Crawbugs, the Moors, and Pinstresses
Is Pinstress a bird?
This question has haunted me since October. In trying to answer it, I dove deep, looking into the craws, the moors, any connection to the stilkin, until it ballooned into analyzing every region of Pharloom. And out of that came realizations about the Hearts of Pharloom, a project to look into all the hearts, of which I wrote 2.5 of 4 or 5 parts, and then….dropped off.
For the last month I've been trying to write an analysis of gender in Silksong. But to talk about gender, I have to talk about the vast system of control the Citadel imposes on its people in every aspect of life. And to talk about that, I have to talk about their control of weapons, and what it meant for the Pinstresses, and subsequently those the most like the Pinstresses, the crawbugs…
So yeah I'm never escaping this question. Not until I gather all my findings and post about it.
The short answer is yes* (close enough). The long answer is under this cut. So if you would like to read about the crawbugs, originators of the Order of the Pinstress, please join me for the next 4k words.
To get the silliest and least consequential part out of the way. Which I don't think needs saying but whatever. No crawbugs aren't literally birds. They're bugs like everyone else. Bugs in the same way that Widow is, who gets described as having a spine. They're heavily crow-coded. Crow's in the name (almost). They flap around. They have "beaks" (word actually used in Crawfather's journal entry). They scavenge shiny things. Their vibes impart bird upon them, so I'll call them that XD
To get started for real. I think the craws and pinstresses are related in some way. The tallcraws fight with pins. The squatcraws fight with triple throwing pins, just like Pinstress (though the design of those pins is a bit different, the fighting style matches). Pinstress, Seamstress, and the dead pinstress in Putrified Ducts all have fabric houses on top of balloon-type things, and those balloons are found all throughout Greymoor, especially the right side which is frequented by craws.
To dive deeper into it...
Ragpelt inventory description: Tattered pelt taken from the body of a Crawbug. Fragile and drab, it is considered to have few practical uses. Creige: Course, you'll need to do some pointed persuading if you're planning to separate rag from bug…
Pelt is wording that suggests part of the body. Rag suggests cloth. This isn't the first time Team Cherry has made wings vs clothes vague in character/bug design—moths in Hollow Knight held their wings like cloaks, and I've seen it commonly both for people to think the vessels have cloaks as part of their body and not.
When Hornet collects the ragpelts, it falls from their bodies at death, drifting slowly to the ground. This is in contrast to the wishes where Hornet collects the clothes of pilgrims, where she rips it from their bodies, and the sprite updates to have the body naked. The craws' sprites stay the same during this wish. Is it mere bits of their cloth/wings tearing from their bodies? I can only guess so. The sprite for ragpelt looks more like wings to me, in its shape, and in having a different segment near the top of it where it narrows, possibly where it would attach to the body. But that's also not how the whole "cloth" looks on the craws. The edges of the "cloaks" do flap like wings, but it still doesn't explain the hood portion. I almost wonder if the crawbugs have wings, and then cloth on top of it. Crawfather is an interesting example as he has separate "wing" and "hair" sections.
Tallcraw journal entry: Rag-winged adult crawbug bearing a scavenged pin.
This indicates that their wings do look like rags. So I think it very well may be that the ragpelt truly are the wings. It still makes me ask whether they have cloth on top of that.
Craw Juror journal entry: Screeching scavenger dyed black in mourning at their land's collapse.
All the craws (the young craw enemies specifically I mean) become craw jurors during act 3. They all are dyed black. But once Hornet goes to court and defeats Crawfather, the craws go back to being undyed. Either they have different outfits, or the dye washes out easily from their wings. They live on top a lake where it's constantly raining. I'm a bit dubious on dyeing their actual bodies.
To get into what's explicitly cloth. The whole of the moors has bugs wearing cloth in a similar manner: covering their heads, and continuing down to cover some of their bodies. Note that the moors here include both Greymoor and Sinner's Road (and I think Wisp Thicket):
Benjin (found in Sinner's Road): Us moorbugs gotta eat, don't we? Benjin: It's said the moors used to grow a bounty of fresh food, way back befores that Citadel set us about catchin' their fallin' thread. Mort (found in Far Fields): […] just above are the dreary moors, a place once of abundance lost to falling silt and murky rain.
