#hk theory

[poketfriend-blog]

When Hornet is imprisoned in The Slab her binding animation is very similar to the pose that Widow makes in her boss fight.

Being a fun easter egg aside to me it's a very sad detail about Widow. Every time she does this weird pose she tries to bind silk to heal herself. But she can't because of the pins stuck in her back.

[hornet-enthusiast]

I HAD AN IDEA

You know who sells maps? Shakra. You know who also sells maps? Iselda, occasionally. You know who’s a warrior? Shakra. You know who used to be one? Iselda. You know who’s a tall, pretty woman? Shakra. You know who else is a tall, pretty woman? Iselda.

Your honor, they should get married.

[mebis-silksong-corner]

jellyfish is plant

Fog Canyon is one of the oddest regions of the game, and this is entirely because of the fog drifting kin of Monomon the Teacher

why are there jellyfish in here? even Hunter is puzzled at their existence

even if thick with fog, this is certainly not underwater

but i think these aren't jellyfish as we know them either

throughout the area one can find many bubbles in the caves walls, which we can assume to be either eggs or soon to be drifting jellies, but most notably we can find roots with said bubbles growing out of their tips

there's even this room filled to the brim with bubbles, bubble spawning roots and...dandelions?

these dandelions aren't used anywhere else ingame, and they certainly follow the pallette of the place

could the bubbles be like fruiting bodies, and these are the flowers spreading the seeds?

to the left of fog canyon, in the queen's gardens, one can find unique, huge flowers, whose stamen have something that looks greatly like bubbles at their tip

so one cant help but wonder if there's a connection here

one is an ancestor of the other? or perhaps a common creator?

at this point I hope my point is clear, all these little things in which the jellies seem to have a plant-like lifecycle

they even almost look like upside down flowers if you squint! kinda

worth noting that jellyfish irl do have a polyp stage where they're grounded like a cute lil flower

now, up to this point this is all stuff i had considered before silksong, but now we have yuma from karak

hornet dropped the ball badly with these ones ngl

seriously girl? do these dont compel you to talk about anything from your kingdom?

anyways, the text might not be useful but the creature itself is

look at the point in which the tentacles join the body

don't they look awfully like leafs?

there's also the the purple flowers of shellwood, whose name,"pollip", could be a combination of pollem and polyp (polyp being the cnidarian body plan that includes jellyfish and coral), although it could also be a combination of pollem+tulip that just so happen to sound like polyp

[grand-mage-moth]

Ok absolutely deranged hollow knight theory and lots.of rambling under the cut but like i have to get it out there

Imagine if instead of the city of steel being a dlc it becomes its own sequel like silksong. You'd play as Hollow (the last of the Pale Siblings to not be playable yet) who is called to the city of steel becuase they are the only vessel left physically in tact. The Shade Lord is compelling them towards the city of steel to free all the void creatures/shades of other (non-vessel) void based bugs the city of steel have enslaved. The City of Steel is trying to take Hollow captive once they enter because there has to be a Shade at the centre of the city of steel, contained within the shell of the giant bug who rules the city of steel, The Steelwyrm, which persists off of void, which shades naturally produce.

I dont have any ideas for what happens through the middle of the story, but i do have an idea for the end:

Hollow confronts the Steelwyrm at the center of the city, the core that the entire city revolves around (literally, my idea is that the city is some sort of floating sanctuary in the shape of an orb with layers, each layer orbiting around the Steelwyrm's chamber. I warned you there would be rambling). The Steelwyrm eagerly jumps down to fight Hollow one on one, wanting to not only claim their shade for his own, but test their combat prowess.

At the end of the fight, Hollow ends up sacrificing their own shade, but it overpowers the Steelwyrm. All the shades that the Steelwyrm absorbed are freed, but Hollow is trapped, only being able to possess the halls of the City of Steel like a ghost (yes, Hollow is now essentially the whole City)

[rainedropp]

I keep seeing all these adorable arts of Ghost growing up to be taller than Hornet (and sometimes even taller than Pure), and I keep having this theory in my head.

More below cut

Obviously most of the vessels didn’t get much larger than Ghost (especially the ones in the void and in deepnest/nosk’s area). The only ones I can think of are Pure, and Kin.

The only thing I can think of that connect those 2 in cannon, is that they (seemingly) were both taught how to fight. Even if Kin was abandoned, they’re (in theory) taller than Ghost because they were seemingly taken care of.

At first I thought maybe it was the time away from the rest of the void, but then Ghost would be taller than the Nosk and sibling vessels at least cause of their time away from the birth place.

So now my running theory is that they’re (essentially) malnourished. They don’t have physical bodies obviously, but I’m thinking more that the vessels other than Kin and Pure were extremely emotionally malnourished.

Pure is easy to explain with this. They grew larger because PK raised them. No matter how hard he tried, he parented them enough to make them “impure” without realizing.

Kin is a bit harder. Idk maybe I missed smth, but there’s barely any info on Kin in the actual game. Mostly just inferences. So that’s what I’m gonna do :b. Kin is close enough to the White Palace that they could’ve probably lurked around there. Now this is purely just speculation- but- it’s possible that they were able to watch Pure grow up. Possibly idolizing them in a way, this could be their “emotional” growth in a way, even if it was small. But then they became infected. (I imagine they tried to do what Pure was destined for, but failed. Hence the broken head.)

An alternative to that is they saw Pure before leaving the Basin. Maybe they were adopted/taken in by the Nail Master? That’d explain how he knows about the Kingsmould and makes statues of them. He might’ve heard of them from Kin. It also explains just how skilled with the nail they are. (Might make some fanart/an AU off of this when I’m not busy :p)

But yeah- all that to say-

Ghost would’ve never gotten that kind of emotional growth/stimuli, hence the emotional malnourishment, and it’d explain why they’re so small.

