Hollow Knight: How and why does the Pale Ore make your nail stronger?
Greetings my good humans. We are back with the second installment of Science in Video Games. I’ve had very positive feedback from the first edition of the newsletter discussing Disco Elysium which makes me feel better. Praise is not the main reason I do this, but it’s always nice to have!
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In this second edition of the newsletter, we’re looking at Hollow Knight, the great platform action-adventure game developed and published by Australian independent developer Team Cherry. In the game, you control a nameless Knight that roams around Hallownest and tries to rid of it the infection that plagues the once flourishing world. One thing that might make or break the game for some people is that it requires active participation from the player to talk with NPCs and interact with monuments around the world in order to understand the very interesting game lore. Nonetheless, it’s a great game to play with challenging boss fights, great music, and beautiful visuals.
In the game, our knight is using the nail in order to fight his foes. The nail is nothing else just a bladed weapon, very similar to a sword that you can gradually upgrade to make stronger and kill foes easier. To upgrade that you can find 6 mysterious Pale Ores in the game which you can take to the Nailmaster and he will infuse your nail with the ore to make it stronger. Now, in terms of in-game lore, we are not sure what this pale ore is. The only thing we know for use comes from a Reddit AMA with the developers of the game. They said that the pale ore has some connection to the pale beings but nothing more is revealed.
The pale beings that you come across while playing the game are the Pale King and the White Lady. They are higher beings (kinda like gods?) in this world and they used to rule different parts of the map. Now it’s safe to assume that the Nailmaster by infusing your nail with these pale ores, instills some supernatural, magical, or holy strengths to your nail that make it stronger. [source] There are actually many different fan theories about it from Reddit users.
Some say that it might be part of the original body of the pale king. Another user suggests that the pale ore is pure solidified soul (soul being the life force of the game). Another theory suggests that these ores predate the pale king and have some link with the civilization that predates Hallownest. So it is safe to assume that there are a lot of theories about the exact source of these ores, and we hope to find out more about them in the upcoming sequel of the game entitled Silksong. One of the theories (or wishes) that I found a bit interesting and that I might come back to later, is written right below the comment from the game developers about it being connected to the pale beings. The users “wish” that the Pale Ore is Wyrm ambergris. Wyrm is the previous body that the Pale King had and ambergris is a substance that in the real world we find in the intestines of sperm whales. The theory is that ambergris can be found in whale poop. Hold on to that thought because it might come later.
In this newsletter, we’re going to take a more material science approach to understand Pale Ores. No matter how, or where it comes from what are the physical properties of the pale ore that when infused with your nail it will make your nail stronger? I have to admit, there are many reasons I chose to write this article. Firstly, I played the game fairly recently and really really liked it, but at the same time… my first degree was in Metallurgy so… this will make my research a bit easier.
To begin with we need to understand what exactly is the end result of the nail. Nail is the general term the game uses to describe the bladed weapons. With that in mind and if we consider the blade is made out of metal we can start working towards some theories about what and how did the Naismith make our nail stronger?
Maybe not in the beginning when it was considered an “old nail” but definitely after our first visit to the Naismith the blade became an alloy. Alloys are a very common type of material and it’s just a mixture of materials of which at least one is metal [source]. The primary metal of an alloy is called the base while the secondary materials are the solutes. Rather, a better way to say this is that the “wanted” secondary materials are the solutes. Very often there are other secondary materials in the matrix that are called impurities. But for the time being, we’re focusing on the solutes that matter in order to make our blade stronger.
Speaking of blades, steel has been the most common material to make blades [source] with some blades existing out there being made out of ceramic materials. However, we can safely assume by the look and the sound of our nail, that it was made out of steel. So we will focus on steel blades rather than anything else.
In order to identify more about the blade and the “Pale Ore”, we will cheat a little bit and we will look at the end result. The “Pure Nail” as it is called in the game. As a scientist, i will “allow” the poetic license of calling it “pure” because metallurgically speaking it’s not pure. As we established, it is an alloy so it is a mixture of things but at the same time when you look at it, it has layers and layers of stuff. And these layers are more than aesthetic. They provide functional benefits as well. In real life, the Pure Nail looks an awful lot like a Damascus blade.
In my effort to start writing a complete analysis of what a Damascus blade is, how it is made, and its history of it, I realized that things are far more complex. Apparently, the method of production of a “true” Damascus sword is an open debate and since they are quite popular because of their beauty there are many resources that are quite obviously wrong and even calling the sword “magic”. There is even a paper entitled “The Mystery of Damascus Blades” that explains all the issues with it. So in the following sections, I will do my best in explaining the different methods I found for making Damascus blades and see how these methods could fit in Hollow Knight.
