Hollow Knight Lore and Plot Explained Script

If I were to ask you “What are some of the best fictional stories ever told?” what would you say?  War and Peace, Moby Dick, The Brothers Karmazov... I mean… umm.. The Brothers Carumzov, err.. The Super Mario Brothers Movie?  Well, these are great and all but it’s time to throw all that shit in the trash.  Hollow Knight’s story literally has everything.  Action, betrayal, comedy, tragedy, relatable characters, multiple endings, and sex appeal.  LOTS and LOTS of sex appeal.  

Of course it’s all very nuanced.  Remember how confusing Inception was?  Well, Hollow Knight is basically Inception, but with bugs.  So if you want to truly understand Hollow Knight, we’re gonna have to go deeper.  So just call me Matt Damon, because this is Hollow Knight Explained.

First let’s talk about how the story for Hollow Knight came to be.  Pretty much all of Hollow Knight was made by these three guys, William Pellen, Ari Gibson, and Dave Kazi.  Also Matt Griffin helped out too.  These three men live in the mystical land of Australia, where everything is upside down.  Their design philosophy for Hollow Knight was to leave their script blank while creating the game’s world.  Basically, they put whatever locations, dungeons, bosses or gameplay mechanics they wanted in the game, and then they built the lore around those elements.

The dialogue for the game was written together in a google document by William and Ari later on in the game’s development.  The game’s script ending up being over 20,000 words long, which is not bad for a game where you literally can skip the majority of the text.  And there’s still more to come.  As of right now Hollow Knight will be getting two more content updates and a Hornet DLC.  So while this video will be pretty comprehensive, we are still waiting for a few more pieces to the puzzle.

Alright, so now it’s time to talk about the game’s plot, but first we need to talk about metaphysics. There are 3 different metaphysical forces that the player interacts with during the game.  Soul, a white liquidy goop, Void, a black liquidy goop, and Essence, a substance that is neither liquidy nor goopy.  In Hollow Knight, Soul is used to cast spells as well as repair the Knight’s shell.  Soul originates in living organisms and acts as a sort of life force.  Void works kinda like playdoh, it can be morphed into different shapes and given form.  The Knight is made of void, for example.  The only place where Void is known to come from is in the Abyss, an area at the very bottom of the world map.

Essence is basically the light found within dreams, whatever that means.  It can be found within Whispering Roots, and in the many ghosts that populate the world.  Essence is collected using the Dream Nail, a powerful weapon that can cut through the veil that separates the real world from the Dream world.  The player character travels to the Dream world several times in the game to fight several bosses, and its features are vaguely defined.  All it is is just a bunch of rocks and floating lamp posts.  You know, the stuff that pretty much everyone dreams about.

Now that we’ve established some of the forces that act in this world, let’s talk about the history of Hallownest before the game started.  

The oldest objects that can be found in Hollow Knight are the arcane eggs and the soul totems.  These objects were created by an ancient society that existed long before Hallownest.  This civilization knew how to harness and use soul, and they were probably aware of the Void’s existence.  The designs of the soul totems were most likely based on the creatures that lived during that time.  On the other hand though, some of the totems are pretty phallic looking.  I’ll blur them out just in case.

There are also some ancient creatures still farting around in the game, albeit mostly in the form of dead bodies.  In Kingdom’s Edge there’s this giant corpse located next to the Quick Slash charm.  In the game’s code, this being is referred to as the Ancient Nailsmith.

There is also an ancient being hiding inside of the Abyss, where the Lifeblood Core is found.  This guy is hidden really well.  When I recorded this footage, I didn’t even know he was there.  The game refers to this thing as Abyss creature, and that’s about all we know.  Is this creature the source of lifeblood, the blue liquidy goop that exists all over Hallownest?  Maybe, but I wouldn’t expect an answer anytime soon. 

The most important ancient creatures that we know about are called Wyrms.  These wyrms were probably similar in anatomy to regular worms, but much bigger in regards to the rest of the world.  Bardoon, an NPC found at Kingdom’s Edge, claims to be too small to by a wyrm, but is incredibly long himself, with his head being up at the top of the map, and his tail being quite a ways down.  It is likely that these wyrms were Higher Beings, a phrase that occasionally pops up in the game.  The developer’s notes clarify that Higher Beings are god-like creatures.  

We can infer from Bardoon’s dialogue that all of the Wyrms are now gone, possibly dead, but the corpse of one Wyrm can still be found in Kingdom’s Edge.  According to Bardoon, this wyrm did not die, but instead transformed.  We know from Bardoon and other sources that the transformed wyrm was the Pale King, the creator and ruler of Hallownest.

Before the Pale King began trying to build his nation, there were other powerful beings already at work within the lands of Hallownest, one of which being the Radiance.  The Radiance is the true final boss and main antagonist of the game.  She is a moth-like creature who is often referenced to in game as a Light.  She tends to appears to bugs in their dreams, and it is mentioned that the Radiance shares some similarities to Essence.  The Radiance only appears in the Dream world in game, so it’s unknown if she ever existed in the physical world.  Her sex is stated as female in a developer’s note inside the game’s code.  

