#Vessel Group includes the Deepnest Vessels

[illmoraineakoi]

So I had a funny idea the other day, and I thought you'd all enjoy it

(Read More bc this this is long)

The Abyss is canonically not as air-tight as PK thought it was, and I personally headcanon the Vessels as having a craving/obsession/hunger for light (specifically the Radiance's; they recognize pale light as “their own”.)

What if PK was minding his business one day, and just stumbles across a Vessel that's infiltrated his Palace? And he's like “Where the HELL did you come from?!” Like he legit double-checks that the door is still sealed. It is. And he’s just so Confused.

And now he's just got this second Vessel that's randomly shown up. That he has no idea what to do with. He only needed one, they're meant to be tools, but at the same time, he can't quite forget the fact that these were supposed to be his children. He can't quite bring himself to just get rid of it, even if it doesn't have a purpose.

He ends up just sitting on the issue, trying to think of a 'solution'. It's fine, it's not even really that big of a deal. It's just one extra Vessel. He’ll figure out a use for it eventually.

A few days later, he walks past both Vessels in the hall – only to stumble a step because "Wait a moment – those aren't the right horns!" And sure enough, he double-takes, and they're not. They're completely unfamiliar. These are two new Vessels.

He's so flabbergasted he actually tries to ask where they came from. And of course they just stare at him. He's so confused.

He's even more at a loss for what to do with them. It's getting hard to even remember to double check if the Vessel he's interacting with is the Pure one. He's stressing out about already accidentally fucking up their ‘hollowness’.

It just keeps happening. The White Lady corners him with a very disapproving look on her face, going "Did you forget to tell me something, my beloved?" while pulling out a Vessel from her robes. Herrah arrives unannounced and plops one on his desk, “I think you’ve lost something, Wyrm. Keep your cursed spawn out of my tunnels.” Ogrim and Isma attempt to stealthily deposit two of them in the ‘Vessel Room’ without him noticing, but the seal work on the door was designed to alert him every time a Vessel left or entered. He doesn’t even ask where they found them, he just looks at them with resigned acceptance and shuffles them into the room.

When Lurrien arrives for his bimonthly meeting to discuss the growing infection rates with a cracked mask and heavily bandaged hands, a tall tri-horned Vessel absolutely seething in a tight bundle of rope, the King honestly just wants to lay down in a ditch at this point. He can't figure out where they're coming from. He doesn't know WHY they're coming to the Palace.

He didn't even think this many had survived.

And he still doesn't know what to do with them all, aside from shoving them into the “Vessel Room”. It takes so much of his concentration just to try to keep them occupied or distracted with something, because if they aren't, they turn to the rest of the Palace, and they are somehow even more of a chaotic nuisance than Hornet was. Nothing was safe; if it existed, a Vessel was going to find it and get into it. And potentially steal it, he discovers after an eventful game of "What are you putting in your mouth--nO COME BACK HERE-"

And then Ghost shows up.

And if he thought the other Vessels were menaces, the King had no idea what he was in for. Ghost is easily the worst of them all, combined. Nothing is sacred to Ghost. Ghost is basically a honey badger: they do not give a fuck.

Ghost is the first Vessel the King accidentally gives a nickname to when he calls them a 'Little Nightmare', a title that Ghost only seems to take on with pride. The King regrets.

The King is beyond exhausted. Trying to juggle the Vessels, training the Pure Vessel, dealing with the increasing number and severity of Infected, rising tensions with Deepnest, the Hive and the Mantis Tribe, and the futile search for some other way to deal withe Radiance that he knows he won't find, because he's already out of options. He's sleep deprived, barely eating, constantly stressed, and more times than not forgets to bathe. He's in a downward spiral, he knows it, and knows he can't continue as he is. But he has no choice. He just has to keep going, while hoping, praying, that he doesn't mess up and doom his kingdom, his people.

And just when the King thought he couldn't handle any further stress...

The Vessels go missing. All of them. They just vanish.

It takes a while for anyone to even notice, but it’s the White Lady who does first.

And at first, the King doesn't pick up on his wife's worry when she tells him she can't find them. It's only when she repeats herself, insisting that they're nowhere within the Palace walls, the guards and Great Knights have looked everywhere, twice, and she hasn't personally seen them since last night, that the implication finally sets in.

The Vessels are missing.

The Vessels are missing.

He's never put together such a massive amount of city guards so quickly before in his entire Kinghood. The order is simple: find the Vessels, bring them back to the Palace. He doesn't understand why his body was shaking so much as he watched nearly every guard in the city leave to search. It must be the stress. Or he just forgot to eat again.

He expected the Vessels to be found quickly. As small and indistinct as they are, they tended to stick together as a flock or in groups. They were also not very sneaky or subtle about their presence, most of them being little terrors on stubby legs, so some bugs must've seen them. They also couldn't have gotten very far. At most, a couple of hours, he tells himself as he paces the entrance hall of the Palace, waiting for news or a team to return.

He wonders how they got out of the Palace, and resolves to find the weak spot and patch it. Without another exit, the Vessels wouldn't make it past the Guards if they tried to leave again. Perhaps he should place detection seals around the perimeter of the Palace...Just in case.

News does not come. Nor do any of the guards return for over half a day.

And when they do start trickling back, they're all empty-handed.

They give reports, of bugs seeing the Vessels, of their possible movements throughout the Kingdom, but the Vessels themselves were elusive. None of them had even caught sight of a single one.

