Hollow Tongues

The Hollow Tongues are a kindred of elves cursed by Aros after their ancestors attempted to cheat death — resurrecting renowned warriors after the soul had already begun its crossing into the Underworld. The curse stripped their voices from their bodies and sealed them behind a glowing keyhole at the throat, never to be spoken again in their own breath.

Once among the most respected High Elves of Avaria — masters of clerical healing, last rites, and spoken resurrection liturgy — the Hollow Tongues can no longer perform the sacred spoken spells and rituals that defined their order. After a century of absolute silence, Eriana brokered The Bonding: a sacred pact through which each elf may bind a familiar that speaks, hears thought, and shares emotion on the host's behalf. The blessing is imperfect — familiars carry desires of their own — and the curse remains for life.

Today the Hollow Tongues worship Aros in penitence, honour Eriana for mercy, train as fighters and adventurers where they once healed, and still seek a way to reverse The Hollowing without breaking the Great Cycle.

Names and spelling

Scholars and kingdom records favour Hollow Tongues (two words), matching other elven kindred labels such as Wood Elves and Ash Elves. Singular: a Hollow Tongue or Hollow Tongue elf.

Usage	Form	Notes
Common / scholarly	Hollow Tongues	Preferred in chronicle, temple law, and the Arcanum Lyceum
Self-name (formal)	The Keybound	Court-elven: those whose voice is locked; used in oaths and pilgrimage record
Self-name (devotional)	The Penitent Choir	Especially among worshippers of Aros; stresses repentance, not the curse alone
Event names	The Hollowing, The Bonding, the Silence Century	Capitalised as proper history; the century between Hollowing and Bonding
Avoid as primary	Hollowtongues, HollowTongues	Rare in Avarian print; appears in some trade manifests and foreign ledgers
Do not confuse with	The Hollow	Clerical name for Cryos's citadel in the Underworld — unrelated

Names given by other peoples

Avarians (respectful): the Keybound, Penitent Choir; (common): locked-voice elves; (slur): the Tongueless
Priests of Aros (throughout Faeloria): the Whisper-locked — ties the curse to Aros as The Whispering Wind and the Whispering Silence
Dalr and northern traders: wind-stolen, grave-cheats — death and silence are Aros-leaning domains in the north
Kokoro envoys: soul-recallers or threshold-breakers — emphasis on the original sin rather than the mark
Dwarves: stone-silent — dwarven law treats spoken oath as binding; Hollow Tongues are trusted only when a familiar speaks the words
Fae of the Moonworld: echo-wearers — one mortal life voiced through another being; some Wild Fae find the bond uncomfortably close to reflection without crossing
Humans at roadside: glass-eyed elves — reference to their crystal eyes; often ignorant of the theology

Place in the wider world

Hollow Tongues remain Sunworld mortals of the Sunworld. They are not undead, not Fae, and not exempt from Aros's domain — quite the opposite. Their story is a cautionary chapter in how divine and learned power intersect with the Law of Resonant Passage (see The Realms of Faeloria).

Orthodox teaching holds that mercy-healing and threshold anchoring — rites that hold a soul in the breath-between before Aros completes the crossing — may be performed only while the final passage has not begun. In common temple doctrine that window is brief: often said to be about a minute, though disputed High Elf texts argue for slightly longer at sites of strong ward-line. Once the soul has crossed toward the Underworld, only Aros may release it; to drag it back is to cheat the design of the Great Cycle.

The ancestors of the Hollow Tongues did exactly that — and Aros answered with silence.

Origins — the Choir of the Silver Threshold

Before The Hollowing, the order now remembered only in Keybound archives was the Choir of the Silver Threshold — a High Elf clerical fellowship centred in Lumenara, attached to temples of Ariana and Eriana. They were healers, midwives of the dying, and keepers of last rites. Kings and generals sought their counsel; the Luminary Circle regarded them as exemplary servants of life's sacred arc.

Their downfall was not cruelty but grief and pride in an age of war. In the early TRA era, as kingdoms such as Avaria rebuilt after the Faefall and border conflicts multiplied, the Choir's greatest spellwrights turned from anchoring the breath-between to Threshold Reversal — liturgy meant to recall souls that had already crossed. They raised Avaria's most renowned war-dead to fight again.

The rites drew on forbidden convergence: spoken divine petition to Eriana's renewal, structured learned formulae, and — in the oldest confessions — resonance techniques perilously close to artificial crossing, tugging at echo and remembrance to haul identity back from the road to the Deep Quiet. It worked. It also violated Aros's charge over the final passage.

The Hollowing

Aros, God of Death and The Whispering Silence, answered as his titles imply: not with thunder, but with windless quiet. He ripped the Choir's voices from their bodies and set them under lock and key at the throat — a glowing keyhole visible over the vocal cords, a mark that would never fade while they lived. Spoken prayer, sung liturgy, and the breath that carried their resurrection craft were gone in an instant.

The punishment fit the crime. Death is Aros's domain; they had used voice to steal souls back from his threshold. Without speech they could not perform their sacred healing or resurrection magic as the order had known it. Some lesser workings survived through gesture and learned sign-cant — but the highest rites of their calling required the spoken word, and those were sealed.

The event is called The Hollowing in Keybound chronicle. Temples of Aros in Avaria still read the account on The Whispering Night as a warning against cheating the Closing.

