Rejoice, Hollow Knight: Silksong fans, for your understanding of the game's story has arrived. Reputable Team Cherry lore scholar Mossbag has assembled a staggering 77-minute video collecting "The (Somewhat) Complete Lore of Silksong," connecting and filling in both major and minor events of the game's world and history.
You won't believe this: there are Silksong spoilers ahead.
Following in the footsteps of his many Hollow Knight lore videos, Mossbag collates, explains, and, in some cases, speculates on the somewhat scattered story of Silksong. I will say, I don't fully buy the comparisons to true laissez-faire bards like FromSoftware; the core story of Silksong and Hornet feels pretty direct and easy to digest. It's when you get into the margins and ancient texts of the world that stuff gets messy.
Luckily, the world needs all kinds of people, and some of them are people like Mossbag, born with the appetite and patience to unearth and archive video game lore. Me? I was just happy to listen to the funny bug song and drink in the shared themes of Hornet's past and the Pharloom kingdom's ruination. So, it's nice to have a Pharloom library podcast.
The standout snippet of the video for me – I can't and don't want to summarize all 77 minutes, just go watch it – covers a cut ending that I'd missed until now.
Silksong still has several possible endings tied to the player's actions and, generally, their willingness to peer deeper into the abyss. But according to fragmented dialogue and leftover cutscenes, a removed bad ending would have seen Hornet succumb to Grandmother Silk and become a puppeted tyrant overseeing an enslaved kingdom. I'm gonna pencil that in as The Worst Ending.
"With how recent this game is, please keep in mind that the theories shared here might be lacking the sort of refinement you'd expect from deep-dive lore videos about other, less recent video game releases," Mossbag cautions. "Also, please don't take everything I say in this video as gospel. I am just one of many people with theories, and nothing makes my words more inherently correct."
To his credit, Mossbag previously made videos correcting his own videos, and has already responded to one viewer suggestion regarding Silksong lore.
"Your understanding of the White Lady dialogue in the Red Memory seems exactly backwards to me," argues ArthurNiculitecheff. "When Hornet says, 'You are wrong' to the White Lady, she's not addressing her actions, but her [belief] Hornet wouldn't understand them ('You will think us harsh... You will think us uncaring, unrepentant')."
In response, Mossbag says: "That makes a lot more sense, I don't know why that never clicked for me. Well now I feel stupid."
But that's half the fun of video game lore. Team Cherry made an engrossing world filled with interesting and tragic characters, some very clear events, and some less-clear bubbles of events, and we all get to pile into those bubbles to share fill-in-the-blank lore theories just for the love of the game.
"THE SACRED TEXTS ARE HERE," as one very calm comment on the video puts it.
