Some lore of every tool: Compass
A compass carved out of bone and shell, the shape makes me think of Mossmir, their 4 limbs also coinciding with the cardinal claws, but considering the shell's color and the fact that the whole tribe can make them, and the fact that Shakra parts with her own instead of crafting a new one for Hornet, makes me wonder if it's made out of a Golpeni's shell; could also just be that the crafting technique can be applied to any kind of shell, and Shakra simply doesn't have extra material at the moment, or it could be that Golpeni and Mossmir are rather similar
To track not just the cardinal directions inplied by the claws, but also the vertical directions of the kingdoms, I imagine this compass balances itself on the stinger, maybe by spinning it like a spinning top, or like a gyroscope
Or maybe it moves into one's location on a map like a spinning top over a Ouija board? I'd like to think it's just a normal tool, unlike the other, more explicitly magic compass, and Hornet has the sense of direction to make use of it
A map can be a useful thing, but it alone won't show you where you are. If you've not the head for directions, I suggest purchasing a compass from my wife, Iselda.
Highly recommended! If you're having trouble finding your way in the maze of ruins below us, try this charm. It will pinpoint your location on the map. Incredibly helpful for finding your bearings in unfamiliar locations!
Curious that they both even have a cardinal set, but considering they don't have a needle pointing out any specific direction, maybe they're just meant to be a reference and measure simply representing left, right, front and back, and not North South West East
I wonder if the compass, being made out of shell, takes advantage of the former bug's instinctual sense of direction; maybe some bugs have traces of magnetite they can use to navigate vast distances, like irl migratory birds
We know Shakra's tribe is located at Pharloom's edge, and it seems it is some sort of plain, maybe something like Far Fields
But these lands, Pharloom… My nest-plains I once saw so grand, now they become small. A place for birth, and growing, but a place too narrow to live a bug's life full.
Her tribe seems to put much of their identity into the golden color of their shells, seeing the color of the compass, of one of the markers, of her rings and of her master's balls
The compass (yellow cardinal directions) seems to also be the icon of yellow tools
What path did Shakra take?
How come Shakra knows the cage is down there?
Hornet immediately wakes up and binds after falling all the way down, as evidenced by the needle still falling down when the camera fades in
I guess there's the time spent unconscious alongside the Chapel Maid, but Shakra doesn't comment on having seen Hornet before, not even from afar
So there's some looney tunes "looping around each other" going on where Shakra at the very least updates the map after Hornet has already fallen down there and then gets ahead without meeting, possibly making use of the z axis (there's a number of bridges in the background of Moss Grotto, and some pilgrim corpses showing they were somewhat transited)
At least we can see she didn't visit the Moss Druid, which makes sense, wall of Silk and all
Shakra is found beneath the Bellway; she seems to avoid large amounts of Silk, yet she has mapped both sides of it, despite the shrine being locked from the other side; did she map the Marrow before the Bell Beast became ensnared?
"Fragile foundations" yet barely any changes to the map in act 3 lol
Fun fact the Marrow map sprite is called generic, but the Docks one is the one used as generic map icon in the inventory
She explored the Docks quite throughoutfully, only stopped at locked or walled dead ends; was she looking for a way to progress, with the shrine's exit gate locked off? couldn't she just hit the lever?
Shakra doesn't comment on Lace, either because she didn't let herself be seen, or because she only arrived after Shakra was done mapping
Shakra relishes battle, yet she avoids paths she considers to lead to traps; it seems she didn't wanto to risk the Skarr path, or going past Fourth Chorus
Shakra, you look well at home in these wilds.
This line by Hornet further implies the similarity between Shakra's home plains and Far Fields
Another well maped area, only the door stopped her; I'll address the pilgrim path in another tool
Shakra explores Hunter's March shortly before you beat Widow at the latest, and seems to still be in the middle of exploring it if Hornet hasn't yet reached the midlands
Shakra got her ass beat in Craw Lake, so she didn't explore the upper half of Greymoor
She was able to jump up to the bell shrine though, or at least identify it from a distance
She only mapped the floor of Bellhart
It seems Bellhart is the heart of the bellveins, the core from which they extend outwards into the rest of Pharloom; curious then that there are bellways higher than it, suggesting the countless bells were placed purposefully instead of simply being discarded failures
Fun how the dead ends correspond to areas without a Bellway: Wormways, western and eastern Underworks, Verdania and Pharloom's Bay
I wonder if pilgrims carrying bells got them from the bellways
She didn't get close to Sister Splinter's nest, makes sense
She also marked the room where Greyroot is, but didnt mark Greyroot's "hut", curious
Avoided going into the path towards Pinstress or beyond west of the bellway, wonder why
Avoided going into Lugoli's kitchen or to Styx's nest; was she put off by something?
Charting the heights of this great mount would prove a mighty challenge. For now, I have seen only its base. Once I have completed the search for my master, I would like to return and attempt the climb in full.
For some reason I get the impression that Shakra only climbed so far then fell down the chasm right into the freezing water, then immediately returned to her provisional camp to heat up and draw the map
Did she circumvent the Slab somehow to get here? there's a number of areas she could have only reached from the Z axis, judging by her maps
Shakra did the whole treck, save for where corpora clusters blocked further exploration...except that the path to the right of where she can be found, mapped here, is blocked by coral nuts; did they get there after she passed through?
