So, in this AU, a large percentage of angels have been blinded. If not completely blind, with significant impairment. This may raise the question of, how can they be effective soldiers in the war? There’s a lot that blind people can do that can be surprising to a sighted person, but regardless, it’s hard to imagine being able to withstand the heat of battle without even being able to see your opponent. And if your comrades can’t see either, that makes it even harder. So I figured I’d delve a bit more into how the angels work around their limitations.
Like most blind people in real life, I imagine angels do a lot of compensating with their other senses like hearing. However, angels also have another sense that we don’t see in the real world: magic sense.
We’ve seen some indications in canon that angels and demons can “sense” magic. Many characters have pointed out sensing odd energy from a cursed object, and things like that. I think this ability could be extremely useful to blind angels.
Any angel or demon likely radiates some kind of magical energy or aura. Their very existence is entwined with their angelic/demonic magic, after all. So, an angel who can sense magic can figure out some pretty important things. Where other people are in relation to them, whether these people are angels, demons or humans, how magically powerful these people are, etc. They could also detect the casting of spells and possibly determine what the spell is without actually seeing the effects with their eyes. This sense would be extremely useful for blind angels to engage in battle, dodging spells and honing in on an opponent, as well as being useful for socializing with each other because they can be more easily aware of each other’s location. This magic sense is still extremely vague and doesn’t help with everyday, non-magical objects, so other workarounds are needed there, but nonetheless this sense is extremely helpful. In some ways, it’s even more helpful than vision- they can sense magic beyond things like walls that one couldn’t see past, helping to detect ambushes.
I also imagine angels began using some form of braille. This actually works to the angels’ advantage; not many abled humans know braille, much less demons. What started as simply the most accessible form of communication for disabled angels ends up becoming code language that is extremely important for conveying information from angel to angel without enemy interception. Braille has likely become the primary method of communication among angels, as there is such a small percentage of sighted angels that non-blind-accessible forms of communication have become obsolete.
It’s also important to note that whatever advantage the demons may seem to have over the angels due to their eyesight isn’t actually all that great. The demons’ eyesight isn’t perfect either anymore. Though the demons’ eyes were not physically damaged, they were drenched in complete and utter darkness for a quite long period of time before moving to the Human World. That inability to use their eyes to see anything for so long has done some damage, and some demons seem to “forget” how to see. Things like depth perception, visual discrimination, and distance determining become difficult for demons who have grown accustomed to not using their eyes, and it’s easy to visually overwhelm a demon who has only recently moved to the Human World.
<-------(Lore II)-------«
The Celestial Realm, though always bright, has gradually grown to be unbearable due to the immense influx of power. Sunburns turned to heat blisters, which then turned to burn scars.
Most angels have developed severe damage to their eyes.
Many of them, their eyes are completely destroyed. Not only are their eyeballs themselves seared until they were mere crimson spheres, but the area around their eyes is red and raised in scar tissue. These angels have no sense of sight anymore. Though these are by far the most disturbing-looking, in one way these angels are lucky: due to all the nerves being burned, they are not in pain. Simeon is in this category.
Others suffered moderate burns. They have burns on certain areas of their eye, or the burns on their whole eye are minor enough that they have retained at least some sense of vision. Many of these angels suffer severe pain from their injuries, severe enough to make many to beg Father to have their eyes removed. Father refused, as an agonized soldier is more useful than a blind one. Many of these angels took matters into their own hands, preferring the temporary agony of removing their eyes themselves to the constant pain of keeping them. Raphael is in this category, but elected to keep his eyes.
And some, the luckiest of the bunch, had minor burns. Their vision tends to be quite blurry, but they can still make out fuzzy shapes, colors, and movement. This includes Luke, whose strong protective magic kept his vision miraculously in tact. However, Luke hides his vision at Simeon’s demand to avoid recruitment into the war.
Because of this, most angels wear blindfolds. Many angels' eyes are too far-gone for the blindfold to be hindering them in any real way, and they don't want others seeing their scarred eyes and discovering their weakness. They'd rather the demons think they're fighting with their eyes closed in an arrogant statement of “I can defeat you even with my eyes closed” rather than discover the dire truth.
Most angels also have most of the feathers of their wings scorched off, making it nearly impossible to fly.
»-------(Lore IV)------->
<-------(Lore V)-------«
With the Celestial Realm and the Devildom becoming nearly uninhabitable, it wasn't long before the war moved to the Human World. The first to move were the demons, fleeing the neverending cold and starvation to live with witches they worked with. The angels soon followed- on paper, they were simply going to hunt down the demons, but in reality, they had been waiting for the excuse to flee the blinding light.
