Trying to keep my account somewhat organized with the help of tags that I use:
Artposting - things I have drawn
Art reblog - art other people have made that I think is very cool, reblogging, people need to see this art
Reblog moment - same but for more text heavy posts
OC posting - post has something to do with my silly little OCs, character specific tag is oc posting: (name of the OC)
Silly chat - Answers to the ask thing Tumblr blogs have (feel free to ask stuff or just chat)
New leaf posting - ACNL posts, I like the game a normal amount, I sometimes post about my silly town of Bugford
Frog yap - me yapping, most likely will contain only this post, I like to yap but only in the art posts (feels too awkward if it's just a box of text with nothing attached to it)
So in the previous comic I mentioned that Ghost can equip Hornet's mementos like charms, and gains new skills:
Grey Memento: Increases their nail length, while nail arts now do Pocket Sand. Synergizes with Longnail and Mark of Pride to turn their nail into a Final Fantasy weapon.
Surface Memento: Significantly increases their jump and double jump distance. (They use it to express their clinginess for their sister.)
Hero's Memento: Hornet doesn't let them play with it, so we may never know.
Guardian's Memento: Pollen AOE attack similar to Spore Shroom; however, activates with Abyss Shriek rather than Focus (a la Nyleth's Pollen Shriek). Might also let them talk to flowers?
Hunter's Memento: Covers them in a thin layer of slime that prevents grappling from enemies like Muckroaches. Synergizes to create a new Shape of Unn variant which also moves faster than the default. (Also instills them with the Cain Instinct, RIP Lace.)
Sprintmaster Memento: Increases movement speed nearly identically to the Sprintmaster Charm. Synergizes with the Sprintmaster and Dashmaster Charms for a quick getaway from an irate sister.
Craw Memento: No magical effect, but grants them impunity when committing Bird Crimes. (They disappear for 36 hours, and reemerge the newly crowned King of Craws. Hornet is concerned they did a coup, but they're not telling.)
Other Hollow Knight Comics:
Hornet Enacting Big Sister Rights
Lace Gets Adopted
Ghost Exhibiting Cat Behavior ™
Addendum to Adoption
A Lack of Due Diligence
Addendum to Due Diligence
Transcript:
Page 1
Title: Grey Memento
Page 2
Title: Surface Memento
Lace: Oh, stop fussing. She said she'd only be a moment.
Lace: ... *sigh*
Page 3
Title: Hero's and Guardian's Mementos
Hornet: No.
Hornet: Come now... that's hardly a reason to sulk. You're setting a poor example for Lace.
Hornet: Oh that's very mature!
Page 4
Title: Hunter's Memento
Lace: ... Ew.
Lace: No! Nonono! Get back you slimy cretin!!
Page 5
Title: Craw + Sprintmaster Mementos
Hornet: Huh. No effect.
Hornet: Hold on. Where are you taking that.
Hornet: Ghost!? Hey! Don't power walk away from me!!
Hornet is slowly subsumed by fluff; Lace uses flea brew as a handwarmer (she has no intention of drinking it); and Ghost heard mention of a pogo competition and the "Challenge" prompt immediately appeared overhead.
Anyways, I feel like Hornet's kidnappers didn't do their due diligence before yoinking her, because they literally brought a half-wyrm--godlike creatures known for their territoriality--into their lands, and then did a shocked pikachu face when she started wrecking shit.
Like, they saw she was half weaver and assumed that that as the most important thing she could possibly be.
Meanwhile, Lace's frame of reference is Pharloom and weavers, so this is like discovering your weird classmate's dad is actually a dragon.
Other Hollow Knight Comics:
Hornet Enacting Big Sister Rights
Lace Gets Adopted
Ghost Exhibiting Cat Behavior ™
Addendum to Adoption
Transcript:
Page 1
Lace: So... your sibling.
Hornet: yes. We share a sire.
Lace: Full chamber to the Kingdom of the White Wyrm. Claim the Weaver, in half part. Last of their line.
Lace: The commandment fails to describe your paternal lineage.
Hornet: You needn't talk in circles.
Page 2
Hornet: It's no great secret my father was a wyrm.
Lace: Oh, worm?
Hornet: No, wyrm. The one from the commandment, specifically.
Lace: I see...
Lace: Wait... a wyrm!?
Hornet: Mm-hmm.
Lace: Those are real!?!
At last, it is time. So this post is going to be different from my Hollow Knight one as I drew way more stuff this time around.