I talked some more about all this when writing about the Chapel of the Reaper, the connections between these regions and all the farming ties. The transition of a land of much good food, and lots of bamboo (now only found in Wisp Thicket but all the buildings of the moors are built from it), to one where almost nothing grows, only roaches.
Anyway, all these bugs wear cloth, in similar drab colors. Does it come from the same source?
All across Greymoor too are these balloons, that Hornet can bounce on, and also hold up platforms. They are sewn together. And the greatest concentration is the east side of Greymoor, where the craws live.
The pinstresses too use cloth. Obviously, Seamstress is found weaving on a loom, with many weaving/sewing type objects in her house. Pinstress and Seamstress wear hooded cloaks similar to the craws and moorbugs, though in bright colors that are not ragged. There's no reason to think these cloaks are part of their bodies. We see Seamstress modify Hornet's dress to be able to float. Pinstress is able to float with their cloak as can be seen in their fight, though they also seem to flap it a bit to gain some extra height.
The three examples of pinstresses we see all have cloth houses, and balloons beneath them, just like several platforms in Greymoor.
One thing in common between Pinstress, Seamstress, and the crawbugs are their "noses". They all have some sorta proboscises coming from their faces. For the craws though it's longer, and is a lighter color similar to their bodies. I wondered if it was really part of their faces or if it could be something extra. After all, in act 3, the juror craws change to have metal over these proboscises. But there's text addressing it:
Crawfather journal entry: Lord and justice of Pharloom's craws. Delivers death to condemned bugs with his steel-plated beak. Seth: The sharp-faced bugs of these drizzled caves love to swoop and play, don't they?
Seems that beak underneath is real.
So what does it mean for Pinstress and Seamstress? Could they be crawbugs, or are they too different? I thought maybe they could just have more variation because they're actual characters rather than generic enemies. After all, it's true for Crawfather, who is quite unique compared to other craws. But there are other bugs out there with prominent proboscises too. Roachfeeders have them. Stilkin have them.
In fact, the dead pinstress found in Putrified Ducts looks like a stilkin, long proboscis and all, and the clothing looks quite similar.
So I had to investigate. How connected are the Moors and the Bilelands? (I'm borrowing Vog's term here, Bilelands, which she uses to group Bilewater and Sinner's Road together. I'll be using it here to refer to Bilewater and Putrified Ducts though, and I group Sinner's Road into the Moorlands alongside Greymoor and Wisp Thicket).
Right off the bat, we can see they are adjacent, and both wet. The putrid water and its maggots are all throughout the Bilelands, and they spill over into Sinner's Road and a small portion of Wisp Thicket. There are pockets of nice areas still in the Bilelands, like where Shakra's master ended up. Rainy and clean, I have to wonder if Craw Lake was similar to that once.
Also throughout Bilewater is some typical Pharloom architecture (stone statues as built into the roads, the bellway, the benches), alongside some aspects characteristic of Sinner's Road: chains, with platforms and cages hanging from them. This may not be that strange though. The area seems to have been a pilgrim route in the past, at least in the lower areas, and there are pilgrim husks to match. Perhaps goods flowed on the roads too, which could explain why cages ended up there. The Mist looks a lot like Sinner's Road, but when it clears the area is a part of Bilewater. But mm, it's the intersection between those two areas and the Citadel. It may have seen much traffic long ago.
The environments are still quite different, though both degraded. The moors are implied to be chilly (Halfway Home keeps being called warm to contrast with the surroundings), while Bilewater is warm (needolin dialog of some enemies). The moors no longer grow their bounty of food, but long ago I think it was like Wisp Thicket, with just how much its bamboo is used in every Greymoor building. Bilewater is always described as a swamp. I'm sure it was a swamp before, and it still is, even as it's in terrible shape. Even knowing how much it's changed, with the creatures adapting, I don't think it ever would've looked like Greymoor, beyond having some continuity in water supply. Bilehaven has completely different architecture, made of shells and a different type of wood.
