By Willow Ascenzo wellmanicuredmusic Bandcamp wellmanicuredman SoundCloud YouTube YouTube wmm_ebooks Twitter qubeley Patreon ← The Drawing of the Four Previous track by this artist → Teal Hunter Next track by this artist.
Cover art by Leslie Hung lesliehung Twitter → Carne Vale Next track art by this artist.
Released 4/2/2012.
Duration: 4:48.

Listen on Bandcamp or YouTube.

Read artist commentary.

Also released as:

• (20131/5/2013; about 9 months, 3 days later) Rust Servant (original) (Rust Apocalypse)

Tracks that reference Rust Servant:

From Fandom:

• Broken Rainbow by Willow Ascenzo
• Rust Witch by Willow Ascenzo
• Rust Apocalypse by Willow Ascenzo
• Emissary of Dance by Catboss
• Maidswap by Ashley Jones
• Maid in Spades by Max Wright
• A Ghost Then a Frog Then a Robot Then a Fairy by cookiefonster
• Flittaurine by Shirokishi
• Spacetime Continuum by apatheticPianist and Pascal van den Bos

Artist commentary:

Willow Ascenzo:

If Violet Mariner was the elder child and Teal Hunter the middle child, then Rust Servant is the youngest child onto which I poured all my love and affection. This was one of my favorite pieces to work on and even today I'm still pretty pleased with how it turned out, from the striking staccato and col legno strings opening the song to the frantic violins, melancholic chromatic percussion, deep brass, and fast-paced drum grooves. I wanted the song to be big, epic, a little scary. If I may be so immodest, I think I succeeded.

Rust Servant was the only one of my three contest submissions to remain allocated to the character I had in mind while writing it, Aradia's tragic ancestor and Lord English's dreadful Handmaid (although the name was changed from the terribly uncreative Handmaid of Death to something more apt for the naming scheme of the album).

When I wrote this song, I had just taken an Intro to Hinduism class the previous fall and had written a short research paper on Kali, the Hindu goddess of time and death (more remembered for being related to death—those of you who have seen Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom must be familiar with the Thuggees, a cult of Kali-worshipers infamous for conducting human sacrifices—and, apparently, ripping people's hearts out and setting them on fire as well). And, of course, because I am A SHAMELESS HOMESTUCK NERD, I immediately thought, "Time? Death? THAT REMINDS ME OF ONE OF THE TROLLS" (no I didn't write my paper on that, i'm not that terrible). It doesn't come through much in the song itself, but that's where I got the inspiration from. And the moral of this story is, take a theology class (or two, or three) on a religion you know nothing about. It'll give you all sorts of new ideas for Homestuck fanart.

Also when the album came out and this song was the first song on the album after Radiation's intro I was all "HOLY SHIT RADIATION LIKED THIS SONG SO MUCH HE MADE IT THE FIRST SONG" and started pelvic-thrusting across my dorm room. Then I realized that it was only first due to all the tracks being organized from lowest to highest by the blood color of the troll they represented. I continued pelvic-thrusting across my dorm room anyway.

And to wrap things up, milkmanner's art for the track is just perfect.