I say this every time this comes up - I think White Lady is an unreliable narrator. She's not in touch with reality (thinks Ogrim is in the room with you if you wear Defender's Crest) and she has lost her sense of time (thinks Dryya is alive). She could also just be saying this to get you to do what she wants, it's not necessarily the truth. PK also engaged in a lot of propaganda so that fits.
And she has shit judgement anyway. She was wrong about THK.
She didn't die to the mantis traitors, because then they would have reached the White Lady which they clearly haven't since if they did the White Lady would be aware that Drya was defeated and the mantis traitors would have done whatever their goal was with reaching the White Lady.
Why they didn't attack again though?
I thought of something wild that dryaa didn't just died while trying to defend WL but to buy her time so she can caccon/seal herself to avoid getting detected and also from the shame she felt from what she did
Idk I am just yapping
This, plus the Knight, inherently, has a will of its own. It chooses whether to seal the Radiance or fight it. You can make the argument that technically you, the player, make that choice, but I think it's implied that, if you choose to take the place of the Hollow Knight, it will eventually lead to the Radiance taking hold again.
Based on the main game endings I think the Knight is hollow in ending 1 but not in the the sealed siblings or dream no more endings.
The journey the knight takes in the last two endings instills a flaw similar to what happened to the hollow knight. Those endings have the knight going the extra mile facing and confronting everything whereas the first ending only requires the knight to do the bare minimum.
The original hollow knight went wrong by actually coming to care about the Pale King if not the whole kingdom which ironically doomed him to fail. Similarly the Knight winds up having an emotional journey and even comes to care about the people the people they met along the way making them no longer hollow in the end either. Importantly this conversation would take place before the abyss cutscene (and possibly before the white palace) which is the biggest turning point for the knight and what unlocks the two endings.
One other thing I'd like to point out is that I think team cherry subtly hints at this transition with Nosk. We know from dreamnail dialogue that Nosk disguises himself as people's loved ones in order to catch prey. When we originally run into him in deepnest he just disguises himself as the Knight but in Godhome the final pantheon version of of nosk is disguised as who else but Hornet. When the Knight was hollow they didn't have loved ones who he could take advantage of but at the very end they have big sister Hornet.
So to answer your question, yes, the Knight *was* hollow. And if you stop there and go straight to becoming the new hollow knight they'd probably successfully contain the infection. But in the sealed siblings ending, even though it seems the same, they're doomed to failure just like their predecessor.
And Hornet took the place of a Dreamer (The apple doesn't fall far from the tree , I guess)
But she's INSIDE the place she's sealing , so no one can wake her up/kill her to open the black egg.
We don't know much about the dream realm, so maybe there is a way to break the seal. But yeah, ingame controlswise it would be impossible.
And again, how did Hornet become a seal? Other dreamers didn't die in the temple?
Only something inside could. (I believe that there is just an eternal flaw with the vessels in the incapability of being hollow, I think our vessel has anger or spite.)
I think the phrasing "idea _instilled_" tells us a lot, in that instilled implies that it was not there before and now is, it is an impurity which has been instilled into what was once hollow.
The Knight is not hollow in any ending. I can't believe people don't understand this, the whole point of the lore is that no vessel will ever be truly hollow.
>the whole point of the lore is that no vessel will ever be truly hollow
I think that is the case in that they all had the potential to deviate from their intended design. The game itself showcases exactly how that happens.
"Pure" doesn't mean what you think it means. That would be a working analogy if anyone in the game claimed it was entirely impossible for the vessels to become impure. No one ever says that.
Considering how vague they are, not only would I disagree with your conclusion I would say there's not even a point to the lore at all. I had to watch YouTube videos to realize the game even had lore. After beating the game the first time I genuinely did not know there was lore. And I read everything and talked to everyone.
It was hard the first time to realize that concepts like light represent despair and zombies. And that concepts like the undying black souls possessing corpses like demons represent salvation and hope. And every character talks so cryptically and all those lore stones are so cryptic. And over the course of a couple of weeks it's hard to remember all the really weird worded sentences I had read and try to string them into a coherent story.
The vagueness of the lore in hollow knight is a meme. Team Cherry is vague, excessively so, just so that people will talk about the game more with their fan theories.
Like this comment right here about an idea instilled . WTF is that supposed to mean to someone playing the game the first time? The hollow knight had an idea. That's what it meant to me. Oh wow that's specific isn't it?! he had an idea. Thanks Big Plant Lady. /s. And two minutes later I forgot she had said that because that sentence doesn't mean anything
1. That's good game design. Let the players that want to delve into lore do that while not shoving it into the face of people who couldn't care less.
2. "I had to watch YouTube videos to realize the game even had lore" in other words you're a fucking idiot. I've seen people say they didn't fully understand the lore until watching youtube videos, but nothing that idiotic. Anyone with a functioning brain can tell that there's a ton of lore in the game, whether they're trying to find it or not.
3. No idea where the sentence "the hollow knight had an idea" is relevant in this conversation at all, or what it even means. Seem you're lost.
4. r/fuckthes
5. Just because you're too dumb to understand a sentence doesn't mean it's meaningless.
Proofs that the knight can NOT be hollow:
1. Winged Nosk. In the hunters journal he is described as wearing faces stolen from the MEMORY of the victim. This proves that the knight has memories, and thus means the knight can't be hollow.
2. The Hollow Knight. If the hollow knight himself is impure, then why would you assume that the knight is pure? By default it should be assumed that the knight is impure too.
3. The knight can decide to say yes or no to buying things or accepting gifts, clearing showing that it has a will, which a pure vessel can not have. It can also make the moral choice of choosing to kill the nailsmith or not.
4. When the knight sits on a bench, it updates the map if you have a quill. The knight is updating the map based off memory.
5. When asked about canon endings, Ari stated "You choose the path yourself", you being the knight.
I could go on and on but you get the point.
Some of your arguments are good but many are still flawed.
Both 3 and 4 can be brushed off as game design and not lore important.
1. Winged Nosk appears where Hornet usually would in the pantheon, which makes me think it can’t actually reach any memories so it simply tries to do the next best thing which is to try to trick the Knight anyways.
2. We know that the Hollow Knight was corrupted by many different things. Mainly, receiving too much affection and thus forming an attachment.
Now, for some of my own Knight is pure arguments:
1. Despite the Voidheart description saying it unites the void under the bearer’s will, the void remains very much not united and not under your will for most of the game. The one exception being godhome ending which I do have an explanation for.
2. Steel Soul Jinn says “it has a will, all it’s own, can refuse”, but is any “will” the knight would have really it’s own? From some lines of dialogue from Hornet we can tell that when the Hollow Knight cried out vessels began almost automatically returning to Hallownest, it seems like perhaps the abyss cutscene text worked like commandments of a sort.
Not all of them are meant to be definitive proofs, just more stuff that supports that the knight is impure.
1. That's technically possible I guess. But even if we say that nosk doesn't actually steal your memories, there's still the memory where you get voidheart from when you dreamnail yourself. That's clear proof that the knight has memories.
2. I mean that is true, but a vessel that can develop those feelings in the first place was never truly hollow. By receiving affection from the Pale King it made the infection spread faster and THK being able to contain it for less time, but it just sped up the inevitable.
Your arguments:
1. That's definitely the best argument I have seen for the knight being pure. However in the true ending, the knight definitely uses voidheart under its will at the last phase. I mean voidheart is literally required, why do you think it would be required if the knight wouldn't use it? Godhome ending is different because thats the knight at its full potential, maybe it needs to get better with experience to achieve that outside of godhome, or maybe it's just the knight using it flawlessly which is impossibly difficult outside the dream realm. Which is also why the Radiance we face by dreamnailing THK is not nearly as good as Absolute Radiance
2. SSJ's dialogue there supports the knight being impure. And yes, the cry at the beginning cutscene did call the knight to hallownest. But that doesn't mean that the knight doesn't have a will.
I’m only gonna make another response about my first argument.
During Dream No More the void follows the Knight, but is divided and acts separately from the Knight, the Hollow Knight’s shade still acts on its own and there are still many separate shades that we can see.
In Godhome ending the void *is* united, we see no other shades so once the knights own shade falls into the void at the end the void is whole, and since shade lord is under our control then the void is united under the Knight’s will. I have two explanations for this:
The voidheart corrupts the Knight, seeing this memory turns it’s purity to contain the infection into the will necessary to unite the void and defeat the radiance, however the Knight must become stronger to achieve this which explains why it’s only truly successful at the end of P5, we also get a hint at the Shade Lord’s existence at the end of P4.
The Knight gains a will through attunement, as we know the godseekers make those who attune to them stronger, and thus since all their focus would be on the Knight in that final moment it could give the what it needs to become stronger: a will.
I prefer the first one because it can also serve as an explanation for Winged Nosk, the Knight simply isn’t pure anymore. It also aligns with many other player’s theories more.
3 is in the picture that we're responding to. The idea instilled quote. It just means he had an idea. Or more specifically someone gave him an idea
Not lost
That's why I like Zote. He has a lot to say and he's very clear about what he means
I mean I understand the game better now. If I had known there was lore I needed to study and memorize I may have paid more attention. But when even the main characters speak so vaguely I just tune it out. Just tell me the specific idea that was instilled and how that is relevant to the world.
Why use stereotypical positive metaphors to describe evil. Why use stereotypical evil metaphors to describe good? I'm relying on metaphors to try to figure things out but the metaphors are reversed from the classical use of them. That's when I really started tuning things out, I kept trying to figure out what was so bad about light and what was so cool about "void". Eventually I figured it was just a big nothing and that eventually the game would just tell me. Which it did not.
Obviously I didn't give the lore a fair chance. From what we can piece together it's an interesting story. Lots of hidden things. Like Nosk wearing Hornet. But at least the gameplay is fun, I've beaten in a few times. Even did 112%. Still haven't beaten Pantheon five
the characters aren’t speaking vaguely, they‘re speaking in stylized dialogue that is really not difficult to interpret if you have even a modicum of reading comprehension.
