Hornet is the ultimate fool. She is dumped into a new world and the adventure begins. Oh how could she possibly know the trials that await her? She's also the main character of the game, so this felt like an obvious choice for the card. Thinking on it more, I found I also like her as the fool because I think it brings a fresh take to the pure optimism of the original card. The original fool is young, actually youthful. Hornet is obviously spry, and honestly more deft than daft I'd argue. Despite her athleticism, if you follow the Silksong lore closely enough, you know that Hornet is also extremely OLD. Perhaps a hundred or hundreds of years old. And the characters know it too. She has already been tested many times, her battle cry "ganaMAH!" loosely translating to "please god don't make me kick your ass right now, I'm so tired and I'd really rather not." She's a hater, she's over it. But she isn't jaded. Because that would be far more dangerous. To her and to those she is trying to serve. She knows that trying and failing (over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over... ask you know from experience if you've played the game...) is far more dangerous than not trying at all. She has lived so much and seen so much, and from this she knows enough to know that she still barely knows shit. In this way, despite aging, she's constantly made a fool, made young.

The decision for this card was an incredibly close race between Trobbio! (a literal magician and performer) and the Twelfth Architect, who I ultimately settled on for the card, for reasons I will get into shortly. But first, I want to express my love for Trobbio! Oh Trobbio, Trobbio, wherefore art thou Trobbio!? I mean come on. The flair, the drama, the MAGIC, from the grand entrance to his final bow and even into an encore. So fab! Hard to pass up for that alone. And, as a magician, certainly a worthy choice. But Trobbio's magic serves as an illusion from the power building within the Citadel and how it has been unleashed upon the occupants of Pharloom. Perhaps even an illusion to himself, on his lonely stage, exuberant but isolated, with choked affect.

The Twelfth Architect was created as a servant for the Citadel's use, and fulfills the role, generating tools as is their directive. Like intent is a separate entity from impact, the tools themselves were created to serve power, but can do nothing (have no impact) until they have been put to use. How one uses a tool and what they do with it, this agency (and subsequent responsibility), is the sort of magic I am interested in. There's also the undeniable imagery of the Twelfth Architect presiding over the table of tools, strongly mirroring the depiction in the original card. 

Tools (and silk skills) are an important component for this card and for the game. First you arrive as a fool, then you start to build your arsenal. As you go on, you continually craft and hone your experiences into tools to use on your journey. What you do with them is up to you. And what you create (or destroy) is the magic, the work of the magician.

First, a bit of background. In Act 3 of the game, we must collect the Heart of the Woods, the Heart of the Wild, and the Heart of Might, and in doing so we meet the three Old Hearts: Nyleth, Skarrsinger Karmelita, and Krust King Kahnn. I love this part of the game because it’s folklore. We learn about Hornet’s past as we talk to the different characters and go through her memories. We learn about Pharloom’s recent past to understand why we’ve been brought here and why now by talking to residents who have lived through or even before all the Citadel silk stuff. Then, to take it even further, we learn about Pharloom’s DEEP past through this Act 3 quest when we visit the shrines of the old spirits, tucked away in hard-to-reach-areas of the map. There’s folklore ABOUT the game, about Silksong. There’s people on Discord talking about it and getting to the bottom of it, there’s a Hollow Knight / Silksong wiki. These people are historians, really. AND there’s folklore IN the game! There’s talk, there’s goss, there’s repressed history IN the story, and you get to uncover it as you play the game and I think that’s really cool. 

Nyleth is one of those old spirits of Pharloom’s past, who reigned in tandem with Khann and Karmelita, kind of a polytheistic setup back then it seems, and who bugs could go to for solace or guidance long before the Citadel and all those other monstrous creations of bugkind. Her shrine is deep in the woods, in an area of Shellwood that you can’t actually get to from Shellwood anymore. She is a flower, not a bug, and she spits pollen at you in the fight. She is nature and The Empress represents nature. The Empress is a nurturing and fertile mother. She is a caretaker and that is her supreme power. She too sits on a throne in the woods, like where we find Nyleth when we enter her peaceful domain to claim her pollen heart.

