Imprisoned in Liveworld, the realm of nightmares, Dreamqueen uses every opportunity to make her escape by playing on the fears and dreams of others.
Forged in Flame
Eight hundred years prior to modern times, the dream lord Nightmare raped and impregnated the succubus Zhilla Char. Aware demon mothers become their own offspring, he imprisons Char in a supposedly inescapable lesser plane, where she’s consumed by flames that turn her into her child, the Dreamqueen.
As Dreamqueen, she transforms the barren realm into the vibrant Liveworld. Despite the changes, Dreamqueen nonetheless comes to view her dream world as a prison, while Nightmare covertly watches, enjoying her suffering.
Reality Manipulation
In Liveworld, Dreamqueen can reshape reality to levitate, teleport, transmute matter, generate energy blasts, and create living beings. On Earth, she can only alter perceptions to induce full-sensory hallucinations. She can “dreamscan” others to create “dream-maps” of images from their subconscious minds. She is exceptionally durable and un-aging, and retains knowledge of magical lore from her mother’s memories.
Broken Dreams
In Dreamqueen’s efforts to escape her realm, she has a knack for creating her own enemies by using others’ fears and dreams against them. She also resorts to torture to control her targets, and sometimes tortures others simply for fun. She often manipulates the members of Canada’s Alpha Flight but the plague on her existence remains her father, Nightmare, who takes joy in her suffering and interferes in her attempts to leave her realm.
She also goes up against Wanda Maximoff, AKA Scarlet Witch, which results in a physiological transformation that changes the core of Dreamqueen’s needs. Once feeding off of the suffering of others, she must consume bliss instead.
Tenuous Allies
Dreamqueen does not often ally with anyone unless her own existence is under threat. When Eshu, AKA Master of the World, goes after Earth, it would leave her with nothing to consume, so she allies with Alpha Flight to save herself.
Life on Liveworld
Over 350 years ago, Chickaqua shaman Nanquato entered the astral plane, seeking the sky gods’ rain for his tribe’s drought-stricken homeland. When he inadvertently found Liveworld, Dreamqueen duped him into carrying a portion of her energy back to Earth, intending to forge a connection and escape Liveworld. To ensure her continued suffering, Nightmare sent a dream to a Chickaqua warrior telling him a weapon of evil spirits was coming and to touch it was to die. Dreamqueen tricked Nanquato into believing he had brought the rain, while simultaneously terrorizing the other Chickaqua with visions of attacking monsters. Their fear strengthened her link to Earth, allowing her to send a dream totem through. Seeing the totem emerge from Nanquato’s chest, the warrior realized the shaman was the source of the monsters and slew him. Though her link was broken, Dreamqueen knew the next person to touch the dream totem would reforge the link, but a taunting Nightmare revealed his interference; Dreamqueen watched as the warrior used cloth to move the totem without making direct contact, placing it by Nanquato’s corpse, which the Chickaqua buried in a rock cairn to trap the evil magic.
In recent years, the mutant dimensional portal manipulator Laura Dean, AKA Pathway, sent her feral twin, Goblyn, to Liveworld to spare her from death at their bigoted parents’ hands. Dreamqueen restrained her own sadistic impulses and covertly monitored Goblyn until she learned of Laura’s portals. When Laura came to Liveworld, Dreamqueen captured and tortured her to open a portal, but Laura believed the power was Goblyn’s. She inadvertently brought her allies, Canada’s Alpha and Beta Flight, to Liveworld instead, where they battled Dreamqueen’s forces. On Earth, former Alphan Eugene Judd, AKA Puck, was visiting China’s Danwei Lamasery, where the High Lama opened a portal to Liveworld to show him his friends. The combat spilled into Earth, but Puck tackled the Dreamqueen, keeping her in Liveworld while Laura, now aware the portal power was hers, closed the gateway. Before it shut, Dreamqueen planted psychic seeds in the Alphans’ minds, which in time became nightmares that built bonds to Liveworld; meanwhile, Dreamqueen amused herself by torturing a captive Puck.
Sometime after Alphan Michael Twoyoungmen, AKA Shaman, claimed the Talisman coronet from his daughter, Elizabeth Twoyoungmen, AKA Talisman, Elizabeth joined an archeological dig that unearthed Nanquato’s tomb. Sensing Elizabeth’s latent power, Dreamqueen sent her dreams via the nearby totem, urging her to enter the cairn. Elizabeth’s magical defenses saved her, and former Alphan Narya, AKA Snowbird’s spirit warned her of Dreamqueen’s plans. Expecting Elizabeth to reclaim her coronet, Dreamqueen used Alpha’s bonds to travel to Earth and planted the urge to steal Talisman’s coronet in Walter Langkowski, AKA Sasquatch’s mind, believing its power would allow Dreamqueen to manipulate Earth’s reality; however, Narya’s spirit again intervened, breaking Dreamqueen’s control, and Elizabeth became Talisman again, now immune to Dreamqueen’s illusions.
