IgnusDei said:my theory is this.
Wiseman ascends as Void, and someone, who could be Gaiseric or someone closely related to him, survives. Like Guts, he begins a quest to acquire the power to kill Astral Overlords, a search that eventually leads Him ot Flora, and to (i assume) a Dwarven Smith. With Flora's enchantments and the Dwarf's fine craftmanship, the Berserker's armor is born.
The armor's enchantments take their heavy toll over Him, confrontation after confrontation, until the one battle in which the suit finally turns His body into a lifeless pile of ground flesh. Despite the Struggler's death, the armor's odic properties keep his soul from being claimed by the Vortex. However, the other much less wholesome properties of the armor slowly turn him into a mad Wraith. With haste, Flora and the Dwarven smith begin making another, similar suit of armour. Instead of a physically enhancing item, THIS suit was meant to work as a cage that would allow an encased soul to remain anchored in the Material Realm and interact with it using the suit's metal extremities. It should be noted that the suit is not "alive". If anything, it is more of a puppet willed to move from within.
Flora transfers the Struggler's soul from the berserker's armour and into this new one, and so, the Skull Knight is born.