Hollows Factions: the Temple

Dead gods make fertile soil.

Before the rise of the empire, the average Islander believed dozens of malevolent gods and spirits were ever-ready to punish them for transgressions against inscrutable laws. Ramshackle amalgamations of folk beliefs coalesced into a broad tradition of fear, obfuscation and appeasement; churches were carefully-maintained divine blind spots where births, marriages, festivals, and funerals could be safely conducted out of their sight.

The empire wiped out whole communities in its endless wars and, in the process, erased everything they believed about the gods. The upstart gardeners of the Viridian Temple seized the moment: they preached that the gods were not vicious creatures, but instead dead and rotting beneath the ground providing sustenance for the world to come. Heaven could rise from the earth itself with careful guidance.

Where other factions of the Isles are in decline, the Temple is growing – spreading like an invasive weed, in fact, wrapping itself around other power structures and choking the life out of them. Also like an invasive weed, it’s fully conquered its biome, in this case the Isles. The Viridian Temple throttles, suppresses, and forces out other beliefs. But an ecosystem needs diversity to flourish and thrive; suffocating every folk belief that might have helped understand the Grand Malignancies, or the cosmological underpinnings of Hollows, is not without cost.

Now, the majority of the food supply for the Isles is controlled by the Viridians. The other factions have little choice but to toe the line. When they don’t… more than one political enemy has been buried under an orchard, chopped up and fed to sacred pigs, or burned on bonfires like so much blighted wheat.

Temple Origins

The four Temple Origins in Hollows are: 

Vindicators, the Temple’s reapers. Clearing the way for new growth requires cutting down and disposing of what came before. They do the hard, ugly, nasty work so that others can plant and sow. Vindicators interrogate and pry, burn down obstacles, and calmly dispose of their enemies. 

Faithful are the Temple’s devoted labourers. They’re the congregation, the lay-preachers, and other obedient (or obliged) members of the church. They might be seasonal migrants, travelling where the work is, or deeply attached to the land of their birth, but they’re Temple through and through. They’re hardy and tough, and they excel when they’re working with plants and animals or stoically labouring. 

Swineherds are itinerant priests, charged with following their beasts wherever they choose to roam. The domesticated pig is held in the highest regard by the Viridians – a perfect omnivorous beast, fat from the bounty of the land, ripe and ready for the slaughter. Orthodox adherents proclaim that pigs should be allowed to roam the country as they please, and the same goes for their herders. Swineherds come and go with impunity, considering themselves as holy and as unstoppable as their pigs. They’re at their strongest when they trespass, delve, and trample all before them – and when they work with animals. 

Revivalists sow new seeds of the Viridian Temple wherever they go. They preach and uplift, bringing bounteous fields and fat herds to blighted areas. They also tear down weak communities, driving recalcitrants out of their homes, and setting down roots by force. They nourish and nurture, break and enter, and strike out alone.

Temple Seeds

Seeds are the worst day of a person’s life. For the Temple, that means a crisis of faith or a transgression so deep that even the generally permissive Viridians turn their backs on you. 

Heretics belong to secret sects within the Temple, working against its stated purposes. The Harvest Folk worship Greed, the Rosa Caelesti believe Hollows are the route to apotheosis, and the named splinter groups barely scratch the surface of the perverse and destructive beliefs fermenting within the Temple. It’s not the Heresy that spawns a Seed, though – it’s getting caught out and kicked out, or deciding to stop hiding and leave the Temple entirely.

Lost Souls suffered a crisis of faith. The Viridian religion doesn’t prevent the hardships of war, or the struggle of surviving in a blighted, failing nation. It doesn’t keep bishops’ hearts from turning hard or priests from preying on their flock. You saw this one too many times – for some, once is enough – and it broke your spirit and killed your faith. 

Outcasts are devout, but their faith is about all they have. The Isles’ aristocrats don’t follow this peasant church, and there are outposts of the old faiths everywhere. Outcast characters are from one of these pockets of non-belief, and their eagerness to welcome in the Temple saw them ostracised and abandoned. 

Sinners may still want to be part of the Temple, but it doesn’t want them. There are few unforgivable sins to the Viridians – salting the earth or someone’s ashes, selling sacred animals, or deliberately ruining good crops – but you committed one of them. Saying a Sinner is still part of the Temple is a little inaccurate, but even though the church offers them no protection or benefit, it hasn’t killed them yet – and that’s a debt the Sinner will never finish repaying.

The Temple and Hollows

The Temple are farmers and nurturers. A good farmer doesn’t wait until their crops are riddled with pests or blighted with disease. They act first, preventing problems rather than solving them. Their approach to Hollows is based on the same philosophy. Sending in a team of Hunters to collapse a Hollow is a sign the Temple failed to safeguard its domain. 

As the gods rot beneath the soil, their metaphysical putrefaction escapes and catches in this earthly kingdom to form Hollows – tenacious and invasive weeds that must be plucked before they take root and spread in the minds and bodies of the congregation. 

While the majority of the faithful don’t know about the existence of parasite dimensions, someone in the upper ranks certainly does, as the church has instituted an aggressive outreach program monitoring those at risk of blossoming into something terrible. Whether the sufferer is brought back into the fold or quietly removed, prevention is seen to be better than cure. 

Like most farmers, the Temple are pragmatists: there’s no room for tender-heartedness. If a pig gets sick and it can’t be cured, you butcher it. Same goes for folk who bloom into Hollows – or Hunters on the verge of doing so.