#king: (referring to restraints on an operating table) yes

[inamindfarfaraway]

I can’t really get into Luz/Hunter roleswap AUs because I just think Luz is the perfect main character and Belos the perfect villain thematically and everything and don’t like Hunter and Camilla taking their places, as cool as Golden Guard Luz is. But what about a King/Collector roleswap AU, since they’re equally foils? Introducing… the Collector Clawthorne AU!

King:

Centuries ago, searching for the power and knowledge he needs to destroy witchkind and a hideout after committing too many crimes on the mainland, Phillip discovers an island conveniently not on any maps and in its dilapidated castle, an egg. He uses a spell to hasten the egg’s hatching, in case it’s an animal he can eat. It turns out to be a baby Titan. The only son of the dead ‘god’ that formed the Boiling Isles. The most powerful being known to exist in this dimension, revered by the witches. Phillip sees potential in this.

He names the baby King, an assertion of both his great power and that it is still inherently inferior to Emperor Belos’s own (and mirroring how Jesus was mockingly called the ‘King of the Jews’ by his killer). King is raised to be the Jesus analogue in Belos’s twisted repurposing of Puritanical ideology to control the people. Witches can’t deny Belos’s righteousness when he’s the protector and in a sense regent for the Titan’s son, the spirit of the father supposedly entrusting him to guide society to become ‘pure’ and worthy of King’s inheritance. But just as the Roman Empire put Jesus to death and hated and persecuted the Jews, Belos inwardly has no affection or respect for King or his father and despises all the magic Titans preside over. Instead he’s leading the boy up a mountain of lies to be his sacrificial lamb. Eventually learning a substitute for the Collector’s draining spell, he plans to murder and fully drain King on the Day of Unity to provide it with the required power.

King is extremely sheltered, not remembering ever leaving the castle grounds, and though everyone knows what he looks like very few people see him in person except on special events. Belos can’t have the sinful riffraff contaminating his precious messiah. This surrounds him with mystery and speculation, even more than Belos and the Golden Guard. It adds to the narrative of his divinity that nobody outside Belos’s inner circle knows his true nature or behaviour. King is spoiled in every way except real love. And how can you miss something you’re never known, right? To prevent him feeling any troublesome empathy for or attachment to witches and demons, he’s constantly treated like he exists on a higher level than them. It totally isn’t crushingly lonely at all, definitely. He cultivates a cold, stern, temperamental, domineering, arrogant facade to feel a degree in control over his life, hide his crippling self-doubt and need for validation and appear as the strong, commanding presence he believes a Titan should be and he has to be to have worth. His emotional growth has been severely stunted and he's very fragile and volatile. The only people he respects are his guardian Belos, who he’s forever indebted and unhesitatingly submissive to, and his father whose lingering soul Belos claims to be able to communicate with. He says that the Titan has big plans for King. That he cares about him, and wants him to be the best he can be and make the world a better place. So if his dad wants, no, needs him to suffer a little to that end - i.e. regularly giving blood and other body parts to the Emperor’s Coven to charge tools and weapons and spells; or going through intense (brutal) training to master and test the limits of his powers; or generally being Belos's personal lab rat to increase his magical knowledge and ability - how can King refuse? How can an act be wrong if it’ll make his dad proud of him? Love him? And it's all for the greater good, of course.

He’s a brother figure to the first few Golden Guards. They aren’t meant to be peers, King has none, but they have no other fellow children for company besides each other, so it just keeps happening that they form a relationship varying from gradual trust and solidarity between victims of abuse to wholehearted sibling love and friendship. The Grimwalkers each rebel at least partly out of wanting King to be safe. Belos gets tired of this. He develops a new dimension to his abusive parenting: inventing a golden child vs scapegoat dynamic for King and the current Grimwalker. The Grimwalker envies and resents King and always being inferior to him fans the flames of his insecurities and desperation to prove himself; King is now unable to befriend him and even more emotionally isolated, and is subtly encouraged to unleash his resultant anger, frustration and bitterness at the Grimwalker, ensuring the latter won’t warm up to him; in a self-perpetuating cycle that keeps them both vulnerable and useful. It absolutely doesn’t traumatize King whatsoever when Belos kills the Grimwalkers over and over. They bring it on themselves. And he knows better than to care about lesser beings anyway - the Grimwalkers don’t matter in the grand scheme of things. They don’t matter to his dad. They aren’t important like him! Belos would never do anything like that to him… right? At least, not as long as he plays his part. Right?