I was ecstatic when I found out that Silksong had food related worldbuilding in it. I was really grasping at straws with the Hollow Knight one, so I’m glad I have much more to work with here! >:)
In the past year I’ve learned way more about agriculture and food production. Previously, I was very reliant on Greenpath (I also regret not making proper use of Fungal Wastes)—however, Silksong also has way more varied and “nature-rich” regions which allowed me to spread out crops and resources over different areas. I’ll likely be making another post at some point that’ll go more into depth about my field research since I took over 200 in-game screenshots of plants and such…and then learned how to rip game files so I could get the raw spites.
Also bc I got questions about this with my last hk food concepts piece, if you want to use any of the ideas here for personal projects, fanwork, etc—go ahead. You don’t need my permission, the world is your oyster
But anyway, my commentary regarding the art will be under the cut since this is already getting pretty long.
Spices, Herbs, and Seasoning
Man I didn’t even come up with unique names for like 90% of this. Okay so this section probably takes the most inspiration from in-game environment sprites out of any of the agricultural sections. Thyme, tarragon, rosemary, sage, chamomile, white plum blossoms, the red pea flower, sumac, and of course clovers all are based on my silksong field journal. I added a new blossom to the nectar flower section, the purple ones are more rare but you can harvest saffron from them. The white ones come with plums and nectar. Vanilla blossoms are rare but chamomile is plentiful, it blends in with the white rose-like flowers that are all over Shellwood. The red flowers are called “pea plants” by the game files so i kept that part of the name. But the seeds are a stand-in for allspice. I haven’t decided on what to do with the leaves/main body. Coral stars are based on star anise—peppercorns, cloves, chives, and coriander are just that. I finished this section ages ago, I’ve just been procrastinating on every other section.
Fruit
A lot of these are inspired by either in-game environmental sprites and/or real life fruits. Mossberries and silk fruit are obviously in game, but everything else is made up. So quick rundown:
ice apple → ice fruit, cloudberry → puffberry (I had also called it “powderberry” in my notes), jackfruit → mega-mossfruit, durian → spikefruit, Yang Mei → coral plum, miracle berries → rosary berries, mangosteen → crustfruit, rattan fruit → oocula, sugar apple → plated sugar apple. I didn’t change the name for the Kaffir Lime because I got lazy. My, uh, design for the rattan fruit may have been inspired by the Ooca, tit fruit.
The coral plums were still called yangmei up until like the last second, I truly had no creativity left. The lotus fruit probably should’ve been in this section but reorganizing these pages is a nightmare.
Vegetables, Roots, Yams
The spiral sprouts, moss artichoke, abyss root, lotus fruit, and cotton puffs were influenced by environmental spirits I screenshotted while doing field research. I would’ve just combined this section with the fruits but these pieces are so crowded and convoluted, it would’ve been a mess.
I don’t know where the Silk Squash or Lufta’s names came from, squashes all look so similar that it’s impossible for me to figure out what I based them on. Those may very well have been their actual name but google is not helping me here. Celtuse is the original name but the coloration is different. Lotus root, lotus fruit, oca, mashua, and the bamboo shoots didn’t get special names. As for the others: black radish → void radish, black carrot → void carrot, scorzonera → abyss root, winged bean → verdania bean, cardoon → cotton puff, fiddlehead → spiral sprout, samphire → asparagus, crosne/chinese artichoke → artichoke root
Mushrooms (Bilelands)
There wasn’t enough here to fill a full page so I vertical-ized it. Get condensed fool. Anyway, I got lazy here after the Paper Mushrooms. These are all based on real mushrooms (minus the aforementioned paper mushrooms which are based on environmental sprites), I didn’t really do any research on their habitats or anything (morels probably shouldn’t be here). So this section isn’t super high effort compared to the others. Also I combined Sinner’s Road, Bilewater, and Putrified Ducts together for the Bilelands, since that’s how Vog refers to them.
Extras (+ baking soda)
I’m now going to subject you to my algae farming agenda.
Algae is a super underrated resource, in real life where we have sunlight and large swaths of land for agriculture, its usefulness is less so, but for limited settings (like space faring or underground bug civilizations) algae is a good resource for farming. Algae/spira flour and glucose can be produced through it, as well as oil (which I believe can be used for plastic production). Other sources for flour like rice and sorghum have to be farmed in specific conditions, but for the citadel, spira flour is probably more accessible. Sucrose requires sugarcane which likely became less accessible when the burning bugs took over wisp thicket. Spira flour has a natural green coloration but the capital uses bone char to bleach it white (bone char comes from deep docks). Fructose and glucose sugar have a whiter tint so they don’t need as much processing. Some of this is based off of real life processes, some of it is me talking out my ass.