The Silence Century

For a hundred years the cursed elves lived in absolute voicelessness. Communication was gesture, chalk, and grief. Many died in despair; others were shunned as living proof that the gods could unmake a people's calling overnight. The Luminary Circle sheltered some in Lumenara; others wandered as penitents.

Eriana, Goddess of Nature and renewal, took pity on her elven children — but she could not simply undo her cousin's judgment. She negotiated with Aros.

The Bonding

The bargain Eriana struck — known as The Bonding — offered each Hollow Tongue the option (never the obligation) of a sacred binding with a familiar. Through the bond, the familiar may speak for the elf, hear surface thoughts, and feel shared emotion. The magic is gifted: a joint mercy of Eriana's living world and Aros's refusal to return what was taken.

The bond is not perfect. Familiars are creatures with desires, moods, and personalities of their own. Miscommunication and misrepresentation of the host's intent are common enough that elder Keybound teach sign language alongside familiar speech — insurance if a familiar dies, is stolen, or simply refuses a phrasing. When a Hollow Tongue speaks through the bond, the keyhole mark and crystal eyes glow with soft light.

Gratitude for Eriana's mercy did not end penitence toward Aros. The Hollow Tongues believe both truths at once.

Keyveil and modern culture

After The Bonding, the survivors founded Keyveil — an enclave in the Avarian Forest foothills between the deeper wood and the plains road toward Starryglen. Keyveil is deliberately modest: stone and timber, open-air shrines to Eriana, and a Threshold Chapel to Aros where no celebrant speaks aloud unless through a familiar or a visiting priest of the Keepers of the Threshold.

Culture among the Keybound diverged sharply from their High Elf origins:

From healers to guardians — Unable to sustain large-scale clerical healing, they became fighters, wardens, and adventurers — still serving the realm, but with blade and vigil where once they held the dying.
Dual worship — Daily repentance and quiet rites for Aros; festivals of renewal and familiar-blessing for Eriana. The Bloomtide and The Quiet Rest weigh heavily in their calendar.
Memory duty — Elders pass oral history through familiar-voice and signed cant so the young know life before The Hollowing and The Bonding.
Familiars as kin — Bonds are treated as sacred household members; to harm a familiar is a grave insult. Some familiars are beasts, others fae-touched small spirits — Eriana's domain welcomes both, within Aros's limits.
Quest for reversal — Scholarships at the Arcanum Lyceum and pilgrimages to Aros shrines seek a cure that does not break the Great Cycle — a line few dare to cross twice.

Keyveil maintains trade with Starryglen herbalists and Lumenara arms-guilds. Hollow Tongue mercenaries and tomb-wardens are sought along roads where the dead must be honoured correctly — ironically, by those who once failed to honour the crossing.

Physical characteristics

Hollow Tongues are marked by the curse and its aftermath:

A glowing keyhole over the vocal cords at the throat — the lock where voice was sealed
Crystal-glass eyes — clear, faceted, faintly luminous in low light
Porcelain-fractured skin — pale complexion with fine craquelure lines, as though baked clay had hairline cracks; more visible in strong emotion
When speaking through a familiar, eyes and keyhole glow in tandem

They otherwise resemble the High Elf bloodlines they descend from: tall bearing, long life, and the dusk-sense common to elven kindreds.

Magic

Lost — Spoken divine resurrection and the Choir's threshold-reversal liturgy; any rite requiring the host's own voice at the throat
Impaired — Most clerical healing that depends on spoken prayer; some progress through signed cant or familiar-proxy speech, but never at the old order's scale
Retained — Non-vocal learned magic where gesture and sign-cant suffice; martial training; gifted power through the familiar bond (communication, some nature-aligned workings aligned with Eriana's mercy)
Taboo — Any research into post-crossing resurrection; enforced by internal law and watched by Aros clergy

Where Hollow Tongues are found

Keyveil (primary enclave) — Avarian Forest foothills; spiritual and cultural heart
Lumenara — Penitent houses, Aros shrines, a few Lyceum scholars
Starryglen and southern Avarian roads — herbal trade, tomb-warden work
Dalr — Rare; viewed with suspicion; only the hardiest travel the mountain passes as guides or sellswords
Adventuring companies — Dispersed individuals across Faeloria seeking redemption, reversal, or simply a life that still serves

Relations

Elves — Other kindreds respect their penitence but keep polite distance; Wood Elves share sign-cant along forest roads
Humans — Mixed pity and unease; Avarian crowns have employed them as elite guards since the early TRA wars
The Luminary Circle — Complicated legacy: the Circle mourns what the Choir became, but aids Keyveil's Eriana rites
Keepers of the Threshold (Aros clergy) — Close theological ties; some Keybound join as lay penitents
Fae — Respect for Eriana's bargain; unease at familiars that sound too much like the mortal they serve

Key figures and chronology (broad)

Approx. date	Event
Early TRA	Choir of the Silver Threshold at height in Lumenara
~85 TRA	The Hollowing — Aros strips the order's voices after Threshold Reversal
85–185 TRA	The Silence Century — voiceless exile and penitence
~185 TRA	The Bonding — Eriana's familiar pact with Aros's assent
~190 TRA onward	Founding of Keyveil; shift from healers to warriors and wardens
Circa 530 TRA	Present era — quest for lawful reversal continues; population scattered but Keyveil endures