Tradition Book: Hollow Ones, by Angel McCoy and Tadd McDivit
The latest of the Revised Mage: the Ascension tradition books is for the non-tradition of magical goths the Hollow Ones. The book shattered a lot of preconceptions I had about the Hollow Ones, and I believe that this is for the better. To be honest, I don’t think I’ve ever known any player whose favorite Mage group was the Hollowers. I’ve met people who loved the Batini more than anything in the World of Darkness, but the Hollow Ones seemed like cosmic jokes: throwaways to give the Vampire players a way to get their goth on while playing Mage.
Let me say this right up front: the word “angst” appears only twice in the roughly 100 pages of this book, and one of those times is a reference to the character statistic from Wraith. These aren’t your parents’ goths any more. To quote the book, “The Hollow tradition is not a club; it is the Living Embodiment of Romance.”
Actually, taking this slant on the Hollowers works out fairly well. It explains why the Hollow Ones are seen as more of a quasi-tradition than a Craft. The Romantic spirit is one that naturally tries to imbue things with meaning, and that glorifies heroics. If this book has one message it is that Hollow Ones do care, but they’re given to caring more about the ideas behind things than the things themselves.
As the gothic sub culture is obsessed with appearances, it would do well to talk about the book’s artwork for a minute. Besides Christopher Shy’s cover (lovely as always), we have 4 artists for interior art. Alex Sheikman provides his usual illustrator-style monochrome pictures, and a few shaded pieces as well, which are quite lovely. Vince Locke provides many of the full-page works, heavily cross-hatched, perhaps as a reference to Edward Gorey? I really appreciated the picture that introduces chapter two, featuring a poster from the rock cello group Rasputina’s How We Quit the Forest album. Larry MacDougal’s ghostly watercolors are the perfect complement to Sheikman and Locke’s rigid forms, and Leif Jones provides some nice gothy figures, including the character template section.
The writing style caught me a little off guard. When the characters who walk readers through the Hollow tradition and its history are introduced, they are, without exception, given a paragraph of physical description. They are all lean and beautiful, sometimes in spite of themselves. Sometimes it feels like it goes a little overboard, but, I’ll give my authors the benefit of the doubt here, and assume that they were taking a little from the very literary styles that typify Romantic literature. Romantic fiction is over-the-top by nature, and taken in this light, the tone of the book can be seen as additive, rather than distracting.
Time for the meat. The book has six sections: prologue, introduction, 3 chapters, and an epilogue. The prologue’s opening fiction gives us Mark (later dubbed Mark Moon, and he seems to think the name is pretty silly too), a down-on-his-luck drifter and illustrator living in the corner of a crackhouse. It’s his birthday, and, because this is the World of Darkness, he returns home from feeling sorry for himself to discover that everybody in his room has been slaughtered. Horrors! After getting smacked around and Awakening, he is rescued by the tomboyish-in-a-hot-way Mysry.
Chapter One: The Saga is our history chapter. Unlike many traditions, the Hollow Ones don’t have much of a history before the Romantic era, so we don’t get any creation myths about the world being new and unformed, and the first goths crawling out of the primal muck, and then crawling back in because it the sun was still up. I enjoyed this chapter a good deal, with its Romantic perspective on the last 200 years. We meet fun characters: Penny Dreadful, super-goth; and Neville Sinclair Nevermore, “founder” of the Hollow Ones; and his clique. Exactly why all the elitist of the Hollowers come up to personally give Mark Moon a history lesson is quietly ignored.
We get a tour of several Hollow chantries, all but one are European, and we are introduced to the Hollow Ones’ information network, under the somewhat clumsy name “The Hollow Railroad.” The authors give us some justification for this rather unusual name, but I can’t help but wonder if there might have been some better choice that might not need as much rationalizing. In my own games, I think I’ll use “The Hollow Underground,” but perhaps that’s too cliché to publish?
Chapter Two: A Hollow Paradigm is our crunchy chapter. We get an extended blurb on Hollow philosophy from a more objective standpoint than is presented in the history chapter. Thankfully, the authors did not shy away from one of the most difficult parts of the Hollow Ones, their views on ascension. The Hollow Ones are ascension’s agnostics, unsure of whether or not it is possible, or, if it is, desirable. As Romantics, they’re around for the here and now.
There’s a look at Hollow factions and cliques. Nothing groundbreaking, but nice expositions on the groups. A short section of foci contains some very cool ideas on using tattoos for magical ends that could be ported to other traditions, too. The section on rotes has some nice ideas, particularly the section on Oneiromancy (dream magic). There are a few wonders to cap off the chapter, including a mix tape made of tass, which I thought was kind of cute.
Chapter Three: Hollow Personalities gives us stats for Neville Sinclair Nevermore, Penny Dreadful, and Nevermore’s ex-, Josepha de Esproncenda, who is ripe for falling into Quiet or turning Nephandus, or both. We get a sample all-Hollow cabal, and a “how the Hollow Ones see other supernaturals” bit, and some character templates. Some are obvious, some are welcome new spins, and one far out one, the Gemini Twins, where the character shares her avatar with her lover. I found it interesting that several of these archetypes come right out and say “if this author’s character came to life, it’d be you.” Named inspirations are: Mary Shelley, Charles Dickens, Tim Burton, Neil Gaiman, Clive Barker, and Alan Moore.
The epilogue doesn’t really tie anything up (like the original gothic novels of the Victorian era, there’s not a lot of plot here, it’s all character development), and we get a 4 page character sheet. The end.
I had a few quibbles with this book. First of all, if the Hollow Ones are supposed to be the new champions of the Romantic movements, why was there no mention made of The Sublime, which was what many European and American Romantics and Liberals went on about at great length? To be struck by the grandeur of nature and the ultimate insignificance of humanity and moved to write poetry at Mother Nature’s majesty and swoon and reach enlightenment and so-on-and-so-forth is such a definitively Romantic notion. Of course, The Sublime is a rather tricky concept to explain well, so it is possible the authors decided that there wasn’t room for it.
Secondly, I question why the authors included the rote “Being Invisible” a forces 3, mind 3 rote that, not surprisingly, makes you invisible by both bending light around you and by mentally suggesting that people look in other directions. This rote feels a little simplistic for a tradition book, which is really a flavor supplement. There isn’t even a good set up like “Many Hollow Ones were ignored as children, and ‘normal’ society only wants to look the other way when these young spooks are going bump in the night.”
Finally, many female characters are described as being “all woman,” as in being feminine. That’s an unusual phrase to hear once, let alone the three or four times it shows up during various character introductions. This is obviously just personal taste talking here, but it was a little weird to read that phrase again and again. Yes, goth is very feminine, but still.
I’m glad that the Hollow Ones finally get a book all to themselves. There’s a soft spot in my heart for goths; I wear my black eyeliner on the inside. This book finally makes me interested in seriously exploring Hollow One characters, which is exactly what a good tradition book should do.
If the writing style was an intentional reference to Victorian gothic novels, it gets a 5 for cleverness, but otherwise it would just be cheesy and get a 3. I’m not convinced either way, so I’ll give style a 4.
Substance takes a 4, too. I mentioned my big quibbles above, but this is the best thing to ever happen to the Hollow Ones. I’m glad they got their due.
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