Hk Enemy Randomizers Can Be The Craziest Things Ever. You Could Be Fighting For Dear Life Trying To March

doodles to honour my sufferings in the 5th pantheon

finally beat it and got those sweet 100% achievements

The Pale King and The Radiance have so many parallels oh my God-

You don't get it the more I think about it the more these two are literally the same goddamn character in different circumstances and I'm about to list the reasons I know this.

1. Light

Ok let's get the obvious out of the way. Both the Pale King and The Radiance are described as "a light" by the seer, which already implies a connection. (Terms like The Old Light for Radiance and Beacon for Pale King allude to this as well) This could be a physical thing, but it also alludes to the type of power these two hold: both of them are capable of affecting bugs' consciousness.

The Pale King gave them sentience and The Radiance made the Infection. It's unknown whether the Moth Tribe had sentience before the Pale King but considering they were able to harness Essence for themselves it seems likely. Either way the Radiance probably gave them some kind of consciousness before the Pale King showed up.

2. "No Cost Too Great"

Ok so PK may have been the one to say the famous line but it 100% applies to The Radiance as well. Her one motivation is to be remembered, presumably out of self-preservation. To accomplish this she entered bugs' dreams and placed them under a hivemind. Not something we'd call ethical, but hey, neither is killing thousands of your own children to find one with no mind and seal it in a temple.

If we interpret Pale King's intentions as wanting to preserve his kingdom as opposed to keeping more bugs from being infected then he also falls into a similar mentality.

Hollow Knight's biggest theme in general is "all things must come to an end eventually", and The Radiance and the Pale King both cause suffering trying to counter that. One wanting to preserve her memory, the other his kingdom.

3. Overanalyzing their designs

The fuckin horn thingies

Both of these headpieces look like crowns for obvious reasons, but The Radiance's "crown" is a lot smaller, alluding to her status as a fallen deity. (This doesn't mean anything in-universe since thanks to the statue in Crystal Peaks we know she always looked like this, but it's an interesting design choice)

If you wanna look deeper the colors between their eyes and face are inverted

PK gives bugs a mind. Radiance takes it away. They have the same goal and the same power but do the exact opposite. So while PK has a lighter face and darker eyes Radi has a darker face and lighter eyes. This is something they share with the bugs whose minds they've altered; conscious bugs have dark eyes while infected bugs have orange pupils.

I know these details were probably not that deep upon conception but on the off chance they were I wanted to bring them up because they cool.

Anyway in conclusion we have

Similar mind powers

Similar symbolism

Similar desires

Similar "ends justify the means" mentality

We don't get much in the way of actual characterization since we only get like 4 lines out of each of them but their motives and actions seem too similar to not notice.

You know what I always considered a really weird detail about the Pure Vessel's cut Dream Nail Dialog?

"Do not think, do not speak, do not hope, do not..."

"Do not speak"

Why? Why 'speak'? Why that word, specifically?

"Because it references back to the "No mind to think no will to break, no voice to cry suffering" thing, duh.

Well, yes.

But the other two parts of PV's DN dialog directly contradicts two of the requirements the King gave for a "Pure Vessel" -

Hollow CAN think; the dialog itself is proof of that.

And Hollow, by the very fact that they need to tell themselves NOT to hope, suggested that they did have some sort of hope they were attempting not to experience. To hope is to have a will for something, a desire, a wish. A will that the Radiance HAD broken to infect them.

So that just leaves us with "Do not Speak" and "No Voice to Cry Suffering"...

And if Hollow has a mind and a will...

Do they also possess a voice as well?

Why else would the word "Speak" be used as the direct contradiction for "No Voice"? Why else would the Pure Vessel need to remind themselves to not speak?

It makes me wonder if the King was wrong about even that aspect of the Vessel(s).

And the other thing that I find interesting: What is the Pure Vessel refraining themselves from saying? What do they want to say that they aren't allowing themselves to?

Just some food for thought

Hk doodles

My personal hc about the Sanctums - both this and Stone one, is that they used to be hospitals. I also think snails' mounds were also some kind of clinics but not nearly as large. With Soul Sanctum, I think it was also some kind of medical university, mostly regarding the uses of the soul (hence the name), which requires to it to be not only a healing item but also a weapon to help fighting off harmful microorganisms.

The Soul Master. Well, firstly, I hc him to be a brother to Sprint Master and Dash Master. During his youth he's been called Jump Master. I also hc No-Eyes to be their sister, called Float Master. Don't think those were their actual names, though. I hc that they were all children of the Stone Sanctum leader, who tended to those coming through the Pilgrim Way - a pretty dangerous place for most Hallownest bugs. No-Eyes inherited it because she was the eldest and most skilled - mentally and physically.

