The Crown
We were great, once.
Before smokestacks and presses, before looms and workhouses, before cutting-edge science and an empire that spanned the globe, the Isles were...
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Chant (Hollows Producer)
10 days ago
Hollows Factions: How Factions Work
The Isles are a state in mid-collapse – it might even have collapsed already, depending on how high you set your standards. In recent memory the Isles had an empire and industry...
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Chant (Hollows Producer)
13 days ago
Post-Campaign Update 1: Thank You, and It Begins
Hello!
The Hollows crowdfunder ended four days ago. We did it. You did it.
Now we’re on to the best part: making the book. Books. And components, and extras, and all the del...
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Chant (Hollows Producer)
17 days ago
Finale Stream Starting Now!
Come and join Grant, CJ and Chant as we watch number get big, congratulate ourselves and you, and air the final episode of our AP!
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Chant (Hollows Producer)
22 days ago
Hollows Weapons: the Pistol
“You’re strong. Smart. Capable. The world’s set against you but with the Pistol resting on your hip or howling in your hand you can weather any storm. You’re a force to be recko...
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Chant (Hollows Producer)
22 days ago
Hollows Weapons: the Sword
“There are fighters and there are warriors and you, friend, are a warrior. You are a professional. You have earned the right to lead an army, to seize the reins of civilisation,...
The Factions combined logos to the left, the Crown faction logo to the right.
The Crown
We were great, once.
Before smokestacks and presses, before looms and workhouses, before cutting-edge science and an empire that spanned the globe, the Isles were a place of quiet majesty. Of noble knights, gleaming armour, slain dragons and momentous destinies. The Crown clings to this ingrained mythology tighter each decade, and as the country falls into disrepair and chaos, it redoubles its efforts to be perceived as an ancient and worthy tradition worth keeping.
Even this imitation of power can’t last. The Crown knows that the next war The Isles fights will be a civil one, and they hope that there’ll be a country left to rule over when the dust settles.
Not everyone in the crown is an aristocrat, but they all shelter under the banners of noble houses. Peers of the realm military officers hold the power in the Crown, but the labour of servants and soldiers props them up.
The Crown throne room by Sam Lamont - picturing torn curtains and two empty thrones amidst skeletons of great antlered beasts.
Crown Origins
Hollows includes four Origins for Crown members.
Bluebloods are the remnants of the ruling class, their ancient and crumbling bloodlines’ last hope. Their position is precarious: blighted land and generations-old debts threaten to strip them of their remaining power – or maybe they’ll be their own downfall; the selfish, wanton ruiners of their own family.
Chamberlains are bluebloods’ staff and servants. So were their parents and grandparents, for as long as there’s been a Crown to serve. The Crown has little power left to share, so their servants now make life worth living by blending in, causing little fuss, and quietly undermining or rebelling against their self-proclaimed betters.
Knight-Sergeants are military officers. They’ve benefited from what passes in The Isles for social mobility, dragging themselves up through the ranks of the army until they command respect. Knights fit in nowhere, uncomfortable amongst nobles and distrusted by the rank and file.
Regimental Peons are the thousands upon thousands of common folk who fight and die to defend The Isles. That’s their duty and they’re expected to perform it without complaint. Regimental peons have endured a lifetime of hardship. They’re tough, and inured to suffering.
Crown Hunter by Sam Lamont - a dusty and eyepatched knight with a sword nearly his size.
Crown Seeds
Crown characters’ Seeds typically open up when they turn their back on, or fail at, the role marked out for them - whether that’s ruling or dying.
Abolitionists see the way things are and take steps to raze the rotten old institutions to the ground. They’ve betrayed their noble family, joined a rebel cell, or incited a mob to riot. It’s not their actions that form the Seed, but the consequences: shedding family blood, losing their cell to a noble’s revenge, or feeling the weight of the lives taken by the rabble they roused.
Deserters abandoned their duty. Some are soldiers who left their post or got drunk on their watch, and whose comrades died as a result. Others are nobles who married for love and damned their family to poverty, or servants who blackmailed or leeched from their masters. Whether they feel guilty or proud, whether it took a lifetime or a moment, their dereliction lacerated their soul and let a Malignancy in.
Murderers didn’t just kill, they killed someone who mattered – to them or the rest of The Isles. Their victim was a beloved noble, a ranking officer, or one of their own family. The victim was probably deserving, but blood stays on the hands.
Sole Survivors are the last person standing. Some lived through the massacre of their squad, family, or employers by luck or cunning. A noble refused to pay for their household’s medical treatment, and the sickness took every servant but one. Infidelity and a dinner party massacre killed off all but the most useless and overlooked family member. A soldier survived multiple massacres before being discharged for being bad luck. How you survived matters less than how you feel about it: lousy.