The Radiance created the moth race, who worshipped her and “basked in her light”.  The Radiance’s light is described by Bardoon as sort of unity, at the cost of thought.  Once you drink the kool-aid, you become connected and powerful, but you lose control of yourself, becoming a mindless bug.  

Other groups in the area included the Mantis Tribe, who took residence in the Fungal Wastes, and the Bees who likely lived in the Hive at Kingdom’s Edge.  Respect and power in the Mantis tribe was based upon physical strength and combat abilities.  The strongest members of the group were also the most valued.  Not much is known about the Bees, other than that they’re scary as fuck.

In Greenpath, there appeared to be a group of followers of a creature called Unn.  There is a structure located at the Lake of Unn that looks like some sort of temple, and Unn can be found hidden in the lake.  Unn is the being supposedly responsible for producing the plant life in Greenpath.  There is also a moss knight that stands at the edge of the lake.  And if we dream nail him, he says something interesting.  He says that “She is calling.”  Now, I have no idea who else this guy would be referring to other than Unn, so I think this pretty much confirms that she’s a chick.  And I gotta say, that is one gorgeous gastropod.

[Sexy music]

The mushrooms of the Fungal Wastes also had some sort of society.  They’re able to communicate with each other through a manner similar to telepathy.  This telepathy seems to involve something with spores since the lore tablets in the area only activate when the Knight is wearing the Spore Shroom charm.  Within the game’s code, there’s a lore tablet that reads as follows.  “Strength in the shared self.  Strength in the mind united.  In every bug that would pass upon our roads, only the melancholy of disparity.”  Now I have no idea what the shit at the end is talking about, but at the beginning it clearly indicates that the mushrooms have some sort of connected consciousness.  

There’s more evidence for this in the form of Mister Mushroom.  So if you haven’t seen this guy around, he’s basically just a talking fortune cookie that pops up in various parts of Hallownest.  The thing is, with the exception of the last encounter, every time you try and talk to Mister Mushroom, he seems to be talking to someone else.  And when he notices that you’re there, he just leaves.  Clearly Mister Mushroom is using the shared mind to talk to other mushrooms.  When Mister Mushroom finally does talk to the Knight, he reveals that he has visited many kingdoms before, and that Hallownest is just one of many.  If we dream nail Mister Mushroom, he provides us with a little poem about Wyrms.  It seems to imply that Wyrms have been creating societies for a long time.  

Then there’s the bugs in Deepnest.  Now you’re probably wondering, did these assholes worship a god too?  Well, maybe.  In Deepnest, there’s a shrine located in the Beast’s Den.  Inside the shrine is a statue of a trilobite.

And as I’m sure we all know, trilobites are one of the oldest known groups of arthropods.  They went extinct in the mass extinction of the Permian back 252 million years ago.  So in other words, these guys are ancient.  Trilobites belong to the subphylum Trilobitomorpha.  Their closest living relatives are the animals in the subphylum Chelicerata, which consists of horseshoe crabs, scorpions, and spiders.  So, it kinda makes sense that there’s a trilobite statue in Deepnest.  It seems to be implying that the residents of Deepnest have been there for quite some time.  For some reason there are no lore tablets in Deepnest, so that’s about as much as we can figure out at the moment.  On top of that we’re gonna learn a lot more about Deepnest in the upcoming content pack, so I wouldn’t even get too worked up about figuring it out now.

And so the Pale King arrived in this fractured land offering a gift to the bugs of his future kingdom.  He granted them some form of knowledge or greater sentience.  A hidden lore tablet in the White Palace reveals the line “The Wyrm becomes beacon, minds expanded, to yield, to devote”.  Also, Monomon the Teacher in her poem “Elegy of Hallownest” mentions that the Pale King taught the bugs of Hallownest and “tamed their savage souls”.  Bardoon explains that the Pale King brought order to the land.  So if we put it all together, the Pale King granted bugs more powerful minds and promised a more ordered society.

Now this is where things get a little bit complicated.  Did these bugs without minds not have them because that was how they naturally were, or was it because the Radiance had them within her hivemind?  A lot of what I’ve read online says that all of Hallownest was under the Radiance's control.  But it is never explicitly stated if the Radiance was worshipped by bugs other than the moth tribe.  The only moth in the game, the Seer who lives in the Resting Grounds, explains that her ancestors stopped worshipping the Radiance in order to worship the Pale King.  She does not mention other non-moth bugs engaging in worshipping the Radiance.  Also, a tablet in Howling Cliffs states that anyone who leaves Hallownest must “relinquish the precious mind this kingdom grants.”  Personally, I think that the Radiance was only worshipped by the moth race, and that many of the other bugs in Hallownest, specifically the husks, had always just been dumb shits.  They didn’t have minds to think in the first place.  I’m not saying there’s no evidence to support the idea that the Radiance controlled all of Hallownest, but I haven’t seen enough evidence to convince me of that.

