#ortet belos

[akaiitwki]

A drawing I made of @perpetual-bad-guy-shipper​ 's Au: Bone of Ortet Au

(everything is fun and games, until you have to take something off a baby’s hand)

[joe-myosotis]

Forgot to upload the bday gift for @perpetual-bad-guy-shipper !!!! Give them some love for their art!!!

[perpetual-bad-guy-shipper]

‘The second interesting thing about angels [...] is that you only ever get one.’

Discworld, Going Postal, Terry Pratchett

Commission info

[asherisawkward]

What do you think of good Belos au's / au's where he's not a complete piece of garbage?

I like them!

There are a few that I like, such as “Humanity and Its Consequences,” which is an AU where Philip and Luz swap places with each other. A few other fics I like are “Reasoning With Crazy,” “Blunt Force Trauma” (Philip gets hit on the head with a collapsing ceiling and ends up believing the backstory he made up to be Belos is real), and (naturally) “Was Not The Hero.”

Some AUs you can find here on tumblr that I’m fond of are The Bone of Ortet AU, the Twin Rulers AU, the AROFAM AU.

I love the way these different works illustrate the various aspects of Philip’s personality and show his growth and/or descent as time goes on. They’re interesting and well thought out. If that’s your cup of tea, I’d really suggest you give them a look!

[fenth-eiria]

My fav versions of Belos so far.

RCA King B who belongs to me.

TRA Pip who belongs to @the-epileptic-toh-blog

Pitdmau Belos who belongs to @wolame-o-ccx

AROFAM Belos who belongs to @jess-the-vampire

BOO Belos who belongs to @perpetual-bad-guy-shipper

More might happen but for now these are my favs^^

[catboymoments]

Plot idea -- some extremists learn that Hyacinth is a grimwalker of Boolus and freak out that he'll try to finish what his ortet started, so they kidnap him. I don't know how Hyacinth will manage the situation, probably doing science stuff to stay calm, meanwhile the OG and Nextgen team up to rescue him and beat the some kidnappers butts.

Also, Hyacinth pestering King, Eda, Lilith and Brownwyn to do experiments on them, and then trying to do experiments on Hooty only to discover that the birdworm defies all scientific logic and proceeds to have a mini breakdown.

You know, as much as “Belos loyalists trying to kidnap Hyacinth because they think he’s the second coming of the emperor” is an excellent source of angst potential as a plot point…

I feel like if anyone even tried they’d be thoroughly fucked.

[nerdykorgi]

GRIMWALKER BIOLOGY & ANATOMY STUDIES [pt 1 / ?? ]

(aka, my ideas and thoughts on how these bad but sad boys work!)

with pictures :D !

ok for starters! I tried my best to make real life connections with actual biological stuff and yeah but there are some things ima have to bullshit lol

i hope yall like rambling

[ ^ Basic ideas ]

Lets talk about anatomy!

From what i can tell from the grim walker ingredient book they have some pretty ... interesting ingredients...

GALDORSTONE:

Heart and Power apparently. What i can make of this is that the Galderstone not only powers and animates the non-organic materials but acts as a circulatory system, flowing blood and nutrients to keep the body stable by creating magical pulses of pressure that makes the blood flow. Blood is kind of ideal for homeostasis and living and om pretty sure we've seen hunter bleed at least once... Perhaps the Galderston can create an artificial vascular system to carry oxygen, magic, and nutrients throughout the growing body instead of just making veins from scratch. I want to say the Galderstone can generate energy for the grimwalker but that would mean they wouldn't need to eat, and I don't think that's true. I think its main purpose is just activate the magic materials and is like the generator to a car, keeping it running. If the Galderstone were to break or fail, the grimwalker probably come unglued and fall apart to its components (which would be pretty horrifying)

ORTET BONE:

