Berserker

                            Berserker

                                          by

                                     Unknown

Now finish your soup, or a berserker’ll come and swallow ye whole.

— Skellige mother scolding a child.

Skellige legends speak of men known as berserkers who transform

into bears when overwhelmed by battle rage. In doing so, they lose

all self-awareness and are driven by a bloodlust which they must

satiate in order to return to human form. Few believe these

blood-curdling tales, however, not even in Skellige, where the inhabitants

usually treat even the least probable legends with the utmost gravity.

This indicates either that berserkers are in fact mere figments of

mead-sodden imaginations, or else that they have learned to hide

their abilities from the rest of the islanders.

The skalds’ ballads indicate a berserker transformed in the heat of

battle cannot be distinguised from a true-born bear. Only minute

anatomical details – such as the shape of their tongues and teeth –

reveal their secret. Descriptions of their fighting prowess paint them

as invulnerable to pain and able to heal any wound received almost

at once.

If these men-turned-bears truly do exist, one can suppose that, like

werewolves and lycanthropes, they are particularly vulnerable to oils

that harm cursed creatured. But if we are to give credence to ancient

songs about these creatures’ deeds, about the mass murders and

massacres they have committed, we can only hope that no witcher

will have to test this hypothesis