He’s grown to Titan mid-adolescence by the present day and is roughly the size of Tarak. His horn was also broken by Jean-Luc when Belos stole him in this continuity, but King was told that wild witches who kidnapped and tried to kill him to harness his power for destruction were responsible. This helps explain why Belos is so ‘protective’ of him and gives him a grudge against wild witches. He wears gold caps on both his horns to conceal the imperfection, part of an elegant, regal outfit consisting of comfortable white robes with gold and purple accents. The clothes likewise hide scars from all the experiments and surgeries that have been done on him. His circlet of woven gold wires seems strangely spiky for the Emperor’s Coven’s aesthetic… until you realize that it’s a crown of thorns.

The Collector:

Eight years ago, Eda stumbles upon a tablet of some weird crystal with a crescent moon etched on it. Looks expensive. She could probably sell it. Once she returns home, it starts to glow. Okay, it’s magical. She could definitely sell it -

Oh. She brought home a child. Shit.

Correction: she brought home an ancient, immortal, godlike child called the Collector who has been sealed away and must communicate through the tablet. She agrees to free them because she doesn’t know why they’re in solitary confinement, but it’s clear he’s a kid however long he’s been alive, and she doesn’t approve of child imprisonment on principle. His voice, laughter and shadow form soon triggers the Owl Beast’s trauma from their imprisonment by an Archivist, and they take control of Eda’s body and attack. They attempt to destroy the tablet and manage to not break but fracture it before Eda can restrain them, which inhibits the Collector’s pinky promise release ritual when Eda performs it. Like when a crack on your touchscreen makes your interaction with the display glitch. This means that only a tiny fraction of magic can pass through, giving the Collector a physical form, but his actual magical power is inaccessible. The Owl Beast is furious to have a Collector here. The Collector is having a tantrum that they "can’t do anything!". Hooty is excited to have a new inhabitant. Eda… is overwhelmed. She calms the Collector down and vows to find a way to free their magic someday.

In return she gets the story of the Archivists, the Titans and how the Collector was unfairly punished for his people's crimes. Learning that her supposed curse is in fact a sentient animal trapped unwillingly and harrowingly moves Eda to sympathize with and respect the Owl Beast. She works on negotiating with it and accesses her harpy form years earlier. It’s awesome.

Meanwhile, although she doesn’t acknowledge it aloud and the Collector doesn’t even notice because he has no concept of parents, she slips unintentionally into being their mother. She just can’t bear to abandon this kid, who as ancient as he may be, is very naive and trusts her and has been alone for so long and can't stand it. And she relates to being pigeonholed as a troublemaker and considered irredeemable by adults. So they get a room. The room accumulates a large collection of toys, books and furnishings. The tablet is kept safely cushioned in a secret chest to prevent its breaking, theft or mishandling. She accurately deduces the Collector has often been deceived and manipulated and tries not to talk down to him or lie to him, but he doesn’t understand much beyond game metaphors initially. For example, she describes the Coven System as a really strict, boring game the mean bully Emperor Belos forces everyone on the Boiling Isle to play, because he designed the rules so he always wins; Eda thought everyone should get the chance to win and broke the rules, meaning now she and the Emperor’s Coven are playing a special game of hide and seek where if they catch her, she’ll be taken away forever. Yes, even though she promised to help the Collector. The Emporer’s Coven do not honour pinky promises. Yes, they’re that bad. She nicknames the Collector Collie (narratively representing his identity as an Ordinary Kid With a Family). He is ecstatic to have companionship, especially the way Eda and Hooty don’t demand any knowledge or services of them like every previous ‘friend’ they’ve had, rather love him in and of himself. Finding unconditional love feels much nicer than lonely omnipotence, they slowly settle into contentment with relatively mundane life. It’s an infinite upgrade to prison besides. Eda disciplines them with gradual success. She introduces them to concepts like empathy; that they can be wrong and that’s okay; that what they find fun isn’t necessarily fun or good for everybody else all of the time; that people can sometimes do hurtful or unpleasant things and not be evil, etc.. Collie has equals now and feel the consequences of their actions. Not to say that he matures beyond pre-Season One King until Luz arrives, but he’s way ahead of the canon Collector.

