The Hollowed
"There is a crack in me. That is where it listens."
No prayers leave the lips of the Hollowed. They feel no hope. They seek no forgiveness.
What speaks to them comes neither from heaven nor hell; it speaks from elsewhere: a space lost to madness, from a time unfinished.
None of the Hollowed stumbled into their pacts by chance. They accepted them, because they dared to ask.
And something old, vast, and deeply wrong answered.
Now they walk the wastelands wrapped in a second skin of outlandish power, carved by the echo of thoughts that do not belong in this world.
Some are little more than husks, their minds scoured clean, carrying the will of another like a message in flesh.
Others remain aware, cunning even, but the shape of their thoughts is no longer their own.
They are not possessed. They are repurposed.
Human only in form.
Their will, malleable, bound to invisible hands that mold them, again and again, like wet clay.
Other Names
Known Patrons
It Which Asks
Choir of Silence
Glasswomb
The Nameless
Inverse Saint
Appearance
- Pale or blotched skin, sometimes patterned with sigils or faint shifting marks beneath the flesh.
- Eyes clouded, pitch black, or swirling with strange hues.
- Voices that echo subtly.
- Movements precise, but often just a little too still.
Theme Soundrack
The Pact & The Price
She ran.
She was always running.
Since the beginning, since her first breath, all she remembered was motion. Escape.
Her feet ached. Her throat burned. Her vision blurred from dust and sweat.
She stumbled, fell.
Her fingers clawed at the rocky slope as she dragged herself upward, breath ragged, limbs trembling.
At the crest of the hill, she lay there. Broken. Defeated.
Overhead, the sky loomed; a gray void veined with rifts. Sparks shimmered like dying embers where the Veil thinned. Once, her parents had whispered of stars. Flickering things. Gentle watchers.
She had never seen one.
Only the moon remained, pale and distant. Watching nothing. Remembering nothing.
And yet, something about this day felt different.
It was the same as every day before it: barren, hopeless.
But this one felt final.
She was done.
She lifted her head and screamed.
The sound ripped free of her; a raw echo that shredded her throat.
Silence followed and then...
… a whisper.
Thin. Patient. Like breath inside her bones.
Her scream died as she froze.
Moments later, the whisper came again.
"You do not have to endure."
She was scared. But in the end, she listened.
Not all that became Hollowed were desperate. Some were proud, daring, defiant. Some believed they could bargain, control, or even outwit the unknowable. What they sought varries; power, revenge, answers, meaning. Yet, the act is always the same: they call into the silence beyond the Veil and something responds.
Not a god. Not a demon.
What speaks back has no form, no name, no concept the human mind can safely hold. The world calls them the Amorphus or the Shattered, but these are simply bandages on wounds of understanding. Their touch is not physical. It does not break the body. It engulfs the soul.
To become Hollowed is not merely to be cursed or possessed. It is to be transformed.
The pact is a a slow erosion of identity and intent. It begins with permission. A whisper accepted. A question answered.
What follows is not direct control, but subtle influence. The Hollowed are not puppets, but tools.
Their thoughts bend first. Language changes. Dreams bleed. Then come the marks: shifting sigils beneath the skin, voices echoing in counterpoint, movements too smooth to be humane. The body becomes a reworked canvas, layered with purpose not their own.
Some Hollowed are aware. They carry their foreign patronage with a kind of clarity, yet shaped by thoughts no longer entirely their own.
Others are husks, their minds scrubbed raw, vessels for impulses not meant to exist.
They are not possessed. They are not insane.
And yet they are not themselves.
The power they gain is real; uncanny resilience, uncanny knowledge, the ability to see patterns in chaos or speak truths that shatter lies. But the cost is their alignment to something outside the natural world. They serve intents not born of this world, not even against it, but entirely beside it. Alien in the truest sense.
Over time, most Hollowed lose the distinction between self and signal. They become echo-chambers of a logic unmoored from time, part of a hive mind that transcended the cosmos to reach them. They may act with purpose, even kindness, but make no mistake: it is not their own.
