The Hollow · a woodland story
A clearing in the Lantern Wilds.
You arrive at a cold hearth with four tired people and a forest all around. What you build here is what the woods will have to get past.
01 / Where it begins
The Hollow is a clearing, and the clearing is yours.
The Lantern Wilds are old woodland: moss on every stone, ferns to the knee, and light that arrives in patches. The Hollow is a gap in it. Somebody kept a hearth here once, and the ring of stones is still warm enough to kindle.
That hearth is where your village starts. It gives everyone a temporary bed, it is the centre of the lantern network, and every path in the village eventually leads back to it. Nothing else in the Hollow is built yet. The meadow, the trees and the quiet are the whole inheritance.
02 / The first four
Wren, Tolm, Isla and Bram.
Four people walk in with you. Wren and Tolm are builders: they carry materials, walk to the plot and do the work that turns a placement into a building. Isla forages, and Bram keeps a garden. They are the whole village until the food holds and the beds are ready for somebody else.
Everyone here has a name, a home, a job and a walk between them. A resident who has not arrived at the workplace is not working yet, and one who is asleep is not either. That is the small honest rule the whole village runs on.
Read how to start a city →03 / The rhythm
The woods are warm by day.
They are restless after dark.
A full day in the Hollow lasts an hour. In daylight the village works: builders build, foragers gather, gardens ripen and everyone walks the paths you gave them. Between 22:00 and 06:00 ordinary residents finish what they are doing and go home to sleep.
Night is when the Hollow feels like a clearing again. Windows glow, the Hearth burns, lanterns mark the entrances, and the dark beyond the last light is where everything unfriendly lives. Wardens and lantern keepers stay on duty through it, as long as they can still do their jobs.
See how the night shift works →04 / What presses in
Nothing here wants to destroy you. It wants what you have.
- Deer come for the crops. They wander in from the tree line about every half hour, you get a short warning, and unprotected food is what they take. A Deer Enclosure around a garden keeps most of it, and they never eat a village’s last stores.
- Raider camps settle at the edge of the map and stay for a while. They leave the village alone and wait with their loot for soldiers to come and clear them.
- Other villages can raid yours only if you have opened it to rival battles. You are told before an army arrives, and the fight is played out against the walls, towers and soldiers you actually have.
Buildings in this version are never removed by a threat. Damage is bounded, food losses are bounded, and a damaged building can be repaired. The Hollow can have a bad night without being taken away from you.
Read how to defend a city →05 / Further in the woods
Others live in the Lantern Wilds.
The Hollow is not the only place with people in it. Five inhabitants of the older woods belong to the story the village is built into. They do not join a village and do not appear in the game.
| Inhabitant | Who they are |
|---|---|
| Morrow | The stone keeper. Slow, heavy and hard to move. |
| Mallow | The apothecary, with careful hands. |
| Orin | The cartographer. Reads ground before anyone walks it. |
| Sere | The lantern moth. Speaks in movement and light. |
| Pip | The travelling spirit. Curious, quick and mostly wordless. |
06 / The shape of it
A village you can leave alone.
- Nobody dies. Residents do not age or die. A soldier who loses a fight recovers.
- The village is never wiped. Losses are bounded and buildings stay on their plots. A building broken in a raid becomes a ruin you repair rather than rubble you lose.
- Closing the game is safe. Deer do no harm while nobody is managing the village, and only a village opened to rival battles can be raided. Reconnecting restores the saved state and clock.