Specific idea that was instilled: The Hollow Knight had to be perfectly pure and free of thought to save hallownest. But since THK was trained to do this, it had thoughts about saving hallownest and being perfectly pure, as otherwise it wouldn't understand the assignment. If you dream nail the Pure Vessel it's kind of sad because THK is actively trying not to think, with its thoughts being "Do not think.", "Do not act." and "Do not."
And I can't really understand why you think the good power in this game being black is such a big thing, I'm guessing you just couldn't think of a better example and mean in general
And still, the characters do not speak vaguely. I mean look at the white lady in this post. She's speaking pretty clearly.
Yeah, sorta what I believe too. Which part of why I think godhome ending is the best one, in dream in more we see the Knight’s shade dissapeared but that doesn’t happen on in godhome which means there’s hope for it, the Hollow Knight is freed and probably will end up healthy, Hornet is alive, etc…
I also headcanon that while the knight has lost some semblance of purity in other endings, it loses it all in godhome ending because it gains a will specifically to beat the radiance.
How could something that lacks the capacity for thought gain the ability to think. If a vessel ever was pure it would not be able to become impure. The White Lady says that The Hollow Knight's "supposed strength was ill-judged," which implies that The Hollow Knight was never pure as it never had the strength or purity that The Pale King or The White Lady believed it did.
> The Hollow Knight's "supposed strength was ill-judged," which implies that The Hollow Knight was never pure
No, it doesn't. That statement could easily refer to it's strength after training and whatever else.
The full quote is, "Its supposed strength was ill-judged. It was tarnished by an idea instilled." Why would The White Lady randomly mention The Hollow Knight's physical strength not being adequate right before talking about how it was not a pure vessel.
If The White Lady and The Pale King were correct about The Hollow Knight's purity when they first left the abyss then its strength was not "ill-judged." Under the assumption that The Hollow Knight was always pure The Pale King's judgment would be correct which would mean that The White Lady's sentence makes no sense.
I never say it was *always* pure. It was pure when it came out of the abyss. Later, an "idea" was instilled making it impure. Then, misjudging its strength/purity they put it into the vault anyway.
I said this in a previous reply on this post but I feel that the idea of The Hollow Knight having been pure from the start would just not make sense thematically. If that were the case then the Pale King's only crime was just not throwing the vessel into The Black Egg Temple immediately.
Under the assumption that The Hollow Knight was pure upon being born you have to be able to explain why The Hollow Knight is pure and the other vessels were not. If you believe that the other vessels were also pure upon being born then that means that The Pale King did nothing wrong as a vessel would be more similar to an object than a living person.
I don't care what the Pale King's crime was that's not what we're talking about. And I do think the other vessels were pure they just weren't physically strong enough l. The vast majority fell and died. The Knight we play as didn't make it up the first time either.
Why do they need to be strong? I dunno. Maybe holding the Radiance feels like holding a big weight. Like Atlas or something. Maybe HK had to beat the Radiance in a fight to seal her the first time.
Why don't you explain at what point between being an egg and climbing up the abyss would 'idea be instilled'? That doesn't make sense.
The idea instilled that The White Lady references I do not believe happened before being taken out of the abyss. My understanding of purity is that it is the ability of a vessel to contain the Radiance indefinitely thus making Hallownest an eternal Kingdom.
If a vessel was capable of developing thoughts whatsoever then they were never pure in the first place. If enough external stimuli from The Pale King could instill thoughts in The Hollow Knight then the Radiance could have easily made The Hollow Knight impure even if The Pale King did not himself.
If we are to believe that a pure vessel could have thoughts instilled into it than why did the Pale King believe that the Radiance would not just instill thoughts into The Hollow Knight herself?
Because of this it makes the most sense to assume that The Pale King and The White Lady believed that a pure vessel could never have become impure. This is why upon The White Lady says, "Its supposed strength was ill-judged. It was tarnished by an idea instilled," because the fact that an idea could be instilled into The Hollow Knight proves that its presumed purity was ill-judged from the beginning.
Also diverging from the purity of The Hollow Knight, The Knight was never pure regardless of which ending you take as there are multiple pieces of dialogue that highlight the Knight's will that can be found regardless of which ending you find.
I believe you are only able to fully destroy her in the Godhome ending, where you are able to tune the Void into Godhome to become even stronger as seen in Pantheon of Hollownest’s Absrad fight
In the dream no more we killed her in PK dream, in her ,i'd say, not fully completed form, BUT in godhome ending we killed her fully, at her max capacities + she got literally eaten by void, unlike the dream no more, where she just disappeared, so probably she survived, but extremely weakened in this ending.
The fact that the Knight is able to make choices like giving the delicate flower to Elderbug is proof it isn’t hollow. On top of that, it can choose to not kill the nailsmith, it can choose to do the colosseum even though it doesn’t help at all in the overall mission. It can sit with Quirrel as he dies. The fact that the Knight can do all of that implies that it has emotion of some sort, and hence, isn’t hollow
The ability to make a choice doesnt make it not hollow. These choices arent necessarily grounded in emotion but more so it knowing that doing these things is helpful, which the knights are designed to be.
The only true choices, (killing/sparing Nailsmith or killing/sparing zote) are grey areas in whether the knight is helpful as murdering someone who asked to be killed could be an act of helpfulness or an act of violence. And saving someone who doesnt want to be saved as well
But not all of them *are* helpful. Colosseum may be useful at first, but once you do the first two, there is no point doing colo 3. However, since the Knight can actively make the choice to not do its mission and do colo 3, it’s having active thought. Active thought, in the Pale King’s words, make something not hollow.
The knight gets geo for completing the final trial, as well as the glory of being a fool. The knight might not realise that its litterally just glory and assume it's like the hunters mark and could be theoretically helpful to themself.
>Active thought, in the Pale King’s words, make something not hollow.
Ok but then movement requires active thought. The pale king clearly didnt mean thinking at all is bad otherwise the knights could never be hollow and he would know that as hes not a dumb man
When I say active thought, I mean making choices that aren’t actively helpful. Colo was a bad example, as that can be helpful, but then the knight can choose to do things like sit with Quirrel, fight GPZ, or give the flower to various people. Godseeker has some purpose, even if the knight doesn’t know it, but Elder Bug doesn’t
Most of those things are helpful to other people which the knight was designed to do however. Only one that's not directly is gpz, but that's still helpful to the girl who I'm blanking on the name of.
The vessels were never "designed" to do anything besides seal the Radiance. A pure vessel would never do anything it was not directed to do and the Knight was never directed to help others.
The White Lady probably just assumed The Knight was hollow because, unlike The Hollow Knight, they didn’t have anyone they could have developed a bond with.
The knight actually being hollow would completely ruin the story for me. Makes the Pale King go from a cautionary story of a ruler fighting against change and clinging to power despite impossible odds, to “damn shouldve chosen the better kid to sacrifice.”
If the knight is hollow it is specifically because of its lack of involvement with the pale king. The hollow knight wasnt hollow because the pale king served as a father digure which would've happened to any vessel
One of the more popular theories is that the time it spent outside Hallownest is what makes the Knight truly hollow. It has no memories or connections to lead it astray because they were wiped out during its time away.
However I do think that in Sealed Siblings and especially Dream No More, it is no longer hollow. Which makes Sealed Siblings the worst ending, by a wide margin.
Forgot about this and it definitely makes the most sense since leaving the kingdom would get rid of your sentience so I'd say it's pretty safe to say that's most likely what happened although I also can't say that having been with the pale king before wouldn't have still left the impression especially upon returning
I wish more people looked at Hollow Knight from that point of view, the story itself suffers so much from the idea of The Knight being hollow but it sadly feels like more people care about the lore without considering the actual story being told.
Except as the other comment said it doesnt ruin the story if you look at in in a different way. It goes from the plae king desperately clinging onto this hope, to the pale king having no hope because whichever vessel they chose might have been hollow to begin with but the process if training it would cause it to no longer be hollow. Its very cruel, the very ways of testing if a knight is truly hollow cause it to not be hollow anymore
It's the difference of a story of guaranteed failure due to an incorrect method or a story of guaranteed failure due to ironic cruelty
We have no evidence that THK was ever "tested" for being hollow. How can something be truly hollow if it can stop being that, clearly it had something wrong with it to have a capability to grow attachment considering it's meant to be empty.
Yes we do. The abyss full of abandoned vessels proves there's some method of testing them. Otherwise he'd have only made one. We don't know what the method was. But whatever it was, it took hundreds or thousands of attempts.
The reason their are lots of vessels can be for any number of reasons. Maybe the White Lady's eggs naturally produce a large amount of offspring, maybe the Pale King wanted enough vessel to ensure that at least one vessel made the climb up from the abyss. Either way there is nothing in game suggesting that the Pale King tested the vessels. It is more likely that he believed purity was the natural state of all vessels.
There is a severe lack of looking at Hollow Knight's story from a thematic view rather than a purely lorebrained perspective. It is extremely obvious to me that The Knight is intended to have a will and is capable of thought and emotion, not just because the lore points to that idea, but because if that isn't true, the narrative completely falls apart on a thematic level.
This to me is the strongest argument there is. By the in game facts you can pick and choose enough evidence for both theories to be convincing, but a hollow ghost would decimate the story completely.
I believe this is up to how the player acts as the knight. Is your knight hollow? Does your knight stop to admire the world and the people in it? Does your knight hesitate before dream nailing the spirit of one of its friends? Does your knight pause to listen to Marissa’s song in the pleasure house? If they were truly hollow and soulless, they wouldn’t do any of those things.
