Written by Jonathan Wojcik

Favorite SILKSONG Creatures

It's hard to believe Hollow Knight came out so long ago, cementing a beautiful and haunting world of reimagined insects, spiders and worms as an almost universally beloved new cornerstone of gaming culture.

In August this year, I even went to my first-ever video game convention of any kind, the Portland Retro Gaming Expo, and I obviously wasn't surprised to see a lot of Hollow Knight merchandise (as well as a little cosplay!) but I can't tell you how second-hand proud I am to see these little insect fellas sharing space with top gaming icons. Look at you, Hollow Knight! You are LITERALLY in neon lights! In neon lights next to Sonic the Hedgehog!

If you're here, I don't even need to give you all that much more explanation. Here's some of them BUGS.

THE BELLBEAST

"Huge, hardbone bug that lives within and travels through the veins of old bells across Pharloom. -- This one has allied themself with me, either as thanks for their saving or respect for one judged as equal. Whichever the reason, their fellowship is welcome. "

The first boss in the game is an isopod-like tunneling creature, its body tapered a little like an adorably fat lizard. The shape of its bony, multi-horned skull head has drawn comparison to Toothless from "How to Train Your Dragon," and I see it, but it looks just as much like an interpretation of those real life dragon-horned caterpillars. The Bellbeast you fight eventually becomes your friendly mount, much to almost every player's delight, and eventually spawns a litter of roly-poly babies, because Team Cherry knows exactly what everybody wants.

Hornet can also use her needle and silk as a musical instrument, the needolin, which often causes other creatures to "sing" their own hidden dialog. The Bellbeast's dialog was cut, but still exists in the game. Before the beast is caught, it would have sung "Time will come...Return to the bells...Feeding, growing...Meat for the young..." once it's strung in silk, it would have said "Pale snare...Strength...stolen...Fight...struggle...Chosen...caught."

THE CLOVER STAGS

"Placid native of Verdania. Its hide closely mimics the flora of its territory."
[Palestag] "Fabled first Cloverstag of Verdania's wilds. Commands the grass and leaves to aid its attack."

Compared to Hollow Knight, Silksong introduces a few more creatures to this setting that fill the role of larger vertebrates, but they generally stay nice and buggy. The cloverstag is just a roundish blob of green moss, with a mossy sprig tail, four thin insectile legs, and a head that's little more than a leaflike cap atop a featureless stalk. It's still distinctly alien and just as buggy as any other given creature in the setting, yet manages to successfully evoke a "deer" by its stance alone, which is a pretty cool artistic achievement here. The more legendary "palestag" is larger, leafier and whiter, and serves as a boss encounter in an NPC's mindscape.

 

THE PONDSKIPPER

"The way they skate along the water's surface is so elegant. Surely it is a skill that can be learned? When time permits, I should attempt the task."

Pondskippers behave exactly like water striders or "pondskaters," an insect I don't think is referenced nearly enough given how fanciful it really is. These differ a little with their fatter, more cockroach-like bodies, long antennae and huge eyes, as well as their ability to temporarily dive under the water to escape. Actual water striders are also predators that hunt drowned or drowning insects, but these don't seem to care one way or the other!

They're also apparently a local food staple, and one type of enemy bugperson will actually hunt nearby skippers if they aren't fighting with Hornet. I love those little touches that make video game enemies seem slightly more alive and aware of their surroundings.

THE BARNAK

"Toothy growth that lives on cave roofs. Wraps wayward bugs with its long tongue and drags them up to be consumed."

A little reference to the "barnacles" from Half-Life, which I reviewed three years prior. Silksong's Barnak behaves exactly the same way, but it also seems to camouflage itself as a plant, its base surrounded by or imitating foliage. Its central body is more like a sea anemone, with a clump of soft pinkish tentacles in the center, while large fangs protrude around its surrounding blobby form. It would basically chew you up in the process of retracting and inverting itself, kind of like some marine worms with reversible tooth-covered probosciseses.

Barnaks are another creature with unique needolin text: "Eating...eat... Touching...tasting... Swallow...suffer... Slime...slick... Swallow...swell... Sliding...wet..."

I love the thought that went into this text, precisely just the sensations this organism experiences. A glimpse into its umwelt!

THE HOKER

"Whatever admiration I had for its fleecy down is spoilt by its disturbing mask... and its steely spines."

This is just a hovering ball of moss with some long, retractable spines, and a white mask with three expressionless black holes. I always like the simplicity of taxonomically ambiguous spike-ball enemies, but this one is especially intriguing, and I like Hornet's opinions on it. She's a harshly serious character, but can't seem to hide her love of soft, fluffy creatures throughout her entries. It's also interesting that she finds the hoker's mask more "disturbing" than the similar masks worn by so many other creatures, including herself.

Even the Hoker has a needolin song! "Rising heat... Spines to spear... Dwellings deep... Predators near..."

We won't include all of these, but we'll include the odder or more insightful ones like these.

THE KILIK

"I am fond of simple, effective traps such as this bug's extendable spikes. An unwary predator would be skewered clean through. "

A simple concept with a cool execution! This cute little bony white bug has what just seem to be overlapping armor plates down its back, but get too close and its armor flares open into a fan of triangular blades on thin, stretchy stalks, like a chitinous peacock with even more ways to cut you up.

THE SHELLWOOD GNAT

"Tiny, soft creature that armours itself using the hard, hollow growths of Shellwood."

Cute!! This "gnat" is really a greenish ball-shaped fly, with dinky little legs, big white eyes and a simple point for a "mouth," but it hides within seashell-like wooden nuts or cones that grow in the forest, like a bagworm. It has a crawling form with four longer spider-like limbs, while its armored flying form interestingly extends its wings out the top of the shell, while the eyes peek out from the open bottom. I just think that orientation is a novel one for a design like this.

THE SANDCARVER

"Bursts forth at movement sensed close, and will consume any object or bug careless enough to fall into its maw."

A simple, limbless worm with a circular arrangement of teeth and a pleasingly armor-plated body of nested segments. A very straightforward design that's been done plenty of times before, but feels cool every time it reappears, and what makes the sandcarver really stand out is its population density; it's not so much an enemy as an environmental feature, since they seem to occupy every square inch of their biome's sandy floor in a writhing, gnashing mass that functions basically the same as a pit of acid or magma.

Sandcarvers have tragically unused needolin text: "Churning, shifting... Hard bone beneath... Scouring wind! Rattling, wriggling..."

THE SWAMP SQUIT & SPIT SQUIT

"Plentiful pest with a sharp proboscis and a belly full of bile. -- More dangerous in the moment of its explosive and corrosive death than it ever was in life."
[Spit Squit] "To subsist on the sickly water in this fetid environment it spits out the most toxic elements. Over generations, this former survival technique has turned into an effective hunting tool. "

Speaking of acid, these creatures inhabit the caustic, toxic Bilewater swamp and come in two variations. The regular swamp squit has a gelatinous green body, swollen to an orb, with a single pair of wings and a cool little mask reminiscent of a hummingbird's skull. It attacks by darting, attempting to stab with its beak, but explodes in a gout of acid when it dies.

