Pridewoven:

"The wind forgets no name willingly given to it."

Among the peoples of the Hollowwind, remembrance is considered a sacred act.

The mountain paths are long and unforgiving. Seasons pass. Herds migrate. Travelers vanish into the mist. Even the greatest of beasts eventually leave only scattered bones upon the slopes.

Yet the Hollowwind teaches that a life does not end when its body returns to the earth...

It ends only when it's story is forgotten.

To honor those memories, the mountain folk craft reliquaries known as Pridewoven.

Fashioned from antler, bone, cord, feather, fur, and other offerings gathered from the wild. Each Pridewoven is woven by hand in remembrance of a life once lived. Every knot marks a memory. Every strand carries a story. Nothing is taken by force. Only what the mountain surrenders freely may be used.

Some are made to honor beloved companions. Others commemorate guardians, hunters, wanderers, or great beasts whose presence shaped the lives of those around them.
The oldest Pridewoven contain the memories of entire lineages, woven together generation after generation until the names of the individual creatures become inseparable from the story of the mountain itself.

Yet the first Pridewoven was woven for neither a hero nor a saint...

It was woven for a beast who carried himself like a lion.

Proud. Fierce. Unyielding.

His presence was felt long before he arrived and lingered long after he departed. He walked the mountain paths as though they belonged to him, and often mistook stubbornness for strength. Many who knew him saw both the greatness within him and the flaws that threatened to consume it.

Those who loved him hoped he would learn.
Some believed he would.
But not every story reaches the ending we wish for.

In time, the pride that once made him strong became the very thing that led him astray. The beast many had admired slowly became something others feared. Some turned away. Others remained, mourning the loss long before death ever came.

Yet despite everything, he was loved.

Not because he was perfect.

Not because he was blameless.

But because there had once been a time when his footsteps walked beside their own.

When he finally passed beyond the mountain mists, those who remembered him gathered what the Hollowwind surrendered freely and wove the first Pridewoven in his honor.

Not to erase his failings.

Not to rewrite his story.

Not to pretend he was something he was not.

The boar skull at its center serves as a reminder that even the proudest among us may be brought low by our own nature. That strength without wisdom may become destruction. That those we love may sometimes become strangers to us.

Yet it also reminds us that remembrance is not reserved for the innocent.

The Hollowwind carries away many things, but it cannot change what was.

The weave preserves neither hero nor monster.

Only truth.

That he was loved.

That he was lost.

And that both things remain.

When completed, a Pridewoven is often hung where the Hollowwind blows strongest. Upon cliffside shrines, ancient pines, forgotten waystones, and weathered mountain sanctuaries.
There the wind passes endlessly through the weave.

The people say it carries the memories onward.
Not away.
Onward.

For the Hollowwind claims many things, but a name remembered is never truly lost.