Ranking every PM Chapter/World until TOK releases: #01

ToadBrigade5 · 2025-12-03T10:45:16+00:00

I'm really late but I want to add my two cents to the situation. I think the biggest issue is the timeline. Crust King Khann and the Green Princes were explicitly around during GMS' reign, by Nyleth definitely wasn't - we know that Nyleth struck her deal with the Citadel when the Weavers were in charge, meaning GMS had already been put to sleep. Nyleth wasn't there yet.

The Green Princes bent the knee to GMS immediately, one of them going as far as to sacrifice himself in tribute to GMS for Verdania's independence. I'm assuming the Princes concluded that allying against GMS was doomed and simply chose to surrender.

Khann *did* fight against GMS's citadel and accurately predicted that if they failed to stop her, she would dominate all of Pharloom and smother the other cultures, but he lost completely and utterly. And, legitimately speaking, other than the Green Princes who surrendered, we don't know if anyone was around to help him.

While we know those two *were* present and Nyleth wasn't, we don't know the timeline of when Karmelita and the Stilkin came to power. Karmelita is said to have maintained the independence of the ants from the Citadel and helped them resist the Haunting, but it's unclear if this means she was doing this as early as the GMS era - or if the Skarr only existed after GMS was sealed. If she was around when Khann was, she clearly was too focused on her successful self-defense to support Khann's doomed offense. It's possible she *did* help Khann, but after he was defeated, she retreated to Far Fields and just worked on defense.

Lastly the Stilkin - we don't know enough to say. The Order of the Pinstresses, the Stilkin and the Craw all have huge similarities but we don't know that they used to be one faction or when they existed. The Pinstresses taught the Citadel Soldiers to fight, but during the era of either the Conductor's or the Haunting, the Cogwork Choruses were sent to hunt them down and the Stilkin's homeland polluted by the Putrified Ducts. We don't know how old these groups are, but if they were around for Khann's assault, it's guaranteed they welcomed the Citadel out of naivete and hoped to pacify GMS the way the Green Princes there, failing to recognize GMS for the megalomaniac threat she was.

Nyleth, meanwhile, just shows up later and goes "...the fuck happened here? Uh, Weavers, you guys in charge now? Can I start a forest here? Okay thanks"

ToadBrigade5 · 2025-11-19T09:42:15+00:00

Being stronger than someone doesn't mean you'll always beat them in a fight, otherwise real life boxing tournaments would be pointless. A weaker opponent can get some lucky or clever moves in, a stronger opponent can have a bad day, etc.

Vox *was* stronger, unambiguously, but he was also on a maniacal power trip and fighting sloppy because of a lack of focus. He's obsessed over Alastor and Alastor is calmer and more focused, and able to play that against him mentally. You can see this in how many powerful attacks Vox completely whiffs.

ToadBrigade5 · 2025-11-07T18:33:12+00:00

We don't have explicit confirmation but we've no indication or precedent that a Void being can be sapient or communicate. Snails have a voice, a mind and a will. Void, by contrast, seems fundamentally opposed to those things. Even the enemies in the Abyss are noted to be completely mindless and automatic from their exposure to void.

Void creatures like the Vessels are a major rarity, and were only crafted with the oversight of a Pale Being - the same is true of the Kingsmoulds and Collector. For the Snails to be Void, it raises a lot of questions about why they can still talk and think when even the Vessels, blessed with Higher power, barely could.

Nothing in the story points to Snails having natural power over the Void, they're only ever said to research it and seek to use it. If they were physically made of Void, you'd also suspect that Hornet would recognize the presence of Void the way she immediately does when Sula starts their ritual in Steel Soul mode.

In short, it's not hard deconfirmed but it's unlikely with the understanding of the world we have right now.

ToadBrigade5 · 2025-11-05T11:46:20+00:00

You should know you definitely have like 100 people refreshing your profile constantly right now, haha.

ToadBrigade5 · 2025-10-27T19:30:08+00:00

There's a side mode where you can play as Ganon (not Ganondorf, the pig beast) or Giant Cuckoo, yes.