Very key component! The ortet bone kind of helps form the blueprint for the species of the grimwalker, as well as supplying blood, a skeletal system, and components of DNA. The most basic definition of the word ORTET is as follows: the original plant from which the members of a clone have descended. Fun fact: since were using cloning terms, Hunter is to Caleb as Ramet is to Ortet (Ramet is an individual clone) I did research for cloning and as it turns out you kinda need a complete genome for cloning but for bullshitting reasons (which will be explained) we can clone with incomplete DNA and make synthetic dna from scratch! I hypothesis that the reason grims can look different from the ortet instead of just straight carbon copies is due to the bone that is used and how much of i there is. Like example a grimwalker made using just a toe phalange is going to look A LOT less like the ortet compared to a grimwalker made from something like the cranium and bigger bones and such. Basically smaller bones dont carry as much dna info and leads for room to fill in the blanks. Sadly this means alot of Grimwalkers had A LOT of health problems (this can range anywhere from immune system problems to liver failure which is quiet typical in clones, that and it is often that clones appear different from the ortet due to enviromental factors and influences)

[ As the image above shows, subject #103 has a very close resemblance to the ortet due to the bones that are used ] There are pros and cons to using bones! Pros being that they can hold DNA for much longer than tissue, but the thing is bones can degrade really easy if not preserved, and i don't think belos had a bottle of hydrogen peroxide laying around that he could dunk Caleb in, so let's just assume he made sure his brother's corpse was well cleaned and kept. Biggest con is the human body only has so many bones (about 206) I believe that the reason Grimwalker can generate organs is by using the ortet and making the stem cells created from bone marrow. Stem cells are very important because they can turn into different types of cells like blood and tissue cells as well as repair tissue. I believe the process of growing grimwalkers is kind of like "Self-renewal" the process in which stem cells divide and make more of the body

STONESLEEPER LUNGS:

Im just gonna assume stone sleeper had very small lungs because aint no way those t rex lungs fit in a teenage boy. I originally thought The reason that Grimwalkers can stay underground for so long is because the lungs, similar to how a stonesleeper hibernates for centuries (kind of like how wood frogs can basically cryo-hibernate) by petrifying but a grimwalker IS growing and therefore needs resources to grow, like how a baby does in the womb. So it has to be actively getting said resources so it cant be petrified. I now think the reason that grimwalkers have these lungs is because theyre easily compatible to the galderstone, which needs oxygen for the blood and that they can be easily harvested and stored in stone form. But that does give room for cool adaptations like self-petrification! (which i will get into next time :D )

PALISTROM WOOD:

Ok its says that the wood is used for keratin, which is a fiberous protein which can make all kinds of things like scales, hair, nails, feathers, horns, claws, hooves, and skin! And since its also a plant means it can grow 4 times as fast as normal keratin can! This explains why hunters hair grew so ridiculously fast in season 3, was because his hair can produce its own carbohydrates and nutrients on its own... This means his skin and surface wounds can heal quite fast! (down side is it might give him something similar to PSS (Peeling Skin Syndrome ) ...) I think Palisman is very important becasue of several reason! 1 Like palisman, it can "animate" if you will, more or less help pull off the illusion that he is alive. 2 Like mentioned before, Grimwalkers need nutrients to grow and I believe the palistrom wood aids in that! Using a process called cellular diffusion, the grimwalker can take in nutrients from the ground around them (which i theorize to be highly fertilized) through THEIR SKIN! and into the veins and flesh of the grims 3 I believe that in the process of forming, the galderstone "activates" the palistrom wood, forming into skin or hair but this process of rapid growth leaves the skin all undone and fragile because a proper cutaneous barrier was not formed yet (which is useful for being malleable. This is why Hunter's ears are so 1 .god blessed big because they are fake and molded to look like that. Its also why The grimwalker Belos possessed fell apart so easily, like he said "It wasnt ready")

SELKIEDOMUS SCALES:

