#Sorry if I'm wrong since it's been a while since I've played HK but isn't Brumm unable to leave without the help of the knight?#I do agree that Grimm isn't bad especially in comparison to other higher beings#still sketchy as hell though...#Just because we personally had a good experience with him and the troupe#doesn't mean that he's off the hook for possibly carrying out atrocities basically#Idk after the whole deal with lifeblood I'm a lot more skeptical of what the pale king doesn't like lmfao
Sure, that's one interpretation, if you assume that he's the only one speaking truthfully and everyone else is lying to you in the entire DLC, which is. Demonstratably not the case.
If Brumm is correct about everything, including 'ohh this ritual is profaning the kingdom' (which is something that the White Lady also gets aggressive about...and WL is also not a reliable narrator; she's protective of hallownest even when it's a fucked up zombie kingdom)...why does Divine exist. Why does she do the things she does? She can literally stay behind after the Ritual for purely her own reasons and is not punished for it, she only leaves if they're banished.
If Brumm's Not Allowed To Leave Without The Knight, why, then, does Brumm and Grimm's dialogue mirror each other, talking about a consequence that does not seem to be about Brumm at all actually:
It is done... and yet...
It is not merely by fortune that we meet here, in the darkest, furthest reaches of the world, where my Master's scarlet eyes can not see us.
Mrmm. A song that never ends… is no song at all.
[...]
If you wish to silence the endless song… Mrmm, meet me where it began…
But if you return to the Master and complete the Ritual… Mrmm. As long as you do it without regret, I will bear you no hatred.
And so our great Ritual nears its end. Will you continue to harvest the flame, even though now you surely see the path it illuminates for us?Our scarlet eyes will watch you keenly… friend.
if you dream nail Brumm at the lantern site:
Master… are even you a slave? If so, let our chains be broken together!
And Grimm notably, does not try to stop you if you go to the lantern site, a place where he presumably can see you. He could stop you if he wanted. He won't, because it's your choice, as the independent participant of the ritual. It's Brumm's choice. It's what Brumm wants.
And doing this is how you get Nymm, who...doesn't remember the Troupe at all, and is simply allowed to live like a normal-ass person.
To be honest, I'm not even sure where I came upon it, but staring at its design, my memory stirs, something, and someone, forgotten, lost far away.
The specifics elude me, but a strange sense remains, fear, but also... longing? Like a strange nostalgia for something that never happened.
And yet he still remembers the Troupe (and Grimm, lol) a little bit, but only as a dream, something he has no real connection to.
What do we draw from all this? Well, uh, Brumm is probably a bit fucked up about how reincarnation means you're losing a person you care about, for one. A lot of how he talks about the ritual betrays a very personal investment in how the ritual is going to turn out and the toll it takes, with the punchline being that he doesn't really care so much about the ritual's effects as he does about Grimm's fate. And yet, disrupting the ritual, the life's work of the troupe, gets him....release from regret and the things that have haunted him, doesn't seem like much of a punishment.
Also the Troupe is like the opposite of sketchy, Grimm literally tells you everything that's going to happen before it happens. He's giving you a choice like literally all the time. You can do as little or as much of the ritual as you want. You don't even have to talk to him ever?
