The Hollow

It does not hate you. Hunger has never had any need to hate the bread.

The Hollow are what the Rivari become when concentrated Rive takes everything. A Rivari was made to regulate chaos; the Rive it touches feeds on it in turn, eating the self, the will, the purpose, until nothing is left but the hunger. A fully fallen Rivari is soulless: not evil by choice, only empty, and an empty thing only consumes. They are the antagonists of the age, and they feed on the Rive a suffering world gives off.

How far the rot goes

The Hollow are not all the same. The deeper a Rivari falls, the less of it remains.

• The Hollowed, the mindless majority. Husks of pure hunger, loose in the world: the blights, the corrupted beasts, the things in the dark places of Caeloren. This is the Hollow that mortals actually meet and fight.
• The Hollow Crown, the three. A bare handful fell and somehow kept their cunning, holding onto just enough self to scheme. Three remain, the masterminds of the whole design and the architects of the Fracture.

The Hollow Crown

Three corrupted Rivari, the cleverest and most intact of the fallen, who rule the mindless Hollow the way a crown rules a kingdom, though it is a crown over nothing. They do not hunger blindly like their lesser kin. They plan.

It was the Hollow Crown that engineered the Fracture. They seized the Caelori network, put on the agents' stolen faces, and now whisper a forged divine will into a million mortal ears, turning the world's faith into a furnace of war. They do not care which empire wins. The war is not the goal. The war is the harvest, and the Hollow Crown feeds on every death, every betrayal, every collapse of faith it manufactures.

The three faces

Each of the three wears a different face, and each manufactures one thing the holy war needs. Pull any one and the war might cool, so they keep all three turning. No mortal knows them by their true names, and not even a seer can name what wears a stolen face, for the Hollow fogs the very sight of the Plane; a seer perceives only that something is wrong.

• Vaesyr, the False Voice, wears the face of god. The chief forger speaks the counterfeit divine will through the captured Caelori; it is the "god" every empire believes it obeys. It makes mortals believe a lie.
• Nolveth, the Kind Mask, wears the face of a friend. The infiltrator takes the shape of allies, advisors, and oracles to whisper distrust and turn ally against ally. It makes mortals doubt their own.
• Rhaveth, the Hateful Face, wears the face of the enemy. The provocateur puts on the other empire's face to commit atrocities, so each side is certain the other did the unforgivable. It makes mortals hate their foe.

False god, false friend, false foe. Faith, betrayal, and hatred: the three pillars that hold a holy war up.

Why they are dangerous

• They cannot be reasoned with. There is no self left to bargain with, only hunger.
• They are nearly invisible. They speak through the captured Caelori, so to most mortals the Hollow's lies are simply the voice of god. Not even a seer sees the rot clearly, for the Hollow fogs the Plane itself; a seer knows only that something is wrong.
• They win by attrition. The longer the holy war burns, the more Rive they harvest, and the more Rivari fall to swell their ranks.