How many Vessels are in the Abyss? | Hollow Knight Lore 

You are one crazy otter, unfortunately, Team Cherry is even crazier

Well, I'd say there must be at least 10.

Short summary: The Pale King got a good time with a tree :v

Man the Pale King sucks. Herrah had 1 child and loved her a ton and this man had God knows how many and killed all but two of them.

Matpat, this is what a hollow knight theory looks like.

Asgore: I killed 7 children Anakin: That's nothing! I'm responsible for the deaths of almost every Padawan in the galaxy ???: Amateurs Anakin and asgore: What was that, punk? PK: *Amateurs!*

"Don't kill your kids" Well that's just, like, your opinion man

alt title: *how many children has the pale king tossed in a pit*

I would say there are ATLEAST 3 dead vessels in the abyss

Pale king: do you love me? Vessel: yess

The knight's head just randomly expanding at 3:07 just cracked me up way more than it should have.

All I know is that the Pale King and White Lady really had a ball making these vessels.

Unrelated to the topic but I’ve always had an itching feeling that the ghost isn’t the only vessel that made it out. Think about it. There are vessel corpses all over hallownest. Why? This video proved something to me, that the abyss looked completely different before it was used to drop piles of bodies there could have been a path hat led out of the abyss before it was covered up maybe the few surviving vessels went through this path before it was sealed away. This could mean that there are still vessels out there. In another kingdom. Like pharloom.

Q: How many vessels are in the Abyss? A: lol idk

I dunno man... this whole thing is just scary to me. I mean, it’s just straight-up *Haunting*

"Oh, this is pretty good content. How many subs does this guy have, ten thousand, twenty...?" *sees sub count* WHAT

YO they mated way too much... no wonder she left to go to her garden

That's a lot of dead children. The worst part is that the only ones dead are the non hollow (AKA: The ones with thoughts and emotions)

Damn the pale king ain't playing round so much seed in such a little bug

Question: Did you consider the final cutscene of the Dream No More ending?

What about the parallax? This feels like a sour grapes cop out.

Holy fuck I'm so relieved I might cry. I wasn't sure how the fuck to guesstimate the amount of vessels in the abyss (I'm shit at math), but this gives me a logical idea of what it could look like and that allows me to thus make educated guesses as to how big each clutch size could be, how long the vessel plan took to breed for the 'pure' vessel, etc (based off of the clutch sizes of bugs and the like), which could make sketching out a timeline of Hallownest easier. This makes lorediving a hell of a lot easier to theorize about

This reinforces my head canon that the climb out of the abyss was more like World War Z than a platforming session. A huge bug pyramid raising the Hollow Knight to its top. WWZ based that scene on how ants pile up anyway

Pale King: do you love me? Vessel: Yes, Father! Pale King: *NEXT!!!*

Parallax, my friend. You can get an idea of the relative distance that way, even if only roughly

Now make a video of how many bell there's in the Silksong Trailer

Answer: A couple of hundred of them.

Great video! This is something I've been wondering about for a while. I'd imagine you could get a pretty reliable measurement of the distance of that wall using parallax

Oh boy, I found something. I found something no one has seen yet. But it’s there. It will help prove just how big the abyss is. Just watch... and wait...and wait a little longer until I figure out how to make videos and how to do the math

Notice how when you move the game camera (by moving the knight, because the game camera follows the player), the background moves very slowly: this means that the background is very far away. There must be some way to figure out the Z axis based off background speed relative to the game camera. For example if the background is very close, it will move negative the knight's speed (the knight's speed is 0 because the camera follows the knight). A far away background moves x times negative the knight's speed (x is a number between 0 and 1, where 0 means no background movement and 1 means equal to the knight's speed). Maybe someone is smart enough to figure out an exact formula with this information.

there are vengeflies in the background sometimes, we know how big they are so the size of that might be used to calculate distance

Thank you for this useless knowledge I so desperately crave. (For real, a great in depth analysis, and you got my like!)