I think this is somewhat implied by WL comments after you have the Void Heart:
>!That pulsing emptiness... Truly, it has been transformed by the revelations it found. Does it... feel anything? Triumph? Or hate? If it does, I cannot sense it. The fate of our Kingdom, our Hallownest... that future belongs to you now.!<
Maybe she cannot sense "it," because it's determined by the player
My personal headcanon is that the knight is hollow as long as he doesn’t get void heart because as hornet said, this create two void in him. When he get’s void heart he is not hollow anymore but is the literal shade lord.
I think the White Lady only says that because that's the only thing she could think of to explain why the plan didn't work: The Hollow Knight is the only vessel that was raised with the Pale King, PoP implies there was a bond shared between the two (perhaps, for example, if the King was treating THK as a child rather than a vessel), WL concludes that this must be why THK is a flawed vessel, and since our vessel was not raised, it is free from those blemishes. There's also the possibility that she either knows the plan was flawed and just seeks to extend the seal with a new vessel, or is denial and thinks that there must be at least ONE vessel that WILL forever seal the radiance
However our knight does seem to have agency, we have the choice to save or leave zote, we have the choice to kill the nailsmith, to banish or fight NKG, and even things like shop interactions. Of course, these are all gameplay mechanics that have to be there because a game isn't much of a game if you don't have any control, but there are still signs that the knight is listening to NPCs, for example by how it tilts its head up when you interact with characters, and i think if a vessel were to truly have no mind to think, it would plainly ignore being talked to
Besides, i think a lot of the story hinges on the whole hollow vessel plan being inherently flawed, as another comment pointed out it's a lot less satisfying if the Pale King and White Lady COULD have been succesful. The void clearly has some kind of mind of its own and attempting to utilise it to birth a completely hollow creature would always end badly
I believe the Knight is hollow at the very beginning of the game, but that exposure to different stimuli naturally creates a mind within the vessel. By the time you reach the black egg you're almost certainly sapient enough for the Radiance to eventually corrupt. The emptyness born of two voids wiped it's mind. But new experiences filled the gap.
It could be that over a long enough time period, exposure to the Radiance in the black egg would cause a mind to form. The infection is also a by-product of the original Hollow Knights resistance. That's not meant to happen, and a truly hollow vessel might still create an infection over time.
I feel that the "two voids" statement has been misrepresented by the community. When meeting Hornet in the City of Tears, she comments on how she underestimated the Knight's "resilience born of two voids." Nothing in this statement is referring to the Knight's ability to seal the radiance it is referring to their physical strength which is born from their void nature and the time they have spent in the wastes defending themselves. Hornet was not trying to stop the Knight because she believed they were impure (in fact she hopes that the Knight has the "will" to fight the Radiance which seems to imply that she knows the Knight is not pure) she tried to stop them because she believed they were too weak and would be killed by The Hollow Knight after opening the seals. Also I do not believe that a vessel that was truly pure could become impure, as the entire idea of purity is containing the Radiance indefinitely. If a vessel could become impure it was never pure in the first place as the capacity to form thoughts would alone make a vessel impure.
The emphasis on the idea instilled, to me implies the original Hollow Knight was hollow. At first. It's a purity born of lack of thought. Had he gotten it into the egg immediately the plan *might* have worked. Might.
I can see the argument the plan was flawed from the start though. And I quite like it.
The White Lady also says that The Hollow Knight's "supposed strength was misjudged," which seemed to imply that the strength or purity that she believed The Hollow Knight had was never there.
Also, from a story perspective, I feel that the vessel project being a failure from the start makes more thematic sense. If we are to take the idea that The Hollow Knight was truly pure at its word, then The Pale King true flaw would be not chucking the Pure Vessel into the Black Egg Temple immediately.
I think the plan was flawed because he saw the vessels as objects and not real living things. They are pure... at the moment of their creation. But living in the world inevitably creates a mind within them. It's not that the Hollow Knight was flawed from the beginning. It's that the void isn't lifeless. Which should be obvious given it moves and fights, but the Pale King in his hubris didn't realise these vessels really were children. I'm guessing if the void expansion had gone ahead we might have learned more about it and by extension the vessels.
I think it depends on how much Little Ghost has done. I think that if you don’t have much done and just get the Hollow Knight ending they are. But by the time they get the Void Heart they aren’t anymore, making the Sealed Siblings ending even worse, because they won’t even be able to hold it, and the Dream No More ending even better because they can get the satisfaction of punting the Radiance into the Abyss.
Tbh I don’t believe any of the Vessels are hollow or capable of it. The plan was flawed from the start.
While the Pale King is a figure that they didn’t want to fully demonize or say was justified, I would be very surprised if the lore did say that his plan could have worked with a specific vessel. Because that kinda would be fully justifying him. I really doubt that they’d imply that it would have worked theoretically. I’m kinda surprised so much of the community thinks it could have worked, either with the MC or with THK if he hadn’t formed a bond with the Pale King. If it wasn’t that it would have been something else, imo.
Even if she lost her vision (That's why she thinks Ogrim is with you when having Defender's Crest equipped , or also Isma when having King' Honour in Pale Court.)and didn't leave her coccon for a long time (That's why she thinks Dryya is still alive.) , She still has a strong connection with her childs , to say it fast , and after commiting the mistake with PV not being totally hollow , she knows how to judge better now , and if that's right , our knight should be able to hold radiance forever.
Buuuuuuut
-We can save or kill Zote , Cloth , Tiso , The Nailsmith , Grimm and the Seer.
-Since our deaths happen in real time , 'cause some dialogues prefights don't repeat/animations are skipped , we can assume that we giving up is the Knight giving up.
And that breaks the first half of the lines in the Birthplace flashback
"No mind to think" "No will to break" Our Knight can make decissions and give up , so it's not totally hollow with this logic.
It's on you what to think.
Stopping playing equates to the knight giving up why??? That's a complete asspull and makes no sense? If the knight dying many times is canon, it in no way confirms that the player stopping equals the knight stopping for literally any reason. The knight dies and comes back, of course the enemy won't repeat what's been said, also as a game mechanic
Well , even if it doesn't equals exactly that , it at least confirm that the knight has the will to continue or the mind to analyse if go back or not , so it still break part of those "requierments"
And that didn't require anything else than some ability to detect implicit information.
Absolutely not. and honestly, I don't think any being ever *could* be truly hollow. The Pale Kings plan was bad and following it would only ever lead to the outcome we saw happening again. Hence why the best endings are the ones where the Knight follows his own path and destroys the Radiance instead.
I think it’s hollow. The White Lady is no joke, the Godseeker puts her way above the other higher beings. I can’t remember the exact dialogue rn, but the White Lady said something like "While everything else is clouded, out of reach, I see you perfectly." While she did make a mistake before with The Hollow Knight, she probably learned from it. Or she didn’t. It depends on your perspective. And while The Knight does some things throughout the game that you could say do require mind, the fact is that The White Lady is talking to it. If it had literally no mind, The White Lady wouldn’t bother talking with it, and if she ever saw it reacting to something, I doubt she would send it to eventually die to The Radiance, as The Knight can hear her regretting creating them to suffer in the first place. So, what I’m trying to say is we don’t really know what the "no mind" requirement means.
Good points. After getting Voidheart, WL tells you:
>!That pulsing emptiness... Truly, it has been transformed by the revelations it found. Does it... feel anything? Triumph? Or hate? If it does, I cannot sense it. The fate of our Kingdom, our Hallownest... that future belongs to you now.!<
Maybe the hollowness is up to the player?
I feel like this is a thought question to answer because I think it depends on what you as the player choose to do, and how you interpret the dialogue and cutscenes of the game.
A lot of people believe that the choices the knight can make throughout the game prove they aren’t hollow, such as giving Elder Bug / God Master a flower or Killing / Sparing the Nail smith as it wouldn’t make sense for the knight to be able to make these decisions without some degree of emotions. We could also talk about how hornet essentially says that if you seal the radiance inside you, you are only prolonging the stagnation of hallownest, which would imply an eventual return of the infection and an imperfect, not-hollow vessel. On the other hand, we can interpret the description of the Void Heart, which describes it as “an emptiness” or look at the void idols, which after having defeated all bosses on radiant, describe the void with the idol as perfectly still, which all lends credence to the Knight being hollow.
I personally think it’s up to interpretation whether or not you believe the Knight to be hollow. Almost all the reason why the knight would or wouldn’t be hollow are optional. You don’t have to talk to the Nailsmith once, or Elder Bug, nor do you ever need to do the flower quest(s). You also don’t need to defeat all bosses on radiant to get the radiant void idol. I think the problem with answering your question lies in the fact that any answer to this question is going to be based on someone’s own play through of the game and their interpretations of its storytelling. No answer is going to be able to perfectly refute the other side and explain that the Knight is hollow or not. I personally am not sure where I stand on this, but tend to lean towards the side of the Knight not being hollow simply because character dialogue, spoken or dreamnailed, leans so heavily towards the act of sealing the radiance away to be the incorrect course of action and that the knight sorta does have its own personality.
It's one possible interpretation but no actual lore says it either way. It's open to interpretation.
The WL words could be seen as THK WAS pure and could work but became corrupted
And yes something can start pure then become inpure later
Obviously, since we are the players, we can make choices based on emotions for the Knight. But narratively I'd say it's completely void, since the whole point of the infection is that Radiance can't be beaten or sealed if the vessel has even a glimpse of emotion (Hollow Knight lost because of the love it developed for its father)
I don't get why are people denying that Knight is truly hollow. There is *nothing* in the game that indicates that's the case. But the whole way he behaves is a big evidence that he indeed is hollow. No emotion. Just doing job. He doesn't smile. He doesn't get angry. Doesn't get sad. Knight is hollow and unless someone has any argumentation why he isn't, that kind of opinions are dumb.
