Mapping out the world of Silksong (Script)

https://youtu.be/piKTQ6VCgM8

Before the video starts, I just wanted to let you know that there are only two days left of the Kickstarter for my game, Titan Shell. It’s a twin stick co-op roguelike coming to PC, Mac, Linux and Switch. There’s a link in the description, so check it out if you’re interested. Thanks!

The Knight’s journey into Hallownest begins with it jumping off a huge cliff. This is fitting because the whole game deals with the main character traveling further and further downward, through strange and dangerous lands full of deadly foes and unlikely allies until it uncovers the dark truth shrouded in the depths of Hallownest. It’s like the whole game is us jumping off a giant cliff.

Hornet’s journey into Pharloom begins much the same way, with her falling off a huge cliff. However, instead of descending down, Hornet will be climbing back up, making her way to the top of Pharloom and defeating the big baddie in charge of everything… except we don’t really know who the big baddie is, and we don’t really know what path Hornet takes to get there.

So in this video, we’re going to take a leisurely stroll through everything we’ve seen of Pharloom so far. From the lush greens of the Moss Grotto to the dull grays of what I assume is supposed to be Maine, we’ll keep our eyes peeled for any clues about how these areas are connected. And by the end, we’ll have nice little map all 

put together. I should also mention that since my last video, about 10 seconds of extra Silksong footage was shown off by Xbox. Man, that already feels like so long ago.

Of course, we’re trying to solve a jigsaw puzzle with only half the pieces, so our chances of actually getting things mostly right are probably pretty slim. But that’s never stopped me before. I once said Silksong was coming out in 2020.

Before Hornet falls off that cliff in the opening cutscene, we see a brief glimpse of the entrance to Pharloom. There are large, opulent, pear-shaped doorways leading the way to this thin, dinky bridge. I guess Pharloom couldn’t even spring for some guardrails or anything. On the opposite side of the path, we can see vines all along the cave wall.

From this location, there’s a chasm that runs through lower Pharloom all the way down to the Moss Grotto, an area we saw extensively in footage of the Silksong demo from E3 2019. This area appears to be like the King’s Pass portion of Hollow Knight. So basically a tutorial level.

An important thing to note about this area are these two strange doors we’ve seen nowhere else in the game so far. Obviously, they’re tied to the Weavers, the spider tribe which played a pretty big role in the events of Hollow Knight. They were very invested in Hornet’s birth, but there’s still a lot of mystery surrounding them. We know that they left Hallownest for their old home, and I think it’s a safe bet to say that Pharloom is where they originally came from.

In Silksong, Hornet can find Weavers throughout the world that help her restore her lost power, but it’s weird to see two of these gates right at the very start of the game. So perhaps there’s something else hidden behind these doors. Or the areas as shown in the demo don’t actually reflect how the map will look in the final game.

At the end of this portion of the demo we see Hornet approach a dark figure in a church until she collapses from what I assume is severe iron deficiency. Here, a mysterious figure teaches Hornet how to play her needolin. We’re not really sure what purpose playing this instrument will serve in Silksong. We see some doors are opened by playing melodic tunes, but we have yet to see Hornet opening any doors this way. We do see her jam out with a few characters, so maybe she can learn different songs to get certain reactions out of NPCs, unlocking new dialogue and quests, sorta like what the Dream Nails does in Hollow Knight.

What’s interesting about the Moss Grotto is that there is more footage in trailers of areas that look like the Moss Grotto that we don’t see in the demo. Luckily, the Edge magazine interview from December 2020 gives us quite a few details about the early parts of Silksong. The Druid of the Moss Temple is described as being found in a place called the Overgrown Village. These shots shown in the reveal trailer look like they might belong in this Overgrown Village area.

We also get a clip and a screenshot of some strange clover area. We can see for a brief second that this region is directly connected to the Moss Grotto, so I assume it might be some sort of subarea. But it’s not clear how this clover area, or the Overgrown Village for that matter, connect to what we saw in the demo. My guess would be that they are a bit higher up, since I doubt we’d go much further below the spot Hornet landed.

From the Moss Grotto, Hornet arrives in Bonebottom, which serves as the entrance to the Boneforest. It also connects to the Marrow, which is the bell tunnel system that seems to run throughout Pharloom, sorta like bone marrow? I don’t know if that was intentional. When Hornet arrives in this area, she’ll find the Bell Beast tied up in silk, although she won’t be able to free it yet.