The King is angry, enraged actually. He's also terrified. He feels like he's in pain, even though he's not wounded. He wants to burn things. Break things. Claw his workshop to pieces. He wants to scream, to seethe. To sob. He's so overwhelmed with so many conflicting emotions, he doesn't know what to do. The shaking has returned. He feels like he can barely breathe past the rock in his throat. His body feels oddly numb. He’s only ever felt so helpless when confronted with the Infection itself.

The order still stands: Find them. Just find them.

He's restless. he feels anxious for reasons he doesn't understand. He searches himself, even though he knows it’s a risk to his own life; the Radiance would take any shot she had at him. He scours the Kingdom, looking for even the slightest traces of Void. He finds signs of it all over the place, small amounts, but not a single whiff of the Vessels themselves. He cannot even tell what they were doing, if anything, because they seemed to have gone quite literally everywhere.

Days pass.

With each hour that goes by without any word of them being found or them returning (by the Stars and Fates, does he hope they just walk back through the front door. He wouldn’t even be upset, he just wants them to come back.) the King becomes more and more distressed. More despondent. More hopeless.

The Kingdom, outside of the City and the villages, is not safe. So many viscous, infected creatures that would willingly try to feast upon a tiny Vessel. Food was becoming scarcer; the icy black of their bodies wouldn't be a deterrent, even if their toxic Void would most assuredly kill whatever consumed them eventually. The acids were so caustic they'd easily eat through the thin, small maskshells, leaving not a single trace. So many perilous places to fall from. So many unstable caverns to be crushed or trapped in.

The King wondered if he should alter his order to include looking for any signs of their corpses as well. He cannot bring himself to do so; to voice such terrors aloud would make them unbearably real.

Every day is the same: There is no news. There is no news. There is no news. We have not seen them. We have not found them.

Until suddenly, there is news, but it’s not the news he expected or even needed.

The Infection was dying. Rapidly. Just...shriveling up, into gnarled vines and sunken pustules. The bright glaring neon orange was dimming to a lifeless murky brown. Those ensnared in the waking dreamsleep woke up, came back to themselves.

Everyone was dumbfounded. What did this mean? What could have possibly happened? Did the Radiance...give up? Or did something happen to her? What could possibly affect the Radiance enough to disrupt her power so quickly, so thoroughly?

The entire Kingdom looked to their King for answers, and he had none to give. He didn’t know.

He could only work to prevent panic and hysteria, and hope that someone comes back with answers soon.

Through the efforts to assuage the public’s concerns, the King continues to wait, desperately, for word on his Vessels. In the evening, he waits by the front gate. Watching the bridge, for hours. Hoping, even as he’s growing hopeless. There, yet not.

The King is just about to give up for the night, to return inside, to curl up in his chambers and fall into a restless sleep that fails to rejuvenate or ease his stresses, where the images of dead and mutilated Vessels terrorize his nightmares, when voices call out, alarmed, catching his attention. He turns.

He freezes. Stares.

The Vessels were right there, huddled in a group as they slowly walked across the bridge. All of them. Together. They were there.

They were safe.

They were all scuffed up, splattered in the orangeish brown muk and smelling of ash, nicks and dents on their tiny dirty shells. Some of them looked worse for the wear, being supported or carried by others, leaking void from various injuries. The taller tri-horned one with an overgrown cloak had a nasty crack on it's head, their shortest horn just outright gone. It was messily bandaged, and they seemed to be in pain, but they were alive. Another, with two short pairs of horns on the side of their head, was clutching their chest, limping along with another who was missing half their curled horn.

Ghost supported the Pure Vessel, who looked utterly ravaged. cloak torn and stained orange, a deep crack through their right eye socket, empty space where their tiny left arm used to be. Ghost, Little Nightmare, supported a nasty crack down the middle of their mask, deep grooves in their horns like blade wounds and scorch marks searing their tattered cloak, nail shattered completely in half.

The Vessels stop when they see him, staring back. The King doesn't even realize he'd approached them until he was almost on top of them, staring down.

And then he realizes they were carrying something between them, but they're moving, shifting, spreading apart--

And presenting him with a large blade still wet with neon orange ichor.

A familiar blade, he knew was once attached to the Radiance.

He can only stare, as the Pure Vessel steps forward, dipping a tiny claw into the slowly congealing orange and writing slowly, "We ate the Light. No more sick dreams."

And it hits the King right in the gut that the Vessels had been listening to him talk about the Infection, heard him complain and worry over it. Had listened, and taken it upon themselves to try to get rid of it.

And they'd somehow succeeded. Somehow managed to find, to trap, to fight, to defeat her. Not unscathed, not without a cost, but without loosing any of their own. They’d all challenged a God, and killed her.

Had ripped out her gleaming blade, the symbol and embodiment of her power to cleave through dreams and minds, to take it with them.

To give it to him.

The Vessels push the bloodstained blade into his hands, and he stares at it for only a single second, before dumping it to the ground beside him without a care.

A twitch of surprise goes through the Vessels, and air of confusion and outrage, but he doesn't care; he lunges forwards and wraps his arms around as many of them as he can reach, pulling them tight to him and grabbing for yet more until he’s somehow got them all in his arms. Clinging to them. Burying his face among their stained shells and nicked horns, and sobbing.

Of course he cares about the death of the Radiance. The severity of that will hit him later, after he's had time to absorb it properly.

For now, the only thing he gives a damn about is the fact that his children are all safe, back home. Dirty, busted up, and in a world of trouble once he's done weeping with relief, but alive.