This one kind of confused me because... well why do we need the seal flesh when the ortet can just regenerate it?? I think its kind of like the stuffing if you will, it also speeds up the process of producing flesh by a lot! Especially if you want to make grown grimwalkers! Im thinking that Grimwalkers don't have a set "age" theyre just as big as however many materials they are given to work with. Even though the book says they can start as babies, if you look closely there is a check mark towards the more adolescent figure, so im thinking that they are not ready to be unearthed until they reach a certain growth ima guess around the age of over 10-ish?? We don't know how young Hunter was pulled out of the floor but it seems like he was fairly young, or atleast younger. This means while Hunter appears to be 16, he might have only been living for around 5 years or so.

Now typically normal seals have a lot of blubber which is a thick layer of fat, also called adipose tissue, directly under the skin of a marine mammals. Its used for insulation. The thing is tho, it says Selkiedomus Scales, not flesh... Dont worry there are mammals that have scales like Pangolins but i dont know if these scales are like thick plated or small and stretchy. Magic bullshitting time, Im goin to assume Selkiedomus scales refers to a layer of scale-like flesh that protect the creature from boiling but is also highly malleable and easy to work with. Maybe the reason they can withstand such heat is due to unsaturated bonds of butadiene molecules mixed into the blubber that are highly heat resistant Selkie domus flesh is molded and into the relative shape of desired body and using the DNA of the ortet the flesh is reshaped and reused into the desired muscles shapes. The vascular system created by the galderstone spreads throughout the flesh and binds with it. healing together and becoming flesh, kind of like a speed up version of skin graft maturation! This is useful for growing them quickly because they don't have to grow an entire adult body from scratch so this speed up the process by eeeerrm 20 years or so lol

Thats only the basics for now, sooner or later i shall get into the more fun stuff, like adaptaions of Grim walker, the growing process, ad more!

Hope you guys enjoyed my ideas, if i got anything incorrect let me know, my research isnt exremly searched through.

last question ill leave you all with, it kind of stumped me while i was working...

i have a theory but i wanna know your thoughts...

(i worked hard on all this btw, i really hope people read it lol /lh.)

[thousand-winters]

One of the most unsettling things about Belos making grimwalkers over and over and over again, aside from the obvious, is what he had to do with the materials.

The ortet bones? Well, I guess he could have plenty from Caleb's skeleton or even from the dead grimwalkers if he ever had to get to that point.

The selkidomus scales? Depending on the quantity he needed, even killing one selkidomus would last him for a while if he preserved the scales really well, though it also seems like they're not all that common by the time the story takes place, so there are chances he hunted them too much and put the species at risk.

Palistrom wood? Now that one was definitely scarce at this point, but of course it seems like he exploited that resource over and over and over too, either in the form of consuming palismen or using it for the grimwalkers.

The galderstones? Potentially he could have found a bunch of those, though we do know he was probably running out of them or no longer had any by the time of the story since Adrian does mention galderstones would make a good gift for the emperor, implying it might be known that Belos wants galderstones.

But the stonesleeper lungs...

There weren't even many anymore in the Deadwardian era, absolutely not nearly enough for the sheer amount of grimwalkers he made and killed.

So there are two options there. An elaborate explanation relating to how the EC was able to revive basilisks again (and how it seemed for some reason on that one HM memory portrait that Flora, aka Beastkeeper, had some huge relevance to Belos), which could have made it possible for Belos to recreate the stonesleepers exclusively to use them as resources, since to people like Lilith they were all but extinct.

Or...

He just. Pulls out the lungs out of each grimwalker he kills. Which is a way more horrifying possibility, but what else could he do...

