An Extension to my Abyss Hollow Knight Lore

Have you ever wondered if I'd ever make a follow up video to my previous Abyss related lore videos? I have to, so I decided to try figuring it out- wait something's not right here.
Twitter - / ccmaci​
Discord - / discord
__________________________________________________________
VVV Special thanks and credits to used content below VVV
Special thanks to Foxyrobo, who showed me how to complete both roadblocks | / @foxyrobo
Music (in order of appearance):
- Hollow Knight Silksong - Coral Forest Theme (Fanmade) | • Video
- Hollow Knight OST, created by Christopher Larkin, you can find his music on his bandcamp | christopherlarkin.bandcamp.com​
X-MichiMochiX created my new sprites! If you want to support her, or want to commission her for art like my new Otter Boi, head on over to her twitter! / xxmichimochixx​
Video Script | docs.google.com/document/d/1Z...
(Custom Closed Captioning is still in the process of being completed)
Timestamps:
00:00​ Intro Segment
00:16 The Perfect Idea
01:06 "How many Vessels are in the Abyss" Extension
05:03 "Legit Abyss Escape" Extension
#Abyss #Parkour #Numbers

[@seabass8163]

Lurien 1000% sounds like that

[@Ccmaci]

I pulled those voice lines from the game files

[@Silver_Sonic_23]

They were unused in the final game though.

[@blueytheprotogen722]

Sad they weren’t put in

[@userpersonwhoisahuman]

"AFTER THIS IM GONNA MAKE YOU DO PARKOUR IN MY PALACE!" Pale King, 2021

[@serraramayfield9230]

Nah

[@mr.kittenface1671]

How many vessels are in the abyss? Well that's easy! It's more than 3 There! Question answered!

[@KittyKatty999]

That's some Monty Phython bridge level logic. XD

[@jotarokujo-starplatinum6286]

OMG HES RIGHT

[@yourlocaltraumademon]

Omg I just realised, it's actually even more than 5! Whoa!

[@hotdog2130]

@@yourlocaltraumademon guys it actually might even be more than 4 :0

[@thestonemason7413]

@@hotdog2130 Okokokok, hear me out. It’s more than 1

[@kakashilover9231]

Guys I figured it out. The minimum body count is one

[@xzznnn845]

You absolute GENIUS

[@moppermop5287]

I don't think THK could always teleport, I think that's just something it learned how to do.

[@victoryender2284]

What's the difference

[@ImieNazwiskoOK]

He probably had a lot of time to learn (enough time for Hornet to grow up and Elerbug to become old)

[@moppermop5287]

@@victoryender2284 What do you mean?

[@puckmin3487]

tbh, idk if the timelines match up but he might have learned it from the soul master, since he teleports too

[@bread5795]

@@ImieNazwiskoOK they*

[@thewanderingartists]

I want a mod that inserts your yelling when we do the abyss segments 😂😂😂

[@blueytheprotogen722]

YES

[@ivanlol7153]

Can’t wait for the Cc screaming update for the volcalized mod

[@derpycows671]

Maybe the Abyss really is endless...? The carcass in Kingdom’s Edge never seems to fade, and the amount of problems surrounding the Abyss’s structure are astounding

[@MeteorTribe]

thats trippy, an infinite land of dead children.

[@noidea3487]

I doubt is endless

[@archusrtm6325]

Maybe its bigger on the inside

[@manuelrabuffetti]

I feel like this channel is underrated

[@Ideabox00]

Totally

[@ionicman2908]

Amazing editing, excellent research, mathematically scientifically and game wise, funny memes, great narration, great explanation. Yes this channel is underrated Btw if you want a channel like ccmaci check out airoah, he makes very high quality animations

[@dennisnordlund902]

I feel that’s because people are unsure of wether he’s a furry or not. Awesome content though.

[@SGalaxyify]

You’d be correct

[@cookie123.]

god damnit that first part with the pale king screaming made me laugh my snot out!