Crown throne room birds eye view by Sam Lamont - with grand chandeliers, tapestries, and an aura of decay.
The Crown and Hollows
The Crown regards protecting the Isles as its duty. It’s the weighty mantle of leadership; noblesse oblige. Many of the cosseted blue-bloods at the top of the heap do not, however, feel obliged to intervene personally. They have people for that, and those people are Hunters.
There’s no unifying doctrine for any faction (except perhaps the Temple) but there are often tendencies. The Crown tends to resolve the problem of a Hollow by sending as many Hunters as possible into it to nobly slay the Entities within. And the slaughter is always noble, because it belongs to the Crown.
Hunters with the Crown in their origin stories often adopt some of this dogma. Whether they’re a humble servant, a bloodstained veteran, or the bastard offspring of a titled jackass, many perceive themselves as heroes, the last line of defence, restoring the Isles to its former glory. Others mutter sullenly about the burden of responsibility or having no choice at all unless they fancy a brief and deadly flirtation with a firing squad.
I already have fallen in love with the bones that I can see in the quickstart and, as mentioned in other posts, I'm already building some unique flavors for a custom game. Do we have any idea when it seems likely those PDF copies will end up being sent out. I'm not expecting a quick turn around, you guys just finished a SUPER successful Backerkit! But if you have some idea of timeline, I'd love to hear it.
The Isles are a state in mid-collapse – it might even have collapsed already, depending on how high you set your standards. In recent memory the Isles had an empire and industry; it had pride. But first it ripened, then it began to rot.
The four factions of the Isles are the people in charge of the ruins. Not everyone is in a faction, and not all the factions are formal organisations. Even so, it’s impossible to avoid their influence – even for Hunters.
Art by Sam Lamont (moonskinned)
What is a Faction?
It’s easier to start with what a faction isn’t. It’s not a membership organisation or a corporation with an agenda and a plan. It’s not even a particularly neat definition: there’s no tight, clearly drawn delineation of who is and isn’t in one. Some factions are more concrete and easier to map than others (which is why we’ll be starting our series of faction-related blog posts with the Crown) but really, what a “faction” is, is a description of what kind of power someone holds or is beholden to.
The Crown and its institutions hold constitutional and military power. The Conclave holds both academic and occult power. The Temple is a religion and exercises that power to define what is taboo and what is expected, what is sacred and what is profane. Oh, and tithes. There’s quite a bit of tithing. Finally, the House – a complicated set of affiliations between industrialists, landowners, and politicians – wields the power of money, manpower, and the legal code.
The people who benefit from membership want to uphold that element of the status quo. The Conclave needs arcane studies to be under its control so they don’t create rivals. The Crown needs people to keep believing aristocrats serve a purpose and that empire and expansion are the Isles’s right.
People in the faction who aren’t benefiting from it are trapped there. They’re bound by contracts, bloodlines, oaths or belief and they either can’t break free or are too institutionalised to try.
Nothing’s ever so black and white, of course. Years of military service – an association with the Crown – might have ruined your body and rattled your mind, leaving you fit for nothing else but continuing the same nightmare career… but wearing your old medals still gets you respect and gives you the right to order around people with even less power. Plus, one day you might get to be one of the people in charge.
It’s helpful to think of factions in terms of specific groups or manifestations, rather than mighty, towering pillars of society. A group of Hunters probably doesn’t think of themselves as working for the Conclave but for a university; not the Crown but the Fitzclair family; not the House but parliament or an industrialist’s staff.
Because factions are so murky, it’s hard to definitively say who is and isn’t in one. We can say, however, that millions of people in the Isles derive no benefit from the factions’ existence. Factory workers labour in dangerous conditions, farmers toil on exhausted soil, and the wrong sorts of people are shunned or exploited.
Art by Sam Lamont (moonskinned)
Factions in Play
In practical terms what faction a Hunter is associated with shapes their experiences before they became Hunters. It defines your ORIGIN and your SEED.
Your Origin is who you are – or were. You might have been (and still be, when you’re not lancing pustulent quasi-realities) a blue-blood noble, a knight-alchemist, a holy gardener, or a member of parliament. Or you might be less fortunate: cannon fodder in a Crown army, an escaped lab experiment, a sinner, or a worker on a factory line.
Your Seed is what made you a Hunter: the thing you did, or that was done to you, that made a gash in your soul for a Malignancy to get in. Your Origin suggests some likely tendencies. In the Crown, family politics end in bloodshed, nobles abuse their servants, and soldiers do unspeakable things in the name of Crown and country. The House’s ambition creates criminals and class traitors. You don’t have to choose a pre-written Seed for your character, but the factions provide a plethora of possibilities that both make sense and tell you something about the Isles.
