#ɪʀᴏɴ ᴛᴇᴀʀs ᴀɴᴅ ɢʀᴏᴀɴs ᴏғ ʟᴇᴀᴅ ( v: borderlands )

[criimsoncloud]

I posted this image over on my twitter, but posting it over here too because yes I must--

A coloured version of the little concept art I have done of Borderlands verse V. He’s got siren tattoos on both sides of his body, indicating how unnatural he is, and he has definitely been branded in some shape or form by Handsome Jack - I’m still debating on whether it is a barcode on his shoulder, or if he has an actual brand seared onto his flesh somewhere.

Maybe both, considering who owned him?

... also I just realized that I stole some of his jacket inspiration from Julius from ToX2.

Please don’t reblog (unless you ask uwu;; ya can visit the tweet of this post!) 

[criimsoncloud]

@thefatalmarksman liked this for a borderlands au starter !

'To any interested Vault Hunter... or anyone wanting to earn perhaps a bit of coin... come to the shack overlooking the Slag Sear. ‘He who desires but acts not, breeds pestilence...’

I’ll be waiting.’ 

His request had been up on the ECHOnet for a long time; not many hunters passed by the Eridium Blight anymore. After all, the Vault in this area had been already opened, and the insides - as V heard, anyways - was just monstrous, and not filled with the power and treasures most hunters craved. It was just a grave of abandoned Hyperion facilities, infested with bandit clans and crazed psychopaths. Home.

So, colour V surprised when he saw that someone picked up his request.

Ensuring the Siren collar was affixed to his neck and the ports secure, V stood, walking out of the shack, leaning on the walls and waiting for the hunter to arrive.

“Greetings, hunter. Here for the request?”

[criimsoncloud]

uwu;; have a smol lil’ art WIP of borderlands!V - yep, the collar actually connects to his neck.

I’m debating whether to go asymmetric with his design or not, but I definitely do know he’s going to have a Psycho mask dangling from his waist.

PLEASE DO NOT REBLOG.

[criimsoncloud]

@betterhealing​ liked this for a borderlands au starter !

V heard the loud, aggravated roar of a Skag - a familiar Skag - and he jerked his head up, the tiny little vial in his hands shattering��and spilling the precious liquid eridium on his table. Glowing liquid stained the table, but V didn’t bother attempting to clean it up. A curse slipped from his lips, and he hastily grabbed the revolver on the table, just in case. Did one of those Psychos from the camp nearby actually shoot Shadow? Or a Vault Hunter, assuming Shadow was some sort of threat? He stood, running as quickly as he could to the door.

‘Nah, Shakespeare, ain’t some bandit. Not a Hunter either - some sorta white coat. And ya know how Shadow feels about white coats.’ Griffon hissed, his body shimmering as he released the cloak. The Stalker’s tail whipped back and forth, clearly agitated as well, before scampering over the crest, urging V to follow. V did, and he immediately spotted the person his companion was complaining about -  and V had to reign in his own shudder.

The sight of that dirtied white coat just sent shivers down his spine, reminding him of his joyful time in the labs.

“Shadow, heel.” A whisper came from his lips, and a discrete order to stand down was sent to his other companion. The Skag let out a huff, before turning tail and running towards the shack. V turned his head to the white coat, before fixating to a place beyond his head, hand trembling ever so slightly - a hint of how uncomfortable he was with this man. “Apologies. My companions don’t like anyone who wears white; they are ... harmless... otherwise.”

[criimsoncloud]

//  iron tears and groans of lead ( v: borderlands )

The Vault.

Vitaly knew of it, from the whispers his father would say when he thought the child was asleep. His father was obsessed - the Vault would give him power beyond his own imagination. He knew of the Vault, and all the stories of passerbys and travellers that would share. Those who sought the Vault were Vault Hunters… and his father, Vergil Sparda, was one of them.

