Hollow Knight

Hollow Knight is a 2017 2D metroidvania game, developed and published by Team Cherry. The player is given the role of the Knight traversing the kingdom of Hallownest, long populated by insectoid "bugs" and stricken by a plague called the Infection. The Knight progresses through Hallownest, acquiring upgrades and new methods of combat and movement, often gaining the means to further access previously-explored areas later on. The Knight encounters numerous friendly bugs on their travels, providing flavor text and lore surrounding the state of the kingdom and the cause of its collapse.

Introduction

• In wilds beyond they speak your name with reverence and regret,
• For none could tame our savage souls yet you the challenge met,
• Under palest watch, you taught, we changed, base instincts were redeemed,
• A world you gave to bug and beast as they had never dreamed.

Excerpt from the Elegy for Hallownest, by Monomon the Teacher.

NPCs

• Ho there, traveller. I'm afraid there's only me left to offer welcome. Our town's fallen quiet you see.
• The other residents, they've all disappeared. Headed down that well, one by one, into the caverns below.
• Used to be there was a great kingdom beneath our town. It's long fell to ruin, yet it still draws folks into its depths.
• Wealth, glory, enlightenment, that darkness seems to promise all things. I'm sure you too seek your dreams down there.
• Well watch out. It's a sickly air that fills the place. Creatures turn mad and travellers are robbed of their memories.
• Perhaps dreams aren't such great things after all...

Elderbug, upon meeting the Knight for the first time in Dirtmouth.

The Pale King

• No cost too great.
• No mind to think.
• No will to break.
• No voice to cry suffering.
• Born of God and Void.
• You shall seal the blinding light that plagues their dreams.
• You are the vessel.
• You are the Hollow Knight.

The Pale King, retrieving the Hollow Knight from the Abyss and sealing the remaining Vessels inside.

• No cost too great...

Dream Nail dialogue of the Pale King's corpse, in the dream containing his White Palace.

Hunter's Journal Entries

• Echo of a previous life. Defeat it to retake its power and become whole.
• Each of us leaves an imprint of something when we die. A stain on the world. I don't know how much longer this kingdom can bear the weight of so many past lives...

Entry on the Knight's Shade.

• Fragment of a lingering will.
• Far down below us, beneath the kingdom, the air grows stiller and a sense of emptiness pervades. Can life flourish down there? If so, I will hunt it.

Entry on the Siblings, the Shades of the other Vessels.

• Fully grown Vessel, carrying the plague's heart within its body.
• The old King of Hallownest... He must have been desperate to save his crumbling little world. The sacrifices he imposed on others... all for nothing.

Entry on the Hollow Knight.

• The light, forgotten.
• The plague, the infection, the madness that haunts the corpses of Hallownest... the light that screams out from the eyes of this dead Kingdom. What is the source? I suppose mere mortals like myself will never understand.

Entry on the Radiance.

• Rare artifact from a time before Hallownest. Contains a drop of liquid from the Abyss.
  • Rare artifact from a time before Hallownest. Volatile liquid of the Abyss writhes within.
  • Rare artifact from a time before Hallownest, its spires twined in a unified form. Contains a large amount of liquid from the Abyss, perfectly still.
• "Inspired or mad, those ancient bugs. They devoted their worship to no lord, or power, or strength, but to the very darkness itself." - Lemm

Entry on the Void Idol, representing the Knight, Void Given Form and Void Given Focus, respectively.