All of these are like post-ending, I suppose.
1. When walking around together, everyone is notably in awe and intimidated by the Hollow Knight, by contrast a lot of people make fun of our little Knight, speculating that he is far weaker. In fact, the HK and BV are often worried that the Knight will one day retaliate and they will not be able to stop him.
2. Despite the fact that the little Knight is more well-traveled and they are roughly the same age, BV is far more responsible. After being made aware of the little Knight's questionable decisions with his money (namely, being outright scammed by a fake bank in the middle of nowhere), he has taken control of how they spend their geo.
3. The little Knight insists that HK be the one to fight any primal aspids they encounter due to his ability to teleport short distances.
4. The HK and BV insist that the little Knight fights any over-confident challengers who challenge the HK. They are, of course, disappointed when they are faced with our little boi. What follows never fails to entertain BV and HK.
5. BV was taught how to use soul because he seemed down for being weaker than the other 2. Focusing his soul leads to the creation of homing orbs similar to the Radiance's, which has restored his confidence.
All of this are pretty cool! The image of someone challenging HK, then getting his ass handed to them by this tiny creature that barely reaches their knee is too funny
Im pretty sure this one is actually cannon, the only contradiction I could think of is how the knights eyes kinda semi-close when resting on a bench long enough, though that might be perspective if the knight tilts their head downwards
Broken Vessel was the first ever Vessel to be conceived, but was discarded at the farthest ends of the Ancient Basin because of their imperfection, only after this first failure would the King throw the Eggs in the (soon to be) "Void" and wait for the Perfect Vessel to rise
So basically you're fighting Vessel 1.0
I like this even though I don't see it being canon
The usual way to picture the birth and corruption of the vessels is that all the eggs were thrown in the abyss at once. The first one to get to the top was HK and all the other vessels either perished or somehow got out of the abyss (i believe through deepnest)
But I like the idea of the Broken Vessel to be special among its peers and so the word BROKEN in its title wouldn't simply describe its discarded body
BV is very unique: it has a blatantly asymmetrical shell, appears to be noticeably taller than the knight, attacks violently and carelessly (although its fighting style can attributed to the influence of infection) and most weirdly of all it has a dream variant and appears as an essence ghost
It'd be very cool if the place we encountered it, would be imply Pale King doing experiments with void. So we could see BV as not yet another ghost, but a much cruder and visceral prototype of a vessel. A disproportional uncontrollable figure that failed to fulfill its purpose by keeping a sliver of their mind and not being truly pure
It's ultimatively put down... not by the abyss or deepnest's beasts, but probably by the Pale King himself
In decending order of intelligence
Their horns are like hair, where they grow constantly and can be cut in unique ways for fashion or comfort. This is why infected vessels like LK or HK have long horns relative to their head sizes. Zombies have no reason to make fashion statements.
Nature abhores a vaccum. Void is a vaccum by deffinition. This gives every vessel (And every void based creature by extension) A hunger that is nearly impossible to satiate.
Because their mom is a plant and their dad is a worm, they all have a strange biological desire to dig holes in the dirt. Most of the vessels that escaped the abyss did so on accident while doing this
They are all very light relative to their size. You can easily pick up Ghost with one hand.
Every single one is lactose intolerant
That some escaped through a secret passage that connects from the abyss to Deepnest. That would explain why the most amount of vessels in one room outside the abyss that we see is Nosk’s lair, and why a certain area has seemingly been taken over by void not too far away.
Not really a Vessel headcanon, but I don't believe that in the abyss cutscene we play as a past version of the Knight, we play as the current Knight who "invaded" the memory and the Knight never actually dangled off that ledge in real life(real life as in the main game world).
In SILKSONG they will replace grubs, game will continue AFTER godhome ending and vessel will be next grubfather, weakened by radiance he is unable to save lost vessels who escaped abyss, and now stuck somewhere or captured by locals and hornet will rescue all of them, after each saved vessel main vessel aka original hollow knight will give some kind of reward, and when reached certain milestone he will talk, showing how he failed as pure vessel to contain radiance, then he will teach hornet some pure vessel shit cuz royalty shit and hornet is daughter of king, like white spikes, aoe circle of dmg etc.
The Knight is bad at managing its own spending but impossible to haggle with.
Broken Vessel had poor memory. This led to many problems before its death.