Nothing else mattered.

[fungal-wasted]

I'm having Colosseum of Fools thoughts now and I should be doing literally anything else. None of them connect to each other into coherent ideas so these are just stuff I've noticed and that I wanna rotate.

The fools are all infected, and every common fool besides God Tamer has Colosseum specific dream nail dialogue.

If the fools are infected are they being forced by someone else to fight? I kind of doubt it since their thoughts seem to imply they know they're fighting and see themselves as the strongest.

God Tamer has the same thoughts as any other infected husk though. Could it be that she didn't choose to be like this? Or perhaps it's just a detail Team Cherry didn't check for.

Who is putting all those cages in the arena? Does the Coloseeum have staff?

They seem to get bugs from far corners of the map including Queen's Gardens and Deepnest. No bees though, no Waterways creatures (flukes, pilflips) either.

Zote being in a cage implies they do capture some bugs to fight. Including "sentient" ones.

They have a bunch of sharp baldurs yet we never see adult ones, to the point where even the Hunter isn't aware if they're allowed to reach adulthood.

The public watching the arena

uses Geo

seems uninfected

Travels other areas of the kingdom like the Crossroads hotsprings

Comes from other lands (like Tiso)

Do you ever think about the Soul Scholars in the third trial? Did they ditch the Sanctum once they found it more motivating to join the arena? Were they taken away by others looking for recruits? The Volt Twisters imply willing training, even learning to use electricity in combat.

What about the mantises? Do they have a settlement? Would they be the same tribe that went to Queen's Gardens or is this a separate group? If they're different groups, which formed first?

Why can God Tamer be spared if her beast is killed before her? She definitely puts up a fight of her own to be considered dangerous, but she somehow maages to be spared if avoided. Why would the knight allow it? Why does the public do it as well?

Honestly just, Lord Food as a whole. Why is that corpse still there.

You ever think how this is the only place outside of the dream realm where we see a crowd? Maybe the kingdoms in the area are gone but there are definitely communities Still Doing Things.

Dude imagine a Colosseum vendor. You get charms from them or temporal upgrades for battle. Little Fool but Better.

Shade room. I mean, that one is probably there for game mechanics but could you imagine if they ever got any other void beings or even vessels to fight?

[cluescorner]

Who knew about the Abyss?

Ok, so this is more of an idea/speculation post than anything. IDK if I’m gonna do anything with it. 

So, who knew about the Abyss? Obviously the Pale King and Hornet, as we have canonically seen them both in that area. And we can presume that the White Lady knew much of what was happening with the Pale King’s dumbass plan, so it’s safe to say she knows about the Abyss. 

But what about the other people involved in the kingdom’s leadership/the plan? Like, did the 5 Great Knights know? Ogrim obviously knows about the vessels (implied in one of his dream-nail lines) so it feels like the other knights should know too. But did they know how the vessels came to be? Did they know about the millions of dead ones or only the Hollow Knight? Maybe that caused a splintering in the group, causing many to abandon their oaths because WHAT THE FUCK. Or maybe none of them knew and the Pale King kept it a secret. Seems like something he’d do. 

The group that’s most interesting to me is the Dreamers: Lurien, Monomon, and Herrah.

You see, I think Monomon knew. Or she at least knew about the attempts to create a hollow being, based on her lore tablets. But as a scientist and teacher, I can also see her directly helping in the plan, maybe running some tests to see if the vessels are truly ‘hollow’. I also can’t see her agreeing to go along with the plan WITHOUT having intimate knowledge of it. So I feel like she should have known about much of it, likely including the Abyss. After all, if she knows about void she should probably know where it came from. 

Lurien knowing could go either way. I don’t think that he would have ever betrayed his oath, based on his dream-nail dialogue. Even with the knowledge that there are a metric fuck ton of child corpses at the bottom of the Abyss, he wouldn’t have stopped. He would have sealed regardless. But because of this blind loyalty, I can also see him not caring enough to know. So, it’s a toss up. 

There’s NO FUCKING WAY Herrah knew. Like, fucking none. Herrah would have abandoned the plan, stolen the Hollow Knight away from the Pale King, and flip off everyone involved for good measure. First of all, she already probably hates the Pale King because he’s trying to colonize her kingdom. She only agreed to help him to get a demigod heir for deepnest/ a child of her own. She does not need further excuses to loathe everyone involved in Hallownest. Second, Herrah is Hornet’s mother and the Pale King is her father. If Herrah figured out that the father of her only daughter killed the rest of his children by putting them in the Abyss and saying “First one up gets abused, the rest get dead”, it doesn’t exactly leave a good track record for Hornet. Third, Herrah would be so horrified at the idea of these two parents, who pride themselves on establishing ‘civilization’ within the area, killing literally all but one of their children that she’d probably bail on the plan right then and there. Not to mention that she’d take one look at The Hollow Knight and go “Yeah, this is fucked. I’m your mom now, come to Deepnest with Hornet and I.” and not take no for an answer. 

TLDR; Monomon probably knew about the Abyss or at least knew enough to know how exactly the Hollow Knight happened, the 5 Great Knights and Lurien are a toss-up, and I want an AU where Herrah found out about the Abyss because it DEFINITELY didn’t happen in canon. 

