True Name: Laika
Alignment: Lawful Mad
Parameters:
Strength: C
Endurance: A+
Agility: C
Magic: E
Luck: B
Noble Phantasm: A
SkillsClass Skills:
Mad Enhancement: C
The Class Skill that characterizes a Berserker, raising basic parameters and strengthening one's physical abilities in exchange for their sense of reason. In some cases it also affects and/or seals away some techniques, Personal Skills and Noble Phantasms. At this rank, all parameters except Luck and Mana are ranked up, but in exchange, one can no longer think and speak properly.
The cold took it all away. First the body. Then the mind. Finally, after howling winds had eroded everything unnecessary, only a single desire remained within that walking shell. Berserker can learn and communicate to the extent of a young child or an intelligent animal, but such behavior is as substantial as the shadows cast by a campfire. When time comes to fight, those burdens will be discarded once more.
Personal Skills:
Pioneer of the Stars: EX
The unique Skill given to heroes that became turning points in human history. All difficult voyages and challenges which are considered "impossible" turn into "events that can be realized".
Compared to other Servants possessing this Skill, the effect is slightly different. Because Berserker's achievement relies not on intellect but instead on "walking forward no matter what", merely existing and consuming magical energy is considered an extension of that journey. It manifests as the ability to endure endless hardship, granting a plus modifier to Endurance and creating a "chance to survive even against certain death".
Protection from Solar Wind: A-
An absolute survival-type Skill that allows a Servant to endure even the most hostile climates. Despite the name, its protection extends to all harmful surroundings and isn't limited to wind-type attacks. Provides bonus modifiers against abilities and attacks that target a wide range. When dealing with a Noble Phantasm, power drops proportionally to the maximum number of targets, with Anti-Fortress becoming less effective than Anti-Unit. At this rank, it's possible to wade through the Sea of Life and come out unharmed.
Rather than it being something she was born with, this Skill was begrudgingly given to Berserker because of her heroic stubbornness. It has reached the point of becoming an unconscious bodily mechanism that continues even under Mad Enhancement. However, because Berserker instinctively regards warmth as an absolute ally against suffering, she is vulnerable to flame-aligned effects.
Pre-Conception: E--
A Skill denoting one's existence as an ancient human predating history. Provides resistance against the Authority of those that came after. Due to living before words like Hero and God became codified as concepts, both Heaven and Earth-type existences will be at a disadvantage. Since a holder of this Skill must be older than the Throne of Heroes itself, possessing it greatly lessens the Servant's status as a Heroic Spirit. In exchange, even a Mystery as overpowering as Potnia Theron can be disregarded.
Berserker was not especially strong or powerful for her time, but was still granted this Skill due to age alone. By purposefully diluting its power to the minimum using a similar existence from the modern day, it became possible for her to become a Servant. Even this rank is only barely enough to allow for summoning. Heaven-type Servants will deal about 10% less damage to her, and Earth-type Servants will take 10% more damage.
Eye of the Mind (True): - (C)
A heightened capacity for observation, refined through training, discipline and experience. A danger-avoidance ability that utilizes the intelligence collected up to the current time as the basis in order to predict the opponent’s activity and change the current situation. This is not a result of talent, but an overwhelming amount of experience.
Rather than combat experience against humans, this skill is a culmination of Berserker's desperate struggle against the death being sown by the nameless Mother Goddesses during her life. Without understanding the world around her, she would have certainly perished. It has been completely sealed by Mad Enhancement.
Noble Phantasm
последний ледниковый максимумBeringian Belt
Rank: A
Type: Unknown
There is a place that rejects life.
Beyond the ordained world in which humans and other beings can live. Beyond even the layers where imaginary creatures sleep. Beyond everything there is a great and cold "nothing" that approaches absolute zero, a state where even the mechanics of the universe begin to break down. As a zone of absolute rejection, only beings with the power to resist the absolute imposition of death can dare to approach it. The Earth Mother Goddesses, as administrators of the cycle of life and death, were the ones to finally wield that power.
Turning that place into a tool, it became a "scalpel of nonexistence" that carved into the earth's flesh and shaped it into a place where life could thrive. By cordoning off areas and gathering nutrition, it became possible to unevenly distribute it to various creatures. That place faded as humanity gained strength, eventually retreating into outer space some time after the Age of Gods.