When his father failed to return to New Haven, Vitaly figured that he suffered the common ailment of Vault Hunters that seem to plague them - death and dismemberment. There was no way Vitaly could follow his footsteps though. His health was poor and sickly, especially, for a child that was born Pandoran. He stayed updated with the current news of the actions of any and all Vault Hunters though, collecting and hoarding ECHOs and trying to hear news of a silver haired Hunter wielding a katana. Still, the only Vault Hunters that passed by New Haven were never his father.

And, when the Vault was opened, years after his father disappeared, Vitaly knew it wasn’t his father.

Vitaly gave up waiting for his father.

Well, he was forced to give up - once the Vault opened up, Hyperion swiftly invaded, murdering most of the population, and kidnapping the rest. It came to a shock to the residents of New Haven. Of course, word spread of Hyperion’s new CEO taking the reigns and deeming all residents of Pandora to be eliminated and experimented on, in either order and in various degrees. But the residents never expected it to be this quickly - only a few managed to escape into the train heading to Sanctuary that Helena Pierce prepared.

Unfortunately, Vitaly was one of the few who wouldn’t make it.

Weak, feeble, sickly... he couldn’t outrun the Hyperion army. No one was going to save him; Pandora, when it all came down to it, was a planet ruled by the saying ‘every man, woman, and skag bitten sonovabitch for themselves’. Vitaly expected a cruel and painful death.

He wished he received that cruel and painful death.

Because the next thing Vitaly knew, he was strapped on a gurney, and the sensation of something both burning and freezing his veins flooded in. Hoarse cries and the worst pain, beyond imaginable, became his every day. Slick, bloodstained yet utterly pristine walls was his ‘home’. Begging for the sweet release of death, moans of torment when throats were literally ripped out, all for the mad sake of science.

He lost his name, forgotten and wiped, overwritten by purple and pain. He knew himself as V - as Five. Subject Number 005, of the Angelos testing, to see just how much slag and pure eridium a human can take. Turns out, most of people can’t take direct injections of slag running in their veins, a good chunk become medically insane, a few either spontaneously combust or melt into puddles of human goo... and a very, very small percentage can take and assimilate the alien substance.

Turns out, V was that lucky minority, the 1%. And, he was even more special - turns out the Angelos Project wasn’t just to see what eridium does to a person. Maybe, by injecting pure eridium, Hyperion could create an artificial Siren. Sure, there was only six Sirens in the entire universe, but that was natural Sirens. Handsome Jack wanted to see if he could defy nature itself, because if anyone could do it, Handsome Jack can.

Subject #005 was his only success. And V’s powers were damned useful for Handsome Jack’s needs - mind control anyone who’s been injected with slag and eridium? Why not create a whole badass army to go with his robot legion? With Angel on his side handling the technology, and this Angelos Project siren handling the biological, Handsome Jack could save Pandora.

V ‘mourned’ when Handsome Jack died by the hands of the Vault Hunters. And by ‘mourn’, he celebrated. And by celebrate, V razed the Wildlife Exploitation Preserve using his fake Siren powers and  two other experiments - a fierce Skag known as Shadow, and an aggressive Stalker named Griffon. Once the entire facility was destroyed, the crazed artificial Siren imploded, shattering into dust and slag.

---

There’s a strange, black haired man who roams Pandora, mainly living in the wastelands that were the former Eridium Blights. Strange markings litter his body, but he’s definitely not a Siren - all Sirens were female, after all! Stop and talk to him, and he mutters odd things - of Blakes and innocence, of the insults that ‘friendly’ Stalker was saying, and of blue clad, white haired Vault Hunters.

He’ll pay a great bounty if you give him what he wants.

And he wants that white haired Vault Hunter, dressed in blue.

Abilities:

Phasequell - Allows him to control creatures that have been inflicted with slag, as well as control any creature that has ingested eridium - most notably, he controls two creatures, a Skag and a Stalker, but rumours has it he could control a third one.

Phasespike - Creates various bright purple eridium-powered spikes that surround him, and home in on various enemies.