[jess-the-vampire]

That last Archie post made me think Liz will do everything in her power to make sure Archie doesn’t grow a beard

since grimwalkers aren't complete 1 to 1 comparisons to their ortets, i think one of the biological differences archie has to philip, is he actually is physically unable to grow facial hair

he doesn't have much idea of what young philip looked like, since only luz and lilith saw him, but has some awareness of the philip hunter was commonly used to, the older philip

so in his mind he thinks of long hair, clean shaven, giant scar belos

hunter stopped him from cutting his own hair by using the braid, because he knows archie actually likes his long hair and doesn't want him to suffer in an attempt to look less like belos

so i'm sure at some point as he reached that age, while also wanting to fit in with the other witches who grew through puberty overnight, he wanted a beard, and then found out nothing was actually growing

so lucky for luz, it's probably unlikely to happen, but i am sure the thought crossed her mind and without realizing her real intentions behind it she was the one to buy him witch shaving tools as a gift

[sepublic]

I also want to correct a misconception on the Grimwalkers, because I’ve seen some people believe that they all betrayed Belos, and even that Hunter doing so is indicative of some innate ‘goodness’ in Caleb’s genes. Except if you look at Belos’ exact quote…

“It hurts every time he chooses to betray me.”

He never says they all betrayed him, just that some have, and he disliked it whenever it happened.

And again, ‘betrayal’ is ambiguous from an unreliable narrator who thinks anyone who’s mean to him is the villain. It doesn’t necessarily mean the other Grimwalkers did it for the good of the isles; It could also mean that they just left Belos, stopped working for him, etc. Because Belos has always been abusive, since he killed the template; And the worst person in the world would still want to leave an abuser, and/or get back at them.

After all, Kikimora was a real piece of work but Belos abused her, so she got her rightful revenge by rendering Belos’ centuries-long work meaningless as he did her own life, and set in motion his demise. She was still awful afterwards too, but she still ‘betrayed’ him (But lbr, like with Caleb and any Grimwalker he abused, Belos did it to her first).

We don’t even know if every Grimwalker ‘betrayed’ him or just some, but I think it says more about Belos’ cruelty pushing away everyone, than the Grimwalkers themselves. Because the tighter you squeeze your grip, the more it incentivizes people to leave; So was the Grimwalkers’ rebellion really innate, or just the natural consequence of anyone’s psychology bearing Belos’ self-destructive abuse?

Belos causes his own misery and blames victims for their reactions, he hates Lilith for rightfully punching him. Dare I say the point of the prior Grimwalkers and even their ortet is to say more about Belos’ character than Caleb himself; The story just isn’t about Caleb, but other characters around him.

And given the whole theme of agency and how people can always choose to be better (or even worse) despite their circumstances, I doubt the show is actually arguing there’s some genetic goodness to the racist white villain’s brother. It’s not even doing it unintentionally. It’s just thematic parallels and the cycle of abuse driving victims to want better.

[a-hobit]

I'd imagine Canon Belos meeting switchedAU Luz and being shocked that she treats her Hunter much better than he treats his, and she fires back with "What, like it's hard?"

REAL SHED ROAST HIS ASS.

“…it doesn’t fill you with rage when they act unlike their ortet would? When they disobey you you don’t put them out of their misery or discipline them as you would have been by the church??”

“Don’t wave Caleb! Nasty ass old man…nasty…”

[kihteyu]

I keep remembering how much the fandom was hoping Hunter would get stabbed in Watching and Dreaming and I just want to say that I'm so glad that never happened. His arc already ended in Thanks to Them and having him die a second time would not only be redundant, but it wouldn't make sense for his story since his ties with Belos were meant to have been metaphorically cut when he fought back against the possession and declared his independence. (Even if he got stabbed by Luz, the point still stands since she would have been representing Belos in the scenario you guys were thinking of.)