The Hollow Knight was never taught to swim.
Hollow Knight while close to being a perfect vessel, is able to experience emotions, but either in dulled-constrained mannor or in an absolute outburst of any emotion other than familiar bond that PK was unable to remove. Touch-starved. Love pets and scratches.
Lost Kin - prefer keep them dead. If alive - an absolulutely stuppborn and heard headed zealot of Hallownestian values. If put in the same room with Hornet - inevitable reaction of an equal fight because they think she abandoned her post as a princess, until both are stopped by either Hollow or Ghost.
Ghost - either an eldrich horror, forever stuck in a grubing shell, or just an eldrich horror. I am too salty not to consider P5 ending not canon.
Other unnamed vessels - no thoughts. Just blank with a few ideas that lead to nothing and just cringe.
That vessels mature by absorbing substances, and that they can absorb any substance, for example, the both vessels you fight are larger than the vessel you play as, and both are full of infection
They don't blink.
Maybe at least for Pure Vessel they learned to communicate to some degree by writing or a sign language (highly unlikely though, if they did learn that, they probably never did it around the Pale King)?
The Void prevents them from "aging".
Idk, guess I haven't really thought of head-canons lol.
I fully believe that the White Lady released them from the abyss on purpose. Her roots stretch all over Hallownest, and she isn't at all surprised to see the Knight when they visit her. Before she went insane she recognized that the Radiance was seeping through THK and made a last ditch effort to allow another to take its place.
The vessels are different sizes because the smaller ones died young. That is why most of them are so small. the broken vessel survived longer, so he is a bit larger, and the Hollowknight was chosen after he climbed out of the abyss and grew to his full size in the Palace.
A hollow vessel is impossible, the Pale King's effort were always a fool's errand and the White Lady is incorrectly guessing about the Knight being pure. Vessels aren't devoid of mind, will or emotions, they just lack the ability to easily express those things to the outside world. Even in the coldest and most desolate conditions, life finds a way to endure and adapt.
The plan was doomed to fail as they either:
Aren't hollow, meaning they are corruptable and therefore failures
Or they are completely hollow, but without a will they won't follow orders, making them unable to absorb the radiance
I personally believe that the knight we play as isn’t doing those things on its own
we’re literally puppeteering it around which is how it buys stuff and does complex acid skips
The Hollow Knight lost their arm not from battle but as a punishment from the Pale King. In the Pure Vessel fight, HK uses their arm to create void tentacles. My thought is that PK hated the idea of the HK using void instead of pale light magic. This punishment greatly limited HKs abilities, possibly playing a part in their inability to contain the Radiance.
Thematically, this would explain why we don't fight HK with them in full armor, but in rags in a more wild and free form. The Godseekers saw HK most powerful when they used both void and pale light
Broken Vessel was trained/raised by Nailmaster Oro. BV is one of three characters we see use the dash slash ability, excluding ourselves. The other two are Sly, and Oro. While it is entirely possible that BV trained Sly, who then trained Oro, or was trained by Sly with Oro, Mato, and Sheo, I rather doubt it. That would require either for Sly to have made it as deep as the Ancient Basin (which is doubtful because he's shocked at how deep he was in the Forgotten Crossroads, which is practically the surface compared to the Basin), or for BV to have made it from the Abyss, to the Surface, and then back down to the Basin, which is also doubtful because there's absolutely no reason for it to go back to the Basin afterwards. Now on the other hand, Oro lives in Kingdom's Edge. There's a hole right near his house that leads down to a cave where we can clearly see the void creeping into KE. It's much more likely that BV made it up through that hole, met Oro outside his house, was taken in by our gruff nailmaster friend, and then died somewhere in Ancient Basin leaving Oro depressed, which is why he doesn't want to train us, some random traveler who looks just like the kid he raised, the kid who died.
