WHEAOW

bonus old gijinka:

morpho books

figure drawing for all it's worth (+ creative illustration)

framed ink

will eisner comics and sequential art

will eisner graphic storytelling and visual narrative

understanding comics (+ making comics)

folder of various animation production art

burne hogarth drawing dynamic hands

perspective for comic book artists

michael mattesi force drawing

the animator's survival kit

color and light james gurney

this might be half the reason I started this series in the first place

Of course, we gotta start with the ruined tool

We can observe that at least one of the two claws used to hold the tool to Hornet's arm is disjointed, both the top plate and the spool are broken, and is overall pretty worn down, likely oxidized from the salt water nearby

We can see it has a chamber for canisters and two prongs, forming a channel

This tool can be repaired in three different places

"We can reforge the weapon" "With our own moldings"

Despite being able to reforge the spool into a functional state, she doesn't reforge the broken plating

Is the material too strong for her forge? or does the plate have something to it that can't be easily replicated?

Of course, she instead replaces the two plate segments with what she knows best: bells, perhaps with some inner carved runes, hymns to get the tool working as intended, or perhaps she doesn't

The result is a silkshot (silk + slingshot) with quite the meaty projectile

Huh, how curious, it looks like the shell canister is used as both an anchor around which a bundle of silk is spun and as a way to transfer kinetic energy to that bundle

The ring added to the end of the spool allows for a strong grip, needed for a heavier pull back

I also just now realized the two bottom prongs may serve not just to guide the "bullet" but also as anchors for the tension of the "slingshot" action

The silk bundle reminds me greatly of this Clawmaiden attack

Now, let's check with the architect

Even the skilled architect calls it an intricate artifact

Being more familiar with the craft of the First Children, they give it a plating closer to that of the original, but not the original plating; the spool is also completely replaced by cog and the smaller plate is reallocated as trigger

An understandable decision, as they do not possess a forge on their workshop

I do wonder thought, do they have red lacker hanging around? or is Hornet secretly carrying her own?

The resulting silkshot is one with revolver action born from the cog, allowing rapid fire of three projectiles

Once again, the now leaner canisters act as guide-seed for a more focused bundle of silk, no doubt because of the leaner plating

I'm noticing a pattern here

But this is still a far cry of the original silkshot, even beyond the fact that the spool was completely changed, so the questions asked with Forge Daughter remain

And like with Forge Daughter, they may or may have not etched runes into the plating to keep it from not blowing up

Finally, the original

Honestly, this one merits its own video (recorded by a friend, as I still don't have a save with it)

Well, that's a fucking laser, nothing like the bullets discussed before

...Or is it? the shot leaves a trail of dregs, the "smoke" is also a trail of even finer dregs, and it works with poison, which is also visible in the trail

Now, before I show screenshots of what's actually happening in there to reveal its secrets, and I've already said enough to gesture at the truth, let's look at an enemy from the area which has this exact same attack

Gotta love clever names like these, "service/servant + rotor"="servitor", "boran" from "bore" as in boring through the rock, drilling tunnels

"Able to fire a focused beam of silklight"

"Silklight? what the hell is that? the light from silk? that's just soul! silklight...fancy ass"

At face value, it just looks like this oversized lamp is focusing its light, likely made out of soul, into a beam

And you can actually see it focusing soul from its surroundings before firing, with the beam leaving a trail of soul particles afterwards

My first thought was that TC wanted to avoid using "soul" as a term as much as possible to make the final act 2 wish more impactful

But then I looked closer

Well, that's straight up a rune (or at the very least a spider's web) being shot

And yes, the silkshot uses this exact asset too

here are the raw sprites

Well that sure is silklight alright, silk shot in a stream at lightning speed, most definetively with the aid of a weaver rune etched into the now repaired plating, making it into essentially a high speed version of some silk skills, like an arrow in a rail gun

Fun fact the arrow looking sprite is called "web_shot_rail_beam_end0000"

The spiderweb-like impact is called "web_shot_rune_flash"

The shell canisters are called "Web_Shot_Bullets__0000_shot_casing_forge", "Web_Shot_Bullets__0001_shot_casing_architect" and "Web_shot_railgun_0000_casing"

So yes, this isn't a ray gun, but a rail gun, one powered with runes

Here's some of Hornet's spells as examples, with both sharp dart and silk spear using the needle as guide like how silkshot uses shell canisters (the pale nails here are enhanced by shaman crest, as indicated by the presence of blue tinted runes)

So the etchings of the plating segments would be something like...