Secondly, I think a lot of the time fandom forgets that Hunter isn't actually Caleb. The show was not subtle in the fact that grimwalkers are not their ortet and that Belos was delusional in thinking they actually were his brother (i.e. him calling Hunter "Caleb", which was meant to feel uncomfortable and wrong). Yet fandom has a tendency to try and force Hunter into Caleb's role, just like Belos did, and act like he's a near perfect replica of him, even down to how their lives play out. I see a lot of headcanons that Hunter inherits a lot from Caleb, which could make sense in the way you inherit some things from your ancestors, but I also see a lot of people headcanoning him inheriting things like his fashion sense, skills, hobbies, personality, sexuality, etc., which absolutely do not make sense. Even a 100% genetic copy of someone (which the grimwalkers aren't even implied to be) would not have the same personality traits as their donor. Even if Hunter happened to have similarities to Caleb (aside from appearance), they would be purely coincidental.

A big aspect of Hunter's character arc is the idea of individuality and he gains this by establishing himself as someone other than what Belos kept forcing the grimwalkers to be and finally breaking the cycle of Belos killing "Caleb", instead getting to live on and have the freedom to develop into his own person. Having Hunter being killed in the same exact way Caleb had would have entirely refuted that point and it's unfair to keep comparing him to Caleb when he fought so hard to be someone else.

[joe-myosotis]

Me and @perpetual-bad-guy-shipper ‘s aus collide to form this beauty i still laugh at this to this day

[perpetual-bad-guy-shipper]

pov: you’re adrian graye telling your boss an anxious 12 year old made you catatonic and you found the golden guard but failed to bring him home  

commission info in pinned post

[astrolavas]

Ok ok, but now is turn for the grimwalker HCs!! Give us the creature👀

!!!!! BET

once a grimwalker is "formed" they simply turn mostly organic, just like how palismen are live animals instead of wood (when activated). so even though the ingredients are still THERE technically, they appear as just like... normal stuff, so grimwalkers are mostly biologically the species that their ortet was, almost indistinguishable (hair is hair, skin is skin, there's blood flow despite there not initially being a heart, the galdorstone is there but it functions very similarly to a heart, etc etc) and yet sometimes the original ingredients' features somehow still "show up" in unique-to-grimwalkers ways. ㅤ

i imagine grimwalkers used to be like a more popular/frequent occurence in ancient demon realm. the process of creating a grimwalker was like a sacred magic ritual, only allowed in special cases (like maybe if a witch lost a child early and wasn't able to have another one, sth of the sort) so it was still very rare even back then and would have to be approved of by most of the community. however, then the tradition died off as ingredients started becoming more scarce, and most of knowledge about it was eventually lost to time. nowadays, grimwalkers are considered to be an extinct species as well as an urban legend/myth by boiling isles habitants, like a "supposedly extinct but there's no certainty if they ever even actually existed" situation (without taking hunter and his possibly-openly-a-grimwalker-in-the-future thing into account just yet). the books we saw hunter read in labyrinth runners have some right information but also lots of misinformation in them, since they're far removed from the direct source, based on only tidbits of actual info, and have been written by witches/demons, with no grimwalkers consulted (obviously); lots of it is speculation, and lots of it is wrong. (i imagine the only actual, entirely truthful info is in those scrolls and books we saw in belos' grimwalker lab, but even that isn't fully complete; and belos wouldn't have wanted to share it with the public anyway, for obvious reasons) additionally, i feel like grimwalkers have a sort of cryptid-like reputation in the boiling isles' pop culture. there are stories made up about them. there are teens making pink-eyed grimwalker ocs on the demon realm equivalent of deviantart and making up things like "grimwalkers can shoot lasers out of their eyes" or "they can raise the dead with their thoughts" LMAO. hunter gets a headache when he discovers all that. ㅤ

grimwalkers are semi-immune to boiling water. the selkidomus scales give them a lot of immunity so boiling water is not actually lethal to them but still, being exposed to boiling rain for a long while or full-on diving into the boiling sea may hurt a bit and prolonged contact with boiling water may leave them with blisters/burns. ㅤ

when grimwalkers' skin is wet for a long time, it gets somewhat scaley ??? scales-resembling texture ?? instead of just being pruney/wrinkled. when dry, their fingertips have a sort of wood-rings-y look. ㅤ