[feralphoenix]

BUT THAT DOESN’T MEAN YOU’RE NOT PREPARED TO TRY

if you’re following my blog or if you read my fanfiction, you may have seen me talking in tags or comments about how the radiance hollowknight was a pacifist. “feral, wtf?” you may have thought. “she’s the freaking final boss and tries really, really hard to kill you and all her attacks do 2 entire masks damage. where on earth do you get pacifism out of that???”

to you specifically i say, that’s an understandable reaction! the short version of how i got here was that i started thinking about the story implications of radi not inflicting contact damage and took a deep dive into game mechanics and lore. when i came up for air i had made myself Very Sad.

if this intrigues you and you would like to know more, come along with me, i am happy to point out the things i noticed and share the Big Sad around.

this essay is also available on dreamwidth for accessibility purposes, since my layout’s text may be too small for folks on pc with high-res screens.

CONTENT WARNING: This essay discusses pseudo-zombie plagues and associated body horror, colonialism and genocide, horrible things that happened in real life Australian history... you know, the usual topics that come up when I’m talking about Hollow Knight.

ADDITIONAL NOTICE: TPK fans of the “TPK meant well/was working for the greater good”/“TPK and Radi are equally bad”/“TPK is bad but Radi is worse” variety please give this one a pass, it ain’t for you.

finally if youre from a christian cultural upbringing (whether currently practicing, agnostic/secular, or atheist now), understand that some of what i’m discussing here may challenge you. if thinking thru the implications of this particular part of hollow knight worldbuilding/lore is distressing for you, PLEASE only approach this essay when youre in a safe mindset & open to listening, and ask the help of a therapist or anti-racism teacher/mentor to help you process your thoughts & feelings. just like keep in mind that youre listening to an ethnoreligiously marginalized person and please be respectful here or wherever else youre discussing this dang essay

BUT THAT DOESN’T MEAN YOU’RE NOT PREPARED TO TRY: The Radiance Doesn’t Deal Contact Damage And That’s Kind Of Fucked Up And Sad

The vast majority of hostile creatures in Hollow Knight deal contact damage: This is to say, if the Wandering Knight (who I’ll probably spend most of this essay calling by their affectionate fan name Ghost) touches a hostile creature, this harms them.

There are exceptions to this rule. The most notable and most oft-memed example is the game’s literal actual true final boss, the Radiance. Not only will Ghost not be harmed by running into any part of her body, but during her stagger animation, where she drops to the boss arena floor on her front with her whole body splayed out, Ghost still isn’t harmed if she lands on top of them! What’s more, this holds true for her full-power form Absolute Radiance, the secret final boss of the Godmaster quest/endings.

A lot of people find this amusing, because it’s a little absurd that a game’s final boss is an exception to such a consistent element of gameplay! Hence all the “haha moth too soft and fluffy for contact damage” jokes. It is objective facts that Radi is very soft and very fluffy, so it’s very easy to understand why people don’t overthink this too much.

Thinking about things I like in gross detail is unfortunately my hobby. When it comes to Hollow Knight this usually leads to me making myself really sad. I’d like to share the fruits of my theorizing with the class, so other people can be sad with me.

Now, from a game design perspective I can think of a lot of reasons why Team Cherry chose for Radiance not to inflict contact damage. Her hitbox only covers the central part of her body. Her limbs are large, so because of the way she floats, if she did contact damage she would be protected from nail strikes from below and to either side. This would give a player who prefers nail combat a punishingly small margin through which they could inflict damage without also taking a hit, potentially forcing them to adapt to a new and unfamiliar play style at the very end of the game. That’s not fun for anybody and tends to make players feel very frustrated.

In addition to this, Radiance’s attacks are all bullet hell-style spells. All of them except the floor hazards inflict two masks of damage, meaning if you want to stay alive and identify points where it’s possible to heal, you need to learn the spell patterns and dodge a lot. Radi is a large boss. If running into her hurt you this would make the bullet hell elements of her fight extra punishing.

So, I think the purely game mechanics reason for Moth Too Soft And Fluffy is in interest of keeping her boss fight fair, and helping players feel like they have a chance of actually defeating her.

Part of why we all love Hollow Knight, though, is that there’s not much in the game that only exists for purely mechanical reasons. There’s always some form of story or lore integration.

So what on earth is the story reason behind why Radiance doesn’t deal contact damage?

OTHER ENEMIES THAT DON’T DEAL CONTACT DAMAGE

Radi isn’t the only enemy (here defined as fightable/killable creature) in Hollow Knight who doesn't inflict contact damage, so let’s take a look at her fellow exceptions to the rule to see what we can learn.

Broadly speaking there are two categories of Enemies That Don’t Deal Contact Damage. The first is enemies or bosses who used to be hostile, but have become friendly to the player. For instance, when characters like Ogrim and Hornet are not being fought in boss battles, touching them won’t cause damage to Ghost. These story characters who Ghost has more or less reconciled with can’t be damaged by the player out of combat either.

In terms of generic enemies who used to be hostile but have become friendly to the player, we have the mantises of the Fungal Wastes and the Siblings/Ghost’s Shade. We learn from the game’s lore that the mantises Did Not Like The Pale King and were hostile to Hallownest, but that they established a ceasefire conditional on their keeping the people of Deepnest (who were also hostile to Hallownest) from leaving through the area’s main entrance/exit in the Fungal Wastes - essentially the two native kingdoms were pitted against one another by the Pale King.

Now, just because there was a ceasefire, that doesn’t mean the mantises take kindly to Hallownest bugs brazenly trespassing into their dang house; they will get in your face and try to kill you unless you have permission to be there. But once you’ve defeated the Mantis Lords in combat and proven yourself worthy of the mantises’ respect, they’ll let you pass through their turf unmolested. They are no longer actively hostile and don't deal contact damage.

