User blog:BigBadSquid/PE Proposal: The Radiance



With ideas that we should start proposing villains for approval that were considered PE before the blog rules, I have several PE villains in mind that must be approved. Starting with the big bad from one of my favorite indie games that I am so hype for a sequel within the year or next.

What’s the Work
Hollow Knight is a 2017 Metroidvania that follows a mute character called the Knight in their adventure through the fallen insect kingdom of Hallownest overrun by infected bugs and uncover its ancient secrets. One of those ancient secrets is the former ruler, The Radiance.

Who is the Radiance, what has she done
Now I'm going to try to describe this the best way, as Hollow Knight is one of those games where the player isn't told the lore directly and they have to find everything on their own.

When the world of Hallownest began, the Radiance was the entity that created intelligent moths to unify the bugs of the land and build an empire, at the cost of everyone being in a hive mind, as Radiance wanted to be worshiped for all eternity. Then one day, one Wyrm grew sentient enough to discover the hive mind link and became a worshiping competitor to break the hive mind connection and gifted everyone free will by thinking independently. Everyone soon rejected the Radiance in favor of the Wyrm, who later reincarnated as the Pale King to rule Hallownest.

The Pale King wanted to dispose the Radiance by making everyone forget about her in way to sever her hive mind, but alas, with alters built by the moths to worship the previous ruler, faded memories of the Radiance remained. Envious by her creations rejecting her as their god in favor to the Pale King, the Radiance created a plague called the Infection to enter the minds of the bugs and drained all of their memories away until there was nothing but a horrible, raging light. This results in a massive majority of Hallownest succumbing to brainwashed/possessed insanity in constant agony.

To fight against the Infection, the Pale King conducted experiments with a hollow black void at the bottom of the Abyss to create living shades of void called Vessels to absorb the Infection within themselves as an effort to stop the Radiance. Only one Vessel succeeded in the task of absorbing every piece of plague in the kingdom, and was restrained in a Black Egg guarded by Dreamers to seal the entrance. Thus ended the Infection and the imprisonment of the Radiance within the chosen Vessel: the Hollow Knight.

...That was until the Radiance decided not to give up and deteriorates the Hollow Knight's mind into an infected monster itself and leaked the Infection once again from within the Black Egg. This is where the Knight comes in, the last known survivor of the Vessels, and their quest to defeat the Hollow Knight and become the next chosen Vessel to contain the Infection. But in the true ending, the Knight Dream Nails their way into the Hollow Knight's mind to confront the Radiance and end her Infection once and for all.

Mitigating Factors
Lets go ahead and address the elephant in the room: the Radiance's moral agency. Other than her creation of the moths, nothing is addressed about her true origins: where she came from or why she created the moths in the first place. But allow me to explain why she's not an amoral generic doomsday villain. When Dream Nailed, she spouts dialogue like "...I WILL NOT BE FORGOTTEN...", "...DAWN WILL BREAK...", and "...THE LIGHT CANNOT BE CONSUMED..." This shows that inside her angelic design with a small past, the Radiance is an egotistical tyrant who shows no pity for her actions and will rather serve as a possessive dictator than a reasonable godlike figure.

Any other redeeming qualities? Honestly no. When her creations rebelled against her, the Radiance had no problem subjecting them to the Infection to reclaim her position as Hallownest's god. She is basically killing off her own kingdom for rejecting her as their god.

Heinous Standards
Absolutely. Nobody, nobody, NOBODY stands close to how heinous the Radiance is. Almost every atrocity that occurs in this game can be addressed behind Radiance. None of the possessed bugs can be blamed since their aggression can be related to the Infection, which again is caused by the Radiance. As bad as the Pale King's actions were, all of his jingoism efforts were to give everyone free will without connection to the hive mind. When the Infection occurred, he did extremist goals to stop the Infection from destroying his kingdom, "No cost to great." There's also Grimm who wants to devour the flames of the fallen kingdom and manipulates the Knight to achieve his ritual, but his heinousness is nowhere compaired to the Radiance.

Verdict
Even with her enigmatic past, Radiance has enough heinousness and no mitigation to qualify.