Silksong Riddle Characters Examined Script

July 10, 2020

Silksong Riddle Characters Examined Script

https://youtu.be/PgnYq7El5Vc

So it’s been about 3000 years since Team Cherry gave us a blog update about Silksong. It almost seemed like Silksong was just some shared fever dream we all hallucinated for over the past year. I was about to nuke the channel and become a foster parent. But luckily, the Hollow Knight community has been tossed a succulent bone by a most unlikely ally, Leth.

In case you didn’t know, Matthew Griffen, AKA Leth, has begun providing us with Silksong updates in a most unusual way. Remember when I mentioned that theory that Silksong was going to be released on June 12th? Well, this resulted in another theory that Team Cherry was going to make an announcement on May 29th, since Hollow Knight’s trailer dropped two weeks before the game came out.

Of course, nothing was announced on May 29th. But Leth did post a riddle in the Hollow Knight Discord. He figured that giving our starving community something to do would help ease the sting of Team Cherry’s deafening silence. The riddle didn’t reveal anything, but it was just nice to be able to interact with Leth as people tried to piece together the riddle’s meaning.

But as it turns out, William and Ari really liked what Leth was doing. So they started giving Leth content that could actually be revealed from these riddles. These reveals happened every Monday for the past four weeks. And Leth even gave me one part of one of these riddles to post on my Twitter for people to find. Now, I’m not going to spend a lot of time discussing these riddles. I would recommend looking at fireb0rn and TacoTV’s channels if you want more details on what these riddles were and how they were solved. They’ve done a good job documenting all of this stuff.

And I know I’ve talked about the Hollow Knight Discord a lot on this channel, but I really do have to say that it’s a great community. The people there deciphered Leth’s riddles incredibly quickly, and they’ve done a ton of digging into Hollow Knight lore and Silksong speculation. So yeah it’s a good group.

For this video, we’re just going to focus on what was actually revealed and what stupid nonsense we can speculate from it. First up we have this character, commonly referred to as the Huntress. Basically Leth would post a zip file along with a riddle. The answer to the riddle would be the password needed to open the zip file. The answer to this zip file was Huntress, hence the name.

Inside the file is a character portrait, a short animated gif, as well as a few lines of dialogue and a brief description. The Huntress appears to have set up camp in this small alcove possibly somewhere near Bonebottom. We can also see that bags have been strung up in the room. Also, notice how these objects are slowly swaying in the room. It’s a pretty neat detail that wasn’t really used for hanging objects in Hollow Knight. The Huntress begins by noticing that Hornet is carrying the “organs of others”, and asks if she would be willing to offer these organs or even her own organs as “birth-meal” for her brood. The Huntress is described as a towering old predator, waiting for the arrival of her children. She scorns the Citadel above and the hapless pilgrims who are ascending towards it.

Now we’ve all met people like this in real life, asking to feed our organs to their young. In this instance, Hornet might be able to give this character some kind of collectable taken from other enemies. We know that quests will play a big role in Silksong, so we might see a lot more of these types of items. But as of right now, the only items we have seen enemies drop are rosaries and shell shards. She also says Hornet could offer up her own organs, but I doubt she would agree to that.

One interesting note about this character is that she looks vaguely like the creatures we saw in one of the images Team Cherry gave us for the Forest of Bones back when it was going to be in Hollow Knight. Could these hideous freaks of nature be her children?

The Huntress is also quite aware of what is going on in Pharloom and she doesn’t appear to be a fan. She holds a disdain for the Citadel, which we saw a brief glimpse of in the trailer. This area is likely controlled by the bell cult, and appears to be the destination of many bugs travelling through Pharloom. So the Citadel probably isn’t a great place, but then again, this lady wants our organs, so maybe we shouldn’t value her opinion.

One final point, the HUD in this gif appears a bit odd. For some reason, the right end of the spool is missing, and the silk itself is thicker. This might just be a buggy UI issue, since the game is still in development after all. Or it could be possible that the silk spool itself can break, similar to how the soul vessel in Hollow Knight breaks. However, this bobbin symbol in the corner is not lit up either, which we have seen is supposed to light up once you have a full spool of silk. We even see it light up in a later reveal as well. So I wouldn’t be surprised if this UI was still buggy.

The next character revealed appears to be named Grindle. Grindle is a snitchbug that can be found locked up in a cell somewhere in what I assume is the gilded city. Once freed, he will offer Hornet information in exchange for rosaries, but his intell is apparently not very good. So chances are he’s going to give us bunk lore, because god forbid we have a character that gives real lore.

From his dialogue, we know that Grindle has been locked up for a while. We also know that Grindle plans to take advantage of Pharloom’s ailing state, though there is no more detail on what exactly is happening to Pharloom. We know that it is haunted by silk and song, but the exact details on that still remain pretty hazy.

Grindle is described as being a snitchbug, which isn’t a real thing according to Google, but his head has a similar design to the enemy we saw in the Silksong reveal trailer, indicating that we might see more of this species of bug throughout the game.

There are quite a few other details in the provided gif that we should talk about. First of all, we actually see another prisoner in this area. This bug looks similar to some of the other enemies we have seen in trailers, except this guy isn’t wearing a headdress. Perhaps he is a defector from the cult, or maybe they just removed his bedsheet as punishment. They let him keep his bell staff though, so that’s nice.

We also see that in Grindle’s cell there is a work bench covered in throwing daggers. Not sure what weapons like those would be doing in a jail cell. Was Grindle about to shiv some bitch? Regardless this might be the location where Hornet obtains the throwing dagger tool.

