#lore horror

You might be wondering why Mercurial Knight’s ability to change into liquid mercury even matters. He is Mercurial Knight Cookie, after all. That’s kind of his thing. 

Well, here’s the problem: technically, it shouldn’t be possible to begin with. 

Let’s start from the beginning: Who is Mercurial Knight Cookie? 

Mercurial Knight Cookie was released on February 7th, 2024 for the second half of the Secrets of the Silver Kingdom update. He’s an Epic Charge cookie, and the general of the Silver Knights who defend the Silver Tree in the Silver Kingdom. (Which… technically isn’t a kingdom because there is no king, only a Guardian by the title of Elder, which may also just… be his name(?) possibly. Not to mention it’s called four separate names by canon materials depending on whether it’s feeling political, ecological, magical, or just particularly indecisive that day, but we don’t need to get into that rant right now. For the sake of everyone’s sanity, we are going with the Silver Kingdom for today—the name of the actual update—and moving on.) His ability is called Mercurial Knight’s Oath, and fun fact! It has an extra buff that triggers whenever Silverbell is in battle with him called Silver Knighthood that also affects Elder Faerie and White Lily. That’s… not exactly relevant to the discussion right now but we discovered this by reading the entry on his ability and thought it was cool, so… the more you know. 

Now I’m sure we have some readers looking at this going, why are you telling me all the stats stuff? Why is this important? Because none of this is setting off any red flags. 

A general. 

A knight. 

A strong Cookie. 

Sure, maybe he’s a little odd, but there is a Space Doughnut running around with a cookie made of Stardust. Oddities are a dime a dozen here. 

But when you start looking into his military title, what his ability does, and exactly what the Silver Knights actually are, you start… noticing things. Nothing much. Just little… inconsistencies that don’t quite line up. Details that make you pause. Answers to questions that were never asked to begin with… and make you wonder why they needed to be asked at all. 

Let’s pause our look at Mercurial Knight Cookie for a second and go look at his knights, yeah? 

Returning to the Cookie Run: Kingdom Wiki, you will find a beautiful page on the Silver Kingdom. Like, the wiki crew is legitimately impressive for collecting all of this and putting it up like this for people to read, and we do actually recommend reading it if you’re curious after this post. (Aside from the map. We’re not touching the canon map today. Not unless you want me to rant for three hours and end up throwing my favourite tea cup at the wall.) It’s even split up in helpful sections! Geography, landscape, history, culture, denizens, and known denizens! Is it a little sparse on information? Yeah, but it’s Cookie Run Kingdom. That’s not on the wiki makers, that’s on Devsisters. We’ll likely expand all of the known locations later to have their own ecology and cultures, but that’s not today’s goals. 

We’re going to focus on the Culture section right now. It has three sub categories: Silver Tree, Silver Tree Knights (with its own sub category of Known Silver Tree Knights), and Faerie Library. Wonderful! We already have our work made easy for us! The wiki has this to say on the Silver Tree Knights: 

“The Silver Tree Knights are an order of knights dedicated to preserving the seal of the Silver Tree and protecting its guardian, Elder Faerie Cookie. Cookies in this order can be blessed with Silver, trading their unique flavor for the strength to carry out their mission. A prime example of this sacrifice is Mercurial Knight Cookie, whose flavor and scent were traded for cold metal long ago. According to Mercurial Knight Cookie, all Silver Tree Knights eventually grow to "look one and the same," and yet, he and Silverbell Cookie are visually distinct from the hordes of identical Knights seen throughout the kingdom. The knights have most likely disbanded after the events of Beyond the Horizon as there is no longer reason to protect the now empty Silver Tree.” 

… Right. Okay. So who here was aware that the Silver Tree was blessing its knights to eradicate their scent and flavour until they have nothing left but metal? Because that seems like something the Silver Kingdom updates kind of glossed over, yeah? 

Let’s dissect this line by line. 

The Order of the Silver Tree, or the Silver Tree Knights, are a group of trained individuals who serve the purpose of defending Elder Faerie Cookie, the Guardian of the Silver Seal Tree (as called in Beast-Yeast Chapter 12 - The Silence of Conviction by Silent Salt), and the actual Silver Seal Tree itself because the Beasts have gone insane and abandoned their virtues. Mhm. Kay. Normal thing to do. That’s fine. 

Now the wiki says that cookies in this order can be blessed with Silver, trading the flavour in their dough for metallic strength. This specific word “can” will be disputed in a line or two, but we’re going to focus on the fact that this is acknowledged to be normal. Why? Do you understand the implications of this? Cookies are flavoured dough organisms with jam innards and soul matrices—a debate for another time—that find individualism and family jamlines through said flavour. And the Silver Tree removes that. Right. That means you are anatomically disassembling and reassembling each Silver Knight to remove all traces of the former recipe, whether it be Witch-made, Wizard-made, or Sugar Swan-descended (again, a topic for another time) and replace it with inedible Silver in such a way that not only does not destroy the cookie, but allows them to continue moving and functioning as if they were a normal cookie. 