Factions have less of a hold over Hunters inside a Hollow and someone’s origins, whether they’re high or low, only matter if you let them. In these rotten little pockets, power resides in a Hunter and their Weapons. Whether you were born in a palace or a workhouse, the Seed inside you and the Weapons you wield make you an unstoppable force, glorious and mighty until the rot in you blossoms and you become something else.
On the other hand, your Seed becomes more important with every Hollow you breach and destroy. The more corrupted you become, the more that Seed echoes and pulses, manifesting itself in those private worlds you invade and piling more dangers atop the Hollow’s own.
The Hollows crowdfunder ended four days ago. We did it. You did it.
Now we’re on to the best part: making the book. Books. And components, and extras, and all the delicious stretch goals we achieved.
PLEDGE MANAGER & SURVEYS
We’ll be opening up the pledge manager and backer surveys by the end of July (at the latest). If you’ve used Backerkit before, this will be a familiar process. You’ll confirm your pledge includes everything you want, have an opportunity to add extras, and give us your address for delivery.
We’re not charging shipping yet. We won’t do that until we’re nearly ready to ship out books. The cutthroat world of international logistics moves like lightning, so we hold off as long as possible to make sure our shipping calculations stay accurate between charging you for shipping and actually doing the shipping.
SNEAK PREVIEWS
The Weapons information we shared with you during the campaign seemed to go down well – so we’re going to keep sharing glimpses of the Hollows over the summer and possibly beyond. We’ll start with a blog post about Hollows four factions – the Crown, the Conclave, the Temple, and the House – each week throughout July.
After that, we’ll be picking setting and story elements to share as and when we’ve got something bite-sized to tell you about. It’s difficult to unpack, for example, ideas and expressions of class consciousness in the Isles in a 5–600 word blog post (but we might try).
STAYING IN TOUCH
Apart from those sneak previews, you should expect an update from me about once a month – more often if we’ve got something exciting to show off.
We’ll also be in touch more often if there’s a problem you need to know about, so if we’re unexpectedly quiet it means we’re busy making books: all is well.
If you’ve got questions for me (Chant) or the team as a whole, you can leave a comment on this or any future update and I’ll get back to you as soon as I have an answer.
You can also come and join our Discord. It’s nice there, and there are lots of people talking about Hollows.
Will this campaign permit upgrading our pledge tier when the surveys come out?
I meant to upgrade mine and then got really busy near the end of the campaign and forgot to do it in time. I asked Backerkit support and they said "Once the surveys are available.... you will be able to upgrade your pledge tier if permitted by the project creator."
Probably going to get myself into trouble but I wonder if it would be worth trying to put the tactical sheet on a clear plastic bit with white lines and letter so it could lie over a background map or image for fight scenes
Not sure if this was addressed but haven't been able to see anything. How does the difficulty of hunt change with number of hunters? Do entity stats change at all?
On p.3 of the Quickstart, it mentions a downloadable Asset Pack with form-fillable character sheets and a tactical grid image, which it suggests can be found at rrdgames.com/hollows-resources - however, it doesn't appear to be there (at least as of 25th June 2024). Is it there under another name, has it been excised for some reason, or is it yet to manifest? Thanks!
“There are fighters and there are warriors and you, friend, are a warrior. You are a professional. You have earned the right to lead an army, to seize the reins of civilisation, to cut and stab and kill. In your hand is the Sword, the tool of a master, and the key to victory. Show them what you can do.”
For millennia, the Sword has been a symbol of power and authority beyond measure: a tool for the masters of men to wield with skill and grace. To cut away the weakest parts of society and to do what must be done to ensure civilisation’s survival and prosperity.
Art by Sam Lamont (moonskinned)
What is the Sword?
The Sword’s almost as good at attracting attention as it is at actually causing harm. It’s flashy. It catches the eye. In game terms, it manipulates Threat (mostly attracting it). Whether it’s a Noble rapier, a Mighty claymore, or a Short but wicked gladius, its core ability is to earn some advantage by placing a Threat token on its area. That ability varies – restoring Resolve, dealing extra Resolve damage, or extra Wound damage – but the origin is the same: “look at me,” the Sword says, “see me,” and when the Entity plays into its attention-seeking behaviour, it makes the Sword stronger.
The Sword’s Tier 1 abilities are all about leadership. Charge into close combat and rally your allies, helping them Focus or inspiring them to deal extra damage. The other early abilities rely on the Entity’s attention. You can spend Threat to Focus, stand on guard when the Entity spends Threat, or direct the Entity’s attention either to or away from you when you miss it.
At Tier 2, you can choose one or more ways to attract Threat to you, or flank the Entity to hamstring it – which fully clears Threat from one area of the grid as it howls in pain and loses focus.