My biggest reason for believing this is because of the way I interpret Seer’s dialogue.  Seer doesn’t blame the Radiance for what happened, but instead, blames the people of her tribe.  She never claims that the Radiance was an evil or power-hungry god, but that she was betrayed.  Seer views helping the Knight obtain the Dream Nail as “penitence for old crimes”.  So on one hand Seer thinks that her ancestors should have remained loyal to the Radiance, but at the same time she is willing to help the Knight in its quest to kill the Radiance.  

The only way this makes sense is if the Radiance of the past was quite different to the Radiance of the present.  After all, members of the moth race were pacifists by nature, with few ever choosing to wield a weapon.  Given the fact that she is also a moth, the Radiance was possibly quite pacifist in the beginning, that is until the Pale King arrived and fucked everything up for her.  After such a betrayal, as well as an extended time spent in isolation, it’s not a stretch to believe that the Radiance would retaliate in the way she did.

So there’s my there’s my little theory on the Radiance.  Some of you watching may not agree with me, but that’s what I really love about Hollow Knight’s story.  A lot of different people have a lot of different ideas about how certain things happened, and the game leaves it just vague enough to let all of those theories be viable.  Hell, there’s probably evidence to support the idea that the entire game takes place on the fucking moon.  So while a good chunk of the stuff in this video is probably agreed on by a lot, I’ll let you know whenever I start throwing out my own dumbass theories.

Regardless, the important thing to take away from all this is that the Pale King endowed his followers with more intelligence and that he convinced the moth tribe to stop worshipping the Radiance.  Because the moth tribe stopped worshipping her, the Radiance was sealed away and memories of her were forgotten over time.  The only lasting monument to the Radiance was a statue located at Hallownest’s Crown.  Seer looks back on this moment with regret, viewing it as a betrayal by her people on their creator.  It was out of this act that Hallownest was born.

While the moth tribe and others accepted the Pale King’s rule, there were other groups that resisted.  The Bees chose to lock themselves away in the Hive at Kingdom’s Edge, deciding to play no part in the Pale King’s kingdom. According to the manual for Hollow Knight the Hive Queen eventually became too big to even leave.  Every time I read that I just end up thinking about Fight Club.

The Mantis race refused the King’s rule, but a truce was reached allowing them to keep their territory as well as their societal structure.  In exchange, the mantises would protect Hallownest from the bugs invading from Deepnest.  We don’t know for sure how Unn and its worshippers reacted.  The size of Greenpath was reduced, but the remaining area of Greenpath remained under Unn’s law. The members of the Mushroom Kingdom accepted the Pale King’s rule, but not with complete confidence.  According to the lore tablets found in the Fungal Wastes, they put faith in the Pale King’s insight into future events to protect them, which is a power that he apparently had.

Bardoon is the only other NPC that even mentions this ability, which is weird because it’s kind of a big fucking deal. But it doesn’t really seem to have much of an impact on the story so… whatever. It is what it is. The bugs of Deepnest refused the King’s rule completely, keeping themselves separate from the Pale King’s domain.  The Mask Maker, who resides in Deepnest, says that the Pale King made a mistake in trying to expand his kingdom across all of Hallownest.

Under the Pale King’s rule, the City of Tears was constructed.  For some reason, somebody thought it was a good idea to build the entire city underneath a giant lake, resulting in constant rain.  It may be stupid, but goddamn it makes for some good atmospheric moments.  Underneath the city, the Royal Waterways were built, where horrific parasite monsters began to appear.  Stag Stations were built, making travel across the kingdom much easier.  Structures such as the Archive and the Colosseum of Fools popped up.  Bugs began working in the mines harvesting powerful crystals.  Geo was established as a primary currency and reputable banking services became available allowing citizens to store all the shit they found while smacking rocks all day.  King’s Idols began to circulate around the land, so that bugs could worship the Pale King on the go.

A tramway system began development, but as construction reached Deepnest, all of the workers got killed by local bugs.  As you can imagine, this really slowed down construction. The tram workers unionized demanding to not be sent places where they could get killed. Ridiculous, I know! But after the events of #Tramgate, it seemed pretty obvious that Deepnest and Hallownest were not going to be getting along anytime soon. Now you might be thinking to yourself:

“Hey, wait a minute! If the Deepnest bugs didn’t want a tramway, why is there a Stag Station in the Distant Village?”

