“There is a line between us and them. Across that line is the Spear, keeping them away from us. Protecting the sacred from the profane. Defending right and killing wrong. The world is trying to swallow you and those you care about, but it’ll have to get through you first.”

The Spear is, in all likelihood, the oldest human-made weapon in existence. It’s archaic and unfashionable, but it doesn’t mind. The Spear predates machines, structures, clothing, the written word, language, and numeracy. It will be here long after the cities have crumbled to dust and the last bullet has been fired.

The Spear’s a tool of control, and its uses in a Hunt reflect that. The Spear’s core ability is keeping an Entity at bay: at the cost of some of the wielder’s own Resolve, they can reduce the amount of Threat on the combat grid. That denies an Entity crucial Interrupt actions and prevents it adding extra damage to its attacks.

The Spear can be Light (making you faster), Long (better at keeping Entities at arm’s length, distracting, and harrying them), or Heavy (dealing more damage). Whatever form it takes, a lot of the Spear’s early abilities are Threat control: move Threat from one area, remove it entirely, or attack with Advantage when you’re the centre of the Entity’s attention. 

At Tier 2, you can throw yourself in front of allies to protect them or dig in alongside them and grant Terrain tags. Your control of the battlefield increases: reposition your allies or drive the Entity off and prevent them making Interrupt or Reposition actions. By the time you reach Tier 3, the battlefield is your home and the Entity’s an outsider. Prevent it from spending Threat to hurt you, or force it to counterattack you - which only makes you stronger. 

The Spear knows that the home – the hearth, the space you claim as your own – is sacred, and it wants to help you keep it sacred by ensuring the profane (which is to say, anything you don’t like,) is excluded by force. To breach the sacred is unthinkable, and anyone who would consider it must be destroyed.

“Home” is a malleable concept. It can mean one’s house, church, town, or kingdom – or an entire plane of reality besieged by parasite godlings. It always means that anything the Spear does is defence, no matter how pre-emptive it might seem or if it has to be carried over borders and jammed in some poor bastard’s guts to do it.

The Spear is a simple Weapon, and its lies are different to the ones the other Weapons tell. It tells you it can protect you and those you value. That it can help you control them. (They owe you their lives, after all.) It brags of sole mastery over its domain – of permissions granted and contracts bestowed, of sworn oaths and kind allowances – but dreads the day that its power is found wanting and those under its protection are killed, or worse, decide to leave before it is ready to let them go.

That’s the truth of the Spear: it keeps enemies out. It can’t keep allies in.

The Staff is of the old blood. It is steeped in old magic: gore and gristle, stone and stars, root and bone. It is the herald of old gods, long-slumbering, now awakened. It is the first and greatest tool designed by humans, and the lever upon which they lean to exert their will on the world.

The Staff changes the world around it. In game terms, it’s really good at manipulating terrain. It gives its wielder access to a special type of terrain, the Briar token, that many of the Staff’s abilities utilise.

Even at Tier 1, the Staff’s abilities indicate power in excess; unnatural vigour and overflowing power. Hunters with Briar get a screen of living plants that reduces Threat, are infused with will and energy (Resolve) at the cost of a little health (Wounds), or can draw strength from the Briar to boost their attacks. Not all the Staff’s powers are linked to Briar, though. You can destroy terrain to replenish your health, or restore others’ Resolve from the overspill of power when you miss with an attack.

At Tier 2, you can travel to wherever your Briar is (an excellent trick for Book and Staff wielding healers), change your Staff’s form, create a simulacrum of a useful piece of equipment, or manipulate your Briar to make an extra attack in your turn. By Tier 3, you’re the ultimate master of the land. You can sacrifice terrain, including your Briar, to resurrect a dead or dying Hunter or deal massive damage to an Entity.

The Staff knows that humans, for all their ingenuity, are nothing but meat. Meat rots away, but symbols endure far beyond the reach of the most powerful. Some meat is lucky enough to bear those symbols and carry them onwards to the future – a small link in a chain that extends back before the dawn of history.

No Weapon’s relationship with its wielders is more fraught and fragile than that of the Staff; it rides a razor-edge balance of abuse and reward, hoping to keep those it ensnares enticed by the promise of power.

It knows it’s lying. The Staff is useless without a hand to hold it. It is entirely reliant on humans – it wouldn’t exist without them – but it postures and pontificates and spins tales of ancient power, of unknowable secrets buried in the mouldering tears between worlds, of its absolute majesty and the artless grasping hands that sully its surface. 