As Hornet travels further into the Boneforest she meets Shakra, this game’s cartographer who might also be a boss fight, maybe, it’s hinted at anyway. Hornet might also have a boss encounter near here with this hermit crab-like bug that we see a few times in trailers. There seems to be tiers of these black ball creatures that hide themselves in leaves and skulls throughout Pharloom. Yup, black balls are an enemy type in Silksong it seems. They’re really cute looking. I can’t wait to find out what their tragic lore is.

Hornet also meets a character named Sherma, who is able to help us open this door by jamming out with a little jingle. On the other side of this door is an elevator that leads back down to Bonebottom. According to the Edge magazine interview, at some point along this circuit, Hornet will also discover a Weaver chamber, opened by some series of levers. Perhaps the chamber looks like what we saw earlier?

We do see a few shots of Hornet standing in front of a Weaver resting in some kind of cocoon. This weaver gives Hornet the Silk Spear, which allows her to free the Bell Beast trapped in the Marrow. This leads to a boss battle, which Team Cherry describes as an exam fight before the player can get out into the rest of the world. However, once defeating the Bell Beast, she actually runs away, meaning Hornet still won’t have access to public transportation.

After this, Hornet will find a bell that she can activate, which rings out the notes, E, F# G E. Structures like this will appearly be scattered throughout Pharloom, and we even see a structure just like it at the end of the Deep Docks portion of the E3 demo. 

This musical progression gives a sense of closure, making it an appropriate way to end a level. It stands out as a nice contrast to the main motif we’ve heard hidden throughout Silksong. You know the one, right? This is heard several times throughout the reveal trailer, notably at the very end.

It also plays after Hornet defeats a boss.

And a lower pitched version of it can even be heard in the opening cutscene.

This phrase, which is sometimes referred to as the Dies Irae, gives off a sense of foreboding danger. The name originates from a poem describing the Last Judgment of God, and the theme used to be closely tied to religious institutions, making it a fitting theme for Citadel caste. As for the theme played by this bell, I’m guessing we’ll be hearing it plenty in other places throughout Pharloom.

The Edge magazine interview ends with Hornet reaching a bridge that looks over where she met Shakra earlier. There isn’t much to go on with the one Shakra screenshot we do have, other than these metallic walls found in the room. This is somewhat reminiscent of the bronze-like structure of the Deep Docks. Which makes sense, because it seems like the Deep Docks are the next area the player will likely visit.

There are even several sections that appear to be where the Boneforest connects into Deep Docks. We know that the Deep Docks appear early on in the game, according to the Nintendo Life Treehouse event. There’s this room that seems to have pathways set up, this long ass platform with literally zero guardrails, and these areas that appear to be just on the outside of the Docks. Of course, we’ve seen quite a bit of the inside thanks to the E3 demo, but we do get one clip of footage from somewhere inside the docks we haven’t seen yet.

The Deep Docks are our first real good look at Pharloom’s active industrial infrastructure. In Hollow Knight, the miner bugs in the Crystal Peak were basically mindless zombies, but it seems like the bugs of the Deep Dock are a bit more aware of their surroundings and are still working. According to the lore tablet found here, the workers are being required to send materials and even pay fealty to the toll of some bell, presumably connected to the Citadel.

There are even a few friendly NPCs here, including Forge-Daughter, who acts as a vendor that can upgrade Hornet’s tools. In Hollow Knight, bugs seemingly could avoid the Radiance’s infection as long as they had strong wills, but it’s not clear what makes the certain bugs in Pharloom hostile or friendly. When enemies are hit, they give off threads of silk, and on death we see what might be threads leading up towards the sky. So it seems like silk is like the infection in this game, but instead of becoming mindless zombies, the bugs are being instructed and guided by some kind of bell toll. Of course, this raises the question of how some NPCs don’t seem affected by it. But we just don’t know yet.

At the end of the Deep Docks, we encounter Lace who says the iconic line “BLANK CELL (Wanderers/LACE_MEET_3)”. Lace taunts Hornet about the fate she would face higher up in Pharloom and offers to help by murdering her. So it seems Lace is not aligned with the bugs that originally captured Hornet. This lines up with the fact that we see Lace conducting these white butterflies which look awfully similar to the one that broke the Seal of Binding on Hornet’s cage at the start of the game. So Lace might be working with some other faction within Pharloom. Beyond the Lace fight room lies a mysterious shrine dedicated to another giant bell. The bell rings out those same four notes.

This is where the Deep Dock demo level ends. Before we move on, I should mention this scene with the giant robot-like creature from the reveal trailer. The area looks more like the Boneforest than the Deep Docks, but the enemy itself looks like it belongs in the Deep Docks, so I’m not exactly sure where this scene takes place.

