WritelyLY

Silent Salt and His Religious Connections

First I want to establish that as Salt of Solidarity that the devotion he and his followers held for the witches is what would eventually sprout off into the St Pastry Order. This is made pretty clear that the Order considers the Salt lands to be a very holy and important place. Often referring to it as consecrated or holy.

Pastry is FIERCELY protective of it, seeing the ghosts that haunt the lands as defiling intruders and being shocked to learn there are no other devotees here despite the land being seen as a very sacred pilgrimage that Pastry is taking.

White lily also notes the sign of the creators and even finds a fork, further confirming that out of all the Virtues, Salt of Solidarity seems to be the most faithful about their creators with direct references to them in architecture, and while we technically get no confirmation, this along with White Lily specifically saying the Order might have split off from the knights makes a link of devotion and worship towards the witches very blatant. A link the other beasts seemed to have lacked.

It is also noted that Silent Salt near immediately upon losing contact began chasing down any sign of them, finding the Faerie Kingdom in search of guidance. No other Virtue seems this rattled by the loss, while Shadow Milk comes close his instability is less one of faith and more of being given an impossible question that he can't escape. Even at his lowest point, he finds comfort in the idea of entrusting fate to the Witches, even if no one can ever know his own role in using their magic.

It's pretty clear that Silent Salt can be considered the Virtue most aligned with their creators. While the others have a more ambivalent or hostile relation, Silent Salt views them in the highest regard to the end.

Silent Salt's Original Plan

For this part I want to highlight Silent Salt's original plans for the Silver Tree and how in his efforts, betrayed all the other virtues in service to the mission he perceives he has.

It's worth noting this was done in secret with the other Virtues fully unaware so it played no role in the fall. It still shows an interesting pattern of thought on the fact he seemed to have decided on this plan without any other input from other Virtues.

Specifically, the plan to split the Virtues was in the work for a very long time, Elder Fairy and Silent Salt have been working on the tree since they first met after all. We don't know know the exact time span between the witch's vanishing and the fall to corruption, but we know it wasn't an immediate thing and almost certainly could have taken anywhere from decades to centuries.

However, Silent Salt had already kind of written them off from the moment the Witch's vanished. Due to his belief that the Virtues weren't good enough anymore, and a desire to create new Virtues. He viewed the Virtues even BEFORE they fell to have become crooked and distorted due to being attached to such powerful figures and became determined to find a way to make new Virtues.

We know this likely wasn't something the others know about, due to the talks and actions of the other beasts framing the soul jam splitting as a theft or crime against them, and they had no reason to believe Silent Salt had anything to do with the fall. If they had known, it seems likely at least there'd be some comment about the Silver Tree being Silent Salt's idea originally. However there's nothing of the sort.

So very likely this was being done in secrecy, especially as he wouldn't even tell his knights or other cookies he shared solidarity with where he was constantly going on long solo journeys and why.

Silent Salt Devotion to the Mission

For my next part I want to highlight how Silent Salt seems to care a lot about the "mission" that was given to him and the Virtues over anything else. The ancient values mean a great deal to him, and he prioritizes it over everything. Even at the idea of the other Virtues being in danger, he cares purely because of how that would damage the mission and shows no concern for their health or safety

When he believes he has failed his Virtue, he begs Elder Faerie to kill him for his failure. He views himself for his failure as inherently a threat to the safety of cookiekind for what happened. Then when he is made aware the Beasts have turned against their virtues, that is the moment he actually turns against them.

I also would like to mention that, while it was done in obvious poor faith, that the Politician of Deceit did attempt negotiations with him before hand. Negotiations that went absolutely nowhere because Silent Salt took one glance at the letter and tossed it due to being from a Usurper and someone who wants power. Which while he was right that the letter is in bad faith and I cannot stress that enough, it still shows a very black and white single mindedness, as even if the letter was so easily read as a way to seek power. Not replying at all or opening any kind of communication with an enemy who's trying to open up that avenue is still a really bad move.

Even if he never planned to give her what she wanted, from a strategic angle he should have at least tried to get information out of her, especially as he's aware of the turning sentiment against his knights and the growing instability of the nation. Even if he never planned to see her as someone to bargain with or give her anything, slamming it closed and making the only option force was a really bad move. Especially when she could have information on the location of the Fount of Knowledge.

