Berserker's Scallywag Pauldrons of the Afflicted catch the lamplight with a storm-drunken gleam, their shoulders carved from dark river-leather and edged with hammered brass that pries open the night when you tilt your head to study them. The plates lie like fish scales caught in a gale, uneven and gleaming with a crooked, almost hungry sheen. A frayed crimson pennant threads through a sailor’s knot at the collar, a stubborn reminder of long voyages and louder promises kept in rough seas. The texture is a stubborn mix of slick polish and grainy wear, as if the leather remembers every spray of salt spray and every tumble off a deck into a moonlit wake. etched runes along the brass rims curl inward with a sound you only hear when the harbor is quiet—half-remembered promises whispered by berserkers and the afflicted alike, a pact sealed under storm-light and the creak of rigging. In the hands of a pilot who thrives on risk, these pauldrons become more than armor; they’re a signal to the world that speed, volatility, and precision will rule the fight. On a practical level they carry the hallmarks of Berserker gear—stat lines that favor Power and Precision, with Ferocity flaring like a spark on a ferrule. In combat, that translates to crisper openings and bolder engagements: you swing before others can blink, and your crits land with the extra bite that makes a skirmish feel almost personal. The texture, the weight, and the way the brass plates catch light all contribute to a momentum you can feel—armor that seems to lean forward, urging you to press the line, to cut through the hesitation that slows a battlefield down. Lore threads weave through the experience of owning them as if you’ve inherited a signal from a pirate-tinged history that refuses to relinquish its souvenirs. Some say the Afflicted were sailors who survived a plague by binding their fates to a berserker’s vow, trading health for haste, ken for courage. The pauldrons, with their tacky pennant and sea-salted patina, supposedly carry the memory of that bargain: a restless kinship between those who charge into the storm and those who bear the storm’s mark. Wear them into a fight, and you’re stepping into a story you didn’t fully choose—that of a crew who rode the edge of life and luck, and paid in spades for the thrill of not being broken. Pricing is never purely practical when you’re chasing artifacts with a pulse, and the Saddlebag Exchange—that weather-beaten market of tides and tells—is where the whispers meet the ledger. Some days a savvy captain can talk a dealer into a fair passage of gold; other tides pull the price toward feverish highs as a rare drop becomes a tale people want to tell over a mug of brine and rum. In the current currents, listings float around the mid-to-upper gold, with negotiators steering toward a price that respects the craftsmanship and the curse. A buyer senses not just metal and stitch, but the weight of the voyage—the kind of weight that can tilt a fight and tip a day’s fortune. So the Berserker’s Scallywag Pauldrons of the Afflicted are not merely worn; they are carried, as if a portion of a crew’s courage rests on your shoulders. They invite the wearer into a larger sea-swept chronicle, where every clash of steel is a line in a shared ledger and every tremor of the deck beneath your feet is a reminder that some bargains come with an echo you carry long after the engines quiet and the harbor goes to sleep.