The spit squit varies with a more elongated, dangling mosquito body, and attack, of course, by spitting. I really like the evolutionary explanation that they weaponize the waste they've filtered out from the water.

Squits and some other bile-dwelling creatures share the same needolin text: "Resist the rot... Choke on bile... Feed...or starve... Survive in smog."

THE NUPHAR

"Predatory plant with a powerful jaw shaped to resemble a lily pad."

While there are a number of plantlike creatures and plant-animal hybrids in the game, this killer lilypad is a rare example of a fully botanical enemy. It looks like a viable platform until you step on it, of course, and then it folds up like a big toothless pac-man mouth. But while it's likened to a lily pad, an actual lily pad from our world would be connected to the rest of the parent plant by a single stem. "lily pads" in this setting float on the surface independently, with a clump of dangling roots all their own, which is more similar to giant duckweed than anything else. Or regular sized duckweed, if this setting is actually at insect scale.

THE MOTHLEAF LAGNIA

"This one is pretty, but not as soft as it first seems. The plant it mimics is flaked and coarse, and the bug's coat shares similar texture."

So apparently she tried to pet one of these the first time she saw one, only to discover that they inflict contact damage! They're not actively aggressive, though, just a mobile obstacle. Their anatomy is pretty cryptic, too. Apparently they are bugs, and they mimic a flaky "mothleaf" plant, but the organism basically just looks like a featureless, cream-colored fuzzy mushroom cap drifting in the air, with a dangling flagellum-like tail.

THE CRUST CRAWLERS and CRUSTCRAG

"Hidden amongst their tower's matching crust, these smaller bugs would have survived and thrived."
[Crustcrag] "Nature distorted... This bug was born tiny and mild. The Citadel deformed it in futile hope it may sustain. "

The "red coral gorge" was teased as a massive environment in the game's original trailer, but in the release version, it's a smaller and more desolate place. Hornet can see more of what it was like in its ancient, thriving form when she enters the memories of another NPC, and encounter various coral-dwelling creatures that are now thought to be extinct in her time, such as the adorable little crust crawlers! Just branchy red coral fragments with tiny pink eyes and nubby coral-pebble legs.

Later, however, she can encounter the crustcrags; very much alive, greatly enlarged crustcrawlers apparently engineered artificially by the bugs of plot-important Citadel. Crust crawlers don't have needolin dialog, but the mutant crustcrags do:

"Crackling, growing, stretching shell... False chambers...long teeth... Water's source...hidden...lost... Poison light...painful lash"

:(

THE DRIZNIT & DRIZNARGA

"Nesting creature that fuses its face with sharpened coral."
[Driznarga] "Large male Driznit, ferocious and territorial. Fires its heavy coral mask at intruders."

So these are two different sexes of the same coral gorge species, both actually resembling fat, legless grey bees or wasps with diminutive little heads, but both shielding their faces with large, conical drill-like coral fragments. The female driznit are way too cute with their little coral masks, while the male is a lot larger, more threatening and able to launch its mask like a missile. It's interesting that both appear to have larger, pure white eyes with the masks on, but their actual eyes are beady and black.

THE CONCHFLIES

"Small bug that crafts a shell of sharpened coral. Spins its shell at rapid speed to cut through crust and bone.
The way it darts in and out of the ground has an almost playful quality to it. An amusing and effective way to ambush prey."
[Raging Conchfly] "Elder Conchfly crowned with a huge coral horn. Once partnered with a mate, they will rarely be seen alone. To pair with another is a base instinct, and one that brings some bugs great joy. I once sought similar union, but of my own mates none could match my lifespan."

Don't say that, Hornet!! There's somebody out there for you, we promise! Especially if you look at your own fanart!!!

Conchflies are similar to driznit, but instead of a coral drill sticking straight out of the face, they wear it sticking straight up out of their backs, and are capable of drilling in and out of the ground. The journal entry also confirms that these and their driznit cousins actually carve coral down into their desired shapes, which is a neat ecological detail.

A mated pair of larger conchflies are battled as bosses, and have special needolin text:

"Together! Stronger! Pierce the stone! Protect our caves... Break the shell! This small one...trapped...We found each other"

They've gotta stop making everybody cry.

THE FLEAS

"Fleas" in this world don't look much like fleas...but what they do look like, and behave like, are dogs themselves! They're poofs of fur with no visible eyes, and a pair of floppy ear-like wings atop their heads. All we know is that they're trained by dedicated bugs as part of a circus-like caravan, throwing a "festival of the flea" with multiple minigames.

The bugs who run this caravan refer to themselves as "fleas," too, but they kind of look like more typical bug NPC's; they just have flea-like fur instead of masks, normal antennae, and eyeholes like most "people" instead of the flea mouth. So what does it mean to be a "flea?" Are there different castes and subspecies of flea? Do some bugs just culturally consider themselves fleas and wear flea fur? For that matter, what does being a flea mean in a world with no large vertebrates to parasitize? Do they still suck blood?! Whatever the answers may be, all the fleas and/or "fleas" are equally adorable and precious.

...All of them except for Kratt.

THE CRAGGLITE & CRAGGLER

"If left to grow, these young bugs will fight for dominance until only one remains."
[Craggler] "Holds an extensive supply of searing acid in a layered sack within its shell. The acid rains from its mouth upon any creature it sees as food."

The cragglite is a small, jagged rock-like bug with a few crabbly legs and a heart-shaped mask, around the same size, one of several bugs in the game that behave exactly like the basic side-scuttling creatures in Metroid. But the single most dominant cragglite apparently just keeps on growing, and that's how you get the boss-monster Craggler!

I really love the craggler's whole design. While it retains the wide, chunky, crabby shape of the juveniles, it hangs by its legs head-down, its mask tapering into a clump of little wiggly finger-points, with two blunt shovel-like arms to either side. It's basically an arthropodal star-nosed mole! Cool!! And it dribbles acid! Cooler!!!

The craggler's needolin dialog is "Become like stone... Larger, greater! Sear their shells...All is mine...only mine!"

Since you only have access to the needolin after you'd have beaten the craggler, the little guys will be singing:
"Our time has come...The great one, defeated...Fallen shell, fallen feast! Now we grow...we grow..."

I guess you don't have to feel nearly as bad about killing this boss, if you've made so many cragglite so happy.

THE GROM & GROMLING

"They ceaselessly churn through rock and bone without ever seeming to rest. Do they have a destination? Or are they compelled to dig forever deeper?"
[Gromling] "Young masked worm that delights in ambushing intruders within its tunnels."

Grom are another tunneling worm enemy, pale and bony with spiny segments and unusual, thorny looking mask-skulls whose two eye holes, one small and one large, are arranged one above the other. Teeth can also be seen jutting out the flared underside of the jawless mask, lamprey-style, which they use along with their drill-like bodies to dig straight down...and that's basically all they do. They just burrow down from above, fall to the floor and keep going, otherwise ignoring you!