The culture more broadly is just different. I think the Greymoor bugs have always been agricultural, in the past using some of the same tools they now use to catch and spool falling thread, farming aphids for nectar, cutting bamboo for buildings, etc. The stilkin seem to be trappers, with nets over the maggot/roach-infested waters, tripwire traps, throwing stakes, etc. They probably have some dietary overlap with the moorbugs now eating roaches, but their approach to getting the meat is quite different. Plus the stilkin are all wearing leafy clothes.
The pinstress houses, while being made like Greymoor architecture, do all have different platforms around them. Seamstress has bamboo just like in Greymoor (and not like the different type of bamboo growing in Far Fields that the ants build out of). The dead pinstress's house not only has platforms around it like are found in Bilehaven, but the exposed supports of the house are made of the same material. Pinstress's house has platforms around it made out of some unique type of material that only seems to exist there and at Grindle's hideout (local Blasted Steps material I suppose). The bottoms of the supports are visible and seem to be made of the same stuff. Seamstress's house actually has pointy spines sticking out the bottom (like giant versions of the hoker spines I suppose). I can only guess that the three pinstresses either carried just the cloth with them to set up their houses, or built the houses entirely on location (Seamstress has a loom, after all). Er, besides the fact that Seamstress brought bamboo with her.
I just wonder about it as I try to puzzle out the pinstress's origins. Pinstress's dialog admitting to being in Blasted Steps due to being able to hide from the Citadel there? I'm sure they are not native to that area. Seamstress I'm guessing is from Greymoor, due to the bamboo. The dead pinstress I'm not so sure. They don't seem to be a stilkin exactly. The bottom of their body paler and striped as opposed to solid black like the stilkin. But they have the long proboscis, a similar outfit, and even made the wreath of purity, presumably out of local materials (reed and leaf). Then again I could ask if the stilkin even need such an object (are they immune to the maggots, or are they really really good at repelling them? maybe their whole outfit repels the maggots).
Dead pinstress needolin: Must we hide? / Dear sisters... / Revered by all... / Feared by all...
That pinstress's needolin dialolg indicates that no matter their origin, their current location was one of hiding. With all the evidence, I think this dead pinstress was not a native of the Bilelands, or at least wasn't a stilkin, but still had strong knowledge of the local environment. The strongest ties for the pinstresses, as far as I can tell, are still to Greymoor. And among those in Greymoor, the pinstresses have visual similarities in body and clothing to many, but as far as their practices, they are closest to the crawbugs.
Right? With their balloons and their pins? Shared between crawbugs and pinstresses? So we can conclude Pinstress is a bird???
Craw journal entry: Screeching scavenger that roosts high in caverns and preys on passing pilgrims. Tallcraw journal entry: Rag-winged adult crawbug bearing a scavenged pin. Crawbug needolin: Shiny, shiny, all for us! / Our nest! Our clan! / Swoop and scratch... / Crack their shells... / Our caves! Our land! / Take their treasures!
The craws are scavengers! In light of this, is anything truly the craws? Do they steal all their weapons? Are they even associated with all those balloons?
The "watermound" they live in (the game's term, not a real English word), on Craw Lake, has dead moorbugs in it. The balloons are primarily found in craw areas, but they can be found above the windmills on the western side too, where craws aren't. Do the craws have any true association with any of this? Did they just move into a preexisting area, building nests on top of other structures?
…
Let's talk about Pharloom, societal control, and pins.
The Citadel is a place that exerts control over the people of Pharloom. The people have no choice but to serve in their roles, often overworking. Faith promises them a reward, if they can work hard enough, or be lucky enough to make pilgrimage it to the top...but they probably won't. But not everyone is within that system. Peoples like the Karakians (if I can call them that), the Verdanians, the Skarr….and yes, the Order of the Pinstress:
Hornet: Then this is not a place of hiding? That Citadel up top seems no friend to the free, or the strong who'd choose to remain apart. Pinstress: ...Aye. Well, yes. That too's a reason, though one that shames me some. Our grand Citadel learnt well from the training of Pinstresses past. Then it went and turned those teachings upon us! Despite our superior skills, our numbers have always been few, and their strength overwhelmed. Of my once revered order, only two of us remain, wormed away in Pharloom's forgotten corners, and my pin-sibling, she's lost herself to more peaceable pursuits.