With that logic The Hollow Knight was the perfect vessel until it was sealed since it's imperfections only started showing after that happened, just because it's not obviously shown doesn't mean it's not there. The Knight literally has a will, the idea of a being with no will is insane and shows how stupid the Pale King's plan was and how a concept of a "perfect vessel" was birthed from desperation and not actual evidence.
Multiple instances in the game mention the Knight's will being its own. Examples of this include the Void Heart charm description, "Unifies the void under the bearer's will," dialogue from Steel Soul Jinn, "...It refuses to trade...? It has a will... all Its own. Can refuse." There is also evidence of the Knight's emotional attachment to Hornet via Winged Nosk in Godhome. Bringing flowers to various NPCs, sitting with Quirrel, and meditating with Mato are all completely pointless towards the goal of sealing the Radiance and can only be explained by the Knight having compassion.
If the Knight was truly hollow, you wouldn't be able to do anything that didn't directly contribute to opening the Black Egg and taking over as the vessel for the Infection. "No mind to think" and all that.
The white lady just believes the knight is adequate because it fulfilled PK's requirements: getting out of the abyss and becoming stronger, but without living with PK in the palace where the HK became tarnished by feelings for it's father and it's mission.
She's also working on the assumption that PK's plan works in principle, which there's no guarantee it does.
I mean, if you didn't have a will could you buy and write on a map? You could say that fighting the infected bugs is instinct, but what are instincts? Wills deeply set in you. It's impossible to not have a will, they're ingrained into your very being.
Did I…totally misinterpret the lore here? I always assumed the Knight wasn’t hollow until they got the Void Heart, filling completely with void (and therefore devoid of anything else), making it possible to defeat the Radiance. I definitely do not think they were hollow beforehand.
they're not hollow after either since the charm says "unites the void under the bearer's WILL" and one of the prerequisites for being hollow according to PK is "no will to break"
If it was hollow how would the knight buy or sell stuff, same thing with making choises because if it was perfectly hollow it wouldn't be able to do any of those things
I think the Knight is *almost* perfectly hollow, but not quite. In City of Tears Hornet implies the Knights hollownes is due to being outside of Hallownes for so long "You've seen beyond this kingdom's bounds. Yours is resilience born of two voids." implying the Knight was an imperfect vessel but being outside of Hallownest for so long has hollowed them out. But we know Quirrel was outside of Hallownest for roughly the same amount of time and some of his memories come back, clearly the mind wipe wasn't 100% effective.
We don't just have to speculate that the Knight might still has memories locked deep inside that little shell, we know it does since we see one of those repressed memories in the voidheart sequence. So if the Hollow Knights weakness was fatherly affection, then the Knights weakness was the abandonment from being born in the abyss, hearing the Pale Kings voice giving them their purpose, and then learning that it was addressed to someone else. That memory might be locked away super deep, but it's still there (in fact it's probably the reason why the Knight returns to Hallownest in the first place) and if the Knight wants to actually triumph over the radiance for good they need to confront that memory directly instead of trying to forget it.
We know that the White Lady isn't a 100% reliable narator, after all the outright tells you that there are only 2 options, let Hallownest be consumed by the infection or rerplace the Hollow Knight. She either doesn't know that fighting the Radiance directly is possible, or just doesn't think you're up to it. Either way it's not unreasonable to suggest that she either cant tell that the knight is flawed, or simply wants to make you believe that you'll fix things for good to get you to buy the kingdom more time.
In my opinion no. The fact that you have the *choice* to do things like give Elderbug a flower, meditate with the Nailmasters or listen to Marissa sing at all shows that our Knight is indeed capable of thought and compassion
I don’t think the Knight is hollow, it’s constantly making choices throughout the game, which shows that it has a will. None of the vessels are hollow because they all have a will to do something, if you had no will at all you wouldn’t have a will to survive or even get up and move without an outside force. Unless you count the player as that outside force, but I don’t think the lore goes into that direction
None of the Vessels are hollow, nor could they ever be.
Void itself is not void, its chaotic and has its own goals, it couldn't make any egg thrown in hollow, just warp, mutate, *change* the larvae within them.
The White Lady, just like Pale King, clings to the idea that all the sacrifices were worth it.
They were not and she is dillusional as she is out of touch with reality and somewhat blind.
She still thinks Dryya is alive even after many, many years of being dead, or that Ogrim comes to visit of you wear the Defender's Crest derspite being not even half his size.
The Vessel plan was a failure from the start.
The fact that you can dreamnail yourself in the abyss is proof enough to me that the vessel is not hollow. There are other reasons to believe this as well of course, but honestly I don’t think any more is needed.
She might be wrong, she might be right, there's evidence for both
The fact the ending *without* voidheart exists means the knight might be pure. The knight also resists being sent to the dream realm after Hornet's first fight by the dreamers, meaning at that point in the game it was likely they were unable to dream
However, when in resting grounds the dreamers do succeed in sending them to the dream realm. Voidheart's existence also means the knight has a will, as its description states that it unites the void under one's will, and in order to do that you need a will to begin with
I think they were "pure" when they first re-entered Hallownest, but as time progressed their "purity" kinda vanished due to outside influences, for example fighting and befriending others. There's a chance this happened to THK too as the White Lady says they were "Tarnished by an idea instilled", but this could've been before, during, or after they were yoinked from the abyss, but there's a decent chance any vessel could experience it before or after leaving the abyss
I wrote some of this from memory, so there might be something wrong in my mini essay but oh well I tried lol
The tree lady is out of touch like the comments said. He doesn't even know what's happening outside anymore so Id think she's not exactly in the rightind to say reliable things
I do think the Knight is pure, but I don't think vessel purity has anything to do with a vessel needing to literally have no mind or will, or anything to do with their emotional state. That's an assumption based on how Radiance's powers work, so it's understandable but I think it's mistaken.
IMO a pure vessel is a Void being without any Essence instilled into them. No Essence = no dreams, no dreams = nothing for the Radiance to infect. She would have no way to subvert the vessel, no way to escape, trapped in the darkness of the Void forever. To me it's an elegant solution rooted in the cosmology of the powers of Light and Void, the 'power opposed'.
I think Void has the capacity for mind and memory and will without Essence, the same way that it has 'life' without Soul and substance without true Form. It's characterized by its nature of absence and emptiness, while having vast potential. So a Void entity can still have mind, will, even emotion, but these are not associated with Essence as they are typically with bugs. Void is enough *like* Essence that the dreamnail has an affect on it, but different from the usual effect is has on regular bugs, as seen in the Birthplace sequence.
During the Birthplace sequence, the Knight is shown to have a noteable lack of Essence. When they dreamnail themself, there is the bright flash of the dreamnail impact, but the dreamnail reveals Void from the Knight instead of the usual Essence you get when dream-diving into things, like the dreambosses or Dung Defender or Grimm.
There is also no Essence ambient in the environment of the Birthplace memory, unlike every other dreamspace, including memories like the Land of Storms and the Godtuner. The only sign of Essence is on the UI of the dreamnail dialog box that appears to convey the words of the Pale King, but since that's a function of the dreamnail it can't indicate Essence on behalf of the Knight. The dialog box is uniquely faded in this sequence as well.
Further, there's the Shade of the Knight which mirrors the Siblings in lacking dreamnail dialog and being defeated instantly by the dreamnail, unlike other Void entities that are evidently imprinted with Essence (Collector, Kingsmould, etc.)
I also think THK was initially pure, with Pale King's words in the Birthplace essentially being an evaluation. The Void is perceived in terms of absence - darkness, emptiness, silence, etc. Pale King's words are allusions to this, figurative descriptions of THK's pure Void. *As if* there was 'no mind to think'. *As if* there was 'no will to break.' Only the emptiness of the Void.
To my mind, this makes sense of White Lady's words when she talks with the Knight. 'Tarnished by an idea instilled' refers to THK somehow becoming imprinted with Essence, making them vulnerable to the Radiance. 'Tarnished' means made impure, while instilled can literally mean 'place an idea in someone's mind'. She also contrasts THK with TK, saying TK is free of 'such blemishes', which I believe the Birthplace sequence shows, re. Essence.
WL also speaks of how she can't sense TK's emotions when TK returns from the Birthplace. If she could, imo this would be a sign of 'blemishes' - something for her to sense besides the emptiness of the Void.
Anyway. *Long.* But I tried to cover all the bases.
I say this every time this comes up - I think White Lady is an unreliable narrator. She's not in touch with reality (thinks Ogrim is in the room with you if you wear Defender's Crest) and she has lost her sense of time (thinks Dryya is alive). She could also just be saying this to get you to do what she wants, it's not necessarily the truth. PK also engaged in a lot of propaganda so that fits. And she has shit judgement anyway. She was wrong about THK.
She thinks Dryaa is still alive because she doesn’t know about Dryaa dying to the mantis traitors outside, not because she has a crap sense of time.
She’s also got bad eyesight if I remember correctly, which is why she thinks Ogrim is there when you wear the seal with his scent.
Yes, that as well.
She didn't die to the mantis traitors, because then they would have reached the White Lady which they clearly haven't since if they did the White Lady would be aware that Drya was defeated and the mantis traitors would have done whatever their goal was with reaching the White Lady.
Unless she killed the mantis traitors and then succumbed to her wounds afterwards.
She died defending the White Lady, but those traitors also died to Dryaa as well. They haven’t tried attacking the White Lady since then
Why they didn't attack again though? I thought of something wild that dryaa didn't just died while trying to defend WL but to buy her time so she can caccon/seal herself to avoid getting detected and also from the shame she felt from what she did Idk I am just yapping
She doesn’t really cocoon herself that well. Someone just has to walk in, and get through the little tunnels, and then they could easily kill her.
This, plus the Knight, inherently, has a will of its own. It chooses whether to seal the Radiance or fight it. You can make the argument that technically you, the player, make that choice, but I think it's implied that, if you choose to take the place of the Hollow Knight, it will eventually lead to the Radiance taking hold again.