The Sword’s Tier 3 abilities represent extensive drills and formalised schools of combat. Each one has a stance, which is active at the beginning of the Hunt, and a tactic: a special, one-use move that changes the battle significantly. Choose Fulcrum of War to resist damage, then gather your allies to you, unnerving the Entity with your display of unity. Take Noble Sacrifice to deal extra damage then reposition all Hunters, restoring their Resolve and dragging them out of harm’s way. Alternatively, select One Perfect Strike to keep your Focus, before drawing most of the Threat on the board straight to you and converting it into bonuses on a single, lethal attack.
What is the Sword Really?
The Sword believes in heroes and strives to convince its wielders that they stand proudly amidst their ranks; that there are those who are born to lead, thanks to some indefinable spark of greatness deep within their being, and it is their duty to shepherd the people beneath them. It tells you: you alone are meant for greatness. The pitiful creatures of the feckless masses are nothing without you to lead them. You are worthy of the respect you see glinting in their bovine eyes.
It admonishes those who fight dirty and it births schools of duellists, manuals of techniques, and reams of rules designed to fashion the grim business of ending lives into something that demands admiration and grace. It is desperate to dictate the battlefield and hold onto its unfair advantage, because without it, it is nothing but a length of sharpened steel. The Sword knows its superiority is a lie. Spears outreach it. Knives carve and craft and make. It glances off Armour’s skin and every single gun outranges it.
That’s the Sword’s truth, the one it’s desperate to keep you from learning: it’s a relic, slipping into rite and ritual as the world marches on without it.
“You’re strong. Smart. Capable. The world’s set against you but with the Pistol resting on your hip or howling in your hand you can weather any storm. You’re a force to be reckoned with, and those fools will be left in your wake when you show them what you can do.”
The Pistol is chief amongst the new gods of bloodshed; gunpowder and lead put a lightning strike in the palm of one’s hand. It has replaced the Sword as a mark of personal prowess - no longer do you have to train for years to use a weapon, or risk your skin by coming close to those you want to hurt. Anyone with a vendetta can set the odds in their favour with a Pistol in their pocket.
Art by Sam Lamont (moonskinned)
What is the Pistol?
The Pistol’s small but versatile. With it in your hand, you can attack up close or from range, with a better capacity than the Rifle or Shotgun. The Automatic’s quick and easy to reload, the Revolver’s bark is as bad as its bite, and the Hand Cannon packs a punch as hard as a much larger gun.
There’s no single trick to using a Pistol. Even at Tier 1, you can focus on mobility and skirmishing – sacrificing an attack for an extra manoeuvre or boosting your stats when you move before you shoot – or dealing damage by unloading your pistol’s current capacity in lieu of making a manoeuvre. You can also choose abilities that let you take cover when you move, or when you wound the Entity.
Further options open up at higher tiers. At Tier 2 you can make better use of cover, ducking in to reload and gather your wits, then burst out in a blaze of gunfire. You can make an additional manoeuvre when you hurt the Entity – or confer the ability on an ally. You can make a bonus attack when an ally misses with their strike, or turn a glancing blow into a perfectly targeted wound. True masters of the Pistol accept that it’s easy to overlook – and so is its wielder – and use that to their advantage. Left for dead, they disappear from the field of battle to return next round, refreshed and reloaded.
What is the Pistol Really?
The Pistol tells you: you’re unique, and special, and fascinating. The world is chaotic and unfocused but you, Pistol gripped against your skin, rise above the noise and move unfettered. A lack of success or prosperity doesn’t indicate that you’ve overestimated yourself; it’s everyone else’s fault that you’ve not made it yet. Your ideas are too new, too revolutionary. Everyone who passes you over or looks down on you knows the truth: they’re jealous of your ability and scared of what you might do.
This absolute refusal to change based on new information brings with it a bullet-proof confidence that the Pistol uses to propel its bearers forward into the future. Reality is what you make it: you’re the one holding the gun.
The thing is, the Pistol’s nowhere near as self-assured as it makes out. It’s not an instrument of war; no great glories, no stern sacrifices, no tactical masterstrokes owe it thanks. It’s not a tool for hunting, either; thick hides turn aside little bullets, rifles outrange it, and it’s a coward’s crutch next to the cut and thrust of finishing the beast with blade and bludgeon. It’s not a part of anything greater, or ancient, or more noble. No abstraction or artifice unite it with the sacrosanct.
All it does is kill people. Is that enough? Is the Pistol enough?
It knows it’s not, though it guards that truth most jealously, keeping others at arm’s length. It cleaves, deep down, to one single truth: if they ever learn how inadequate it really is, it will lose everything.