She may have gone through before Enraged Conchfly returned, or maybe the creature only really had reason to appear to and fight with Hornet
I wonder if she just jumped to the side of the bridge to go down, unlike Hornet who has to blast a hole through it with a massive stalactite; damn z axis privilege
The Stilkin territory, and by extension where her master is found, isn't marked of course, it makes sense; it looks like she got to the bench room and sussed out the trap, considering she didn't take the bench...or maybe she simply never sits in benches to begin with
The place where she can be found, it has a huge, closed, stone door...surely there isn't some sort of Sea of Sorrow behind it
Ok, with Shakra done we can finally look at the other maps
I absolutely love the Citadel models holding the maps of each of its areas, it's such a cool detail, how you can see not only the cymbal for inserting payment but also the notch from which the chart comes out
You have the standard model, with normal parchment for the Grand Gate and the Choral Chambers, the gilded (or perhaps a bit worn down?) parchment of the High Halls, the mossed up parchment of the Memorium, and finally the cobweb covered parchment of the Cradle
Then, you have the wider version of the Whispering Vaults, with unusual antique looking legs and pretty brown parchment (presumably worn down by age), and the Whiteward, with both the machine and the badge being made silvery to match Silk, even the parchment is a pure white
Seeing the difference in size, perhaps these models aren't each one depicting the whole Citadel, but rather the specific subsection they hold the map of
Maybe these badges weren't just for binding the maps but actually meant to go with the garbs recently arrived pilgrims would wear to join the Choir
I wonder how much missing of these maps is simply the result of weathering down vs purposefully hiding stuff from the average bug
You'll notice I included two unused versions of these models, one without the glass dome, which allows a better look at the inside, and another with a smaller base, which both me and my ko-fi supporters found so cute I decided to try and make it in blender
For someone that is a complete amateur in Blender, I must admit it came out pretty good, just don't think about what topology this could have
I love cogwork so much, I wish the Cogwork Core was bigger, and it was planned to get bigger, like, in universe
I have pointed out before that you can spot places in the surroundings and peripherical rooms of the Core where the Cogwork is being expanded outwards, replacing the architecture, consuming it, and the design of the map in the token you get further suggests only the central tower was in the initial blueprints, with the other rooms being later additions
I guess the raw map still has those other rooms, so maybe the full map is just folded within that token? still feels purposeful though; I wonder if these token-maps were meant for Cogmatons, or for regular workers
The march of progress has even begun breaking down the wooden shelves of the Whispering Vaults, as some can be seen turned into nothing more than hazardous wood splinters near the Core-Vault connection, corresponding with the newer segment of the corridor
Perhaps, with time, Cogwork would consume and replace the whole Citadel, then eventually collapse completely as malfunctions accumulate
No traces of it are left, save for maybe the silk syphon room in Whiteward (which is perfectly aligned with it), but the Core likely was once the oldest part of the Citadel, and where most Weaver stuff would've been, before being remodelled with Cogwork
We only get one half of the Underworks in the raw map, and fittingly, the blueprint is ripped in half (an attempt at withholding information from the underworkers?); I can kinda make out the map out of the sprite
Another blueprint is found in Putrified Ducts, surprisingly surrounded by bugs that look like underworkers but with Choir white robes (they don't even have eyebags!); this suggests the ducts went rotten before the Underwork's current modus operandi was set up
The sprite is odd, it isn't accurate to the raw map we get at all, and seems to be depicting Huntress' hut when flipped; it makes even less sense if you try to see it as the Swampstress hut or the Bellway
If you watched this video, you already know what's going on here
Both rune-maps use the same set of sprites, but two of those sprites depict the two maps separately, with some minor inconsistencies: the Atla rune depicts the "scroll archive" room while the raw map doesn't, and the Abyss rune depicts not only the weavenest missing in the raw map, but also more paths than there is in game, towards the Abyss escape sequence, possibly now collapsed routes
It's curious that the Abyss rune map is still active, unlike the Atla one which needs to be restarted alongside the rest of the Weavenest; either that room has its own power core, or it has been active for shorter than the time Atla and Murglin have been abandoned
This, alongside the (admitedly iffy) presence of the diving bell in the map, and the escape route (littered throughout with the remains of multiple Weaver teleporters / elevators) ending on the Deep Docks praying shrine, further places Absolom as one of if not the most recent Weavenest, even if its own power station is completely destroyed, possibly from a void related incident
These sure got a pretty good map of the Slab, I wonder if this bug really was moved around all those rooms by their jailor, or if they managed to find and hastily copy part of one like the unused sprite I've included in the image
Unlike the other unique maps, this one's visuals don't really match any part of the map; wether it matches an old version of the map during development, or it's just random lines, I cannot tell
They sure had a decent progress in their escape attempt, all things considered; it seems they were aiming to escape through right above the entry bridge, towards the Citadel (maybe there's a second bridge offscreen up there? judging by the massive chain that is just gone in the bridge); a bit foolish, but I guess it's a decent plan if you still think you can live in the Citadel and want to avoid the cold of Mount Fay or the harshness of Karak or the Steps; no idea how they plan to get past the metal fence though
Verdania...nothing noteworthy about this map's origin, just a pilgrim camp that found its way here before getting trapped and dying out; only the accessible path is mapped out, which does implies they came through Craw Lake before the cave-in