Baby gromlings, on the other hand, are leaping, screeching ambush predators that burst out of the strata when you get too close. They're so nubby that they're basically teardrop shaped, their circular mouths point straight ahead and their masks have only a single cyclops eye socket. Another of the cutest things in a game where pretty much everything is the cutest thing in the game. And while adults don't react to the needolin, babies have plenty of thoughts!

"Dig...dig...dig... Deep scent... Find it, find it...Through bone, through shell."

What are they looking for!? Something that is also cute of them to be looking for, no doubt!

THE KAI

"Plump, plentiful drifter of a coral past."
[Spinebeak kai] "A critical member of the larger flock. Without them present the Kai would be fast driven to extinction by larger predators."
[Steelspine kai] "Seeming soft, but hiding a sharp surprise. Any larger predator attempting a bite would learn a pointed and painful lesson. "

Another organism from the coral gorge of the past, but not coral-armored. The basic kai is a shiny, gelatinous looking reddish ball with narrow black eyes, a subtle upturned point for a "nose," tiny blue insect wings on its sides, a third wing on its rear, a row of stringy black legs along its belly and a matching row of "legs" along its back, overall evocative of a "fish" swimming around the "reef!"

Kai are apparently poorly defended and presumably enticing to predators, but some members of the school or "flock" are
"spinebeak" kai, able to harden their snout into a longer, more metallic spine as they launch forward, while others are
"steelspine" kai, able to extend an array of long spikes, pufferfish-style! I love the idea of a social fish-bug with different defensive castes. I DISLIKE, on the other hand, that when I wrote their names followed by "able to," the words aligned just almost perfectly above one another by coincidence, off by barely a pixel. I am not only preserving that, just so you can be annoyed by it too, but adding line breaks so they'll do that no matter your display resolution. Be mad at the half pixel with me.

THE SQUIRRM AND JUDGES

"If allowed the opportunity, these creatures will grow into a form larger and more oppressive."
[Judge] "They remorselessly eliminate any pilgrim or passerby deemed impure to their sight. The countless husks, strewn on paths beside them, tell of their conclusive decisions. "

We haven't gotten deep into the setting lore here, because that's a bigger rabbit hole than just Cool Looking Bugs and this game already has enough Cool Looking Bugs that I dragged out working on this page for several weeks straight, but this is also a soulsborne-inspired setting, as you may know, with a dark and foreboding fictional history of weird little bug creature religious cults. Much of Silksong's story centers on The Citadel, a "religious institution" that calls out to "pilgrims" throughout the land.

Most of those pilgrims die, of course, to all the sorts of things we've already been looking at, but even most of those who reach the Citadel's steps are "deemed unworthy" and killed by the judges; wingless wasp-like bugs whose golden helmets look exactly like the spade-shaped head of the Flatwoods monster! Their dialog is about what you'd expect: "Only the holy may judge! Pass only the pure...Glory to the gilded...The edict, absolute...Crush sin upon the step! Ever vigilant!"

They're tough and aggressive, but they're also encountered in a larval state, the squirrm, which attempts to flee into the sand rather than fight. A squirrm is maggotlike, but with four fully developed spindly legs. Its face is a dull brass-colored circle with a couple of small lumps for eyes set in a rounded head end with a little nub on top, already evoking the adult form's mask. I love the concept of an entire species raised just to be these highly specialized guardians, and the larval form's song shows us just how thoroughly programmed they already are:

"Let's grow holy! We are chosen! All are chosen! Let's grow stronger! We will serve! All will serve! All together! All together! Warmly shifting, dancing sands..."

 

THE MUCKMAGGOTS, SLUBBERLUG, MUCKROACH & BLOATROACH

"They cling fast to the shells of other bugs, destroying any hope for concentration or comfort."
[Slubberlug] "These creatures look to have been bred deliberately in watery pens. If they are food to be, their scent suggests they must taste vile."
[Muckroach]"Starved pack bug with an insatiable appetite. Despite their tough hide and pungent meat, roaches breed rapidly so are sometimes farmed for food./A revolting creature. My shell itches at their presence. In the pens where their numbers grow vast, I am forever on edge."
[Bloatroach] "Obese offshoot of the Muckroaches, born of the Citadel's exhaust smog. The winged roach's sagging stomach is filled with sizzling bile./Its form is absurd... Surely it would not be able to hold itself in the air? The noxious gasses in its stomach must provide its levity."

New favorites, easily! Muckroaches are pernicious, pack-hunting, doglike predators bred as food by the residents of Greymoor, a dank and polluted place under constant rainfall. The first larval stage, the muckmaggots, thickly infest stagnant water and can attach themselves to Hornet as a parasitic affliction. The next larval stage, the slubberlug, is a more active aquatic predator and looks like a bigger, fatter maggot with four spiny little wing-like fins, almost like four little prickly holly leaves. The mouth is just a ragged-edged split in the front, visually like its head was ripped off!

A mature muckroach has a more solid and chitinous appearance, from what we can see; most of its long body and humped back is draped with some sort of mantle resembling ragged, brown cloth, hiding all but its pointed tail-like abdomen, six roachy legs, and the end of its more scissor-like jagged muzzle! There's always something so cool and snazzy about any design where a hood or sack covers the eye area, especially if the exposed part of the face is just an elongated snoot or beak.

The mutated "bloatroach" might look like boss material, but it's just an exceptionally massive enemy. Swollen to blimp-like proportions with a much larger, fleshier, acid-spewing maw, it also swaps the "cloth shroud" for a mass of green moss and over a dozen tiny fly-like wings. I like the speculation that the wings work together with buoyant gases to keep it in the air.

The muckroaches are overall really fun worldbuilding; you'll even encounter sapient bugs whose whole job is watching over these dangerous livestock. Muckroach songs, in order of these three forms, are:

"Eat and grow...Poison's flow...Grow or die!...Eat! Eat! Eat"
"Gouge and gnaw...Eat it all...Bite and claw...More and more!"
"Gurgling...gasping...Meat inside...Warm waters teeming...Burn them...bite them...Soft shells...swallow them..."

THE DUCTSUCKER

"Suction creature surviving on the thick slime that coats its caves./This mindless bug seems to sense only through its tendrils, yet despite that simplicity it still poses a serious threat. "

Another huge-size enemy, this bug disguises itself as a giant, slimy bush of moss, but explodes to furious, violent activity when it senses food. Its true appearance is a fat, greyish segmented worm with a massive, gaping round mouth, multiple whiplike black tentacles instead of legs, and many small, shiny black eyes scattered around its mossy shroud. Its most menacing feature, however, is the ring of pinkish gum tissue it has instead of any visible teeth, or any other way to actually bite you or kill you before you're engulfed.