grimwalkers' hair naturally grows incredibly fast, but especially when they spend lots of time in the sun. plant magic may also affect its growth positively. ㅤ

grimwalkers' eyes are reflective and can glow/shine in the dark. ㅤ

when it comes to human-based grimwalkers (the golden guards), sometimes their ears would turn out rounder and human-looking, sometimes they'd look pointier but still not fully witch-like. belos preferred them to be round cuz obviously he preferred "caleb" to be human-looking, but with time he started modifying some grimwalkers' naturally round ears to be pointier just so that they could blend in easier and so they'd believe that they're witches too. he'd "mold" their ears during early creation or sometimes modify/cut them after, like he did his. (hunter's ears are naturally pointy and generally look like a witch's ears but, upon closer inspection, the details of his ears differ from a normal witch's ears juuuust slightly) (ears of the grimwalker that we saw in ftf were fully round because belos was counting on this one to be the golden guard post-day of unity, seemingly brought up as human and in the human realm) ㅤ

just like stonesleepers, grimwalkers often have a slightly sensitive spot behind their ears. ㅤㅤㅤ

palismen can somewhat sense that grimwalkers are also made of palistrom wood so they naturally cling to them more (big win for mr palisman enthusiast/carver hunter owlhouse!) ㅤㅤ

again, when it comes to specifically caleb-based/the golden guard grimwalkers, i can imagine that belos' first attempts were....... FAR from perfect. since i imagine he got all the information from different incomplete ancient scrolls, there were many things he had to come up with and re-discover himself. the very first grimwalkers he made probably didn't even survive for longer than a few minutes/hours. and when they did survive, i feel like the ingredients used were much more distinguishable at first too, not fully transformed into their organic counterparts; like for example some grimwalkers had more selkidomus-like or stonesleeper-like features, or were visibly wooden in some places, etc etc. i feel like belos didn't succeed in making a fully functional, stable and human/witch-looking grimwalker until he met the collector, and then did so thanks to their help. ㅤ

grimwalkers are already "harvestable" at early infancy and that's when you're "supposed" to unbury them, but they can technically emerge at any age (they just have to stay underground and age for the amount of time). i feel like there were also times when belos tried to speed up the process and age his grimwalkers up faster so that they'd be of use to him quicker, but that would also often result in the grimwalkers being unstable; so not really a good idea. (i envision that hunter was probably one of the youngest- if not the youngest- grimwalker belos had ever made, and that's also why he had high hopes for him lasting longer than the others; because he manipulated him since early childhood, starting in his most pivotal developmental years) ㅤ

i like to believe that the reason why flapjack was able to save hunter in thanks to them was because hunter's a grimwalker. if hunter had been a normal witch or a human, i don't think flapjack could do anything to help. (something abt the thing that hunter was ashamed of and hated abt himself ending up being the exact thing that makes saving him possible... you know?) ㅤ

for specifically caleb-based grimwalkers, i imagine that since they're mostly human in biology, they might also have issues with eating some particular demon realm food. not as much as luz of course, since they're not completely human + after years of living in the demon realm and basically eating ONLY demon realm food i can imagine your stomach would get mostly used to it, acclimated and all, but it probably still could result in some problems and discomfort. ㅤ

because of their stonesleeper lungs, grimwalkers are usually pretty still and motionless sleepers. they breathe very slowly when sleeping. ㅤ

you can't make a grimwalker out of a grimwalker. you can try, but the magic simply won't work correctly.

[azure-wolf-227]

Here is an idea that I haven’t encountered before but it somehow makes sense to me:

Belos creates a Grimwalker of the Titan.

Having a living Titan would help solidify Belos’s claim of speaking to it. There’s literally a lot of Titan Bone around that can serve as the ortet for this Grimwalker.

Of course, I do think that a Grimwalker formed from a Titan Bone would take longer to form than a regular Grimwalker.

What do you guys think?