User Name/Nick: Maniette
User DW: maniette
E-mail/Plurk/Discord/PM to a character journal/alternate method of contact: Maniette
Other Characters Currently In-Game: Arthur Lester, Sam Walls, Beckett Mariner Freeman

Character Name: The Knight, or Ghost
Series: Hollow Knight
Age: Unclear, but implied to be at minimum decades old, since it predates the fall of the local civilisation completely. Don't let its underdeveloped status fool you.
From When?: Ending Five: Delicate Flower

Warden Justification: The Knight was born to be used as a vessel for a corrupting plague, was thrown away when it was deemed 'impure', and despite clawing its way out of the abyss, losing what little memories it had, and learning to be an insanely competent killing machine, it still chooses kindness, and its whole overall mission is to help protect the bugs of Hallownest. Learning how to be more than what you were made to be is sort of its whole thing, and something it's continuing to learn now that its primary mission has been fulfilled.

Item: A charm embossed with the Admiral's hat; while wearing it, the Knight can summon a small Beaft to lead it to its inmate. What creature is summoned will reflect its inmates physical status.

Abilities/Powers: Primarily a skilled swordsman nailmaster capable of cyclonic, ranged and charged slashes, as well as pogo-bouncing with its sword, thanks to how light it is. It also has a magical nail that can be used to access people's surface thoughts by (painlessly) hitting them with it, as well as a wide variety of charms it can equip to give it different bonuses or skills.

It's moderately capable of magic, including kamehameha-ing its own soul, abyssal shockwaves, and a horrific shrieking AOE. It can also run at inhuman speed and through other beings without hurting them, cling to walls, double-jump, and even be a crystal rocket. It's even immune to acid! It can also absorb or consume (in some unclear fashion) items within itself to permanently acquire them as an ability.

Importantly, however, is that the Knight is also a vessel, and while it is a fully sentient person in and of itself, it still contains a shade, a semi-sentient entity made of pure Void. If the Knight is killed, the Shade will emerge from its shell; while it won't try and attack anyone indiscriminately, it will attack anyone that attacks it (and it's as competent a fighter as the Knight itself) until the Knight can come back and defeats it itself, but it's easily kept at bay by bright lights if necessary. However, the Knight can also choose to destroy its shell and release the Shade, at which point it is the fully sentient combined force of both of them, and able to interact with other void entities at full capacity.

Wardening Strategies and Philosophies: The Knight expressly understands that power comes in different forms, that respect matters, and that no one is under any obligation to take whatever shit they aren't fully willing to endure. Therefore it will not put up with any shit or disrespect from its inmate, and will stonewall them, intentionally or otherwise, until they act in a way that it accepts as sufficiently respectful or mindful.

While it's wildly bizarre to say who might work best for it as its inmate, it will likely be good for someone who's trying to delude themselves by buying into their own arguments and justifications, since the Knight will be an excellent sounding board for them to rubber duck code themselves out of their own bullshit. It'll be an excellent warden for anyone inclined towards violence, since while it's also a lethal combatant who can hold its own if so required, it also finds pleasure and peace in stillness and can encourage that in others (at nailpoint if it has to). It'll be bad for someone who needs extensive open communication, since it... can't, but excellent for someone who needs a warden that doesn't make any pretence of their motives, since what the Knight chooses to do is exactly what it wants and nothing more, often simply for the act itself being something inherently kind or noble; or even for someone who needs to be a teacher or guardian before they can improve, as the Knight will need a lot of teaching on how human norms and general communication skills work.

(That's not to say it's incapable of being a petty fucker or little gremlin, because it very much is. But again it makes no pretence of the fact it's being a shitheel.)

Communication might be tricky for other characters to deal with, especially in its early time on the Barge, since it can't speak and rarely if ever uses meaningful body language (though it is fully literate, and a moderately skilled artist); most other bugs talk to it normally, treating it like a particularly quiet normal person without it needing to reply, so part of its own journey will be learning how to actually communicate clearly, and make meaningful connections through its own smaller efforts, and not just running missions for people.

Deal: Its own body back, having sacrificed its shell in order to destroy the Radiance.

History: The Knight's wiki page!

Sample Network Entry:
[This sort of technology is far beyond anything the Knight has ever seen before. Even the very idea of moving pictures is something beyond its limited imagination, and it spends quite a while simply poking the screen and marvelling at the fact something so small can be so miraculously complicated.

It supposed, if it was inclined to muse more on its own existence, that it could probably relate to the fact. Who knows what power could be found inside small packages, after all.

It takes a few trial runs, of working out what each button means with some increasingly frantic tapping - but eventually, it starts a public video of itself (and of all things, the background is an underground hot spring, with sprigs of grass and glowing motes of light drifting in the steam of the faintly glowing water).

So the Barge will get to see a skull (carapace) with hollowed out sockets filled with nothing but pitch black, that seem to leave brief, unpleasant static glitches on the screen as it lifts the communicator to rest it on the metal park bench it was sitting on, and then jumps off to make sure the video gets it in full. The shuffling back and forth a few paces clearly looks awkward, as it tried to centre itself on the screen; and when it finally gets it right, and stands still in the centre, it somehow looks even more awkward - not that that particular emotion is easy to identify, when all it's doing is standing stiff and straight and staring directly at the camera.

After a few, too-long seconds, it nods. Just once, deep and quick. And then it toddles a bit too quickly back to the camera, and the tapping of its screen is audibly more of a scrabble, before the video clicks off.]

Sample RP: TDM toplevel!

Special Notes: For ease of playing, the Knight will be able to understand and read/write in English in addition to its normal Buglish.

ALSO If the Knight's shell is destroyed then the Knight is technically dead, but the Shade will linger until otherwise defeated; if the Shade is defeated while the Knight is dead, the Knight will revive sooner. (If the Knight suicide-bombed and is the Shade, then it will remain as such for the full 24-hour revival period, at which point it will disappear and wake up on its bench in its room.)