I appreciate how many worm-things are in this game. Predatory worms and grubs are a pretty big part of being a bug in real life, not all of them necessarily arthropods themselves. This one's song dialog is the same as the unused song of the barnak, and while many enemies in the game share the same songs, particularly if they share the same ecosystem, the barnak could easily pass as a ductsucker's larval stage. That, or a case of sexual dimorphism, which wouldn't even be as extreme as that seen in some actual invertebrates.

THE MITES

"Verminous pest, common throughout the dark corners of Greymoor."
[Fluttermite] "Similar bugs would gnaw away at unguarded food supplies in my homeland. As a child, I would hunt them, eager to make use of myself and test my skills."
[Mitemother] "Poor of sight but possessing a keen sense of smell, it uses its bulk to charge at foreign scents. Remaining fierce so far into old age is an admirable trait."
[Moorwing] "With its wranglers long dead, the Moorwing stalked the towers of Greymoor, feasting on passing pilgrims and tenders alike."

Fleas are dogs, roaches are...also dogs, or maybe more like pigs?...and mites, in this world, are evidently the equivalent to rats! Delightful! A mite at rest is a round bug with a thin, black tail, a fuzzy shroud-like front, two giant grey spherical eyes that evoke "mouse ears" and three big, sharp incisor-like yellow teeth! Nasty and TOO freaking cute!

There are also massive-size "mitemothers" and winged "fluttermites," the latter of which hide their teeth and show a pair of tiny, black nostrils that look more like eyes, selling the cartoon rodent appearance even more. Both of the smaller mites share the same song; "Smell it, starving...Claw and fang...Deeper, darker...Find it. Take it...Shriek and scratch them...Hide below them..." The mitemother, however, sings "Screech and smash them...Raise the many...Rip and rend...Darker, quieter...more..."

Then, there's the Moorwing, a boss you might not even take for a mite at first. A domesticated hunter turned feral, it doesn't have the tail, but it has hind legs with knifelike blades attached. Its face is covered by a sewn-together hood like those used by falconers, and it has a torn up leathery "cape" it uses as a pair of wings! I love its bizarre, overall sort of owl-like appearance with the huge, leather blinders over its eyes, and the two little fangs poking out under the hood are just too charming.

The moorwing sings "Free to feed...Free to fly...Kill the captors!...Scratch and slash..."

THE DRAPEFLIES

"Like fabric somehow sprung to life. Its pelt is perfectly matched to the rags it infests."
[Drapelord] "Greed will always see some bugs swell above their kin."

The drapefly is visually just a jagged-edged grey "rag" with two pale eyes and black antennae on the upper surface. They hang upside-down like bats at rest, and reveal a mothlike dangling abdomen in flight. They don't do much else, but what a cool design for something so simplistic! I just love them! Incorporating the idea of a "clothes moth" as a bat-like creature, with a cloth-like body itself, is just a great combination for the setting, and an obvious addition in a world where "silk" is so important.

There are also much larger, fatter "drapelords," but both of them sing the same song:
"Swooping and feeding...hiding, hiding...Larger, hide away! Smaller, catch the prey!"

They're stated to feed on cloth, first and foremost, but they apparently attack to acquire "prey." Either they supplement their diet with meat, or maybe, like actual clothes moths, they only feed on silk in some unseen larval stage, in this case even using it to create their wings?

THE PHACIA

"Quite a beautiful creature. In my own kingdom's court, it would have been highly favoured as an ornamental pet."

I'm a big fan of creatures that fly or float without traditional wings, if you haven't noticed, so I really like these little plant-bugs, resembling white flower buds with cute, roundish masks and antennae protruding up from their centers. When they attack, they reveal that the mask is only attached by a stretchy, fleshy little stalk, and release a cloud of damaging pollen!

"Sleeping...sleeping...Thirsty roots creeping down...Drifting, dancing, falling seeds...Voice! Wake! Voice calls out..."

THE GAHLIA

"Floral foe with a core shaped to mimic a mask. The core can be thrust forth to bludgeon unwary bugs./The false mask alone is frightening enough to scare away smaller pests. "

I didn't necessarily put my top favorites at the very end in this time, but this one would probably be in the running. The gahlia seems like a more mature, stationary phacia, and sings the same song, though again we might be seeing different sexes of the same organism. It would certainly make sense for flower-based creatures to have a larger, sessile stage and drifting pollen-bearing state, though maybe the phacia are more bug-related, given their antennae.

The gahlia appears as a large lotus-like flower attached directly to walls, with a base of blackened, perhaps older petals. At the center is what looks like a white mask, actually an entire rounded head-like bulb, that can launch outward on an umbilicus to shatter your exoskeleton like one big fist. Of all the masks and mask-like faces in the game, this one's proportions look the most like a human baby head, with an upturned pointed nose below a bulging forehead. Its larger black eyeholes, or maybe just spots, are down low on the face, while a tinier pair kind of evoke dot-shaped eyebrows. It's still cute, but it's also splendidly, hauntingly weird even by this world's standards.

THE BELLEATER

"Long dormant centipede, awoken and enraged by Pharloom's crumbling collapse./ A monster in the classic form of tales from youth. Its slaying was done as much by my fierce traveling companion as by myself. "

This is a pretty cool boss whose implementation I won't spoil, but it seems to be a natural nemesis to the bellbeast! Though described as a "centipede," its anatomy and coloration is much, much more like a firefly larva or trilobite beetle; a broad, flattened thing with sharp mandibles, a red headplate, shingles of black armor and a softer, nubbier pale rear end definitely reminiscent of the aforementioned fireflies, even if it doesn't light up.

I like the implication that it's a sort of legendary dragon-like figure in Hornet's culture, too; one that may have been in hibernation long enough that its existence was no longer certain.

"Wake now...World trembles...Long slumber...Great noise...louder...Feed Eat..."

VAULTKEEPERS

"Gilded servant of the Whispering Vaults, born to read and recall the near endless scrolls of prayer./ Most likely this one's true charge was to root out and condemn those not seen as sufficiently fervent."
[Lampbearer]"Disciple of the Whispering Vaults, tasked to navigate its dim recesses to retrieve old scrolls."
[Scrollreader]"Did they ever truly understand those inscrutable scrolls? Or is it all merely pretence, an endless act to maintain their order's station within the Citadel?"
[Vaultkeeper Cardinius, introducing himself] No fool this Keeper. It has lived long, watched its fellows wither, but it shall not die, not yet, not while knowledge needs be sought"

The Vaultkeepers are a sect of multiple different bugs tasked with watching over the Citadel's labyrinthine library; the basic variety is a pitch black little round spider with four very long, prickly legs, though it can fold up into tapering, golden armor that gives it an outline more like a humanoid figure in a golden pope-hat. The tiny, flying "lampbearers" carry luminous orbs, and where shell-like gold helmets with a rune carved into the faceless front plate, while the "scrollreaders" are bigger, bulkier bugs with golden armor more reminiscent of the judges, carrying hook-tipped poles for retrieving reading material off the towering shelves. You can even see them reading with the aid of lampbearers, but it's implied they're all possibly too insane to understand their duties or their "research" anymore.