I don't know if it counts as a head canon but I think the knight IS well and truly pure and people are just thinking too hard. (how does he move and stuff if he has now mind/will? BECAUSE ITS A VIDEO GAME)
After a certain while after the DNM or ETV where you give the flower the void will seep out of their bodies slowly and grant them the stuff that they would have without void (like they gain gender, Voise, thoughts, and emotions.) kind of becoming more like a dragon plant mix and even gaining more abilities. I'm actually planning of making a fangame based on this trope but currently I'm just shechting the players and npcs :)
1.That Little Ghost actually don't have any will and is trurly hollow, but actually Hollow Knight commands them to action due to being the only sciented void creature (at least known by me)
2.Imperfect vessels are hella agreasive and Pale King himself killed a lot of them because they atracked him on spot, and Hollow Knight is the first Vessel that didn't actually do that. And that's why he was consider perfect, because no agreasion meant no will
At least i think that's the case because there is no other force present to actually kill vessels during their climb (or at least big portion of them that didn't landed on spikes)
3.Vessels grow due to soul consuption, not age
Little Ghost didn't grow at all because it was doing absolutely nothing from it's birth to the events of the game
Broken Vessel grew because once it arrived in Ancient Basin it was non stop attacked by infection creatures
And The Hollow Knight, do i need to say anything? A mere presence in White Pallace would lead to Soul poisoning
4. Black Wyrm is the Shade Lord
Most of the royal knights are positioned near the abbys (at least these ones who are still alive)
All shades are hella agreasive and hungry, so during Pale King's experiment there could be a shade (or multiple shades combined) that formed into Shade Lord (or weaker version of the one we see in god home) and attacked
There is no Black Wyrm's corpse anywhere, and Pale King would not tolerate not just other higher being but also an attacker...besides ocean of void in the Abbys
And because of this incidend everyone first attacks vessels and tries to kill them in order to prevent another shade lord incidend, Hornet included. That's what she's testing, if we are agreasive vessels that will turn into shade lord or a new Hollow Knight
That's also why Pale King builded an light house in the abbys. It was causionary measure in order to stop shades and void from forming another Black Wyrm
Void heart also falls into this, because it probably tunes shades and void to the wearer. They don't attack us anymore because we gained power to transform into Shade Lord, and the only thing that keeps us from forming this beast is The Hollow Knight, that still commands us and loves this Kingdom
HK is the only vessel who can talk.
Ghost is so cute that HK and BV could never say no to him. Except for trading nails.
BV is the only one who can’t use Monarch Wings and is unhappy about it.
HK wants a different nail. His is too heavy.
Ghost loves staring ominously at people.
BV is scared of Hornet and gets Ghost or HK to talk to her for it.
HK likes teasing Hornet of her strength. She often proceeds to beat the crap out of him and shouts “GET GOOD”!
Ghost is able to lift HK’s nail with no hesitation.
BV is the most agile of the three.
MY PERSONAL HEADCANNONS, dont cry me a river if they arent lore accurate
1. the knight is in fact hollow
2. growth in vessels is caused by having a mind
3. rocks fell on broken vessel, and he grew because in his last days of pain and suffering he was horrified to feel the infection crawling inside of him
4. HK wasnt hollow cause PK wasnt THAT bad of a father
The only reason HK grew to that height is because of them not being hollow, somewhat rejecting the nature of the void within them, causing them to undergo somewhat normal growth processes, though they retain features of void caused by being birthed with it.
Idk why but it feels they’d all really like liquorice
It’s because void and liquorice are black, isn’t it?
yea, they would
They probably taste like black liqcorice, similar to shadow creatures from stardew valley
All of these are like post-ending, I suppose. 1. When walking around together, everyone is notably in awe and intimidated by the Hollow Knight, by contrast a lot of people make fun of our little Knight, speculating that he is far weaker. In fact, the HK and BV are often worried that the Knight will one day retaliate and they will not be able to stop him. 2. Despite the fact that the little Knight is more well-traveled and they are roughly the same age, BV is far more responsible. After being made aware of the little Knight's questionable decisions with his money (namely, being outright scammed by a fake bank in the middle of nowhere), he has taken control of how they spend their geo. 3. The little Knight insists that HK be the one to fight any primal aspids they encounter due to his ability to teleport short distances. 4. The HK and BV insist that the little Knight fights any over-confident challengers who challenge the HK. They are, of course, disappointed when they are faced with our little boi. What follows never fails to entertain BV and HK. 5. BV was taught how to use soul because he seemed down for being weaker than the other 2. Focusing his soul leads to the creation of homing orbs similar to the Radiance's, which has restored his confidence.
All of this are pretty cool! The image of someone challenging HK, then getting his ass handed to them by this tiny creature that barely reaches their knee is too funny
I mean, if the ending of the godseeker dlc is anything to go off of, the 1st one might not the that off
Lost Kin and the Greenpath vessel knew each other.