[@dandyspacedandy]

I feel like legit abyss escape should allow mothwing cloak. Lost Kin and Hollow Knight both use a dash ability, and Lost Kin is able to air dash. The vessel that Hornet kills in Greenpath had a mothwing cloak as well. I feel it might be safe to assume all vessels had mothwing cloaks, and that the Knight managed to lose theirs somehow in their time outside of Hallownest

[@Foxyrobo]

Thanks for the shoutout! Also I wasn't expecting to get a trigonometry lesson at the beginning of the video lol

[@thedorklord1029]

7:08 True words, my dude. True words.

[@slavenderthethe587]

The knight on his first attempt might have reached the top of the abyss like that but THK, the vessel killed by hornet, broken vessel, the vessel killed by nosk and the knight on his 2nd attempt did not. THK was most likely brought up there by TPK and the rest probably took the deepnest route. Ya know that one place in deepnes where you find sharp shadow? That highly resembles ancient basin and/or the abyss, so they could have escaped from there, and then pale king blocked it acter he saw some got out(maybe? At least for the deepnest one) and put shade gate, but the rest got out using the third dimention i guess. That would explain why one of them was dead in the nosk arena, and the rest were not. Also maybe broken vessel was killed by a sentry in the basin and was left there

[@mothgirl326]

Isn't there also the 420 geo rock in kingdoms Edge? That seems pretty deep and abyss-y, although there aren't any vessels on that side of the map at all, they are all on the deepnest side so it's probably quite unlikely

[@zygarde.r6461]

6 vessels escaping is also just the minimum, the vessel we play as left hallownest so it could make sense that many other did as well

[@scariuslvl9987]

About the parallax effect: A similar but slightly less well formulated similar idea I already put under your previous video: you still miss a variable (an angle in your triangle, but that's difficult to measure in 2D like you said). My idea was to assume the perspective axis were the same throughout the game, but not the distance between planes. Explanation: if you find an object of which you know the length in the foreground and in the background (ex.: the width of the stagway cutout in the foreground and the width of the door of the stag station), you can measure how fast this background moves when you run. Then you would have a parallelogram of which you know the length of one pair of sides. If when you're in the middle of the foreground object and the background object at the same time, you're in a rectangle. You need to find two of those parallelograms/rectangles in the same room, then you can compare the angles and length of the sides of the trapezoids on screen. Perspective is proportionate to the distance, and those proportions don't change. Parallax is difficult to apply in the game because you can't measure angles, but you can find replacements. Another idea is (again in those parallelograms) to measure the distance you have to walk to make two ends of the foreground fall in one end of the background, but then also to measure the distance you have to walk to make the two ends of the background fall in the foreground. This could be a simple way to fill your lack of parameters in parallax through simple geometry.

[@miruten4628]

Your ideas interesting, but I think we're lacking a variable no matter what we do. We either some angle, or some depth-wise distance (this could be the distance between any two layers or between the camera and something). For your first idea, we don't actually need known objects. We can measure the width of any background object by having the knight walk from end to end. Since the camera is orthogonal, the object width is just the length walked by the knight. Your second idea is basically the same as your "perspective is proportionate to the distance" remark. This would be an efficient way of getting the ratio of distances between layers, and we could do this easily for any pair of layers (including the camera layer). One redeeming fact is that, if we can figure out a depth-distance *anywhere* in the game, we should know all depths in the game using parallax, because we'll know the distance from the camera to the knight (or equivalently the angle of the camera-view). Actually I might look into that! Couldn't we use e.g. the black egg? Assuming it's cylindrical and the knight is in the middle or something?

[@miruten4628]

Though probably everything will turn out to be inconsistent if you dig deep enough 😅 Like the camera is actually filming from outside the black egg or something

[@Lionblaze1970]

"no! hollow knight! you dont NEED to use noclip! its been solved!" "he cant hear us! he has buzzsaws all around him!" "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO"

[@YceSzmiff]

That little scene at the beginning was actually funny, I'd love to see more of those!

[@nusajagodic5770]

I think this confirms that Zote is not a vessel as there is literally *no way* he would've made it through the climb. He can barely stand on his own two feet, let alone pogo off spikes. 😂 Great video CC, thank you!

[@SamueL-td7fb]

Although I and a significant portion of the community consider Mossbag the channel when it comes to HK's lore, that doesn't mean that no one else has the right to give their own views on the vast world of this game. Your content undoubtedly has a lot of work behind it both in the investigative and editing sections, and I can't wait to see more of what you have to offer in the future!

