You find a ruined shrine with a soul campfire burning at it, and you touch the altar. From then on, nine creepypastas hunt everyone in the world, mostly in the dark, and something tall stands at the edge of your sight and watches you kill them.
The Forsaken Altar
Every world has a Forsaken Altar, 500 to 1000 blocks from the world spawn. It always stands on open, flat, dry ground, never underground, in water or on a mountainside, and on the far side of spawn from the cathedral. Follow the blue smoke from its soul campfire.
The ruin rises around the altar once you come within about 90 blocks: broken pillars, skulls, candles, graves and splashes of blood, built from the mod's own hollow stone, ossuary bricks of bone and rotten planks. It clears every tree, bush and bump of ground in its way as it goes up.
Around it (since 1.40) stand nine pilgrim stones, each carved with the sign of one of the Nine. The pilgrims' camp is abandoned nearby, with one of their diaries, and a sealing stone by the shrine covers a stair down to the catacomb where the first pilgrims lie. It stays shut until the altar wakes. At night pilgrims kneel round the altar; come close and they fade away, and sometimes leave something behind.
Right-click the altar with an empty hand to wake it. There is no going back after that.
Read the pilgrim's diary on the lore page. Find the altar with /locate structure statichollow:forsaken_altar if you're testing with cheats on.
The nine creepypastas
Once the altar is awake the nine hunt everyone, mostly in the dark. Each one fights its own way, has its own sounds and its own death, and drops its own material, which is what the chapter's weapons and armour are made from.
| Creepypasta | What to know | Drops |
|---|---|---|
| Hollow Neighbor | Hostile to players only. Stalks you, knocks on doors, messages you in chat pretending to be a friend, and rises up behind your window to say it to your face. | Hollow Knuckle |
| Stitchjaw | Hostile to everything. Crawls flat and climbs walls. Every bite opens the wound further (Bleeding I, II, III). | Stitched Sinew |
| Weeping Shepherd | Neutral, but fights back. Weeps, stares if you stare, hunts the undead. | Shepherd's Tear |
| Lullaby Mother | Neutral by day, hostile at night. Steals villagers. Her hits can drag you into the Hollow, a sealed black room under the world, for 15 seconds. | Rusted Lullaby Key |
| Broadcast | A man with a CRT television for a head. Don't look at it (it burns) and don't touch it (it shocks). Its antennae glow green once it has seen you. | Static Shard |
| Little Lamb | A crying child that follows you. Hit it and it shows its real face. | Bloodied Wool |
| The Hymnal | Floats. Its song slows and weakens you and heals the other creepypastas. | Hymnal Page |
| The Underneath | Waits buried with only its hands showing, and breathes under your bed. | Grave Claw |
| Antlerkin | Imitates cows, pigs and sheep to lure prey, and at night it calls and runs its prey down. | Antler Shard |
Heads. The first time you kill each one, it always drops its head. After that it's a 10% chance, plus 5% a level of Looting (25% with Looting III). Only a kill by a player counts, an arrow from your bow included, and in multiplayer each player gets their own first head. You need one head from each of the nine.
Under the bed
The Underneath deserves its own warning. Once the altar is awake, about four times in ten that you lie down, and always the next time after you've heard it breathing, it comes up under your bed: three knocks under the floor, then its hands feel for the edge of the mattress. The night won't pass while it's there.
Get out of bed within about four seconds (Leave Bed) and it bursts up out of the floor to fight you. Stay, and its arms come up over you and it drags you down through the bed and eats you. In the dark you may see it waiting under a bed: two pale eyes and long fingers creeping out. It never comes in Creative or on Peaceful.
The Watcher
The Watcher never attacks. It stares, waves, points, peeks round things, crouches, and sometimes stands right behind you. It speaks after your first kill, your fifth and your ninth, and again when the Saint rises and when it falls.
you shouldn't have done that, [your name].
it was only watching you. like i do.
i'll remember this.
five.
you're counting too, aren't you [your name]?
i know where you sleep. i've known for a while.
nine.
do you know what nine heads are for?
there is a church that isn't on any map. find it. i'll be on the ceiling.
The church that isn't on any map
The church is the Cathedral of the Hollow: one per world, 500 to 1000 blocks from spawn, roughly the opposite way from the altar. It rises out of nothing once you come within about 90 blocks of where it stands, inside a walled graveyard. The Watcher hangs from the ceiling of the nave, as it said it would.
In the sanctuary is the Hollow Reliquary with nine head pedestals around it. Since 1.40 there is much more underneath: an undercroft of tombs, the priest's study, a flooded charnel pit and, at its end, the Saint's tomb, empty, its chains broken.
The Hollow Saint
Put one head from each of the nine different creepypastas on the pedestals, then right-click the reliquary with an empty hand. The summoning takes about ten seconds: a circle of runes burns open in the floor, a beam of light streams out of every head into an orb over the reliquary, and the Saint rises up out of the ground and roars with many dead voices at once.
look up. i told you i'd be here.
this is what they were all pieces of.
The full fight, its dark form and Abyssal Rupture are on the Hollow Saint's page. When it dies, the Watcher won't let it stay: its beam burns a portal to hell open under the Saint, and a huge burning hand drags it down.
you did it.
do you understand what you've done? they were keeping it in.
it was the only thing in this world bigger than me.
thank you.
i'll be seeing you. all of you. i always have.
What you can make
The nine's drops make the chapter's weapons and three armour sets. The Saint's own drops finish the job: its heart goes into the Saint's Requiem, and its shrouds upgrade the last armour set. Recipes are in the items section.
- Weapons: the Sinew Cleaver (Rend), the Antler Scythe (Reap), the Static Blade (Dead Air) and the Saint's Requiem (Last Rites), which needs the Saint's Heart.
- Armour: Stitchskin (Sewn Shut), Antlerbone (Night Hunter) and Static Mail (Dead Channel). Upgrade each Static Mail piece at a smithing table with a Saint's Shroud and a Hymnal Page to make the Saint's Vestments (Hollow Grace).
What comes next
Where the Saint fell, the floor tears open into a red wound standing up out of the ground. That is the Breach.