So what comes after the Deep Docks? During the Lace fight, we can see moss growing on the right side of the giant statue in the background, and in one trailer shot we also see Hornet walking into a green forest area, leaving behind what appears to be a bell shrine. So the Deep Docks might actually be sandwiched between the Boneforest, and another, more regular boneless forest, which I like to call the Dark Forest.

This forest is crawling with ant enemies as well, and it seems their main fortress is located somewhere in the more lava rich section of Pharloom albeit higher up in the air, which means these two areas probably aren’t far apart. This will be where Hornet fights Hunter Queen Carmalita. The ants seem like they’ll be the mantis tribe of this game. Except ants are little assholes so I doubt they’ll be as nice as the mantises are.

This forest region is also where Hornet meets this bug. If I had to guess, this guy is dressing up like an ant to avoid getting attacked, which is an insanely common phenomenon in real life because, like I said, ants are assholes. It also appears that the Huntress might show up in this area as well.

Other than that, when Hornet first enters the region, we see a sign for what is probably a city. It’s not clear what city this is supposed to be, so I’m guessing it’s a city we haven’t actually seen yet.

Anyways, we have one teeny tiny lead about where the map might go from here. In this region of Pharloom we see these green vines in a few locations, and we can actually see these same vines growing in a dark section of Greymoor. It’s very subtle but there is a connection here, and it’s our only lead right now. So the top of the Dark Forest might connect to the bottom of Greymoor, which according to Team Cherry is the largest area they’ve ever made.

Greymoor can be broken down into a few subareas. There are wide open fields with nothing but gravestones and distant towers and windmills in the background. There’s the indoor sections with tight hallways and large, open rooms. There appears to be a small village or rest area of some kind. And of course there’s this dank basement area that appears to connect to the forest region.

From Team Cherry’s blog posts, it is explained that the tenders of the land have become haunted, and that the place is infested with Dustroaches. Despite that, we do catch glimpses of what the bugs of Greymoor have been doing here. I’ve mentioned before that these objects seem to be able to catch silk that floats through the air. This area in Greymoor is also filled with enemies carrying around scissors, and we can see several empty spools discarded all over the place. In this basement room we can even see stacks upon stacks of these spools. So these bugs seem specifically equipped to deal with silk.

The only spools we ever see that actually have silk on them can only be seen in the background of this cropped screenshot from a Team Cherry blog post. I’m guessing that these giant spools are related to the windmills we see. They use the wind to wind up these giant spools. These spools or their silk are possibly transported up to the Citadel. It seems the Citadel is always in want of silk, since it's what they desire from those who would choose to pilgrimage there. And the whole capturing Hornet thing might be related to their desire for silk as well.

Another strange section of Greymoor is this boss encounter. I originally thought this character was some kind of chef, cooking some kind of mosquito soup. But the Discord user, Arch_Imedes, made a very interesting connection between this character and medieval candle makers. Strap in, boys, cuz we’re about to learn about candle lore.

Candle wax can be made by rendering fat in a big vat, which can then be poured over wicks hanging above. We can see what appears to be a vat stored in the floor, and there’s also bug corpses which would serve as a source of fat. This would also explain the off-white color stains on the bug’s apron. And it would even explain where all these candles came from seen in this room in Greymoor. That said, this could just be a repeat of what we already saw in Hollow Knight with the cannibals in the City of Tears. But the candle theory seems a bit more unique and interesting to me.

There’s one room in Greymoor that gives us a connection to another area in Pharloom. This room appears to lead left into this bell heap city. There isn’t much to see here, other than it seems Hornet can unlock a series of platforms to get higher up into the city. But we don’t know exactly where this leads.

This city reminds me of the Marrow, the pile of bells that make up the tunnels we fast travel through throughout the game. But we also know that there are other sections of the Marrow that Hornet can actually traverse through. Perhaps the Marrow connects the Boneforest to the Bell Heap? I’ve been going through Pharloom fairly linearly in this video, but I think we all know that there will be multiple routes through the world. In fact, Team Cherry has even said that during the game Hornet “may” pass through Greymoor. It’s literally the largest region in the game, and you apparently don’t even have to go through it. If you’ve seen Mark Brown’s video about Hollow Knight, you’ll know how many different routes you can take through that game, and how certain areas can be completely skipped. And I’m sure Silksong will be similar, if not even more crazy.

Regardless, we actually have another connection to the Bell Heap. This swamp-like region appears to be located to the left of the city. This region of Pharloom is extremely fascinating for a couple reasons. First of all, this appears to be where the player can fight Seth. Seth is said to reside at the “Base of the Citadel” where he guards a hidden secret, one that the Citadel’s caste seem to be interested in as well. Seth believes he has been chosen by a mysterious force known as “The Voice”.