So yeah, in this theory/context, if someone were to make an AU where they all just lived together and were happy or whatever, they would potentially grow as big/bigger than Pure!

I could also make a case for this explaining how they’re different portions of The Lord Of Shades, but that’d require more thinking. And I’m not in the mood hahah. If anyone else wants to- feel free to reblog this and theorize :3

(And idk if I got it from somewhere and I just forgot or smth. I haven’t been in the fandom for long. Sry if I’m repeating what ppl already knew or I’m so very wrong or smth.)

[bludermaus]

Now that everyone's talking about Silksong, Pharloom and Hallownest, and the Pale King, I can finally say a theory I've had about the fork-head man since forever

What if he's not as coward as the community thinks for hiding away in the Dream Realm with his whole palace in the end?

Hear me out!

The King has the power to foresee events, and the whole community followed the big mushroom guy dreamnail dialogue to indicate he knew everything was gonna fail but committed atrocities anyways because he couldn't let go of his kingdom... That is ONE interpretation of prescience

What if instead of just being all-knowing and just being mega stubborn, he instead sees every POSSIBLE future, but has to take actions and move forward to know which timeline he's in? So, he sees that the vessels could stop The Radiance for good, but as he starts his plan the future possibilities start collapsing and he sees... It's all gonna go bad, none can contain her for good

So, maybe the reason he chose the Hollow Knight to be the vessel wasn't because it was truly hollow, but because he foresaw that - among all the vessels that would climb up - it was the one that could hold her for the longest

So okay, the plan happens, Radiance is locked in a void cage and peace happens... Until it starts again.

However, this time the King has a different vision: in the far future, after everyone has perished, the lil Ghost will come and kill the Radiance. But, it'll need the Kingsoul at first to do it... Which is with the king

What if the act of hiding in the dream realm wasn't a coward act, but instead a way of safeguarding and sacrificing himself so in the far future the Knight could have access to his White Fragment, if it's strong enough to get there?

That's the theory I'm leaving to you all, sorry for any poor wording, I really gotta stop writing these dissertations minutes before my work shift starts aaaaaa

[missiva12]

Yes. Yesterday and today, I discussed some theories with a friend.

The White Lady and who she is.

But let me start with the words from Greyroot in SilkSong. Those who have played and know how to get the witch's mark in HKSK (HKSS) know that Greyroot plants a parasite in us that eats Hornet's power and magic, and which we get rid of by partially taking away and subjugating what remains to ourselves and our will.

I thought for a long time about what Greyroot is and what its essence is, until a friend (another one) said that, according to the description, Greyroot resembles Cordyceps. A type of fungus that parasitizes insects, subjugating them to its will (usually ants, but that's not important).

So, the idea is that roots are a subspecies of Mushrooms (Mushrooms, as we know, do not belong to the plant class and are more animal than plant in nature, so living mushrooms surprise me less than living tree roots, for example).

Mushrooms such as Greyroot look for a host from which they can draw strength and energy and with the help of which they can grow and develop and/or continue their fungal lineage.

So, considering the information that Greyroot is most likely a parasite, and that it is similar to the White Lady in the very fact of being a root species

Why would anything prevent the White Lady from being the same kind of root parasite?

Simply, in the case of the White Lady, she was not seeking complete parasitism, but rather an alliance in which both parties could benefit.

The White Lady receives the power of the Pale King and grows fruit. And the Pale King uses the very fruits needed for his plan to create Vessels in which he would seal Radience.

This results in a mutually beneficial union.

Because the White Lady absorbs the power of the Pale King to create fruits from which vessels are made, they are in fact the “children” of both the White Lady and the Pale King.

They are just not very standard children in our understanding.

And also, regarding why the White Lady would seal herself off in order to no longer grow fruit (roughly speaking, to no longer reproduce)

1. Trauma associated with the vessels, because for her they were like children, and she does not want to repeat this again.

2. Conservation of the resources she had left from the Pale King.

Considering how much she could absorb of the Pale Kings power over time (not a lot at once, but little by little, where the power had time to accumulate quite well), she may feel like a real goddess.

And her children, who are made from her fruit, may have a good adaptation to the type of magic that can help them absorb any type of magic. This applies to the ending with Shade Lord, where the Ghost becomes a god by absorbing the power of Radiance. Most likely, this was influenced by the nature of the White Lady, whose body was made from her fruit, and the Void, which adapted the power of Radiance to itself, making it part of the power of the Void.

So, the verdict is as follows: the White Lady is like a root, a kind of Parasid-Cordyceps fungus that absorbs power for its life and development, but which lived in alliance with the Pale King for a mutually beneficial exchange of power for resources, or something like that.

[littlebittyhollowbugs]

Greenpath vessel headcanon/theory

The Greenpath vessel like all the vessels who escaped was called to rescue/replace the Hollow knight. At some point, early on in it's travel it met the Seer, who wanted to help the little one in it's quest to free the knight, like how she would later assist little Ghost, by showing it to the dream nail.

Because they did not meet within the dream realm the seer could not lead this vessel to the dream nail but instead instructed it to find a grove in Greenpath, which is a sacred place with a strong connection to the dream realm. The place where Unn had used dream to bring to life the mosskin.

And there it was to use a spell, either a spell within the stones there, or a spell the seer had taught it, to enter into the dream realm to retrieve the nail.

For this quest the Seer bestowed upon the vessel, the mothwing cloak, that would help it to more quickly reach its destination.

Unfortunately, Hornet could not let the vessel obtain any power to destroy the dreamers without first testing it's strength, and the vessel was defeated by her, before it could use the spell.

Also! the dreamers appearance to little Ghost within the grove was able to occur because of the grove's strong connection to their realm.