In the spirit of the chariot, of decisiveness, of clarity, of movement, of action, of not second guessing oneself, this was an easy choice. After first defeating it to prove her worth and mastery, Hornet befriends and rides the Bell Beast like a chariot to fast travel to different areas. Things to do, bugs to see, and this control over the map, provided by the Bell Beast, allows her to show up for it all.

This felt like another obvious choice. Especially because of where she sits in the game, just like where we find Justice situated in the major arcana, right after the first line of 0-10. Halting us. Demanding we get real if we're to face the heavy hitters coming up in 11-21. In the game, we've run all over, defeated the bosses, rang all the bells, completed the Big Quest and opened the gate into Act 2. All we really need to do is walk through the door. Right? Enter the Last Judge. Not so fast. Did you really think you'd waltz through the gates of the Citadel without first reckoning with whatever it was that brought you this far? Was it all a fluke? Or are you actually ready for what lies ahead? This fight will make you sit here and find out. You'll either find out that you're good enough or you'll run it again and again until you GET good enough for Act 2, for the second line, for whatever is to come. Only when you've earned it, then and only then, you may pass.

This was a tricky pick for me. Maybe it’s because the moon has such a reputation for being ~mysterious~ that I can never quite seem to hold her in my grasp, or at least not for very long. I did have a few things going for me in my settling on Fayforn for this card. Research suggests Fayforn is a type of moth, which are largely nocturnal creatures (if not crepuscular or diurnal, also conditions where the moon might be present). There is no day and night in the game, but this morsel plus the moody blues that color the area matches the night theme of the 18th trump. Other than the color palette, the terrain and landscape of the card is similar in Mount Fay, mountainous and containing placid lakes, where creatures roam within her domain. She’s also female, and the moon is widely understood to be a feminine entity, and full of mystery, which is true for Fayforn as well, perched high and far beyond even the cast-off area of The Slab, and located at the absolute highest point within her area, only summoned at the activation of a great ancient tuning fork. Which brings me to the clincher, and again praise for the folklore of the game. Why is there a big ass tuning fork on top of a mountain!? Seems like a site for ritual to me. And the moon? Ritual queen for the ages. 

The Hollow Knight wiki experts suggest that Fayforn is a silk moth and there’s one particular silk moth I have in mind that I think would really send this thing over the top. Fayforn is white, not pale chartreuse, but she does have the long tails to match the moth I’m thinking of and she is quite large, easily dwarfing Hornet when she arrives in a flurry at the peak. And actually, you know something? Maybe if I think back hard enough, just going from memory, you know what??? I DO think I saw a flash of green in her wings as she touched down! Maybe it’s wishful thinking, but you wanted my opinion so here it is — even if it isn’t true literally, figuratively, I’d say she’s a luna moth.

Finally we have arrived at the 21st and last trump of the major arcana, the beginning and the end in some ways, and in this deck, represented by someone we’ve known basically since the beginning (or at least very early on) and who will stay with us to guide us, to provide us both companionship and the tools necessary for us to keep on the path to fulfill our quests and then some. Who better to describe The World than our beloved cartographer Shakra? 

For this card, instead of selecting creatures to reside in the four corners outside her oval wreath, I chose four regions in Pharloom. I picked them loosely for their locations on the map, and to have some variety in color on the card, but now that I think of it maybe I should have been a bit more discerning to align them with the four astrological elements suggested by the animals of the original card. Let’s say I chose The Marrow for Fire, Far Fields for Earth, Shellwood for Water, and Sands of Karak for Air. I did consider sneaking Bilewater in there, perhaps for water, but decided against it, to spare you from recalling what might still be painful memories. Shellwood maybe isn’t the strongest pick for water, but at least there is another appearance of water in my drawing. In the original card, the background is light blue and the animals sit in clouds, the whole thing seemingly taking place in the sky. I kept the blue color but added streaks, to recall Shakra’s Trail’s End quest, when you meet her teacher and say goodbye to her in a purifying waterfall all the way at the edge of Bilewater. It’s a sweet moment in the game and makes me think of many things: growing up, learning, passing on what we’ve learned to the next generation, saying goodbye, starting again, the dance of life, The World…