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.
Let’s start with a commission for the sisters of fate themselves. I have a beginning chapter that has the three of them together playing around with the strands of human fate. Let’s start with this scene.
As for the sisters, in terms of basic details, they are akin to hyper-realistic dolls (They eat, they drink, they bleed). In a crowd, you’d never be able to pick them out from any other woman, but, those who pay attention notice things aren’t quite right. Visible joints, glassy eyes, and an open scar on the back of their necks.
This scar is the most obvious feature that separates them from humanity at least for Morta and Nona. It is basically a part of their bodies left exposed without skin like the manufacturer left unfinished dolls on the assembly line. This opening leaves their upper cervical spines visible, metal slats, pistons, and a bevy of wires. However, the scar serves a purpose. Much like the engineers in the Pallid war, Nona and Morta store tools within their bodies. The knife, the needle, and the spool. These tools are living things in of themselves requiring body heat like any liver or kidney. Hence why they can’t leave them outside of their bodies for long without significant necrosis. Each utensil is quite small, think of pocket knives and sewing needles, and are bound by black wires that slip out from the back of their necks like doll strings.
Another detail that both Nona and Morta share is the diodes in their eyes. Basically, they are projectors beneath the retinae that appear as three small rings in their pupils. These rings glow a brilliant color when active and spin clockwise when viewing human fate.
Okay, those are the basic details that the sisters should share as for the specifics for each one let’s start with Nona.
Nona is the youngest of three sisters. She’s also the only one who has a mortal mother which makes her the most human in appearance. Like Morta, she has a metal scar on the back of her neck but hides it beneath her hair and accessories. Technically a demigoddess, Nona is a bit more fragile than her other sisters bleeding whenever she’s cut or stubs her toe. The Gnatu treat her like a porcelain doll which makes her feel inferior to her sisters. She’s childish and often throws temper tantrums when she doesn’t get her way.
The take-home points for Nona’s design:
Nona is a brunette with dull gray eyes. Her diode is in her right eye which glows a brilliant green color when active. She’s a girl out of time dressing in heavy tea gowns from the late eighteenth century taking great pains to hide her inhuman heritage. She wears chokers and keeps her hair long to camouflage the back of her neck. Basically, think what would happen if a human-sized doll became obsessed with Downton Abbey and you get the idea.
She is the scion of birth and oversees mortal conception, pregnancy, and labor.
Morta is the eldest of the sisters who behaves like a caretaker for her younger siblings, albeit one who is in need of serious practice. She often teases Nona and Decima but, in actuality, she secretly dotes on them both and is fierce toward those who would put her sisters in harm's way. She’s violent and unpredictable and has a particular disdain for the human race seeing them as insects to her fly swatter. Put simply, she’s a flat-chested ice queen whose warmth is reserved for a select few.
The take-home points on Morta’s design:
Morta has pitch-black hair and, like Nona, her eyes are dull gray at rest. Her diode is in her left eye, which is vibrant blue when active. Unlike Nona, however, she’s proud of her heritage and either keeps her hair cut short or done up in a single braid that she drapes over her shoulder to keep the back of her neck exposed. She often leaves her tools dangling from her neck, wires pulled like slack doll strings.
If Nona likes to leave everything to the imagination with her eighteenth-century dresses then Morta is the exact opposite of her. Short skirts, open-back dresses, and sleeveless tight gowns. Given her fondness for weapons of war, she’s also a big advocate for the thigh holster, colt revolvers, and Saturday night specials. However, she tends to avoid clothes with deep V-necks or gowns showing cleavage. Nothing that brings attention to what she doesn’t have, so to speak. Basically, if you’ve ever run into a young lady who dresses and acts in a certain way to seem older than she is, that’s Morta.
Morta is the scion of death and oversees internal hemorrhaging, aneurysms, and sudden cardiac arrest.
Then we have Decima:
I saved her for last as I think you might have the most fun here from a surreal horror aspect. She shares some of the doll-like features of her sisters but with a few notable differences. Decima doesn’t have a metal scar or any diodes in her eye. In fact, she should have been the most beautiful of the sisters if not for her mother being the Devourer. Above the knee, she looks fairly normal but for a few odd features. Her hair is pure white and her eyes are a piercing red with a smattering of oddly colored freckles across her nose (Though nobody really knows it yet, these freckles are actually tiny purple flies that live under her skin). In terms of dress code, she’s not as loose as Morta nor as conservative as Nona. She’s somewhere in between with a fondness for tiered sweetheart dresses.
Below her knees are where things get interesting. Her legs twist together into a serpentine appendage. Think of it like taking two twist ties and twisting them together over and over until you can’t decide which was the right or left leg. Within this appendage, you can make out what was left of her feet, painted toenails, and bent tibias. Additionally, hundreds of finger-like projections line this new appendage as if it were a millipedes tail. She’s, after all, an unknowing engineer much like Icarus or Xerxes. This is what makes her such a talented weaver using her feet instead of her arms. Additionally, since she has so many fingers beneath her knees, she’s joyfully married to more than half of the Gnatu sporting rings for almost every finger. Given the state of her legs, she can’t walk and is often either carried or crawls along the floor or ceiling.
Despite her appearance, she’s the most selfless of the sisters, often sacrificing her own well-being for their happiness. Much like Nona, she’s also incredibly insecure about her less-than-human parts. Of course, when her alternate personality, Lakhysis, takes her body for a test drive, she becomes a full-fledged cannibal so, you know, still scary
Decima is the scion of life and oversees mortals between the time of their birth and death with an emphasis on sex and marriage.