The Berserkers of the Old World
Long ago, before time was kept, the land was inhabited by strange tall people, with orange hair and tiny eyes. These berserkers wore the skin of wistbeasts and pulled on their magical power. Skin thick as a boar's and claws like a tiger were just the beginning, with some rumored to have power rivaling a dragon's.
However, this power came at a severe cost. The fury of the wistbeast tainted the mind, like a dozen wistorms at once. Overcome by rage, each berserker would eventually turn on the clan, and either eradicate the people, or be killed.
There is rumors that deep in the mountains, or at the heart of the harshest glaciers, somewhere life cannot flourish, the last berserker is locked away, waiting for their moment to escape.
Summary
Berserkers are remembered as the pinnacle of an uncivilized people. Their magic is warned to never be replicated, a relic of a more dangerous and less learned era.
Stories about berserkers are few and far between, with a confused theme between them.
The common thread is focused on an orange haired man who can wear the skin of beasts to take their power, who is corrupted by this power and turns on his allies. He is banished to an uninhabitable waste where he waits for his moment to return and enact his furious revenge.
Historical Basis
The original inhabitants of Cantumland were a tall, fair skinned, orange haired people. They had great and rich culture and tradition, centered around wielding the power of beasts through complicated ritual and tradition, entering a trance. This process was complicated because it had to be reversible, and for a long time, it worked fine.
Then the mages arrived. People who tore their souls from their body and stretched it thin, using the strands to bind beast and foe alike. They were friendly on contact, but lusted for more power. They tried to perform in the same rituals, but lacking a complete soul, they couldn't reverse the process fully. Some beast was left within the emptiness. They turned on their families in their sleep.
Ignorance and misunderstanding fueled fears, and the mage's people escalated the fear into bloodshed. Berserkers would never be trusted again, and over thousands of years, the connection of Rognande and Inenmaki people to those original inhabitants was lost.
Spread
Variations exist across the continent, but the tales are most commonly told among the Achi people.
Variations & Mutation
In the most common variation, it is said that berserkers were the Kings of their land, taking more and more power until they lost all of their humanity and stopped caring for the people they were supposed to lead. When their people abandoned them, the berserkers turned on each other. All but one were slain, and from their corpses came the first wistbeasts. The last took the hearts of his fallen enemies, and consumed them to gain their humanity. This gave him the vision to see the horrors of his actions, and as a final measure, he walked into a blizzard naked, was frozen over, and now rests forever at the heart of a glacier.
In another, berserkers were like the modern mage. Defending people from the wistbeasts, and using their skill in battle to wage terrifying power in war. However, the people lose their trust of the berserkers, after many innocents were slain by the furious warriors. Only one escaped, and hid deep inside the mountains, waiting long enough that he could be certain none who wished him dead would remain.
In the last kind, berserkers were partners with mages, each relying on the tools of the other to support each other. The berserkers were larger and stronger, and the mages were smarter and faster, but together they were a powerful whole. The berserkers were bloodthirsty though, and often enjoyed killing their allies. The mages did what they could to quell the violence, but in the end a peace could not be found. The mages killed the vast majority of the berserkers, and banished the few who surrendered, sending them into the mountain ranges and frozen plains, far from the inhabited lands.
Cultural Reception
No modern people take claim to the culture, but Dubricians do have a version that appends it as the Rognande origin myth. The Rognande do not believe that at all.
In Literature
Referenced in scholarly works from antiquity on the first forbidden form of magic.
Date of First Recording
Year 127, A Listing of the Forbidden Forms is written by a Gidulian Scholar.
Date of Setting
Year 0, and before.
Related Ethnicities
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