Berserker

The "Berserker" was a warrior employing a type of endo-magic. Berserkers featured heavily during the Mage Wars. Equipped with weapons and armor, they cast a spell on themselves to receive unnatural strength, speed, and size for a short time period.

Contemporary accounts tell of warriors growing to over twelve foot high, and gaining the strength of ten men. Usually armed with powerful enchanted weapons and armor, a single berserker was an army unto himself. They moved through the battlefield with uncalculating wrath, wrecking havoc on friend and foe alike.

The spell caused a sort of violent mind-fog to overtake the caster, causing him to loose all control over his actions. Berkerkers would often turn on their own troops in a blind rage. The typical strategy was for a berserker to break away from the others, fight as deeply into the enemy forces as he could, and then cast the spell, hoping that the bulk of his anger would be directed at the enemy.

A casting lasted anywhere from two to ten minutes, though some accounts tell of berserk rages lasting for hours (it is possible this is the result of one mage casting the spell several times). At least one account deals with a "permanently-berserk" fighter-mage whose path of chaos lasted for weeks and for whom an entire army was assembled. Ten thousand men would give their lives to end this one tirade.

Spell

The spell is referenced in many sources as "The Berserk Fury" and was probably quite easy to learn (most berserkers were more fighter than mage). The spell itself may have been created by Nathan Searlin, though no contemporary source directly attributed it to him. Further, no primary source confirms the use of the spell during the First Chaotic Period.

In the Dynastic Period, the spell was already very heavily in use. The Marcons in particular trained berserkers by the tens of thousands. They were considered expendable, and according to surviving Marconian military manuals: "if a berserker survive a singe fight and to his name attribute a thousand souls, then his worth be proved"; essentially, if it lasted for a single fight and killed a thousand enemies, the Marcons had their monies' worth.

A single known transcription survived the Mage Wars, and is kept in archives at Stormwind Keep in Arindell, in the private library of the Pendragon. Unconfirmed rumors claim that the transcription was actually burned by Uther himself, as a deathbed-request from Sol.