|
|
| (One intermediate revision by the same user not shown) |
| Line 1: |
Line 1: |
| {{State | | {{State |
| |name=Myrrun Hollow | | | name = Myrrun Hollow |
| |capital=Beneath-Root | | | capital = Beneath-Root |
| |located in = Eastern Continent | | | located in = Eastern Continent |
| |population= | | | population = 5600000 |
| |landmarks=[[Beneath-Root]]; [[Rot-Court]]; [[Spore-Markets]]; [[Amber-Root Rails]]; [[Myco-Crypt]] | | | geography = Myrrun Hollow is a vast subterranean realm spread beneath the eastern coast of the eastern continent, where cedar forests sink into river-fed foothills and the continent’s greatest river empties into the Bangrave Sea. Beneath loam and root lies an immense network of fungal caverns, fossil forests, spore-lit waterways, and living stone chambers grown rather than carved. The Hollow expands vertically as much as laterally, with entire districts layered in cycles of growth and decay. Bioluminescent mycelium replaces sky and horizon, pulsing in rhythms tied to emotion, population density, and resonance tides. |
| |other_settlements= | | | people_and_culture = Myrrun Hollow is home to a deeply interdependent society shaped by biological resonance. Fungril colonies, Faun dreamers, Ribbet engineers, Firbolg orchard-tenders, Umbrin shadow-wrights, Deep Dwarves, and Humans coexist within shared ecological systems. Culture emphasizes cycles, mutual reliance, and communal memory rather than individual legacy. Identity is understood as something grown together, not owned alone. |
| |factions=[[Rotwardens]], [[Ferrymasters of the Veiled Flow]], [[Sporebound Circles]], [[Gutterkin Syndics]], [[The Deep Resonants]]
| | | hazards = Spore Saturation; Shared Nightmare Blooms; Mycelial Floods; Memory Overgrowth; Griefglass Sporulation; Echo Myths; and Biogenic Collapse. |
| |coords=44.2903,63.0643 | | | landmarks = [[Beneath-Root]]; [[The Great Mycelial Loom]]; [[Fossil-Canopy Vaults]]; [[The Underwake Delta]] |
| | | other_settlements = Rootmarket; Glowreach; Pale Orchard; Driftcap Enclave |
| | | coords=44.2903,63.0643 |
| }} | | }} |
|
| |
|
| Myrrun Hollow lies along the eastern coast of the eastern continent, where the cedar-shadowed uplands of Velkar Spires descend into the river-fed margins of Nokhul Vale, and the continent’s greatest river finally loosens itself into the Bangrave Sea. To surface eyes, Myrrun appears as a fogbound green delta of reeds, tidal marshes, and sinking trails. But beneath the loam and root-matted ground spreads a far older truth: a vast, layered labyrinth of fungal caverns, fossil-forests, drowned halls, and spore-lit markets, forming a subterranean nation whose borders are defined by rot, renewal, and what is allowed to be forgotten. | | = Myrrun Hollow = |
|
| |
|
| Geography is Myrrun’s first defense. Rivers shift course, marsh paths vanish overnight, and even sound behaves strangely in the fog. Reliable maps become lies within days. What endures instead are ferrymasters’ memories, whispered directions, and agreements that exist only as long as all parties continue to believe in them. This instability is not accidental. It is cultivated. In Myrrun, truth is a resource, and concealment is survival.
| | == Overview == |
| | Myrrun Hollow is not merely beneath the world. It is within it. This subterranean state exists as a living undercycle, where life, death, decay, and rebirth form the foundation of civilization itself. Stone walls breathe, bridges grow from woven mycelium, and markets pulse with bioluminescent light that responds to mood as much as movement. The Hollow measures time not in hours of longbright and deepglow, but in phases of growth, rot, and renewal that mirror the world’s deeper rhythms. |
|
| |
|
| Beneath the surface, life unfolds in bioluminescent cycles. Fungril colonies shape entire districts from living mycelium. Faun dreamers cultivate spore-gardens whose vapors carry memory and omen. Ribbet engineers redirect water through fungal turbines, while Firbolg orchard-tenders coax edible growth from decay itself. Umbrin shadow-wrights craft spaces meant to obscure rather than illuminate, and Deep Dwarves carve resonance chambers where sound, not stone, determines architecture. Star-lichen hums softly along cavern walls, bridges are grown from hardened mushroom fiber, and markets glow with slow, breathing light.
