Possessed Janos

Now we come to the final form of Janos in the game. The Hylden Lord’s possession. In the original Defiance, while a bit more stylized, Janos’ skin has fiery yellow-orange veins, charred bits of clothing, and glowing, burnt feathers. This possession is personal. The Hylden’s possession of living beings can go one of two ways. They can be gentle in the first way, in effort to not use up the host and to prolong their ability to maintain control over the vessel for as long as possible. This is the level that the Hylden Lord possessed Mortanius and the level that Turel was possessed by the multiple Hylden for so long. No matter the level of possession, it will eventually use up the host, as we see for both of these poor souls when we meet them. Even newly possessed humans in the game can go one of two ways: still human in form and only taken over partially, or fully mutated and destroyed by it. The second extreme is to fully take over the body and even mold it to the whims of the Hylden possessor. This kills the host and presents a body that they can mutate how they wish. For Janos, who is unable to be killed by it and is far, far stronger than a human, the Hylden Lord did not have to hold back. This is their enemy – the representation of all that the Hylden hate. His possession of Janos was intentionally unkind. While not fully able to mutate Janos, the corruption from this possession could burn and tear through the body in as painful a way as possible. Burning veins and flesh, even pushing to remold part of Janos’ bone structure to resemble the Hylden Lord’s very own crown in spots. This was like fire and ice coming together. Janos’ claws are red hot, longer, and more menacing; his flesh flakes apart in spots, wings burn. His skin is even a darker blue, more in the blues and purples, rather than the lighter blues and teals. The Hylden Lord then has access to all of Janos’ abilities, plus his own. He’s reveling completely in it. All of that I wanted to show in this, which is one of my favorite recreations I've done for the Remaster of Defiance.

This is all made so much more intense with us having the ability to have emissive textures. These allow the model to actually glow, not just hint at it through the base color map. It all starts at the source. The eyes, glowing a burning green, overflow into his veins, turning yellow-orange, then red-orange, as the corruption burns through his entire body, even down to his claws, which I imagine are searing hot when they strike Raziel. Even his wing spin move to shake Raziel off in combat comes with it that searing hot tear as the wings hit. Janos’s tunic, adorned originally with vampiric runes, have even been mockingly replaced with the Hylden’s very flag, and additional Hylden runes – very much declaring this vessel has been claimed in the name of the banished race! Possessed Janos is a force of terror to witness and to fight!