Dreamqueen engulfed Edmonton, Alberta, in waking dreams, feeding off the populace to expand her sphere of influence, but Alpha confronted her; Laura opened an interdimensional portal that Talisman punched her through. Before Dreamqueen returned to Liveworld, Alpha rescued Puck.
In a moment of duress, Laura later transported her parents and some of Beta Flight back to Liveworld, where they narrowly evaded Dreamqueen’s demons before escaping to Earth.
Sensing the the Master of the World’s plans for conquest would create a world devoid of free will with nothing for her to feed on, Dreamqueen sent Alpha prophetic dreams to warn them, and when they looked likely to fall to Eshu’s Omega Flight, she revived the unconscious Puck so he could call in Beta Flight, allowing Alpha Flight to defeat the Master.
Dreamqueen later ensnared Thor Odinson, AKA Thor, and Jane Foster, AKA the Mighty Thor as Valkyrie, in the confines of Liveworld, but they are able to escape the chains that hold them there with the Valkyrie’s word made of promethium.
When Dreamqueen took on the synthezoid Viv Vision, giving her nightmares of her mother’s death on repeat, Viv allied with the Scarlet Witch. Wanda and Dreamqueen get locked in a reality-bending battle for Viv’s freedom. Having suffered a great loss when her children perished, Wanda offered this nugget of immense pain to Dreamqueen so that she could live off it for some time, freeing Viv, but in reality it changed her appetite from suffering to bliss.
Three hundred and fifty years ago, the now-extinct tribe of Native Americans called the Chickaqua was suffering from a severe drought. The tribe's shaman, Nanquato, cast forth his astral self in an attempt to contact the tribe's sky gods to beg them to end the drought. Nanquato's spirit wandered through the dimensions until he came to the realm of the Dreamqueen, whom he mistakenly believed to be one of his sky gods. Reveling in her first deception, the Dreamqueen gave Nanquato a magic totem to bring back to his world that she assured him would solve his problems.
Back on Earth Nanquato cast a spell using the totem to bring rain, but instead it caused his fellow tribesmen to believe that they saw demonic beings attacking them. The Dreamqueen intended to use the fears of the tribesmen to strengthen the psychic link by which she induced their hallucinations enough so that she could escape to Earth. But before she could travel to Earth, one of Nanquato's tribesmen realized that Nanquato was responsible for their torment, and put an end to it by slaying him. Nanquato and the totem were buried so that neither could be used by demons to cause harm.
Nightmare taunted the Dreamqueen for her failure. Having once experienced causing the fears of human beings, the Dreamqueen longed to do so again, and was frustrated and enraged at her continuing confinement to her own dimension. Causing suffering to beings she had herself created somehow was not satisfying to her.
Finally, in recent times, her servants brought to her the creature called Goblyn, which had somehow entered her dimension from another reality. Intrigued, the Dreamqueen kept Goblyn under observation until she finally discovered that Goblyn was the twin of a young Earth mutant named Laura Dean, who had the power to open portals to other dimensions. Dean had sent Goblyn to the Dreamqueen's realm, thinking Goblyn would be safe there. Laura referred to this otherdimensional world, which she also visited, as "Liveworld," which she innocently believed to be a paradise.
Dean and Goblyn joined Alpha Flight, a team of Canadian superhuman adventurers. When Alpha Flight came to the Dreamqueen's dimension through a series of misadventures, the Dreamqueen tried in vain to compel them to help her escape it. Finally, Alpha Flight escaped back to Earth through an interdimensional portal. The Dreamqueen tried to follow them, but was prevented from escaping to Earth by the Alpha Flight member known as Puck, who seized her.
The Dreamqueen took Puck prisoner, restored his youth and tormented him, then caused the members of Alpha Flight to suffer nightmares based on their greatest fears, thereby creating psychic bonds between the Alpha Flight members and herself strengthened by the Alpha Flight members' fears. Realizing that archaeologist Elizabeth Twoyoungmen, a member of Alpha Flight known as Talisman, was near the cairn where Nanquato was buried, she induced in Twoyoungmen's dreaming mind the desire to touch the totem. The spirit of the goddess Snowbird, a former Alpha Flight member, warned Twoyoungmen of the Dreamqueen's intentions and Talisman instead used her own powers to destroy the totem.
But immediately afterward the Dreamqueen was able to use her psychic links with the other members of Alpha Flight to transport herself to Earth. Elizabeth Twoyoungmen was able to use her powers as Talisman to limit the degree to which the Dreamqueen could affect the minds of the other Alpha Flight members. The Dreamqueen, however, spread her influence throughout the Canadian city of Edmonton, causing its inhabitants to act out their darkest fantasies. If the Dreamqueen had not been stopped, her influence would have spread over the entire North American continent within a day.
Ultimately however, Elizabeth Twoyoungmen forced the Dreamqueen through an interdimensional portal opened by Laura Dean that apparently led to some kind of netherworld, thereby ending the Dreamqueen's control over her victims in Canada.