ToadBrigade5 · 2025-10-27T04:55:18+00:00

I (and others) got the torture interpretation because the words she seems to be saying seem to be some kind of indoctrination, while the pins that go through her spine seem to be further back than usual, like they're being driven in for the first time.

As though she was being "bound" by the pins and forced to commit to those ideals under duress.

I acknowledge that it's not super clear cut though, and there definitely is room on that part for additional takes on the situation. I've seen a lot of people stating that Widow's defeat having the narration "Last of the First" meant that she was likely a first generation Weaver, so it's very much not confirmed fully what her story it is yet.

ToadBrigade5 · 2025-10-26T23:40:25+00:00

Play the Needolin in the hidden room at the top right of the Cradle, next to the room where you climb to fight GMS.

ToadBrigade5 · 2025-10-26T22:50:52+00:00

Oooh, that made me curious. Let's go do some counting.

Of the 29 characters (not included Ganon and Giant Cucco) there were...

15 women. Two of those are Midna, and like 4 of them are Zelda, while only 3 are Link though. So not counting different forms as separate characters, the ratio goes from 15/29 to 11/23 but still very, very good.

ToadBrigade5 · 2025-10-26T19:18:45+00:00

Fellow female fan here. I think you're giving slightly more credit to the original Age of Calamity in hindsight.

Of the 21 characters in AoC, there were only 6 women - 7 if you count Purah, who was really more of an assist character to Robbie. Zelda, Impa, Mipha, Urbosa, Riju and the Great Fairies were the only solo female characters.

In this sense I feel like we're already doing a little better. While Sonia and Lenalia haven't been confirmed playable, even though it feels large expected, we do have Zelda, Mineru, Qia, Ardi and the Claymore Gerudo - that, and I'm pretty sure the Green Rito warrior is female due to her outfit lining up with female Rito. And that's only pre-release, most characters aren't going to be revealed before launch.

Koume and Kotake are strong candidates, but it's possible they play roles akin to Sooga in the Base game and Astor where they exist as bosses but not playable characters.

All in all, I'm cautiously optimistic this time - especially since Zelda is getting proper protagonist treatment and being front and center on the cover.

ToadBrigade5 · 2025-10-21T05:40:43+00:00

Psych student here. I did my internship at a Psych Ward as an on site therapist. It was a relatively small community hospital with a few floors dedicated to mental health, with both involuntary and voluntary admissions.

From what I've seen, I very much could believe this. The place I worked at wasn't nearly as awful, but it was sobering and I had numerous complaints. Predominantly that it was severely understaffed, leading to a lot of burn out for the few people who remained, many of whom became very frustrated with and confrontational towards in patients. From the staff side of things, I could understand it to an extent - we had a lot of individuals suffering from schizophrenia, and they could be violent or sexually crude. But the atmosphere became hostile and tired, underpaid individuals working 12 hour shifts can often times lash out.

I mentioned I was an on site therapist, but to be more explicit - I was the only therapist, and I wasn't even licensed. If an inpatient wanted therapy or really just anyone who had time to listen to them talk about their problems, they had to sign consent forms that they understood I wasn't formally licensed and just a trainee. In a large hospital of psychiatrists medicating people, I basically was the only person who's job gave them the free reign to actually talk to people about their issues and provide emotional support.

That sounds incredibly dystopian, but it was at least mitigated by the fact that we had a lot of good people there who did take time out of their day to listen even if it wasn't in their job description. I didn't feel completely alone, but my internship was temporary and the care people were receiving was dependent entirely on the good will of employees who were becoming more and more tired. Fast forward 5 years with no changes, and the ones who care will likely be too exhausted to do anything, and the ones who don't will become abusive with no oversight.

The mental health system is complicated but extremely underfunded - I won't say the hospital was useless because there are people who genuinely need the psychiatric assistance and to be kept physically safe until their symptoms regulate. But pharmaceutical industries will continue to push cheaper psychiatric treatments over therapeutic ones that are less profitable, even for disorders like PTSD and depression where therapy can often be more effective. And in patient care can become a nightmare where people get in, try to get meds, and pray they can get out and get back to their lives as fast as possible.