Hooty is his best friend. They get along excellently, sharing an eccentric, kinda disturbing sense of fun and humour and remaining in the Owl House when Eda goes out, with Hooty a surprisingly competent babysitter.

Collie adores and dotes on Owlbert. Eda repeatedly takes measures to childproof her staff and must teach them to be gentle with Palismen.

Then Luz arrives in the Demon Realm. And the entire history of the Boiling Isles is set to change forever.

[outofangband]

a prompt! you mentioned once that there are the outlier orcs who've shown Maedhros kindness on a rare occasion, so I've been really interested in seeing that!

Masterlist 

This got rather long, I’m sorry...

Update: in addition to what’s here I have this world building post here

Oh yes this is good! I have so many headcanons on the culture of the orcs, I don't think all of them are soldiers, that's just unrealistic given how much of Angband's population they make up. The ones visible in the fortress (as guards, torturers, etc) and during attacks are the ones the elves fear but there are plenty in the fortress who are tasked with the menial labor that's just needed to run an operation as large as this and not all of them are cruel and violent, some have bonds with each other, even families. These ones are treated far more like the elven slaves of Angband who they hold practically no power over and the cultures of those elves in and out of the fortress mix with the culture of the orcs.

As you can see in this story for the orcs that aren’t apart of the containment of prisoners, their lives are mostly spent in the darkness. Literally.  And many are unaware of what occurs in the other parts of the fortress. They’re not naive, they know that the torture of prisoners and slaves occurs on the daily but the little rules, tokens, bits of culture that both prisoners and tormentors are privy to, they are unaware of. 

I mentioned on my Another Long Angband world building post that one of the more dangerous tasks given to slaves and thralls is the collection of various materials in the caves and subterranean springs. These materials are used for a variety of reasons including medicine, a rudimentary medicine compared to what Mairon is capable of producing and so it's shared among the slaves in the mines and forges and used by the rare orcish healers. These healers have lives and resources actually pretty similar to the elven healers of the fortress which I talk about in more detail here though they are in less danger of punishment (less but not none. No one in the fortress save Melkor himself is completely safe from punishment and abuse)

Anyways this was a long infodump for you and I'll try to cut it off now but I have so many thoughts about this!

Feel free to ask more questions if you want!

and onto the story itself

CW: general Angband warnings for captivity/restraints, dehumanizing language, implied immediate aftermath of torture, implied enforced nudity, vague references to Melkor being creepy 

“It is still breathing,” one of the guards regarded Maitimo critically, jabbing a finger into his side and drawing a little gasp, “Do not bother to take off the blindfold, we are better off with it disoriented.” The elf could only wait as the two guards drew nearer to him, one on each side. The awful sound of the chains rattling struck his ears, one of which was already bleeding. They unlocked the shackles above his head and pushed him off of the table, leaving him sprawled on the floor. The guard who had spoken laughed harshly and prodded him with his foot.

“Rough day, little king?” The litany of bruises and other injuries covering Maitimo’s body was enough of an answer though if he had been in a position with more leverage, he might have spat at this guard or otherwise taken the bait.

The two hauled him to his feet. Maitimo did not know their names but he recognized them by their demeanor. One of them was perhaps younger (though he was still unsure quite how orcish aging transpired) and seemed almost hesitant. Their touch was always delicate as they went about their tasks, not out of kindness, Maitimo figured, but out of uncertainty. Blood trickled down his forehead from when his tormentor had gotten bored merely petting his hair and had instead raked His claw like nails over his scalp, further marking and staining the red tresses. 

The other was more typical of the servants in this part of the fortress; large, rough and cruel with enough of an overlap in their tongues to have the words to taunt the Noldorin king on every possible occasion. This one liked to see him humiliated, enjoyed it when he could provoke Maitimo into violence of his own.

At the moment however the elf was too exhausted and injured to be much of a threat to either of them. They half dragged him down the subterranean corridor. The larger of the two was keeping a grip on the chain leash connected to his collar with one hand. He must have looked truly awful, Maitimo reflected. Usually they would have at least tried to make him travel by crawling on all fours, one of them holding his leash, the other behind him, offering motivation by kicks and lashes.

The journey back to his cell was largely uneventful though his bare feet became more scraped and bloodied as he half stumbled along the uneven path. One of the guards applied continuous pressure to a particularly vicious mark on his left shoulder to further prevent his struggling. 