Well, don’t worry. We will get to that later. But let’s talk about the man behind it all. The Pale King, himself, lived a life or reclusion.  Relic Seeker Lemm, a bug in the City of Tears who buys historical artifacts, claims that the King was an elusive figure.  The Last Stag also mentions that the Pale King never rode the stagways.  Even the Pale King’s castle was kept hidden.  His White Palace was built underneath the City of Tears, in the Ancient Basin, a dark area with little life in it.  Despite his introverted lifestyle, the King did get together with this… whatever this is and she became Queen.  The Queen is likely also a Higher Being, according to the description found on the Kingsoul.  The Queen can be found in game going by the name White Lady.

The Pale King also assigned five knights to the task of protecting the realm of Hallownest.  The Five Great Knights as they were called consisted of Fierce Dryya, Kindly Isma, Mysterious Ze’mer, Loyal Ogrim, and Mighty Hegemol.  Not much is known about what these knights did before the fall of Hallownest, other than that they served the King.

The White Defender’s entry in the Hunter’s Journal gives us the most insight into the shenanigans of the Five Great Knights.  He mentions the Champion's Call, the Knotted Grove, and the Battle of the Blackwyrm.  Now that’s a badass name for a battle.  But what is the Blackwyrm?  Is its corpse somewhere in Hallownest too?  So there’s some flavor text for you letting you know that the Five Great Knights were apparently some pretty cool dudes. But as impressive as these events may sound, the King and his knights were nowhere near prepared for what happened next.

Remember how I said that the Radiance had been completely forgotten?  Well, I lied.  According to the Seer, faint memories of the Radiance lingered until eventually they surfaced once again.  One theory suggests that some bugs accidently discovered the statue at Hallownest’s Crown, resulting in thoughts of her to enter back into their minds.  

Within the game’s code are additional verses to the Elegy of Hallownest that cannot be found ingame.  The poem mentions that the bugs of Hallownest had dreams and desires that the Pale King could not satisfy.  Eventually out of these dreams appeared a light that turned the bugs back into mindless beasts.

In the game, the player can encounter an NPC named Myla.  Myla is happy little miner bug who mines crystals while singing a tune.  As the game progresses, Myla begins to lose control of her thoughts, not being able to remember the verses to her songs.  A second voice begins to appear in her dialogue.  An angry voice that demands Myla to kill the player character.  Eventually Myla becomes just another enemy NPC.

[Edgy Emo Music]

While many bugs shared the same fate as Myla, some looked for solutions.  In the City of Tears, a group of intellectual bugs began to experiment with Soul.  They believed that with enough Soul, they could remain powerful enough to escape the infection.  The collection of souls involved the killing of hundreds of bugs whose shells can still be found in Soul Sanctuary, or the Soul Sanctum or whatever it was. The Pale King was against these experiments, but I guess these criminals were just too well hidden.

The experiments failed anyway and Soul Master and his associates became infected. After getting his ass kicked twice by the player character the Soul Master explains that a prophetic vision told him to experiment with Soul.  Yeah, okay buddy.  

Most of the Mantis race was able to stave off the infection, keeping Mantis Village intact despite the surrounding chaos.  Within the tribe, however, a group of Mantises defected and decided to accept the infection in order to become more powerful.  One of the four Mantis Lords turned against his sisters, and he and his allies were driven out of Mantis Village and took up residence in the Queen’s Garden.  After accepting the infection, these mantises went mad and lost control of their minds.  The Traitor Lord’s daughter somehow died during these events and is buried in Queen’s Garden.  This unnamed mantis was actually in a relationship with Mysterious Ze’mer, one of the Five Great Knights.  The mantises didn’t approve of this, however, and now Ze’mer lives as the Grey Mourner in the Resting Grounds, lamenting her dead lover.  Who would have guessed that mantises were so homophobic?

With the infection spreading across Hallownest, the Pale King became desperate to find a solution.  The Five Great Knights served as nothing but a waste of taxpayers’ geo.  Because the infection was targeting the minds and dreams of bugs, another method had to be used to combat the Radiance.  Deep down in the Abyss, the Pale King found the Void, and possibly the last hope for Hallownest.

Now let’s talk about the Void.  The Pale King is basically playing with fire at this point.  Void itself, is a dangerous force.  It seems to oppose other forms of life, always trying to consume them.  That is why the character’s shade and the other shades, called the siblings, attack the Knight.  The lighthouse keeper in the Abyss seems to have been influenced and possibly killed by the Void somehow.  Confessor Jiji, in Dirtmouth, is terrified of the shades, fearing that she might get swallowed up by the darkness.  That’s right.  The Knight might seem like a little harmless guy, but underneath the surface is a monster that wants nothing more than to do terrible things to you.  Kinda like Bill Cosby.  As for the lighthouse, it seems like it was built as a way to subdue the sea of Void beneath it, But it sounds like at some point the King wanted the lighthouse turned off.  Why?  Honestly, I have no clue.

Using the Void, the Pale King hoped to create something that could act as a Vessel to contain the Radiance.  This vessel had to be completely lacking in mind, will, or personality.  Without these traits, the infection would not be able to control the host and the Radiance would be stopped dead in her tracks.

