what’s the deal with some of the guardians missing shell? are they falling?
Finally getting round to answering some questions now I'm feeling lot better- There is a difference between missing shells and being cracked. Missing parts tend to be clean cut, not having any 'cracks'
If anything I could compare the texture to being that of a broken in half china cup.
Angel skin takes a very verrry long time to grow back, so often when an angel loses a a piece of themselves in a fight and are unable to get it back (there's a whole other tale about angel skin collecting demons like Stolforns) they simple just have to live without it
(aka losing ya arms so you gotta live without em for a while) Some higher rank angels are so powerful, that they don't feel the need to even wear protective skin to shield away their innards. The way it's differentiable from a demon, is that demon innards tend to stretch out instead of staying packed tightly.
Left is the example of a high rank angel (Power) still maintaining a packed form with their innards while on the right shows a fallen guardian angel whose insides have been elongated and thinned out, like a bag full of spaghetti that was just burst.
Meanwhile, when an Angel falls- their skin begins to break on it's own forming notable cracks along the surface. Usually when this begins, it can be reversed within a short amount of time but usually when an angel is headed down that path, there is no return for them.
To continue using the tea cup analogy, it's when they begin to 'chip'