| | Where other states struggle to preserve or suppress memory, Myrrun Hollow shares it. Resonance here does not linger as history. It spreads biologically, transmitted through spores, food, water, and touch. This makes the Hollow one of the most emotionally connected societies in Velthuryn, and one of the most volatile when balance is lost. |
|
| |
|
| Law in Myrrun is governed by the Law of Rot. Decrees are etched into bark, bone, or spore-clay and are meant to decay naturally once their authority expires. No ruling is permanent, and no mistake is allowed to linger forever. Time is not measured by clocks or calendars, but by the pace of decomposition and regrowth. A contract that refuses to rot is considered dangerous. A memory that cannot fade is a threat.
| | == Geography == |
| | Myrrun Hollow stretches beneath the eastern coast and delta regions, forming a honeycomb of caverns and living chambers connected by spore-lit rivers and root-tunnels. Fossilized forests form vaulted ceilings where ancient trees were entombed mid-growth during pre-Shattering ages. Entire neighborhoods migrate slowly as fungal masses expand, collapse, and regrow elsewhere. |
|
| |
|
| Spirit activity is common and largely accepted. The dead, the lost, and the almost-forgotten linger in the Hollow, bound not by malice but by unresolved bargains, drowned promises, or truths that were hidden too well. Unlike Gravenreach, which preserves memory through stone, or Nokhul Vale, which binds it into living roots, Myrrun allows memory to blur, soften, and transform. This keeps the Hollow flexible and adaptable, but it also breeds instability when too many secrets overlap.
| | The Underwake Delta marks where surface rivers descend into the Hollow, becoming nutrient-rich arteries that sustain enormous mycelial networks. During periods of high resonance, these waterways glow intensely, flooding nearby districts with shared sensation and memory. |
|
| |
|
| To its neighbors, Myrrun Hollow is both indispensable and deeply unsettling. Nokhul Vale relies on its dream-herbs, healing spores, and fermentation lore, even as covenants begin to unravel once they pass into the marsh. The Bastion of Aurex draws on Myrrun pigments and fungal tinctures to tint beacon-glyphs, while publicly condemning the Hollow’s refusal to fix borders or doctrine. Velkar traders descend cedar-root chasms to barter for resonance mushrooms, wary of the whispers that cling to spores long after leaving the caverns. Along the coast, river-ships load fungal bricks, spore-candles, and rot-clay sealants, carrying Myrrun’s goods outward while its truths remain behind.
| | == People & Culture == |
| | Life in Myrrun Hollow is inherently communal. |
|
| |
|
| Myrrun Hollow endures by never presenting a single face. It survives through half-remembered paths, selective truths, and the quiet understanding that some things are safer when allowed to decay. Yet that strength is also its danger. Too many secrets now coexist in the dark, contradicting one another, demanding upkeep, and refusing to stay buried. To reveal them all would shatter Myrrun’s protection. To keep them hidden ensures growing paranoia, spiritual unrest, and violence born from misunderstanding.
| | '''Fungril''' — Primary architects of Hollow society; spore-speakers and memory-bearers. |
|
| |
|
| Myrrun Hollow is not a place to conquer or reform. It is a place to navigate carefully, where what you uncover may be far more dangerous than what remains lost to moss, mist, and rot.
| | '''Fauns''' — Dream-walkers and emotional interpreters who navigate shared visions. |
|
| |
|
| == Capital - Beneath-Root ==
| | '''Ribbets''' — Engineers of water-flow, lift-vines, and bio-mechanical systems. |
| {{Settlement
| | |
| |name=Beneath-Root
| | '''Firbolgs''' — Orchard-tenders cultivating fungal groves and bioluminescent crops. |
| |state=Myrrun Hollow
| |
| |type=Subterranean capital
| |
| |population=
| |
| |coords=
| |
| }}
| |
|
| |
|
| The capital, '''[[Beneath-Root]]''', sprawls under the colossal roots of a cedar forest that crowns the Hollow's ceiling. Pillars of petrified trunks plunge through the caverns, hollowed into civic halls and fungal amphitheaters. Streets are strands of hardened mycelium, soft to the tread but strong as iron. The whole city glows with spores drifting like lantern-dust, their colors shifting to mark seasons of growth, harvest, or decay.
