Homebrew Hollowshade Species Details

 

There are things in Lustria that do not crawl, do not hunt, do not roar, and yet still terrify the bravest soldiers more than any beast.

They do not need claws.

They do not need teeth.

They only need the light to shift the wrong way.

Hollowshades are not undead. They are not spirits torn loose from the afterlife, nor are they devils wearing darkness like a cloak. They are something quieter and far rarer—a living absence. A consciousness that blooms inside shadow when the world forgets how to see.

Most who encounter a Hollowshade never realize they have done so. They only remember small, unsettling details.

A statue that seemed closer than it should have been.
An empty suit of armor that felt… occupied.
A cloak draped over a chair that held its shape too well, as if someone invisible had never stood up.

And if they noticed the shadow of it at all, they’d swear it moved a heartbeat too early, as though it was anticipating the world.

“Some nights the darkness does not fall. It arrives.”
— High Astronomer Serevin Haln, Keeper of the Star-Vault of Hidun

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The Night Called Twin Sleep

Lustria has witnessed countless eclipses, cloudbursts, storms that devour sunlight and drown cities in gray. But the Hollowshades do not come from weather, and they do not come from coincidence. They come from a phenomenon so rare that most scholars live and die without ever seeing it.

The elders call it Twin Sleep.

It is not merely that the sun vanishes. In Twin Sleep, the very heavens become reluctant. The moons do not shine. The stars blur and dim as though viewed through bruised glass. The sky does not look like night—it looks like something covering its eyes.

Candles die early. Lanterns burn as if they have less to burn with. Even the bravest watchmen begin to speak in shorter sentences, like loud words might invite attention.

Shadows stretch thin across walls, then sharpen, then thicken, as if they have gained weight. A person’s silhouette becomes too long. Too specific. Too intentional.

And somewhere—almost always in a place where history has gathered dust—something hollow becomes available.

“I have charted the skies for forty-seven years. There are eclipses, yes… and then there is Twin Sleep.
Twin Sleep is not a shadow over the world. It is the world being held under shadow.”
— Arch-Observer Lyr Marneth, The Meridian Journals

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The Shape That Should Have Been

A Hollowshade cannot exist naked in the open world for long. It is not a creature of flesh with organs and heat. It is a mind woven from the edges of absence, and it requires a boundary to cling to, the way flame requires a wick.

So it takes what it can.

A Hollowshade’s first body is almost always something hollow that resembles living form—an empty suit of armor, a statue with a vacant core, a training dummy, a cloak stitched into a human shape, a mask with depth enough to hide a face.

It does not wear these things as disguise.

It wears them as survival.

Those who have studied them closely say the act is less like possession and more like filling a mold. A Hollowshade pours into emptiness until emptiness learns how to walk.

When a Hollowshade stands still inside its vessel, it becomes unnervingly convincing. It holds the posture of an object. It obeys stillness so perfectly that the mind begins to accept it as furniture, decoration, armor on display.

Then it moves.

Not clumsily, not like a puppet. It moves like something that has practiced being real.

“I watched an empty set of ceremonial plate turn its head toward me.
It did not creak. It did not scrape.
The sound it made was the sound a room makes when it realizes it is no longer empty.”
— Captain-Commander Vaelor Trast, Black Harbor Garrison Records

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Light as a Predator

To understand Hollowshades, one must abandon the comfortable idea that light is always safety.

Light is truth.

Light exposes.

Light insists.

To most folk, illumination is relief. To a Hollowshade, illumination is interrogation.

They do not simply dislike brightness. It harms them in ways that are difficult to explain to anyone born of flesh. Firelight does not only burn—it frays. Moonlight does not merely reveal—it thins. Sunlight is worse than a weapon. It is a verdict.

Some scholars name this phenomenon Ontological Burn, the pain of being forced to prove yourself real under a power that refuses to accept you.

A Hollowshade in bright light grows slow and uncertain. Their movement falters, their precision fails, their shadow loses the bold confidence of its outline. Under enough radiance, their “body” feels less like a vessel and more like a prison full of glass.

Many who have glimpsed one in open daylight describe a terrible image: a walking figure whose darkness looks… wrong. Too pale at the edges. Too fragile. As if it is already fading, even while it stands.

“Do not believe the lies of taverns: that shadowfolk laugh at lanterns and dance beneath moons.
Moonlight is not a lover to them. Moonlight is a judge.”
— Sister Adeyne of the Silver Basilica, Sermons Against the Comforting Dark

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Instinctual Darkness

Hollowshades do not study shadow magic the way mages do.

They do not memorize it.

They breathe it.

When threatened, a Hollowshade will smother light the way a wounded animal thrashes for cover. Darkness spills from them in a curtain. Flames gutter. The world dims. And in that softening of brightness, the Hollowshade stabilizes—faster, sharper, more sure of its shape.

