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.
Persephone was not born to greatness.
In her earliest days, she was weak, impulsive, prone to gluttony, and quick to cast blame for her own failings. Among Icarus’s brood, she was seen as a disappointment and unworthy of attention. But something changed. Not quickly and certainly not cleanly. Through sheer force of will, Persephone began to reconstruct herself.
Over time, she became one of Icarus’s most formidable heirs, a name feared in the Pallid Wars, where she claimed victory not by natural talent, but through discipline and chaos.
To gain control of herself, she fractured her id, allowing Persephone to isolate and suppress the traits that once ruled her. Gluttony, faith, lust, each was separated, housed within individual heads that sprout from her hydra-like form, her appetites easier to control when divided.
Each head is its own psyche: some embody virtues such as discipline, strategy, and patience, while others are grotesque avatars of sin. Gluttony is the most dangerous, always seeking to consume and assert dominance over the rest. Persephone must constantly regulate where and when each personality is deployed lest they overwhelm her.
In the physical world, Persephone has carved out her niche in the rivers of pus and bile that flow beneath the Devourer’s endothelial layer. She is a master of aquatic adaptation, her creations slithering and swimming through these internal canals with terrifying grace.
Her most infamous creation is the Orca, a leviathan of flesh and fluid, sleek as it is brutal, adapted for underwater ambushes and silent kills. It is as beautiful as it is nightmarish, an effigy of herself.
Persephone is no longer the weakest.
She is proof that monstrosity can be mastered, and that sometimes, the only way to control the self… is to divide it.