Even so, it did not go unnoticed. Humanity could instinctively sense that there was "a place no living being could exist". So, they couldn't help but to challenge it.
It should have been impossible. Thousands lost their lives venturing into that impossibility. Yet, there was one that finally breached that barrier. Even as everything around her tried to crush her into nothingness, she survived and kept breathing, taking one second at a time. That alone was enough make her a Heroic Spirit. After seeing that place and acknowledging it with her own eyes, she became the first to truly reach out to and capture a glimpse of the future waiting for humanity beyond the stars.
Berserker cannot activate Beringian Belt herself, nor can she deactivate it without a Command Spell. But if she is forced to remember, then an imitation of that zone will surely be produced around her. The suffering carved into her bones will invert, recreating her history of bearing that inhospitable torture. At first the temperature will drop, and then plants and animals will wither in her presence. Conditions will worsen, faster and faster, as life begins to flee. Soon after activation, she will be the epicenter of a miniature hurricane, surrounded by razor-sharp winds that can rip a person to shreds. The final destination is none other than outer space itself, a cold and cruel void with no atmosphere and no rules, where thaumaturgical foundations cannot be engraved and to approach is to invite destruction, even for a Servant.
Berserker herself is not exempt from these effects, but as she has the Skills to endure, the only thing to worry about is the immense amount of magical energy required to sustain Beringian Belt. She will continue to walk towards the enemy without sparing a thought as to the hell around her, even as it grows to swallow up everything. To her, it is merely an unfortunate status quo.
Lore 1
Laika was a Soviet space dog who became one of the first animals in space, and the first animal to orbit the Earth. Laika, a stray dog from the streets of Moscow, was selected to be the occupant of the Soviet spacecraft Sputnik 2 that was launched into outer space in 1957. Little was known about the impact of spaceflight on living creatures at the time of her mission, and the technology to de-orbit had not yet been developed, so her survival was never expected.
Laika does not remember much of her life. At three years old, she'd lived mostly on the streets without thinking. At some point, some men came and took her to a strange place, full of machines and people in white. They forced her to endure strange tests and jabbed at her body with needles, but she didn't mind. Being sheltered was something to celebrate. Being fed was good, even if it was strange gels that made her stomach squirm. Then one day a man came and started crying. He hugged Laika and took her home, to stay with his family. Running around, playing fetch with children and sleeping on a warm bed. Even if it was only for a night, surely it must have been the greatest happiness in the world.
The next day she was put into a tiny ball, in a strange contraption of metal, and tied down. There was only a tiny window to see out of. Laika couldn't understand what was going on, but some part of her understood that she was being relied on. For that reason, she decided to do her best.
There was a terrible noise and a terrible heat and, finally, a terrible weightlessness that spread from her core. She peered out of the window and saw a sea of black, dotted with white, and a strange blue and white ball that whizzed by. It hurt, and it was hot, but worst of all, she had never felt so alone in her life. She howled with certainty, knowing that nobody existed that could possibly hear.
"I see. You're scared, right? Me too."
Even so, he heard her.
A strange boy clad in furs, as insubstantial as the mist on a cold morning. He reached through the window and ruffled her hair. She couldn't understand the boy, but Laika knew he was a kindred spirit. More than any of the other dogs or animals, he was someone that understood her.
"We were both thrown away," he said. "But, it wasn't for nothing. Can't you see it? That shining paradise?"
The boy stayed with her as the metal contraption rounded the strange blue ball. He stayed with her as she ran out of food, and he stayed with her as the air grew thick and hot and the strength fled from her body. He stayed with her until the very and, and then, even beyond it.
They were the same, she knew. Neither she nor the boy wanted to be lonely again, so they would stay together forever.
Lore 2The boy was one of many.
His people, also, were one of many. A tribe among tribes among islands. The land was wet and hot and sometimes dry, and there was never enough food to go around. He grew up in such a place, playing and hunting and running without sparing a thought for the future. One day, the village elder decided that they couldn't stay. The other tribes were brandishing sharp sticks, crying about stolen food. The boy, his family, his friends and elders, all would have to leave and live somewhere else.
So they went north, towards the stars and towards the cold.
