Consider the weight of failure, if you will—not as mortal men know it in their fleeting wars and withering loves—but as it festers in the belly of Hell, where time forgets and punishment does not.
Malam walked the endless iron throat of Dis, burdened by this ancient certainty. A Praetor of Famine, a unique abomination among his peers, he had stood at the lip of apotheosis. One task—one divine theft from the grasp of a rival Duke—and he would have risen, remade among the Black Court of Hell, to whisper counsel into the ears of Arch-Dukes and shake the vaults of Pandemonium itself.
Failure had chained him instead. Now the corridors pulled him forward to reckoning. Within the splintered vaults of his mind, voices stirred, restless and unaligned.
One murmured, sleek and soothing: “Praise him. Let us sing. Let us swell his pride. He loves the scent of submission.”
Another, sour and cracked, whispered: “Words will not save us. He summoned us in silence, without theatre or jest. Judgment is passed. Offer betrayal or perish.”
A third, lush and laughing: “Why fear? Hunger stirs all things. A glance, a breath—even Dukes crave mortal flesh.”
The voices did not cease. They coiled in the hollow of his mind, threading doubt and hunger through every crack of thought. Each pulled against the other—treacherous, pleading, seducing—until sense itself began to fray.
But the corridor gave no answer. Dis sighed, leaking heat and oily smoke from its ancient wounds.
The great doors uncoiled—massive and corroded—spilling their sweetness: the stench of honey rotted black. The Throne Room swelled vast and wrong. Columns twisted like melting wax; walls breathed as if belonging to some forgotten beast. Too many angles where there should be none. Before him sat the Arch-Duke, a satyrine fiend, his hide a prison of faces and limbs straining silently beneath translucent skin. Under a scared sigil, his great yellow eyes opened and flickered like a sun long dead.
“Malam...”
Soundless. The name formed without voice or breath. Malam knew it only in the wet chambers of his being, where thought dissolved into primal dread.
They communed then. Memories traded like flesh. Desires turned inside out. No bargains. No mercy. Only the vast, patient certainty of the Arch-Duke’s will.
“Your shape offends. Your failure is known. Scour the lands of the False Redeemer YHWH, and we will see you rewarded generously.”
No flame. Not at first. Only pressure—unbearable, inward. Bone folding, meat twisting, pride stripped nerve by nerve. Three voices shrieked, cursed, begged—then blurred and became one, then ashes.
Ashen wings burst from his back, and his mouth split - the voices now given flesh. They screamed in unison, and he found his own voice silenced. His punishment complete, Malam retreated from the chamber to earn his penance.
Malam, the Prince of Famine
Praetor of the Hollow Maw and Lord of the Withering Host
“He does not march with an army. He starves the world until he builds one.”
There is no throne for Famine in the Iron City of Dis. No seat among the Seven Serpent Heads bears its mark, and yet Malam moves unopposed through the black smoke of the Court, and even the archdevils fall silent in his presence.
He is not Gluttony, but he is its reckoning. The stillness after the feast, the ash where the field once bloomed. Where the lords of excess gorge themselves on the world, Malam leaves nothing behind.
The theologians of New Antioch burned every record of his origin. Some claim he was an angel of mercy sent to feed the starving, who watched them die and was unmade by their hunger. Others believe he was born directly from the Third Mouth of Hell - a miscarriage of divine silence and endless want. Whatever the truth, Malam no longer speaks with his own voice.
Instead, he opens his body.
From the torn cavity of his chest gapes a vertical, tooth-ringed maw, impossibly deep and ever-writhing. Inside squirm the souls of failed preachers - those who offered false hope to the hungry, who called down blessings on empty plates. Their mouths still move. Their sermons still echo, mangled into endless shrieking. Their suffering is Malam’s breath.
His form is cadaverous - tall, lean, carved with sigils that pulse like dying stars. His limbs are too long, his skin is tight as drumhide. His wings are laced with abandoned tormentor chains and split sinew, dragging behind him like banners of starvation. He wears no symbols, no armor, no crown. His authority is carved into his very flesh.
Malam is followed by the Withering Host—a procession of starving yoke fiends, decaying hell knights, gaunt beasts, and silent Wretched who believe that by suffering in his shadow, they might be last to starve. His presence does not simply break armies, but rather unthreads civilization itself. Fields spoil, wells curdle, and mothers cannot feed their young.
Though denied a seat at the Court of the Seven-Headed Serpent, none dare contest him. Mammon courts him. Beelzebub mocks him. Malam answers neither. He walks alone through battlefields of christendom, untouched, unseen until it is too late. When he passes, the wounded do not scream - they beggar themselves before him and plead for mercy.
And there is none.
(Writing by Taylor Holloway, Simon Sung, and Aiden O'Brien)
This miniature includes Malam - Prince of Famine, in both supported and unsupported formats (LYS and STL), and a premium 50mm base. There are several variations of the same model in this kit, including a gun option, sword option, and a NSFW option.
