# Despair, Serenity, Song and Nobility in "Hollow Knight: Silksong"

Fictional universes are oft defined by what their positive affect feels like and what their negative affect feels like. This is the palette that the story is written using. In the videogame Silksong, the negative affect is a hollow, pointless, loneliness. Every character is a bug, crawling through the dirt, creeping out to see you briefly before they continue attempting to do something with their pointless lives.

![Pebb | Hollow Knight Silksong Wiki](https://hollowknightsilksong.wiki.fextralife.com/file/Hollow-Knight-Silksong/pebb-npc-hollowknightsilksong-wiki-guide-300px.jpg)

*Oh... you've come to hide down here too, then? 'Tis a fearful world out there. If you can keep quiet, I don't mind you joining me.*

They spend the game in religious devotion, attempting to climb to the citadel where they can meet their God. But most die along the way, or go mad and just start to kill anything nearby.

The currency in the game is rosary beads, to be used for prayer.

![Garb of the Pilgrims' quest walkthrough in Hollow Knight: Silksong](https://static0.thegamerimages.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/wm/2025/09/hollow-knight-silksong-hornet-standing-near-dangling-rosary.jpg?q=50&fit=crop&w=383&h=247&dpr=1.5)

You end up killing a lot of these mad pilgrims and taking their Rosaries.

What is the positive affect drawn in? It's a kind of serenity.

![](https://39669.cdn.cke-cs.com/rQvD3VnunXZu34m86e5f/animations/0a67a5fa0f7d358c99eb5ecc00be82c27cb683bc374982c4.gif)

Surrounded by nature.

![moss druid npc hollowknightsilksong wiki guide 300px](https://hollowknightsilksong.wiki.fextralife.com/file/Hollow-Knight-Silksong/moss-druid-npc-hollowknightsilksong-wiki-guide-300px.jpg)

Here's a nice lady cooking a stew that you can help her with.

So between the pointlessness and despair, is an occasional "ah, everything is just fine as it is" of feeling at-home. You can hear a bug just laughing to himself, or singing.

...talking of singing: most people's favorite character is Sherma. He is always singing and hitting his little metal instrument, believing that singing will get him through this difficult journey. While many people around are going crazy and fighting to the death, he just keeps singing. When you occasionally open doors in his way, he remarks on how it's clearly that his singing opened the door, rather than you.

His cute song can be heard [here](https://www.youtube.com/shorts/hopMAK_rddU) (it's like 10 seconds long).

![](https://39669.cdn.cke-cs.com/rQvD3VnunXZu34m86e5f/images/f00b8d501df46bcc3c250371ae07c0e8dffd18609956950f.png)

"Fa-ri-doo-la-see-ma-net  
Do-ni-pwa-nah-vo-li-net  
Pi-nah-so-mi-ma-ni-set  
Da-na-fo-su-lo-bon!"

It's actually the case that every character sings in the game. If you use your needle as a bow along some silk that you have, you play a tune, and every single NPC in the game will sing along in their strange weird voice, and give you a little flavor of what they care about.

* * *

The best thing from Hollow Knight (the original game) was the music. 6 years later I still listen to it regularly. In *Greenpath*, the arpeggiated & plucked strings are delicate and energizing; the bowed melodies are ethereal and pretty; everything is a little magical. *City of Tears* has a similar feeling but the bowed melody is replaced with a woman's voice, open-throated pure-tone. Harmonically these pieces are rarely *arriving* anywhere, just holding, moving slightly, droning. 

But my favorite tune is *Reflection.* This was whenever you'd reach a safe spot and sit to gather yourself. Most places in the game you were at risk of dying, but here things are safe, and it can slow down. Gentle piano chords, a little bowed strings coming ni with a slow tune. This is definitely enhanced because of the association with safety; even today when I hear it, I still just release some tension in my shoulders, and relax a little.

Unfortunately, the music felt quite de-emphasized in the sequel, Silksong. I strongly recommend going into the settings and turning up the music relative to all the other sounds—it's often there but a little quieter.

* * *

The de-emphasis on music almost made me not endorse taking the ~60 hrs it took to complete Silksong. However, I got one thing from it that I didn't get from any other game, and that was a referent for *nobility*.

See, in Hollow Knight, the main character is just sort of a vessel for the game, and never speaks. There are plot-relevant reasons for why this is the case. Anyway, in Silksong, that is markedly not the case, and the main character has a lot to say. She's proud and competent and good.

I think the main way that I noticed this, is that she is wreaking havoc through the land, killing gods that have been powerful for centuries. And yet, when she interacts with individuals along her quest line, she takes care not to upset their lives if it is not mandated. This includes not being pushy with rotten people! Some people are very annoying and demanding and rude and unkind, and yet she does not punish them for this; she is largely polite, because even though she is extremely powerful over them, it is not her place to dictate all of morality everywhere she goes.

Relatedly, she moves on from suffering. At one point she endures great suffering at the hands of others, in order to gain a skill necessary to save the kingdom.

At the end, they say

> ...Alas... spider's child...
> 
> ...Four our ways you will think us harsh... You will think us uncaring, unrepentant...
> 
> ...And so wew must seem, for such is the cost of our wish...

Hornet replies:

> You are wrong, Lady...
> 
> I knew the wish, and the price to achieve it. And now, across these many ages, I have only come to know it better...
> 
> Strength... in mind, in care, in claw. Strength enough that I may live to see a world better than our own, or to craft a world as I desire.
> 
> That was the wish, of my mother, of my mentor, and of you...

And then

> ...Indeed, spider... So much pain you must have passed to speak our hope so simply...

I like that she doesn't take this personally. Yes, she has experienced immense suffering, but she chose to experience that, and she does not now profess a desire to hurt the people who did this to her, and can simply move on from it.

* * *

There is more to say on this game, but I will leave it here because my midnight publishing deadline approaches. I just encourage you to listen to Reflection from the original game for 1 minute 40 seconds, to know the calm that I feel right now.