The Citadel doesn't let anyone outside its control carry weapons:
Horned Pilgrim, in Bone Bottom: Sister, sister! What is that long, gleaming tooth you carry with you? Is it a weapon? […] Alas... for a pilgrim, that's sin you speak of, sister. Shakra at Mount Fay: When I first encountered them, I had little respect for the weak, rag-bundled bugs. Too cowardly to even carry a weapon!
There are a few in the Citadel's control that have weapons, if they rise high enough in the ranks:
Chorister journal entry: Disciple of the Choir, elevated above other pilgrims, and forced to cowl their face forever more. Reed journal entry: Disciple of the Choir, charged to maintain its perfect order, by sharp pin if necessary.
All of the Citadel bugs that cowl their faces, the ones who carry pins, have different needolin dialog than the Citadel pilgrims (though veiled bugs also include others like surgeons and not just fighters). They are set apart. The sentinels too fight. And Second Sentinel displays the same charge attack as Pinstress, a giant X across the screen. I wouldn't be surprised if that's a direct example of what the Citadel learned from the Pinstresses.
It's recounted how it used to be:
Pinstress: Your needle there might fit you fair, strange as it is'n all, but it's the pin that's the glorious weapon of Pharloom. Pinstress journal entry: Blade maiden of a once renowned warrior sect, survived long beyond the rest of her order. Dead pinstress needolin: Must we hide? / Dear sisters... / Revered by all... / Feared by all… Pinstress act 1/2 needolin: The flurried dance of blades swung swift… / Warriors proud in battle's midst… / An order lost of maidens fair… / Lethal talents beyond compare… / I remember you... My sisters passed… / You were the finest... bravest... caste…
Even with the order gone, Pinstress still describes pins as the weapons of Pharloom. It seems the order was well known in its time. But it's all but gone now. The Citadel took them out almost entirely.
The Citadel tried to take out Seamstress too. Seamstress says she left the way of the pin, but clearly she still defends herself, as evidenced by the pin in Fourth Chorus. It's unknown what happened to the dead pinstress but I think it's a safe guess to say the Citadel at least contributed to their death, and the deaths of many others of the Order.
What does this mean for the crawbugs? Quoting these again:
Craw journal entry: Screeching scavenger that roosts high in caverns and preys on passing pilgrims. Tallcraw journal entry: Rag-winged adult crawbug bearing a scavenged pin. Crawbug needolin: Shiny, shiny, all for us! / Our nest! Our clan! / Swoop and scratch... / Crack their shells... / Our caves! Our land! / Take their treasures!
I find all this quite strange. If the crawbugs are getting everything from the pilgrims...how would they have so many pins? In a land where it's considered sinful to wield a weapon, and the authorities may even hunt you down for owning them? Where could the craws possibly even get all those pins?
Crawbell description: Nest fashioned from an old bell. Once set up, young Craws will occasionally roost within, filling the bell with shell shards and rosaries.
I wonder if primarily the craws are stealing other things like those shell shards and rosaries. But. Let's say for argument's sake they do steal all their pins. Even then, how would they learn to use them? Where would all their techniques come from?
Pinstress shows us an example of how a pinstress fights. They have two types of pins, one with a hooked end, and one with a spherical end. The latter looks like the pins the roachfeeders carry. (Judges and guardflies also have weapons with spherical ends, but they don't look as similar.)
But those pins of Pinstress are also thrown in groups of three, just like squatcraws do. I believe those are the only enemies to fight in such a way besides Pinstress. Also gotta mention the tallcraws here fighting with pins in a similar manner to Pinstress.
