SPOILERS
So
Obviously the lore of this game is told in fragments and a lot of it seems left for the players to piece for themselves. Obviously the Higher Being fights the infection born from the decaying body of the Wyrm, but there seems to be a lot more going on than that. This thread is of everyone to discuss these things if they want to.
I’ll start things of with a summary of what I pieced out. Keep in mind this is all my imperfect interpretation and I don’t claim for it to be the truth. I just want to start the conversation.
Generally speaking, there seems to be several forces at play in the world.
The White / The Soul
The Soul is the mysterious force the bugs of Harrownest know how to wield. It seems to grow in the veins of the world, and select beings are imbued with large amounts of it, like the White King and the White Lady. It’s not entirely understood, and misuse of it has extremely averse effects, as can be seen by taking a look at the Follies and the Mistakes.
The Soul Sanctum denizens studied it and imbued themselves with it in a quest for eternal life, but the King frowned upon such experiments and apparently the Soul Master was cast off by the king.
Not much else is known about the Soul except that it is the force that is used to enslave the Siblings, and force them to do the King’s bidding.
The Black / The Void
The black thing that creeps in the bowels of the earth. It seems to be alive, and Siblings made of the stuff are the true form of the Higher Being and the Hollow Knight. It’s hard to say if the corpses in the abyss were there originally or if they are the results of the King’s experimentation, but it seems safe to assume it’s a force that comes from death.
As can be garnered from the description of the Wingmould and some other story hints, the King was a master of using the stuff. A bit ironic for someone called the White King, that his greatest creations were made of Void. Whatever it is, it’s a force able to kill even the remnants of the Wyrm, a feat the Soul could not perform. Maybe, in a way, it is Death itself, taking arms against a creature trying to make a mockery of them.
That theory seems confirmed by the acts of the player in regards of the Kingsoul. The abyss is a “place of birth”, maybe for the phantoms of the void, and one could say turning the Kingsoul into the Void soul is a way for the King to finally die, and his powers to be passed on to the Higher Being, his herald or ghost.
Overall not much is known about the Void except that it is that, void. Siblings have no will, the Hollow Knight was hollow precisely because he was made of the stuff, and was made so because he needed to be a vessel for the Wyrm. Even the Higher Being is aimless and lost without his mask, a thing probably crafted precisely to give it the purpose the King wanted to give it (see the Mask Maker in deepnest: masks can change the mind of a bug, turning them into someone else). Without his mask, that is, dead, the Higher Being is a mindless ghost with no purpose. Only at the end can it finally transcend its condition, unite the Void, and strike with purpose at the Radiance.
It also stands to reason to assume the Black Egg is made of the stuff.
The Orange / The Wyrm
The Wyrm, aka the infection, was once a powerfull creature that died somewhere close to Kingdom’s Edge. Its body turned to ashes, but its essence, refusing to die, turned into something else, something terrible that sought life at all cost, corrupting every organism within its reach.
Most of it was contained within the Hollow Knight, but its starting to leak and the seal to weaken, and this is the start of our adventure.
We know people consumed by the Wyrm lose theird minds, and seem united in a single, sprawling hivemind that has no care for their individual safety and cares only about spreading and defending its territory.
In the Dream World, the infection is a bright, shining god, the Radiance. Maybe this is how it sees itself, or maybe this is its future. Other dream selves tended to be more ferocious, more accomplished versions of their original selves, so maybe one can assume that is what the infection aspires to be.
Nevertheless, the infection is without a doubt the closest thing this world has to eternal life. It is a boundless parasite that can latch itself to anything and take them over, even beings made entirely of void.
The Blue / The lifeblood
I couldn’t figure anything about this out. All I know is that it is a force that make shells stronger, and that Joni, who seems to be strongly connected to it, was considered an heretic.
Maybe it was, in its time, a force analog to the Soul. Its properties seems to be focused on strengthening the body. So, body and soul, blue and white? Possibly, but there is nothing to support that.
That is it for today, I’m off to find more information, you guys should post your own thoughts on the matter.
Original Link – Continuation of discussion
Add comment