The Staff’s secret truth is this: the world is not as complex and mysterious as it makes it out to be; it just needs you to believe that it is.

The rifle is modernity, and modernity is calm and orderly. No swirling melee, no barbaric brawling, but a measured march towards victory. The Rifle bides its time, and when it acts, it does so decisively, precisely, and professionally.

The Rifle kills at range. It does so without mess or fuss. A Rifle wielder never needs to look their victim in the eye or hear their final scream. 

Whether it’s repeating, high-calibre, or scoped – high capacity, high damage, or geared for sniping – the Rifle’s core ability is the same. It lets its user Focus more closely than any other Hunter. Most Hunters can get one Focus token, which they can spend to get advantage on a roll. Rifle users can have up to five Focus, and they have more options for using it: they can avoid harm, deal extra damage, make more manoeuvres, or claim terrain. Rifle users also gain Focus more easily, creating a satisfying game loop that allows a Hunter to spend a couple of turns setting up, then make one devastating, battle-defining shot.

The Rifle rewards positioning and patience. Pin down an Entity with covering fire to cancel its manoeuvre, find cover and use it to avoid deadly attacks, or simply fall back on training and attitude to keep doing what you were made to do – firing shot after predictable, repeatable shot. 

At Tier 3, the Rifle user’s Focus boosts Sharp, their attack stat, and grants them an extra attack. That’s what training gets you. You’re a reliable, professional killing machine.

The Rifle conquered the world. When the dominion of the Isles was at its height, it was at the heart of every conquering force: trade and diplomacy may be what cements an empire in place, but violence digs the foundations. 

But one Rifle doesn’t win a war; ten thousand Rifles do. To deliver ten thousand Rifles - and the ammunition needed to fire them, and the tools to maintain them, and the spare parts to swap out during a campaign, and the soldiers to carry them - you need infrastructure. You need steel refineries and weapons manufacturers and cargo ships and iron ore mines and anti-union laws and strikebreakers and vassal nations and bloodlines and flags and the continual threat, whether implied or explicit, of absolute violence against those who disagree with you. You need civilization.

The Rifle is but the foremost, sharpest point of the grand machine that was the Empire.

The Rifle tells you: you are untouchable, unimpeachable, unflappable. You can do whatever you want because you are in charge and whatever you want is the right thing to do. You’re the conquering army. You’re the state. You’re the rules. You’re the boys’ club, the back-room deal, the secret handshake. You cannot be stopped.

But the Rifle knows, deep down, that it’s nothing alone, without the great machine of Empire to support it. Without bullets and production lines and foundries it’s just dead weight to carry around – an obligation you’ve brought upon yourself that you’re too proud to forsake. 

That’s the Rifle’s secret and its truth: if left alone and told to manifest its destiny, it’s dead in the water.

“It doesn’t matter how you feel, what you do, or who you are. What matters is what people think of you – and people think you’re great. You’ve made it. You’re a success. The world lays down a constant assault but you stand alone and unbroken against it all.

Why shouldn’t they be impressed? When the storm rolls in, why shouldn’t they take shelter behind you? Perhaps they would rather die alone and exposed; so be it.”

Since the moment humans discovered they could wield tools with which to hurt each other, they’ve sought ways to avoid being hurt. The Armour started out as animal pelts, thick furs layered over soft, vulnerable skin. It’s come a long way since then. 

Armour is polished steel, layered silk, lacquered wood and hardened leather. Armour is as much the filigree and flash as it is a physical barrier. It’s expensive. If it’s not, it’s not Armour – it’s just safety equipment.

Armour in most TTRPGs is purely for defence. Not in Hollows. You can do a lot of damage to someone with an armoured fist. Even so, most of the Armour’s abilities are protective. They allow the wearer to weather blows that would fell other Hunters and – very much in line with the Armour’s arrogant belief that it’s the shield behind which others cower – set up bulwarks to defend allies.

Armour takes many forms. Metal, which predictably reduces Wound damage; Hide, which turns aside the glancing blows of Resolve damage; and Silk, which offers an Armour build based on the Quick stat, and allows you to become Ready when you move or defend. (Aside: everyone should try running around in Silk Armour with a Knife at least once. Sickening.)

