On the Wings of a Dream

Question: The power to move through flames is in the Fire purview and the power to move through shadows is in Darkness, so how come the power to move through dreams isn't in Illusion, the puview that controls dreams?

Because, where Fire and Darkness are purviews concerned with the manipulation of an existing element, Illusion is a purview concerned with the creation of things that are entirely unreal.

Fire's a simple purview, at its base. You're a fire-god; you control fire. It does what you say, you can benefit from it in ways other gods can't, and you can become one with it at your discretion. It makes sense for a god of fire, who can become part of the leaping flames and command their every movement, to be able to travel through them. Similarly, a goddess of darkness controls the shadows of the universe, makes them obey her commands and can become part of their ever-shifting obscurity, so it also makes sense for her to be able to travel through them. Both are using the existing force of the world over which they are master to move themselves around (and, on a conceptual level, drawing on the fact that both elements are things that are fluid and interconnected by nature - one shadow is the same as all other shadows, one flame is indistinguishable from the fire that surrounds it, so therefore you can come out of any one regardless of where you went in).

But Illusion, by its very nature, isn't like that. There's no thing that Illusion controls or commands; it is literally the purview of nothing, the set of powers dedicated to pretending things are there that really aren't. Most of the time, the illusionist doesn't even see the illusions she projects onto others, because she's wielding a power to convince people that something is there when she knows very well that it isn't. A fire god can step into the flames, but an illusion god has literally nothing to do the same with. It would make no sense to travel through dreams or illusions as an illusionist, because illusions are not real, are not there, and are products of the inward-drawn mind alone. There's nothing to travel in, especially for the god who knows that better than everyone else.

However, the idea of visions, effects and even travel in dreams is one that occurs in folklore and is both powerful and cool, so we didn't want to leave it out of Scion - on the contrary, let's get that bad boy into play so people can do awesome stuff with it! Since the purpose of the power is to travel, and since the Psychopomp purview is both about traveling for purposes of guiding souls and carrying messages and is also the set of powers that specializes in journeying around with no regard for the normal means of doing so (teleportation!), Oneiric Visit makes perfect sense there. A Psychopomp's job is to zoom around the universe, through doors that are invisible, across vistas unseen, collecting not just notes but the very souls of the dead; why should they not also travel through dreams, using the minds of their future charges as their conveyance? For them, wacky methods of getting around are just business as usual.

Illusion is one of the slimmer purviews at the moment, so I definitely feel you on wanting it to do more and branch out wider, particularly in the less-represented field of dreams. This boon isn't the place to do it, but I will tell you that we're on the same page with you, and that more powers having to do with dreams are on some mysterious lists on our desks right now.