Hollow Choir
The Hollow Choir is a unique druidic caste among the Withered Elves, composed of individuals whose bodies and minds have been partially overtaken by sentient fungal colonies. Neither fully elf nor entirely fungus, they serve as singers, spiritual guides, and mourners—binding the living and the dead through harmonic decay. Their songs are not merely art—they are spells of entropy, communion, and transformation.
Culture
Every member of the Hollow Choir carries within them a fungal symbiote, often located in the lungs, throat, or skull. This presence gives them:
- A limited shared memory across Choir members
- The ability to sing multiple harmonics at once
- Occasional prophetic trances, where they glimpse past deaths or coming ends
Some are indistinguishable from corpses, kept animated only by the will of the fungus inside them.
Public Agenda
Members wear tattered robes woven from lichen-veils and root-thread, often with masks grown from mushroom caps or bark that have hollow eyeholes or open mouths for song. When they chant, their bodies may emit faint spores in rhythmic pulses, the air shimmering with decay and memory.
They are both feared and revered, even among Withered Elves—seen as voices of the gods and harbingers of the inevitable.
Assets
Their signature magic is known as Harmonic Decay—a school of druidic songcraft that accelerates natural processes of breakdown. Through haunting, layered vocals, they can cause:
- Wood to rot
- Metal to rust
- Flesh to soften or swell with spores
- Spirits of the dead to linger or speak
More advanced members can even unravel magical wards, as the fungal resonance undercuts arcane bindings.
Their performances are often disturbing yet beautiful—multiple voices layered in unnatural harmony, echoing as if sung from within hollowed trees.
History
The Hollow Choir emerged when ancient druids first allowed the Whispering Rot—a sapient, hive-minded fungal presence—to merge with them. Through this bond, they developed a means of channeling magic not through speech or gesture, but through resonant song, tuned to the frequencies of growth, decay, and death.
They do not act as frontline warriors but serve a sacred role in Withered Elf society:
- Chanting rites of decay to hasten the return of corpses to the forest
- Lulling intruders or prey into a death-dream with hypnotic harmonics
- Singing the names of the fallen into the mycelial network, where they live on in fungal memory
- Weaving fungal spores into sound, directing their spread with melody
Worship
- The Quiet Requiem – A rite performed at mass funerals, spreading spores that carry the essence of the dead to the Hollow Grove.
- Echo of the Final Breath – A chant used to commune with a dying creature’s soul, allowing it to pass without regret or resistance.
- Seedhymns – Songs sung over rotwood or corpses to grow new fungal life in sacred patterns.
They believe that decay is a sacred music, and that all life is a chord waiting to fade. To resist death is to disrupt the harmony of the world.
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