Hollow Knight

by Team Cherry

Hollow Knight is a Metroidvania set in the decaying insect kingdom of Hallownest. You play as the Knight — a small, silent being exploring interconnected subterranean regions filled with hostile bugs, hidden secrets, and the lingering memory of a civilization consumed by a radiant infection. The game is celebrated for its atmospheric design, precise combat, and extraordinary scope.

56 characters, locations, and items in this world codex.

Characters

• Bretta — A lovesick beetle who writes fanfiction about whoever saves her — first the Knight, then Zote, always someone else.
• Brumm — The Grimm Troupe's musician — a melancholy accordion player who secretly wants to break the nightmare cycle his master serves.
• Cloth — A cicada warrior seeking a glorious death in battle — who finds it, if you help her, in the place she was always meant to be.
• Cornifer — Hallownest's last cartographer — a cheerful bug who hums while he maps a plague-ravaged kingdom, one cave at a time.
• Divine — A member of the Grimm Troupe who eats charms and Geo with equal enthusiasm — part of the nightmare circus and the most unsettling merchant in Hallowne
• Dung Defender — The last of the Five Great Knights still standing — a joyful warrior who guards the Royal Waterways with devotion, dung, and an unshakeable belief tha
• Elderbug — The last resident of Dirtmouth — an old bug on a bench who has watched everyone he knew descend into the kingdom below and not return.
• Grimm — Troupe Master of the Nightmare circus — a showman from another realm entirely, drawn to dying kingdoms to harvest their final flames.
• Herrah the Beast — The third Dreamer — queen of Deepnest, who traded eternal sleep for a daughter sired by the Pale King, and whose bargain gave Hallownest both a seal a
• Hornet — The Gendered Child — born from a bargain between the Pale King and the queen of Deepnest, now the last protector of a kingdom that has no one left to
• Iselda — Cornifer's wife and shopkeeper — a retired warrior who sighs behind the counter and misses the adventures she chose to leave behind.
• Leg Eater — A twitchy merchant in the Fungal Wastes who sells fragile charms at discount prices — and is deeply, inexplicably terrified of Divine.
• Lurien the Watcher — The first Dreamer — a loyal subject who entered eternal sleep to seal the Hollow Knight, watching over the City of Tears through a single unblinking e
• Mantis Lords — The three warrior-queens of the Mantis Tribe — the only faction in Hallownest that resisted the Infection through pure discipline and refused to bow t
• Mask Maker — An enigmatic being in the depths of Deepnest who knows what faces are made of — and hints that yours might not mean what you think.
• Midwife — A spider who sits in Deepnest's darkness and offers information with the casual menace of someone who could eat you but finds conversation more intere
• Monomon the Teacher — The second Dreamer — a scholar who understood the seal was only a delay, sent her apprentice away with her mask, and secretly hoped someone would come
• Nailmaster Mato — The Nailmaster of the Howling Cliffs — Sly's most affectionate pupil, who teaches the Cyclone Slash and hugs you afterward.
• Nailmaster Oro — The Nailmaster of Kingdom's Edge — Sly's first pupil, a bitter warrior who teaches the Dash Slash for a fee and a grudge.
• Nailmaster Sheo — The Nailmaster of Greenpath — Sly's pupil who abandoned the nail for a paintbrush and found more truth in art than in combat.
• Nosk — A shape-shifting predator in the depths of Deepnest — it wears the faces of those you trust to lure you into its nest.
• Quirrel — A scholar-adventurer drawn back to Hallownest by a teacher's mask and a question he can't remember asking — the warmest voice in a dying kingdom.
• Sly — A cranky shopkeeper in Dirtmouth who is secretly the greatest nailsage in Hallownest's history — retired, but his students' techniques still cut.
• Soul Master — A scholar who cracked open bugs to harvest their Soul, searching for a cure to the Infection — and lost his mind to the very thing he was trying to st
• The Collector — A Void-born thing that hoards living creatures in jars — a broken Kingsmould driven by obsessive love for its collection.
• The Hollow Knight — The Pure Vessel — chosen from hundreds to contain the Radiance, raised by a king who loved it too much, and now cracking apart in the Black Egg as the
• The Hunter — A massive, predatory bug who keeps a bestiary of everything that moves in Hallownest — and gives it to you so you can kill them more efficiently.
• The Knight — A small, silent Vessel born of Void and root — one of hundreds discarded by the Pale King, now returned to Hallownest to finish what its hollow siblin
• The Nailsmith — A craftsman who has spent his life perfecting the art of nail-forging — and who asks you to end his life with his finest work once it's complete.
• The Pale King — The god who built a civilization for bugs, fathered hundreds of children to use as containers, and loved exactly one of them — which destroyed everyth
• The Radiance — An ancient moth goddess — forgotten by her own people, sealed inside a hollow shell, and now burning Hallownest from the inside with the light of a me
• The Seer — The last of the Moth Tribe — an ancient elder who gives you the Dream Nail and carries the guilt of a people who betrayed their own goddess.
• The White Lady — The Root — queen of Hallownest, mother of all Vessels, now bound in silk of her own making to stop herself from creating more children for a plan that
• Zote the Mighty — A self-proclaimed legendary knight wielding a nail that can't cut anything — the funniest liar in a kingdom of tragedies.