Honestly, not one rune we see felt like a perfect fit (closest ones are still pale nails and silkspear though), so I made a custom design for fun

Doing this realized the two prongs probably are also etched with runes

It is also cute how the Boran lower body shares design elements with the silkshot, with the lil legs looking like the two claws that hold the tool to the arm

...and only after drawing and adding this do I notice the fine lines within the plating in the blueprint

This is probably missing detail because of how small it is on the screen ingame, runes are a lot more complex up close

I still gotta discuss the material of the weapon and the stuff regarding its original creation, but once again Tumblr's 30 images limit forces me to split the rest of it into a reblog

I mean, what we're given at face value is more than enough, neither of the two is entirely familiar with weaver craft, even if Architect knows more about it, so they adapt what they know to it, and in the case of Architect they may be bound to crafting in a specific way from their directive, and Hornet finds a blueprint

But I think there's more to it, like how I mentioned the deep docks forge may not have been enough to reforge the plating

So let's look at both workshops

Both have a desk and curious tools mounted on articulated arms, and the Mt Fay one has the blueprint yes, but also a shelf

The shelf might've had spare parts, it is likely even, but I think there's more to this still

The tool in the arm looks similar to the silkshot and to the whiteward scalpel needles used to suture bugs (you can even see a spool in both), and the tip also looks like on of the thin unplugged pipes in Eva's room

They also remind me of an ink pen, solding pen, and a laser cutter

So yes, I think these tools are laser cutters (although the way of function would be more like a waterjet cutter), suturing-solding tools and rune inscribing all in one, perfect for making, repairing and restoring rune inscribed tools made out of hard metals

It's curious how pale, silvery looking the tip of the whiteward scalpels are, and how similar they are to the bottom section of the silkshot, but I'll cover that when I write about the injection band

It is also quite curious how pale the original silkshot looks once repaired, as if made of pale ore

With the confirmation of ancient masks being made of pale ore, it becomes immediately obvious both that ancient masks and soul vessels from the first game as well as silk spools are made out of pale ore too, and the reason pale ore was used was not just because of being a hard, resistant material, but also because it can channel soul and even contain it depending on how you use it, possibly even self-repair with it in the right circumstances (the way fragments automatically join to form the full artifact, and the masks getting restored when focusing/binding)

It seems weavers had access to great amounts of pale ore to make spools with, and doing so as opposed to using normal ones (and placing them at the core of larger spools of seemingly more standard material) only makes sense if they had special properties like naturally / automathically spooling the silk, preserving it for longer than a normal spool, or straight up creating silk on its own from raw soul

Notice how spool fragments glow (also mentioned in dialogue) and constantly emanate a mist of fine dregs

Why can't we get spool fragments out of every weaver spool we can break? well, it's possible not all of them had one inside, but I find more likely that most of them got stained / rusted, just like the silkshot

Because yes, not only pale ore can break (mask shards are proof enough), we also see it stain and rust

So yeah, if they had so much pale ore to make spools with, it wouldn't surprise me if they also used it for tools and guns and more

"Ok that's an awful amount of famous "rare metal" pale ore" well there's a few possibilities here

Rare when compared with other metals

Rare now, after it has been throughoutfully mined by either ancient civilizations or by order of the Pale King himself

Rare in Hallownest, not in Pharloom

Mount Fay, obviously a Weaver mining site and holy ground, is the jackpot of jackpots when it comes to pale ore

a combination of all of these on varying levels

In steel soul we even get to see a huge chunk of the material, larger than any seen in Hallownest

So to summarize, Hornet can only repair the silkshot fully in Mt Fay because

the workshop up there is the only place where a blueprint of the tool remains

the tool is made out of pale ore, a material that is hard to work with and requires incredible talent as a nailsmith or the right advanced tools

it is inscribed with likely forgotten weaver runes, which may require to be woven into the material with silk, or at the very least engraved with great precision

on top of the blueprint, the workshop also has the right tool for solding the pieces back together and to inscribe the right runes the right way, and / or spare pieces to replace the broken ones

Now, why the hell is the ruined tool in Bilewater when the blueprint is in Mt Fay???

It's clear that Weavenest Murglin was the main workshop where the silkshots were built, not brought

Servitor Boran obviously uses the same technique, and the crafting tools must by necessity be older than the silkshot

I got two proposals for the timeline of events:

The Mount Fay mining operation had been going on for a while, Boran having been designed and built quite a while ago; Murglin came to Mt Fay to study the Boran and try to figure out a way to make the design more compact in order to be used as a portable weapon, "strenght enough to keep us free"; issue with this idea is that you'd expect Murglin to bring the blueprint back to her nest, instead of using the first finished silkshot as a reference to build more and just leave the blueprint back there for no reason

Before mining began in Mt Fay, Murglin crafted the silkshot, using the crafting tools (weaverune pen?) at her desk as reference; at some point after its completion, she moved to the top of Mt Fay with the blueprint to adapt the design to the common servitor for the purposes of large scale mining; they'd be needing a whole lot of ore and stone for the building of the Citadel, after all

Was Murglin hoping to have all her sisters come together and gun down GMS? was there a conflict with the citadel bugs where they wanted to overthrow the Weavers, and they at first tried to keep the status quo by force before eventually handing down the rule to the conductors? were these meant for the Cindril Weavers before their departure? were outside forces, such as the steel assassins, compromising Weavers freedom?

Whichever way it was, I think there's one thing clear: the Mt Fay workshop was built at the summit in hopes of being blessed by the Fayform with insight

morpho books

figure drawing for all it's worth (+ creative illustration)

framed ink

will eisner comics and sequential art

will eisner graphic storytelling and visual narrative

understanding comics (+ making comics)

folder of various animation production art

burne hogarth drawing dynamic hands

perspective for comic book artists

michael mattesi force drawing

the animator's survival kit

color and light james gurney