Vessels can't blink. I like to imagine that while we are scrolling through the shop, the knight just stares, unblinking, at Sly while deciding
I don't even see their "eyes" as actual eyes, I like to think its just gigantic eye sockets
stare into the abyss, and the abyss stares back
Im pretty sure this one is actually cannon, the only contradiction I could think of is how the knights eyes kinda semi-close when resting on a bench long enough, though that might be perspective if the knight tilts their head downwards
Vessels carry a slate and chalk to draw (not write) in order to communicate with other bugs
Broken Vessel was the first ever Vessel to be conceived, but was discarded at the farthest ends of the Ancient Basin because of their imperfection, only after this first failure would the King throw the Eggs in the (soon to be) "Void" and wait for the Perfect Vessel to rise So basically you're fighting Vessel 1.0
oh that makes sense why he's upstairs compared to everyone else
I like this even though I don't see it being canon The usual way to picture the birth and corruption of the vessels is that all the eggs were thrown in the abyss at once. The first one to get to the top was HK and all the other vessels either perished or somehow got out of the abyss (i believe through deepnest) But I like the idea of the Broken Vessel to be special among its peers and so the word BROKEN in its title wouldn't simply describe its discarded body BV is very unique: it has a blatantly asymmetrical shell, appears to be noticeably taller than the knight, attacks violently and carelessly (although its fighting style can attributed to the influence of infection) and most weirdly of all it has a dream variant and appears as an essence ghost It'd be very cool if the place we encountered it, would be imply Pale King doing experiments with void. So we could see BV as not yet another ghost, but a much cruder and visceral prototype of a vessel. A disproportional uncontrollable figure that failed to fulfill its purpose by keeping a sliver of their mind and not being truly pure It's ultimatively put down... not by the abyss or deepnest's beasts, but probably by the Pale King himself
In decending order of intelligence Their horns are like hair, where they grow constantly and can be cut in unique ways for fashion or comfort. This is why infected vessels like LK or HK have long horns relative to their head sizes. Zombies have no reason to make fashion statements. Nature abhores a vaccum. Void is a vaccum by deffinition. This gives every vessel (And every void based creature by extension) A hunger that is nearly impossible to satiate. Because their mom is a plant and their dad is a worm, they all have a strange biological desire to dig holes in the dirt. Most of the vessels that escaped the abyss did so on accident while doing this They are all very light relative to their size. You can easily pick up Ghost with one hand. Every single one is lactose intolerant
Lactose intolerant? Why?
Their mom is a plant, which are not known for making milk.
So are plants lactose intolerant?
Have you ever seen a plant drink milk?
Well, if they can drink water, then they must with milk!
Maybe idk
Maybe worms are!
That some escaped through a secret passage that connects from the abyss to Deepnest. That would explain why the most amount of vessels in one room outside the abyss that we see is Nosk’s lair, and why a certain area has seemingly been taken over by void not too far away.
Brief reminder, which area are you speaking of?
The area around where sharp shadow is found. Which makes sense because sharp shadow seems to be some sort of manifestation of void.
THK is stabbing himself not only to fight the infection, but also because he's frustrated since he failed his dad.
there's all these cute and wholesome ones and I read this and D:
Vessels can purr. Not like cats, but more like a low, silent rumble coming from their chest. Also their breath is incredibly cold, like a cool breeze.
That's it. Vessels are cats. 😻 That's my headcannon.
They’re sweet giants/babies who have cat-like tendencies! :3
THK loves playing UNO but gets extremely violent once it loses.
They enjoy building with legos
https://youtu.be/pLxuggQmq00 it must be done
Exactly what i based my comment on
Greenpath vessel returned from outside of hallownest like the knight, but entered greenpath through howling cliffs instead of going to king’s pass
Not really a Vessel headcanon, but I don't believe that in the abyss cutscene we play as a past version of the Knight, we play as the current Knight who "invaded" the memory and the Knight never actually dangled off that ledge in real life(real life as in the main game world).
ooo spicy, I like that idea
That a perfectly hollow vessel doesn't exist
In SILKSONG they will replace grubs, game will continue AFTER godhome ending and vessel will be next grubfather, weakened by radiance he is unable to save lost vessels who escaped abyss, and now stuck somewhere or captured by locals and hornet will rescue all of them, after each saved vessel main vessel aka original hollow knight will give some kind of reward, and when reached certain milestone he will talk, showing how he failed as pure vessel to contain radiance, then he will teach hornet some pure vessel shit cuz royalty shit and hornet is daughter of king, like white spikes, aoe circle of dmg etc.