Phaseseize - Manipulates slag tendrils that immobilize enemies on the spot for a short time.

[criimsoncloud]

As a Siren, though artificial, V can manifest wings as well - draconic looking wings, his power over slag and poison dripping and flowing in his wings like ink. Hooks seem to jut out from his wings, looking quite lethal despite their translucent quality. When his wings are active, the Siren tattoos seem to lift from his skin... 

Manifesting his wings, however, take quite a lot of effort and energy - enough so that he requires a large amount of liquid eridium to return to his normal, ‘healthy’ state.

The only time he has ever needed to manifest his wings was when he razed the Wildlife Exploitation Reserve to its very bones.

[criimsoncloud]

Finally got off my lazy ass and finished off BL3, so now I’m gonna be working on figuring out how to properly fit V’s Borderlands verse with BL3, as even though I referenced BL3 in the original verse writeup, it was heavily based on the BL2 timeline--

[criimsoncloud]

Like this for a starter from V’s Borderlands verse!

( details of his Borderlands verse here )

[criimsoncloud]

@betteresurrection​ asked ( nonverbal starters )

cry uvu

He couldn’t stop the slip of tears from escaping his eyes the moment V saw the figure walking up that steep hill. It had been years since he had last laid eyes on that man - the blue of his coat was darker than before, a near black, and the silver of his hair a more greyish tone than what he had known, the ever familiar katana, still gleaming and well cared for... V knew this man. How could he not; after all, this was his own father. 

V took one step forward, hesitation in his steps.

Last time his father had seen him, he was but a child at the doorsteps of that small New Haven home, waiting for the latest adventure. Long, silvery hair, and skin unmarred with any sort of injury or marks. Healthy looking and well care for, despite the conditions of this planet. Yet now, here he was, a man, with hair stained black and purple from the constant eridium exposure, thin and near skeletal. Purple marks decorate his skin, and clear evidence of the human experimentation he had suffered were still clear on his neck and arms.

He took another step, not even bothering to hide the tears that were beginning to bubble.

Please... please recognize me, father, please...

The figure approached the tiny little shack, and V froze - if he had any doubt that it was someone else - those steely eyes were definitely his father’s. He stood there, watching as his father approached, bracing himself for Vergil to not recognize his new appearance. The tears still continued to fall.

Footsteps continued closer, and before V could properly react, his father stood before him. A silence fell between them, V not knowing what to say, whether his father recognized him or not, especially looking like this. He parted his lips once, trying to figure out the words that he wanted to say - a greeting, an apology, something to break the silence.

A calloused thumb brushed against the peaks of his cheeks, and instantly V knew that somehow, some way, Vergil recognized him. The tears continued to spill, and those hands continued to wipe them away. “F...f-father... it’s been... You’re back... you’re really back...” 

[criimsoncloud]

// borderlands au headcanons (that I couldn’t fit in the previous post)

V resides in an old abandoned home he found in the Eridium Blights. It’s nice and quaint, and far enough that the local bandit population doesn’t bother him. (He’s completely unaware that this abandoned house was formerly a certain someone’s grandma’s house.)

V is reliant on eridium to live - he can last a few days to a week without it, but he will start having withdrawals after a week, and beyond two, his organs start to fail. Unfortunately, he can’t absorb eridium like a normal Siren can - he needs to inject a liquified form of the refined eridium into his bloodstream. He’s managed to collect a sizable amount from the old Wildlife Exploitation Preserve... but lately V’s been running low, and as far as he’s aware, only Handsome Jack’s Hyperion knows the refinery process.

V didn’t exactly escape with his sanity completely intact. While he is quite markedly saner than a Psycho, he lapses into occasional mutterings of poetry and strange sayings. He also speaks to his Stalker companion, Griffon, as if the creature could talk. It could be a hallucination... it could be that his mutated Siren powers lets him communicate with Griffon. Who knows? (He can only speak with Griffon. Griffon just passes on whatever Shadow says.)