Finally, there is another additional HUD element that we haven’t seen before. There appears to be a little green bead on the end of Hornet’s silk spool. This might be the result of some kind of tool Hornet has equipped, but I’m not sure what it would do. We can see in the tool menu in the reveal trailer that some green object appears next to a Weaver-type tool and some kind of device that looks like it could weave silk. I’ve mentioned before that there appear to be different classes of tools in Silksong: red, blue and yellow. My guess is these blue tools will be related to modifying Hornet’s silkspool in some way. We can also see that the right side of the spool is missing in this gif as well, so the bead might be related to that in some way.

The third reveal we got from Leth was for a caravan of fleas. Now, we have actually seen these fleas before in the Silksong E3 demo. They appear to operate like the grubs of Hollow Knight, getting stuck in different areas and needing rescued. According to their dialogue, we can tell that the caravan is not from Pharloom, and that they have but a single, humble wish.

The caravan didn’t realize how dangerous Pharloom was, however, and instead of watching their kids like responsible ass adult fleas, they let their children get lost all throughout the kingdom. These fleas are said to carry bountiful food, powerful drinks and surprising amenities. So these characters probably give Hornet these different foods as reward for returning their fleas. The fact that these are foods and drinks makes me think these are perishable items, which wasn’t a super prevalent mechanic in Hollow Knight. It will be interesting to see how exactly that will work in Silksong if this is the case.

These fleas appear to be making a pilgrimage to the Shining Citadel at the top of Pharloom, which is a very common theme throughout this game. Of course, we have characters like the Huntress who distrust the Citadel and all it stands for, but a lot of other characters seem interested in making it there. There’s a pretty interesting parallel to this in Hallownest. Bugs would make pilgrimages to Hallownest to see the Pale King’s kingdom as well. There’s even a path in Hallownest called the Pilgrim’s Way. And while the Pale King is a morally dubious character, it’s not like his promise to pilgrims was some completely malicious lie. So it will be interesting to see what exactly it is these pilgrims are expecting at the citadel, and what it is they actually get.

Looking at the HUD, we can see that Hornet’s spool can in fact be increased in length. I don’t think anyone doubted this would be the case, but it’s nice to have this confirmed. Also, we can see that one of Hornet’s health masks has another mask placed on top of it. This might be like lifeblood, giving you extra health, but honestly, that seems a bit redundant. This mask has a crack on it, which might imply that it can take multiple hits before it breaks completely, similar to the Balder Shell charm that everyone forgot exists.

And now we come to the final reveal of Leth’s riddle madness, Seth. Seth is a boss fight that appears to occur somewhat late in the game. Seth guards a secret located at the base of the Citadel, and he attacks anyone who gets too close, including the bell cultists. There appears to be something a bit unnatural about this character. He is described as being ancient, and has somehow been imbued with stamina and strength beyond a normal bug.

We do have a hint about what the source of this strength might be. Team Cherry provided us with one line of dialogue from Seth that simply reads “The Voice… has chosen me.” But this isn’t the first time we’ve heard about this voice. Another character, Trobbio, has been described as being Master of the Stage, the Brush and the Voice. And Trobbio and Seth have somewhat similar designs. From one of the provided gifs, we can see that this feathery thing is actually some kind of cloak, which means Trobbio’s might be as well, and honestly, I really don’t want to imagine what he looks like without it.

The connections between Seth and Trobbio are interesting, but they don’t really make sense. Seth is this hardened warrior protecting some ancient secret, while Trobbio appears to be some performer who is obsessed with fame. Not really sure what to make of that. Perhaps the Voice is a more nebulous element that has a broader context we just aren’t aware of yet.

Looking at the two gifs, we can see that Seth appears in Greymoor as a passive NPC. But we also see him in a boss fight with Hornet, which appears to be a different location. We know that this is the base of the Citadel, since it features the tangled roots mentioned in Team Cherry’s description. We also see what appears to be some kind of snow falling from above, similar to the ash we saw in Kingdom’s Edge in Hollow Knight. So does this mean Pharloom also contains some kind of Wyrm in it, similar to the Pale King?

Well, not so fast. Another theory for what those might be are flower petals. We have seen at least one area in Pharloom filled with petals, and there is another argument for this. Leth actually locked this reveal behind two passwords, which were “protector” and “bloom”. The former password obviously refers to Seth, while the latter could imply that what we are seeing here is related to plant life. We also have those roots in this area too, indicating that plants and trees are growing somewhere nearby.

The boss fight itself looks awesome. Seth is fast, and utilizes his cymbal as both a shield and a frisbee. Another small detail about this fight is that we can see Hornet perform some kind of aerial move where her dress puffs up. This seems to stall her fall speed like some sort of glide mechanic. We know that Hornet’s cloak is an actual item in Hornet’s inventory, so it seems like the cloak itself can be upgraded.

Seth is a character designed by Seth Goldman, a Hollow Knight fan who got to meet Team Cherry through a program called the Marty Lyons Foundation, which grants wishes to children with life-threatening illnesses. Unfortunately, Seth passed away earlier this year, but his character will live on in Silksong. And I’m sure the Hollow Knight community will remember him for years to come.

And that’s about it for Silksong news. We’ve received a few glimpses of what new abilities Hornet will gain throughout her quest. And we also met a new cast of colorful characters, including a thief, a band of fleas, a guy who hears voices and a girl who wants our organs. I’m excited to see what else Team Cherry has in store for us. Maybe a ladybug that commits tax fraud, or a grasshopper that wields a mace, or maybe even Jeff Bezos.

fireb0rn’s analysis:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLfkLKB8O1Ff3jJ8uRIBxMKymfTsufzkY0

T4coTV’s channel:

https://www.youtube.com/c/T4coTV