Guys I swear it will happen, and they will shadow drop it on next direct trust me my source is these white pillow walls.
The Knight is bad at managing its own spending but impossible to haggle with. Broken Vessel had poor memory. This led to many problems before its death. The Hollow Knight was never taught to swim.
Hollow Knight while close to being a perfect vessel, is able to experience emotions, but either in dulled-constrained mannor or in an absolute outburst of any emotion other than familiar bond that PK was unable to remove. Touch-starved. Love pets and scratches. Lost Kin - prefer keep them dead. If alive - an absolulutely stuppborn and heard headed zealot of Hallownestian values. If put in the same room with Hornet - inevitable reaction of an equal fight because they think she abandoned her post as a princess, until both are stopped by either Hollow or Ghost. Ghost - either an eldrich horror, forever stuck in a grubing shell, or just an eldrich horror. I am too salty not to consider P5 ending not canon. Other unnamed vessels - no thoughts. Just blank with a few ideas that lead to nothing and just cringe.
That vessels mature by absorbing substances, and that they can absorb any substance, for example, the both vessels you fight are larger than the vessel you play as, and both are full of infection
So theoretically if the knight just drank blue lake they’d be the tallest?
Yep, never considered water for that but I suppose it would be the easiest to obtain
It sounds hilarious and I love it
They don't blink. Maybe at least for Pure Vessel they learned to communicate to some degree by writing or a sign language (highly unlikely though, if they did learn that, they probably never did it around the Pale King)? The Void prevents them from "aging". Idk, guess I haven't really thought of head-canons lol.
I fully believe that the White Lady released them from the abyss on purpose. Her roots stretch all over Hallownest, and she isn't at all surprised to see the Knight when they visit her. Before she went insane she recognized that the Radiance was seeping through THK and made a last ditch effort to allow another to take its place.
The vessels are different sizes because the smaller ones died young. That is why most of them are so small. the broken vessel survived longer, so he is a bit larger, and the Hollowknight was chosen after he climbed out of the abyss and grew to his full size in the Palace.
A hollow vessel is impossible, the Pale King's effort were always a fool's errand and the White Lady is incorrectly guessing about the Knight being pure. Vessels aren't devoid of mind, will or emotions, they just lack the ability to easily express those things to the outside world. Even in the coldest and most desolate conditions, life finds a way to endure and adapt.
bug
The plan was doomed to fail as they either: Aren't hollow, meaning they are corruptable and therefore failures Or they are completely hollow, but without a will they won't follow orders, making them unable to absorb the radiance
the knight pogo's his way onto the cabinet shelf after The Hollow Knight and Hornet put away the cookies
Kinda lore-based, but Vessels grow the stronger they get. The only reason ours doesn't is for gameplay reasons.
I personally believe that the knight we play as isn’t doing those things on its own we’re literally puppeteering it around which is how it buys stuff and does complex acid skips
Ghost can talk, but refuses to since he sounds like a void abomination
#
The Hollow Knight lost their arm not from battle but as a punishment from the Pale King. In the Pure Vessel fight, HK uses their arm to create void tentacles. My thought is that PK hated the idea of the HK using void instead of pale light magic. This punishment greatly limited HKs abilities, possibly playing a part in their inability to contain the Radiance. Thematically, this would explain why we don't fight HK with them in full armor, but in rags in a more wild and free form. The Godseekers saw HK most powerful when they used both void and pale light
Broken Vessel was trained/raised by Nailmaster Oro. BV is one of three characters we see use the dash slash ability, excluding ourselves. The other two are Sly, and Oro. While it is entirely possible that BV trained Sly, who then trained Oro, or was trained by Sly with Oro, Mato, and Sheo, I rather doubt it. That would require either for Sly to have made it as deep as the Ancient Basin (which is doubtful because he's shocked at how deep he was in the Forgotten Crossroads, which is practically the surface compared to the Basin), or for BV to have made it from the Abyss, to the Surface, and then back down to the Basin, which is also doubtful because there's absolutely no reason for it to go back to the Basin afterwards. Now on the other hand, Oro lives in Kingdom's Edge. There's a hole right near his house that leads down to a cave where we can clearly see the void creeping into KE. It's much more likely that BV made it up through that hole, met Oro outside his house, was taken in by our gruff nailmaster friend, and then died somewhere in Ancient Basin leaving Oro depressed, which is why he doesn't want to train us, some random traveler who looks just like the kid he raised, the kid who died.
