Hollow Daen
Hollow Daen is the Day One enclave that the Confederation pretends does not exist.
Rules Reference
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Aesthetic | uncharted |
| Anchor System | The Burning |
| Controlling Faction | The Day One (the Watchers of the Hollow; charismatic leadership under a figure called the Patient) |
| Fold Bleed | high |
| Habitat | ashen |
| Population | 410000 |
| Role | anchor |
| Zone | Rim |
Notes
Dangers: Fold-bleed is high, structural, and treated as revelation (the cult's inner circle calls it 'the Whisper'); off-worlders who stay more than three days report hearing the Patient's voice in places the Patient has never been; pilgrims who come to argue are not seen again.
Hooks: The Patient has announced the First Ember -- a coordinated arson of every Kadiss-bearing site on the Hollow's surface, in one night; the cult's cells across the Rim are waiting for the signal., A Confederation envoy has landed at Hollow Daen asking, formally, for 'talks'; the Watchers have invited the envoy to a public Burning and the envoy has accepted; the Legation is furious., A clan ship has put in at Hollow Daen carrying the surviving crew of an ark-ship that went dark four hundred years ago; the crew remembers Earth; the Watchers say the crew has been sent.
Lore: Hollow Daen is the Day One enclave that the Confederation pretends does not exist. It is a cold, mostly-subterranean world with a single continent and a cave-system so deep and so extensive that the cult's inner circle has been known to disappear into it for months at a time. The cult does not run cities; it runs congregations, each one seated over an Ember Pit, each Pit burning in the open air with whatever the local congregation has decided to immolate -- Kadiss units first, then records, then sometimes people. The Patient, whoever they are, speaks through the Whisper, which the cult treats as the voice of a Fold that is trying to warn humanity. Fold-bleed here is high and the cult's theology depends on it: the world was chosen, the cult teaches, because the nightmares come closer to the surface here than anywhere else they have been able to find. Outsiders call it indoctrination. The cult calls it evidence. The Confederation has tried twice to land Legions on Hollow Daen; both landings failed in circumstances the Legation does not discuss. Four hundred and ten thousand people live here, most of them by choice, and they are waiting for the signal.
Notable: The Hollow itself (a continent-scale cave-system under the world's only landmass); the Ember Pits (twelve open-air Burning sites, one for each of the original Witnesses); the Patient's Vault (sealed, the cult says it contains a piece of Earth that has not yet burned).