[@T4coTV]

You only started editing in 2018 and are already this good? Damn, that's impressive!

[@sampvp134]

Hi

[@domonkosludvig3314]

"Callenge run: Shade cloak before mantis claw" is the name of the video that features the completed diagonal wall. You even commented under the video and it says 1 month ago (thats why i think you are talking about my comment). The timestamp is 1:45:34 If you have twitter or whatever please tell him the name of the video. Im not posting a link cuz my comment was probably deleted cuz youtube thought i was advertising my channel for ez money. Btw i found the video, because back then i wanted to try a mantis claw movement ability only challenge and I was researching. Its still my favorite playthrough of HK even though its incomplete(able).

[@domonkosludvig3314]

Uhhhhhhhhhh... turns out my comment wasnt deleted... its still under the *unlisted* amogus video... very awkward :D so you werent talking about my comment? im very confused... you still commented under that video... wat

[@Arzvet]

The shadow creepers being pushed away from walls by siblings made me laugh like the collector

[@MASSOFTHEFERMENTlNGDREGS]

thanks for the upload

[@frozenreaper5028]

Great video idea! Keep up the good work and maybe... just maybe... you’ll make it to the top of the abyss without anything, my love and positivity believes you will make it!

[@zekanark943]

i found your comment frozen!

[@frozenreaper5028]

@@zekanark943 yay! I hope you’re doing well!

[@oscarc2079]

Even if the abyss is cylindrical we don’t know if the knight is in the centre.

[@ImieNazwiskoOK]

I think we need to look at those "plates" in the back. Cilinders of different size would have various scale of those.

[@lurienthewatcher5437]

My idea was flawless!

[@ELV13S]

THAT FUCKING INTRO IS SO GODLY GOOD DAMN I LAUGHED THROUGH MY NOSE WITH THAT ONE, SUBSCRIBED!!!!!!!!

[@cementcitron9428]

"My king! You have returned with the pure vessel to stop the infection!" "What are you talking about, I wanna improve the path of pain"

[@zviyeri9117]

because the greenpath vessel has the mothwing cloak i always assumed vessels were born with these abilities, ghost just lost his somewhere on the way or perhaps theirs were damaged

[@PerpetualNoob]

Very cool video cc! 😃 And a heck of a challenge. I love it. 😃

[@seigel2289]

I think you could actually find the parallax angle based on how fast the background objects travel when the knight moves but I'd have to think about it 🤔

[@ratchet7748]

We need more of that incredible lurien impression

[@littlevader06]

I always thought of the abyss messages to be the pale king being sold on the vessels or convincing someone that it’ll work but yeah him yelling it into the abyss literally is funnier

[@TK3TK3]

This is your pop off era

[@victoryender2284]

Feels like crime documentary a bit lol

[@poptato6426]

2:45 So this is what math was truly designed for

[@serraramayfield9230]

Uh, Cc, I think you forgot that The Hollow Knight's ability to teleport was not inherent; it was part of the "raising and training" as said in the Pure Vessel description.

[@Ccmaci]

Are you talking about the hunter's journal description?

[@serraramayfield9230]

@@Ccmaci Yes

[@ianjohns5701]

@@Ccmaci I have an idea for the # of vessels in the abyss. Could you possibly use the abyss cutscene in the dream no more ending to find the distance? Because the cutscenes in the game show the world of Hallownest in a more 3D aspect than in gameplay. Could that work?

[@astrumleaf]

@@ianjohns5701 uhm, that won't work

[@bubblegumcupcake3216]

@@ianjohns5701 “today I’ll be beating up the Radiance to figure out how many of my siblings are dead!” (I’m not making fun of the idea, I just thought it sounds a bit funny 🙂)

[@johncargille7722]

I love your hollow knight skit stuff so much

[@alpacaofthemountain8760]

imagine being used as a ladder for your sibling to escape the abyss

[@nolander7732]

The part I don't understand about the abyss is how the void changes from liquid to gas or solid or sibling

[@idk_what_im_doing04]

The void seeped into the eggs of which contained the Pale Kings children (I believe so, at least. No certainty). The eggs became corrupted and the void fused with the vessels, making them the hollow void vessels we know today (again, not 100% certain with this statement)

[@nolander7732]

@@idk_what_im_doing04 ok but how did the pale king now the void would corrupt the eggs and also if the void can't think then how did it decide to corrupt the eggs in the first place?