We don’t know what Seth is protecting, but Team Cherry points out that the base of the Citadel is covered in tangled roots, and this region of Pharloom is where we see these strange white flowers growing naturally. These flowers have some significance in Silksong, given that they appear prominently during the Lace fight, but also because floral patterns also appear frequently in the architecture of the Citadel. There’s likely a connection here, and it’s a connection Team Cherry has never really commented on.

Another interesting detail in the Citadel base area are these giant plants sticking out of the ceiling. This tells us that whatever plant life lives here at the base of the Citadel is quite encompassing. I’m not quite sure if these are vines or roots or if they come from multiple plants or one big one, but they appear to be pretty barren. One possibility is that the Citadel covets these flowers, and perhaps they stripped these once lush vines of their flowers. This would reinforce how industrially driven Pharloom is, eating up natural resources to fuel their society. Either that or this plant life is naturally dying out. That could explain why we see an unending stream of flower petals falling from the sky.

It seems like this overgrown temple is located somewhere in this region as well. The more muted colors match this area better than something like the Moss Grotto. We can also see floating flower petals in this boss fight arena. So that pretty much seals the deal.

Finally, all the vines located here are reminiscent of the vines seen right at the entrance of Pharloom, so it seems the base of the Citadel might actually be close to this doorway. But if that were the case, why do pilgrims like Sherma end up way lower than this in places like the Boneforest? Maybe his stupid ass fell off the cliff too?

Now this is complete speculation on my part, but I think this area might also be where the player can find this elevator up to the Citadel. It is the base, after all. That said, we also see the elevator crashing back down at some point. This implies that Hornet might get to explore a bit of the Citadel before being locked off from it, or it breaks the first time she even tries to use it.

And we’re pretty much out of leads at this point. Honestly, I think we’ve done pretty good so far. We were able to connect quite a few of Pharloom’s areas, but there’s still a few stragglers left before we reach the Citadel, so let’s just do some guess work for these last few.

We’ve got the barnacle area, the coral forest, this sandy desert, Grindle’s prison cell, the Last Judge boss arena, the room with the penis dude, the room with Trobbio, and this giant grinding pit room.

I’m going to place the barnacle area above Greymoor for one simple reason: there's rain in Greymoor. This is probably wrong but it's the only lead we really have. Unfortunately, there’s also rain in the barnacle area, and I really don’t know what could be above it.

There’s the coral forest, but this area doesn’t really seem to have much water at all. It’s kinda like Fog Canyon where it kinda looks like it’s underwater, but it’s not. That said, it’s really our best bet so… I’m just gonna put it above the Barnance area.

This might be controversial, but I’m going to roll all of these rooms into the desert region of Pharloom, as I think they are all in relatively the same place. This room shares architecture with what we see in the Weaver’s Den and other Weaver-related areas. This might be a mini-dungeon where Hornet can find another Weaver to gain a new spell from.

We don’t really know anything about the Last Judge, but we do know that he bears some resemblance to these three enemies shown off in a Team Cherry blog post. These enemies are described as the former tenders of a dusty vault of ancient knowledge. However, it appears that one of them can be seen in what might be a church somewhere in the Citadel. The similarity in design to the Last Judge might imply that he is the current tender of the dusty vault. Dusty. Desert. I dunno, it’s kinda similar. As a side note, maybe these three characters were the other Judges, who abandoned this guy, because he was stupid or ugly or something, explaining how he got the name “Last Judge”.

I think Grindle is in the same facility as the Last Judge, like some sort of prison. As for where the desert is as a whole, I’m going to put it just above the Moss Grotto. I feel like it’s somewhere on the outskirts of the Kingdom, so that’s where it’s going. Cry about it, liberals.

These last three rooms I think are somewhere near the bottom of the Citadel, like you’re in the lower parts of the Citadel at this point, but you’re still not to the shining part of the Citadel. This is what I’m going to call the Gilded Cities. Keep in mind, this is mostly speculation. These areas might be in completely different locations, but this is what I’m going with for now. This is where we can see a few more examples of Pharloom’s industrial complex. Smokerock and Sweetsmelt brought up from the Deep Docks are placed in furnaces here. Waste is discarded into this giant grinding machine. And finally, there’s the room with Trobbio, which, as it turns out, is pretty important.

In this room, we see what appears to be a model replica of the Citadel itself. The two main indicators of this are the various bulbous domes and the giant, winding pipes. So this is possibly representative of what the entire Citadel looks like.