Locations

• Ancient Basin — The deep, dark ground floor of Hallownest — palace ruins above, the Abyss below, and something very old sleeping in between.
• Black Egg Temple — The sealed prison at Hallownest's heart — where the Hollow Knight is chained, the Dreamers' masks watch, and the fate of the kingdom waits to be decid
• City of Tears — The capital of Hallownest — a grand city of towers and fountains beneath an eternal rain, beautiful and empty and drowned in its own grief.
• Crystal Peak — A mountain of luminous crystals above Hallownest — mined by bugs drawn to the light, now a glittering tomb for the workers who never left.
• Deepnest — The darkest place in Hallownest — a labyrinth of spider silk and chittering darkness where the map doesn't help and the things that move in the dark w
• Dirtmouth — The last surface town above Hallownest — a handful of buildings, a bench, and a well that leads down into everything.
• Forgotten Crossroads — The first caverns beneath the surface — ancient highways once teeming with pilgrims, now crawling with infected husks and the echo of what they used t
• Fungal Wastes — A mushroom-choked labyrinth where the Mantis Tribe maintains its honor code and everything else is slowly decomposing.
• Greenpath — A lush, acid-green wilderness sacred to the higher being Unn — where Hornet first tests the Knight and the living world pushes back against the dying
• Kingdom's Edge — The border of Hallownest — windswept cliffs, ash drifts, and the colossal corpse of the Wyrm that became the Pale King.
• Queen's Gardens — The White Lady's overgrown paradise — a garden of thorns and beauty where the queen bound herself to stop producing more children for a plan that alre
• Royal Waterways — The sewers beneath the City of Tears — where the Dung Defender still patrols with joyful loyalty, guarding infrastructure for a king who will never re
• The Abyss — The lowest point in Hallownest — a sea of liquid Void and a floor carpeted with the shells of hundreds of discarded Vessels, all the children who were
• White Palace — The Pale King's vanished palace — existing only in the Dream Realm now, a beautiful and lethal labyrinth of buzzsaws surrounding a dead king on his th

Items

• Dream Nail — An ancient weapon of the Moth Tribe — it cuts through the boundary between waking and dreaming, reads minds, and opens doors that don't exist in the p
• Dreamers' Seals — Three masks, three sleepers, three sacrifices — the locks on the Black Egg that kept the Radiance imprisoned and the cost of breaking them.
• Grimmchild — A living charm born from the Grimm Troupe's ritual — a small, bat-like creature that follows the Knight and grows stronger as it feeds on nightmare fl
• King's Brand — The mark of the Wyrm — a brand of royal authority found inside the Pale King's shed shell, and the only key to the sealed Abyss.
• Soul — The life-energy of all bugs in Hallownest — harvested through combat, focused into spells, and dangerously addictive to those who study it too closely
• The Infection — The orange plague consuming Hallownest — not a disease but a goddess's memory, forcing itself back into minds that chose to forget her.
• Void — The primordial darkness beneath everything — the substance of the Abyss, the stuff Vessels are made of, and the only force that can extinguish the Rad
• Void Heart — The charm that unifies all Void under one will — the transformation of the Kingsoul that turns the Knight from a wandering vessel into something that

View full codex at Simulacra.Ink