V favours sniper rifles and revolvers. He’s also quite partial to Maliwan and Jakobs.

He doesn’t fully recall his father - he remembers what he looks like, his preferred colours... but V can’t even remember if their relationship was good or not.

V’s natural hair colour is white, but it’s been stained with eridium ever since the experimentation. His hair isn’t black, but an extremely dark purple, with a few sections revealing his former hair colour.

[criimsoncloud]

as I’m writing this borderlands verse thing...

I’m coming to a realization that V did not come out of the Wildlife Exploitation Preserve SANE. He’s significantly saner than the Psychos and other mutant experiments that came out of there, but V is probably not... all there in the head. I mean, look at some of the others who came from that place... Tiny Tina, Krieg, as examples...

Poetry and William Blake is definitely a grounding thing for him. Definitely.

[criimsoncloud]

@betteresurrection​ asked...

Gloved fingers brush messy dark locks away from the younger man's face. Vergil watches him in awe for a moment; lips gently parted and pale brows furrowed. He looks V over carefully as if trying to gauge if it's truly him. He's grown so much, but it is him for certain. Years of living on Pandora had left Vergil visibly aged and lacking in his once renowed cool grace. He holds his son's face gently, their foreheads pressed together. "How beautiful you have grown." He murmurs with a soft smile.

With his eyes only slightly drier than before, V’s eyes went up to his father’s, the tension that had become a companion to him ever since the razing of his Pandoran home finally fleeing. Now that he has a closer look to his father, he could see just how much this planet had affected him, just as much as it affected V. Much more worn and hardened, compared to the man who was in deep competition with his own brother.

His lips curled into a twisted, half smile - his own experience morphing Vitaly’s once innocent smile to one that was bittersweet, a mere shadow of the joy it once was. “It looks like... I’m as tall as you now, father.” Though his voice was still roughened by the tears, it was clearer now. “But I’m afraid, father... my growth was not without turmoil...” A sardonic tone came to his voice, acid green eyes narrowing in remembrance. “I’m just glad you arrived on my good day.” Thankfully, bad days were not as frequent... but V still would lapse into insanity, obsessing over blood and murder, over poetry and and cannibalism, caressing that mask that hid his expressions--

A quite far cry from the child that first arrived on this planet with his father.

“Will you be staying the night, father?”

[criimsoncloud]

@betteresurrection​ said...

"Don't go wandering off while I'm away, the people here will eat you alive." Vergil sighs. "Literally." He adds, doing his best to stress the seriousness of the situation. Their homeworld was relatively peaceful, as far as human settlements went, at least. Pandora offered no such commodities. "The Hyperion lot have been stirring up trouble, do keep your distance from them, dear." He gives the boy a light pat on the head. "Dante is following up a lead, and I'd rather not give him an upper hand."

Vitaly stood at the door of the little New Haven home, one hand fiercely clutching the book that he kept with him with the move from their previous world to Pandora, the other holding his father’s coat. “I understand, father. Stay here, and keep away from Hyperion.” He did understand, at least half of it; he couldn’t help but notice, on the way to this settlement, the amount of insane people that resided on Pandora. He didn’t particularly want to leave their previous home - he missed the greenery, the peace, the comforts of his bed... But Vitaly would be left alone - even Uncle Dante was on Pandora, somewhere.

And if there was one thing Vitaly hated, it was being left alone. He could deal with his father’s temporary trips away, trying to beat Uncle Dante to the Vault, but if he was still back home...

Who knows when his father would come back?

At least, if he was on the same planet as his father, his father could always come back and visit.

He let go of his father’s coat, green eyes glancing at the imposing figure. “I promise to not to leave New Haven - as long as you promise to come back and tell me all about beating Uncle Dante to the Vault!” Vitaly leaned in to give his father a quick hug around his waist. “If you don’t find it by the time I grow up, I’ll help.”

He’ll continue practising, getting stronger, so he could join his father in becoming a Vault Hunter one day.