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’ll need a piece between tyke Nona and Morta as they weave Alexander’s fate. Not long after Decima attempts knee surgery on herself, Nona feels guilty and wants to get her sister a proper birthday present. Given Decima’s obsession with love, she attempts to weave for her a boyfriend with Morta’s help. Alexander is the resulting progeny of their fumbling with the weave, and you know how he turned out.
Morta: Tyke Morta is like a fish out of water. She’s trying to use Decima’s loom, but the strings of fate get tangled between the ribs of the instrument and her fingers. She has no talent for creating life, more at ease with cutting than sowing, and it shows. The resulting otherworldly tapestry comes out… Not quite right… The stitches are loose, the seams all wrong, the chromosomes either missing a pair or having one extra, a recipe for maloccluded growth and mental instability. In a way, Alexander’s tapestry resembles him, crooked, lumpy, with buttons instead of sleeves and sleeves instead of buttons; an ugly duckling in a pure forest of lovely tapestries.
Nona: Clearly, tyke Nona’s plans are not working out the way she’d intended. Nona herself cannot knit beyond the tenth month of pregnancy, and Morta is a bull in a china shop following. She looks distressed, petting the tapestry and doing her best to prune the impurities with her needle and distaff.
She has a strong attachment to life and refuses to give up on the newly born child, no matter how twisted his fate becomes. We get a good sense of her stubbornness here. A stubbornness that unfortunately leads to tragedy with her mother.
As an added note, the girls have clearly snuck out of bed late at night to do this. They wander around in nightgowns, barefoot and half asleep.
Background: We are in the main cathedral beneath the daunting fingers of the Isomerase, church pews, taconite, pipes, and stained glass. In the back, we can see Bastion, his cloak dangling from the isomerase, the long bellows of his neck stretched around the wrist, his hands poised above the girls' heads, strands drawn from his fingers directing their actions. It’s another puppet master piece and shares the same sinister tone as the previous.
Are the sisters really in charge of their actions, or is this some twisted play by a negligent ventriloquist?