Even despite the dire circumstances, the war was pushed onward. Father went as far as to insist no angel could leave the Celestial Realm unless they were going as a soldier, pressuring otherwise peaceful angels to pick up their swords to escape a burning fate. Demons fought just as viciously, their desperation driving them to the same extremes. It became common for demons to slay angels and demons simply to eat them.
The warring angels and demons brought the same havoc of their homelands into the Human World. Battles flattened cities, and humans were killed by bands of starving demons or kidnapped to join the forces. Humanity, enraged by the destruction wrought upon their world, declared war on both the Celestial Realm and the Devildom. Now, the war was officially three-way.
»-------(Lore VII)------->
believe it or not this AU is actually really tame compared to what inspired me to make it
I have a question. How has Beel been doing? probably horrible, I'd imagine. but.. the food problem. how would he be handling it? would he resort cannabalism? or...?
...good question. I never entirely figured that out. I toyed with a few things, but never found something I really liked.
A while ago, someone brought up the idea of Beel taking a bite out of Belphie, and there being a big bite mark on Belphie reminding Beel of what he did. I do like that idea.
I also toyed with the possibility of the brothers sealing Beelzebub in some kind of artifact or pocket-dimension to keep him from eating them. I have mixed feelings on this one. On one hand, it probably makes the most sense because we all know Beel would be incredibly dangerous otherwise, but something just doesn't feel right.
There's also the possibility of Beel turning his hunger on anyone who threatens the brothers. The brothers would face many threats from all parties during the war, and Beel would have no problem munching down a few of them. He may get his sustenance from their enemies on the battlefield.
Honestly, I'd love to hear other opinions on this.
In a recent Devilgram, Simeon mentions that he’s a sort of “middle man” between the high-ranking angels and the lower-ranking angels.
I think that could be a really interesting thing working in his favor in this AU.
He’s a powerful authority figure, but also much closer with the lower-ranking majority and knows them much better than someone at the very top like Michael would. Meaning, those lower-ranking angels would likely be VERY willing to listen to their trusted Simeon once everything goes south.
I feel like in this AU Michael and Luke would have a very Frozen Anna-and-Elsa relationship. Like, I listen to “The First Time In Forever (Reprise)” and “I Can’t Lose You” and think of a naive Luke, feeling abandoned by his role model, banging on the door of Michael’s bunker begging to be let in, while Michael shuts him out like he shut out everyone else and trying to tell Luke it isn’t safe to be around him in his current form.
Mammon has a handgun as his main weapon and uses it to protect from looters
i'd joke about making tea over michael's burning wings but drinking anything warm except hot chocolate makes my skeleton leave my body
wdym hot chocolate is awesome 😭
If I were ever to write a fic of this AU, my protagonist would definitely be Simeon.
As mentioned in the lore, Simeon is completely blind. He has no sense of sight, not even for distinguishing light and darkness, and his face is scarred over where his eyes formerly were. He wears a white blindfold to cover these scars. In addition to his eyes, he has also sustained other damage, being covered in scars from popped heat blisters. His wings are charred, and only useful for flying short distances. Most of the remaining feathers on his wings have been turned black from soot.
Despite this, Simeon remains mostly independent. He utilizes many of the same tactics as other angels to compensate for lack of sight, and has remained an apt and reliable soldier for the Celestial Realm. Though, he does use Luke as a seeing eye dog sometimes.
He remains his usual smiley self instead of sinking into self-pity over his new-found disability- moping won’t bring back his sight, after all. He makes do the best he can, accepting that he can no longer see.
Simeon resides in in a military camp in the Human World, where he serves in the war along with Raphael, Michael, and other angels. He also smuggled Luke to this camp to protect him from the desolation of the Celestial Realm.
Though Simeon is a celestial soldier, he isn’t exactly loyal to the Celestial Realm. Deep down, he realizes that if the war continues as it has been, there will be no one left alive to claim victory. He is also extremely hesitant to fight Lucifer and his brothers again, should he encounter them in battle. Simeon has ended up breaking numerous rules to protect Luke- first, hiding the fact that Luke can still see from other angels so Luke wouldn’t be sent to war, and then sneaking Luke out of the Celestial Realm as a civilian once he realized the war-torn Human World was safer than what had become of the Celestial Realm. He’s at a point where he’s broken quite a few rules and isn’t afraid to break a few more. He won’t admit it, but he’s just a few hairs off from “fuck it”.
visual by @kitto-katsuu
You know, I really wonder how Beelzebub is going to manage in this AU. Like, he’s going to be constantly starving, and we all know how violent he gets when he’s too hungry.
The page for everthing related to the Armageddon AU. Blog admin is 20 y/o
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