This is why many survivors claim the encounter itself felt like being pulled underwater.

The air grows heavier. Sound dulls. Distance becomes uncertain. A torch that was comforting becomes small and inadequate.

Then, the vessel moves—not with fear, but with practiced precision. It steps through shadows like doors, crossing space in a way that feels unfair, like a lie told directly to the laws of the world.

“The thing did not flee.
The shadows simply became closer together so it had less distance to travel.”
— Lord Historian Pellivar Voss, The Annals of the Gloam Wars

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The Refuge Places

Hollowshades do not build cities. They do not farm, nor do they hold open markets. Their existence is too fragile for that kind of life.

Instead, they gather in Refuge Places, hidden sanctuaries designed for a single purpose: to keep the world dim.

These places are built in old spaces where no one wants to linger. Beneath abandoned estates. Inside collapsed bell towers. Under statue gardens that noble families swear are haunted. Within sealed archives where the ink itself smells ancient.

Refuge corridors bend to avoid straight lines of sunlight. Curtains hang in layers. Every corner is crafted to create a pocket of safety. Lamps are smoked and hooded. Doors are heavy, padded, silent.

A visitor is usually greeted by an unspoken rule that feels more like a prayer than law:

No flame without permission.

The Hollowshades do not say this to control travelers.

They say it the way a drowning sailor says:
please don’t rock the boat.

“I entered their sanctuary and realized something immediately—
it was not built to keep enemies out.
It was built to keep the day from getting in.”
— Chancellor Merrow Vaine, Diplomatic Letters to the Council of Hidun

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Identity as Vessel

Among Hollowshades, a “face” is chosen, not born.

A vessel becomes reputation. A vessel becomes personality. A vessel becomes the way the world remembers them.

One Hollowshade inhabits a suit of armor and speaks like a knight, formal and precise, with the cadence of oaths. Another prefers a cracked marble statue and speaks slowly, prophet-like, as if every word was carved from stone. Others wear only a cloak and mask, moving like a thief’s rumor.

Some Hollowshades maintain more than one vessel, hidden like emergency lives. There are stories of a Hollowshade abandoning a damaged body mid-chase, sliding into a hollow helm on a nearby wall as effortlessly as breath.

Those who have earned their trust claim the Hollowshades do not view this as deception.

To them, it is simply the only way to continue.

“You call it ‘wearing a mask.’
I call it ‘having lungs.’”
— An anonymous Hollowshade, recorded in the Vault-Library of Veyra

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The Quiet Hunger

They do not eat bread. They do not drink wine. They do not crave blood.

But Hollowshades do hunger.

They hunger for uncontested darkness, for places where the light is not actively arguing against them. If deprived too long—if forced to remain near flame, near open sky, near constant brightness—they begin to deteriorate.

Their edges thin. Their voice skips. Their ability to hold their vessel weakens. They forget words they once used easily. Their movements become uncertain, like a thought losing its sentence.

In the final stage, the Hollowshades call it Bleaching.

A Hollowshade that bleaches does not die in the dramatic way stories prefer. There is no scream. No sudden collapse. No final curse.

It simply becomes less, and less, and less… until what remains is no more than soot wiped from glass.

“It stood at the door as if it wanted to leave.
Then it was not there.
Not gone—worse.
As though it had never been allowed to arrive.”
— Field Surgeon Orrik Dannel, Notes from the Lantern Riots

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How Lustria Treats Them

Most common folk do not believe Hollowshades exist until the night they do.

When a Hollowshade is confirmed, fear spreads quickly. Homes become brighter. Candles burn in every room. Mirrors are hung facing windows. People begin to sleep with lanterns close enough to touch.

Nobles are more complicated. Some want Hollowshades eradicated as unnatural threats. Others want them captured as weapons—perfect spies, perfect vault-guards, perfect assassins.

Priests argue loudly. Some declare them blasphemy, a contradiction of life’s intended shape. Others treat them as sacred proof that Twin Sleep is not merely a phenomenon, but a message.

Those who exploit them usually do so with the same cruelty: light as a leash.

If a Hollowshade is trapped beneath constant flame, it becomes compliant—not because it is weak-willed, but because it is being slowly erased.

“A chained thing is not loyal.
It is simply exhausted.”
— Matron Eliss Durovane, Warden of the Ashward Vault

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The Old Myth: The Unarmored Knight

The oldest story told about Hollowshades is not a horror tale.

It is a warning wrapped in pride.

It speaks of a knight who demanded immortality and was denied. In arrogance, the knight commissioned a suit of armor with no openings—sealed plate that could never be removed, a perfect prison made into a trophy.

