Under Hollow Hills

Under Hollow Hills

There is a traveling circus under the Hollow Hills.

It travels by moonlight, small wagons creaking in the night silence. It travels lost roads, where fireflies and whisps hover to watch it pass, where goblins peer down from their treebranch perches, and owls. It travels the night world and the day world, fairyland and the living earth, and places otherwise, and no border can keep it. It has mysteries to pose, drama to perform, it has music, juggling, acts of death-defying peril, pratfall comedy. It has dangerous secrets to tell.

Step up, step up. Come great, come small, come revelers all!

About the Game

In Under Hollow Hills, you play the performers, planners, and crew of a traveling circus. You’re fairies and mortal humans, of various kinds and descriptions, but one and all you’ve found your way to the circus and now you travel with it. You make your way through fairyland and the human world, performing wherever you go, in street fairs and crossroads markets, in vacant lots, fairy palaces, amphitheaters, and among the standing stones. You perform for great and small, and to you, a child’s birthday in a town park is as important as the command of the the great Crowned Heads of fairyland.

Wherever you perform, you change: you change the seasons, you change the fortunes of those you perform for, you change their hearts. You change yourselves. This is the game: we change.

Content warning: Elements of fairytale violence, horror, and sexuality. If you know your fairytales, you know we mean it.

Suitable for adults & teens.

The Playbooks

• The Boondoggle Hob: goblin kind, ringmaster, cook, and heel dragger, always there to comment upon others’ work.
• The Chieftain Mouse: mousey kind, valorous and loyal, planner and overseer of work, always there with an observation.
• The Crooked Wand: witchy kind, fortune teller and conjurer, planner and problem solver, always there with a secret to tell.
• The Crowned Stag: fairy nobility, regal and generous, ringmaster and host, always there, gorgeous and flirty.
• The Feather-Cloak: shifty kind and a bird, aerialist and tumbler, resourceful and humble, always there with advice and gossip.
• The Interloper: a human being who’s intruding into fairyland in disguise, to steal fairy treasure. You’ve taken up with the circus because you think it will lead you where treasure’s to be had.
• The Lantern Jack: pisky kind, enchanting, full of fun and malice, clown and juggler, purveyor of trinkets and refreshments, always there as a voice of reason.
• The Lostling: a human being lost or stolen into fairyland long ago. Performer, collaborator, problem solver, always there with encouragement and insight.
• The Nightmare Horse: unique and yourself, dweller in the night sky and in deep water, opener and closer of doors, star of the circus. You’re always there as a dangerous friend.
• The Seeker: a human being, come boldly into fairyland to win back something the fairies stole from you. You’ve taken up with the circus because you think it will lead you to what was taken.
• The Stick Figure: a made thing given life by magic, serious and naive, clown and worker, always there, trying to fit in.
• The Troll: powerful, undignified, and patient. Performer and spectacle, worker and problem solver, always there to lend a hand.
• The Winding Rose: flora kind, tough and beautiful with no patience for fools, performer and barker, always there with a smile and a cutting line.