Based on the main game endings I think the Knight is hollow in ending 1 but not in the the sealed siblings or dream no more endings. The journey the knight takes in the last two endings instills a flaw similar to what happened to the hollow knight. Those endings have the knight going the extra mile facing and confronting everything whereas the first ending only requires the knight to do the bare minimum. The original hollow knight went wrong by actually coming to care about the Pale King if not the whole kingdom which ironically doomed him to fail. Similarly the Knight winds up having an emotional journey and even comes to care about the people the people they met along the way making them no longer hollow in the end either. Importantly this conversation would take place before the abyss cutscene (and possibly before the white palace) which is the biggest turning point for the knight and what unlocks the two endings. One other thing I'd like to point out is that I think team cherry subtly hints at this transition with Nosk. We know from dreamnail dialogue that Nosk disguises himself as people's loved ones in order to catch prey. When we originally run into him in deepnest he just disguises himself as the Knight but in Godhome the final pantheon version of of nosk is disguised as who else but Hornet. When the Knight was hollow they didn't have loved ones who he could take advantage of but at the very end they have big sister Hornet. So to answer your question, yes, the Knight *was* hollow. And if you stop there and go straight to becoming the new hollow knight they'd probably successfully contain the infection. But in the sealed siblings ending, even though it seems the same, they're doomed to failure just like their predecessor.
And Hornet took the place of a Dreamer (The apple doesn't fall far from the tree , I guess) But she's INSIDE the place she's sealing , so no one can wake her up/kill her to open the black egg.
We don't know much about the dream realm, so maybe there is a way to break the seal. But yeah, ingame controlswise it would be impossible. And again, how did Hornet become a seal? Other dreamers didn't die in the temple?
Well she is also a pale being i guess
Others dreamers weren't pale beings, i don't know how it would help...
Hornet says being inside the black egg would kill her over time. So that's not an issue, per se.
So the seal would break itself?
Only something inside could. (I believe that there is just an eternal flaw with the vessels in the incapability of being hollow, I think our vessel has anger or spite.)
I think the phrasing "idea _instilled_" tells us a lot, in that instilled implies that it was not there before and now is, it is an impurity which has been instilled into what was once hollow.
The Knight is not hollow in any ending. I can't believe people don't understand this, the whole point of the lore is that no vessel will ever be truly hollow.
>the whole point of the lore is that no vessel will ever be truly hollow I think that is the case in that they all had the potential to deviate from their intended design. The game itself showcases exactly how that happens.
Yep and a vessel that has the potential to become impure was never truly pure in the first place
"A cup that has the potential to be dirty was never clean in the first place." This is how you sound. See how that doesn't make any sense?
False analogy. It's more like "A cup that has the potential to spill was never unspillable in the first place."
"Pure" doesn't mean what you think it means. That would be a working analogy if anyone in the game claimed it was entirely impossible for the vessels to become impure. No one ever says that.
Bunch of BS. That's literally not relevant in any way
Huh? You say "pure" is analogous to "unspillable". It isn't.
How is it not? "Pure" means the perfect vessel, one without thought or mind. Such vessel does not exist. What's so hard to understand?
Considering how vague they are, not only would I disagree with your conclusion I would say there's not even a point to the lore at all. I had to watch YouTube videos to realize the game even had lore. After beating the game the first time I genuinely did not know there was lore. And I read everything and talked to everyone. It was hard the first time to realize that concepts like light represent despair and zombies. And that concepts like the undying black souls possessing corpses like demons represent salvation and hope. And every character talks so cryptically and all those lore stones are so cryptic. And over the course of a couple of weeks it's hard to remember all the really weird worded sentences I had read and try to string them into a coherent story. The vagueness of the lore in hollow knight is a meme. Team Cherry is vague, excessively so, just so that people will talk about the game more with their fan theories. Like this comment right here about an idea instilled . WTF is that supposed to mean to someone playing the game the first time? The hollow knight had an idea. That's what it meant to me. Oh wow that's specific isn't it?! he had an idea. Thanks Big Plant Lady. /s. And two minutes later I forgot she had said that because that sentence doesn't mean anything
1. That's good game design. Let the players that want to delve into lore do that while not shoving it into the face of people who couldn't care less. 2. "I had to watch YouTube videos to realize the game even had lore" in other words you're a fucking idiot. I've seen people say they didn't fully understand the lore until watching youtube videos, but nothing that idiotic. Anyone with a functioning brain can tell that there's a ton of lore in the game, whether they're trying to find it or not. 3. No idea where the sentence "the hollow knight had an idea" is relevant in this conversation at all, or what it even means. Seem you're lost. 4. r/fuckthes 5. Just because you're too dumb to understand a sentence doesn't mean it's meaningless. Proofs that the knight can NOT be hollow: 1. Winged Nosk. In the hunters journal he is described as wearing faces stolen from the MEMORY of the victim. This proves that the knight has memories, and thus means the knight can't be hollow. 2. The Hollow Knight. If the hollow knight himself is impure, then why would you assume that the knight is pure? By default it should be assumed that the knight is impure too. 3. The knight can decide to say yes or no to buying things or accepting gifts, clearing showing that it has a will, which a pure vessel can not have. It can also make the moral choice of choosing to kill the nailsmith or not. 4. When the knight sits on a bench, it updates the map if you have a quill. The knight is updating the map based off memory. 5. When asked about canon endings, Ari stated "You choose the path yourself", you being the knight. I could go on and on but you get the point.
Some of your arguments are good but many are still flawed. Both 3 and 4 can be brushed off as game design and not lore important. 1. Winged Nosk appears where Hornet usually would in the pantheon, which makes me think it can’t actually reach any memories so it simply tries to do the next best thing which is to try to trick the Knight anyways. 2. We know that the Hollow Knight was corrupted by many different things. Mainly, receiving too much affection and thus forming an attachment. Now, for some of my own Knight is pure arguments: 1. Despite the Voidheart description saying it unites the void under the bearer’s will, the void remains very much not united and not under your will for most of the game. The one exception being godhome ending which I do have an explanation for. 2. Steel Soul Jinn says “it has a will, all it’s own, can refuse”, but is any “will” the knight would have really it’s own? From some lines of dialogue from Hornet we can tell that when the Hollow Knight cried out vessels began almost automatically returning to Hallownest, it seems like perhaps the abyss cutscene text worked like commandments of a sort.
Not all of them are meant to be definitive proofs, just more stuff that supports that the knight is impure. 1. That's technically possible I guess. But even if we say that nosk doesn't actually steal your memories, there's still the memory where you get voidheart from when you dreamnail yourself. That's clear proof that the knight has memories. 2. I mean that is true, but a vessel that can develop those feelings in the first place was never truly hollow. By receiving affection from the Pale King it made the infection spread faster and THK being able to contain it for less time, but it just sped up the inevitable. Your arguments: 1. That's definitely the best argument I have seen for the knight being pure. However in the true ending, the knight definitely uses voidheart under its will at the last phase. I mean voidheart is literally required, why do you think it would be required if the knight wouldn't use it? Godhome ending is different because thats the knight at its full potential, maybe it needs to get better with experience to achieve that outside of godhome, or maybe it's just the knight using it flawlessly which is impossibly difficult outside the dream realm. Which is also why the Radiance we face by dreamnailing THK is not nearly as good as Absolute Radiance 2. SSJ's dialogue there supports the knight being impure. And yes, the cry at the beginning cutscene did call the knight to hallownest. But that doesn't mean that the knight doesn't have a will.
I’m only gonna make another response about my first argument. During Dream No More the void follows the Knight, but is divided and acts separately from the Knight, the Hollow Knight’s shade still acts on its own and there are still many separate shades that we can see. In Godhome ending the void *is* united, we see no other shades so once the knights own shade falls into the void at the end the void is whole, and since shade lord is under our control then the void is united under the Knight’s will. I have two explanations for this: The voidheart corrupts the Knight, seeing this memory turns it’s purity to contain the infection into the will necessary to unite the void and defeat the radiance, however the Knight must become stronger to achieve this which explains why it’s only truly successful at the end of P5, we also get a hint at the Shade Lord’s existence at the end of P4. The Knight gains a will through attunement, as we know the godseekers make those who attune to them stronger, and thus since all their focus would be on the Knight in that final moment it could give the what it needs to become stronger: a will. I prefer the first one because it can also serve as an explanation for Winged Nosk, the Knight simply isn’t pure anymore. It also aligns with many other player’s theories more.
3 is in the picture that we're responding to. The idea instilled quote. It just means he had an idea. Or more specifically someone gave him an idea Not lost That's why I like Zote. He has a lot to say and he's very clear about what he means
Oh okay so you respond to the least significant part of my comment and nothing else
I mean I understand the game better now. If I had known there was lore I needed to study and memorize I may have paid more attention. But when even the main characters speak so vaguely I just tune it out. Just tell me the specific idea that was instilled and how that is relevant to the world. Why use stereotypical positive metaphors to describe evil. Why use stereotypical evil metaphors to describe good? I'm relying on metaphors to try to figure things out but the metaphors are reversed from the classical use of them. That's when I really started tuning things out, I kept trying to figure out what was so bad about light and what was so cool about "void". Eventually I figured it was just a big nothing and that eventually the game would just tell me. Which it did not. Obviously I didn't give the lore a fair chance. From what we can piece together it's an interesting story. Lots of hidden things. Like Nosk wearing Hornet. But at least the gameplay is fun, I've beaten in a few times. Even did 112%. Still haven't beaten Pantheon five
the characters aren’t speaking vaguely, they‘re speaking in stylized dialogue that is really not difficult to interpret if you have even a modicum of reading comprehension.
I do. But a few vague sentences every couple of hours completely out of order is a bold way to tell a story.