Damascus blades were first made in Syria from Indian steel [source]. These steels have in common an attractive surface pattern composed of swirling patterns of light-etched regions on a nearly black background. The way these swords were produced had been a source of debate in the academic community for years. It is believed that the original Damascus swords were using a specific type of steel called Wootz. While initially, Damascus steel was thought of as being made of two different types of steel. The pattern-welded steels were produced by forge welding alternating sheets of high- and low-carbon steels. This composite was then folded and forge-welded together, and the fold/ forge cycle was repeated until a large number of layers was obtained [source]. The properties of the blade were very highly dependent by many things but the toughness of the sword in impact and the strength of the material is improved with the higher number of layers[source]. You can see the above process in many youtube videos making “Damascus” knives and swords like the one below:
However, further research and prodding proved that the above method wasn’t “genuine”.
The Europeans first encountered the Damascus sword during the crusades against Muslim Nations [source]. Presumably, they brought some back to Europe as spoils of war, however in their effort to replicate the patterns they saw they only used the aforementioned forge-welding technique. However, further research proved that it is possible with the steel they were using in the city of Damascus to create patterns with a single type of steel.
Even if, in the case of Hollow Knight we are obviously not looking for a single steel Damascus blade, I found the story of the “original” Damascus steels very interesting. In papers published in 1998 researchers managed to recreate the watery pattern and identify the role of impurities in the creation of this pattern [source, source]. In these papers, they identified that the methods blacksmiths used by welding different types of steel and then etching the surface of the blade wasn’t accurate. They realized that raw material with specific impurities would do the trick. The major impurities that played a role in the pattern of the Damascus blade were Vanadium, Molybdenum, Chromium, Manganese, and Nitrogen with the first two playing the most important role. The method of preparation and some details are then ironed out (pun intended). A small steel ingot of the correct composition (Iron + 1.5% Carbon) is produced in a closed crucible and is then forged to a blade shape. The key factors include time/temperature record of the ingot preparation, the temperature of the forging operations, and the type and composition level of impurity elements in the Fe + 1.5C steel.
Could the Pale Ore be the small impurities of Vanadium or Molybdenum? Unlikely, since the concentration of these impurities is very very small. On a scale of 10 or 100 parts per million. Maybe, in more of a poetic sense, the developers were talking about these impurities but practically, no matter how good our Nailsmith was he wouldn’t be able to do this.
It is more probable, that the Nailsmith was using the technique the European blacksmiths were using for forging these Damascus-like blades. Either or original Nail was made of iron or low carbon steel and the Pale Ore could be parts of steel our nailsmith used to reinforce it and eventually create the patterns we have on the “Pure Nail”. Pure iron is quite shiny so it could be our Pale Ore. However, it could rust quite easily in high humidity environments which might make it harder. Or, remember the whale poop theory we had earlier? Maybe, just maybe the wyrm poop is made out of steel wich has some percentage of carbon that would work out and help our nameless knight make that “Pure Nail”.
Aside from it being very pretty to look at, Damascus steel has many properties that even though are not considered top of its class today, were very impressive at the time. It is very sharp and very tough. In the mechanics of materials, the strength of a material is its ability to withstand an applied load without failure or permanent deformation. The ability of the blacksmiths in Damascus to produce such high-quality swords with the knowledge of the time is outstanding. One reference that I found mentioned that Damascus steel exhibited superplasticity [source]. This means that the material could be deformed well beyond the usual breaking point. The material tested in that paper had a Yield Strength (maximum stress before it starts to change shape permanently) of 920 Mpa, Ultimate Tensile Strength (maximum stress before it breaks) of 1145 MPa, and a total elongation of 12%. While these numbers aren’t great when it comes to some modern materials it is still quite impressive.
Writing this article made me very interested in archaeometallurgy. Trying to figure out the past use and production of metals using modern-day technology is a very interesting way of trying to figure out how different civilizations lived in the past. I hope by reading this article you understood my fascination with it, and maybe you understood a little bit more about material science as well.
Have you played Hollow Knight? Did you like it? Are you looking forward to the next installment of the game? Let me know in the comments below. Also, did you ever play a game and wondered what would it take to bring the events of the game into real life? Let me know in the comments below as well! And of course, don’t forget to share this article on your social media! [=