| | '''Umbrin''' — Shadow-wrights shaping light, darkness, and resonance contrast. |
|
| |
|
| At its heart lies the [[Rot-Court]], a cavern of black loam and amber fungus where decrees are pressed into bark tablets and left to decompose. Laws that rot away are considered ended; those that sprout into lichen are believed blessed by the Hollow itself. Surrounding the court are the [[Spore-Markets]], where merchants trade in memory-moss, dream-herbs, and fossil-wood relics dug from ancient strata. Whispers say every trade here is overheard by the fungi, and that bargains broken awaken mold-spirits who reclaim debt in flesh.
| | '''Deep Dwarves''' — Stone-keepers maintaining structural continuity beneath growth. |
|
| |
|
| To live in Beneath-Root is to accept that permanence is an illusion: streets shift as roots thicken, laws vanish as bark crumbles, and even the brightest lantern-spore will one day dim. Yet the Hollow's people do not mourn this; they thrive in it, their city a living sermon that in Myrrun, decay is not an end, but the covenant of beginning again.
| | '''Humans''' — Traders, mediators, and surface liaisons adapting to Hollow life. |
|
| |
|
| == Spiritual Fabric ==
| | Status is earned through contribution to balance, not lineage. Individual ambition is tolerated only insofar as it benefits the collective cycle. |
| Myrrun's spiritual life entwines rot, memory, and dream:
| |
|
| |
|
| * '''[[Bone-Root Way (Hollow Branch)]]''' - A branch of the Bone-Root tradition teaching that life and ancestor spirit mingle in the rot beneath roots. Funereal saplings are planted in nutrient loam; when a lineage is complete, they bloom red and are woven into the family's "rot-tapestry."
| | == Governance & Social Order == |
| * '''[[Spirits Between]]''' - A folk belief that every mushroom cap houses a doorway to the unseen. Children leave carved bone tokens atop caps; spirits swap them for guidance dreams by dawn.
| | Myrrun Hollow has no singular ruler. Governance emerges through consensus nodes, where representatives from colonies and districts gather in spore-rituals to feel communal will rather than vote on it. |
| * '''[[The Spoor Cantors]]''' - A Fungril sect that teaches all voices decay into chorus. At each deepglow, Cantors sing into spore-chimes; echoes are inhaled as incense, letting memories of the day spread across the Hollow.
| |
| * '''[[Amber Sleepers]]''' - Ribbet and Faun mystics who believe stillness preserves truth. Practitioners submerge in root-amber pools for hours, experiencing visions that replay unaltered histories of the Vale and Hollow.
| |
|
| |
|
| == Trade & Materials == | | === Capital — Beneath-Root === |
| The Hollow's economy pulses with spores, resin, and fungal light, goods coveted and feared across Velthuryn. Each export carries the mark of Myrrun's covenant with rot:
| | Beneath-Root lies at the deepest stable convergence of the Hollow’s major mycelial rivers. It is less a city than a living nexus, grown around titanic root-masses and reinforced fungal pillars that channel nutrient flow, memory exchange, and governance impulses throughout the state. Decisions reached in Beneath-Root propagate outward biologically, altering growth patterns, emotional climate, and even architectural development across Myrrun Hollow. |
|
| |
|
| * '''[[Glowshroom Oil]]''' - Cold-burning, bioluminescent fuel drawn from cavern shrooms. A staple in [[Aeterron]] logic-lamps and [[Lexharrow]] scriptoriums, though spores accumulate in cogs and gears and require weekly airing or mechanisms seize.
| | Beneath-Root is also the Hollow’s primary point of contact with the surface world, receiving controlled river traffic from Nokhul Vale through the Underwake Delta. |
| * '''[[Spore-Silk]]''' - Iridescent, scent-binding textile spun from fungal strands. Favored by [[Sunlash Coast|Sunlash]] couture houses and [[Velkar Spires|Velkar]] sky-sails. Fibers unravel after twelve hours in direct sunlight, so must be layered or kept in shadow.