The boy hadn't lived in a forgiving place to begin with, but with each step, the land became more inhospitable. Trees and grass became snow and ice, that covered even the ground. The wind bit and clawed, tearing chunks out of exposed skin. Even when they stopped and set up tents, the cold found a way to leak in. One by one the infirm began to die off. Food started to run out.
Even so, they kept going. The boy didn't understand what was going on, but he kept walking too. His mother had told him a story about their destination: it would be a wonderful paradise, where the sun would caress his skin with kisses and the water would wash clean his wounds. Fruit would fall from the trees and the softest grass in the world would be his bed.
Soon the elder died, as did all the weak and ill. The village shrank from a hundred people to thirty, and then to twenty and finally ten. The boy didn't notice. He just kept walking, repeating his dead mother's story in his head, over and over again.
Eventually the other ten decided to turn back. They would join another village, they said. Better that then walking into the no man's land that no one had returned from. But the boy kept walking without sparing them a thought.
Cold. Wind. White. His world shrank. The boy slowly forgot things. He forgot what warmth was, his mother's face, and taste and smell. He forgot everything except how to put one foot in front of the other. The gods seemed to whisper at him to turn back, but he ignored them. He ignored everything, even his own body.
Paradise. If he endlessly pursued, then surely he would reach it.
The boy kept walking. And walking. And walking. And walking. And-.
The boy doesn't remember much, but he knows that he certainly reached "somewhere". He isn't aware that the cold expanse he crossed was a designated zone of death that the Earth Mother Goddesses had purposely put in place to prevent humans from traversing it. He doesn't know that it would later come to be called the Bering Strait. Neither did he ever realize that the land he arrived at was called America, or that he was the first settler to ever set foot onto it. Others would come after him, but for the boy, his entire existence became a struggle against that endless expanse of ice and snow, and so he couldn't comprehend anything else.
Because he predates a certain Oldest Hero, he cannot qualify as a Heroic Spirit on his own. As such, the boy walked endlessly towards the Throne of Heroes, never quite reaching it, until one day he sensed an existence infinitely close to his own, howling into the darkness. He approached, and found salvation in another.
Together, they could do more than withstand that cold nothing.
They could beat it.
DescriptionA crude and unrefined person, but at the same time, Berserker is endlessly earnest. A simple, bumbling girl, she'll do her best to answer to her Master's demands. Perhaps because both of her components were used to being bossed around, she has no objection to any order, even if it's one she personally dislikes.
Since she is an amalgam of two infinitely similar souls, Berserker's habits are slightly incongruous. She knows how to use tools, but prefers to bite and prod at things with her knuckles. Her knowledge of cultural milestones like clothing is present, but rarely acknowledged as significant. Embarrassment and disappointment are foreign concepts, because the first thing she discarded upon going mad was "the ability to be weak". That isn't to say she can't be confused, but discouragement is impossible. Simultaneously soft and hard, she is a battered existence that can endlessly struggle against the North Wind but will be instantly capitulate to the Sun. In short, love and affection are 200% effective.
Berserker, despite having gone mad, isn't particularly violent. To her, violence against a person and violence against nature are one and the same, and so she fights as if struggling against the world itself, pushing and clawing with infinite desperation. She does not feel fear and has no self-preservation instinct, and can't accurately judge a powerful enemy from a weak one. Furthermore, she is incapable of retreating from of her own free will and needs to be ordered back by a Command Spell or a simple justification like "that person isn't an obstacle anymore".
Her emotions are rusty from lack of use, but that isn't to say they are non-functional. Berserker can acknowledge a precious person and desire to protect them, and countless other mundane pieces of common sense will certainly be accumulated after a few days. With enough time, Berserker might even develop enough self-awareness to be able to articulate her wish:
"I... want... home, where... it's warm... And then, lie down... by the fire... sleep... for a very long time."
RelationshipsFrankenstein:
Head pats would be dispensed. Berserker can recognize a kindred spirit that suffered through the sort of coldness that freezes a heart.
Tamamo:
"Warm... mother...? Did I... do good?"
EMIYA:
"Just... a little more... You're... almost there..."
Gawain:
"Ah... you're like... the sun..."
Tiamat:
"Why? You... can't stop me... but... why...? Do you hate us... that much? Or maybe... is this... love...?"