ROUGH sketches but my design for mairon's initial form is HEAVILY inspired by depictions of the automatons of hephaestus, particularly Talos! inspirations for the design itself definitely also came from that, but also from the puppetmaster from ghost in the shell!
i think it's not out of character for Aule to have created mechanical wonders, and I personally headcanon that Mairon was drawn to them, and actually never got used to flesh forms, with their extremely amorphous, shapeshifting nature being born of the fact that he finds it INCREDIBLY easy to squish around in them.
i also headcanon that in their early days of interaction, mairon was incredibly composed, and melkor was really the only one who could actually get mairon pissed to the point of losing his composure. at one point, this got to the point where mairon got so angry that he partially melted himself.
