Hollowyn
House: Nox
One of the eighteen locked family surnames assigned by the Archive on Varuna at first activation.
Notes on the name
What is empty and therefore unfilled. The Nox virtue named.
In the genetic structure
One of three families within Nox. The eighteen-family system is the Archive's optimisation of the founding 60,000 colonist population. Three genetically distinct groupings per house, 18 total across the system. Cross-house pairings recommended by the Archive keep the broader gene pool varied across generations.
Character of the line
Hollowyn was the Nox virtue named, the line of what is empty and therefore unfilled, the family that carried the house's deepest commitment to the unseen as a value rather than a tactic. Where Umberlin acted and Vesper closed, Hollowyn held the principle itself, that silence is the natural state and that to be seen is the only real loss.
The temperament was restraint carried to its quietest extreme. A Hollowyn treated the absence of a signature as the highest form of work and contempt for the loud as a thing to be guarded against in oneself as much as exercised against others. Of the three lines it was the one most at home in the space where nothing could be pointed to, the family that understood the work was entirely in choosing when to strike and when to stay still, and that the best outcome left no moment anyone could name.
Related
- nox (house)
- the-archive-institution