The Armour’s abilities are based around the wearer’s status as Ready – on guard, prepared to turn aside a blow – or not. At Tier 1, when you’re Ready you’ll reduce or ignore Wounds, or take them so your allies don’t. Alternatively, you can use your Ready status to command your Allies, granting them extra manoeuvres if they listen to you and fall in line.

At Tier 2, you’ll shrug off killing blows, make counterattacks, and throw yourself into the Entity’s jaws to deny your companions the glory of suffering. At Tier 3, every use of Ready gives you an extra attack. By that stage, you can choose to always use your Hard stat for defence, which makes it really easy to push one stat to its maximum and become almost impossible to harm.

The Armour is a message, turning the wearer into a beacon of security and prosperity. The Armour says: you’ve made it, and it wants others to hear.

The Armour wants you to understand that what people think of you is infinitely more important than what you do or who you are. Honesty, integrity, and earnestness are all well and good but they’re useless compared to letting others bask in your glory. Everyone else is looking blindly for the answers to questions they don’t even know how to ask, but you can show them the way.

The Armour’s favourite lie is of the self-made man – that the bearer did it all themselves, that they had no unfair advantages on their path to success, and that similar outcomes are available to anyone with enough gumption. It laughs at the thought that anyone helped them get to the top. It despises the idea of luck. You don’t need luck when you’re this good. 

The Armour knows it’s lying, and it’s doing it to cover the real truth: each time you drown out the weak part of you inside, what little humanity remains is made smaller and weaker, until you’re left strange and empty, and only the image of the Armour remains.

The Book is the latest form of an ancient concept – knowledge, embodied, that can be shared or jealously hoarded. What is now paper and ink was once chiselled tablets of stone or rich pigment daubed across the walls of firelit caves. It sees the world not as a chaotic mess, but instead a series of rules which can be manipulated to its advantage.

Absolute truth is not only possible but extant, and it lies within the pages of the Book. Where others stumble around in darkness, you have the intellect and the determination to pierce the veil of ignorance and see the world for what it really is.

The Book deals in control. It makes the rules and others abide by them. It doesn’t do its own dirty work; it’s above that. The Book is the first Weapon we’ll look at that isn’t primarily geared around dealing damage. 

An individual Book takes one of three forms: Sacred, Profane, or Eldritch. Those who read from Sacred books inspire their allies, restoring their Resolve. Eldritch Book wielders strike fear even into Entities’ maniac hearts. The secrets in the Profane Book make for viciously painful attacks. 

Whatever form a Book takes, its wielder has access to the same wide range of abilities. At Tier 1, they split into three groups. You can Leash or Ward, punishing the Entity for acting against you. You can lead your allies from behind when you Spur them to action, granting them advantage or rerolls, or Brand the Entity, marking a target for your friends. Once you’ve built up a few abilities Witness, which allows you to Focus when you miss with an attack, starts a cascade of free actions that mean a Book wielder’s missed attack empowers their allies. Alternatively, you can take Remake and speak your injured companions’ bones back into place. 

Tier 2 abilities build on this control, making the Book wielder more effective, close to indomitable. Tier 3 goes further: take ownership of the battlefield and deny an Entity its ability to place Threat – limiting its attack and banning interrupt actions – and reject death itself, bringing your companions back from the dead with a well chosen word. 

When you impose structure on the world around you, you give it a form pleasing to your eye. You create species and periodic tables, constellations and countries, ethnicities and social classes, heretics and saints. Everything you see is yours to control and order with you, bright and brilliant as the sun, at the centre. The book is enlightenment and, as students of history might recognise, Enlightenment, which is closely tied to imperialism. If the Sword and the Rifle built the Isles’ empire, the Book mandated it. 

The Book’s violence is more subtle than that of its companions in the Weapons’ bloodstained pantheon. Every Weapon is a tool through which humans impose their will upon the world, and where the others do so directly with fire and iron, the Book holds itself above such base matters. Violence is not only the crack of bone and tang of blood; pure violence, unsullied by the sweat and pain of the melee, is the subjugation of that which you deem to be beneath you. The Book knows that everything is beneath it.

These are the lies the Book tells to preserve its own importance. Deep down, it knows that  from the moment its final page is written, any insight it offers becomes less relevant. Contexts shift and erode. Touchstones crumble, idioms invert themselves, and audiences die out.

That’s the truth the Book doesn’t want you to know: it’s only true as long as you believe it. The moment you reject it, it crumbles to dust.