(You're still able to attack them, though - maybe because you’d be locked out of receiving the Hunter’s Mark if you complete the Respect quest/achievement before you’ve successfully killed enough mantises? - and if you attack them, or if your pet charm familiars attack them, any mantises you aggroed will fight back and deal contact damage again.)

The Siblings, as well as Ghost’s Shade, are initially indiscriminately hostile. Our window into Shade psychology is limited, but we know that the Shade died violently and the Siblings probably did too; they may be lashing out. They’re also Void creatures, and Ghost looks a lot like the Pale King, whom we can guess from context clues pissed the Void off significantly by using it as his personal play-doh to make tools and toys with and also using its house as his personal garbage dump for baby corpses.

However, once Ghost recalls their past and breaks the mask of the Kingsoul charm to reveal the Void Heart at its core, the Void recognizes them as a part of it, and Ghost becomes able to direct/lead the Void to some extent. As an extension of this, the Siblings and Ghost’s shade become docile and can now be killed by any weapon in one hit instead of just the Dream Nail (which is made of Radiance’s Light and is the Void’s natural weakness). They don’t deal contact damage anymore either.

That’s it for “enemies that inflict contact damage at one point, but stop inflicting it after becoming friendly or neutral to Ghost”.

The generic enemies which don't inflict contact damage include shrumelings, maggots, maskflies, and lightseeds/lifeseeds. These enemies are incapable of inflicting any damage on Ghost whatsoever, because by themselves they are completely helpless entities with no natural defenses.

Shrumelings are infant members of the mushroom clan who are usually protected by adult fungi like shrumal warriors and ogres. Lightseeds and lifeseeds are harmless single-celled organisms. Maskflies are similarly harmless. Maggots, we glean from the Hunter’s Journal and dialogue from False Knight/Failed Champion, are the bottom rung of Hallownest’s society because they are weak and helpless, and are forced into menial and slave labor by other Hallownest bugs because they cannot defend themselves. The maggots’ plight is the whole reason why False Knight/Failed Champion stole Hegemol's armor in the first place, as he wanted to protect his people.

All of these enemies flee when Ghost approaches them. (Some maskfly groups’ flight triggers are set to specific areas on a map and won’t flee if you can avoid stepping on/passing through those areas, but this is clearly due to a programming oversight because their whole Thing is running away.)

But, there’s something interesting to be observed in the case of lightseeds and maggots: They can fight back against and harm Ghost if they use tools. The little flock of lightseeds you chase around the Ancient Basin eventually get sick of Ghost’s shit and take over Broken Vessel/Lost Kin’s corpse, which they puppet around to try to murder you. By doing so they gain access to Broken Vessel/Lost Kin’s considerable combat prowess and become very dangerous, contact damage included in the bargain. (The lightseeds’ doing this seems to evoke the vessel’s spirit, since they reach for Ghost when defeated. That’s not a gesture the lightseeds have any reason to make. The Lost Kin fight, by which the spirit seems to gain some form of closure, becomes available here too.)

False Knight/Failed Champion’s fights work on the same general principle. Now that he has a weapon he can attack Ghost, and his armor deals contact damage. The maggot inside the armor does not inflict contact damage; essentially both his boss fights consist of your whacking the armor until he’s stunned and pops out of the armor for a moment so you can hit his vulnerable real body, which is the only part of him that yields Soul when you smack him. In fact, his boss fights will last forever if you let him recover from being stunned on his own.

Between these two groups, Radiance very obviously doesn’t fit in the first, as she’s the final boss and is very vigorously trying to kill Ghost with various magic spells. You can tell from her Dream Nail dialogue that she’s furious about what the Pale King did to her and her people, and is afraid for her life. She is willing to use everything at her disposal to try to destroy Ghost so she can survive, go free, and get revenge for the Pale King’s crimes. If she could do contact damage to Ghost she would.

So, the only logical conclusion to make is that Radi falls into the second group of enemies that don’t inflict contact damage. She is physically incapable of causing any harm to anyone with only her body. Her magic is deadly as all get out and the 2 masks damage explosion noise probably haunts the nightmares of anyone who’s struggled fighting her, but without it she is helpless.

WHY CAN’T RADIANCE DO CONTACT DAMAGE?

It might be pretty hard to reconcile the fact that a character with Audre Lorde energy as potent as Radi Hollowknight’s is has a whopping 0 ATK. The biggest clues we get in terms of story context for her inability to inflict physical harm of any kind can be found within the culture of the moth tribe, who were her people.

Thistlewind, the backer-designed moth ghost who can be found in the Resting Grounds, tells you that the majority of moths were pacifists, and that individuals like them and like Markoth who learned to wield a nail were in the minority. Thistlewind appears to have learned to fight as a means of self-defense while they explored the crater area, and describes Markoth as having done so in order to “[brave] the edges of this world, hoping to uncover a truth long forgotten”. It sounds to me like Markoth was trying to recover parts of moth culture that were lost when their tribe was assimilated into Hallownest, or maybe even searching for Radiance or trying to learn what happened to her. (Judging that his corpse is hidden behind one of the Pale King’s shade gates it seems this didn’t go well. Thanks TPK.)