| |
| * '''[[Memory-Mold]]''' - Edible hallucinogen that imprints and replays dreams. Used by [[Thirasil]] oracle-circles. It devours written text placed nearby, leaving pages blank as if eaten.
| |
| * '''[[Root-Amber Resin]]''' - Time-stilled sap used for sealing vaults and relics by [[Gravenreach]] vault-keepers and [[Aurex]] sun-priests. It cracks when exposed to dragonfire heat; fragments release the scents of old forests.
| |
| * '''[[Echo-Koi Scales]]''' - Bioluminescent fish scales that store whispered prayers, prized by [[Nokhul Vale|Nokhul]] shamans and Vale oracles. They shatter into grieflight if touched by false speech, scattering spectral sparks.
| |
|
| |
|
| Imports include surface iron from [[Tarkhos Dominion|Tarkhos]] for tools, glacier ice from [[Aurex]] to cool fungal forges, resonance dampers from [[Aeterron]] to stabilize spore-chambers, and polished sun-mirrors from [[Velkar Spires|Velkar]] to guide light into the deep gardens.
| | == Hazards & Ecological Threats == |
| | Myrrun Hollow’s greatest dangers arise when balance fails: |
|
| |
|
| == Trade Routes & Caravans ==
| | Spore Saturation — Overexposure causing loss of individual identity. |
| * '''[[Rootflow Ferries]]''' - Bioluminescent barge-caravans grown from driftwood and mycelium, following underground rivers from [[Beneath-Root]] to [[Nokhul Vale]]'s surface markets. Crewed by Ribbet pilots whose croak-choirs adjust pitch to stabilize currents.
| |
| * '''[[Spore-Silk Caravans]]''' - Convoys of Fungril weavers leading silk-beasts - massive moth-larvae fitted with platform harnesses. They travel shifting mycelium roads guided by scent markers and the memory of decay.
| |
| * '''[[Amber-Root Rails]]''' - Fossilized trunks carved into rails where rootsteel carts glide on resin tracks lit by star-lichen veins. The network links [[Beneath-Root]] with [[Gravenreach]]'s Stonevault Causey and [[Aeterron]] barge routes.
| |
| * '''[[Decay Processions]]''' - Pilgrimage-caravans of Faun and Fungril pilgrims singing rot-hymns as they carry tribute bundles. At each stop, a portion of cargo is left for the Hollow itself; anything carried onward is considered blessed by decay.
| |
|
| |
|
| Each route carries its own hazards: undertow-vines that drag boats into side caverns, Hollow-rot patches that collapse beneath heavy loads, griefglass seepage that warps rails, and spectral rot-wardens that rise if offerings are withheld.
| | Shared Nightmare Blooms — Collective fears manifesting as hostile growths. |
|
| |
|
| == Hazards & Hospitality ==
| | Mycelial Floods — Rapid expansion that collapses districts. |
| Visitors to Myrrun Hollow are welcomed with rot-tokens and spore-light, but the environment tests those who ignore its laws:
| |
|
| |
|
| * '''[[Spore Storms]]''' - Periodic upwellings of psychoactive dust. Outsiders must steel their Instinct or relive ancestral memories not their own, often gaining Stress.
| | Memory Overgrowth — Old emotions resurfacing uncontrollably. |
| * '''[[Lumen-Slugs]]''' - Bioluminescent predators that siphon light; their slime trails corrode metal and etch words from vellum.
| |
| * '''[[Guest-Rot]]''' - Visitors are issued a rot-token, a seeded fruit meant to decay during their stay. Removing it early brands them with bark-rash runes and social disadvantage.
| |
| * '''[[Hollow Quakes]]''' - Tectonic murmurs that collapse root-bridges. Local Firbolgs sing anchoring dirges to calm shifting stone.
| |
| * '''[[Whisper-Fungus]]''' - Ambient spores that mimic conversations. Careless outsiders may incriminate themselves when echoed words are repeated in public plazas.