Patrons from the Beyond
The world calls them the Amorphus or the Shattered, but these are not names. They are guesses; holes in the fabric of understanding, wrapped in metaphor so the mind does not split from trying to know them.
Each Hollowed is bound to the whispers of a presence beyond the Veil.
A THOUGHT NOT OF THE MIND
These beings do not speak in words. They do not offer terms. They respond.
And the response is the pact.
Some patrons seem to operate on themes; echoes of shape and concept. These are not personalities, but gravitational pulls of meaning.
The Hollowed do not explain their patrons. Most cannot. The more they know, the more they unravel.
These patrons do not war with each other. They are not rivals. And They are not allies.
They simply are; fragments of something older than context, reaching into the world through cracks in willing souls.
Cults of the Amorphus
"We built the altar after it spoke, hoping it wouldn’t speak again."
Not all who gather in the shadows of the Amorphus have been touched.
Some long for the pact.
Others fear it, study it, envy it.
Many simply believe; not in salvation, but in surrender.
These cults did not form by divine command. The Amorphus do not summon followers. They do not preach, or bless, or even acknowledge worship.
These are not all, nor all are known.
The names you speak were never shown.
What gathers here does not belong.
Your need for meaning makes it wrong.
And yet, the cults grow.
Some were formed by mortals trying to make sense of the unknowable, dressing it in ritual and structure to survive proximity to its vastness. Others were built by Hollowed themselves, seeking to extend their patron’s influence, or to crown themselves as messiahs in the wake of their transformation. Others reject the cults entirely, calling them parasites that twist what they do not understand into something small enough to use.
What is right or wrong, real or illusion, is up to speculation. The Amorphus do not answer. Whether they approve, disdain, or are even aware of these gatherings is unknown.
But the cults persist. Some are quiet. Others violent. Most walk a blurred line between madness and belief. All of them look to the cracks in the world, waiting for something to step through.
The Mouth Without Throat
They believe silence is the only honest language. They mutilate their own tongues, speak only in gesture, and offer up memories to be devoured by the Hollowed among them. They believe answers will come only when nothing remains to interrupt the questions.
The Pale Choir
They collect the words people do not say. Regrets, withheld truths, things left unsaid before death. Their Hollowed are librarians of memory, their flesh covered in scrawled secrets. Members believe all emotion is recorded and one day, will be sung.
The Glassborn
Their sacred spaces are made of reflective shards. They anoint themselves in powdered bone and ink their skin with mystical runes. They venerate rebirth through torment and seek it over and over again, breaking themselves open to be re-formed.
The Unspoken
They claim nothing and own nothing. They erase their identities until even their bodies seem borrowed. They believe in the magnificence of the void. They worship absence which the deem the place where all truth bleeds. They do not pray. They observe. And they wait.
The Reversed Creed
Twisted dogma and corrupted saints form the core of their rites. They preach that sanctity lies in inversion: purity through rot, revelation through sin. They mimic sermons but speak them backwards. They bless with fire. They baptize with dust.
Powers of the Hollowed
The power bestowed upon the Hollowed is not a gift; it is a burden. As they merge their consiousness with the Amorphus' alien minds, they gain abilities that are less about strength and more about manipulating the unseen, the unknown, and the unnatural. These psychic and occult powers allow them control on many things, but they are not without consequence. Each power carries a cost, a further unraveling of the self.
Examples of powers as recorded from observation:
Whispers of the Veil
The Hollowed can hear the voices of those lost, whispers that flicker like fading flames. These voices are not always coherent, but they can provide glimpses of knowledge or prophecy, flooded with cryptic meaning. The Hollowed who possess this ability often speak of hearing faint cries or receiving visions in the depths of their minds. But these whispers grow louder, consuming their thoughts, until they can no longer tell where their own mind ends and the voices begin.
Unseen Influence
Some of the Hollowed gain the ability to subtly manipulate minds. It is not exactly control; instead, they can plant seeds of doubt, subtly sway decisions, or leave impressions in the minds of others that persist long after their presence has faded. This manipulation feels more like an intrusive thought, one that is indistinguishable from the victim’s own, causing deep paranoia and confusion in those affected. It is a haunting power that leaves the victim questioning themselves.