As far as fighting moths go there’s Marmu too, but she seems to be a special case, possibly raised in Hallownest's culture instead of with her tribe. We don’t actually get any sort of canon explanation for how a baby moth wound up as a child soldier who died defending the Queen’s Gardens, but given the overall tone of Hollow Knight as a game and all the colonization/Australian history parallel subtext, some horrifying possibilities come to mind.

So, if Thistlewind, Markoth, and Marmu are Outliers Lepidoptera and should not be counted, how did the majority of moths spend their time? According to Seer, who knows more about the tribe’s history than most (and to Quirrel, who points you to her if you defeat Uumuu before picking up the Dream Nail), the moths’ main prerogative was cultivating and developing dream magic. From the way the Seer describes dreams as a living history as you collect Essence, dream magic seems to be a parallel to the Dreaming (or Dreamtime), a spiritual concept in Indigenous Australian religion related to both history and myth.

To translate this into simple terms, the moths were by and large pacifists whose culture celebrated art, history, and spirituality.

Team Cherry tends to adapt at least some aspects of real-life bug behavior and biology into their sad cartoon bugs, so moths-as-pacifists tracks: Real moths do not really have any way to fight. They defend themselves from predators via their mobility and their markings, which tend towards either camouflage that helps them hide or bright markings intended to scare predators off by indicating they’re poisonous (therefore not good to eat) or look like the face of something much bigger and more dangerous than they are.

There's not that much we can glean about the moths in pre-Hallownest society aside from Seer’s dialogue, because Hallownest destroyed their civilization so thoroughly: Except in the Dream Realm (which is filled with Essence spirographs and the wisteria charms that decorate Seer’s room), their architecture can only be found anymore in hidden parts of the Resting Grounds and at the very top of the Crystal Peak where Radi’s statue and a fuckton of lore tablets Ghost doesn’t know how to read are located.

But, we know that the crater pre-Hallownest was home to a ton of diverse bug nations - the mosskin, the mushroom tribe, the mantises, Deepnest, the Hive, the flukes - and every SINGLE one of those had some kind of warrior tradition, as well as their own unique cultures. In the midst of all that it was only the moths who were pacifists, so from there we can tentatively assume that they were on good enough terms with their neighbors for there not to be any fighting. The mosskin in particular also had and still have a Higher Being on their side, though in the modern day Unn seems to be rather conflict avoidant to say the least.

And we know from Hallownest’s past dealings with the mantises and Deepnest that even having Two (2) Higher Beings isn’t enough to keep rival civilizations off your nuts if they hate you, so it’s improbable that Radiance just did all the moths’ fighting for them.

The only hint that the moths ever had beef with anyone at all is one of Radiance’s Dream Nail lines, “ancient enemy” - this is popularly theorized to refer to the Void and might be corroborated by the Void’s willingness to follow Ghost into Radi’s boss fights and fight alongside them. As the Void seems to be some sort of Higher Being/god of darkness and nothingness, and the Dream Nail’s only offensive ability is to kill Void creatures, the Void and creatures of Light appear to be in a position of mutual vulnerability. Some of the Pale King’s writings in his workshop, which identify the Void as a power in direct opposition to his, support this too.

It’s unclear whether the Void civilization and Radiance ever directly came to blows or whether they were just giving each other the stink eye over being natural enemies - personally I think the latter is more likely because the two civilizations existed on opposite sides of the crater*, and again, the moths were pacifists; plus when Ghost brings the Void along to Radi’s boss fight she is quickly and gruesomely overwhelmed by it.

What I am saying here is that if pacifism was such an integral aspect of moth culture, and Radiance epitomized her people’s culture, and she is 100% incapable of inflicting physical harm, she was probably a pacifist too.

DEEP DOWN YOU KNOW YOU WEREN'T BUILT FOR FIGHTING

Hallownest flourished for a long, long time between the Pale King and White Lady first establishing it and the initial outbreak of the Infection.

There’s no conclusive information in-game as to why this is. We can only guess: Maybe Radiance was so badly hurt or weakened by the moths’ assimilation that it simply took her That Long to become capable of the mass dream broadcast to Literally Everyone In Hallownest that would eventually become the Infection when Hallownest’s people tried to suppress it. Or, maybe it just took a long time for her to come up with a way to fight back. It’s possible that it took her a while to find the resolve to actually fight back, too, with her principles of pacifism in conflict with the necessity of defending herself and taking her people back. Maybe there was a change in the moths’ situation in Hallownest somewhere down the line that compelled her to step in - all the moths are super extremely dead at the time Hollow Knight starts, after all. Even Seer is eventually revealed to be a revenant like Ze’mer the Grey Mourner, only lingering in the world to pass on the Dream Nail and tell Radiance’s story. Maybe it was a combination of all those factors. Barring Team Cherry dropping in to explain this bit of Sekret Deep Lore, we are never going to know.

All we DO know for sure is that when we mosey into Hollow’s brain (and/or Ultimate Showdown of Ultimate Destiny our way to the top of Hallownest’s Pantheon) and challenge the literal actual sun to a fight, Radi takes the challenge with extreme prejudice and comes in swinging.

Something interesting I noticed while comparing the Radiance boss fights with the Pure Vessel fight is that some of their attacks are vaguely similar. Where warrior-mage characters like Xero and Markoth have physical weapons that they summon and manipulate with magic, Radiance and Pure Vessel both create nails and daggers out of Essence and Soul respectively. Both characters’ magical weapon attacks are similar in nature too: Some are used to create hazards that must be dodged or avoided, and some are fired directly at Ghost in radial patterns.