Too insane, with the exception of Vaultkeeper Cardinius, an elder Vaultkeeper NPC who asks for help continuing his studies. Cardinius has the four fuzzy limbs, black head, white eyes and pointed hat of the basic spider-like keeper, but hanging black strands evoke a "bearded" face, and extending out his back is a long, segmented worm-like body that continues winding through multiple chambers, implying this is how his species grows with age!

All three of the enemy vaultkeeper castes sing "Ours to guard... Holy secrets, sacred whispers...Ours to keep...Words that only we may speak...Hidden dark and deep...Songs that only we may sing!"

RELIC SEEKER SCROUNGE

"It's my calling it is, to gather the relics of the past. If you find any fine old stuff, anything with a history to it, bring it here. I'll take it - Scrounge introducing herself"

Is Scrounge the same species as Cardinius? She has the same long, grey worm-body, though only the front end is visible, and simply flares like a bulb, wrapped in bandages with a white mask. She only has one pair of arms, too, much shorter, and a pair of hairy antennae on top, maybe only a distantly related species at best. Scrounge seeks ancient relics with any sort of writing on them, and when you bring her something on her shopping list, she'll translate the inscription for a little more insight into the setting's culture and past. She also has one of the cutest voices in the whole game.

FATHER OF THE FLAME

"Totem and god, built and worshipped by the Burning Bugs./ The remains of an aged bug were housed at the pyre's heart. The structure suggested they wished for immolation. If so, I have seen their wish granted."

A creative and interesting boss, worshiped by a pyromaniac bug cult that controls insect-shaped wisps of flame. So you're basically "fighting" an inanimate giant insect wicker-man, constantly spawning little wisps!

DRIFTLIN & FAYFORN

"Gentle glider of Mount Fay. Its downy wings and cowl allow it to resist even the most cutting cold. / This one would make a perfect pet, but for the freezing temperatures it requires for comfort. "

There are, of course, real insects that only inhabit freezing cold environments, though in our own world these all tend to be wingless, because use of wings would expend too much heat energy. Driftlin however have "cowls" covered in fluff, similar in basic anatomy to the drapeflies but with rounder heads, beadier eyes, blunter antennae and poofier "wings" giving them a passing resemblance to both doves and tiny snowmen!

Then there's Fayforn, an absolutely gigantic member of what has to be the same species or at least genus, fully resembling a gigantic beakless dove until it spreads its four wings, revealing its more moth-like shape and insect abdomen! Fayforn doesn't sing, but the driftlin have one of the more whimsical songs:

"Glidey! Glidey! Glidey! Lightly, lightly, oh so lightly...Mother, mother, gleam so brightly...Drifty, drifty, oh so nicely..."

GREAT GOURMAND (& MERGWIN)

"My master shall have the holy indulgence they deserve, even if I must douse my shell in oil and climb onto a dish myself!" -Mergwin

This NPC character resides in the Citadel, but couldn't care less about anything outside his own private chamber, where he gorges on whatever his faithful servant Mergwin prepares for him. The Gourmand himself is reminiscent of a massively bloated tick, having what is either a small, eyeless black head surrounded by a pale, warty and wrinkly shield, or the shield is the head and the "head" is all mouthpart, like an actual tick. Most "bugs" in this setting are more taxonomically ambiguous, but the tick similarity hit me only just as I was trying to write this description. Look!


That guy is totally a big, fat tick! He just doesn't subsist solely on blood, instead demanding rare and exotic flavors from throughout the land...or at least, that's what Mergwin demands, whose tired, cricketlike face, now that I look at it, also evokes his master's ticklike shield and mouth arrangement. The Gourmand has no known personal name, never speaks for himself, and even his needolin song has a more limited vocabulary than the average wild animal you come across:

"EAT...EAT...EAT...FEED...FOOD...MEAT...MUCH...MUCH...EAT...GOOD."

Mergwin holds his master in high esteem regardless, believing everyone everywhere should revere the Gourmand, but lamenting that he's the very last who appreciates such "greatness." There's a whole subcultural history implied here that has to be pretty bizarre, especially if these two are the same species of bug-person, as if they select someone to feed and deify who lives far beyond their natural lifespan, but perhaps at the cost of their sanity? And why IS Mergwin the last? He already says he'd be happy to become the next meal himself...I'm not sure this was ever that sustainable a cult.

THE HUNTRESS, STYX & RUNT

"All those gooey bugssss, all so reluctant to share their organs. Sssooo much coaxing and gnawing, and prodding." - Huntress

"A ss-sslave must feed his misstress-sss. Morsss-sels will I grow. While you hunt, I am working... alwaysss-sss..." - Styx

"Gone... the mother, her meatsss... and lifesss... for siblingss strong... not for usss so small... Neverss for usss... " - Runt

Huntress is a very large, very threatening NPC bug, visually a little similar to Hornet herself with her antlered, two-pronged mask and flowing black robe, but she seems to be something much older, much beastlier than other "civilized" bugfolk. Her only concern is to provide her massive brood of eggs with plenty of meat, and would devour you on the spot if she didn't think killing you would be kind of a pain in the ass.

Huntress sends you on a quest to gather organs from various wildlife, and if you succeed, you're rewarded with a much-needed extension to your weapon's range. Later, she'll be gone, and every egg in her cave will have hatched, but you'll never see where the Huntress or any of her deadly brood ran off to.

Fail the quest, and you'll find that she was eaten alive by her brood, but a "runt" will have been left behind, still needs meat to grow, and will fortunately still hand out the same reward.

Styx, meanwhile, is a male of the same species. He's smaller than the Huntress, possessing a wider, more crescent shaped head and a body very closely modeled on that of a winged adult mantis, though unlike most mantids, his six legs are all roughly the same size and shape.

Styx's dialog reveals the strange mentality of these large meat-eaters. All you have to do is kill a couple of muckroaches that are bothering him, and he'll immediately pledge himself as Hornet's "slave." Hornet does not want any slaves, but Styx is insistent that he lives only to be "claimed" by a more powerful "mistress," whose job in turn is to protect him while he stays home and prepares food.


The "food" in question is a kind of fat, gummy grub called a silkeater, which is also a valuable single-use item; when Hornet dies, her money will be left in a silk cocoon you'll have to collect on your next life, unless you have a spare silkeater, which can somehow instantly transport your last cocoon to you wherever you are. Styx can breed a new silkeater every hour of play time, so our girl is like "okay man, you're not my slave but go ahead and do what you want if it makes you happy."

There's one more member of this species, Skynx, who's mostly hidden in shadow and has much more limited dialog. Skynx is Styx's replacement for the game's ultra-hard-mode, where you don't get any extra lives anyway. Since there's no use for silkeaters in this mode, but you can still find them, they become quest items you can sell to Skynx for cash.

