An Angband Headcanon

An Angband headcanon

Angband is designed to be horrific, an abomination of architecture and iron that just looks plain wrong to any incarnate except orcs. It’s a twisting labyrinth of Escher-esque horrors -a contorting mess that would make anyone violently sick if they tried to map it out if they were anything less than a maiar.

Everything in Angband is horrific. Everything except him.

Mairon is beautiful. A single spot of beauty and order in the Iron Hells.

And that draws the elves to him. And they can’t help it. Really they can’t. But he makes something in their hindbrains scream safety in the midst of all the chaos. All they have to do to stay near him is follow his rules. And of course, if the rules get broken, punishment follows.

Its kinder for him to punish them than abandon them to the endless twisting corridors to be picked off by orcs and... other things.

He lets them stay near him, lets them have important roles in his experiments, lets them be useful to him down in the mines.

And they love him for it.

They look almost exactly like Luthien

They look almost exactly like Luthien.

Their jaw shape is slightly different, and the slant of their noses is just a bit off, but those are such trivial things.

They've known it since they first arrived in Angband- their first view of the Lieutenant was his face contorted in a terrifying mask of rage as he snarled at Elros. They are half-convinced the only reason he didn't slay them then and there was that Maglor tripped and revealed there were two instead of one.

Throughout their childhood in the weaving room Maglor is their primary teacher. He tells them of the crimes his brothers have committed against their family, compares them to Luthien in both appearance and temperament. When the Lieutenant takes them away to supplement their education he tells them of Tol-in-Gaurhoth and the witch and her hound that threw him down and stole his lands. 

He takes their tiny hands and makes them swear to never do anything like that against him or His Highness. They cry out in horror that they would never do such a thing, and the Lieutenant lets them throw themselves into his waiting arms. 

His Highness likes that they look like Luthien. He’s never tried anything untoward, but he likes to pat them on the head and call them Luthienlie when they do something good. It feels vaguely paternal, and they aren't particularly averse to it.

Luthien was good at singing, and to the Lietenant’s joy so are they. He and Maglor teach them Song, how to bring an elf the purest joy, how to make them insensate with terror. They can cast down walls, will rivers to a rage. Elros incorporates it into his work in agriculture- sings crops to a greater yield many times more than normal, sings animals into docility for the slaughter. Elrond learns how to sing the flesh off to get the internal structures of a body before singing everything back together, and how to burn out infection from a wound.

They’re often brought to see new prisoners, along with Maglor and Maedhros. 

The Noldor cry out to the feanorions to help them. Maglor cringes behind the lieutenant’s skirts while Maedhros shouts and swears at the maia.

When the Sindar see the twins their faces fall in despair and resignation.

They look almost exactly like Luthien.

Hey, so I just wanted to say that I’m not stopping development on the gothic au just because of the Angband Elrond au- they’ll both be put up at the same time, and the reason there hasn’t been much gothic au stuff lately is that I’m stuck on the layout of a panel and it’s bugging me

They think they had a good childhood

They think they had a good childhood. They don’t remember much of the Before; Elrond thinks he can remember their mother’s smile, Elros thinks she never smiled at them at all.

Maglor smiled at them. Elrond remembers him having a smile as bright as a forge-light, no matter how much his arms shook or his skin seemed to pull. He was the one who gave them lessons in arithmetic, made sure they knew all their letters.

He was always very strict on pronunciation. They never did understand why.

The weaving room was nice. It was quiet and the elves who lived there were kind, if slightly obsessed with their work. Maglor would play for them on the harp, fingers bleeding as he went though the history of his people over and over again.

Maglor would be Gone sometimes. The one time Elros asked him why, he smiled at him, ruffled his hair, and told him not to worry. 

“Do you remember the bad things I did? Well, His Highness and the Lieutenant are punishing me for it. That’s what happens to bad people, you see.” 

In hindsight he probably shouldn't have said that to children.

The Lieutenant visited them often. Sometimes he would just watch as Maglor played for them, eyes gleaming with a fey light. Other times he would bring them small gifts- sweets and shiny things and soft stuffed animals. Or he would teach them himself, voice rising in Song with Maglor’s accompaniment while they tried to copy him with shaking notes. They liked that the best because he would laugh and hug them and throw them into the air as they shrieked in delight whenever they were successful.

They saw His Highness once a month- the same time they saw Maedhros. They all had dinner on a monthly basis. Elrond and Elros made a game of trying to steal the meat off each other’s plates, the Lieutenant chuckling and occasionally surrendering his own if he was in a good mood.

They didn’t steal off Maglor’s plate. The one time Elrond had he almost vomited it was so over-salted. Maedhros never had nearly enough food to steal in the first place, and the very idea of trying to steal from His Highness made them feel sick.

His Highness was always nice to them, always interested in what they wanted to say. Better than Maedhros, who would always try and stop them eating, who would scream at Maglor and the Lieutenant and even His Highness. But Maedhros would also tell the best stories about his brothers, so he was alright.

They think they had a good childhood.

Decided I haven’t tortured Maedhros enough, so consider this what Mairon is imagining during the events of this 

So, @outofangband had a brilliant idea that Morgoth would force maedhros to dress as a priest of Manwe so I decided to illustrate it

The main idea was that 1. normally there would be a long robe underneath it that morgoth just doesn't let maedhros wear, and 2.normally the feathers would be eagle feathers but Morgoth replaced them with crow feathers out of spite.