In this model, we can actually see a few tall towers on either side of the city. We don’t know what these towers are, but one possibility is that one of them is the clock tower level we’ve seen a few times. This clocktower is probably the driving force of Pharloom’s productivity, responsible for the tolls mentioned all the way down in the Deep Docks. I think the tower might actually drop down into the underpart of the Citadel, making a good connection between the two areas.

From this model, we also get a clear view of these strange pipes that run throughout the city. These things are everywhere in the Citadel, just casually hiding away in the background, and apparently they all converge at the very top. 

This leads us to our final shot, the Lace fight. Now given the sheer amount of pipes in the background, you’d think this would be the place where all the pipes converge, but if that’s the case, why is the room so dark? Wouldn’t it be close to whatever the light source of the Shining Citadel is? So perhaps this is closer to the base of the Citadel, with lights from up above just barely peeking through.

Regardless of where the Lace fight takes place, we can guess from the diagram in Trobbio’s room that at the peak of Pharloom rests this  giant ball, a symbol we see plastered all throughout Pharloom. It looks like a giant wound up ball of silk with a curved needle positioned above it. To me, this symbolizes the control of silk the Citadel has over the land of Pharloom.

But there’s something the Citadel is up to that we should talk about, and that’s these pipes. These things are so weird. What’s inside them? Why do some of them taper off like this? Why did Team Cherry change this scene between the two trailers to remove the threads of silk in the room?

Clearly there’s something between the top of the Citadel and the bottom of the Citadel that these pipes help transfer. So… maybe it’s silk? If we believe the whole puppet idea, that the threads extend all the way down to the various bugs across the kingdom, then these pipes that start from the center and move outwards would be a good way to distribute the threads across Parloom. 

Here’s another idea I originally heard from another user named Araraura. These pipes have a vague similarity to something else we’ve seen in Hollow Knight before: the Beast’s Den shrine in Deepnest. This contraption also has pipes coming out of it. Perhaps this device is just a tomb for Deepnest’s dead king. Or maybe it’s hiding whatever beast attacked us when we first entered Beast’s Den. All that said, it doesn’t really help us solve what these pipes are for. But maybe the two are related somehow. And the coming reveal in Silksong will tell us more about this thing.

Another connection we can make with these pipes is the flowers. The flowers seemingly grow at the base of the Citadel, yet we see them here in the Lace fight, and even growing on the sides of the pipe. If we assume the Lace fight is at the top of the Citadel, why would flowers be found all the way up here? So perhaps the vines that we see tangled at the base of the Citadel also extend through the Citadel up to the top through these pipes. This is another theory suggested by Arch_Imedes, and he thinks that these pipes are a way of hiding this giant plant from the bugs of the Citadel, relating back to the hidden truth alluded to in Pharloom’s Folly, the poem shown off at the start of the game. That would be an interesting twist, and it seems pretty likely that these flowers will have some greater connection to Silksong’s story. 

So there’s a lot going on here. You’ve got the Citadel caste with their abundance of bells and weapons for cutting and controlling silk. You’ve got Lace who seems to have her mysterious motives. There’s the Conductor Romino, who… we know nothing about. And like, we don’t even know what’s creating the light found in the Shining Citadel. What is that all about? Lots and lots of loose threads, to say the least.

But the point of this video wasn’t to necessarily worry about all that stuff. We’re just trying to draw a map of Pharloom, and here it is. I can’t wait to explore every inch of this game, from its stubbly little feet to its round head. This potential map for Silksong really is just so beautiful looking. Like, this map already looks so familiar to me, even though Silksong isn’t even out yet. It’s like I’ve been seeing this map everywhere for years and never even realized it. It looks… It’s kinda sus.

Songs used:

Silksong Xbox Trailer Theme - Recreated by Gauthier, MAT and Cosnzaid

Greenpath (Main Loop) - Hollow Knight

Dirtmouth - Hollow Knight OST

Resting Grounds - Hollow Knight OST

Animal I Have Become - Three Days Grace

Hornet - Hollow Knight OST

Dream - Hollow Knight OST

Dies Irae
Lace - Hollow Knight Silksong OST

Kingdom’s Edge - Hollow Knight OST

Somebody That I Used To Know - Trap by VelvetCasca

Reflection - Hollow Knight OST

Queen’s Garden - Hollow Knight OST

Fungal Wastes - Hollow Knight OST

Haunted Foes (Flukemarm, Markoth, Troupe Master Grimm) - Hollow Knight

Bonebottom - Hollow Knight Silksong OST

Hive Knight - Hollow Knight OST

Enter Hallownest - Hollow Knight OST