Static Hollow

Chapter Five - The Static

Once the Great Bloom is dead, the Flesh dies back, but the parasites are still out there.

Static Hounds

• What the parasites made of the wolves: starved to a frame, mangy, black chitin up the spine, two violet pinpricks for eyes, and a muzzle that splits open into petals round a throat of teeth.
• At night, a pack of three to five comes out of the dark behind a Pack Leader with a brood sac on its back.
• The leader comes at you head on; the rest go wide and come in from your sides and behind.
• The leader's howl breaks up into radio static: the pack runs faster and bites harder for a while, and you're left weak.
• Any of them lunges the last few blocks, and their bites open you up (Bleeding).
• Kill the leader and its sac tears open - one of them comes out - and the pack breaks and scatters, yelping.

One of Them in You

• A Parasite that holds on at the back of your neck for the whole four seconds gets in (crouch, or get hit, to tear it off first).
• Its brood grows over about three days of play, and a meter beside your hotbar fills:
  • first you're hungrier;
  • at a quarter you can feel the others - Parasites, hounds, the Hollowed and anything with a brood in it show through walls, violet - and static comes off you;
  • at two fifths you're stronger and faster;
  • at half the sac shows on your back, and it has fits - you can hardly move for a second or two;
  • at three quarters it's too big to burn out;
  • full, it bursts out of your back - 7 hearts, bleeding - and two of them come out.
• Surgical Kit: hold it to cut the brood out of yourself, or use it on someone else, or on an animal with one growing in it. It hurts. Four uses. (Shears, an iron ingot, string, paper and wool.)
• Or burn it out: stand in fire long enough to get hurt, before it's three quarters grown.

The Hollowed

• In every village, one villager isn't one any more. Its eyes are two violet pinpricks; it mutters, and what comes out is static; it watches you.
• At night, alone with you, it turns: it shakes, straightens up taller than it was, its folded arms come apart and hang to its knees, and its head splits open into four. Hurt it and it turns there and then.
• Turned, it comes for you and the rest of its village: a shriek that roots you to the spot, raking claws, and a grab - and sometimes it puts one in you.
• Killed, a parasite crawls out of its throat (unless it burnt).

Also

• The Dead Channel Helm picks them up: wearing it, the parasites' own show through walls, and the Hollowed and anything with a brood in it give off static you can see.
• Hosts crackle with static now.
• New: 2 creatures (each with its own model, animations, HD textures, shader maps and glow), the Pack Leader's coat, the Surgical Kit, 2 spawn eggs, the Brood Fit effect, 18 sounds with subtitles, a new death message, and 6 advancements: Something Inside, Cut It Out, Burn It Out, It Came Out of Me, Head of the Pack and Not One of Them.