless a character actively tries to keep an eye on it, the mere ripple of air that marks a spellshadow is difficult to spot. It has the vague outline of a humanoid form, composed of mystic symbols and runes. When it uses its spell theft ability, the words that comprise its body briefly flare with mystical energy; otherwise, the spellshadow is virtually impossible to see. A spell-shadow understands Common and Draconic. but it never speaks. Its only sounds come from the whisperings of the distorted fragments of spells it has stolen in the past.

The Role of Dreams

Source: Rising from the Last War chapter 4

All dreams occur in the plane of Dal Quor. When mortals sleep, their minds touch the plane and shape a shard of it. Normally, a dream is shaped by the memories and emotions of the dreamer. But the dream spell and similar effects (such as a night hag’s Nightmare Haunting) can influence a dream from the outside, to a specific and often sinister purpose. The quori are masters of using the dream spell as a weapon to terrorize their foes.

It’s possible for an entire adventure to take place in a dream. The trick with a dream adventure is ensuring that it feels meaningful, even consequential, and not just a waste of time. One of four basic approaches can help you do that:

  • A real monster inhabits a character’s dreams and poses a real threat to that character’s mind or body. The goal of the adventure is to defeat that monster.
  • A dreaming character is incapable of waking communication — they might be comatose or possessed. The goal of the adventure is to communicate with the dreamer and free them from whatever is preventing them from communicating.
  • A villain has implanted some kind of psychic lock in a character’s mind, which prevents them from accessing some knowledge or capability. The goal of the adventure is to remove the psychic lock, which might take the form of a complex trap or maze in the dream.
  • The actual objective of the adventure lies in Dal Quor. The first goal is to find a way to break out of the mundane dreamscape and enter the wider plane.

The second challenge in crafting a dream adventure is how to bring all the characters in a party together in the same dream, which might or might not belong to one of them. Consider these possibilities:

  • One of the characters is dreaming, and the others appear in the dream as memories and impressions in the dreamer’s mind.
  • Some exotic magic — a kalashtar ritual or an eldritch machine, perhaps — allows the characters to share a dream or to enter someone else’s dream. This magic could also allow a character who ordinarily can’t dream (such as an elf, a warforged, or a kalashtar) to enter the dreamscape as well.
  • Agents of the Dreaming Dark use their magic to bring the dreams of the characters together so they can influence or target the whole party at once.

The Dream Adventures table puts these principles together and suggests hooks into this kind of adventure.

Dream Adventures

d4 Adventure Goal
1 Break a psychic lock that is preventing a House Thuranni spy from remembering what they learned about a sinister Dreaming Dark plot.
2 Escape into Dal Quor to find an artifact that can be brought back to the Material Plane when the characters awaken.
3 Rescue a character who is suffering from debilitating recurring nightmares by defeating the quori inhabiting the character’s mind.
4 Stop the construction of an eldritch machine in Dal Quor that will give the quori physical access to the Material Plane again.

Dying in Dreams

Death in dreams is less severe than in reality, but it’s not without consequence. Of course, characters who are mere figments of a dreamer’s imagination are simply removed from the dream. But a character dies while actually dreaming, the character receives no benefit from the rest and takes 3d6 psychic damage.

If you want to establish more severe consequences, you can. A dreamer killed by a quori could be trapped in Dal Quor while the quori possesses their body, forcing their allies to try to rescue them from their nightmares.

Beyond the Quori

If you plan to use the Dreaming Dark as a major villain in your campaign, it can be helpful to establish the role of dreams early on. If dreams feel like a regular part of the story, it will be less obvious when the Dreaming Dark starts manipulating the characters’ dreams. For example, you might establish a pattern of picking one adventurer and discussing their dreams each time the group takes a long rest. Consider these ideas for the basic seed of a dream:

Revisit recent events. This can be a useful opportunity to call attention to a detail the characters overlooked. Clearly, this character’s subconscious registered the detail as important!

Involve a current villain. This can help build the players’ hatred for an elusive recurring villain!

Foreshadow the future. This could simply reflect a character’s fears, but it might also convey a warning from a celestial or other supernatural creature.

Explore the character’s past. Give the player an opportunity to add depth to one element of the character’s story.

Reflect anxiety. An anxious character might dream about showing up in a dungeon with no armor or at school with no clothes. Narratively, these dreams can provide a moment of comic relief or heighten the players own concern about what’s happening in the game.

Keith

If players made it to Dal Quor, how difficult it would be avoid the Dreaming Dark attention?

The quori are in no way omniscient. There are millions, possibly billions of dreamers in Dal Quor at any given moment. The quori have no way to monitor all of them and there's nothing that makes the adventurers automatically stand out any more than any mortal dreamer. They can monitor the dreams of individuals they have identified as being of particular interest, but they don't automatically know about the dreams of every Brelish farmer or every beggar in Sharn. There are far more dreams than there are quori, and something has to draw their attention to be noticed. 

With that said, quori DO patrol the Ocean of Dreams, sometimes just looking for things that are interesting, other times because they are monitoring an interesting individual. In this case, the quori will typically disguise itself as someone or something that fits within the dream—when you are dreaming about your high school graduation, it's not that there's a tsucora just sitting in the crowd, it's that the tsucora has taken the place of the principal. And if a group of outside mortals show up and clearly start acting outside the parameters of the dream, they will get noticed. So part of the point is that it's up to the adventurers to evade detection, usually by PLAYING ALONG WITH THE DREAM. If you're in the high school graduation, congratulate the seniors. Sign a yearbook. Maybe get into a fight with the bully, because that's appropriate, but don't pick a fight with the Principal. Personally, in this case I would allow BEHAVIOR to trump APPEARANCE. You might think a group of armed adventurers showing up in a high school graduation ceremony would be automatically suspicious. But this is a DREAM, remember? Where the graduating character might be in their underwear and where there could be a dragon at the end of the stage eating everyone who graduates. Why can't a group of armed adventurers show up? Maybe the dreamer saw them in a tavern and they made an impression... and that's what dreams are, fragments of memory and emotion. So again, it's not APPEARANCE that's going to draw attention—it's ACTION. If the actions of the players clearly challenge and disrupt the story of the dream, they risk drawing the interest and attention of any quori that happen to be monitoring it. 

Even with il-Lashtavar itself, consider the description of it in Exploring Eberron. "On the edges of il-Lashtavar, corpses dangle from the trees of a haunted orchard. Blood drips from the leaves of a terrifying topiary maze. While the basic form of these nightmares is stable, they feed on the psyches of nearby mortals. Adventurers walking through the orchard see the hanging corpses as the people they most care about, or even as themselves—whatever is most disturbing to each intruder." What it doesn't say is "And the instant they set foot in it, they are automatically detected." Because at the end of the day, it's about TELLING A COMPELLING STORY. What fun is a fortress that can never be breached? You want the story to be CHALLENGING, so consider—you are trying to penetrate the heart of darkness, a citadel filled with fiends (or aberrations, depending on edition...). How CAN you keep them from noticing you? Can you do a fake prisoner situation, with one adventurer somehow mimicking the psychic signature of a quori? Can you cloak everyone in psychic disguises? Are you using Nondetection to evade any divinatory sensing and relying on physical stealth? Il-Lashtavar IS the heart of darkness and you shouldn't be able to simply walk inside. But if the players have a good plan, it should be possible; again, the quori aren't omniscient. 

Source: February 2023 Questions Thread