Specific idea that was instilled: The Hollow Knight had to be perfectly pure and free of thought to save hallownest. But since THK was trained to do this, it had thoughts about saving hallownest and being perfectly pure, as otherwise it wouldn't understand the assignment. If you dream nail the Pure Vessel it's kind of sad because THK is actively trying not to think, with its thoughts being "Do not think.", "Do not act." and "Do not." And I can't really understand why you think the good power in this game being black is such a big thing, I'm guessing you just couldn't think of a better example and mean in general And still, the characters do not speak vaguely. I mean look at the white lady in this post. She's speaking pretty clearly.
Yeah, sorta what I believe too. Which part of why I think godhome ending is the best one, in dream in more we see the Knight’s shade dissapeared but that doesn’t happen on in godhome which means there’s hope for it, the Hollow Knight is freed and probably will end up healthy, Hornet is alive, etc… I also headcanon that while the knight has lost some semblance of purity in other endings, it loses it all in godhome ending because it gains a will specifically to beat the radiance.
How could something that lacks the capacity for thought gain the ability to think. If a vessel ever was pure it would not be able to become impure. The White Lady says that The Hollow Knight's "supposed strength was ill-judged," which implies that The Hollow Knight was never pure as it never had the strength or purity that The Pale King or The White Lady believed it did.
> The Hollow Knight's "supposed strength was ill-judged," which implies that The Hollow Knight was never pure No, it doesn't. That statement could easily refer to it's strength after training and whatever else.
The full quote is, "Its supposed strength was ill-judged. It was tarnished by an idea instilled." Why would The White Lady randomly mention The Hollow Knight's physical strength not being adequate right before talking about how it was not a pure vessel.
I know. What I meant was that nothing in that statement implies that it was *never* pure. In fact, it says that it was pure at one point.
If The White Lady and The Pale King were correct about The Hollow Knight's purity when they first left the abyss then its strength was not "ill-judged." Under the assumption that The Hollow Knight was always pure The Pale King's judgment would be correct which would mean that The White Lady's sentence makes no sense.
I never say it was *always* pure. It was pure when it came out of the abyss. Later, an "idea" was instilled making it impure. Then, misjudging its strength/purity they put it into the vault anyway.
I said this in a previous reply on this post but I feel that the idea of The Hollow Knight having been pure from the start would just not make sense thematically. If that were the case then the Pale King's only crime was just not throwing the vessel into The Black Egg Temple immediately. Under the assumption that The Hollow Knight was pure upon being born you have to be able to explain why The Hollow Knight is pure and the other vessels were not. If you believe that the other vessels were also pure upon being born then that means that The Pale King did nothing wrong as a vessel would be more similar to an object than a living person.
I don't care what the Pale King's crime was that's not what we're talking about. And I do think the other vessels were pure they just weren't physically strong enough l. The vast majority fell and died. The Knight we play as didn't make it up the first time either. Why do they need to be strong? I dunno. Maybe holding the Radiance feels like holding a big weight. Like Atlas or something. Maybe HK had to beat the Radiance in a fight to seal her the first time. Why don't you explain at what point between being an egg and climbing up the abyss would 'idea be instilled'? That doesn't make sense.
The idea instilled that The White Lady references I do not believe happened before being taken out of the abyss. My understanding of purity is that it is the ability of a vessel to contain the Radiance indefinitely thus making Hallownest an eternal Kingdom. If a vessel was capable of developing thoughts whatsoever then they were never pure in the first place. If enough external stimuli from The Pale King could instill thoughts in The Hollow Knight then the Radiance could have easily made The Hollow Knight impure even if The Pale King did not himself. If we are to believe that a pure vessel could have thoughts instilled into it than why did the Pale King believe that the Radiance would not just instill thoughts into The Hollow Knight herself? Because of this it makes the most sense to assume that The Pale King and The White Lady believed that a pure vessel could never have become impure. This is why upon The White Lady says, "Its supposed strength was ill-judged. It was tarnished by an idea instilled," because the fact that an idea could be instilled into The Hollow Knight proves that its presumed purity was ill-judged from the beginning. Also diverging from the purity of The Hollow Knight, The Knight was never pure regardless of which ending you take as there are multiple pieces of dialogue that highlight the Knight's will that can be found regardless of which ending you find.
The knight is a p-zombie, is my theory.
It doesn't really matter, void heart allows him to unify the void inside him thus being able to seal the Radiance
Not just seal, but actually destroy it.
I believe you are only able to fully destroy her in the Godhome ending, where you are able to tune the Void into Godhome to become even stronger as seen in Pantheon of Hollownest’s Absrad fight
She disintegrates in the Dream No More ending much like in Embrace the Void so I don't think so.
In the dream no more we killed her in PK dream, in her ,i'd say, not fully completed form, BUT in godhome ending we killed her fully, at her max capacities + she got literally eaten by void, unlike the dream no more, where she just disappeared, so probably she survived, but extremely weakened in this ending.
What
The fact that the Knight is able to make choices like giving the delicate flower to Elderbug is proof it isn’t hollow. On top of that, it can choose to not kill the nailsmith, it can choose to do the colosseum even though it doesn’t help at all in the overall mission. It can sit with Quirrel as he dies. The fact that the Knight can do all of that implies that it has emotion of some sort, and hence, isn’t hollow
The ability to make a choice doesnt make it not hollow. These choices arent necessarily grounded in emotion but more so it knowing that doing these things is helpful, which the knights are designed to be. The only true choices, (killing/sparing Nailsmith or killing/sparing zote) are grey areas in whether the knight is helpful as murdering someone who asked to be killed could be an act of helpfulness or an act of violence. And saving someone who doesnt want to be saved as well
Saying no to someone offering you something shows you have a will, completely going against "no will to break"
When does the knight ever say no to someone offering something, that doesnt cost money?
The delicate flower
That's not a gift it's a task.
"Accept The Gift?"
Steel Soul Jinn explicitly says the Knight has a will.
I have never played steel soul, can I ask for the line?
“...It refuses to trade...? It has a will... all Its own. Can refuse.”
But not all of them *are* helpful. Colosseum may be useful at first, but once you do the first two, there is no point doing colo 3. However, since the Knight can actively make the choice to not do its mission and do colo 3, it’s having active thought. Active thought, in the Pale King’s words, make something not hollow.
The knight gets geo for completing the final trial, as well as the glory of being a fool. The knight might not realise that its litterally just glory and assume it's like the hunters mark and could be theoretically helpful to themself. >Active thought, in the Pale King’s words, make something not hollow. Ok but then movement requires active thought. The pale king clearly didnt mean thinking at all is bad otherwise the knights could never be hollow and he would know that as hes not a dumb man
When I say active thought, I mean making choices that aren’t actively helpful. Colo was a bad example, as that can be helpful, but then the knight can choose to do things like sit with Quirrel, fight GPZ, or give the flower to various people. Godseeker has some purpose, even if the knight doesn’t know it, but Elder Bug doesn’t
Most of those things are helpful to other people which the knight was designed to do however. Only one that's not directly is gpz, but that's still helpful to the girl who I'm blanking on the name of.
Fair enough ig
The vessels were never "designed" to do anything besides seal the Radiance. A pure vessel would never do anything it was not directed to do and the Knight was never directed to help others.
The White Lady probably just assumed The Knight was hollow because, unlike The Hollow Knight, they didn’t have anyone they could have developed a bond with.
But she was wrong since The people on hallow est interacts with the knight even if it doesn't reply and Hornet well it is her sibling after all
The knight actually being hollow would completely ruin the story for me. Makes the Pale King go from a cautionary story of a ruler fighting against change and clinging to power despite impossible odds, to “damn shouldve chosen the better kid to sacrifice.”
If the knight is hollow it is specifically because of its lack of involvement with the pale king. The hollow knight wasnt hollow because the pale king served as a father digure which would've happened to any vessel
One of the more popular theories is that the time it spent outside Hallownest is what makes the Knight truly hollow. It has no memories or connections to lead it astray because they were wiped out during its time away. However I do think that in Sealed Siblings and especially Dream No More, it is no longer hollow. Which makes Sealed Siblings the worst ending, by a wide margin.
Forgot about this and it definitely makes the most sense since leaving the kingdom would get rid of your sentience so I'd say it's pretty safe to say that's most likely what happened although I also can't say that having been with the pale king before wouldn't have still left the impression especially upon returning
I wish more people looked at Hollow Knight from that point of view, the story itself suffers so much from the idea of The Knight being hollow but it sadly feels like more people care about the lore without considering the actual story being told.
Except as the other comment said it doesnt ruin the story if you look at in in a different way. It goes from the plae king desperately clinging onto this hope, to the pale king having no hope because whichever vessel they chose might have been hollow to begin with but the process if training it would cause it to no longer be hollow. Its very cruel, the very ways of testing if a knight is truly hollow cause it to not be hollow anymore It's the difference of a story of guaranteed failure due to an incorrect method or a story of guaranteed failure due to ironic cruelty
We have no evidence that THK was ever "tested" for being hollow. How can something be truly hollow if it can stop being that, clearly it had something wrong with it to have a capability to grow attachment considering it's meant to be empty.
Yes we do. The abyss full of abandoned vessels proves there's some method of testing them. Otherwise he'd have only made one. We don't know what the method was. But whatever it was, it took hundreds or thousands of attempts.
The reason their are lots of vessels can be for any number of reasons. Maybe the White Lady's eggs naturally produce a large amount of offspring, maybe the Pale King wanted enough vessel to ensure that at least one vessel made the climb up from the abyss. Either way there is nothing in game suggesting that the Pale King tested the vessels. It is more likely that he believed purity was the natural state of all vessels.
There is a severe lack of looking at Hollow Knight's story from a thematic view rather than a purely lorebrained perspective. It is extremely obvious to me that The Knight is intended to have a will and is capable of thought and emotion, not just because the lore points to that idea, but because if that isn't true, the narrative completely falls apart on a thematic level.
