Barbatoi, the Hollowed Kin

“There is a lesson in the Barbatoi, if one dares to look. The hunger to preserve, the fear of loss, the worship of what crumbles — these are not alien impulses. Perhaps Barbalach did not create them, but only magnified what was already there: the craftsman’s terror that his work will fade, the collector’s obsession that nothing be forgotten. If so, then the Barbatoi are not demons at all, but the purest reflection of us.”
— Scholar-Magus Taren Veyne, Treatise on the Elder Compacts

Formerly: The Dwarves of Aesos
Titles: The Hollowed Kin, The Stone-Cursed, The Hoarders Beneath, The Keepers of Dust
Corrupting Demon: Barbalach, the Devouring Deep
Aspect: Greed, Preservation through Rot, the Endless Hunger of Buried Knowledge

Myth and Origin

Millennia ago, during the War of Rebellion in the Age of Origin, the Elder Races — the Elves and Dwarves, first creations of the Architect — stood at the edge of ruin. Humanity, their former servitors, had turned upon them and gained the upper hand. In desperation, the Elder Races turned to forbidden powers.

The First Demon came bearing the promise of victory — if given a foothold in the material world. To each of the Elder Races, he sent an emissary, a fragment of his vast malice. For the Dwarves, it was Barbalach, the Devouring Deep — a demon born of insatiable hunger, coveting all that lies buried and lost.

Barbalach whispered that all mastery fades, that only what is devoured endures. To feed something greater than themselves, he promised, was to become part of eternity. The Dwarves accepted the pact, believing they would gain everlasting craft and endurance. Instead, they gained eternal decay.

Barbalach carved fragments of his essence into their souls, turning endurance into stagnation, preservation into corruption. What was once flesh and craft became dust and hunger. The Dwarves were no more — in their place rose the Barbatoi, forever gnawing at the stones that birthed them.

Transformation

The change came slowly, like the collapse of a mountain over centuries. Dwarven flesh calcified, veins filled with tarry ore, bones fused with stone. Their citadels, once wonders of engineering, began to crumble from within as though eaten by invisible worms.

Sunlight scoured their bodies, splitting their skin to dust. The Barbatoi retreated deep into the roots of the world — caverns and forges now half-living extensions of themselves. There they hoard, build, and unbuild in endless repetition, their souls gnawed hollow by the same hunger that devoured Barbalach’s own heart.

They still call to the surface, but no longer in words. Only the echo of hammers and the grinding of stone answers them.

Appearance

The Barbatoi retain the stocky proportions of their dwarven ancestors but are grotesque parodies of stone and flesh. Their skin resembles cracked granite veined with amber light; flakes constantly fall, leaving trails of dust. Their eyes glow faintly like molten ore, and their beards are patchy, stiff, and dust-dry.

They wear fragments of corroded armor fused into their bodies, often adorned with bones, crystals, and tarnished gold. Their tools and weapons resemble their makers — beautiful once, now fractured and barely held together by rust and malice.

In darkness, the faint light of their fissures and eyes casts them in eerie silhouette — living statues animated by bitterness.

Abilities

Stoneflesh

The bodies of the Barbatoi are dense, brittle, and unyielding. Their skin cracks like shale but resists all ordinary harm. They move with the grinding sound of shifting rock, enduring wounds that would kill a mortal.

The Hollow Hunger

They feed on the act of possession. The more they hoard — gold, relics, secrets — the stronger they grow. Yet what they covet always decays, forcing them to seek more. Some consume dust and shattered ore to sustain themselves, crumbling further with each feeding.

Barbalach’s Whisper

The Barbatoi hear the murmur of their demon-lord through the stone itself. They can sense veins of metal, buried relics, or forgotten tombs by listening to the heartbeat of the world. When Barbalach stirs, his voice becomes a compulsion that drives entire covens to dig or destroy.

Lightless Vision

Their eyes perceive the echo of heat and the resonance of metal rather than light. In sunlight they suffer cracking and shedding of their outer stone, a slow flaying that forces them to shun the surface.

The Crumbling Gift

Entropy follows them. Structures decay, metal rusts, and living things wither where the Barbatoi dwell. They call this the Proof of the Pact, evidence that even the world itself must erode in reverence to Barbalach.

The Mark of Barbalach

Each Barbatoi bears the Hollow Brand, a fragment of Barbalach’s power etched beneath the skin — a vein of dull amber light pulsing near the heart. It spreads with age and devotion, petrifying flesh into mineral.

Those who embrace the corruption fully fracture their own Brands, causing glowing fissures to spider across their bodies. Through these cracks, the will of Barbalach seeps — guiding them, consuming them, and linking them eternally to the Charnel Deep.

When many Barbatoi gather, their Brands resonate like a living forge, a droning hum that echoes through the mountains.

Behavior and Culture

The Barbatoi inhabit the deepest caverns of the Barrier Range and beneath the mountains of Cezorus. They have rebuilt fragments of their lost citadels into necrotic under-cities of cracked stone and dying light.

Their society revolves around the Covens of Consumption, each devoted to a facet of Barbalach’s hunger:

• The Dustborn tend the dead and crumble relics to dust for ritual use.
• The Hollow Guard defend the tunnels, armor fused to their flesh.
• The Deep Forgers create weapons and idols from ore that decays as soon as it is lifted from their forges.
• The Hoard-Priests — the most corrupted — commune directly with Barbalach through molten veins known as Mawwells, feeding treasures, memories, and flesh into the molten pits that connect to the Charnel Deep.

Their culture prizes endurance and secrecy. Every stone hoarded, every relic hidden, is seen as a fragment of eternity stolen from time’s decay — though all will eventually crumble to dust.

They raid the surface rarely but violently, usually during ley surges or eclipses when the world’s boundaries thin. To them, these are sacred moments when Barbalach’s hunger may be fed directly

Religion and Doctrine — The Cult of the Hollow Stone

The Barbatoi revere Barbalach, the Devouring Deep, as both god and curse. They do not pray for salvation — they pray for continuance. Their religion is a theology of hunger, built on the belief that all things must return to the Deep and be consumed so they may persist within Barbalach’s eternal hoard.

Their sacred texts — carved into slabs of black stone known as the Tablets of Dust — proclaim that the mountain’s slow collapse is divine speech, and that decay itself is the highest act of worship.

Their rituals are ancient and terrible:

• The Mawwells: Vast molten pits said to connect to the Charnel Deep. Offerings of gold, stone, and memory are cast into them to feed Barbalach’s hunger. The Hoard-Priests claim to hear his voice echoing from the depths in return.
• The Binding of Dust: Priests forge relics by mixing their own powdered flesh with molten ore, believing this act binds them closer to the Deep.
• The Offering of Silence: Entire covens extinguish all sound and light for a lunar cycle, letting the mountain “breathe them in.” Many do not return.
• The Hollow Harvest: Once every century, during a ley surge, the Barbatoi ascend to the surface to reclaim lost relics and living captives, feeding both to their Mawwells in colossal sacrifice.

To the Barbatoi, preservation through decay is divine truth — a paradox that defines their existence. Even their prayers are whispered in reverse, as though recalling words already lost to time.

In-World Accounts

“They build as the dying breathe — in gasps and tremors, afraid the world will forget them.”
— Edrin Vale, Explorer of the Barrier Range

“If gold could scream, you’d hear it beneath the mountains.”
— Old miner’s superstition, Cezorian eastlands

“When the mountains gnaw, the Barbatoi pray.”
— Fragment recovered from the ruin of Khar Tovel

“We thought to master the stones. Instead, the stones mastered us.”
— Carved into a collapsed dwarven vault wall, translation uncertain