Here's a simple answer. *too many*

i kinda like that because it makes the knight "the first to succeed" instead of "the chosen one"

i hope we get an abyss-like area in silksong. its always been my favorite location because of how mysterious and ominous it is.

I don't agree with the estimated number... I seen at least 48

I think the most chilling of all those dead vessels in the abyss, is not the sure and vast amount of bodies found, or even that so many were created....but rather the theory that none of the common residents of Hollownest knew. There are obviously a few people, such as the white lady (duh) knew, however, from some a few bits of dialog, such as ones from the Dung Defender, most people did not know of the sacrifices, but simply that the Hollow Knight was found and what a great blessing he was. The Abyss locked away, so no one would know the Pale Kings genocide. Millions upon millions killed, all of them to be hopefully forgotten. I sometimes wonder, and theorize, if this tragedy is what actually led to the Pale Kings destruction. Rather if guilt and emotions made him vulnerable, especially after all that hard work, and technically knowing (as hinted by more dialog in monomons archives and may other lore tablets) that his efforts were technically in vain. As the hollow knight was more of a bandaid, and not a solution. As the White Lady hints that it was ill-judged, and tarnished by an idea instilled.

Looking forward to your lore videos! Great job breaking down this area, one of my favorites!

There are exactly [REDACTED] vessels in the Abyss

I like math put to my favorite games, as long as its someone else doing the math for me.

This video is incredibly underrated

Oi, who put all these corpses here?

The DnM ending shows the full distance of a vessel shell compared to a spiraled shell allowing you to use pixel measurements and proportions for a better scope on length to make a better estimate on blurriness because some shells are near vessel shells in the background

By making getting out of the Abyss first a competition, then essentially rewarding the victor, doesn’t that sabotage the idea of the winner being perfectly hollow on a conceptual level? I get that it was to ensure the vessel was strong, but The Pale King dropped the ball there a bit. Not to mention everything else. Not the best at thinking ahead, there.

I like how he turned the video into a morality thing when I was actually tyna pass my math class

Your editing is amazing! Keep it up! New sub!

The pale king and his lady must be heck busy to birth that many

Underrated content

you probably could do a calculation based on the parallax of the background scrolling. See how far the background scrolls during the descent down into the abyss, compare that to how far the foreground scrolls during that descent, then you'd be able to tell how far away the background is relative to the depth of the descent. Also I feel like it's actually pretty reasonable to assume that the bottom of the Birthplace is at least pretty close to the bottom of the corpse pile.That's where all the eggs were, then the bodies just gradually piled up from there. We also see some actual floor when we're down there. Obviously there's a lot of unknown void below that, but that was there before the vessels started being created.

U another hollow knight channel! Neat good luck and great video!

Just gonna say, I haven't been able to figure out how to get the abyss shriek until I saw that clip you used. I feel dumb for not getting it yet, but thank you

petition to make ccmaci the new matpat

You could determine the Z-axis of the abyss based on how fast the background moves across the screen while walking

a way to calculate the 3d space would be to look at the cylinder of the abyss (since we can reasonably assume that the well is a perfect cylinder we see how the vessel heads stretch from one side to the other and use that as the diameter for our cylinder.)

Cool 💯😎 Keep up the good work 💚💙

I didn't understand a thing but it seems interesting. Always here for interesting Hollow Knight lore theories.

I'm at around 6:28 in the video and i was expecting you to use the concept of parallax. Maybe use an obstacle as refernce, move the knight left and right, and determine the depth of the abyss. Idk how astronauts do it but somehow we can tell how far away a star is

It is actually possible to find out how far the wall is since hollow knight is actually a 3d game using 2d assets so you could use some sort of mod to turn the camera however you like and see where the z axis of the wall is and go from there.

Wow, this was a great video, and I love your editing style :) WHY DON'T YOU HAVE MORE SUBSCRIBERS???? (Hornet Is Void)

Hey Ccmaci, i loved this video and I know i'm late to the party. However to determine the distance to the back wall we could use the parallax effect. you may have to do the math yourself or you may be able to find the parallax value of the layer somewhere in the code

I agree with mossbag, more than 10! Also you won one sub!

