Myrrun Hollow
| Myrrun Hollow | |
|---|---|
| Capital | Beneath-Root |
| Located in | Eastern Continent |
| Population | |
| Landmarks | Beneath-Root; Rot-Court; Spore-Markets; Amber-Root Rails; Myco-Crypt |
| Settlements | |
| Factions |
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| Coordinates | |
| Campaigns | |
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Capital - Beneath-Root
| Beneath-Root | |
|---|---|
| State | Myrrun Hollow |
| Population | |
| Landmarks | |
| Coordinates | |
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.
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.
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.
Spiritual Fabric
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."
- 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.
- 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
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:
- 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.
- Spore-Silk - Iridescent, scent-binding textile spun from fungal strands. Favored by Sunlash couture houses and 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 shamans and Vale oracles. They shatter into grieflight if touched by false speech, scattering spectral sparks.
Imports include surface iron from 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 to guide light into the deep gardens.
Trade Routes & Caravans
- 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.
Hazards & Hospitality
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.
- 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
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.
- 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.
Major Conflict
Too Many Secrets Are Being Kept Alive
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.
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.
Living Mysteries
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.
- 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
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.
2. The Route That Should Not Exist
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.
3. The Memory Market
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.
4. Voices in the Foundations
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.
5. The Drowned Bargain
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.
6. When the Fog Lifts
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.
Ancestry in the Hollow
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.
- 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.
