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.
In the stillness that follows Xerxes’s defeat, Persephone stands over his severed body, the heat of battle still coursing through her veins. His decapitated form lies partially buried in the sand—once a master of the sky, now just another carcass scattered across the Pallid Wastes.
But something lingers.
As his physical form collapses, wings twitching, black ichor leaking into the dunes, Persephone sees it: the soul of an engineer.
It unfurls slowly at first, like a mist spilling from a shattered vessel, then stretches wide into a massive, luminescent cobweb. It clings desperately to the ceiling of the Overworld, thin strands spidering outward in every direction, trying in vain to hold on.
But souls are not meant to remain.
Engineers, in their disembodied state, are like water slipping through the cracks of a broken world. Xerxes soul, vast and trembling, begins to sink, threads snapping one by one. The dark world calls him home.
Within his soul’s radiant core, scars shimmer distant memories given form like luminsecent pores. These are the remnants of his previous forms: a spear-faced prince, a tempest-touched tactician, a creature borne of storm and ambition. Each one flickers briefly to the surface, rising like drowning animals gasping for air only to sink back beneath the shimmering membrane, lost once more.
His soul is a sphere of trembling light, rippling with motion, finger-like projections grasping into the fading sky, as if still searching for a tether to the world above.
But his time in this war is over.
Xerxes's soul descends, swallowed by the depths beneath. What remains is a faint glimmer in the dunes, fading like the last gasp of a dying storm.