Red Stairs

Piety And Pain Battlebox Cover

I was tagged by @redstairs! Thank you so much ❤️

I'm doing several things all at once, but let me show you this Gigerish sketch of Vigdis I've started for #character_week RT

There're not only pre-raphaelites I like as you see:)

Insane that this has the same title as the new orizyn book. They should have used the pose for the cover.

Like yeah they're taken from their families and subjected to horrific extensive surgeries/indoctrination beginning at a very young age, this is true. But the entire process takes years, so even though it starts at 11-12 years old, they have to wait until around 15 for the surgeries to take before they begin training and then they only graduate from the neophyte stage to become true Astartes with interface ports and shit around 18. So all of the Astartes we're seeing are fully grown, we're not seeing 13 year olds who just happen to appear fully grown, as some people seem to think.

The definition of a child soldier is anyone recruited for war under the age of 18, for sure, but I do feel like the term doesn't really accurately reflect the Astartes process; real world child soldiers like in the Congo are being recruited AND thrown into war high out of their minds on amphetamines at like 9, they're not entered into an almost decade long process first.

You know what it is like, though? The K-Pop idol recruitment and training system.

It aligns perfectly: taken away from their families when they're recruited as young as 10-12, put through a grueling training and preparation process, not everyone graduates from the training process but if you do it's around 18 years old, then you "ascend" to idol status and are exploited as a sentient product until your body gives out. Plus it's widely regarded as a dream come true for aspirants, but the reality is pretty much just indentured servitude where you aren't really allowed a life or sense of personhood outside of your job.