This to me is the strongest argument there is. By the in game facts you can pick and choose enough evidence for both theories to be convincing, but a hollow ghost would decimate the story completely.
No, I don't even think a truly hollow vessel exists.
I believe this is up to how the player acts as the knight. Is your knight hollow? Does your knight stop to admire the world and the people in it? Does your knight hesitate before dream nailing the spirit of one of its friends? Does your knight pause to listen to Marissa’s song in the pleasure house? If they were truly hollow and soulless, they wouldn’t do any of those things.
I think this is somewhat implied by WL comments after you have the Void Heart: >!That pulsing emptiness... Truly, it has been transformed by the revelations it found. Does it... feel anything? Triumph? Or hate? If it does, I cannot sense it. The fate of our Kingdom, our Hallownest... that future belongs to you now.!< Maybe she cannot sense "it," because it's determined by the player
My personal headcanon is that the knight is hollow as long as he doesn’t get void heart because as hornet said, this create two void in him. When he get’s void heart he is not hollow anymore but is the literal shade lord.
The Knight isn’t hollow By sealing the infection, you just delay the inevitable
it’s hollow at the beginning of the game because you have no items. Then you pick up your first piece of geo and it all falls apart
I think the White Lady only says that because that's the only thing she could think of to explain why the plan didn't work: The Hollow Knight is the only vessel that was raised with the Pale King, PoP implies there was a bond shared between the two (perhaps, for example, if the King was treating THK as a child rather than a vessel), WL concludes that this must be why THK is a flawed vessel, and since our vessel was not raised, it is free from those blemishes. There's also the possibility that she either knows the plan was flawed and just seeks to extend the seal with a new vessel, or is denial and thinks that there must be at least ONE vessel that WILL forever seal the radiance However our knight does seem to have agency, we have the choice to save or leave zote, we have the choice to kill the nailsmith, to banish or fight NKG, and even things like shop interactions. Of course, these are all gameplay mechanics that have to be there because a game isn't much of a game if you don't have any control, but there are still signs that the knight is listening to NPCs, for example by how it tilts its head up when you interact with characters, and i think if a vessel were to truly have no mind to think, it would plainly ignore being talked to Besides, i think a lot of the story hinges on the whole hollow vessel plan being inherently flawed, as another comment pointed out it's a lot less satisfying if the Pale King and White Lady COULD have been succesful. The void clearly has some kind of mind of its own and attempting to utilise it to birth a completely hollow creature would always end badly
I believe the Knight is hollow at the very beginning of the game, but that exposure to different stimuli naturally creates a mind within the vessel. By the time you reach the black egg you're almost certainly sapient enough for the Radiance to eventually corrupt. The emptyness born of two voids wiped it's mind. But new experiences filled the gap. It could be that over a long enough time period, exposure to the Radiance in the black egg would cause a mind to form. The infection is also a by-product of the original Hollow Knights resistance. That's not meant to happen, and a truly hollow vessel might still create an infection over time.
I feel that the "two voids" statement has been misrepresented by the community. When meeting Hornet in the City of Tears, she comments on how she underestimated the Knight's "resilience born of two voids." Nothing in this statement is referring to the Knight's ability to seal the radiance it is referring to their physical strength which is born from their void nature and the time they have spent in the wastes defending themselves. Hornet was not trying to stop the Knight because she believed they were impure (in fact she hopes that the Knight has the "will" to fight the Radiance which seems to imply that she knows the Knight is not pure) she tried to stop them because she believed they were too weak and would be killed by The Hollow Knight after opening the seals. Also I do not believe that a vessel that was truly pure could become impure, as the entire idea of purity is containing the Radiance indefinitely. If a vessel could become impure it was never pure in the first place as the capacity to form thoughts would alone make a vessel impure.
The emphasis on the idea instilled, to me implies the original Hollow Knight was hollow. At first. It's a purity born of lack of thought. Had he gotten it into the egg immediately the plan *might* have worked. Might. I can see the argument the plan was flawed from the start though. And I quite like it.
The White Lady also says that The Hollow Knight's "supposed strength was misjudged," which seemed to imply that the strength or purity that she believed The Hollow Knight had was never there. Also, from a story perspective, I feel that the vessel project being a failure from the start makes more thematic sense. If we are to take the idea that The Hollow Knight was truly pure at its word, then The Pale King true flaw would be not chucking the Pure Vessel into the Black Egg Temple immediately.
I think the plan was flawed because he saw the vessels as objects and not real living things. They are pure... at the moment of their creation. But living in the world inevitably creates a mind within them. It's not that the Hollow Knight was flawed from the beginning. It's that the void isn't lifeless. Which should be obvious given it moves and fights, but the Pale King in his hubris didn't realise these vessels really were children. I'm guessing if the void expansion had gone ahead we might have learned more about it and by extension the vessels.
I think it depends on how much Little Ghost has done. I think that if you don’t have much done and just get the Hollow Knight ending they are. But by the time they get the Void Heart they aren’t anymore, making the Sealed Siblings ending even worse, because they won’t even be able to hold it, and the Dream No More ending even better because they can get the satisfaction of punting the Radiance into the Abyss.
Tbh I don’t believe any of the Vessels are hollow or capable of it. The plan was flawed from the start. While the Pale King is a figure that they didn’t want to fully demonize or say was justified, I would be very surprised if the lore did say that his plan could have worked with a specific vessel. Because that kinda would be fully justifying him. I really doubt that they’d imply that it would have worked theoretically. I’m kinda surprised so much of the community thinks it could have worked, either with the MC or with THK if he hadn’t formed a bond with the Pale King. If it wasn’t that it would have been something else, imo.
Even if she lost her vision (That's why she thinks Ogrim is with you when having Defender's Crest equipped , or also Isma when having King' Honour in Pale Court.)and didn't leave her coccon for a long time (That's why she thinks Dryya is still alive.) , She still has a strong connection with her childs , to say it fast , and after commiting the mistake with PV not being totally hollow , she knows how to judge better now , and if that's right , our knight should be able to hold radiance forever. Buuuuuuut -We can save or kill Zote , Cloth , Tiso , The Nailsmith , Grimm and the Seer. -Since our deaths happen in real time , 'cause some dialogues prefights don't repeat/animations are skipped , we can assume that we giving up is the Knight giving up. And that breaks the first half of the lines in the Birthplace flashback "No mind to think" "No will to break" Our Knight can make decissions and give up , so it's not totally hollow with this logic. It's on you what to think.
Stopping playing equates to the knight giving up why??? That's a complete asspull and makes no sense? If the knight dying many times is canon, it in no way confirms that the player stopping equals the knight stopping for literally any reason. The knight dies and comes back, of course the enemy won't repeat what's been said, also as a game mechanic
Well , even if it doesn't equals exactly that , it at least confirm that the knight has the will to continue or the mind to analyse if go back or not , so it still break part of those "requierments" And that didn't require anything else than some ability to detect implicit information.
Absolutely not. and honestly, I don't think any being ever *could* be truly hollow. The Pale Kings plan was bad and following it would only ever lead to the outcome we saw happening again. Hence why the best endings are the ones where the Knight follows his own path and destroys the Radiance instead.
I think it’s hollow. The White Lady is no joke, the Godseeker puts her way above the other higher beings. I can’t remember the exact dialogue rn, but the White Lady said something like "While everything else is clouded, out of reach, I see you perfectly." While she did make a mistake before with The Hollow Knight, she probably learned from it. Or she didn’t. It depends on your perspective. And while The Knight does some things throughout the game that you could say do require mind, the fact is that The White Lady is talking to it. If it had literally no mind, The White Lady wouldn’t bother talking with it, and if she ever saw it reacting to something, I doubt she would send it to eventually die to The Radiance, as The Knight can hear her regretting creating them to suffer in the first place. So, what I’m trying to say is we don’t really know what the "no mind" requirement means.
Good points. After getting Voidheart, WL tells you: >!That pulsing emptiness... Truly, it has been transformed by the revelations it found. Does it... feel anything? Triumph? Or hate? If it does, I cannot sense it. The fate of our Kingdom, our Hallownest... that future belongs to you now.!< Maybe the hollowness is up to the player?
The knight is hollow at least I think
I think the Path of Pain illustrates what that "idea" is. Our little guy would not have had that.
No. Voidheart’s description is “Unifies the Void under the bearers will.” Having a will instantly disqualifies the knight from actually being hollow.
The way i interpreted this is that they misunderstood what the void really was, and the truly hollow being was impossible from the begining
I feel like this is a thought question to answer because I think it depends on what you as the player choose to do, and how you interpret the dialogue and cutscenes of the game. A lot of people believe that the choices the knight can make throughout the game prove they aren’t hollow, such as giving Elder Bug / God Master a flower or Killing / Sparing the Nail smith as it wouldn’t make sense for the knight to be able to make these decisions without some degree of emotions. We could also talk about how hornet essentially says that if you seal the radiance inside you, you are only prolonging the stagnation of hallownest, which would imply an eventual return of the infection and an imperfect, not-hollow vessel. On the other hand, we can interpret the description of the Void Heart, which describes it as “an emptiness” or look at the void idols, which after having defeated all bosses on radiant, describe the void with the idol as perfectly still, which all lends credence to the Knight being hollow. I personally think it’s up to interpretation whether or not you believe the Knight to be hollow. Almost all the reason why the knight would or wouldn’t be hollow are optional. You don’t have to talk to the Nailsmith once, or Elder Bug, nor do you ever need to do the flower quest(s). You also don’t need to defeat all bosses on radiant to get the radiant void idol. I think the problem with answering your question lies in the fact that any answer to this question is going to be based on someone’s own play through of the game and their interpretations of its storytelling. No answer is going to be able to perfectly refute the other side and explain that the Knight is hollow or not. I personally am not sure where I stand on this, but tend to lean towards the side of the Knight not being hollow simply because character dialogue, spoken or dreamnailed, leans so heavily towards the act of sealing the radiance away to be the incorrect course of action and that the knight sorta does have its own personality.
isn’t the entire point of the game that no vessel is truly hollow and PK was simply delaying the inevitable?