The Pale King began experimenting with the Void. Several creatures were made in the White Palace using the Void, such as the Kingsmoulds and Wingmoulds, as well as the Collector, a boss that can be found in the Tower of Love.

The Pale King started creating countless Vessels in an attempt to create one that was completely empty.  These Vessels were unique to the previously mentioned constructs.  Kingsmoulds and Wingmoulds are Void contained within armor, while the Collector seems to be made solely of Void.  The vessels, however, wear shells.  The game doesn’t explain where these shells came from, but a metric fuck ton of them can be found in the Abyss.  Well, put on your tin foil hats, boys, because it’s time to speculate.  

The White Lady has some interesting dialogue about this event.  She explains that she locked herself away in the Queen’s Garden.  Her reason appears to be that she feels shame for her participation in “the deed”.  She then mentions that she still has the urge to breed and propagate herself.  I think that the Queen helped create the Vessels, specifically by using her seeds.  This biological origin for the Vessels could explain where the shells came from, and it explains why there are eggs laying in the Abyss.  Thanks to dialogue from the White Lady we know that the player character was born in the Abyss, not in the White Palace.  And it makes sense with the phrase “Born from God and Void” which is later used to describe the Hollow Knight.

Also, in the White Palace, a room that appears to be a nursery can be found.  In this room is a chair, with what appears to be the White Lady’s silhouette on it, and a cradle.  What’s interesting about this is that there is a melody that plays in this room which is identical to the melody that plays when the character’s shade is nearby.

This practically screams that the White Lady had something to do with the creation of the Vessels.  Now I’m sure this little theory of mine is littered with problems, so for now, the take away from all this is that the Pale King created a lot of Vessels in an attempt to find one that was perfectly empty. 

Any Vessels not deemed worthy were cast down into the Abyss.  The Vessel that the player controls during the game is one of the Pale King’s many failed creations.  They were thrown into the Abyss, and another Vessel was chosen, who eventually would become the Hollow Knight, the not true final boss of the game.  After the Hollow Knight was chosen, the entrance to the Abyss was sealed, hiding the Pale King’s rejected children from the world.

Somehow, the Radiance was placed inside the Hollow Knight.  I don’t really know the logistics of how that worked, and honestly, I don’t want to know.  The hope was that, without a will or mind, the Radiance would not be able to take control of the Hollow Knight’s body.  But of course, it didn’t work.  The White Lady mentions that the Hollow Knight was not completely void of thought.  That it was tarnished by an idea instilled.  There’s not much we can look at to try and figure out what the White Lady means by this but there is one thing. In the scene where the Hollow Knight is chosen by the Pale King, we see it turn its head towards the player character.  Is it because the Hollow Knight has feelings of regret, sympathy, maybe even guilt? 

[Sound of Silence]

Why them?  Why were they chosen while all the other Siblings were thrown away?  Maybe the Hollow Knight was afraid.  Maybe it didn’t think it could live up to the pressure of being the Vessel.  It didn’t ask for this.  It didn’t ask to be born.  Maybe it didn’t want to be the savior of Hallownest.  I mean, what did Hallownest ever do for it?  What made Hallownest so special that it even deserved to be saved?  After all, isn’t life just is a cyclical process of birth and death?  Why should Hallownest be spared a fate given to every kingdom that preceded it?  You can’t stop the inevitable.  Everything dies in the end and nothing really matters.  

Or maybe I’m reading too much into this.

Anyway, the Pale King’s plan had failed.  His creation could not contain the Radiance’s power, and soon she would break free once again.  But instead of giving up, the Pale King devised another scheme.  He seeked the assistance of three powerful bugs; Monomon the Teacher, Lurien the Watcher, & Herrah the Beast.  Luiren lived in a spire in the City of Tears. There, he kept a telescope which is kind of creepy if you think about it.

Monomon maintained an archive in the Fog Canyon. There she tried to keep all the information of Hallownest’s history. Unfortunately, all of her data logs read like bad George Orwell fan fiction. Herrah was Queen and ruler in the domain of Deepnest. As I’m sure you remember, relations between Deepnest and Hallownest were not that good. While the other two were okay with doing the King a solid, Herrah was a bit more difficult. But a deal was struck.  Herrah agreed to help the Pale King, but in exchange the Pale King had to give her a child.  Hornet.

The circumstances of Hornet’s birth are shrouded in mystery. Is she Herrah’s biological offspring or was she created from the void like the Siblings?  The White Lady mentions a sexual relationship between the Pale King and Herrah.  She also mentions that Herrah and Hornet look very similar.  So it sounds like the King and Herrah totally did it and Hornet’s their baby, right?  Well, not so fast.  If Herrah could give birth in the first place, why would the King have to give her a child?  Is she barren?  Is Herrah just that bad at dating?  Well, a tablet in the Fungal Wastes hints at Deepnest once having a king, but that he somehow died.  So it seems possible that the death of the King of Deepnest simply left Herrah without a suitable mate.