THE VOLTVYRM

"Coiled nest of charged worms. Assaults intruders with bolts of crackling electricity. / Barely a bug, and possessing only basic thought, yet instinct alone proved enough to turn it deadly."

It's too bad Hollow Knight's flukes didn't make a comeback, but at least we get another kind of gooey pink worm! One of the game's most dazzlingly beautiful but wildly deadly locales is the Voltnest, a cavern of barnacle-like colonial organisms whose slimy pink polyps can channel bolts of electricity:



You can't attack these lifeforms, but if you can reach the ceiling of Voltnest's central shaft, you're drawn into a boss battle against in a boss battle against a larger, possibly more "mature" cluster of polyps...or maybe the whole place is one big colonial organism, and the "voltvyrm" is the central brain of it all? It doesn't have any needolin dialog, indicating that either Hornet is correct about its lack of self-awareness, or it's simply too far removed from Arthropoda to have any thought processes that "translate." I feel like the latter is more likely, since even the simplest "bugs" can have a song, but non-arthropod invertebrates are characterized as "unintelligent" throughout both Silksong and Hollow Knight. This notably includes Cnidarian-like forms, such as the aerial jellyfish that bug-kind evidently consider spooky and disturbing.

NYLETH

"Ancient heart of Shellwood, connected to all its living things. / Her presence would once have maintained the wood's fragile order, allowing the safe passage of bugs across its branches. "

Queen of all those eerie flower-bug chimeras, Nyleth is something akin to a forest goddess in the local bug culture, the "spirit of the wood" and "health of the heart" according to her own needolin songs. She's also an extremely cool, beautiful and weird design, resembling a giant white-petaled flower with a knot of root-like legs on its underside and a large central stamen resembling a limbless, humanoid bug-lady-body; a fuzzy, dark base kind of reads as the hips, a clear yellow nodule further up the stalk implies a torso or bust, and a thin neck supports a pointed white mask with a clump of brown petal "hair." When she leans back and unleashes her pollen, though, we can see that there's nothing under the mask but a cluster of yellow tentacles! Extremely cool, easily up there with the best designed bosses of both Metroid and the Souls series, which this franchise is more or less a combo homage to.

SPLINTERHORN, SPLINTERBARK
& SISTER SPLINTER

"ts shell gives it the advantage of surprise, but also forces it into a slender, brittle shape that cannot withstand a heavy attack."
[Splinterbark] "Winged insect with a flaky shell that perfectly mimics its environment. /Its assault... like a young bug's toy turned deadly. Could I, in time, fashion a spinning tool to match?"
[Sister Splinter] "Imposing old insect nesting in the heights of Shellwood. Her command of twig and branch ensured no pilgrim ever survived her territory. / This one lived long and fed much. The wood will be much safer for their slaying."

Splinterhorns, another of my favorite basic enemy designs, are cute but ferocious stick-insects resembling simple, twisted twigs with pale, globular eyes sticking out the sides of the head end, which forks at the tip and can instantly sprout into a pair of blades! Splinterbarks, meanwhile, look a little more like brown and withered leaf-insects, though their broad and ragged segments are mimicking shards of bark. They have long, segmented barklike abdomens with smaller legs than the splinterhorn, a broad leaf-shaped bark head with those same tan colored eyeballs, a pair of armored upper arms with broad, flat forearms and a set of functional wings. These ferocious creatures infest a version of Shellwood forest overtaken by thorny weeds, during a period where Nyleth has been dormant!

At the top of the Splinter-bug hierarchy is their elder Sister Splinter, another of the game's single coolest designs. Her body is just a crooked, spiny stick that hangs upside-down from a mass of thin tentacles, no longer possessing insectlike legs or wings. She still has the flaring woody arms of a Splinterbark, though, tipped with black claws, and her head, like a wooden mask with those same blind-looking eyes, is draped with pale hair-like green tendrils.

The Splinterhorn and Splinterbark needolin song is whimsically menacing: ""Monster, monster, run away! Sister, sister, your dismay! Hidey, hidey, here I lay! Brother, brother, time to play!"

Sister Splinter's, meanwhile, goes "Children, children, hide and strike! This land is ours, now! by our claws, none but us now! Sisters, sisters, so long gone! Other, other, sleeping deep! Creeping, creaking..."

Whereas Nyleth is a sort of angelic "wood nymph" to this world, Sister Splinter acts as more of a "hag" in the fairy-folklore sense of the term, a twisted witchlike monster whose "children" gleefully stalk, ambush and prey upon intruders with what they only think of as playful frolic. I absolutely love this for creatures clearly based on the Phasmidae, making them a fairylike "unseelie court" to the forest's flower-mimic "seelie court."

SNAIL SHAMANS

One Snail Shaman was already encountered in Hollow Knight, but three can be found in Silksong. All snails we've now seen have solid black shadow-like bodies with large, luminous white eyes, but their shapes can vary quite a bit! The "Chapel Maid" is similar in shape to any typical humanoid bug, save for the coiled snail shell weighing her down. The "Caretaker" is another humanoid one, but his shell is on his head and covered in multiple swirls, like a big grey brain, and the "Bell Hermit," the largest of the three, has an actual snail-like body shape, with the foot underneath and the thick neck-stalk and everything, plus four short, knobby horns on his head and some tendrils hanging off his face.

These are a very lore-heavy bunch, whose roles would kind of spoil the crux of the game's A-plot. I just wanted to include them because they look great and I like this ongoing concept of snails as a mystical race of ancients.

NUU

"Nuu must ask a wish! For her, you would seek Pharloom's many fabulous bugs and cut them.
Cut them with your blade! Cut them with your mature spirit! Cut them with your savage adult heart!
Would you help Nuu? Could you take her scroll, and fill its pages with the learnings of your cuts?" - Nuu

Nuu is a pinkish, round little bug with even pinker, uncannily human lips, four tiny pointy limbs, two shiny black eyes on very tall stalks, and a backpack strongly resembling a snail shell. She doesn't look like any other creature in the setting, but she wants what we ALL want: to know everything about every kind of bug.

Unfortunately, Nuu seems to be just a young kid of her kind, needing a more capable adult bug to do the hunting for her. This is how you get your Hunter's Journal, where Hornet begins documenting every creature that she slaughters. Hornet gets some rewards for completing at least 100 entries, but when Nuu senses the "essences" of countless dead creatures wafting from Hornet, she almost loses control of herself and threatens to "sample" the "forbidden taste" of such a "fierce predator's juices." Hornet knocks sense back into Nuu with just a light slap, but the bloodlust honestly isn't surprising. Nuu may resemble a goofy, pinkish snail, but between the false "shell" and those unmistakable eyestalks, she's definitely a bug-person analogous to a hermit crab! No wonder she craves dead stuff!