[@serraramayfield9230]

@@nolander7732 Void can think

[@nolander7732]

@@serraramayfield9230 but wasn't the whole point of the vessels that they couldn't think because they were filled with void?

[@serraramayfield9230]

@@nolander7732 yes - see the problem?

[@Monkscug]

2:52 "to estimate how long it will take to beat her up"

[@sporg_nut__]

hey seesee, will smith here from team cherry. i am here to say if YOU can explain why the pure vessel is so hot, i will PERSONALLY release silksong.

[@mr.kittenface1671]

Ok I'll give it a shot: So pale ore is described as being "cold" In order to forge metal, you need extreme heat, so a metal ore that is naturally cold would need an unreal amount of heat. The Hollow Knight's nail is extremely large, and their armor may also be made from pale ore, so handling both these objects fresh from the forge would certainly increase one's temperature. Was this explanation satisfactory?

[@lostsoul2746]

The intro is perfection

[@Tankirb]

Could you theorhetically find the furthest visible shell in the background and since the further away something is the smaller it appears. Use that to calculate the depth of the background? Obviously this assumes that team cherry pit thought into how far the shells would be but the same argument applies to paralax

[@CeruleanTrafficlight]

* This treads the line if not is outright pedantic, but more than two vessels reached the top and escaped the abyss (the vessel you get the mothwing cloak from in greenpath and broken vessel/lost kin, without delving into the background art. hornet also implies she's killed a few before you, and she couldn't/wouldnt open the abyss). I'd interpreted it as Ghost and THK got to the top *first*, but more came at indeterminate times after them. I'm not sure if that significantly impacts anything here (or even suggests there may be an alternate, if much longer, pathway out we don't see in-game)

[@Yiffbait]

With the ammount of broken vessels down there they could have just pogo'd off endless amount of siblings to get up. You don't have to restrict the thinking just looking at gameplay spawns, we know that there is a shit ton of sibligs in the Radiance fight.

[@TheAdvertisement]

5:00 Well actually a few more you find in Hallownest did. :P

[@markoththewarrior4679]

Knowledge is power, and ccmaci brings great knowledge in an entertaining manner. Make sure to subscribe to him

[@user-hn1qc3rn2b]

the first thing that happens when you are born in hallownest: Minecraft parkour

[@1nked]

Wait, here is a thought for legit abyss escape and the rules you have implemented. You said in the first video on the topic that nail pogoing is possible due to The Knight being able to craft a nail from the dead vessels. The only materials that they have is their... well i guess its a bone head and a cloak, apart from that they are but void incarnate. If The Knight can craft a nail from the bones, then what's stopping them from making a mantis claw? its description says it is 'carved from bone', The Knight can access bone (and plenty of it) so what's stopping them from using makeshift mantis claws to reach the top by clinging to walls? Side note: this comment was made for fun, please don't take what i have said the wrong way. I like to look at shit too in depth for my own good :]

[@stoneforest2639]

0:44 PLEASE GUVE LURIAN THE EXTREMELY LOUD VIOLIN

[@mvsh]

the "far away object" is about 89 cm away from the camera, assuming the Knight is 2 cm tall (without the horns) and our FOV is 90 degrees I don't know why I post this 8 month later but this is the first time the YT algorithm has recommended this to me so there

[@craigg6621]

They just pogo off each other

[@petruciosxd1374]

Ooo boy I wish being concise was a natural gift of mine. Anyway uh, I'm not sure how many people made note of it, if any, but, even though it's not really the point of the challenge run up to the Abyss, it should probably be pointed out that, as well as us not knowing what goes on in the foreground, the layout of the Abyss when it comes to platforms is most likely radically different in-game than in actuality, since the naturally occurring floating platforms don't seem to be canon (and of course, if they were actually straight up floating and not attached to something in the foreground, why would they?), based on say, the Quirrel comic that seems to show part of the Howling Cliffs we visit, or just like, the promotional art in general, the world is a lot more normal despite what the game itself suggests, so it's clear enough that you're not supposed to take the way the platforming segments as completely accurate, even besides their weirdness like how much setup you'd need to get through the Birthplace cutscene without your items. For the most part it wouldn't really matter, but being a game full of platforming it'd got to have solid ground that wouldn't make much sense to exist, makes sense that _they'd_ be an exception, that the whole reason they're there. The platforms in the Radiance fight for example are probably completely canon, though the reason as to why she doesn't just have you free fall away from her is still just a gameplay construct, because... Come on, not gonna lose out on cool gameplay for _that._