So yeah, something was definitely going on between the Pale King and Herrah.  The stag station in Deepnest was probably built around the time this was going on.  The Pale King could just hop on his elite special forces stag, head over to Herrah’s place and have crazy bug sex with her.  That would explain why the Last Stag has never seen the stag station in the Distant Village or the Hidden Station.  While this all makes sense, there is also evidence that points towards Hornet being made from void like the Knight and the Siblings, which if true complicates things a little bit.

Hornet tells the player character that they share the same force.  Well, we know that the player character is made of the Void, so it seems likely that Hornet was created in a similar fashion. Plus, Hornet is called the Gendered Child by a number of NPCs.  The only reason they would call her that is if her kind wouldn’t normally have a gender.  And, according to developers notes, the vessels made from the Void do not have genders.

There’s also the Weaver’s Den, a hidden area in Deepnest that appears to be connected to Hornet in some way.  The loom spiders mention a bargain and a princess. Within this hidden area there is another hidden area.  In this room, there is a design with Hornet’s head displayed in the middle. Plus, all the string lying around makes sense given that Hornet uses thread in combat. When you leave the Weaver’s Den for the first time you see this loom spider run away. There’s no real explanation about this, but I’m guessing the upcoming Hornet DLC will shed more light on what’s going on here.

Also, Midwife is clearly involved in Hornet’s creation, but she doesn’t really tell us much about how exactly hornet was created.  Honestly, unless we can get all these guys on Murray, we’re not gonna know for sure.

And so with the Pale King and Herrah’s deal struck, she, Lurien, and Monomon became the Dreamers.  The Hollow Knight was chained up in the Temple of the Black Egg and the Dreamers went into an endless slumber, where they placed a seal over the temple from the Dream world.  Two memorials were built, one in the City of Tears and one in the Resting Grounds to commemorate the sacrifices made.  Also, at some point between all this, the Hollow Knight hit puberty or something.  This has actually lead to a lot of questions being asked about why the Hollow Knight grew, but none of the other siblings grew.  My theory.  Flintstone Chewable Vitamins.

So at this point the Radiance was trapped inside a Vessel that was chained up inside a temple that was surrounded by an interdimensional telepathic force field, stationed all the way up at the top of the world.  And it didn’t work. 

[The Price Is Right failure sound]

It was at this point when the Pale King and the White Palace suddenly vanished into thin air.  The White Lady and Fierce Dyrra retreated to the Queen’s Garden.  Dyrra died fighting off infected mantises, while the White Lady rooted herself into the ground.

Mighty Hegemol got his armor stolen by a maggot who the player later finds under the name False Knight.  Yeah, nice job “Mighty” Hegemol.  But this doesn’t mean that Hegemol is dead, however.  On August 6th, 2017, Team Cherry held an AMA on Reddit where they answered questions about the game.  It was revealed in this thread that Hegemol could live without his armor.  Which... makes sense.  I mean, I certainly hope he wasn’t born wearing a giant suit of armor. Mysterious Ze’mer remained in the Resting Grounds waiting for some poor sucker to attempt her soul crushing sidequest so they can get a piece of heart.

Loyal Ogrim moved into the Royal Waterways, and changed his name to Dung Defender.  Now I’m not going to be too hard on this guy.  We all have our fetishes.  It may not be coprophilia, but to each their own, you know.  But Ogrim’s love is not exclusive to excrement.  He acts as the protector to Isma’s Grove, as it is only accessible after beating him in combat.  Isma’s Grove is the grove where kindly Isma is.  She is dead by the time the player finds her, however.  It is clear from the Dung Defender’s dialogue that Ogrim and Isma had some sort of relationship.  As to whether or not he gave her a Dirty Sanchez or something, I don’t know.

The game never discloses Hornet’s whereabouts during all of this.  At some point it seems possible that she spent a good deal of time with the White Lady.  This would make sense because the White Lady could have been the one who explained to Hornet everything she knows about how to stop the infection.  In the previously mentioned Reddit AMA, a developer from Team Cherry mentioned the original plans for Hornet’s lore.  They involved Hornet being raised by Herrah, the White Lady and Vespa, the Queen of the Hive.  Hence the name Hornet.  This is actually pretty badass, but we don’t know for sure if this is still Hornet’s backstory in the game.

Over time, the player character and several other failed Vessels escape the Abyss, ending up in various locations.  The player character leaves Hallownest and wanders into the wilderness beyond the Howling Cliffs.

At this point the collapse of Hallownest seemed inevitable. The kingdom was sealed away from the rest of the world, with the well in Dirtmouth being one of the only ways to get back inside.  Dirtmouth itself remained unaffected because of it’s location on the surface. Oh, I guess it was that easy. But slowly the bugs that lived there decided to travel into Hallownest, leaving the Elderbug as one of the few remaining survivors.  Time within the kingdom froze, and Hallownest was left in complete stasis.  

