Velthuryn — World Atlas

Myrrun Hollow is a living underworld, a nation grown rather than built. Hidden beneath the eastern coast where forested deltas sink into loam and root, it is a vast network of fungal caverns, spore-lit markets, and bioluminescent orchards sustained by cycles of growth, decay, and renewal. To surface dwellers, Myrrun is a rumor or a warning. To those who belong to it, the Hollow is home, memory, and nourishment intertwined.

Born from ancient covenants between peoples and the living land, Myrrun endured the Shattering not by resisting change, but by absorbing it. Resonance storms passed through root and mycelium, diffusing their force and embedding echoes into the soil itself. The Hollow remembers everything, but never all at once.

Myrrun does not conquer. It spreads.

Geography & Travel¶

Myrrun Hollow does not correspond cleanly to any single surface territory. It extends beneath river deltas, wetlands, forested basins, and lowland seams, threading through regions that appear only loosely connected aboveground. From the surface, Myrrun seems scattered and irregular. Below, it forms a continuous but uneven subsurface world, shaped by water pressure, root systems, and slow biological expansion rather than political borders.

The Hollow’s caverns are not empty voids but layered living environments, grown from petrified root-forests, hollowed stone, and vast fungal structures that function as both architecture and infrastructure. Walls breathe faintly, floors flex underfoot, and chambers expand or contract over decades in response to stress above. What appears as solid ground on the surface may conceal open volume below, while dense subsurface growth can stabilize terrain that would otherwise collapse.

Travel within the Hollow follows growthways, reinforced corridors of living mycelium cultivated to bear sustained passage. These routes are stable only so long as they are tended. They drift slowly over time, responding to water flow, nutrient shifts, and resonance pressure. Maps are not drawn but grown, propagated as spore-etched panels that must be refreshed regularly or they lose alignment with the living terrain.

Hazards are constant but rarely sudden. Spore blooms can induce shared hallucinations that blur personal memory, sink-root failures may cascade upward after heavy surface flooding, and isolated resonance pockets allow fragments of unfamiliar lives to surface without warning. In Myrrun Hollow, danger does not announce itself. It accumulates quietly, carried along the same networks that sustain the world below.---

People & Culture¶

Myrrun society is communal and cyclical. Individuals define themselves less by occupation and more by contribution to the Hollow’s balance. Roles change with the seasons, and leadership rotates based on need rather than status.

The peoples of Myrrun include Fungril colonies, Faun dreamers, Ribbet engineers, Firbolg orchard-tenders, Umbrin shadow-wrights, and Deep Dwarves who adapted their craft to living stone. Humanity and Halflingkind also dwell here, often as surface-born adoptees drawn by the Hollow’s promise of belonging.

Storytelling in Myrrun is collective. Memories are shared through spore-rituals, allowing experiences to be felt rather than merely heard. Privacy is respected, but isolation is viewed with concern.

Power & Politics¶

Governance in Myrrun is handled by the Circle of Caps, a council of representatives chosen not by vote, but by recognition. When a voice consistently speaks for the health of the Hollow, it is listened to.

Power is diffuse and situational. Authority arises where expertise meets necessity. During floods, the water-guides lead. During blight, the cultivators decide. During conflict, the watchers emerge from shadow.

External factions struggle to influence Myrrun, as control over the Hollow requires more than leverage. It requires acceptance by the living network itself.

Trade & Resources¶

Myrrun exports rare organic materials unavailable anywhere else in Velthuryn:

• Bioluminescent fungi and spores
• Living construction mycelium
• Medicinal molds and alchemical growths
• Memory-ink distilled from resonance-infused spores

Imports are minimal but intentional:

• Metals unsuitable for fungal growth
• Surface grains and preserved foods
• Crafted items requiring non-organic precision

Trade agreements with Myrrun often include clauses related to sustainability. Overharvesting is not punished by law, but by exclusion.

Faith & Folklore¶

Faith in Myrrun is inseparable from ecology. Many residents venerate the Elderseed, not as a god, but as a source of continuity whose pulse can still be felt deep within the Hollow’s root-mass.

Rituals center on cycles. Birth is celebrated with planting. Death is honored with decomposition rites that return the body to the communal growth.

A common tale warns of the White Silence, a theoretical state where growth stops entirely. Whether this is myth or prophecy is unknown, but it shapes Myrrun’s cautious relationship with stagnation.

Threats & Conflicts¶

Myrrun faces several ongoing dangers:

• Surface exploitation that damages root systems above the Hollow
• Resonance saturation that warps growth cycles
• Blights introduced by foreign spores or alchemical contamination

Internally, Myrrun wrestles with a philosophical divide. Some believe the Hollow should expand upward and outward to protect itself. Others insist that growth without consent is a betrayal of its founding covenants.

Adventure Hooks¶

• A surface settlement collapses into the Hollow, carrying with it secrets that cannot be allowed to take root.
• A shared memory ritual goes wrong, blending the pasts of dozens of participants into something unstable.
• A faction seeks to weaponize Myrrun’s living architecture, forcing the Circle of Caps to consider open resistance.
• An ancient growthway begins leading somewhere it never has before.
• The PCs are asked to escort a rare spore-cultivar to the surface, knowing it may never be brought back.