The future Soul Master went to the capital, hoping to achieve even greater things at a Soul Sanctum. Which he did. He quickly became the star student, capturing the attention of the current leader, who later made him his right hand. Since that leader didn't have any heirs - non of their children ever showed interest in medicine, it wasn't too hard for SM to take the place of a leader after their retirement.

I personally hc SM to be not too bad of a person before the Infection. I imagine him to be very ambitious, slightly pomptious and arrogant, but also sincerelly caring towards the patients, of both - higher and lower birth. I hc him, Monomon and Lurien to be in a pretty good relationship with one another.

When the infection had stricken he was in a panic. He even begged the King to help him with researches by supplying the Sanctum with more soul, since the King is a pale being. However the Wyrm forsaw the massacre SM will commit without seeing the reasons and asumed this to happen as a result of him oblidging. Not only he denied the SM's request but strictly forbade him to attempt any research regarding the cure and just perform palliative care to all of the infected. That cause SM to start resenting the King. He asumed the only reason of his refusal was the arrogance and jealousy towards the mortal. This resentment only grew worse when his sister has met her tragic demise because of the infection (points at No-Eyes' backstory). The Lurien, as usual, fully supported the King, which really soured the relationship between him and SM. Also I hc that after the whole vessel plan was fullfilled, despite being in peace about the Infection (not for long as we know) SM felt a little insulted that the King didn't even thought to offer him to becomes a Dreamer, but making a Beast of Deepnest to be one (classical bug racism).

I imagine SM becoming the selfish, hubristic, mad scientist we see him as, during the second wave of the infection. The same wave that caused the King to hide and the Kingdom to fall. No longer does he care about the well-being of his patients, especially those of a lower birth. He only uses them as tools to prolong his and his coleagues' existence. And no longer does he care about the infection. He only considers it as another tool, while we know it was entirely other way around.

Soul Sanctum. What are y'all's thoughts, impressions, and/or headcanons about the place and the bugs within?

Hi hello I have been very obsessed about your concept of territorial gods lately. How far must two (or more) gods' domains/territories overlap in order to actively cause conflict, or at least activate their territorial tendencies?

Heyo, glad to hear that you're stuck with the same brainrot that I gave myself!! The answer here is a mix of two things: personal animosity (ie, Radiance vs Unn), and niche overlap. I tend to take a very biological/ecological role to the gods of Hollow Knight because it's incredibly fun to me, but also because there is a small nugget of merit in the game itself- the major conflict is between two gods of Light, with a minor background turf war happening between Unn and the White Lady, two gods of greenery. In these cases, land = resources such as the density of worshipers, which is important because to an ascended god, receiving tribute is what sustains them and grants them their power + longevity. Essentially, worship = food, so being possessive over the source of your food is what leads to territoriality.

For the Pale King and the Radiance, both gods of Light, whose followers worshiped them as the source of said light, this means that they shared the same religious niche as each other and thus were incapable of coexisting. If a bug prays to the Light, they could mean either the Old Light or the New, so a previously-steady source of worship turned to something more capricious, even though they differ slightly (PK is the moon, Radi is the sun). Neither can or want to share. That's why PK converted the moths to worshiping him even though the territory he physically claimed was below the Radiance's and the people that he came to primarily rule over were the beetle tribe, rather than the moths- he needed to eliminate his competition by weakening her source of power. The ceding of Crystal Peak to Hallownest was something that happened incidentally, but was necessary to fully remove the Radiance from her seat of power and thus eliminate her as competition.

(That's also why I don't believe that the diminished Moth Tribe we see in-game is because of him- that would have been shooting himself in the foot. If worship is what sustains a god, then why willingly destroy your livestock? Radiance seems to have done it out of spite, but that's because the Radiance herself is a very spiteful individual, whereas the Pale King was cold and calculating.)

For Unn and the White Lady, I see it more as a primary vs secondary succession takeover, a ceding of old territory to a new, more powerful god (albeit unwillingly). Both are gods of greenery, but Unn is old and fading, and the White Lady is...well, not exactly new and spry, but she certainly doesn't seem diminished, not by anything other than her grief. They are both nature gods, but there's a slight bit more difference between their realms in that Unn is a god of moss (nonvascular plants) whereas WL is known by the Root, aka vascular plants. That's kind of why I see the White Lady encroaching onto Greenpath as a secondary succession sort of deal- in my headcanon for Hallownest, the first god was the original Shade Lord (or the Void itself, rather), and the caverns themselves were full of the Void Sea. Then, over time, the Sea slowly receded to the Abyss- helped in part by the arrival of the Radiance- and left bare rock caverns behind. Unn took advantage of this bare space to create the Mosskin and start converting the bare rock to verdant greenery via her moss (much like how mosses and lichens irl colonize and break down bare rock for minerals), and then the accumulation of sediment from her centuries as a god allowed for WL and her rooted plants to take hold and start colonizing the space in turn.

