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.
Fortessa, the Lesser Engineer, is the first to fall by Icarus’s hand in the opening chapters. This encounter takes place shortly after Icarus’s birth into the Overworld, a moment charged with chaos and shifting power.
Fortessa is an inexperienced tactician who leans heavily on calculation and structure to compensate for her lack of instinct. Her attempted assassination of Icarus is swift but fatally misjudged. She’s struck down by Icarus’s Sidewinders—deadly, precise tools forged by the older engineer with terrifying ease.
Fortessa’s form is spider-like, a grotesque fusion of flesh and precision. She possesses eight elongated limbs, each ending in clusters of small, dexterous fingers used to mold, direct, and command her brood, which she shapes in her own eerie image. Unlike a spider, however, her vision is poor: her milky white pupils offer little clarity, forcing her to rely on a heightened sense of smell, aided by a long, snout-like nose and a flickering forked tongue.
To fledgling engineers, Fortessa appears imposing—an eight-limbed architect of calculated menace. But to those with experience, her design betrays a weakness: she requires eight limbs to maintain control over her brood. Her dominion is fragile, spread thin. In stark contrast, Icarus needs only one.
This scene should carry a sense of inevitable obsolescence, a crumbling order giving way to something sharper, faster, and far more dangerous.