The Amorphus' Gaze
The Hollowed may develop the ability to peer into the hearts of others, seeing their deepest fears, desires, and secrets. This is not empathy, but an unsettling invasion of the mind, like a cold, calculating force that unmasks the person before them. Some Hollowed use this power to manipulate and control, while others are driven mad by the knowledge they acquire, as it forces them to confront the inherent flaws in everyone and everything.
Veil Touch
The Hollowed can reach through the Veil. This power allows them to glimpse things unseen, like invisible entities or locations hidden from mortal perception. It also grants them the ability to “touch” things beyond the world’s normal boundaries, allowing them to pass through walls, blend into shadows, or even project their consciousness into dreams or distant locations. The longer they use this power, the more disconnected they become from the material world.
Reasons to Fall
The Desperate
These are the ones clinging to life by frayed threads.
A mother trading her soul for a child’s breath.
A starving wanderer who just wants to stop feeling hunger.
Their plea is simple: make it stop.
The price is not.
The Arrogant
Mages who craved to wield magic once more.
Warlords seeking power beyond death.
They believed they could use the Patron, bargain and bind it like any other force.
But you do not steer the tide. You are shaped by it.
The Curious
Scholars. Dreamers. Inquisitive minds.
They did not ask for power.
They asked for truth.
And found something else entirely.
The Broken
Hollowed by grief, guilt, or trauma.
To them, the pact is not a loss; it is a release.
The voice from beyond is the first thing that listens in a world that has gone deaf.
They become perfect vessels, because they no longer resist.
The Devoted
Cultists, yes, but more than that.
Some hear the call and embrace it as divinity.
They see the Amorphus not as intrusions, but as a newfound truth.
They serve willingly, becoming missionaries of the unknown.
The Lost
Survivors who stared too long into the rifts of the broken Veil.
Their fall begins with an accident, but it only completes when they accept.
The moment of choice may come later, in a dream, in a whisper, in a moment of pain.
But it always comes.
Views of Others
To most, the Hollowed are not people. They are omens; proof that the Veil is gone, and something beyond stirs.
They walk the land wrapped in echoes, and their every step reminds the world of a single truth:
Some doors, once opened, do not close.
Survivors
To common folk, the Hollowed are ghosts that forgot how to die. Some survivors treat them with caution, hoping to avoid notice. Others lash out, trying to kill what they don’t understand. But you don’t kill a Hollowed.
You just break a vessel, and hope what was inside doesn’t linger.
Yet sometimes- rarely- the Hollowed are sought.
For guidance. For wisdom. For insight.
Because what everyone in this world came to know is that madness, more often than not, holds truth.
Immortals
Worse still, some speak in riddles that feel like prophecy. Too many speak of stars gone wrong. Of Immortals falling.
So they keep the Hollowed close. Or burn them quickly. Depending on what they whisper.
Mages
To those who once bent magic to will, the Hollowed are a bitter mirror.
A reminder of how far a soul can fall chasing truth without limit.
Most view them as abominations, others as cautionary tales.
But a few… a few wonder what might be learned from them.
Even fewer are tempted of what might lie beyond even the deepest well of magic.
Can they be saved?
"Have you ever tasted a scream? I have. It clings to the teeth."
Some say the Hollowed are too far gone, their souls unraveled like threads in the wind. Others whisper of anchors that might pull them back; if only one could find where the soul hid itself. Mages speak of rituals lost to time, of reattuning what has been dissonant for too long. Most simply avert their eyes and pray.
The Hollowed themselves rarely answer.
Some claim they do not want to be saved. Others do not understand the question.
And some... some weep when no one is watching.
The truth is, the Hollowed are not understood.
They walk the edge of humanity. Not outside it entirely, but no longer within its bounds.
They don’t fit cleanly into a moral compass. They are not heroes. But they are not monsters either; at least not by intention.
They are the result of a choice, a question asked too eagerly, a whisper answered in the dark.
To understand them you must consider this:
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Great article! \o/
Thank you <3
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