+++

The Cult of the Hollow Thorne is one of the oldest Cults of the Green Man. It has risen to great numbers recently, as the search for illumination, cure and oracular statements has increased dramatically among citizens of the Imperium. Its origination story has been lost in cult myth, but according to the fabled Grimoire Crataegus the cult was birthed in a far-flung region near the Halo Stars several Millennia ago. Its congregants, known simply as Hollowers, are hunched and crooked wayfarers draped in green garbs and lichen garlands giving them the look of verdant half-men who have walked straight out of an Imperial fable.

Hollowers are pilgrims! 

According to cult doctrine they are only allowed to walk during nighttime, their pilgrimage resembling the dark interior of a hollow tree. They walk along some of the deepest pilgrim routes traversing the underlit labyrinth of an Imperium draped in almost-darkness. They often walk in smaller congregations of a thousand pilgrims, but occasionally, larger congregations are seen gathering around ancient Hollow Thornes. Cult belief describes how Hollow Thornes were once wayside trees that stood along Imperial hollow roads when the young Prince of Imperium traversed his empire underneath their then majestic canopies ten thousand years ago. They are such potent oracles of divination, that they are now carried along in veneration along some of the deepest and oldest pilgrim routes that are stretched so thin and over such expanses through the Imperium that generations live and die as pilgrims beneath the Hollow Thornes gnarled branches.

Hollowers believe that the time is nigh, when the Emperor will be reborn as the Green Man and that his rebirth will occur through a hollow of a Hollow Thorne. As such, they all carry the cult symbol of a circle with eight pointed thorns symbolizing a hollow in the trunk of a thorny tree. Many of the cult’s augurs, chief priests who select sacred places deemed suitable for the rebirth of the Emperor, make use of geomancy, an archaic tradition of fitting particular places along the pilgrim routes into the cosmic branches of a coming verdant Imperium. Only the most pious Hollowers are blessed with the bleak task of carrying a Hollow Thorne shrine.

+++

This is my contribution to the Vastarian Invitational over at Between the Bolter and Me. Sadly, I didnt manage to paint it for the deadline on March 31st, but I wanted to share it together with the other amazing entries over at the brother Wiers site.

Not only is this a great way to give something back to the original team of the Pilgrym Game in 2016, where I met Between the Bolter and Me for the first time. There are so many similarities between the Vastarian Invitational, Iron Sleet’s current Ynqvisitor campaign and my work on expanding the Cults of the Green Man, that I can kill two sheen birds with one flect; 

Support the Inq28 community, and still be able to use the Hollow Thorne shrine as a centerpiece for my Green Man Cults and the full-scale Warhammer 40.000 war on Venus looming in the horizon.

A fun fact: I have used one of the original trees from the Botanicarium table for the Pilgrym Game. I broke the tree off, did some refitting, added bits and pieces suitable for a shrine dedicated to the Emperor Reborn, incorporated a flock of bats (they live in one of its hollows) and incorporated it to the Pontifex Zenestra Age of Sigmar model. I did the original Botanicairum table together with Jakob Rune Nielsen for the Pilgrym Game in 2016, where I also began the narrative that still haunts me; 

The story of nature and its place among humanity in the war-torn future of Warhammer 40.000…

This also means, that the tree has already been exhibited in Warhammer World and featured in White Dwarf! Things are usually the other way around, but nothing is as it seems in an Imperium where everything you have been told is a lie…

The Emperor is Dead!

Long Live the Emperor Reborn!

From Throne to Thorne! 

Green Man Cometh!