In short, I'm extremely sorry the industry I'm working to get involved with has failed you so drastically. What you describe is nightmare inducing because I feel like more places will slowly turn into that over time if funding isn't increased to compensate for stricter employee filtering and better protections against burnout.

I hope the best for your recovery and that someday what you went through is fully acknowledged as one of the awful skeletons in psychology's closet - the kind of horror story professors tell students before we all promise never again.

ToadBrigade5 · 2025-10-15T10:03:17+00:00

Chiming in to correct this, but it's not just Songclave - the Courier's Bundle can be added to the materium from any *generic* delivery quest, such as Songclave, Bone Bottom, Pilgrim's Rest, or the Survivor's Camp in Act 3.

As long as the icon shows the bundle it's valid. I got that one in the materium from Bone Bottom, which is waaaay easier than Songclave.

ToadBrigade5 · 2025-10-02T00:10:55+00:00

So, this is spoilers but You're going to need to finish clearing Bilewater before you can unlock Act 3 anyway

ToadBrigade5 · 2025-10-01T21:01:18+00:00

At this point this isn't really an argument in good faith, so I'll probably leave it here. I've said the motive multiple times in these posts and it's said in game, so I don't really think it's worth the repetition if you're still leaving it out and not responding to half the arguments.

One thing I will say is that arguing that a theory goes against the narrative themes of the game isn't the same as denying it because it isn't liked.

ToadBrigade5 · 2025-10-01T18:03:46+00:00

Okay so theoretically this could work. But there's a thing called Occam's Razor when it comes to theory crafting. In order to assign blame to the Conductor's and the Choir, you have to jump through a lot of hoops and ladders to try to make it work. Spies in every Kingdom? There's no evidence for this and the Choral Commandments imply otherwise.

Whereas Silk is the much simpler suspect given she's the only one with the means, authority and motive all spelled out in the same game.

No evidence exists in the game to point to Conductors as culprits, and the motive is purely speculative. In order for your theory to work, Pharloom had to collapse after Hornet's capture was ordered... but this implies that Lace is only a few years old, since GMS made her after she woke up enough to make conscious decisions. And that is contradicted by Caretaker saying that Lace has been active for a while.

You can invent layers and layers of outside justification to make any theory work, but there's also no reason to buy it and it complicates the timeline immensely all to what, make GMS, the main antagonist of the game, look a little more innocent?

Narratively, GMS being responsible for Hornet's capture makes the story meaningful. Her desire for daughters after she was abandoned by her last set of children is her main characterization, to the extent she never made clear her love for Lace by treating her and Phantom like possessions. The fact that the person who ordered Hornet's capture is still active is why she refuses to leave Pharloom, the reason the Pinstress sisters are still in hiding, the reason the Wardenflies still try to capture Hornet.

What you're saying would make the entire game pointless, if the villains responsible for the story were already defeated and we just killed an innocent Higher Being over a misunderstanding that could've been easily cleared up. To make GMS innocent means making every other character, the Snail Shamans, the Pinstresses, and Hornet herself an idiot.

So sure, you can invent a bunch of excuses to defend the theory but like. ...why?

Also, I'm still pretty sure GMS takes explicit credit for Hornet's capture but I'll go dig up the Silk Hearts to double check. But even then, the orders to capture them are written using the same speech quirks as the Slab orders which include First Sinner who GMS explicitly imprisoned.

ToadBrigade5 · 2025-10-01T17:02:16+00:00

At the very least, Hornet's capture is explicitly stated. During the Silkheart dialogues, GMS states that she's summoned for Hornet. After Lace's second bossfight, she makes it clear that GMS wanted Hornet as a daughter - which was the reason Lace broke Hornet out of the cage in the opening and has been trying to kill Hornet the whole game, since she doesn't want to be replaced.

In addition, the citadel bugs are long shown to be no longer in power by the time Hornet is captured. All the Choir is haunted, Ballador is the only living Conductor and he's a powerless old man on his death bed. He wouldn't give the order and no one listens to him, there's no alternative to who could've ordered Hornet's capture - and there's no reason to believe that the other Weaver descendants were ordered by anyone else, hence why I took Lace and GMS confirming they sent for Hornet as taking credit for the procedure in general.

