Soulsborne fans tackle the ultimate boss of private healthcare, paying off beloved community figure’s huge bill within hours while collectively urging: ‘Don’t you dare go hollow’

The longtime Soulsborne content creator Zullie the Witch has been datamining FromSoftware’s games for pretty much as long as I’ve been playing them, producing countless deep-dives, neat findings and lore tidbits for fans to chew on. They’ve covered every Soulsborne game including Elden Ring and Sekiro, but under their most recent video on Elden Ring Nightreign shared that things weren’t going so well personally (thanks, GR+).

“I am clawing my way out of a pit of depression, but the pit is deep and my claws are blunt,” wrote Zullie. “I’d been hoping to get back to making videos at the start of the month, only to find myself just slipping in at the end of it instead. Between that, the fact I haven’t been able to secure a sponsor video in a while, and a looming $15,000 in medical expenses, I’m reluctant to do this, but I’m openly asking for donations.”

Within hours Zullie chose to remove the donation links “because this has already smashed every expectation I had and I’m kind of overwhelmed by how quickly and emphatically you’ve all lent your support.” The Ko-fi page shows 6467 donations at the time of writing, which with a minimum donation of $5 means the community has ponied-up a minimum of $32,355 and probably a great deal more.

Rather sweetly, people have also collectively decided to list most donations with a line from the original Dark Souls spoken by Laurentius: “Don’t you dare go hollow.” It’s one of the last things that this friendly and charming NPC says before… well, we don’t need to go into Laurentius’ end. But it’s one of those memorable lines that both encapsulates the challenge of Dark Souls and its world, and speaks to the persistence needed to get through hard times.

“This has already smashed every expectation I had and I’m kind of overwhelmed by how quickly and emphatically you’ve all lent your support,” said Zullie after removing the links. “I’ve always been a deeply anxious person, and a large emphasis of that anxiety lately has been financial issues, so I truly didn’t anticipate seeing the bulk of those issues get crushed into nothing in the span of a single afternoon.

“I’d been deeply reluctant to ask for assistance, especially because I felt like I had avenues of addressing these problems that weren’t available to the average person, like vying for sponsor money or trying harder to make more videos, but having finally asked, I don’t know how to express how unprepared I was for the level of generosity I’ve received.”

The Laurentius line feels especially apposite for Zullie, who has been something of a comforting presence for anyone who probably spends too much time thinking about these games. Their channel is a total treasure trove if, for example, you wonder about those weird little worm things in Shadow of the Erdtree, why some Elden Ring NPCs have a thing going on with their eyes, or even what the games had as spawn points before FromSoftware hit upon the idea of a bonfire. And after this, it looks like there’ll be a lot more to come.