All across Pharloom, very few fight with pins. Lace and Phantom do. Certain Citadel bugs do. Seth does, appointed shrine guardian by the Citadel. Plinney works with pins, but we never see anyone around him using them (there are pins alongside dead bugs in the Widow arena, but that's a mystery for another time). Most bugs using some kind of weapon are instead using tools. The tools might be pin-like, but they are typically not identical to the kind seen for weapons. Once the bugs became Haunted, they started using the tools as weapons.
Pilgrim Hiker journal entry: Hard-shelled bug with a climber's pin. Their pin, once aid, has become a weapon, though the bug is unrefined in its use. Underloft journal entry: The worker's twistpins, once tools of repair, now serve as spun projectiles. Roachcatcher journal entry: Short, nimble bug who uses barbed bolas to keep beasts corralled and caged. Roachfeeder journal entry: The feeder's curled pin looks designed to keep ravenous roaches at bay, and the tender from turning into the meal. Silk snipper journal entry: Scissor-wielding bug charged to cut and spool fallen dregs of Silk for return to the Citadel above. Thread Raker journal entry: Tall bug charged to pile Silk dregs in preparation for respooling. Their sharp rake now doubles equally well as a stabbing weapon.
I've compiled a bunch of weapon examples. The underworkers use tools. The moorbugs (center) use tools. The dockworkers use tools. The pilgrims mostly use instruments. Bugs from distinct civilizations (Skarr, Karakians) have weapons but they're not pins. Stilkin may have made their weapons for fighting and not just trapping, but still it's not pins. The pondcatchers (highlighted in green) use pins but attached to a pole to hunt. Roachfeeders (yellow), judges (magenta), and guardflies (red) I've put here for comparison to Pinstress's throwing pins…only the roachfeeders come close I think. But again, the roachfeeders use their pins to control the roaches, tools for their jobs, not intended for fighting other intelligent bugs originally.
This leaves the crawbugs as the only group in all of Pharloom associated with pins, alongside higher ranking Citadel bugs, and the Order of the Pinstress. Though these three are different types of groups—one government-assigned (Citadel bugs), one a group that any could join presumably, as long as they were skilled (Pinstresses), and one...a whole species. I can only think that as a whole people the craws have a strong martial culture. We can see examples of that in Shakra's people, in Hallownest's mantises. In the Verdanians, in the Karakians. But none of them used pins except the craws.
Bilehaven lore tablet: Hate for their light. Hate for their pins. For their waste poured thick and endless. Fill your hearts with hate, for power has now been claimed, and with it we shall punish.
Even the stilkin, as ready to fight as they are, reject pins as associated with the Citadel.
Shakra in eastern Greymoor: Heed a warning, many fierce bugs roost nearby. On the lake beyond this cave nest a ragged horde atop an old watermound. Their mastery of flight makes them dangerous. My shell will forever carry the score of their pins.
(another line here associating crawbugs and pins) (also the source of that "watermound" term)
One more thing before I reach some conclusions. I do think the crawbugs are associated with Greymoor. I mean obviously they lived there. But I had to ask the question upon learning they were scavengers how much anything at all is associated with them, like the buildings and balloons.
Crawbug needolin: Shiny, shiny, all for us! / Our nest! Our clan! / Swoop and scratch... / Crack their shells... / Our caves! Our land! / Take their treasures!
The crawbugs seem to think it's theirs, from their needolin dialog. The lake they live on/around is named after them too, Craw Lake. The "watermound" is heavily used by them, and they hold court there. It's possible they didn't make the building, but even if they didn't, it's the heart of their society now. And if they didn't make it, I don't know where else they would've come from. And even as scavengers, they're not like the snitchbugs. They have a much more organized society. I'm not sure you can say they always were scavengers (though being so crow coded, maybe they did always love shinies….)
So with all this evidence…
I think the crawbugs are the originators of the Order of the Pinstress. The Pinstresses are heavily associated with Greymoor and its architecture. Whether or not the craws made that architecture, they live there. And culturally, the overlap is extremely strong between the craws and the Pinstresses.
In my heart, Pinstress is a bird. Using slightly more of my mind, they might not be, okay. But I kinda don't care. Their exact species matters less to me than what defines Pinstress most, the order they belong to, and that is very bird in this world.
