Berserker Kin

The Berserkers of the Get of Fenris

Long have the Get of Fenris kinfolk been expected to be in fighting shape and fighting capable. The most obvious of them of course the recent incarnation of these ideology in the Black Eagle Mercenaries. However, long before their were guns and tanks, and modern advancements in war, there was cold steel, leather and muscle. In the Old Norse written corpus, berserkers were those who were said to have fought in a trance-like fury, a characteristic which later gave rise to the modern English word berserk (meaning "furiously violent or out of control"). Berserkers are attested to in numerous Old Norse sources. In the ancient times there were three castes of Berserkers that were more common, although even at their height they were not a group of warriors that ever were great in population. Such is the dangers of kinfolk fighting beside garou.

The Three Castes:

Berserkr – The Bear Warriors

The Bear Warriors were strength and power when in their state of wild fury. For example, the band of men who go with Skallagrim to see King Harald about his brother Thorolf's murder are described as "the hardest of men, with a touch of the uncanny about a number of them ... they [were] built and shaped more like trolls than human beings” The weapon of choice was often an Axe.

Úlfhéðnar – wolf warriors

The wolf warriors were Fenrir’s Fury on the battle field. Speed and rage, a legend would have it their rage would spread across the battlefield like a manic state, leaving only death and destruction in their wake. The weapon of choice was often a spear.

Svinfylking – boar warriors

In Norse mythology, the wild boar was an animal sacred, the goddess Freya had Hildisvini her battle swine, and the boar warriors would fight in a battle formation known as Svinfykling, “the Boars Head”. Fearless they would fight at the front, strength was the foundation of their martial art. The weapon of choice was often a sword.

The Valkyrie There was a fourth example of Berserker in history, the Valkyrie. So rare, it was never really a caste on its own. The Valkyrie was a female berserker of one of the other three warrior ways, but they would be chosen by the spirits to choose who will die on the battlefield, which is a nice way of saying they were chosen to be great warriors to kill Gaia’s enemies. One does not choose to be a Valkyrie, Fenrir and his brood choose you.

Modern times In modern times, the berserkers have become so few in numbers that the three warrior castes have been eliminated, and their teachings and methods of war brought under one banner. Even in the sept that honors the old ways, The Sept of the Troll-Slayers, the berserker way is few. It is the home to one of the last teachers of the methods of war of all three berserker castes, Heirolf Audunsson. Theron Santorini is his chief protégé, and has learned the ways of war of all three castes, becoming the next generation of Berserker.