THE CRAW

"I'm looking for a long-term solution. A scarecraw! I'll build the biggest there's ever been, so fearsome it'll keep those craws away for good!" - Creige

There may not be real birds in this world, but in addition to the bird-like fayforn there are also the "crawbugs," or just the "craw!" A whole tribe of fierce, screeching bugfolk whose shaggy, dark cloaks also serve as a pair of wings, and conceal all but the hooked "beaks" protruding from their shadowy hoods. I like the idea of bug-people that happen to look and act like bird-people, and since the beaks don't actually open that we ever see, they're most likely the same sort of fused proboscis seen in Hemiptera such as assassin bugs!

The basic craw sing "Shiny, shiny, all for us! Our nest! Our clan! Swoop and scratch! Crack their shells...Our caves! Our land! Take their treasures!"...so they even share the classic corvid attraction to bright trinkets, too!

THE FLIES

"[Wardenfly] Disgusting both in manner and stench. I feel no remorse to see them felled."
"[Guardfly] The smell from these jailers overwhelms my senses. I strongly doubt they have ever thought to bathe."
"[Freshfly] The less these gruesome bugs breed, the better."
"[Scabfly] Foul creatures birthed into servitude. Their plight elicits no sympathy from me.
"[Broodmother] Mad matriarch of the Slab rarely seen outside her warren. From her all jailers are born and bred. "

My very favorite animals, who are also my very favorite insects, are now my favorite "race" or "faction" of Hollow Knight continuity. Perfectly capturing all the scruffy cuteness of their inspiration, they're characterized by sparse bristles all over their fat, grey bodies, very large white eyes - usually exhausted looking - and charmingly droopy, tapering little proboscises. They couldn't possibly be more precious and perfect; this is exactly the visual essence of a fly's aesthetic charm, zero notes!

But as cuddly as they all look, flies are actually pretty grim and brutal folk in Pharloom, operating a dismal prison complex known as "The Slab," where "sinners" once willfully came to "repent" and purify themselves for the Citadel. By the events of Silksong, it's become a dilapidated cesspit where the flies bring just about anyone they don't like the look of. I appreciate the irony that flies work under spider-people as jailers, and imprison our main character, who is also half-spider.

The flies have some very detailed and interesting songs, too. The tiny little newly hatched "freshflies" only sing "Eat! Eat! Light! Light! Warm air...Mother...", but the slightly more developed "scabflies" sing "Sinner! No escape! Be still! Be still! Born in filth...No light!"

Some mature into long-necked guardflies, who now sing "You! You are the sinner! Why was I born in the filth? I'll be cleansed...You! The filth! it's you! By toil...by torment...I'm clean! I'm cleaner!", while others become the bigger, bulkier wardenflies, who sing all the same verses with four additions to the mix: "O sinner! O filth! Lay yourself down... Be caged! Be caged! Let my duty...absolve me..."

It all paints a picture of an entire species subjugated by the Citadel's mad religious cult, convinced that they're accursed, wretched lower beings who can achieve absolution only by punishing other "filth." Yeah, this is definitely a soulslike alright.

It's a pretty funny contrast to the broodmother, who seems to suffer none of this inner torment. Her simple song goes "Hatchy, hatchy! Eggy, eggy...Warmly, safely...Yummy! Yummy! Grow the brood...Eat the food..." Is she impartial to the suffering of her brood, or is she happily oblivious?

After you defeat her, a new future queen or "broodling" will hatch from a dung ball, proclaiming "Eggy, eggy! i want to lay a lot of pretty eggies!" Hornet is at least kind enough to leave her alone, despite the scathing prejudices in her journal entries.

THE STILKIN & GROAL THE GREAT

"They know well their domain, lurking in wait in its byways and bogs, always ready to pounce."
[Groal the Great] "Chief and chaplain of the Stilkin, forever raging against the Citadel that chokes their caves and sees them suffer. / This one's strength was much enhanced by stolen soul. They are not the first who tried to hoard it, or to mould it towards such violent ends. "

Stilkin are lovably nasty bugfolk, solid black with extra-large white eyes and sharp needly snouts, who cover themselves in moss and stalk other bugs with poison-tipped darts in Bilewater, resentful of the Citadel for poisoning their home. Their leader, Groal, presumably used to be the same kind of bug, but after absorbing the soul of a snail shaman, he began to mutate into something else, craving more and more bug prey and incorporating their souls to gain ever more power.

The result of this mutation is the spitting image of a frog, which perfectly embodies his ravenousness for tasty little bug souls. His whole upper body is just one massive, serenely smiling frog face with bulging, blank white eyeballs, though a split down the middle of its lower lip gives it a T-shaped mouth opening, a minor detail that goes a long way in selling this as an invertebrate approximating the vertebrate. He wears a broken white bug mask between his eyes, and a fringe of moss separates the froggly front from the rest of his multi-legged, fly-winged insect anatomy. Groal can inhale prey into his gaping maw like a vacuum, but can also spit up acid, or fire off "vengeful souls," a spell you can learn yourself that fires gooey little bug-mask ghosts!

The most interesting thing about Groal's physical form is that, while other bugs have closely resembled chordates such as birds or rats, you can usually wave those away as convergent evolution, and heck, there's even such a thing as a toad bug in real life!

But Groal didn't evolve to resemble a frog; Groal's transformation is explicitly supernatural. And even "small" vertebrates like frogs can be many magnitudes more massive, longer-lived, nearly invulnerable forces of death from the perspective of MOST (...but not all, no. Not always...) tiny insects and arachnids. So whether such blasphemous endoskeletoned abominations exist or have ever existed anywhere in the timeline of Hornet's known universe, its natural order may very well be haunted by their memory, in some sense, or even haunted by their fundamental idea. Of COURSE a bug that eats the souls of other bugs might start turning into a frog. In this world a frog is an unnameable, unfathomable, hypothetical demon from the nightmares of madmen. I mean madbugs.

THE GARGANT GLOOM & GLOOMSACS

"Tiny empty creature, barely a bug. Swallows its prey whole and sucks their nutrients until nothing remains. / This one disturbs me... There is something in its simplicity. Do I almost feel fear?"
[Gargant Gloom] "Enormous tubular beast uniquely suited to living close to the void below. / Amazingly, the creature carries the void's black liquid in its stomach, violently spraying it forth if threatened."

Silksong eventually returns us to The Abyss, first seen in Hollow Knight as the source of the dangerous shadow-stuff known as Void. The only abyssal llifeforms previously encountered there were small, slow-moving armored grubs, the shadowcreepers, and while those return in Silksong with a giant-size variant, the abyssal "glooms" are so striking that I really hope we haven't seen the last of Void-based fauna. "Gloomsacs" roughly resemble severed insect abdomens; segmented, grey cones with a few dangling legs and a white, flat front full of irregular holes, like the cross section of a lotus root! They hang from ceilings at rest, bringing to mind wasp nests, and can float through the air to latch on and drain energy from their prey!