The Order may have started with the craws, and grown beyond just that species, with not all Pinstresses being crawbugs, and not all crawbugs being Pinstresses (After all, Pinstresses are referred to as sisters and there are male craws like Crawfather) (And plus the entire species of craws wasn't hunted down unlike the Pinstresses). Even so I wonder if close association ended up hurting the craws. They use pins outside Citadel control. And they are treated like garbage. The Memorium has them in cages as if they were unintelligent bugs. The Sinner's Road chefs have them pickled (granted they seem to pickle any bug, intelligent or not, no matter their origin). Creige speaks of them like they're nothing more than vermin and wants to make a scarecraw from their own body parts. But crawbugs are clearly intelligent with their own culture. They have their own language (Seth remarks that he wished he could understand), though at least some speak some of Pharloom's common language (giving Hornet a written summons to court). And yeah they have a whole court, meaning they have laws.
I have to wonder, were they more integrated with the other Greymoor bugs, and wider Pharloom (though still with distinct culture, as any region in Pharloom), but the change in the Citadel's attitudes broke them away from the rest of Pharloom? Or were they always more separate, like the Skarr, and relations worsened from there? I favor the latter just because of the language barrier. Regardless, they do have several similarities with the surrounding moorbugs, even as the relations between craws and the surrounding bugs are quite poor in the present.
…
And that's it! I hope you all enjoyed this long journey. The rest of this is just random evidence that wasn't as crucial and I didn't know how to fit in. It will be a bit rambly
Crull and Benjin's house looks like a craw's. If you made craw nests big. I can't say I know exactly what this means, as I think it's the only example of this. Maybe it doesn't mean anything, as there's at least one other example of thatch being used (on top of the windmills). So there has to exist such natural material, which the craws could also collect completely independently. But it does get me how twiggy the inside of Crull and Benjin's house looks (easier to see in the raw assets over a screenshot).
The craws wear metal crowns on their heads in act 3, that look like various objects around the moorlands. This thing in Sinner's Road (screenshot), the similar crown on roachkeepers, the spinning spiked wheels to pogo off inside the windmills, the tools used by dreg catchers. All similar things that are round and spiky. Scavenged, or part of their culture? Both? I don't know, but they sure had a lot of that on hand in act 3.
Crawfather too has barbed wire as is common in Sinner's Road.
Some other bugs have hoods. The underworkers, undersweeps. I may just have been overthinking the hood thing in my discussions earlier, when it's part of the varieties worn by the common bug.
Saw this post by @meepnesscombat just a couple days ago wondering if anyone had posted on all this. The post compares Pinstress dead sleeping on Mount Fay next to a dead craw and the posing is pretty identical.
The craws can go many places around the map to give the court summons (attached to a pin, I might add). As far as Far Fields, Shellwood, and Bilewater. So despite living on the east side of Greymoor, they clearly travel around.
When I was researching I struggled greatly to understand what the moors are exactly. The word seems to be primarily British as far as I can tell, and what moors are has come up with multiple definitions:
rocky uplands
hills
overgrazed land that's degraded
land with poor soils
land with poor drainage
peatland
marshy lowlands
wastelands
grassland
places full of heath (admittedly I barely know what heath is)
I saw definitions that said moorland is a result of massive deforestation and not a natural environment. I saw definitions saying it was good for farming. I saw definitions that said it was bad for farming. I saw definitions saying that it had to be farmed or else it would return to woodland. I saw some areas called moors that were set aside as nature reserves and banned from farming. I asked and Australian if the word was used in Australia, and they didn't really think so. The best I can understand is it's a British word with centuries-old roots that's changed throughout time and now it's just accumulated vibes of contradictory flavors. If anyone knows more properly what moors are and which flavor of moor Greymoor is I'd love to hear your thoughts. I collected ALL MENTIONS of Greymoor's environment. Uh. It is called wasted, no longer able to provide food but roaches, very wet, dreary/gloomy, chilly, and has hills. Fits some of those definitions
