Nightmares from the Forgotten Earth

“To remember is to awaken something that prefers to be left dreaming…”

The Red Harvest (Inspired by the Holodomor and other man-made famines)

The dream begins in golden fields that rot as you approach. Blades of grain whisper, “We were enough.” You see a village, smiling faces, smoke rising from chimneys. Then silence. The food is gone, and the gates are locked. No one may leave. The harvest is demanded by a pale king in bone-colored robes, who weighs memory on iron scales but never pays. Mothers dream of dirt tasting like stew. Children forget how to cry. You awaken hungry, no matter how full your belly was before.

The Firebound Archive (Inspired by the destruction of libraries and cultural erasure)

You dream of a library that burns eternally—but the fire never consumes it. Every book screams as you touch it. Each tome is a tongue, a memory, a name. Soldiers in glass armor toss volumes into the flame, laughing. A chained being—half ash, half ink—tells you: “These were our songs, and now they are soot.” You try to save a single page, but it dissolves into smoke that whispers your own name backward. You awake with your handwriting reversed for a full day.

The Breathless Room (Inspired by gas chamber executions and human experimentation)

You walk into a stone chamber where the walls are mirrors. You see versions of yourself: older, altered, dissected. A voice says: “Let us see what makes you you.” The air grows heavy. You gasp, but the only thing that fills your lungs is regret. One mirror self suffocates. Another screams. The last offers you a scalpel. Behind you, doctors with silver eyes observe. You awaken with a bruised chest and the faint taste of iron.

The Bone Train (Inspired by the Holocaust and death trains)

An endless train crosses a salt desert under a black sun. The boxcars are made of bone. Inside, the dead are awake. Their eyes follow you, but none speak. Each time you move, a name is etched into your skin. You realize they are names of people you forgot existed—ancestors, friends, maybe you. The conductor is silent, but his lantern shows a memory in each passing window. Your reflection in the glass gets older each mile. You awaken with the sense you missed something vital.

The Living Wall (Inspired by child soldiers and mass executions)

You stumble through a battlefield where the slain rise—not to fight, but to build. They stitch themselves together into a wall made of bone, sinew, and sorrow. “This is what peace costs,” they say. Children carry bricks of flesh, their eyes hollow, their names sewn into their arms. You are given a hammer shaped like a spine and asked to add your voice to the wall. If you refuse, your mouth is mortared shut. You awaken unable to speak until sunset.

The Hunger Clock (Inspired by poverty, time-theft, and industrial suffering)

You enter a factory where every second is a scream. Gears grind fingers. Time slips through floor grates. A massive clock ticks above, and with every chime, someone ages ten years. A child works until he is an old man. An elder becomes a stillborn. A foreman with no face offers you a deal: “Work until you remember why you came here.” You awaken with a splinter under your thumbnail and an irrational fear of ticking.

The Vein Cathedral (Inspired by addiction epidemics and medical exploitation)

You kneel in a cathedral built of pulsating flesh. Veins crawl along the stained glass. The choir chants promises: No pain, no thought, no past. Priests offer you golden needles. You refuse—but you’re already bleeding. You see others: ghosts of patients, addicts, forgotten test subjects. They pray to numbness. A great altar pulses with memory being drained from the living. You awaken with your arm aching as if you slept on it wrong, though you know it wasn’t sleep.

The Smile Burden (Inspired by mental health crises and forced positivity)

A carnival of painted joy spins endlessly. Everyone smiles. Everyone dances. You feel wrong, because you don’t want to smile—but the mask on your face won’t come off. The clowns whisper, “Grief is treason.” You see a woman dragged off for weeping. The crowd cheers. A mirror shows your real face: silent, screaming behind a painted grin. A ringleader invites you to perform. You awaken exhausted and unsure whether your happiness is your own.

The Tide of Teeth (Inspired by genocides hidden or forgotten by history)

A city drowns in a tide not of water, but teeth—millions, clattering, cracking. You hear laughter above, from towers of gold. The streets below vanish. People cry out for names, but none remain. A mother offers her infant to the sea, saying, “Let them remember something.” Each tooth carries a name the world chose to forget. You awaken with blood in your gums and the taste of salt and iron.

The Unfinished Wake (Inspired by forgotten bodies, unmarked graves)

You find yourself at a funeral with no casket, no mourners, only echoing sobs. “Who died?” you ask. No one answers. Candles flicker but give no warmth. A pile of unclaimed shoes lies nearby. A mourner in black whispers: “Every unburied story becomes a nightmare.” You awaken with mud on your feet and a deep unease, as if someone should have remembered you.

These nightmares could be encountered during specific soul-deep rituals, through Mire Echoes’ bog-communions, or as side effects of tapping too deep into fragmented Memory Banks. Each could serve as a campaign arc, horror dungeon, or background trauma for Echoen or Forgotten characters carrying fragments of Earth’s past.