And basically, that’s all that happens before the game starts.  For the rest of this video, I’ll explain the plot as if the player is going for the Dream No More ending, which is the good ending to the game.

The player character, who I will refer to as the Knight, is called back to Hallownest by some force.  They arrive in Dirtmouth and descend into Hallownest.  The Knight encounters Hornet, who at first dismisses their abilities.  Hornet again appears in the City of Tears, where she encourages the Knight to travel to Kingdom’s Edge to the corpse of the Pale King’s original form.  During this conversation, Hornet says that the Knight holds a resilience of two voids.  The two voids she is referring to are the Void the Knight is made of and the void that exists outside of Hallownest.  Leaving Hallownest appears to cause bugs to lose their memories, or even their minds.  Quirrel is an example of a bug that lost his memory from entering the void beyond Hallownest.  Quirrel was originally an assistant to Monomon. When the Knight meets Quirrel at the beginning of the game, however, he has no recollection of any of this. This means that the Knight probably has no memory of anything at the start of the game.  

At Kingdom’s Edge, Hornet challenges the Knight one last time.  The Knight wins, and they travel into the corpse of Wyrm where they obtain the King’s Brand, which allows the Knight to travel into the Abyss.

At some point, the Knight visits the Dreamer’s Shrine in the Resting Grounds, where the Dreamers appear to the Knight.  The Dreamers admit that their powers are not working to stop the infection, but remember that their sworn duty to the king is to keep the seal in place.  At this point Monomon, Lurien and Herrah make the executive decision to lock the Knight away forever in the Dream world

[Sound of Silence]

 But then the Knight is immediately rescued by some flying moth creature.  Yeah, the Dreamers really suck at their job.

[Sound of Silence]

This moth gives the Knight a little pep talk before giving them the Dream Nail.  After this sequence, the Knight awakens in the presence of the Seer, the sole survivor of the moth race.  The Seer tells the Knight to obtain Essence in order to sharpen the Dream Nail.  Once the Knight collects 1800 Essence, the Dream Nail transforms into the Awoken Dream Nail.

With the Dream Nail, the Knight breaks the seal on the Black Egg Temple by visiting the three Dreamers and murdering them in their dreams, Freddy Krueger style.

The Knight travels to the Abyss, using the King’s Brand to unlock the gate that kept the realm sealed away for so long.  There, the Knight receives the Shade Cloak, which allows them to pass through these annoying ass barriers, which gives the Knight access to the building in Queen’s Garden where the reclusive White Lady lives.  The White Lady gives the Knight the first half of a charm called the Kingsoul, which is a symbol of the union of two higher beings.

The second half of the Kingsoul is located in the White Palace, which can only be reached by using the awakened Dream Nail on the corpse of a Kingsmold in the Ancient Basin.  After a ridiculous amount of platforming bullshit, the Knight finds the second half of the Kingsoul next to the corpse of the Pale King.  Now is the Pale King really dead? 

[X-Files theme intensifies]

According to the manual for Hollow Knight, the King is just in hiding.  Also, we’re in the Dream world, which could mean that this just a memory of the Pale King, and not the real Pale King.  But, we know that the real White Palace vanished and that this body is very close to where the palace originally stood, meaning that this could be the real White Palace inside the Dream world with the real Pale King sitting dead on the throne.  BUT the Pale King has been known to cheat death.  It’s possible that the Pale King reincarnated again into a different creature.  Also, what would have even killed him?  Did he accidentally walk into one of the hundreds of saw blade he has around the castle?  If that’s the case then he deserved to die.  

BUT, there is a chance that the Kingsoul, is literally the King’s soul.  Salubra, the slug that sells charms to the Knight, reveals that some charms are created from the dying wishes of bugs.  There are many charms in the game that confirm this, such as Joni’s Blessing and Dash Master.  And after equipping the Kingsoul, the White Lady says she feels like she is in the presence of Wyrm once again.  The Pale King might have died in the White Palace and his wish to free Hallownest resulted in creating the Kingsoul.

BUT if that’s the case, why is the charm broken in half?  Did the Queen take half of the Kingsoul after the Pale King died?  And the charm’s description mentions a union, so the charm might have existed for a long time before the Pale King’s death.  BUT the Pale King’s final words are “No cost too great”.  Those sound like the words of a person who is willing to sacrifice himself to end the infection.  BUT, they never did

find Tupac's body.  And also you're telling me that jet fuel can't even melt passports???  And why is it that Ross Geller is 29 in seasons 3, 4 and 5 of "Friends"??? There's only one plausible explanation, people!

He's probably dead.  Either way, the Knight loots the body and the Kingsoul is complete.