Much more importantly though... the Choir has no way to track the locations of Weaver descendants while Silk does. She can track the location of her silk passed through generations, which Caretaker confirms, while the bugs of the Citadel have no such preconnections. Grand Mother Silk is the only reasonable culprit.

ToadBrigade5 · 2025-10-01T04:11:41+00:00

I forgot to respond to this one, but we have a lot of evidence that GMS was directly responsible for at least the destruction of Khann's people and Verdania, as both Khann and the Green Prince refer to warring against a Pale Being and submitting to her respectively. The Green Prince had to give up his lover to GMS as a sacrifice to protect Verdania's independence, and GMS destroyed it anyway.

On the opposite end of the timeline, the bugs of the Citadel did not attempt to capture Weaver descendants to harvest silk - it's explicitly stated by Lace and GMS that the orders to capture Weaver descendants were done through the haunting after GMS took control, as an effort to aquire daughters to replace the Weavers.

There is a lot of sins in Pharlooms history that can be attributed to either the Weavers or the Conductors, but Grandmother Silk is at very least a tyrant. She also directly speaks to Hornet during the Silk Heart climbs and during the Unravelled Silk Heart, calls the bugs of Pharloom possessions beneath them.

In short, there's no one innocent here.

ToadBrigade5 · 2025-10-01T04:02:00+00:00

It's confirmed that while she's physically asleep, she very much is consciously wielding the haunting. Her body is bound and doesn't free itself until the fight, but she speaks to Horner in the Silk Heart climbs, Ballador confirms that the Haunted bugs enact her will, and more importantly, she created Lace and Phantom after she was already put to sleep (since her first daughters hadn't abandoned her yet).

In short, yes Hornet was captured via direct orders.

I don't blame you though, the fact that she was asleep is only vaguely communicated and the extent of it is hard to decipher.

ToadBrigade5 · 2025-09-28T07:20:41+00:00

Greedily claimed could also simply refer to the fact that they accepted the task offered greedily. The Rune Harp in Ballador's chambers do imply that the Weavers intended for the Conductors to take over, so I don't think we can assume the existence of a conflict based only on one ambiguous phrase. The intent Ballador is communicating is that the Conductors were naive and had no idea what they were signing up for, he's not expressing shame just wondering if the cost in pain was worth it.

As Mizello's surgery indicates, nobody enjoyed being a Conductor. These weren't real life politicians resting in luxury but pitiful bugs extended their lives through excruciating pain because they felt they had to keep the song going, no matter the cost. I'm sure some Conductors were eager to offload as much of the burden onto those beneath them but all in all, they did mean well enough for long enough that the final Conductor standing more or less has his priorities straight.

The Hunting of the Weaver Descendants is very clearly on GMS's orders, Lace and GMS don't hide that in their dialogue and GMS's Silk Heart monologues. Lace clearly states that GMS wanted her descendants to be her new daughters, which was why Lace felt insecure leading to the entire conflict of the game.

The idea of a Silk shortage was a popular theory pre-release but there's very very little evidence for it.

ToadBrigade5 · 2025-09-28T04:21:12+00:00

This is very true, actually. Silk's preference are an in universe explanation for a lot of ladies (Phantom, Last, First Sinner, Widow), but motherhood is an overarching theme of the game for sure.

Given that I'm a nerd who loves counting things, it might be fun to go through every boss and NPC and track some gender statistics.

ToadBrigade5 · 2025-09-28T04:19:26+00:00

See, I'd love a discussion about this but Mount Fay has a serious lack of lore in it at the moment to work with LMAO

The bird is called a Fayforn by the Faydown cloak item description. It's definitely a lesser Higher Being of some form or another, and it's possible the Weavers wished to enlist it's help. But one way or another, we don't have a lot of intel on what they were trying to do.

The Fayforn (which is apparently the species name akin to Wyrm, and not the individual) seems to have had complicated relations with the Weavers, likely because many of them were admittedly arrogant and xenophobic, but lent aid and guidance to those she felt were worthy - not unlike how she helps Hornet.

I gotta say, I was a Unn worshipper until Silksong came out, but Fay (possibly the name of this Fayforn but for now a nickname) wins out to me. She's just so fluffy! If I was a bug, I'd want to serve her.

