I was never afraid to go to sleep - worse to wake up to some catastrophic reality. I've had that.
The Gods are only conjectures. I do not believe that anything can travel between the world of awake and dream without changing. So no, always a new guise. I think that I might keep changing the drawings, I had the thought at least that they would be ever changing.
It could be that it is a weapon. I didn't think of it that way, but I have tried to think as little as possible when doing these. I think in dreams I would normally be the one wielding a weapon and that it would be something that would run out of control.
You say it exactly as it is. Dreams are real. That is one of the things I would say with these strange approximations.