Gooday everyone,
Welcome to the Deacon Corner. If you’re new here, this space dives into the inspirations behind the images you’ll find throughout the books on these pages. What began as a place to share commission breakdowns has grown into something more. In addition to detailing how each piece came to life, you’ll now find expanded chapter notes, lore entries, and my own black-and-white concept illustrations which are raw glimpses into the ideas that shaped this world before they fully took form.
Before we begin, it’s important to say that none of the beautiful stylized images found in the hard and soft copies of these books would exist without the incredible talent of Sickjoe who is quite literally the heart and soul of this visual world. If you appreciate his work as much as I do, I highly encourage you to visit his gallery and explore more of his creations.
Now, without further ado, let’s take a look at the featured image and learn a bit more about the lore hidden in this chapter.
I’d like to have a few pieces on the constructs living in the heads of the sisters of fate. These beings are their other halves and help them weave fate by whispering in their ears. They meet only in dreams since the constructs aren’t physical beings, but, when summoned, they take the appearance of their host’s idealized version of themselves.
We’ll start with Atropos and Morta.
Background: This scene occurs in Morta’s head, a metaphysical dream space Atropos dwells in. The world is reminiscent of an interrogation room with a single hanging light, two stools, and an old wooden table. To quote Morta in this scene: Double-sided glass, stale coffee, a half-eaten doughnut, and an empty liquor bottle. This could only mean one thing. She wasn’t getting her phone call.
That Morta visualizes her dreamscape as an interrogation room is a reflection of her character. Unlike her sisters, Morta doesn’t feel free in her dreams but is imprisoned by them. She fears her idle thoughts and the devil that plays when she lets her mind wander.
Atropos: As mentioned, Atropos appears as Morta’s idealized version of herself, a mature woman. Morta longs for adulthood and Atropos reflects that appearing as Morta would fully grown. However, they aren’t exactly twins of different ages. Atropos shares Decima’s feminine qualities, wearing her hair down instead of in a braid, her skin a darker tanned color, a striking contrast to her sharp blue eyes. Atropos is aware of Morta’s insecurities and flaunts her beauty with short, revealing dresses, exposing a thigh holster for a short-range pistol as she sits seductively on the table.
Atropos is the reason Morta grows fond of such attire. You might say, she’s a terrible influence in addition to being batshit crazy.
Morta: In this sequence, Morta is now a teenager, and is thoroughly unamused by Atropos’s behavior. The two women are playing a game of Russian roulette, aggressively shoving a pistol back and forth between each other. What I mean to be most unsettling about this scene is that both appear completely unconcerned about a potential lead injection between the eyes. This game is as normal to them as tic tac toe. They are, after all, two halves of the same whole, and what exactly is normal in this strange world of theirs?