As for the Radiance and the Shade Lord- that came about partially because they are fundamental opposites, and partially because the Radiance herself is a very offense-heavy person by nature, as we see from her relentless attacks and willingness to throw hands (lasers?) in-game. Rather than squabbling over resources with another god, like she did with PK, the Void was a threat, a predator of sorts, so she had it and its followers eliminated. Crystal Peaks is as far from the Abyss as physically possible, and the moths seem to have stuck to the surface or near-surface of the caverns, but the mere prescence of the Void itself was enough to threaten her, so burned it away and slaughtered any and all who refused to either swear fealty to her, or continued to worship it. That's why there's so few traces of the Void civilization left, and why the Snail Shamans (who have a connection to void magic) are mostly hidden away, and why the place you can get the Abyss Shriek is full of their carvings + the dreamnail dialogue Our voices will cry out again. She saw a predator near her nest, and so she preemptively destroyed it. Justified, I suppose, but uh, not to that extent.)

(PK clearly didn't have the exact same reservations as the Radiance did, but then again, Soul is not the antithesis to Void the way that Essence seems to be- probably bc of the moon metaphor going on with him vs the Sun vs the Night one that Radi and the vessels have. He can work with the Void, even if its dangerous to him. Though I shall also make the case for him having a scientific curiosity for it which affected how he interacted with it.)

All of these reasons are also why PK and WL can coexist peacefully too- PK is a God of Light and Mind, WL is a God of Root and Life. Their aspects and realms of worship don't conflict with each other- they coexist. So a mutualistic relationship is not only possible, it's beneficial, and that indeed seems to be why they thrived so well pre-fall. It's also why Hallownest (as in, the Hallownest that the Beetle Tribe claimed) was also so big- because those were the territories of two gods merged and working in tandem, rather than guard what they had alone. It's also why other Higher Beings could exist next to PK with relatively little conflict, since he had no interest in their worshipers and they wanted nothing to do with his- though WL ofc had some contesting with Unn.

I will say that in my hcs as well, unascended wyrms are the exception to all of this- they are incredibly territorial because their massive ever-growing bodies are nutrient sinks on both the mortal and spiritual plane. That's why they're incredibly violent interritory altercations, despite the rule of thumb for pretty much all living things being a conflict-avoidance policy if possible: territory wars and/or mating events can also double as a massive food source if they can kill the other god, so fights often rapidly escalate to the death with them because if they can't win a territory, then hey, might as well raid the coop while at it. This isn't something of 100% certainty because if a fight turns bad for them then they WILL disengage to conserve energy (and they usually do their damned best to avoid other wyrms in general), but that isn't something you want to risk. I hc that PK arriving to Hallownest raised a whole bunch of alarm bells in the residant gods up until he killed himself to be reborn anew, which was such an un-wyrmly move that it settled everyone's hackles back down again (bar for Radi, but she never would have been able to coexist with him anyways). And then PK giving up his wyrm form meant that he didn't need to eat practically at all on top of the energy gains he got from worship, so that saved everyone a lot of trouble too.

Oouuuggghhh I can't sleep, incoherent ramble time:

Why is the Knight/Ghost so tiny in comparison to their siblings? The Hollow Knight is goddamn huge, and even the Broken Vessel is a fair bit taller than Ghost.

But like, Ghost is the same age as the Hollow Knight. Why 'n how are they so different? Like, at first I was thinking maybe it had something to do with the way the Pale King brought up THK. Cultivating THK's power or something, I dunno. But then I gotta wonder, what's up with BV? We don't really know why it's outside the Abyss; whether it's another escapee like Ghost - in which case, it would've grown to that size on its own - or they were let out of the Abyss as a potential candidate for containing the Radiance - in which case, the growth again could've been due to the Pale King giving them protein shakes or whatever. They still have a rounded face, similar to Ghost, so I guess you could say it didn't finish growing up - whether being unable to survive on their own or being killed purposefully for not being hollow.

But also, like, we see other Vessels out and about in Hallownest. Again, never made clear if they escaped on their own or were let out. But they generally seem pretty close to Ghost in terms of size. I think maybe some are slightly bigger? I'd have to look again, it's been a while. So, who knows why they're all the sizes they are.

I guess, the only other thought I had was, if you want to go with "all Vessels can get that big even without PK's help" is that maybe Ghost was dormant or something. We don't know much about what they were up to before the game started. Just that it was somewhere outside Hallownest. Maybe Ghost just took a really long nap, and after waking up, made its way back to Hallownest. Ghost didn't get big, since it wasn't eating or fighting or anything. Just conserving their energy. I rly dunno.

The Hollow Knight people

Quirrel…I miss him

he's got two hats now (ghost is very impressed that he's not been explode-ified yet) :)