Duskgloaming Hollow
by OneEyedZealThis hsiao stronghold rises in the southeastern foothills of the Wendarian Range, within lands technically claimed by the Principalities of Glantri but in a practical sense unsettled wilderness. To the casual eye, it appears to be nothing more than an especially dense and tangled copse of old-growth pine, nestled into the valley cleft between a pair of small but fast-running mountain streams that join together and then flow away to the south.
Forcing one’s way into Duskgloaming Hollow on foot is both difficult and hazardous. The trees are thick and sturdy, and what little ground is between their trunks is veritably choked with all sorts of brambles, clinging vines, poison weeds, muck and mire, and similar unpleasantness. Biting insects, giant rats and other vermin are commonplace and will hazard any trespasser. Flying above Duskgloaming Hollow is similarly perilous. The trees’ top canopy is thick and impenetrable, and the winds above them are strong, ceaseless and constantly shifting. If a flyer lingers too long overhead, stinging hail or ball lightning may even coalesce to attack them. The only safe way into Duskgloaming Hollow is to fly low, beneath the tree canopy. Even this is not really straightforward, as the only sure routes involve a mix of gliding through clearings, hopping along larger branches, and slipping between gaps in the upper foliage. Sigils marking the quickest path are marked with a special sort of faerie fire that glows a deep purple to a hsaio, but is outside the visible spectrum entirely for most other creatures.
The center of Duskgloaming Hollow, behind the outer defenses, is much more open and hospitable. Several dozen mature and mighty trees are widely spaced throughout an area roughly a quarter of a mile across, as carefully cultivated as any elvenhome. Personal and group nests, meditation nooks, library and scribal cubbies and more are nestled among the trees’ limbs or within hollows in their trunks. Pens and burrows for small rodents (kept by the hsaio in much the same way that humans might keep herd animals) are nestled against the trees’ roots. The interior maintains a constant dim twilight, shielded from noonday brightness by the thick branches overhead and lit from below by carefully-cultivated bioluminescent fungi at night.
Joyous Diligence is the only living fledgling of Duskgloaming Hollow’s current matriarch, and thus the stronghold’s heir presumptive. They have a history of zealous and sometimes brutal hunts of rogue vampires and lesser undead on the borders of the Boldavian baronies further west. Recent years have seen such escapades sharply curtailed in favor of more local stewardship work, but a few of Duskgloaming Hollow’s elders worry that Joyous Diligence may merely be faking their change of heart, in order to assure their inheritance. These elders might seek to retain outside assistance to look for evidence that Joyous Diligence might restart their crusades once more after ascending to rule over the stronghold in their own right.
‘Nunkle’ Horgsson is the head of an extended halfling family that sought sanctuary at Duskgloaming Hollow during the Glantrian Years of Infamy, and has remained in residence as servants ever since. Horgsson privately believes that staying at Duskgloaming Hollow has been on balance bad for his family, isolating them from the wider world and smothering their potential. He is surreptitiously looking for some way of contacting halfling clans abroad, either to get help in revitalizing his family’s fortunes or in arranging an outright emigration if necessary.
Exuberant Sagacity is the chief librarian and archivist in residence for Duskgloaming Hollow, and is an enthusiastic collector of any text detailing Glantrian history and culture. Not all of her acquisitions over the years have been entirely discreet, and as a consequence there are more than a couple Glantrian sages and scholars who wonder where a particular rare tome or manuscript has disappeared to. None of them directly suspect Exuberant Sagacity or the hsaio of Duskgloaming Hollow... yet.