Yo wtf this is so underrated

DUDE you put so much effort and math into this and you only have 3k subs? like wtactualheck

3:06 Well... Vessel bodies aren't exactly fully solid anyway, and any existing cloaks are probably little more than crumpled filler between the shell-skulls, if not already deteriorated and decomposed into nonexistance... so yeah, that makes sense. Heck, the Knight doesn't leave behind a body - just a shell.

6:45 *because they didn’t want the player to hate the Pale King then they already do*

In heaven, Fermi just wept a tear of joy... Or confusion

The Pale King sure did it lot, to have all these kids.

Technically, we can use parallax to find the depth. When the Ghost walks, background moves with a speed, different from his, and it can be used in equation. I forgot the exact equation, but astronomers use it to determine how far the stars are.

Bones do bend under pressure! What you mean to say is that they shatter rather than warp and stretch, i.e. are not malleable or plasticine. We would expect the shells to get squashed towards the bottom on account of weight, but also expand out, such that they maintain the same surface area but a diminished volume. We would expect that, but I don't think the shells were drawn that way.

If the king was not stupid, he would just send them all to fight the radiant. If one of them defeated her, then all of them would defeat him easily

This answers few questions and raises far too many-

You can also use parallax to determine how far away the background of the abyss is. That would be more accurate than the blurriness.

Imma subscribe cause you gonna need it

So this is what no silksong has brought us to

you, as an otter, is so stinking cute and otter-ly adorable!

I’d be interested to see if the distance of the wall could be estimated from the degree of the foreground-background parallax scrolling effect…

Can I hove money? For shaman stone? Yesssss... Buys wayward compass like a boss

I'm not even gonna watch the full video yet, got some stuff to do first. But since it's about Hollow Knight lore and you seems awesome, imma leave a like and subcribe. *I got manners and shit.*

I think an interesting way to get an estimate for the minimum would be to take the sprite(s) used for the vessel corpses and count each and every sprite’s appearance. I’m not a coder but if we’re lucky there may be a number in the game files. Idk I’m just spitballing here

You could have determined the distance of the back wall by how strong the paralax scrolling effect is.

"How many vessels are in the abbys?" Me: TOO MANY

Impressive, but question: what about the empty spaces? The spaces the player walks through, the path to the birthplace for example. I don't think it wasn't mentioned so I was just curious.

Impure vessel: I love ya daddeh Pale king: *No*

"How many vessels are in the Abyss?" "Yes"

Can you not use trigonometry and percieved motion in the background to figure out depth? Since both the background and the foreground move in parallel, theoretically you might be able to use that to cook up some angles and then use something like law of cosines to figure it out...

wouldnt you be able to figure out the depth of the map with Pythagoras and paralax? the distance could be determined by how fast the background moves with the camera.

Amazing youtuber for a smol one.

Imagine how different the game would be seen if the Abyss wasn't backed for on the kickstarter

Would it be possible to calculate the z axis using the distance each layer of the level move because of the parallax effect ?

I think the really important question about the number of sacrifices is how does it compare to the population of Hallownest. Did he sacrifice millions to save billions? Or just to save a hundred? Or just himself?

try measuring the distance the background moves relative to the foreground

this just made the abyss challenge a lot harder

couldnt you calculate distance based on perspective, since the background and foreground move at a different rate?

You can use parallax to determine the Z axis.

"how many vessels are in the abyss" pale king: how to count past infinity

since the back of the abyss is a parallax couldn't there be an equation to find the distance: like the pixels the knight moves vs how many pixels the background moves? ... maybe there's not enough to go off of though

PK bought one sawblade per child

Im gonna assume there is at least 5 million.

You should've calculated the z axis by looking at the parallax backgrounds. I am to lazy to do it

"If had a nickel for everytime there was a pit filled with hundreds of dead children cause they didn't have the specific trait their creator was looking for, I'd have three nickels. Which isn't alot but it's weird it happened thrice."