It's this complete and utter cold shoulder of the attempt to negotiate that makes them jump to the next viable option, full out war. Something most of the Usurpers (Overlord of Destruction notwithstanding) wanted to try and avoid.

It's his dismissal of the Usurpers as just average tyrants and not the chosen virtues that leads to them getting the jump on him. Even with how as even he knows conflict is coming, he's still going out to meet with Elder Faerie because he underestimates them. In his inability to get back in time is what leads to the destruction of the order, especially as the Usurpers managed to get their hands on that information that he is gone for prolonged periods of time

Silent Salt heavily defines himself with his Virtue to the point of it as the sole focal point of his existence, even after all the terrors done by the usurpers, he still singles out him and the other virtues as being Other and overly defined by their mission and is only when Elder Faerie directly tells him of their falls does Silent Salt finally turn attention to him.

Elder Fairies Bias

Which leads into an interesting point! Elder Faerie is the main source of information on what happened to Silent Salt. It's through his perspective does Silent Salt hear about what happened, and while he has things right... he got stuff wrong as well. He claims all of them abandoned their virtues of their own accord but... we know that isn't true!

Eternal Sugar genuinely believed she was still fulfilling her duty, she never forsook anything, she just grew into a toxic mindset on the definition of happiness! To her, Sloth and Happiness are identical. Sloth is true happiness, and she wants to give it to everyone.

Mystic Flour did not fall of her own accord, instead it was the direct result of an attack against her that killed her greatest protector with meditations showing her that the only way to avoid the greed of the cookies tormenting her was apathy. She was very much pushed into a corner where she had to defend herself.

While Shadow Milk and Burning Spice could more properly be argued to have forsaken their virtues of their own accords, Eternal Sugar and Mystic Flour on the other hand either did NOT forsake their virtue and it became instead twisted like Eternal Sugar or was pushed into an intense life or death situation while trying to find more answers like Mystic Flour. Elder Faerie is wrong about the nature of the falls, and is colored by his own bias against them. He also says they hid from Silent Salt from behind their fallen virtues but while they did all cut contact, we have no idea why. Which feels odd, you'd think Shadow Milk at least would give SOME kind of taunt? The framing makes it seem more personal then it actually seemed to be.

Things get a bit murky here though because right after he tells Silent Salt this, it enters into a flashback. However, it's impossible to actually... tell how diagetic this is. It's fully possible the Silver Tree is showing these things, as we know it can show things from Elder Faerie witnessing the carnage of the Barren. Especially since we've been seeing lots of flashbacks throughout the story that Silent Salt has not seen. So it's possible this is him being shown what happened to them, or it could just be for the audience. Either way though Silent Salt accepts the narrative of them all willingly falling at face value with no thought about why or how this happened and immediately jumped to the sealing.

In Conclusion

It seems clear that Silent Salt from the start lacked solidarity with the other Virtues, showing little concern for them being missing beyond the danger it would bring to the continent. So focused on the mission to the point of fully defining himself on it, he does not seem to see himself as a normal cookie, but instead only an avatar of his virtue fully.

He also seemed to have spread that vision of seeing himself as only as good as he can give his virtue to the others Virtues. Which we can infer from how he schemed behind their backs to take power from their soul jams to create better virtues. Seeming to show no care for how this will impact them and showing no evidence that any of them know that he has decided that the virtues have become twisted. Instead focusing on how this will aid cookiekind per his mission.

He is solely focused on his perception of his mission and virtue to the point of neglecting other avenues that could have been utilized to avoid tragedy and showing no concern for his own life. While he tries to give solidarity to all, he's very susceptible to a binary good or evil, and accepts the narrative given to him by others.

This extends back into his intense worship of the witches, seeing them as a source of hope even when going to bind himself. He shows a heavy unwavering loyalty and certainty in his creators beyond any other virtue. The devotion his dehumanization of himself and the other virtues stem from comes from blindly following everything the witches say and going to any extreme in what he believes is for the mission he gave them

While this was tempered by his solidarity and attempts to help everyone, his level of faith he had in the witches and he inspired in his followers would eventually split off to create the St Pastry Order, a very dangerous death cult in regards to how blind their devotion to the witches are. An organization that still sees his stronghold as a holy site. Even if it is a worship that has truly twisted out of control, the fact it's starting point was with Silent Salt is very telling about his level of devotion.