The knight stood at noon in a temple and proclaimed the day could not defeat him. That he would outlast the world itself.

That night, Twin Sleep came.

When morning returned, the armor still stood in the same place.

Empty.

Except it lifted its hand toward the altar, as if asking a question the gods refused to answer.

And its shadow moved before it did.

“Pride does not always fall.
Sometimes it becomes hollow and learns to walk.”
— The Hymn of Closed Helms, attributed to Pre-War Lustria

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A Truth Few Admit

Here is the part no noble likes in writing, and no priest likes in sermons.

Hollowshades do not form randomly.

They appear most often near places where secrecy has soaked into stone—unmarked graves, forbidden archives, sealed shrines, ruined prisons, estates with locked basements nobody speaks about.

Twin Sleep is not merely darkness.

Twin Sleep is the sky refusing to witness what is happening below.

And Hollowshades are what happens when the world realizes it needs something that can survive where light refuses to look.

“If the heavens close their eyes, it is not always for rest.
Sometimes… it is mercy.
Sometimes… it is fear.”
— Oracle-Magister Selvara Nyne, The Black Meridian Prophecy

Hollowshade Traits

Traits

Umbral Vessel

Vessel Binding. Over the course of 1 minute, you bind yourself to a Hollow Vessel you can touch (such as an empty suit of armor, hollow statue, mannequin, cloak, mask, scarecrow shell, or similarly hollow object). While bound, you animate the vessel as your body.

• You use your normal game statistics while inside the vessel.

• If you remain motionless while bound, you have advantage on Dexterity (Stealth) checks made to appear as an ordinary object.

Unbinding. You can end this binding as a bonus action, leaving the vessel behind in your space.

Light-Razed

• You have vulnerability to radiant damage.

• While you are in Bright Light, you suffer the following effects:

  • Your speed reduced to 10 feet

  • You have disadvantage on attack rolls

  • You have disadvantage on Wisdom (Perception) checks that rely on sight

Light Sensitivity. If you start your turn within 10 feet of a nonmagical or magical flame that produces light(torch, lantern, campfire, brazier), you are treated as being in Bright Light for this trait, even if the area would normally be dim.

Shadow Surge

While you are in Dim Light or Darkness, your speed increases:

• Dim Light: +5 feet

• Darkness: +10 feet

This bonus ends immediately if you enter Bright Light.

Shade-Step

As a bonus action, you teleport up to 15 feet to an unoccupied space you can see that is in Dim Light or Darkness.

You can use this trait a number of times equal to your Proficiency Bonus, and you regain all expended uses when you finish a Long Rest.

Panic Curtain

When you take damage while in Bright Light, you can use your reaction to create a Curtain of Gloom until the start of your next turn:

• In a 25-foot radius centered on you, extinguish any light sources, magic, and nonmagical

Once you use this trait, you can’t use it again until you finish a Long Rest.

Twin Sleep Gift

 

Starting at 8th level, you can cast Darkness once without expending a spell slot. You regain the ability to do so when you finish a Long Rest.

Restriction: You can cast Darkness with this trait only if:

• you are currently in Dim Light or Darkness, OR

• you have taken radiant damage within the last 1 minute

 

Last Eclipse (Shadow Dome)

When you are reduced to 0 hit points (and not killed outright), you unleash an umbral collapse that creates a massive dome of darkness.

Shadow Dome. A dome of magical darkness appears centered on you with the following properties:

• Size: The dome has a circumference of 1/2 mile and a height of 1/2 mile.

• Area: The interior of the dome is Total Darkness (magical darkness).

• Sunlight Blocked: The dome blocks all outside sunlight and bright natural light from entering. Light sources outside the dome do not illuminate the inside.

• Light Suppression: Nonmagical light cannot illuminate the interior of the dome. Magical light can only function if it specifically states it can overcome magical darkness.

Duration: The dome lasts for 10 minutes, or until you regain at least 1 hit point, whichever happens first.

Aftershock. When the dome ends, you gain 1 level of Exhaustion.

Once Per Long Rest. Once you use this trait, you can’t do so again until you finish a Long Rest.

Crown of Twin Sleep

As an action, you erupt into a sovereign shadow state for 1 minute, gaining the following benefits:

• Eclipse Aura. A 20-foot-radius sphere of magical darkness surrounds you and moves with you, centered on you for the duration. This darkness blocks sunlight and cannot be illuminated by nonmagical light.

• Shadow Sovereignty. While in the aura, you gain resistance to radiant damage (instead of vulnerability).

• Untouchable in the Gloom. Creatures of your choice that start their turn inside the aura have disadvantage on attack rolls against you until the start of their next turn.

Once you use this trait, you can’t use it again until you finish 3 Long Rest.