The Veil & Lead Companion Reference Character Sheet

Hollow

Critical

Effect: The character's identity is gone. They are no longer playable. The body remains, but nothing recognizable inhabits it.

Duration Permanent

Inflicted By

  • Burning your final remaining Memory (the fifth and last Pillar of your Memory Palace)
  • Backlash: The Breach (three 1s on Bleed/Cursed Dice) when you have only one Memory remaining
  • Memory Hole (Mindweaver R5) used on someone with one Memory left, targeting that Memory
  • Source-text: 'a corpse left unsalted in a place where the Veil is thin' (becomes a Hollow Man creature, not the same as a player character going Hollow)

Cleared By

  • The Hollow's Rest (Bastion Soul R5 Miracle) restores the capacity to form new Memories; does not return lost Memories. The Hollow becomes a person again, but a stranger.
  • Nothing else. Hollow is otherwise permanent.

Hollow is the game’s endpoint condition: the moment when a Psionic character (or rarely, a non-Psionic who has lost enough Memories through trauma) burns their final Memory and there is nothing left to anchor the self. The body remains. The eyes move. There is nothing behind them.

Mechanically:

  • The character is removed from player control.
  • The GM determines what the Hollow does next.
  • Some Hollows become violent (the Veil’s chaos has free reign).
  • Some become passive (a wandering shell, vacant).
  • Some become actively malevolent (something else has moved in).

Socially:

  • The Circle of Ash runs sanctuaries for Hollows. Palomera has Garden residents who have already taken on Hollow-like features.
  • The Redeemers burn Hollows on sight as abominations.
  • The Consortium has been known to use Hollows as expendable labor in dangerous mining operations.

The single canonical way to reverse a Hollow state is The Hollow’s Rest (Bastion Soul Rank 5 Miracle), which rebuilds the empty Memory Palace with 5 fresh slots, but does NOT restore lost Memories. The Hollow becomes a person again, with the same skills and Attributes, but a blank personality shaped by whoever they encounter first. They are not who they were. They may never be.

(See also: the Hollow Man creature entry for the Veil-Born minion that shares the name and origin, and the Memory Burn keyword.)