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 beneath the eastern coast of the eastern continent, where Velkar's cedar forests sink into Nokhul Vale's river-fed foothills and the continent's greatest river empties into the Bangrave Sea. To surface eyes it is a green delta, but beneath the loam and roots spreads a vast labyrinth of fungal caverns, fossil-forests, and spore-lit markets: a subterranean nation whose heartbeat is measured not by moonrise but by growth, rot, and renewal.
Here, Fungril colonies, Faun dreamers, Ribbet engineers, Firbolg orchard-tenders, Umbrin shadow-wrights, and Deep Dwarves weave their lives into the Hollow's bioluminescent cycles. Walls drip with star-lichen that hums in resonance tones; bridges are spun from mushroom mycelium that hardens like stone; and laws are codified through the Law of Rot, decrees etched on bark or bone that decay naturally when their authority expires. Time in the Hollow is not kept by clocks but by the pace of decay and regrowth, a people living in covenant with entropy itself.
To their neighbors, Myrrun is both indispensable and unsettling. Nokhul Vale covets its dream-herbs and healing spores, while Aurex draws on its fungal pigments to tint beacon-glyphs. Velkar traders descend cedar-root chasms to barter for resonance mushrooms, wary of the spores' whispers. On the coast, river-ships load fungal bricks and spore-candles, carrying the Hollow's goods abroad. Myrrun endures, half-forgotten beneath the soil, a reminder that all things feed the cycle, flesh to fungus, memory to moss, law to loam.
Capital - Beneath-Root
| Beneath-Root | |
|---|---|
| State | Myrrun Hollow |
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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.
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.
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.