This begs a very sad chicken-and-egg question. Did Radi and Hollow develop these battle techniques independently of each other, has Hollow in their prime form somehow absorbed similar techniques to Radi through osmosis since they’re currently chained together by the brain... or is Radi mimicking and innovating on these attacks she knows Hollow can do?

All her other attacks seem very obvious for a light-themed character, after all: Beam attacks and blobs of light. A flash of bright light is also how she shakes off the Void the first time it tries to grab her, too, making for a strong argument that that’s the original natural defense she possessed, and that’s what she based most of her attack magic off of.

Making sword’s and knive’s from Essence when most of her people didn’t even handle these sorts of tools even at the height of her power and influence, though... that seems less like something that would come naturally to her. i don’t really know i don’t have a definitive answer or theory for this one it just Seems Possible and it’s fucking me up guys

Even the Infection - which began life as Radiance’s attempt to communicate, let’s remember, before it progressed to “The End Of Eva Disease Will Continue Until Someone Actually Listens To Me” and then finally Radi screaming “FUCK U LET ME OUT, GET THAT NEW SUNNY D BOTTLE THE FUCK AWAY FROM ME, HALLOWNEST EAT SHIT” during canon - does not appear to be fatal to living bugs until the tumorous growths grow so large they impede bodily functions, like real cancer. We can observe this phenomenon via a number of NPCs and enemies that are rediscovered as tumorous corpses after the whole Crossroads area becomes infected.

At least to me, all of this points to Radiance being a character to whom violence and causing harm doesn't come naturally, and who has resorted to these methods in desperation.

It actually reminds me a lot of False Knight/Failed Champion. It’s a very common theory among fans that when he stole Hegemol’s armor he killed Hegemol - this is a reasonable thing to believe, since Hegemol is the only one of the Five Great Knights of Hallownest who never appears at all in-game, not even as a corpse like Dryya and Isma. Like Radi, False Knight/Failed Champion is a character who rose up and turned to violence in order to protect his people, despite the maggots not being a belligerent species.

False Knight is one of the game’s first major bosses, sometimes the first boss that players encounter at all. And so Hollow Knight’s story bookends with two separate victims of a predatory system, one who lived within and was cannibalized by it, one outside of it who was deliberately targeted by the Pale King. Neither of them started out as a fighter, but both of them still adopted violence as a tool to protect themselves and their people. Radiance is as doomed as False Knight by the Pale King’s genocide, but just like False Knight, she has no intention of going quietly, and will rage against the dying of the light as only the literal actual sun can.

Cue Deedee Magno Hall voice clip. You all know the one.

*A footnote: There’s no conclusive evidence to tell us whether the Void civilization was contemporaneous with the other pre-Hallownest indigenous bug nations or whether it predated them. Mask Maker has a line suggesting that the Void civilization tried to expand throughout the crater in its heyday and that maybe this was linked to its collapse, but in general the Void lore is just too darn thin to draw firm conclusions - it’s like trying to speculate on the ancient stone age cultures of the Americas that came before pre-settler Indigenous countries when the only sources you can easily access are elementary school level US history textbooks. (To non-Americans: We mostly teach kids propaganda until they hit college-level courses and it sucks so much ass.) This is very realistic worldbuilding, but also please Team Cherry I want to know more about these ancient bugs who apparently got lost in the sauce

[flame-shadow]

I suppose I should start by expounding on why I ask the question. It's been something in the back of my mind for about two years now, ever since I tried to write a fic and realized that I couldn't remember any mention of time or timekeeping, and it was taking me out of the story to have a bug say "in five seconds..." when they might not even know what a second is. Or a minute. Or an hour. Or a day in the way that we know it, as surface-dwellers with a reliable sun that isn't linked to or influenced by a jealous deity.

[fun fact! Elderbug's beta dialogue includes two uses of the word "day" which were removed in the final game dialogue. In the cut content section of the wiki, there are a couple notes for removing terms like "day to day" and "today" to take away time specificity and emphasize the long night]

For these speculations, I will try to take into account the culture, the established technology as evidenced from the game, and what seems likely based off my interpretations of the world in general. Unless specified otherwise, all of these assume a regular flow of time (a.k.a. before the extended night and the kingdom's stasis, and also no other shenanigans from higher beings). I will also exclude anything that directly relies on a celestial body, as the reliability of the sun pre-sealing of the Radiance is unknown and likely inconsistent.

Timers: These aren't clocks, but they're still useful. Customizable increments of time allowed.

-Water timers where a consistent amount of time can be measured from the level of water in a basin or other vessel. Can be made of metal, clay, wood, shell/bone; just as long as the interior is waterproof and it can be shaped for the need. Note: water flow is inconsistent from a basic basin-like timer.

-Sand timers (aka hour glasses, though the "hour" part isn't always relevant) are another simple way to measure increments of time. Make sure all the sand is the same size and flows well. If we assume glass is used for the container, then I think only Hallownest bugs would've had this type of timer to begin with, though perhaps trade would spread it.

-Candles. Likely limited to the Hive, since from what I recall, they were the most isolationist and uncooperative of the groups. If they did trade for anything, there's not much evidence of inports in the Hive itself, though perhaps they had a small export of wax that could be used by the richer of the Hallownest bugs. Lurien had candles in his tower.

Clocks: Cyclical keepers of time.

-Given the mechanical inclinations of both the Mantises and Hallownest, clocks similar to how we know them could be made and maintained. I think it would be very cool if the Mantis Village had a large pendulum clock (similar to a grandfather clock) visible and accessible to the community. Young mantises would challenge each other to fly past the pendulum without being struck.