| |
|
| |
|
| == Seasonal Observances & Bloom-Festivals ==
| | Griefglass Sporulation — Crystalline spores inducing shared trauma. |
| Myrrun measures seasons by bloom and decay instead of stars:
| |
|
| |
|
| * '''[[The Spoor-Unfurling]]''' (Rot-Break, early spring) - Glowshroom caps are ritually cracked, releasing memory-laden spores as families sit in silence beneath drifting recollections.
| | Echo Myths — Legends made real through repeated communal belief. |
| * '''[[The Moth-Waking]]''' (Deepglow Apex, midsummer) - Sun-mirrors coax titanic dream-moths from cocoons; children ride them around [[Beneath-Root]], scattering pollen to ensure fertility.
| |
| * '''[[The Rot-Keening]]''' (Decay Zenith, autumn) - Pilgrims bear corpse-flowers into plazas; their scents summon ancestral echoes as citizens confess broken promises.
| |
| * '''[[The Amber Stillness]]''' (Frost-Dream, mid-winter) - Druids seal volunteers in root-amber baths until Tassaryn's longest rise ends, while Fungril Cantors sing their visions aloud as ancestral prophecy.
| |
|
| |
|
| These rites grant blessings and risks to participants, especially outsiders who may suffer Spore Overload, Moth-Dread, Rot-Keening Echoes, or Amber Misalignment if unprepared.
| | Biogenic Collapse — Failure of life-support cycles leading to mass die-off. |
|
| |
|
| == Major Conflict == | | == Economy & Exchange == |
| '''Too Many Secrets Are Being Kept Alive'''
| | The Hollow trades in bioluminescent crops, medicinal spores, bio-engineered materials, and emotional stabilizers. Griefglass is used sparingly, ground into controlled spores that facilitate healing or carefully moderated memory sharing. External trade is routed primarily through Beneath-Root, where ecological impact can be assessed before goods are distributed further into the Hollow. |
|
| |
|
| Myrrun Hollow survives by allowing truth, law, and memory to decay naturally. But in recent generations, secrets have been preserved too carefully, traded too often, and hidden too deeply. Old lies now contradict newer ones, forgotten bargains demand upkeep, and spirits linger because no one will let their memory rot.
| | == Relations & Reputation == |
|
| |
|
| If Myrrun reveals everything, it loses the obscurity that protects it from conquest and control. If it continues to hide the truth, internal paranoia, spiritual unrest, and violence will escalate until the Hollow collapses under the weight of what it refuses to forget. No faction can resolve this without undermining the very principle that keeps Myrrun alive.
| | Thirasil — Philosophical kinship through living memory, though Myrrun favors biological sharing over ancestral preservation. |
|
| |
|
| == Living Mysteries ==
| | Nokhul Vale — Essential trade and cultural conduit via river systems. |
| The Hollow hides enigmas where fungus and memory blur:
| |
|
| |
|
| * '''[[The Ever-Blooming Corpse]]''' - A petrified treant in a cavern of fossil oaks that continuously sprouts fresh corpse-flowers that never wilt.
| | Fleaspark — Source of innovation and frequent ecological disruption. |
| * '''[[The Whisper-Mold Choir]]''' - A patch of memory-mold in [[Beneath-Root]] that hums in multiple voices, replaying the last words of Hollow founders and perhaps future deaths.
| |
| * '''[[The Hollow Sunspore]]''' - A floating fungal orb that emits warmth like Solivar, but on erratic cycles that alter crop growth and false "days."
| |
| * '''[[The Root-Tongue Idol]]''' - A statue carved from calcified roots that speaks in a lost dialect when moonlight refracts through an amber pool above it.
| |
| * '''[[The Myco-Crypt]]''' - A cavern of fungal pillars whose spores mimic the faces of the dead as fragile, glowing shells.
| |
|
| |
|
| == Potential Campaign Hooks ==
| | The Bastion of Aurex — Deep ideological opposition over suppression versus integration of resonance. |
| 1. The Law That Would Not Decay
| |
|
| |
|
| A Rotwarden decree meant to expire decades ago remains intact and enforceable, causing arrests and seizures no one remembers authorizing. The party must uncover why the law refuses to rot and what truth it is anchored to.
