SkekTober day 29...a day devoted to skekTek the Scientist! Rapturous day!
A combination physician and engineer, skekTek serves at the behest of his Emperor to devise solutions to whatever problems might arise that threaten the health and happiness of all skeksis. He's...very tired.
Physically frail, but resilient, if for no other reason than he has to be, in order to get his work done, skekTek is sustained mostly by momentum and sheer determination...and whatever edible substance on Thra contains the most caffeine. He's been so often ordered not to leave his laboratory in the Chamber of Life until results have been produced, that he tends to remain confined there of his own accord. And anyway, he finds little in the way of friendship outside the circle of his experiments and lab animals. The other skeksis find him...creepy...and they're not always afraid to say it to his face. He remembers, though, when the other Lords of the Crystal held him in high esteem for his fine work, and when they welcomed his personal company. He remembers, too, the friendship he once shared with the prophet Aughra, Mother of Thra, whose curiosity for the natural world matched his own, and for whom he built the great Observatory with its Orrery to study the movements of the suns, moons, and planets through space.
But that was...long ago, now.
Now, there is work to be done.
As the planet sickens, skekTek becomes more pressed to do more with less. As the skeksis age, the Emperor becomes more desperate for results at any cost necessary to preserve the skeksis' youth, to restore their health, to prove themselves immortal. Overworked, underappreciated, desperately lonely, increasingly spiteful. As time passes, skekTek sinks further into his isolation. Welcomes it, even. He finds himself performing more and more complicated surgeries upon his own body. His experiments become more...unconventional. Some might say abominable. But skekTek will show them. He'll show them all!!
...skekTek is my personal favorite character in all of "The Dark Crystal". In a castle full of Draculas, he's also a Dr. Frankenstein, and a fascinatingly nuanced portrait of evil, being a vulnerable and painfully self-aware entity who fashions the machinations of genocide and sets his strong personal guilt over his actions aside so that he might clutch at what few moments of social acceptance he can get. I have...a lot of feelings about him.
India ink on my finest watercolor paper.