-Watches were likely made by Hallownest bugs with their more detailed metal working capabilities. City bugs might have these to keep up with events and obligations.

Plants/fungi:

-A flower species that blooms rarely but consistently, marking the beginning of the next cycle (year). A festival marks the first day of bloom, and the celebration lasts as long as the flowers are open (roughly equivalent to a week, though factors such as temperature or soil condition or air quality could affect the length of the bloom or even when it actually opens. It is considered an unlucky year if someone tries to begin the festival before the flowers have truly bloomed. This would be something the Mosskin practiced, though perhaps a patch of flowers were kept in the Queen's Gardens for the spectacle or event too.

-A mushroom which releases spores at regular intervals.

-A mushroom whose cap changes colors with the seasons. Which seasons? Try asking Mister Mushroom.

-Bioluminescent mushrooms' glow cycle in Deepnest. Or maybe a specific kind pulses in time with "seconds" or "minutes." Similar to the above, perhaps the glow changes with an environmental change, marking a new season or cycle, however that is defined.

-A slime mold which grows steadily when fed enough of what it likes. Held within a restrictive container, it is encouraged to grow in one direction, marked at regular intervals. Perhaps this container is circular, and after the slime has traveled a certain distance, the area "behind" is cleaned and prepped for the cycle of traveling growth to perpetuate.

Misc:

-Soul. While not a widely accessible (nor accepted) material, the Soul Sanctum perhaps found a way to use it to keep or track time. Perhaps through a decay/dissipation rate, perhaps based off strength of glow, or a certain inherent pulse of the stolen life itself.

-Lumaflies. I had only had a vague thought of "these could maybe be used somehow" and @abarelysapientpairofshoes stepped up and suggested the lifespan of a lumafly in a lantern, which is a sad but practical and relatively portable method.

And, uh, yeah! That's all I got for now. Some of these ideas are more developed than others. I've used the flower blooming concept for something already, so it's a little more fleshed out, but not by much. If you have other ideas or want to build off one or more of mine, I'd love to see what you think up!

What are your thoughts on how the passage of time is observed and kept in Hallownest and/or one of the other cultures (Mosskin, Mantis, Deepnest, Moths, Fungus, etc) during the time they were thriving? Clocks, calendars, holidays, seasons... Anything time-related is up for speculation. Feel free to come up with methods that wouldn't work in our world due to a fantastical element but which would work within HK's world.

[astronomy-two-worlds-apart]

OMG YAY IVE BEEN WAITINH FOR A CHANCE TO DO THIS IM SO EXCITED

might take a while but i will eventually finish this. even if it stays in the drafts for a bit

okay okay okay so hollow knight is a metroidvania video game with bugs as the characters in the game. the player plays as the knight, a creature that traverses the world of hallownest, an old abandoned kingdom that was once a really active city filled with all kinds of bugs from all around. hallownest was home to a bunch of civilizations of bugs, some under the rule of the pale king, the last and only king of hallownest.

there are multiple different areas in hallownest, and some were under the rule of the pale king, others remained independent but within the kingdom’s limits, such as a place called the hive, and also what’s known as deepnest

all the areas include kings pass, howling cliffs, dirtmouth, forgotten crossroads, greenpath, fog canyon, fungal wastes, resting grounds, the abyss, white castle, crystal peaks, kingdoms edge, city of tears, ancient basin, deepnest, the hive, and royal waterways :)

anyways so moving on the pale king had a wife, the white lady, and they ruled all of hallownest together. there were also 5 great knights of hallownest, who protected it and where very tightly knit together. then at some point before the beginning of the game, hallownest started to become infected thanks to the radiance, a being of light (moth)

the pale king knew the radiance needed to be stopped, so he and his wife started to try and create completely empty vessels, with a thing called void. basically making more and more children until a perfect and pure vessel would be created. any of those not deemed to be worthy were locked in a room within the area of hallownest called the abyss, with a lighthouse, not enabling them to escape because they are beings made of void

the pale king also had another child with a different woman, herrah the beast, which his wife knew completely about and was part of a deal with the weavers, another group of bugs in hallownest, in order to store a dreamer in their kingdom.

the dreamers are three, lurien the watcher, herrah the beast, and monomon the teacher. they are the three that put a seal over the black egg temple, where the hollow knight resides guarding the infection. you can collect their essence using what is called the dream nail, a nail used to absorb the dreamers and open the black egg once more as well as defeat dream bosses (updated and better and faster versions of normal bosses) and the dream warriors, get hidden dialogue, and collect essence.

anhways back to the child. that child is named hornet, a character in game that you fight twice and is your sibling bc of the pale kind being her father

the hollow knight was chosen to be the vessel, but now the infection is escaping again, meaning that he was not completely hollow, marking the beginning of the game

the player’s character, the knight, is the actual pure vessel, just not fully grown to its ideal size.

the point of the game is to traverse through hallownest and find all three dreamers, unlocking the black egg and allowing the player to fight the hollow knight, and maybe even the radiance (fighting the radiance gives a different ending rather than if you just keep fighting the hollow knight, with 3 different endings possible i believe)

and that’s about all i got without giving hugeeee spoilers abt the game :))

*chnating* hollow knight, hollow knight, hollow knight, hollow knight, hollow kni-

i tried to look that up cause i know very little about it and tumblr IMMEDIATELY logged me out smh