After obtaining the Kingsoul, the Knight travels down into the Abyss and a new area is unlocked.  There, the Knight can strike a big black ball with the Awakened Dream Nail to reveal a flashback to when the Pale King and the Hollow Knight leave the Abyss.  The Kingsoul is then replaced by another charm called the Void Heart.  According to the in-game description, the Void Heart “unifies the void under the bearer’s will”.

What I think is happening with this sphere is that the Knight is hitting their own reflection with the Dream Nail, allowing them access into their own mind and memories.  The Kingsoul turning into the Void Heart is what unlocks new endings for the game.  It’s an important moment because now the Knight is not just made of Void but has control over all of the Void.  Throughout the game, the Knight’s shade and the Siblings attack the Knight, but after obtaining the Void Heart, these enemies become docile. With complete control over all of the Void, the Knight now has enough power in order to defeat the Radiance once and for all.

After obtaining the Void Heart, the Knight enters the Temple of the Black Egg, unchains the Hollow Knight, and the two begin to fight.  Partway through the battle, the Hollow Knight goes all 13 Reason Why on us and begins mutilating itself.  A possible explanation for this is that the Hollow Knight is trying to help the Knight by weakening itself.  While not in the final game, dream nail dialogue for the Hollow Knight has been datamined.  Most of it just appears to be thoughts from the Radiance, things like “kill” and “Shall blaze free”. 

There are a few interesting lines here however.   “Kill the usurper… Our light it would suffocate”.  This line implies that the Knight will be able to contain the Radiance completely. Another interesting line seems to be coming from the Hollow Knight itself. “Father?”.  Yeah, that’s weird.  Maybe the Hollow Knight noticed the Kingsoul consumed inside the Void Heart. Or maybe the King’s Brand. Or maybe the poor thing has just gone insane.  Regardless, these lines of dialogue were cut from the final game, so we have to be cautious when analyzing them.

At some point during the fight Hornet pierces the Hollow Knights shell, and the Knight uses the Dream nail to enter the Hollow Knight’s mind.  There the Knight challenges the Radiance.  During the fight, the Dream Nail can be used on the Radiance.  She says things like “DAWN SHALL BREAK”  and “I DO NOT FEAR YOU”.  At some point she calls the Knight her “ancient enemy”.  Now when I hear this, the only two things I think she could be referring to are the Pale King or the Void.  Without the Pale King, the Knight would probably never have existed, so that does make some sense.  Again, it's also possible the Radiance detects the Kingsoul inside the Knight.  However, maybe this dialogue is hinting at some greater fight between the Radiance and the Void.

 Maybe the Radiance and the Void have some other beef that happened long before the arrival of the Pale King. Maybe it had something to do with the fall of the ancient civilization that we learn about during the game. Who knows, maybe Team Cherry will make a prequel saga to explain it all.

Anyway, as the fight continues, the Siblings and the Hollow Knight appear in the Dream world and help the Knight corner the Radiance.  The Void starts holding the Radiance down using its Void tentacles, and well, I think we’ve all seen enough Hentai to know where this is going.  Acting as one, the Void engulfs the Radiance in total darkness.

After the battle ends, there is a cutscene showing the Void seeping into the ground.  Hornet wakes up and finds the Knight’s shattered shell, and a final shot shows Siblings returning back into the earth.  The Radiance has been consumed and the infection has presumably ceased completely.

Hopefully this video was able to help you better understand the plot to Hollow Knight.  It’s definitely a bit more complicated than your average platformer. However, there are still many unanswered questions.  Like, what's the deal with the bugs wearing masks?  How does the Pale King's foresight abilities play into the story?  Clearly there was some sort of plan put in place for the Knight to defeat the Radiance.  Was the Pale King involved in this?  And most importantly, why the fuck are there goddamn jellyfish in a game about bugs? It makes no sense!  Come on,  Team Cherry!  What kind of Entomology textbooks are they selling you in Australia?  But yeah, other than the jellyfish, this game is fucking perfect.  I love everything about "Hollow Knight".

So now that we’ve mapped out most of the plot to this game, what’s the message?  Is there a greater meaning to i all?  People have argued that the White Walkers in Game of Thrones are an allegory for Climate Change.  They’re wrong, but maybe Hollow Knight has some sort of similar allegorical message.  J. R. R. Tolkien flat out said that Lord of the Rings is not an allegory at all.  It’s literally just about some short people with big feet who hate jewerly or something.

Maybe Hollow Knight is a cautionary tale about the dangers of temptation and how we shouldn’t let our desires control us.  Maybe it’s a story about the dangers of imperialism and how trying to destroy the cultures of others only leads to more destruction.  Perhaps Hollow Knight is a tragic love story between an orphan girl and her mute vertically challenged half-sibling.  It might also be a warning about how exposed the human race is to disease and how easily a pandemic could wipe us all out.

Or maybe moths are just assholes.

Team Cherry’s Reddit AMA:

https://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/6rvds8/we_are_team_cherry_the_developers_of_hollow/?limit=500