"(...)Skeletor became, then, the Greatest Dark Lord to have ever waged war upon the Empire of Eternia. Many had been the times he'd attempted to destroy the righteous rule of Emperor Randor, but it wasn't until he obliterated Castle Grayskull that he found the true source of power to make his conquest a dark, cruel reality.
Sorceress' blood, upon drinking it from her corpse, gave him a strength like that of his sworn enemy,
He-man. His body, for years an empty shell filled with deadly demon powers from the depths of nightmarishm nether realms, began to regenerate until the fallen hero was able to stop him.
Thrice did he curse He-man! For he was more scarred now than ever: his deathly skull bearing half grown tissue that, exposed to the elements, brought the Dark Lord immense pain. Pain that turned into yet more hate and drove his perverse mind into yet more madness.
O! how the Great Worms that he conjured from the nether realms consumed Eternia! How his ghastly, putrid armies slashed, violated and cursed the living! It was his power that brought the nights of unrest into Eternia. It was his power that turned the nocturnal skies blood red and dusk into a nightmare. And his power that killed off every living creature and forest, perpetuating an endless desert of shifting burning sands on a once prosperous world.
To endure daylight in Eternia meant thirst, hunger and vigilance; the quest of the mortals that survived the fall of the Empire. But to endure the night meant to stand in front of the consuming Worms of the Abyss and the horror of Skeletor the Great. The sands would lit up with tremulous fires and the giant bloated insects of death would rise from the deep to engulf whatever they may find, making way for the slow, marching feet of the great enemy's armies: half living puppets of once glorious soldiers and citizens, animated by demons from the dimensions of despair...
"Beware, ye who walk under the blood skies of nocturnal lands," a saying of the Old Days pray "for in thy way there stands the Demon, the Carrion Lord, the accursed Skeletor! And he who dared stand in his way, will forever serve him in agony unto the end of all things!"(...)

Book 13, Chronicles of Twilight,
"Books of Eternia: The Old Days"

I told you this one was coming!

After the sucess of my previous reimagining of He-Man, I felt compelled to bring his deadliest nemesis to life: Skeletor!
I always thought Skeletor was a bit of a stupid villain, and didn't instill me with the fear I would've thought the sight of a man with an empty skull for a face would've. And when I saw Marko Djurdjevic's redesigns (from where I based my previous version of Skeletor in this image ) and worked with the sorceror, it still didn't convince me. It still wasn't what I felt this character could be.
So, now you see him as I feel he should be, in this bleak, grim future I've written for Eternia.
I've kept his muscls, because I think visually, they work as a reminder that He-Man and Skeletor are two sides of the same coin. As a matter of fact, I added quite a striking similarity on his harness to that of He-Man in my previous image. Only that, in Skeletor, that design is a bit weirder, a bit more twisted; a bit more perverse. As it should be.
I also kept the giant worms I'd thought of giving Skeletor before as his Heralds. Worms are, in celtic myths and other cultures, the sign of decay and death and I thought they would befit the Dark Lord's armies quite well.
I also redesigned his staff and the skull iconography, adding a more strange form to them (except for the chest one), to reinforce the alien nature of Eternia as well as the dimensional warping powers of Skeletor.

I'm quite proud of this one and I hope you like it as well. Let me know what you think and if you would like to see more of these reimaginings from me!

Nic.-