So I'm thinking about writing a little something and two of my characters are quite heavily scarred and I want to get things right with the property of these scars. WARNING: Some people my find these descriptions rather gruesome. Spoiler First off we have the first character. His eyes were basically sliced out. So what would be the worst amount of damage that could be inflicted without it being lethal. Could his eyes have been scoped out, or what. And what kind of scarring could one expect from that. As well as what would a Medic do if they saw that kind of wound. Would they sew up the holes to prevent infection or what? Second character is much more simple. He had his tattoos over his chest, arms and legs burned away with a kind of heated metal stick rotated to make them neat as to do minimum damage, yet still remove the tattoos. What kind of burns would these be and would the color from the tattoos still be present in some areas like little flicks of color.
For the eyes part, I'm almost positive they would seal them one way or another. Whichever way you want to do it depends on the genre. For horror you could have them completely stitched up. For a more realistic approach they'd probably seal them so that it looks like you don't have eyes in the first place and then wrap something around your head. I'm not sure about the tattoo part, though.
I would presume that the tattoo would still be visible to some degree, even from a serious burn because the ink is buried rather deep below the skin. Burns are generally only the first few layers of the skin really. The burn you are talking og would alter the appearance somewhat if there was scarring afterwards, but would not remove the tattoos I don't think. Tattoos are removed by laser, so I would say the burns would only alter the appearance rather than remove them. Try looking at this page on Wikipedia for more information about tattoos, there may possibly be some information on there that could help you. Also, hit a google search. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tattoo
for missing eyes, it depends on how you lost them. I've seen an empty socket on a guy who got his eye shot out, and I damn near threw up. It's possible to get shot in the eye and live through it (I've known two guys who have), but the results are hella gross looking (I.E they were missing parts of their heads and some other napp looking ****). As for the medic end, they usually fill that up with disinfectant and cotton, I'd look that up a little bit more, though. as for the burn scars, if the burns are third degree, they'd need skin grafts and the scarring would definitely wipe out that ink.
They wouldn't sew close the eyes because the risk of infection would be much higher. It is possible that they would be stuffed with cotton and disinfectant or, depending on the time period, cauterized (although that would be very delicate work.) You could lose your eyes in a number of ways without having it kill you; scoping out would work, as would knife wounds, and even projectiles if the force was believably small. As for the burns, a third/fourth degree burn would get rid of the tattoo and leave a shiny scar behind. (assuming it healed without infection) None of the ink would still show unless the burns were not the same degree all over. (You could have cloth burned into his skin, though.) But with heated metal, it is likely that it would be a 2nd degree burn and distort the tattoos rather then remove them. To remove them by burning would pose a serious health risk, and medal melts at the temperature were it's hot enough to cause 3rd degree burning for long periods of time.
