​Battlefield Role: Elite Assault Infantry
Weapons: A Heavy Axe or a Great Sword, plus a hatchet or a knife.
Outfit: Brigandine Vest and a Bear Pelt (slayed by the Berserker herself)
Skill level: Masters in heavy melee weapons.
Affiliation: Alendra
Doctrine: Bellona's Way of the Warmaiden
Strengths: Ferocious individual combat skills and unbreakable morale. They intimidate enemy units with their vicious charge and always take advantage of any weaknesses they see. Their cunning is as much of a weapon as their deadly swords and axes are.
Weaknesses: They may refuse to obey direct orders, if those orders aren't fitting with their personal strategies.
Alendrian Berserkers
No. Amazon Berserkers are not by any means the utterly frenzied and mindless naked fighters that so many people mistakenly think them to be. They might look like quite the reckless, fearless and impulsive warrioresses that urge to fight people and beasts alike (and they actually are, up to some degre), but there is so much more about them than just that.
Behind their bold and daring persona, Amazon Berserkers are rather intelligent, perceptive and clever fighters, who use careful study about their foes and about the environment around them to employ a wide range of advanced tactics and cunning strategies within their highly adaptative fighting style, thus minimizing the risk of the battle to come as much as they can before ever charging, which enables them to perform uncannily well on the battlefield.
And they do wear clothes. As well as armour. (At least most of the time...) Actually, what gives them their names is their outfit and their initiation rites, which are somewhat linked. Their very first task before ever becoming a berserker warrior is to kill one of the countless grizzly bears that roam thorughout the deep Alendrian Woods. All by themselves, in 1vs1 combat with the beast, using nothing but their intellect to bring it down. Ironically enough, most people think this is a test of fearlessness and sheer muscle might, when it's actually a test of cunning and wits.
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Any young berserker wannabe who is too stupid to attack a freaking grizzly bear without properly studying her bestial adversary and properly preparing to face it will soon meet her fatidic demise at the earth-shattering claws of the first beast to cross her path. But those who are clever enough to take their time and carefully observe their target's ways, learning the bear's habits and fighting it with their brains instead of merely using their axes, can very well win through outwitting the massive creature instead of attacking it directly. That's the way of the Alendrian Berserkers. The way of fighting with the mind, getting to know their enemies' strengths and weaknesses better than the enemies themselves know it. Only then approaching the battlefield with the certainty of winning, using the best-suiting strategies to vanquish any specific foe.
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This whole process takes time, but works on both beasts and people, for every breathing creature has their own weaknesses. In Alendra, the first bear that a woman kills all by herself makes that woman a Berserker on her own right. So the hide of the fallen beast shall then be skinned by her own hands so she can craft a fearsome Bear Pelt that will forever immortalize her as a mighty Berserker.
The Alendrian Amazons are the only people on the Arandolian Islands who has this long-lasting tradition of having Berserkers in their armies, making those fabled military units quite rare. However, what they lack in numbers, they compensate in deadly killing efficiency and battlefield versatility. Because no matter which foe thay might face, Berserkers can swiftly adapt to any changing odds, taking on archers, cavalry or infantry without prejudice or remorse in killing.
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For them, death is just another natural and very important stage of the circle of life. Survival of the fittest at its very essence. They therefore see war as nothing but the struggle of two factions fighting just like rival predators for the rightful place on top of the food chain, whilst only one may step out of it still breathing. No compromises, no prisoners. Just plain, cold, death.
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​However, berserkers are no arrogant fools at that! They will never charge against a foe who they know they can't defeat. No matter what their commander says, they only fight in their own terms.