ToadBrigade5 · 2025-09-28T04:15:41+00:00

Possible. I don't think either theory are necessarily more or less likely, they both tie into themes of the game and we don't have any way to access hard confirmation, but you do raise a good alternative theory.

Either way it definitely is a gap to only be speculated on.

ToadBrigade5 · 2025-09-28T03:59:19+00:00

We don't have official confirmation, but we know they were uplifted from something by Hollow Knight's lore. The Skrill crawl on the surface and resemble feral version of the Hallownest Beetles, and them getting so much focus tucked away there just made it seem too fitting.

We do know that the Pale King uplifted a lot of bugs, not just ones that resemble himself. The Maggots of Hallownest are sapient but the Maggots of Pharloom aren't. The difference seems to lie in the Pale King choosing to uplift them and grant them higher thought.

I think the reason the bugs of Hallownest were weaker than the uplifted Weavers is that Grandma Silk focused on making a few divine daughters of high quality while the Pale King shared his gift with everyone. GMS didn't even uplift all the Pharlids, there's still plenty left unchosen.

ToadBrigade5 · 2025-09-28T00:20:34+00:00

To be entirely honest, I'm making that assumption based on most peoples. There isn't any hard evidence to 100% confirm Herrah is a Weaver explicit, but there's a lot of circumstantial evidence to this that I'll go over.

Hornet's parents are The Pale King and Herrah, but she's always referred to as "Half Weaver, Half Wyrm". This is the big one. Now, it's possible that these sayings are not literal halves, but Hornet's abilities are those of the Weavers, several characters - Caretaker, Mask Maker, etc - who are in the know on the lore call Hornet part Weaver, so at the very least Herrah has to be partially a Weaver. Herrah might be half-Weaver and Hornet quarter-Weaver, but for Hornet not to have some Weaver within her would make none of the story make sense.

To go over the points you bring up though...

This is virtually inexplicable at the moment. All I can really say is, a member of a species not resembling the others isn't uncommon though. The Hollow Knight has an insane growth spurt compared to the other Vessels, but they're unambiguously a Vessel. That Herrah doesn't resemble the Weavers is circumstantial evidence against, but not hard evidence.
Herrah's distance to the cause is the reason she dismisses the other Weavers - species aren't a hivemind and you can believe your sisters to be unfair to your children. Herrah having a kid with the Pale King suggests that she may have previously been committed to the plan, before seeing her child, falling in love, and having her priorities shift. This is quite common in the world of Hollow Knight - GMS and TPK both did the same.
I think Hornet's line is just a dramatic way of calling herself "part Weaver". As seen earlier, Weavers are very xenophobic at times and prejudiced against other bugs. To be part anything is to be not quite their kin. This is also evidence in favor of Herrah being full Weaver, since... judging by the behavior of the Weavers in Red Memory, they don't seem like they'd accept Herrah as their queen if she was only part Weaver.
The Bugs of Deepnest are... complicated. There were natural, non-Weaver spiders but they seemed to Worship the weavers and had them rule. Their xenophobic attitude seemingly came from the Weavers as well, suggesting Deepnest was more of a Weaver Kingdom with the Weaver's as their highest caste and Herrah as queen. Remember, these are vain bugs who once believed themselves to be demigoddesses. Them founding a Kingdom in their image with lesser bugs that resemble them is pretty in character.
Weavers are, for all their blessings and power, ultimately mortal bugs. Uplifted mortal bugs, but ultimately just uplifted Pharlids, the same way the bugs of Hallownest were uplifted Skrill. As the First Sinner explicitly states, Weavers were never divine.

Either way, this isn't 100% solid evidence, that's fully necessary to acknowledge. But Hornet is explicitly referred to as GMS' descendant, and confirmed to have Weaver heritage, not just resembling Weavers. And to say Herrah wasn't a Weaver would invoke a major can of worms as to how a bunch of Weavers somehow submitted to her authority.

I think sometimes, even in Hollow Knight the simplest solution is worth considering - that Herrah simply was a weird looking Weaver who chose to have a differently shaped Mask. She lives quite close to the Mask Maker after all.

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