Old streets. Overgrown buildings. Waterways swallowed by fog. The sort of place where the city gets quiet and the world gets a little stranger than it ought to be.
♡ Get to know the neighborhood
Some of those roots are literally inside the buildings.
Alien trees, vines, moss, fungi, flowers, and other vegetation grow through buildings, across rooftops, along streets, and around abandoned structures. Fog frequently settles throughout the Hollows, especially at night and around its waterways. The greenery is not decoration somebody planted and forgot about. It is alive, persistent, and thoroughly involved in the district's architecture.
Buildings are old, irregular, and heavily modified over generations. Some are beautifully maintained homes or businesses; others are collapsing structures swallowed by vegetation. Old construction sits directly beside newer additions, creating neighborhoods that feel layered rather than planned. A crooked old house might share a wall with a perfectly ordinary corner shop.
Humans, demi-humans, monsters, and other beings live throughout the Hollows. The district attracts people and species who prefer privacy, isolation, unusual communities, or lifestyles that might draw more attention elsewhere. People have their own reasons for living here, and not everyone wants to explain theirs to a curious stranger.
The Hollows has an unusually high population of strange, elusive, nocturnal, and heavily nonhuman creatures. Some residents have unusual sensory abilities, camouflage, bioluminescence, predatory anatomy, or bodies adapted to the district’s damp and overgrown environment. Not every strange shape in the fog is a threat. It is still worth knowing what you are looking at.
Human/monster and interspecies relationships are common in the Hollows. Its residents tend to be less concerned with conventional ideas of beauty or appropriate pairings. Strange anatomy, frightening appearances, extreme size differences, fangs, claws, tails, fur, scales, and other monstrous traits can all be objects of genuine romantic or sexual attraction. What one person finds terrifying, another might find irresistible. The Hollows is not especially interested in settling that argument for you.
☾ The neighborhood after sundown
The district changes dramatically after dark. Fog becomes thicker, vegetation becomes louder with nocturnal life, strange lights appear among the trees, and creatures that remain hidden during the day become active. People who know the Hollows understand that nighttime does not necessarily mean the same thing as daytime here. Some places come alive after sunset. Others are best left alone.
♡ Life happens here, too
The locals still have errands to run.
The Hollows has intimate bars, private clubs, underground parties, fetish communities, brothels, secluded homes, and other adult spaces hidden throughout the district. Privacy is highly valued, and people often know exactly where to go when they do not want to be seen. Behind closed doors, there are whole social worlds that outsiders might never realize exist.
The Hollows has a reputation for disappearances, stalking, violence, predatory creatures, criminal activity, and unexplained incidents. Some stories are exaggerated. Others are not. Residents learn quickly which streets, buildings, waterways, and creatures should be avoided. Familiarity helps, but it does not make anyone invincible.
Despite its reputation, the Hollows is not simply a dangerous wasteland. People have homes, families, jobs, relationships, favorite restaurants, local businesses, and longstanding friendships. Neighbors often know one another extremely well. Someone might warn you about a dangerous alley, lend you a tool, gossip about your landlord, and then invite you over for dinner. It's still a neighborhood. Just a particularly strange one.
✧ The general feeling
Damp, overgrown, intimate, eerie, beautiful, secluded, sensual, strange, and occasionally terrifying.
Gothic without being a fixed aesthetic. The Hollows can be romantic, filthy, cozy, erotic, funny, violent, horrifying, or completely mundane depending on where someone is and who they encounter.
Before you wander off
The Hollows is a district, not a single mood. Its beauty and its danger coexist with the ordinary lives of the people who call it home. There are places to hide, places to fall in love, places to get into trouble, and places where nothing especially interesting happens at all. The strange part is how difficult it can be to tell which is which until you get there.