Crust King Khann led the most disciplined army in whole of Pharloom, yet Hornet found his body dried up in the Coral Tower amount his soldiers who are also completely dried. How can such an army by beaten?

There are many factors that led to fall of Coral Forest kingdom but the main factor is the lack of water, coral exists the best in moist areas where you can find plenty of water. However even that could have been avoided by the help of other tribes but this tribe so extremely isolationist, seeing how well their territory is defined. Every time you change areas in Silksong, you get a transition zone where you change from one area to another. Almost all areas have this but Blasted Steps lacks this a lot, there is an area of strong winds and you enter the area of Blasted Steps quite quickly, same for Sands of Karak, you do some parkour near house of the blue pinstress and you see some crust and you’re in the Sands of Karak.

Khann led an extremely war-like tribe, they conquered a lot, Coral Forest clearly extended from Blasted steps to Sands of Karak, one can imagine this didn’t lead to many alliance thus even the tribe that was most well-equipped to face the Citadel still fell before it. Because the Citadel doesn’t fight directly, with construction of the Slab, we see that it is built around Mt. Fay, now water source for Coral Forest was most likely Mt. Fay’s snow which melted as it went down the mountain. So the construction, most likely stopped the flow of water, I personally like to think it was deliberate; with construction of the Slab being a good excuse to eliminate a rival.

An isolated tribe, now facing an ecological calamity, it most likely just surrendered to its faith and its leader chose death. The death of these creatures is also something very interesting, it seems like they’re not really dead as much as they have been frozen. I have my reasons for this because of how we find one soldier alive in-present, without the signature red colour coating its shell. From journal entries we know that the red colour means coral and Sands of Karak clearly shows that this substance dries up, I believe that death of Khann and his army came because of the coral in their bodies drying up. One soldier that was found at the edge of Sands of Karak by Hornet most likely is an exile who has has his coral stripped off of him. That’s how he survived the dry, arid, and sandy atmosphere of this new environment.