Berserker Armor

The Berserker Armor is an extraordinarily tough suit of body armor currently carried by Guts. Those who don it earn the name berserkers for the superhuman power and beastly ferocity it lends them, a gift that comes bound to a heavy price.

The dwarf smith Hanarr forged the armor at some distant point in the past and infused it with a sinister od that attunes to a wearer ruled by violent feeling and numb to pain and fear. Its core effect is to shut down the physiological reflexes that normally stop a person from exerting enough force to injure themselves, which sharply amplifies strength and speed. The wearer still feels pain as sensation, but the mind stops registering it as a threat, so it can simply be ignored. The suit also stokes a savage bloodlust, feeding on hatred, fear, and anger to drive the fighter harder, and it mends crippling injuries on the spot, threading thin spines into shattered bones to set them back in place. Guts has noted that it sharpens his night vision, and the armor can also repair itself. When a berserker rage takes hold, the helm reshapes; in Guts' case it forms the head of the Beast of Darkness, its jaws able to bite, with the eye sockets glowing red while his face stays hidden. When he holds himself in control, his real eye shows through and the red glow fades. On one occasion the armor imparted a blood memory of a previous wearer's final moments.

Guts is the armor's present wearer, having received it after apostles of Griffith's reborn band invaded Flora's spirit-tree mansion; clad in it, he withstands Grunbeld's assault and forces the apostle to concede defeat. Before him, the man who became the Skull Knight wore the armor to battle demonkind, then entrusted it to his friend the witch Flora, who kept it locked away until Guts' need arose. Its drawbacks are severe: unchecked, the od can swallow the wearer's psyche and turn them into a feral killer blind to friend and foe, and repeated loss of control erodes the senses of sight and taste, brings on a hand tremor, and festers into lasting mental decay. Because it masks pain, the wearer can destroy their own body through overexertion, and its bracing of broken bones can end in death by blood loss. For Guts, only a powerful magical presence, such as Schierke's astral body or the Moonlight Boy, reliably keeps him stable while the armor is fully unleashed.