Maitimo was then was unceremoniously dropped to the floor of the cell once they entered, instinctively pulling his legs to his chest and tucking his head in both to try and cover himself and to prevent blows to his exposed abdomen.

“Master says it doesn’t need to be shackled up completely, just attach its leash to the wall,” the crueler guard barked to his companion who strode forth to comply, yanking Maitimo up as they found a spot on the wall to anchor the chain. Only then was the blindfold torn off before the guards turned to leave. As the iron door shut Maitimo distinctly heard the less cruel of the two ask their companion. 

“That is the High King of the Noldor? What does High King mean anyways?” The response could have been either a snarl or a chuckle. Inside the cell, Maitimo strained involuntarily against his collar and spat a mouthful of his own blood onto the ground in frustration. 

... 

He had passed out or fallen asleep, what really was the difference here. The Lord of Dreams had little to no influence on the unconscious states of those in the fortress. All Maitimo knew was that he awoke suddenly and on high alert. He always heard the footsteps of the Dark Enemy long before He approached the door so the prescense of another in the gloomy cell merely unsettled him. He blinked and focused on another orc. Not one of the two guards from earlier, this one was smaller, more frail looking. For a few moments they merely stared at each other. 

They didn’t look like they had a weapon, not at first glance. But they were standing too far for Maedhros to pose a threat to, the chain leash was connected high up enough on the wall that it gave him little room to move on the ground. 

“Your ear was bitten,” the creature says, breaking the tense silence. Maitimo tried to glare but doubted it came as anything other than a grimace. 

“Yes, I know,” he said curtly. 

“The ears of your kind hurt more. I heard it is an honor to touch them.”

“I had forgotten,” Maedhros muttered, “I shall keep this in mind and on the next occasion tell Him not to.” If the orc is put off by the venom in his tone they don’t show it. 

“I only heard that,” they seem to shrug. Maitimo ignores this. 

“I have water,” the orc tries instead, taking a step closer. Maedhros pondered the distance. A few more steps and he might manage an attack though there would be little point in it with the chain around his neck and no way to escape. 

“That is a blessing here, joy and good wishes to thee.” 

“I can give you water.” 

“And what will you have me do for it?” the elf says bitterly, “I think not.” 

“What could you do for me?” there is a sincerity in their tone that makes Maitimo furious. 

“Nothing of substance or value, not here,” he says coldly, “But your kind take pleasure in cruder payment.”

“I do not.”

“Commendable,” Maitimo practically sneers.  He is exhausted, sore. The Vala’s crooning voice invades his mind until he might have screamed at the shadows the words he had not managed in the throes of his torment. Could names be scratched away like he sometimes ridden himself of the memory of His hand? A sob of pure frustration welled up in his throat. 

But again the orc does not appear bothered by his rudeness or his seeming desperation. He stares at them, breaking out of his anguish long enough to consider their pitiful existence. If they don’t want anything for the water and haven’t been ordered to hurt him in any way they could have just left it here and gone. Are they bored or lonely enough that they linger here to pass the time? He wasn’t sure if orcs became lonely but he couldn’t see a reason it was impossible. 

There was a time when he would strive to be an exception, to not merely add to the life of neglect and worse they had lived. To take comfort in that he was sought out for a reason other than suffering. 

Perhaps there will be a time like this again. 

“Thank you for the water,” Maitimo says quietly but doesn’t say anything else. They linger for another few minutes before leaving the flask at his feet and exiting the cell. 

(note: Maedhros is not inherently talking about sexual favors when he’s talking about payment for water, he’s mostly talking about garden variety humiliations, having to beg, etc. Not that there isn’t that sort of abuse used over resources but uh. Certain beings are possessive so for the most part he isn’t going to get that from the orcs.)

(second author’s note: I tend to use more common grammar for the servants of Angband (with the exception of Sauron) and older English for Melkor to indicate that he’s speaking in a higher and older form of Quenya when he’s speaking to Maedhros or that he’s occasionally speaking in Valerin. Most of the servants are speaking a mix of languages.)

third author’s note: I headcanon that Melkor has servants who were originally Maiar of Irmo and of Mandos and this aids him in both preventing certain elves from passing to the Halls and from information or even comfort being given in the form of dreams. 

@tears-and-lilies @miriel-estelwen @someoneinthestars @much-ado-about-whumping @mozart-the-meerkitten @oswaldinator3000