The Corridor That Forgets | Fantasy Hazard Generated by CharGen

The hazard

The corridor gradually forgets that intruders exist. Names fade from speech, tracks vanish, and familiar details become difficult to recall. The effect is not an attack so much as an increasingly hostile failure of the dream to include the party. Creatures can still act and make choices, but at the hazard's strongest stage the corridor's inhabitants and features cease to acknowledge them.

Magical
Dream
Memory
Complex

Stealth: . The corridor is difficult to distinguish from an ordinary dream passage until its omissions become apparent.
Trigger: The hazard activates when a creature enters the corridor or interacts with one of its blank portraits. Roll initiative when it activates.
Disable: The hazard is suppressed while the party maintains a shared spoken anchor, or while a marked area remains physically vivid. To permanently disable it, a creature adjacent to one of the corridor's blank portraits can use an action to make a Intelligence (Arcana) check while another creature describes a true memory of the portrait's missing subject. Three successful checks are required before two failures. On completion, the portrait regains its face and the hazard ends.
Initiative: 20. The hazard acts on initiative count 20, losing ties. Its routine continues while it is active.
Routine: On initiative count 20, each creature in the corridor makes the saving throw described in The Corridor Forgets. Then the corridor shifts one unattended doorway or passage as described in Unreliable Geography.
Reset: The corridor becomes active again when another creature enters. It reforms after 1 hour if destroyed, unless permanently disabled.

Damage

Immunities

Poison damage, Psychic damage, Conditions

Resistances

Bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing damage from nonmagical attacks

Weaknesses

A sincere shared memory suppresses its routine while the party maintains the spoken anchor.
Vivid physical marks anchor a small area and interrupt the corridor's shifting geography.

Effects

3

The Corridor Forgets
DC 15
A creature that starts its turn in the corridor makes a Wisdom saving throw. On a failure, it gains one Forgetting mark, to a maximum of three. On a success, it removes one Forgetting mark. A creature can also remove a mark using the countermeasures. A mark lasts until removed or the creature leaves the corridor for 1 minute.
Forgetting Marks
At one mark, the creature has disadvantage on Wisdom (Perception) checks made to notice creatures or objects in the corridor. At two marks, it cannot communicate its name or a clear description of its appearance; attempts emerge as pauses, wrong words, or unrelated details. At three marks, the creature becomes a Blank to the corridor: it is invisible to other creatures in the corridor, and other creatures cannot hear it or perceive its tracks. It can still see and hear normally, speak, and interact with objects. A creature that leaves the corridor is immediately visible and audible again, and its marks fade after 1 minute outside.
Unreliable Geography
DC 14
Once per round, on initiative count 20, the corridor shifts one unattended doorway or passage up to 30 feet, closing one route and opening another. It cannot separate a creature from the exit once that creature has reached the exit. A Intelligence (Investigation) check as an action identifies the true exit, which does not move.

Special rules

A Blank Is Still There.A creature that is a Blank can still take turns normally. The corridor does not erase the creature from the minds of its companions, only from the dream's ability to acknowledge it. Other creatures in the corridor cannot target the Blank with attacks or effects that require seeing or hearing it, but can target it with effects that do not require either.

Meaningful Anchors.A spoken anchor must be a specific name, promise, or shared memory repeated clearly by at least two creatures. It does not need to be true, but it must be personally meaningful to the speakers. Generic shouting does not count.

Spotting it

Discovery

A creature examining the corridor can make a Intelligence (Investigation) or Wisdom (Perception) check.

Perception

Wisdom (Perception) or Intelligence (Investigation) to notice the erased footprints, blank portraits, or delayed echoes before entering.

Stop it

Signs of dangerFootprints stop appearing behind the party. · A portrait's face is blank, though its clothes and posture are sharply detailed. · The party hears a delayed echo that repeats a name incorrectly. · A character's reflection or shadow briefly fails to appear.

Countermeasures

DC 15A creature can use its action to speak its own name and describe a specific memory aloud. It makes a Wisdom (Insight) or Intelligence (Investigation) check. On a success, it removes one Forgetting mark from itself or a creature within 5 feet.
DC 15Two or more creatures can spend their actions in the same round calling out one another's names and a shared memory. If each succeeds on a Charisma (Performance) or Wisdom (Insight) check, the hazard's routine is suppressed until initiative count 20 next round.
DC 14A creature can use an action to mark a doorway, wall, or floor with chalk, paint, or another vivid physical sign. A Intelligence (Investigation) check succeeds; the mark anchors a 10-foot-radius area for 1 minute, suppressing the routine there.
A creature that leaves the corridor is no longer affected and removes all its Forgetting marks after 1 minute outside it.
The hazard can be destroyed by reducing it to 0 hit points, though its corridor collapses into a harmless, darkened dreamscape.

In short

Notice the accumulating omissions, then anchor the party with a repeated name, a vividly described memory, or a marked object.

Its story

What it looks like

A corridor of pale-blue sky stretches between impossible doorways.

Why it is here

To keep intruders from reaching a memory, dreamer, or passage beyond the corridor by erasing their presence from the dream.

Who made it

Unknown.

Lore

The corridor is said to form wherever a dreamer refuses to remember something important.

Where it is found

Dream dimension

Variants

The Gallery of Unsaid Names: Each portrait depicts a party member, but the face disappears whenever that person is named.

The Familiar House: Replace shifting doorways with rooms that become subtly less familiar each round. A creature that reaches three Forgetting marks cannot remember which room contains the exit until it succeeds on a DC 15 Intelligence (Investigation) check.

The Kindly Version: The corridor forgets threats as well as intruders. While a creature maintains a spoken anchor, the hazard's routine is suppressed, but the anchor also prevents the party from using stealthy movement in the corridor.

Plot hooks

A missing dreamer is trapped in the corridor, but the party must learn the dreamer's name from someone who has already forgotten it.

An important memory has been stored in one of the blank portraits. Recovering it could restore a witness's identity or expose a hidden truth.

The corridor has appeared in the dreams of a waking noble, and its forgotten details are beginning to disappear from the noble's home.

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