The Hollow

Stub-class article · First seen: s04 · Last seen: s10

The Hollow is an ambiguous Umbrafall term connected to deeper power, hidden influence or underworld pressure; it is not confirmed as an organisation with ranks and members (ruling 5). It is distinct from the surface Nightwatch and from the Black Hollow Market that The Broker runs [4]. Play has used the word twice: the Broker promised “your passage through the hollow is clean” and that “the Hollow will pay you what is owed” [1][3], and the Hollow Guardians challenged the party in The Warrens with “Servants of the hollow?” [10]. What stands behind those words has not been shown.

Overview

The Hollow is, in the DM’s ruling, “an ambiguous Umbrafall term connected to deeper power, hidden influence, or underworld pressure. It is not confirmed as a normal organisation with ranks and members.” (ruling 5). It is not the Nightwatch, the visible and bribable city guard, and it is not the Black Hollow Market, the underground bazaar above The Warrens that The Broker runs [4]. The world brief names the Black Hollow Market but not the Hollow itself.

The party has not met the Hollow as a face. It has heard the Broker speak in its name (s4), met the Hollow Guardians (s5), and killed Maelis Dirn, whose racket the Broker condemned (s7). What the Hollow is (a religion, a cult, an underworld power, an entity in the literal sense, or simply a way Umbrafall talks about its depths) has not been resolved on screen.

Known traits

  • The word is used as an allegiance. The Guardians challenged new arrivals to the Warrens with a binary question: “Speak. Who enters? Thieves? Or servants of the hollow?” [10]. Caelumn answered “we are servants of the hollow” [7], failed the Deception, and they attacked [11].
  • The Broker speaks in its name on commercial matters. His contract against Maelis offered “your passage through the hollow is clean. no tax, no questions” and closed with “the Hollow will pay you what is owed” [1][3]. Caelumn took the passage to be through the Hollow Market [12], so “the hollow” there may mean the market itself. The passage tax was waived for Hugo alone; the rest of the party “would have to pay the tax of 50 gold” [13].
  • It is spoken of as underground. Its Guardians stood in the Warrens beneath the Black Hollow Market, two figures “roughly the size of you” in a corridor of “dozens of hollow eye sockets that turn in unison to follow you” [14][15]. Their touch dealt necrotic damage and cut the target’s maximum hit points [16][17].
  • Posture towards the party. Mixed and contingent. The Broker is friendly and transactional and has paid every contract. The Guardians were hostile to anyone who did not declare as servants, and a bare declaration was not enough. Nothing called the Hollow has been the party’s enemy on screen, but its Guardians were lethal, and the party’s standing rests on the Broker’s contracts.
  • Not known. What the Hollow is: the Guardians’ framing suggests allegiance, perhaps a faith or an order, but no doctrine, deity, membership or hierarchy has been confirmed (ruling 5). Whether anyone runs it: Umbrafall’s real if informal powers are the Shade Mistress, the Broker, the Nightwatch, the Rat King and the Black Cartels (ruling 3), and none is tied to the Hollow on screen. What the Guardians were (summoned, undead, constructs, native to the depths) is unspecified. The deeper Gloaming Warrens of the world brief have not been entered.

Relationships

  • Umbrafall: the city the word belongs to; how the Hollow sits among its powers is unknown (ruling 5).
  • Black Hollow Market and The Warrens: the bazaar the Broker runs, and the dungeon beneath it where the Guardians stood. The cleared part is the session 5 to 7 dungeon.
  • Nightwatch: the distinct surface enforcers, the visible and bribable city guard.
  • Maelis Dirn: her racket was what the Broker condemned, “she’s bleeding the market with her own racket” [1]. Whether she ever answered to the Hollow is not stated.
  • The Rat: the Rat King’s spy network (ruling 4), to which the Broker sent the party for news of the Dawn Mercy Clinic [18].

Notable named figures

  • The Broker: the one person on screen who speaks in the Hollow’s name. The wiki has sometimes called him the Hollow’s voice; that is a wiki label, not a title he uses.
  • Hollow Guardians: the two glowing challengers of session 5, both destroyed.

