Land of Morpheus: the Realm of Dreams

The Land of Morpheus, as mortals often named it, was one of the realms of the Greek world, the domain of Morpheus, the God of Dreams. Also known as the Realm of Dreams, it was a bizarre world of eternal night where imagination and reality converged and where time itself ran distorted. Its shadow reached into the waking world more than once, most cruelly through the curse of the living sleep that claimed the father of the Barbarian prince Alrik, and most dangerously when its master cast Greece into slumber after Helios was torn from the sky. (God of War: Chains of Olympus; God of War (2010 comic))

A world of eternal night#

Morpheus, the God of Dreams, ruled over the Realm of Dreams, which mortals called the Land of Morpheus after its master. In the 2010 comic series it is a strange country of unending night, a place where imagination and reality flowed into one another and where time was distorted beyond mortal reckoning. (God of War (2010 comic))

It was a world of imagination, of fears and of desires, spoken of as a parallel world, a mirror of the waking and physical world. That made it a cousin of sorts to the other dark places of the Greek world, such as the Domain of Death ruled by Thanatos. (God of War (2010 comic))

The balance of light and dark#

The danger of the dream world nearly reached the waking one when Helios was torn from the sky. With the sun gone, Morpheus cast the gods and mortals of Greece into slumber and began wrapping the earth in black fog, sending his creatures out across the land. Athena warned Kratos that without Helios there was no one to keep Morpheus from seizing permanent power. The fog even dragged Kratos into dreams of the family he had lost. Only when he restored the sun god to the heavens did the darkness lift. (God of War: Chains of Olympus)

The living sleep#

The Land of Morpheus pressed most directly upon mortal life through the curse called "the living sleep". The King of the Barbarians, father of Prince Alrik, fell ill from a curse secretly inflicted upon him by Hades, God of the Underworld, as motivation for Alrik in the Wager of the Gods. A Healer who tended the King on his sickbed revealed to the prince that his father suffered from the living sleep, a curse that imprisoned the King within the Land of Morpheus until it finished draining away his life force. (God of War (2010 comic))

In a desperate attempt to save his father, Alrik ventured forth on a quest for the Tree of Life to obtain the healing drink of the gods, the Ambrosia of Asclepius, having learned of its powers from the elder Healer. He failed. The Spartan warrior Kratos, then sworn to Ares, captured the Ambrosia to save his own daughter from an illness of her own. Alrik returned home empty handed and found his father, who had succumbed to the curse, already being cremated. Crowned the new Barbarian King shortly after, Alrik swore vengeance upon Kratos. (God of War (2010 comic))

The fate of the dream world#

What became of the dream world after Morpheus's failed plot was never told. Gaia recounted that the Dream God retreated into the shadows upon the return of Helios, and he never appears again in the Greek games. Kratos mentions him only once more, years later, when he tells Tyr about the time Helios was lost. (God of War: Chains of Olympus; God of War Ragnarök: Valhalla)