“But it’s magic!” I hear some of you crying out. “Magic does that!” 

Yes, our dear readers. It is magic. That is not our concern here. The how is easy to explain. Where they got magic with these capabilities and why it is being used is not. But we can get into canon’s… lacklustre explanation in another post. Because yes, we do have thoughts on the matter. 

The prime example of this Silver Blessing process is apparently Mercurial Knight Cookie. We just addressed that Mercurial Knight can melt into liquid mercury. No other Silver Knight can do this. Um… That’s not a small detail, and definitely has implications that might be best saved for a part two because this is already 1440 words long at that number and there is so much evidence packed into this post alone that it would be actively unjust to try and fit it all here in one post. But trust me, we have some lore to continue digging into on Mercurial Knight. 

Keep in mind that nowhere in canon does it state that Elder Faerie does not also receive the Silver Blessing. An odd note for later. 

This next line we are going to treat as what it is: a quote from a potentially unreliable primary source. “But why?” you may ask. “Mercurial Knight does say that.” Yep! He does! That’s the reason we’re treating it like this. 

Quick sidebar: Primary sources are fantastic places to get information about an event, process, or anything else you are trying to research. They tend to be stuff like testimonies, witness accounts, and other sources that were there at the events. There’s still an issue with this: primary sources can lie or be incorrect. If Jack says he jumped the candlestick when he actually burned himself, then he is a primary source that has false information. That doesn’t change the fact that he’s a primary source. It just means that you need to check the source against other sources of information, like an art book (sometimes) or a text in-world. 

Why is this important? Because the line in the excerpt directly states and acknowledges a contradiction: Mercurial Knight says eventually all Silver Knights grow to “look one and the same” but this is a direct violation of Mercurial Knight and Silverbell having both unique names and unique abilities. Either Mercurial Knight meant, “we all look like silver knights because the tree makes us silver and so we are one order,” or something is very specifically different about Mercurial Knight and Silverbell. Likely the latter, considering that Mercurial is able to, and I stress this again, melt into liquid mercury, which Silverbell is definitely not able to do. 

Also this line implies that the Silver Blessing’s transmutation of flavour into metal might be a slow, gradual process over time? That… That doesn’t make us feel better, Devsisters. That’s actually worse. 

The final line states that the Silver Knights have likely disbanded after the Silver Tree stops needing defending. This is actually evident in one of the 5th Anniversary gallery painting cutscenes for the Silver Kingdom where Mercurial Knight states that he’ll likely wander the land trying to defend people. We do not know where we would get the full quote for this right now so if anyone knows where we could verify this, we’d really appreciate it as we tried to go and find it in our game and couldn’t remember where the completed paintings were stored. But direct parallels to the Salt of Solidarity aside, that implies one thing: this Silver Blessing is not reversible once the process finishes. You are a Silver Knight permanently, no matter what. Were the Knights aware of this before they signed on? If so, why does this culture just normalise getting your identity removed? If not, that seems like something that should be in big red ink at the bottom of the contract, yeah? 

That one passage is doing so much work. Just the one paragraph reveals systematic reconstruction of a cookie’s entire biology and social identity to guard this one tree. The psychological horror of that statement alone is wild. Isn’t this supposed to be a kids’ game?! 

(Funny story: we ran this by some friends to make sure we weren’t crazy. They stared at us in horror before one of them pulled up a photo of Starlight Glimmer’s village in MLP:FiM and how she removed all of their cutie marks for equality. We laughed so hard realising the similarities between the Silver Tree’s knights and this village. Like… he isn’t wrong. I just don’t think the Silver Tree is so easily reversible.) 

“But it’s the Wiki! Wikis can be wrong! Surely this isn’t canon,” we hear some of you protesting. 

Well… 

Mercurial Knight Cookie’s in-game description: “... Blessed by Silver, he cast aside his former flavor, scent, and memories (and mastered the sacred art of Amalgamation). … Perhaps the gravity of his mission has changed the very nature of his crispy Cookie dough.” His soul jam description: “It's seeped with silver till its deepest core, with the original color no where to be found.” (Yes, it is “no where.” We are choosing to blame the game’s proofreaders on that one.) 

Yeah… Yeah no, this is canon. Which means we have plenty to dig into in future parts: 

Why is the Silver Tree doing this? 

What is the source of this magic? 

How are Silent Salt and Elder Faerie involved? (And why their involvement alone is not enough for this to occur.) 

What happened to Mercurial Knight? 

What does this mean for Silverbell? 

And if this was Witch magic… what does that mean for the Witches themselves? 

But this is a good place to stop for today. We need tea and I’m already falling asleep at my typewriter.