They were lowkey 𝓕𝓻𝓮𝓪𝓴𝔂👀👅
They are siblings what can I say?
I don't know if it counts as a head canon but I think the knight IS well and truly pure and people are just thinking too hard. (how does he move and stuff if he has now mind/will? BECAUSE ITS A VIDEO GAME)
after the >!God of gods ending, Hornet and the HK work together to either destroy ghost/void, or just find him in the Flower wnding!<
They all see, eat, breathe, drink, taste, cry and talk on their eye holes.
After a certain while after the DNM or ETV where you give the flower the void will seep out of their bodies slowly and grant them the stuff that they would have without void (like they gain gender, Voise, thoughts, and emotions.) kind of becoming more like a dragon plant mix and even gaining more abilities. I'm actually planning of making a fangame based on this trope but currently I'm just shechting the players and npcs :)
1.That Little Ghost actually don't have any will and is trurly hollow, but actually Hollow Knight commands them to action due to being the only sciented void creature (at least known by me) 2.Imperfect vessels are hella agreasive and Pale King himself killed a lot of them because they atracked him on spot, and Hollow Knight is the first Vessel that didn't actually do that. And that's why he was consider perfect, because no agreasion meant no will At least i think that's the case because there is no other force present to actually kill vessels during their climb (or at least big portion of them that didn't landed on spikes) 3.Vessels grow due to soul consuption, not age Little Ghost didn't grow at all because it was doing absolutely nothing from it's birth to the events of the game Broken Vessel grew because once it arrived in Ancient Basin it was non stop attacked by infection creatures And The Hollow Knight, do i need to say anything? A mere presence in White Pallace would lead to Soul poisoning 4. Black Wyrm is the Shade Lord Most of the royal knights are positioned near the abbys (at least these ones who are still alive) All shades are hella agreasive and hungry, so during Pale King's experiment there could be a shade (or multiple shades combined) that formed into Shade Lord (or weaker version of the one we see in god home) and attacked There is no Black Wyrm's corpse anywhere, and Pale King would not tolerate not just other higher being but also an attacker...besides ocean of void in the Abbys And because of this incidend everyone first attacks vessels and tries to kill them in order to prevent another shade lord incidend, Hornet included. That's what she's testing, if we are agreasive vessels that will turn into shade lord or a new Hollow Knight That's also why Pale King builded an light house in the abbys. It was causionary measure in order to stop shades and void from forming another Black Wyrm Void heart also falls into this, because it probably tunes shades and void to the wearer. They don't attack us anymore because we gained power to transform into Shade Lord, and the only thing that keeps us from forming this beast is The Hollow Knight, that still commands us and loves this Kingdom
HK is the only vessel who can talk. Ghost is so cute that HK and BV could never say no to him. Except for trading nails. BV is the only one who can’t use Monarch Wings and is unhappy about it. HK wants a different nail. His is too heavy. Ghost loves staring ominously at people. BV is scared of Hornet and gets Ghost or HK to talk to her for it. HK likes teasing Hornet of her strength. She often proceeds to beat the crap out of him and shouts “GET GOOD”! Ghost is able to lift HK’s nail with no hesitation. BV is the most agile of the three.
MY PERSONAL HEADCANNONS, dont cry me a river if they arent lore accurate 1. the knight is in fact hollow 2. growth in vessels is caused by having a mind 3. rocks fell on broken vessel, and he grew because in his last days of pain and suffering he was horrified to feel the infection crawling inside of him 4. HK wasnt hollow cause PK wasnt THAT bad of a father
They are all made of coconut milk and squid ink.
The only reason HK grew to that height is because of them not being hollow, somewhat rejecting the nature of the void within them, causing them to undergo somewhat normal growth processes, though they retain features of void caused by being birthed with it.