| | To outsiders, Myrrun Hollow is wondrous, intimate, and unsettling in equal measure. |
|
| |
|
| 2. The Route That Should Not Exist
| | == Ancestry Distribution == |
| | === Predominant === |
|
| |
|
| A ferrymaster offers a passage that bypasses every known checkpoint and spirit-ward. Those who take it arrive safely, but return altered. The party must decide whether to expose the route or use it.
| | Fungril, Fauns, Ribbets |
|
| |
|
| 3. The Memory Market
| | === Significant Minorities === |
|
| |
|
| A black-market spore allows buyers to relive memories that were never theirs. When a foreign power acquires it, the Sporebound Circles ask the party to retrieve or destroy the source before entire histories can be stolen.
| | Firbolgs, Deep Dwarves, Humans |
|
| |
|
| 4. Voices in the Foundations
| | === Transient Populations === |
|
| |
|
| Deep Resonants detect a new harmonic beneath the city that matches no known cavern or structure. Investigation reveals a sealed district grown over rather than dismantled, still inhabited by something that remembers being forgotten.
| | Surface traders, pilgrims, resonance scholars, and emissaries |
|
| |
|
| 5. The Drowned Bargain
| | == Fauna & Living Structures == |
|
| |
|
| A centuries-old treaty resurfaces when a river course shifts, revealing bone-markers tied to an oath no one remembers making. Enforcing it would destabilize current alliances. Ignoring it may anger whatever still holds the bargain true.
| | Glowcap Leviathans — Massive fungal organisms forming transit corridors. |
|
| |
|
| 6. When the Fog Lifts
| | Spore Serpents — Semi-sentient mycelial guardians. |
|
| |
|
| For one dawn, the fog does not rise. Outsiders see Myrrun clearly for the first time in living memory. Panic spreads as factions scramble to decide what must be hidden before the mist returns and what must finally be confronted.
| | Lumen Beetles — Bioluminescent pollinators used as signal swarms. |
|
| |
|
| == Ancestry in the Hollow ==
| | Rootbound Colossi — Living structural supports mistaken for statues. |
| Myrrun's people are as layered as its strata:
| |
|
| |
|
| * Deep Dwarves and Stone-Kin dominate civic rule, inscribing their rulings directly into fossil trunks where the earth remembers.
| | Echo Spores — Floating motes that replay shared memories when disturbed. |
| * Ribbet amphibian guilds control water-courses and vote by croak-choir, making no canal safe to cross without their blessing.
| |
| * Fungril artisans and archivists tend spore-archives and the living loam that sustains commerce.
| |
| * Umbrin shadow-kin move on the margins, rumored to walk into the Aethergrave's breath and return unchanged.
| |
| * Fauns and Firbolgs serve as caretakers of moss-terraces and memory-gardens, tuning life to the Hollow's shifting rhythm.
| |
|
| |
|
| In Myrrun Hollow, permanence is a polite fiction. Those who learn to move with the rot-cycle may find sanctuary and strange power; those who cling to stone and unchanging law soon discover that here, everything feeds the Hollow in the end. | | == Memory, Cycle, and Communion == |
| | In Myrrun Hollow, memory is not preserved. It is composted. Grief, joy, fear, and hope break down and feed new growth. This makes the Hollow resilient, adaptive, and deeply empathetic, but also vulnerable to runaway emotion. To live here is to accept that you are never entirely alone, and never entirely your own. |
Myrrun Hollow
Overview
Myrrun Hollow is not merely beneath the world. It is within it. This subterranean state exists as a living undercycle, where life, death, decay, and rebirth form the foundation of civilization itself. Stone walls breathe, bridges grow from woven mycelium, and markets pulse with bioluminescent light that responds to mood as much as movement. The Hollow measures time not in hours of longbright and deepglow, but in phases of growth, rot, and renewal that mirror the world’s deeper rhythms.
Where other states struggle to preserve or suppress memory, Myrrun Hollow shares it. Resonance here does not linger as history. It spreads biologically, transmitted through spores, food, water, and touch. This makes the Hollow one of the most emotionally connected societies in Velthuryn, and one of the most volatile when balance is lost.