The much, much larger Gargant Gloom is a more complete insect-creature with an almost dinosaur shape to it, its bulky body tapering into a long neck. Its face resembles a "sliced-off" stump, like the gloomsac, but with a single row of four eye-like holes and a pair of small mandibles. To attack, it either spews void from its "face" holes or lifts the chitinous plates of its back, exposing dozens more black holes in the underlying tissue...which spawn even more gloomsacs! Hooray!

 

ALCHEMIST ZYLOTOL & ZANGO

"Plasmium was discovered by my master at the farthest edge of Pharloom, hidden deep in salt-stricken waters. I brought it to these caves under her direction, to study how it flourishes in a foreign place.
Perhaps, like myself, you have been bewitched by the Plasmium's beautiful glow? Would you assent then, to assisting me in my studies?"

Zylotol is a scientist researching yet another mysterious, dangerous substance in a world already polluted by what feels like half a dozen of them: a luminous blue "lifeblood" called Plasmium, which can provide you with additional bonus health, but seems implied by the alchemist's obsession to be addictive and ultimately corruptive. Zylotol's name and design both reference axolotls, with rows of fleshy papillae flaring from the back of an oversized, salamander-y head. His assistant's design is just a little simpler, a wide head with one array of bulbous knobs, but both have a bit of a blue sheen to them, especially in their eyes. Are all these features natural to this type of bug-person? Probably not, as we'll see shortly.

Zylotol's assistant, sadly, has been completely lost to the plasmium, encountered as a boss that Hornet describes as an animate husk. Once he's been "killed" (again?), he sprouts the signature dark blue vines associated with plasmium, which bear "leaves" or "petals" precisely resembling luminous, tiny blue butterflies. These eventually sprout into the plasmium-filled "lifeseeds" you can kill to extend your health bar, which may look like bugs, but are described as only "mindless" sacs; obviously the spore-like stage of what is clearly a parasite. Eerily, Zango doesn't react to the needolin while he's animate, but the corpse - or, perhaps, what's growing from the corpse - has its own song:

"To our dead lands... life... the buds must grow....Only a little...Only a spark...Too dark..."

THE PLASMID & PLASMIDAS

"Mutated young worm infected with Plasmium. The new form displays potent regenerative skill. / Pharloom shall quickly learn the curse of this substance. What benefits it provides can be swiftly outweighed."
[Plasmidas] "Large worm mutated heavily by Plasmium. The creature has become fused to the roof of its cave, no longer able to move freely. / In my home caves, when once this substance was allowed to flourish, I saw similar aberrations. This is wonder tainted strong with revulsion."

These are actually mutations of enemies we've seen before; the plasmid still resembles the gromling it used to be, but mostly covered over in pale blue flesh, leaving only a luminous eye and part of the mouth exposed. The mature grom on the other hand is almost unrecognizable, now anchored in place and looking more like a fabulous, goopy blue nudibranch than anything else, bright blue plasmium blisters erupting from its coat of jellylike cilia. Both can spit plasmium that damages, rather than heals, and their own health constantly regenerates.

The spread of plasmium is a relatively minor plot point compared to the disastrous effects of the Citadel's silk, which has so much lore and so many characters attached to it that I didn't feel the topic would even fit in this article without taking too much time out of my life and spoiling the rest of the game. But, it definitely feels like plasmium is gearing up to be a bigger threat in potential future installments, and I'd certainly welcome more plasmoid mutations.

THE DREG HUSKS

"Remains of a Citadel bug possessed by Silk dregs. The husk will lash out wildly with the many sharp pins caught inside its thread -- There is old anguish bound upon these threads, the result of countless cruel procedures."
[Dregwheel] "Living Silk commanding a dead shell... An affront to nature, and one all too common across Pharloom."

What I will review of the "main threat" in this game are these bug exoskeletons animated by living silk, since silk itself is more a "magical element" in this canon than just another physical material. The bugs of the Citadel are behind many weird, arcane experiments with silk as a means of artificially prolonging their lifespans, but as you can tell, it doesn't always go as planned. Despite being "undead husks," they do sing along to the needolin:

"Remember...shell...Why?...again...The shell...I was...Lost...Lost...The pain...forget the pain"

Giving silk this level of mystical significance, tying it into a whole magic system, entities, cults and horrors and a form of basic "life energy," is honestly one of the coolest and thematically logical things you could ever do in a bug-themed setting.

LOAM

"Me can not rest. Us works, and Citadel breathes, and thems above do sing, and all is right. And when us works enough, thems see it... Hrrr... thems see it, and us gets us holy reward... "

Loam is a long-legged, long-necked bug whose mask brings to mind a horse's skull. Loam also single-handedly keeps the Citadel's technology operational by continuously running on a single treadmill, though there presumably used to be many more like him.

Loam is a good boy and nothing ever happens to him.

 

GREYROOT

(SPOILERS FOR WHAT I CONSIDER THE
BEST SIDEQUEST IN EITHER GAME)

"The time... the time of birth approaches. The bud cries. Yearning. The final rite may begin. White shell. Red cloak. Bug strong and old. The time of birth is near. Aid now the final rite. " - Greyroot


In a game full of astronomically threatening presences, Greyroot is still up there as one of the most ominous. They superficially resemble a mostly unremarkable bug-person, wrapped in a cloth shroud that exposes only a bit of maggotlike lower abdomen and a rounded, grey head, with two fleshy tentacles that hang down like "hair" to either side of its black, shiny eyes...but it talks a lot about "bugs" with "hard shells" like that's something else entirely.

The fun begins if you happen to find the "Twisted Bud," a squiggly little baby tentacle-clump lying alone in a cavern of dried, gnarled roots. If you bring this to Greyroot, Greyroot will instantly reveal what it really was all along:

After implanting the larva, Greyroot's purpose is complete, and its entire body petrifies into a wood-like material...exactly like all the "roots" where you found the twisted bud to begin with.

YARNABY

"Do you even know who I am? Why, 'tis the great Yarnaby, genius physician, unfairly outcast, who now towers before you!" - Yarnaby

Yarnaby is a small, utterly darling little fly, entirely different in style from the fly-folk of the Slab, but still distinctly Dipteran. Even with a pair of tiny fangs in place of any visible proboscis, this design is almost exactly a little nubby fruit fly or phorid fly!

Yarnaby is also a MEDICAL PROFESSIONAL with a special interest in parasites, though she takes it as almost an insult if you bother her about common muckmaggots, and she doesn't think plasmium even counts as a problem to be cured. She wants only the most novel, most exciting new specimens to sample, namely an exotic find like the twisted bud. If you want it out, you just have to gather the metal needles necessary to complete her extraction machine, which fortunately won't hurt her a bit!

Yarnaby is exactly the character I'd be if I were in this game, and a doctor, and a lady, and a fly, and felt like a personally ideal note to end this on. I spent several days sorting out this article and still only touched on little over a quarter of the creatures and characters present, but for now, it's good enough, finally going up on December 31st. HAPPY HALLOWEEEEEEEEEEN!

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