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.
This moment follows Velbrava’s grisly triumph. Icarus, torn apart from within, lies gutted and lifeless—his once-mighty frame reduced to a hollowed vessel. From the remains, Velbrava emerges, no longer the awkward ratling but a perfected engineer of famine and pestulance.
Where once his form was misshapen, now everything fits, unsettling symmetry with purpose. The last remnants of Icarus cling to him. A shard of the old engineer’s soul has fused with Velbrava, gifting him the cunning, cruelty, and brutal precision that once defined the Rat King himself.
But Velbrava is no mere inheritor. He is evolution itself. His swarm, the locusts, gather around him in a thick, writhing cloud. They form limbs of chitin, fingers and toes that stretch for miles, casting shadows over the dunes with great wings. He is the hive mind, the center of the plague, a singular intelligence pulsing at the core of a million wings.
In the end, Velbrava is Icarus’s greatest creation.