And yes, I did come up with a method for how they’re acquiring soda bicarbonate, unfortunately it’s very convoluted. In my HK food chart I just listed soda bicarbonate as coming from mineral springs, but Pharloom doesn’t have hot springs everywhere so I had to get more technical.
Salt Spikes (from Sands of Katar) combined w/Ground Limestone to create “Soda Ash” which is then dissolved in water and combined w/Carbon Dioxide (found in groundwater & lakes) to create Baking Soda.
Alternative method: Salt Spikes combined w/Ammonia (found in Deep Docks) and Carbon Dioxide to create Baking Soda and Ammonium Chloride (used in fertilizer).
Can be found (albeit rarely) naturally occurring in basins & hot springs. Sometimes found in mudrock (Deep Docks), co-product of shale oil extraction from solution mining. This is all based on real life, I’ve just simplified it heavily. Method two is literally just the Solvay Process. A lot of this is paraphrased from Wikipedia and I understand the basic gist of it but I’m not a chemist.
This project had me googling insane shit again, but this time it was more to the tune of “do bugs have collagen” rather than “do bugs make milk” so we’ve improved slightly. I’m ignoring the fact that they don’t have collagen, there’s probably some beasts around somewhere that are vertebrate.
Oh yeah also I’m into vinegar now. I had some pomegranate vinegar and it was delicious. Pour some of that into a nice cold glass of club soda and it would be perfect unfortunately my mother has hidden the vinegar. Uh, so anyway, there’s more vinegar options. Fruit, sugarcane, and grains. Oh yeah and the Cheong method of syrup making returns, this one uses a lot of sugarcane so its more old fashioned (in this setting not in real life).
Animal Products
I previously had roach milk as this decadent dairy product and then Silksong introduced roaches and put them in the biohazard area, so, surprise! It’s gone sour now.
Weaver milk is infinitely more rare here, but I should clarify that when I’m saying weaver milk I don’t just mean The Weavers, I meant spiders in general. The weavers aren’t having kids, but the Phallids may produce more offspring that will require some nutrients.
Ant and craw milk are more normal. I realize the craws are bugs, but I’m treating them like birds. So they get eggs and milk. Ant milk is thicker and richer in flavor while craw milk is more watery and nutritious. The cheeses present are all based off of real cheeses—Lebanese white cheese, camembert cheese, and blue cheese. Weaver silk cheese is inspired by the Centaur’s silk cheese in JayEaton’s “Runaway to the Stars” series.
As for eggs, the craw eggs are more like typical bird eggs, while the maggot eggs are gelatinous and usually laid in gooey bunches underwater. I had to google ant eggs for this drawing so you all owe me money for that. The moss egg is me capitulating to the game design, they look like artichokes to me so I used the design simultaneously for the vegetable and the egg. I imagine some foragers have had the traumatic experience of dropping what they thought was a plant and it then cracking like an egg upon impact. Or biting into it and it making a gooey crunch. These are all good ideas.
Oh yeah, meat. Standard meat here. Added some more organ cuts and included some creatures that are referred to as edible prey either in the compendium or by NPCs.
I’m glad my pickling inclinations the last time were fulfilled here, more pickling. Vinegar is great and we should be using it more. Get pickling now! The sauerkraut is here because I was so focused on pickling that I forgot that the page was for animal products.
Also ignore the crust organ, I put it in the animal products section, but in my head its a 50/50 between “stone from the guts of a [previously] living macro-organism” and “big walnut”.
Miscellaneous Musings
I know that in-game the Memorium is meant as a sort of zoo/archive for the fauna and flora of different regions. But I think it would also serve as a useful area for farming, since the citadel likely doesn’t want to have to rely on other regions for food production. Deep Docks serves a strong role in mining/harvesting the materials needed for filtration, purification, etc. for various baking ingredients. But Shellwood and Sands of Katar likely also were and are very important for food production. Salt is a necessary resource, which may still be harvestable post-collapse. If Pharloom Bay somehow gets added in a future DLC/update then I can probably use that for salt production.