History in the campaign

Session 4: The Still Current, the Black Mask, and Hugo’s Pact

Main article: Session 4

In Umbrafall, Hugo felt “an almost burning desire to head to the Black Hollow Market” [19], where the party met the Broker, whom he knew as the man who keeps the market undisturbed [4]. The Broker offered a contract against Maelis Dirn, whose racket was “bleeding the market”: “you deal with her, and your passage through the hollow is clean. no tax, no questions” [1]. Caelumn read that as the Hollow Market [12], and the DM set a 50 gold tax on everyone but Hugo [13]. The Broker closed: “the Hollow will pay you what is owed.” [3].

Session 5: Black Hollow Market Tunnels and the Hollow Guardians

Main article: Session 5

In the Warrens the party came to a corridor of watching eye sockets and two figures that glowed from within, who asked in unison, “Speak. Who enters? Thieves? Or servants of the hollow?” [5]. The DM described the figures as “hollow” [6], and Caelumn answered “we are servants of the hollow” [7]. His Deception failed and the first Guardian attacked “because he lied” [20][21]. The party destroyed both [22][23]. It is the only point in the cleared Warrens where allegiance to the Hollow was the gate.

Session 7: Maelis Falls, Vasquez Captured

Main article: Session 7

The last node fell and Maelis’s own Titan pounded her to mist with a natural 20 [24]. Hugo brought her ring to the Broker, who recognised it and paid in full: 50 gold, two biogloom toxins and a great axe [8]. Pressed for more, the Broker called himself a mere “vessel of information” [25]. Nobody above him claimed a say in her fate on screen, so whether he contracted her death for himself or for someone else is open.

Session 10: Ruin Joins, the Aurelian Conspiracy, the Plate Armour

Main article: Session 10

Hugo asked the Broker about the Dawn Mercy Clinic. He called it “just charity work” that “doesn’t move products, doesn’t move secrets, doesn’t move leverage”, said it was “not my end of town”, and pointed the party to the Rat [9]. Read narrowly, this shows only that the clinic is outside the Broker’s business. It ties the Hollow neither to the Aurelian conspiracy nor away from it.

Status

As of session 23. Unresolved. The word has not been used since session 5 [7], the party has not asked what the Hollow is, and the party left Umbrafall in session 11 [26]. The cleared parts of the Warrens are empty, with Maelis, the Guardians and the Titan gone, but the deeper workings have not been entered.

See also

References

  1. ^ Session 4, line 1506: The Broker contracts the party against Maelis: 'your passage through the hollow is clean. no tax, no questions.'.
  2. ^ Session 4, line 1516-1520: The passage tax: the rest of the party 'would have to pay the tax of 50 gold'.
  3. ^ Session 4, line 1576: The Broker closes with: 'the Hollow will pay you what is owed.'.
  4. ^ Session 4, line 1490: Hugo's character knowledge: the Broker 'runs the Black Hollow Market'.
  5. ^ Session 5, line 891-894: Hollow Guardians challenge: 'Speak. Who enters? Thieves? Or servants of the hollow?'.
  6. ^ Session 5, line 910: DM clarifies the Guardians are 'hollow' (the figures themselves, not just the question).
  7. ^ Session 5, line 915: Caelumn declares 'we are servants of the hollow' before failing the Deception.
  8. ^ Session 7, line 719-725: The Broker recognises Maelis's ring and pays the contract in full.
  9. ^ Session 10, line 463-471: The Broker calls the Dawn Mercy Clinic 'just charity work' outside his business and sends the party to the Rat.
  10. ^ Session 5, line 892-894: Inline citation.
  11. ^ Session 5, line 917-936: Inline citation.
  12. ^ Session 4, line 1514: Inline citation.
  13. ^ Session 4, line 1518: Inline citation.
  14. ^ Session 5, line 891: Inline citation.
  15. ^ Session 5, line 898: Inline citation.
  16. ^ Session 5, line 938: Inline citation.
  17. ^ Session 5, line 972: Inline citation.
  18. ^ Session 10, line 469-471: Inline citation.
  19. ^ Session 4, line 1446: Inline citation.
  20. ^ Session 5, line 917: Inline citation.
  21. ^ Session 5, line 936: Inline citation.
  22. ^ Session 5, line 1270: Inline citation.
  23. ^ Session 5, line 1277: Inline citation.
  24. ^ Session 7, line 610-614: Inline citation.
  25. ^ Session 7, line 836: Inline citation.
  26. ^ Session 11, line 703: Inline citation.
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