[@a.kitcat.b]

Lurien definitely sounds like he eats ramen all day and writes fan fiction as his main job and is only on his telescope when the King is there. Definitely a one sided relationship ;^;

[@Stizzl]

Finally someone is putting math to good use.

[@mateuhade]

"we cant calculate the minimum of vessels on the abyss" oh yeah? fuck it im counting it

[@mc_wolfy1]

Monomom definitely told lurien

[@thenoobattack3818]

The vessels could have boosted each other up to the higher platform’s

[@olgafinikova7547]

There is at least one vessel in the abyss, or like, at least 5.

[@klikkolee]

That's not enough to conclude that parallax won't help. when people talk about parallax, they're usually referring to the difference in how near objects move compared to far ones. When the knight moves, measure how far each plane moved on-screen. If a plane moved 2x as far as another, it's half the distance away from the camera. This lets you find the distances of the planes relative to each other. You can now only need one absolute distance to get them all. Odds are, the distance you're most likely to succeed at finding is the distance from the camera to the gameplay plane. The plane exists at any point in the map, so you can tour the map looking for a depth reference. Make sure to measure the apparent width of the knight to know if the camera has changed difference and by how much. You can also try making assumptions about the camera -- things like focal length. It's not a turnkey solution -- it's a direction, and one where there are lots of paths to investigate.

[@kakashilover9231]

New video yay!

[@vayganantel3858]

There's one thing that bugged me : if the knight has to use its falling siblings to ascend... how did their siblings get that high ? There has to have been a first sibling attempting the climb, and as they had nothing to pogo on at the spike wall part... that means that vessels would have had to give their siblings a leg up at some point ?

[@Tankirb]

Its possible that those sibling used the shadow crawlers to pogo off of which is why none are visible in the cutscene because they have already been killed from pogoing. There is also the alternative explanation that the cutscene is a memory and thus may not include every detail or may even be incorrect such as the knight having mothwing clock and the double jump

[@oosyboosy3549]

parallax 100% dose work. instead of measuring the angle you need to messier the difference in movement between near objects and distant ones. you can then use this to fined the angle change and therefor the distance. use the number of skulls to fined the distance to near objects.

[@sahirahvasquez6211]

"You're setting a bad example for the vessel"

[@inkygrimmananas4928]

Pale king's character is spot on lol

[@pictonary3560]

Upload moment

[@SaoryEmanoelle]

THE BEGINNING WITH THE KING YELLING I'M LOSING MY MIND LMAOOO

[@thenoobattack3818]

The vessels could have boosted each other up to the higher platform.

[@Vexatious_Humanoid]

Or they could’ve done a shade skip, since some of the vessels would have already become shades by that point due to falling at other sections of the platform climbing bit. /hj

[@ryanmetzger8689]

So if hollow knight looked similar to our character originally, do you think eventually our character would look like that?

[@bubblegumcupcake3216]

That first part 😭😂

[@redstonewizard3450]

For the abyss it’s possible, to import it unity and then measure the pixels that way

[@faitfore]

If you have the vessels falling down, you can probably complete it without claw

[@_sprook_]

Okay so: fun fact. Hollow Knight was built in Unity, yeah? It’s a lot easier to make a 3D game than a 2D, so what Team Cherry did was put a bunch of 2D textures in a space, and lock the camera to one angle. If you go and fuck with the files of the game, you can see that the pngs for everything are physically layered in a 3 dimensional space, and thus, it may be possible to get an accurate distance of how far the back wall is.

[@lukemimnagh2594]

Sorry CC, i doubt that the Vessels would have a nail when climbing out of the Abyss.

[@walemaa5631]

6:35 Or he just pogoed on his siblings who climbed with him.

