Gooday everyone,
Welcome to the Deacon Corner. If you’re new here, these galleries dive into the inspirations behind the images you’ll find throughout the books posted on these pages. In these issues, I also like to share the commission details for each project, so readers can follow along with how these images came to life.
If there’s a particular piece you’re curious about, you can find all previous issues under my journal entries or linked directly beneath the images within each chapter.
Now before we begin, none of these beautiful art pieces would exist without the incredible talent of Sickjoe who is the creative force behind all the artwork in these books. Quite literally the heart and soul of this visual world. If you appreciate his work as much as I do, I encourage you to visit his gallery and explore more of his stunning creations.
Now, without further ado, let's take a look at the featured image and the commission details below.
Icarus was once a crusader—a glory-hungry warrior from beyond the stars and the only engineer ever allowed to enter Kath’le Kal, the sacred realm of the Devourer. Unlike the other engineers who were shaped within her fold, Icarus came from the outside, forged in the crucible of blood-soaked worlds that orbit too close to the great Leviathans. On such planets, the laws of reality twist—blood rains from clear skies, and war is constant. It is from these cursed crucibles that the Crusaders hail, seeking glory in endless battle against mortal races.
Kath’le Kal, the inner sanctum of the Devourer, was long forbidden to these outsiders. Yet Icarus achieved so much on the battlefield that the Devourer granted him passage, welcoming her prodigal son into the realm every Crusader longed to reach.
But it was a lie.
Kath’le Kal is no paradise. It is a prison. A vast, empty desert ruled by silence and sand, where mindless larvae worship an empty throne. Glory is absent. Purpose is hollow. And Icarus, who once soared on wings of conquest, found only torment.
In his boredom and bitterness, he sparked the Pallid Wars—a cataclysm meant to shake the desert from its slumber. But he was defeated in the first conflict by Xerxes, who ripped the wings from Icarus’s back. From that day on, Icarus was mocked as The Rat King, for what else could a wingless tyrant rule but vermin?
Even now, when he takes new vessels, the bloody stumps of his severed wings always return, a cursed reminder of what he once was.
Yet Icarus endures. In secret, he has become the Shaper of Shapers—a hidden hand guiding the evolution of his fellow engineers. Over millennia, he tweaks, perfects, and refines them, not out of loyalty or duty, but in the desperate hope that one day, one of them will be worthy enough to kill him.
And still the question lingers: Was it a mistake for the Devourer to yield the throne to a crusader? Or was it her design all along?
Visually, Icarus is monstrous and regal, his body marked by centuries of transformation. He bears multiple eyes, though one of them is not his own. Within it, hidden deep, sleeps our little leech.