Geography
Myrrun Hollow stretches beneath the eastern coast and delta regions, forming a honeycomb of caverns and living chambers connected by spore-lit rivers and root-tunnels. Fossilized forests form vaulted ceilings where ancient trees were entombed mid-growth during pre-Shattering ages. Entire neighborhoods migrate slowly as fungal masses expand, collapse, and regrow elsewhere.
The Underwake Delta marks where surface rivers descend into the Hollow, becoming nutrient-rich arteries that sustain enormous mycelial networks. During periods of high resonance, these waterways glow intensely, flooding nearby districts with shared sensation and memory.
People & Culture
Life in Myrrun Hollow is inherently communal.
Fungril — Primary architects of Hollow society; spore-speakers and memory-bearers.
Fauns — Dream-walkers and emotional interpreters who navigate shared visions.
Ribbets — Engineers of water-flow, lift-vines, and bio-mechanical systems.
Firbolgs — Orchard-tenders cultivating fungal groves and bioluminescent crops.
Umbrin — Shadow-wrights shaping light, darkness, and resonance contrast.
Deep Dwarves — Stone-keepers maintaining structural continuity beneath growth.
Humans — Traders, mediators, and surface liaisons adapting to Hollow life.
Status is earned through contribution to balance, not lineage. Individual ambition is tolerated only insofar as it benefits the collective cycle.
Governance & Social Order
Myrrun Hollow has no singular ruler. Governance emerges through consensus nodes, where representatives from colonies and districts gather in spore-rituals to feel communal will rather than vote on it.
Capital — Beneath-Root
Beneath-Root lies at the deepest stable convergence of the Hollow’s major mycelial rivers. It is less a city than a living nexus, grown around titanic root-masses and reinforced fungal pillars that channel nutrient flow, memory exchange, and governance impulses throughout the state. Decisions reached in Beneath-Root propagate outward biologically, altering growth patterns, emotional climate, and even architectural development across Myrrun Hollow.
Beneath-Root is also the Hollow’s primary point of contact with the surface world, receiving controlled river traffic from Nokhul Vale through the Underwake Delta.
Hazards & Ecological Threats
Myrrun Hollow’s greatest dangers arise when balance fails:
Spore Saturation — Overexposure causing loss of individual identity.
Shared Nightmare Blooms — Collective fears manifesting as hostile growths.
Mycelial Floods — Rapid expansion that collapses districts.
Memory Overgrowth — Old emotions resurfacing uncontrollably.
Griefglass Sporulation — Crystalline spores inducing shared trauma.
Echo Myths — Legends made real through repeated communal belief.
Biogenic Collapse — Failure of life-support cycles leading to mass die-off.
Economy & Exchange
The Hollow trades in bioluminescent crops, medicinal spores, bio-engineered materials, and emotional stabilizers. Griefglass is used sparingly, ground into controlled spores that facilitate healing or carefully moderated memory sharing. External trade is routed primarily through Beneath-Root, where ecological impact can be assessed before goods are distributed further into the Hollow.
Relations & Reputation
Thirasil — Philosophical kinship through living memory, though Myrrun favors biological sharing over ancestral preservation.
Nokhul Vale — Essential trade and cultural conduit via river systems.
Fleaspark — Source of innovation and frequent ecological disruption.
The Bastion of Aurex — Deep ideological opposition over suppression versus integration of resonance.
To outsiders, Myrrun Hollow is wondrous, intimate, and unsettling in equal measure.
Ancestry Distribution
Predominant
Fungril, Fauns, Ribbets
Significant Minorities
Firbolgs, Deep Dwarves, Humans
Transient Populations
Surface traders, pilgrims, resonance scholars, and emissaries
Fauna & Living Structures
Glowcap Leviathans — Massive fungal organisms forming transit corridors.
Spore Serpents — Semi-sentient mycelial guardians.
Lumen Beetles — Bioluminescent pollinators used as signal swarms.
Rootbound Colossi — Living structural supports mistaken for statues.
Echo Spores — Floating motes that replay shared memories when disturbed.
Memory, Cycle, and Communion
In Myrrun Hollow, memory is not preserved. It is composted. Grief, joy, fear, and hope break down and feed new growth. This makes the Hollow resilient, adaptive, and deeply empathetic, but also vulnerable to runaway emotion. To live here is to accept that you are never entirely alone, and never entirely your own.