[@KonkyDonk]

There are at least 87 vessels in the abyss

[@mortsllaf]

Milibells head is another head upside down!?!

[@BrimmFate]

I should try doing this with absolutely nothing but nail..m

[@cobaltflynt7736]

What if the abyss if kilometers deep? Part of the games world is composed of supossedly dead bug exoskeletons, solidified into platorforms, so probably the abyss has primordial bug remains. Maybe the void comes frol those super old corpses

[@ImieNazwiskoOK]

So oil is Void? ... Why do I hear American Helicopter ?!

[@cobaltflynt7736]

@@ImieNazwiskoOK void is just angy oil

[@ImieNazwiskoOK]

@@cobaltflynt7736 So ancient civilization was just America

[@Hollow__Heart]

@@ImieNazwiskoOK I would be more careful with statements like that if I were you. Team Cherry might not like that you've discovered the truth.

[@joko8395]

That first bit tho 🤣

[@madisonavestudios2131]

This is going to sound really stupid, but what if the more hollow the vessel the higher they were able to jump because they were lighter. That could also be an explanation for why escaping the abyss was even a good test in the first place.

[@lonelygoat2716]

There’s probably atleast 3 vessels in the abyss

[@cxjivnlew8010]

I think there are 137,647,352,087,891,000 vessels

[@sampvp8901]

Wwwwow

[@sampvp134]

I agree lol

[@Ant-tx2ej]

10/10 voiceacting

[@jackosalt1648]

7:08 he is asending to p5

[@p1CM]

Ccmaciya

[@TheAdvertisement]

Okay can we talk about the fact this vid has a thousand likes and no dislikes?? That's a rare stat!

[@Ccmaci]

I can change that

[@TheAdvertisement]

@@Ccmaci Don't you dare-

[@theredbert]

just did some testing and since siblings are allowed now apparently u can lure a few of them to entirely skip the spike tunnel part. This makes the entire thing a lot easier, but I am not sure if they are only allowed for the wall or in general :/ Hope this information is not known yet/ helpful at all

[@Ccmaci]

With the shade following you, I have discovered with my Abyss Escape Practice Livestreams that they let you skip A LOT of the hard parts. However, the point of this run not only is to explain how the Knight escaped the Abyss, but for it to be as difficult as possible. Shades should only be used to go up the vertical wall, otherwise the entire point of the run is lost.

[@theredbert]

@@Ccmaci i see. That definitely makes the challenge more interesting and now that I've remembered it again I might give it a few tries

[@cobaltking2475]

I have come to the conclusion that there are at least 68 vessels in the abyss

[@SunPotato01]

If thk and the knight made it up by pogoing falling vessels, how did those vessels get up?

[@Tankirb]

Obviously they got up by pogoing on the shadow crawlers which is why none are visible in the flashback because they've taken to much damage.

[@Baark0]

Well, there's definitely at least 1 vessel in the abyss edit: whats the song name playing at the end of the video?

[@laurinjustlaurin1021]

This moment when you somehow helped a bit in the thumbnail

[@gamerzone5663]

Just asking a question : isn't Hollow Knight a game that uses a 3D camera to achieve its parallax effect?

[@leonardodavinchi7693]

Hey, one thing i didn't understand. Who exactly is Esmy and why training dummy has this dream nail daialogue

[@gnormal3225]

Since you bring the shade anyways and it has 20 health, couldn't you use the shade to get up areas where the ledge climbing is used, removing the last ability entirely?

[@Ccmaci]

There's a lot of things I can do with the shade, so yes you're correct. But you can also use a shade to skip pixel perfect wall jumps and the diagonal spike tunnel. So shade pogoing to beat jumps should be used at an absolute minimum to keep the run as difficult as possible.

[@aviowl8945]

I think there are at least ten corpses

[@Back_flips_for_life]

Wait so the night had a nail when it was first created

[@Tankirb]

No the idea is that they made a makeshift nail out of aurrounding material

[@animatronicsgamer]

Petition to add a mod that makes you start the game at an easier version of birthplace.

[@ashleyfadah2660]

bro i have a theory, A GAME THEORY! but fr what if the knight had these abilitys before the main game and lost them when he fell to the bottom