I need to learn how to mod Silksong so I can add new regions/areas in. That’ll likely take me forever though, I have a microscopic level of modding experience. The HK modding community is more combat/platforming focused, which makes sense considering the game genre. I just wish modders did region expansions in Hollow Knight like the Rain World modders do. I love the Rain World region expansions, The Mast, Fog Gulch, and Preservatory are my favorites.
But in terms of achievable Silksong mods—the organ harvesting quest is my favorite quest in the game and if someone could make a mod that extends it to like 100-150 per category I’d appreciate it.
Team Cherry should hire me to design/draw stuff for a DLC, I definitely won’t spend the entire time creating 30 food-related fetch quests. I have depths beyond this!
For few months i have been working on concept of a fan Hollow Knight Kingdom called Eonbloom. All this started from the idea of how in Hallownest lifeblood was taboo but then I thought “what if there was kingdom that embraced lifeblood?”. So over few posts i will be posting all the concepts i made and probably even explaining some stuff.
My first concepts still haven’t a finalized Main Character design, so ill also post his current design and trivia.
His name is Blossom! He is a lifeblooded (or lifebloodborn) bug. And at the start of the “plot” he will pop out of the cacoon in Withering Garden. Basically the plot starts with main character birthing. Except he is no ordinary bug. And i wanted to explore the details of his origins later in my concepts.
So thats the first bunch. I’m gonna post more a bit later so see ya!
Because I just see so many drawings of hornet and her siblings loving each other, and it’s awesome!
But did we just forget she kills a vessel in front of ghost, and shows no remorse? Btw, a vessel that she knows most likely has emotions because she knows her sibling (Hollow) has emotions because it failed keeping the Radiance at bay
Also a vessel whose only crime was to have the instinct to keep the Randiance within it, which if it did it would free Hollow
Maybe it was a mercy kill? So it didn’t have to suffer like Hollow
Idk, my headcanon is that her mind can’t comprehend the fact the she cares about her siblings with the fact that she’s benefiting of the suffering of one of them (and does nothing until Ghost gets there to prevent that) and that’s she’s killed at least one of them before
(I also have to take into account her character development before and after silksong, because she goes from being very cold and uncaring to helping everyone she comes across for mostly no reason)
But please tell me your thoughts, I need to know what people think of this
Really cool comic! I just want to add my own theory about a couple things
First of, are we sure Hornet fully knows that Hollow and the vessels are people with emotions and wills?
Assuming she was at the palace and interacted with Hollow, the Pale King or the White Lady would probably tell her to treat them lile any other kingsmould. Even if they were sure it was empty and would stay empty, it'd be best for Hornet not to get attached. Fast forward to when Hollow is sealed and the infection breaks out of them, proving that they aren't empty. If Hornet asked the White Lady, she'd say it was "tarnished by an idea instilled" aka it was born empty, but that was ruined by expectations, or parental love or whatever else.
And then there is fucking GREENPATH VESSEL
I swear I'm not trying to say Hornet is a perfect little angel who never killed anyone, but the more I think about it the more I dont believe she killed that specific vessel. And its all because that vessel was killed with their own nail. Could Hornet have disarmed it and then killed it, sure, but we didn't see that and we need to at least consider that it could have killed itself. If it did then why? I had no idea until I replayed Hornet's fight and saw the cutscene after it
You know, the one where the dreamers talk to you and discuss what to do about you, and then they like, blast you with dream essence but you get up like nothing happened and go on your merry way? That cutscene. Whats so weird about it you ask?
Oh I dont know, maybe the fact they're commanding the vessel to "return to it's darkness" aka the abyss?? Granted it's not that imperative of a phrasing, but it's not a suggestion either. Maybe the dream essence was a way to force that command onto the vessel and Ghost was able to withstand it, while greenpath vessel didn't have enough will and, well, returned to the darkness. What convinces me the most is that if this isnt what the dreamers were trying to do, then that cutscene doesn't serve any purpose, especially knocking out ghost.
I think Hornet saw that happen, saw the mothwing cloak on the vessel, and when ghost came to hallownest she decided to lure them (because we aren't stalking her like she says, she makes sure to wait for us to follow her) to the location of the vessel's corpse because a. It's a good intimidation, b. It makes for a fine arena and c. If the dreamers could do that again, they could test ghost as well.
I'm making designs for all the crests in Silksong :3
Man Wanderer is so fun to use with how fast it attacks.. def one of the best Crests! I made the needle a big ahh harp to reflect the harp crest symbol. And ofc, Magnetite Dice.
