> The Collector

On its purpose, nature and history.

> Important Quotes

Hunter’s Journal:
Dark figure locked inside the Tower of Love. Preserves Hallownest's creatures in glass
jars, with particular attention given to Grubs.
A shadow that sometimes flits through the caverns, making strange noises to itself.
I've never seen it clearly so I have no idea what type of creature it is.

Collector’s Dream Nail Dialogue:

● My love! My love! Protected at last!
● A safe space, for you! And you! And you!
● It must be saved!

Love Key Corpse:

"Too long... spent together. We became as one..."

Hall of Gods description:

“Joyful god of protection”

> On its Creation

Being the shape that it is, it most likely was a creation by The Pale King.
Its body shape very much resembles that of an unarmored Kingsmould
though with far more distinguished fingers and head. It is unsure
whether it ever wore bindings like Kingsmoulds and lost them, or simply never had
bindings at all. Though at some point it was locked up within the Tower of Love for the
most likely rationale that it went insane.
The current most common theories are: It is a failed Kingsmould who broke its
bindings, it went psychotic and developed an interest in grubs of its own
understanding. However, this theory stands to possibly explain some oddities and
details that the other theories have not.
This theory is going to work off the fact that The Collector is not a failed Kingsmould.
Despite some visual similarities, The Collector’s unique fingers seem to be designed
just for it, and rather not a mutation of any sort nor a variation of a Kingsmould. As
well there could be a perfectly viable explanation as to why it looks so similar to a
Kingsmoulds.

> Base Theory

First of all, being a creation of the Pale King, The Collector was most likely created
with a purpose imbued. To try to understand what its purpose was, its Dream Nail
dialogue states:

“My love! My love! Protected at last!

A safe space, for you! And you! And you!
It must be saved!”

Along with a portion of his Hunter Journal description:

“...Preserves Hallownest's creatures in glass jars…”

Additionally, with the Godmaster update the description of The Collector is:

“Joyful god of protection”

What could this imply? Well also taking into account that a multitude of
the creatures captive in jars within the Tower of Love is not just solely
grubs, this could mean that The Collector was given the single purpose
by the Pale King to “Protect”, the kingdom at least. Though it may have
taken this to its very own meaning. Timeline wise, given its design, it seemed to be
created as a solution to the infection, probably before the creation of Vessels. Its
features are nearly identical to the Kingsmoulds most likely because of the fact that
Pale King decided to reuse his Kingsmould mould but give it minor modifications. Pale
King’s reasoning for doing so could stem from the time constraint of saving the
kingdom that he was in. After receiving its order to protect, The Collector possibly
decided that the best way to protect this kingdom was to trap its inhabitants in glass
jars, which seems to be proven to work as seen by its effect on keeping the grubs alive
and uninfected. When or how it lost its bindings, or even if it had bindings, to begin
with, is unknown and irrelevant to the fact that its behaviour was the cause of it getting
locked away within the Tower of Love.

The original collector… is not The Collector we see now? For

this portion of the theory, The Collector we know to be the
boss it is will now be referred to as a “Void construct”. Within
the Tower of Love, there lived a bug who ran the building, it
had an unending obsession over grubs and wanted to seal
them all away for unknown purposes. This bug will be known
as the collector and he is the one who drew the Vitruvian Grub, the Collector’s Map
and all those other writings within the Tower of Love. As far as evidence points, no
void construct nor creation has ever displayed the ability to write other than possibly
the Vessels in some manner, and even so, this distinct behaviour could be attributed to
their outer shells being living biological bugs with sentience rather than being just a
binding. If so, and Void Being could not be the culprit behind the writings, then who
would have drawn those intricate diagrams and the map? Rather the collector is the
bug we find holding the Love Key in Queen’s Gardens. He was the owner of the Tower
of Love when Pale King decided to have his “failed” void construct locked away in the
collector’s tower.

How did this lead to the death of the original collector? Well, his Dream Nail dialogue
in Queen’s Gardens says:

“Too long… spent together. we became as one”

Natural Void beings generally do not have minds as demonstrated by the

fact that Siblings and the Shade cannot be Dream Nailed and neither can
the Void Tendrils. Not having Dream Nail dialogue would point towards no
mind to think any thoughts. Kingsmoulds supposedly have their thoughts derived from
the bindings and will placed upon them by the Pale King. So, what does this all lead up
to? Well at a certain point it seems as if The Collector (Void being) either “stole” the
bug’s mind completely or joined consciousness with the bug. The Collector we see
ended up taking on the persona and voice of the original collector, and at some point,
this bug decided to lock away the void construct and run, but judging by the state of its
corpse it seems as if it had been too late and had succumbed to the effect of the Void.
What points to the original collector and the new void construct’s obsession over
grubs? Well from The Hunter’s Notes we know that there was a point not too long ago
when the void construct was free to roam and was already insane by the time.

“A shadow that sometimes flits through the caverns, making strange noises to itself.”

How would this be possible if the void construct were locked away because it was
deemed mad? All the way back during Pale King’s rule no less. Well to restate, it was
the original collector who had an obsession with grubs, and now he also had this
newcomer to his home, so what was he to do with it? Well, of course, to send it to do
his bidding, and so the void construct was probably sent out to trap grubs in jars
supplied. While the Void Being was out the collector himself busily tracked down the
location of each grub and made a map. This may seem hard to believe but never has
any void construct known to be capable of the ability to write or otherwise, so who else
could have sat down at that desk to work out a complicated map?

> Additional Note

New evidence from analyzing the lore tablets in Lurien’s quarters in
Watcher’s Spire gives some small details and possible answers. Featured on
all three tablets (one interactable and two backdrops) are jars identical to the
ones found on the Vitruvian Grub and the other lore tablets scattered around
the Tower of Love. The only difference between these is a lack of grub
imagery in Lurien’s Tablets. However, the presence of the jars may give answers to the
huge stockpile of jars found within the Tower of Love. Perhaps given that the corpse
holding the Love Key is a Husk Dandy or a royal husk, it may have even served under
Lurien and gained the position to control the tower. Whatever the case Lurien most
definitely had something to do with the jars and perhaps even got those orders to
create those jars from Pale King himself as Lurien is shown to be a devout follower. In
addition, this concept could prove that what The Collector was doing may have been
completely intentional and orchestrated by Lurien or even Pale King. However, the fact
that the Tower of Love tablet is quite literally a segment of the Watcher’s Spire tablet
but modified could suggest that the original collector may have used this method to
trick the void being by simply altering the commands a small bit to contain grubs.

Thanks for reading- @KitsuneMedia (Mola)