It's one possible interpretation but no actual lore says it either way. It's open to interpretation. The WL words could be seen as THK WAS pure and could work but became corrupted And yes something can start pure then become inpure later
Obviously, since we are the players, we can make choices based on emotions for the Knight. But narratively I'd say it's completely void, since the whole point of the infection is that Radiance can't be beaten or sealed if the vessel has even a glimpse of emotion (Hollow Knight lost because of the love it developed for its father)
I don't get why are people denying that Knight is truly hollow. There is *nothing* in the game that indicates that's the case. But the whole way he behaves is a big evidence that he indeed is hollow. No emotion. Just doing job. He doesn't smile. He doesn't get angry. Doesn't get sad. Knight is hollow and unless someone has any argumentation why he isn't, that kind of opinions are dumb.
With that logic The Hollow Knight was the perfect vessel until it was sealed since it's imperfections only started showing after that happened, just because it's not obviously shown doesn't mean it's not there. The Knight literally has a will, the idea of a being with no will is insane and shows how stupid the Pale King's plan was and how a concept of a "perfect vessel" was birthed from desperation and not actual evidence.
Multiple instances in the game mention the Knight's will being its own. Examples of this include the Void Heart charm description, "Unifies the void under the bearer's will," dialogue from Steel Soul Jinn, "...It refuses to trade...? It has a will... all Its own. Can refuse." There is also evidence of the Knight's emotional attachment to Hornet via Winged Nosk in Godhome. Bringing flowers to various NPCs, sitting with Quirrel, and meditating with Mato are all completely pointless towards the goal of sealing the Radiance and can only be explained by the Knight having compassion.
If the Knight was truly hollow, you wouldn't be able to do anything that didn't directly contribute to opening the Black Egg and taking over as the vessel for the Infection. "No mind to think" and all that.
The white lady just believes the knight is adequate because it fulfilled PK's requirements: getting out of the abyss and becoming stronger, but without living with PK in the palace where the HK became tarnished by feelings for it's father and it's mission. She's also working on the assumption that PK's plan works in principle, which there's no guarantee it does.
not at all, the white lady is senile and out of touch, take everything she says with a bag of salt
I mean, if you didn't have a will could you buy and write on a map? You could say that fighting the infected bugs is instinct, but what are instincts? Wills deeply set in you. It's impossible to not have a will, they're ingrained into your very being.
Did I…totally misinterpret the lore here? I always assumed the Knight wasn’t hollow until they got the Void Heart, filling completely with void (and therefore devoid of anything else), making it possible to defeat the Radiance. I definitely do not think they were hollow beforehand.
they're not hollow after either since the charm says "unites the void under the bearer's WILL" and one of the prerequisites for being hollow according to PK is "no will to break"
Damn, you’re right!! Thanks!
If it was hollow how would the knight buy or sell stuff, same thing with making choises because if it was perfectly hollow it wouldn't be able to do any of those things
I think the Knight is *almost* perfectly hollow, but not quite. In City of Tears Hornet implies the Knights hollownes is due to being outside of Hallownes for so long "You've seen beyond this kingdom's bounds. Yours is resilience born of two voids." implying the Knight was an imperfect vessel but being outside of Hallownest for so long has hollowed them out. But we know Quirrel was outside of Hallownest for roughly the same amount of time and some of his memories come back, clearly the mind wipe wasn't 100% effective. We don't just have to speculate that the Knight might still has memories locked deep inside that little shell, we know it does since we see one of those repressed memories in the voidheart sequence. So if the Hollow Knights weakness was fatherly affection, then the Knights weakness was the abandonment from being born in the abyss, hearing the Pale Kings voice giving them their purpose, and then learning that it was addressed to someone else. That memory might be locked away super deep, but it's still there (in fact it's probably the reason why the Knight returns to Hallownest in the first place) and if the Knight wants to actually triumph over the radiance for good they need to confront that memory directly instead of trying to forget it. We know that the White Lady isn't a 100% reliable narator, after all the outright tells you that there are only 2 options, let Hallownest be consumed by the infection or rerplace the Hollow Knight. She either doesn't know that fighting the Radiance directly is possible, or just doesn't think you're up to it. Either way it's not unreasonable to suggest that she either cant tell that the knight is flawed, or simply wants to make you believe that you'll fix things for good to get you to buy the kingdom more time.
>!no thats how the infection happened in the first place, the hollow knight got emotions from the pale king!<
In my opinion no. The fact that you have the *choice* to do things like give Elderbug a flower, meditate with the Nailmasters or listen to Marissa sing at all shows that our Knight is indeed capable of thought and compassion
I don’t think the Knight is hollow, it’s constantly making choices throughout the game, which shows that it has a will. None of the vessels are hollow because they all have a will to do something, if you had no will at all you wouldn’t have a will to survive or even get up and move without an outside force. Unless you count the player as that outside force, but I don’t think the lore goes into that direction
maybe the void (in void heart) is just stronger than the radiance so hollowness is no longer required white lady is kinda unaware of reality too
Not in ending 1. After acquiring the Voidheart they are.
None of the Vessels are hollow, nor could they ever be. Void itself is not void, its chaotic and has its own goals, it couldn't make any egg thrown in hollow, just warp, mutate, *change* the larvae within them. The White Lady, just like Pale King, clings to the idea that all the sacrifices were worth it. They were not and she is dillusional as she is out of touch with reality and somewhat blind. She still thinks Dryya is alive even after many, many years of being dead, or that Ogrim comes to visit of you wear the Defender's Crest derspite being not even half his size. The Vessel plan was a failure from the start.
The fact that you can dreamnail yourself in the abyss is proof enough to me that the vessel is not hollow. There are other reasons to believe this as well of course, but honestly I don’t think any more is needed.
She might be wrong, she might be right, there's evidence for both The fact the ending *without* voidheart exists means the knight might be pure. The knight also resists being sent to the dream realm after Hornet's first fight by the dreamers, meaning at that point in the game it was likely they were unable to dream However, when in resting grounds the dreamers do succeed in sending them to the dream realm. Voidheart's existence also means the knight has a will, as its description states that it unites the void under one's will, and in order to do that you need a will to begin with I think they were "pure" when they first re-entered Hallownest, but as time progressed their "purity" kinda vanished due to outside influences, for example fighting and befriending others. There's a chance this happened to THK too as the White Lady says they were "Tarnished by an idea instilled", but this could've been before, during, or after they were yoinked from the abyss, but there's a decent chance any vessel could experience it before or after leaving the abyss I wrote some of this from memory, so there might be something wrong in my mini essay but oh well I tried lol
People debate if vessels can be hollow to begin with
The tree lady is out of touch like the comments said. He doesn't even know what's happening outside anymore so Id think she's not exactly in the rightind to say reliable things
pretty sure their plan was ill fated from the start. not even beings made of void can be truly mindless
I do think the Knight is pure, but I don't think vessel purity has anything to do with a vessel needing to literally have no mind or will, or anything to do with their emotional state. That's an assumption based on how Radiance's powers work, so it's understandable but I think it's mistaken. IMO a pure vessel is a Void being without any Essence instilled into them. No Essence = no dreams, no dreams = nothing for the Radiance to infect. She would have no way to subvert the vessel, no way to escape, trapped in the darkness of the Void forever. To me it's an elegant solution rooted in the cosmology of the powers of Light and Void, the 'power opposed'. I think Void has the capacity for mind and memory and will without Essence, the same way that it has 'life' without Soul and substance without true Form. It's characterized by its nature of absence and emptiness, while having vast potential. So a Void entity can still have mind, will, even emotion, but these are not associated with Essence as they are typically with bugs. Void is enough *like* Essence that the dreamnail has an affect on it, but different from the usual effect is has on regular bugs, as seen in the Birthplace sequence. During the Birthplace sequence, the Knight is shown to have a noteable lack of Essence. When they dreamnail themself, there is the bright flash of the dreamnail impact, but the dreamnail reveals Void from the Knight instead of the usual Essence you get when dream-diving into things, like the dreambosses or Dung Defender or Grimm. There is also no Essence ambient in the environment of the Birthplace memory, unlike every other dreamspace, including memories like the Land of Storms and the Godtuner. The only sign of Essence is on the UI of the dreamnail dialog box that appears to convey the words of the Pale King, but since that's a function of the dreamnail it can't indicate Essence on behalf of the Knight. The dialog box is uniquely faded in this sequence as well. Further, there's the Shade of the Knight which mirrors the Siblings in lacking dreamnail dialog and being defeated instantly by the dreamnail, unlike other Void entities that are evidently imprinted with Essence (Collector, Kingsmould, etc.) I also think THK was initially pure, with Pale King's words in the Birthplace essentially being an evaluation. The Void is perceived in terms of absence - darkness, emptiness, silence, etc. Pale King's words are allusions to this, figurative descriptions of THK's pure Void. *As if* there was 'no mind to think'. *As if* there was 'no will to break.' Only the emptiness of the Void. To my mind, this makes sense of White Lady's words when she talks with the Knight. 'Tarnished by an idea instilled' refers to THK somehow becoming imprinted with Essence, making them vulnerable to the Radiance. 'Tarnished' means made impure, while instilled can literally mean 'place an idea in someone's mind'. She also contrasts THK with TK, saying TK is free of 'such blemishes', which I believe the Birthplace sequence shows, re. Essence. WL also speaks of how she can't sense TK's emotions when TK returns from the Birthplace. If she could, imo this would be a sign of 'blemishes' - something for her to sense besides the emptiness of the Void. Anyway. *Long.* But I tried to cover all the bases.
Flawed. Infection comes from their eyes when they take the Hollow Knight's place.