Escaping the eclipse: *IF* Skully is branded too...

HA!

that became a popular belief i guess, but has anyone questioned this:

how did he escape the eclipse?

we all know (i guess) that Guts and Casca would never survive the eclipse if it wasnt for skull knight. probably no branded human could survive it. well if skully also was once sacrificed - branded AND escaped who saved him?

maybe zodd?

could this mean that the theory of skull knight being a 'struggler' with 'the same curse' as Guts meaning hes branded too just isnt correct?

Flora could have saved him (according to Morgan she is much older than it seems)
or some other Power(about whom we know nothing yet) that make also him in what he is now.
Or he could have not survived at all, and what we see now is only is reincarnated spirit that seeks vengeance. Believe it or not I did read the other topic about skullknight after i posted this ;D

maybe he was almost died, but elves managed to save him ( thats why ther'd be only a skeleton out of him and that puck had felt his elvish aura : / )
just a lil speculation

This is a good question, something I'd never really considered before. But, it's asking something thats a little too specific for a character whose background we don't really know anything about.

I really don't think Zodd is involved, as Im still VERY convinced he's only 300 years old. I think Flora is likely... or someone from her order (shall I call them mages?). But then again I have a feeling that Skully has been far deeper in "hell" than Flora has. I think Flora may have knowledge of a great deal about areas past the nexus... but not as much experience as Skully.
(Im allowed to post garbage like this! This is the speculation section.)

Ok fine, my theory on this... Skully barely escaped alive. His body was nearly destroyed. Flora (or a mage) entrusted his body to Elfhelm. After that... magical armor time. I also think the possibility of Skully being branded (and thus within the interstice) has a LOT to do with his resilience.

I think Skully's body died a long time ago and all that is left is his spirt living in the armor, and is why he can eat beherits, have glowing eyes, and why guts brand doesn't react to him.

alright, well im going to post a stupid theory that just popped into my head

so skully is 1000 years old (approx), which puts him at the time of gaiseric, so we immediately believe there is a skully/gaiseric parallel. but what if its more than that?

1000 years ago is also the time of the 5th god hand of the previous generation, so we propose that is void, which to my knowledge is purely unsubstantiated. but this previous 5th god hand would have been reincarnated just like griff was, at least thats how i think it works.

so i propose, skully and gaiseric are the same person, but there is a third entity, the 5th god hand. they are all teh same person. an almost direct griffith/femto/new griff parallel.

this answers some question, but leaves just as many unanswered.

i suspect that the new griff is not purely mortal, lets say hes a spiritual being with mortal qualities
this could account for the clanking inside skully when he eats (theres not body), but he's still capable of wearing armor.

this also accounts for his long life, strong ethereal pressence.

but this doesnt account for the fellow struggler

this also means that skully didnt have to get out of the eclipse, cause he was doing the sacrificing.

also explains his abundant knowledge of the doings of god hand, the eclipse, and especially the rebirth. how would anyone know about that

and he seeks revenge on all of god hand, not just void, because they cursed him to walk the earth immortally.

or something like that

maybe void saved him...then SK grows hating Void....u know...the "i hate u coz u saved me" relationship....^^;

(hey..that's just a speculation right?...^^;)

THE HISTORY REPEATS ITSELF THEORY
(drums go "dumb dumb dumb dumb")

Maybe Void(when human, if human) attempted to sacrifice gaiseric to gain the power of the angels, gaiseric escaped and now hunts void just like guts hunts griffith .... also maybe the brand gives the skullknight immortality .... maybe it will give guts the same .... although, we know that when somebody with a brand dies, they go to the abyss .... so if skully does have a brand, he never died, cause he is still around .... hmmmmm? ..... OR maybe slan(when human) was his girlfriend and void cock blocked him and convinced her to sacrifice gaiseric .... so skully cant take his rage out on his former biotch and chooses to take it out on void .... off topic: ever notice how void always passes out the brand and not the other angels?

where did muira get his inspiration for skull knight anyway?

and
"The laws of causality dictate that i will own castle gray skull!!!!!!"

maybe long lost brothers?

where did Miura get his inspiration for skull knight anyway?

and
"The laws of causality dictate that i will own castle gray skull!!!!!!"

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Screw that. http://www.internationalhero.co.uk/o/ogonbat.htmHere's the inspiration

Reminds me more of Void with that big ass cloak and all.

Thanks for reviving this shitty thread too. No, really. Thanks. A lot.

You're welcome. It was that, or post a new topic with my "find".

I think Void raises a good point with his body being nearly destroyed. Maybe he WAS sent to Elfheim for healing and they tried to give him the berserk armour. After a while, skully died as he described the last owner died. And maybe Flora or someone else took Skully's soul and encased it into his current armour.

How do we know Skully is even branded? Didn't he ward off evil spirits in Volume 13 rather then attract them? Or was that a bad translation?

Void Swordsman said:

I think Void raises a good point with his body being nearly destroyed.

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What? Void raised a point?

Void Swordsman said:

After a while, skully died as he described the last owner died.

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It's actually Schierke that talked about the armor's previous wearer dying in it.

EUIX said:

How do we know Skully is even branded? Didn't he ward off evil spirits in Volume 13 rather then attract them? Or was that a bad translation?

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Well, we know he can sense evil, but that doesn't necessarily mean he's branded. And I don't remember him warding off any evil spirits in volume 13, so yes, that was a bad translation. However, Puck does comment about him having an elfin aura, and he indeed doesn't seem to be attracting evil beings (although that's rather hard to judge since we rarely see him).

I think the curse they share is the brand. I also think that some brands are unique with different attributes..

Like, Guts brand attract lots of demons that always try to kill him

Where as in Casca's case, they didnt attack her when she was standing on the hill by herself in Vol13. Maybe because the child had some influence over the spirits.

SPECULATIN here, but I think SK's brand is kind of like A daytime vampire, in that he has the Pros of a vampire, but no cons. He has the ability to "feel" the presence demons and not die from it(he did strike at void), but where as a normal brand would draw them near, his repells them(Vol13 it says somewhere that it does, maybe only for weak demons) SK isn't of flesh and blood, he might of been able to receive even a more powerful treatment than to what Flora did to Guts. She probably used some crazy magic on Skullknight because she wouldn't want to use it on someone living like Guts, fearing it might cause death. Perhaps SK had been wondering and fighting off demons a long time in spirit form and having his flesh rotting away before meeting Flora, she might of put some crazy ward that Guts couldn't receive on him because she knew she could do more with a "dead" physical body.

So my speculation goes like this for skullknight
Branded - Eclipse Ended - Survived/Dying - Didn't give up, and continued fighting -
Started to lose his flesh - Spirit became stronger by fighting in the interstice, Body started to rot away - Was able to Enter Flora's mansion because his spirit allowed him to see it- Met flora -Put on the cursed armor - Some time later, his body ripped apart due to the strain of the armor and was left slain on the battleground- then, either Flora came to his rescue and saved his spirit from being swallowed into the "mini hell" and managed to put him into a host body and sealing him inside. But that body too was not perfect, and crumbled in time. However SK managed to "create his own armor with his strong will" kinda like how Griffith has feather shaped armor now.

Or his resolve was so strong that he continued fighting until the beast within completely took over his spirit, and caused him to be even more of a "badass" than the skullknight we see now. However in that state, he had no control, so Flora had to do her thing so he wouldn't lose his mind, and cast her highest level of magic, no matter how dangerous it was, and it worked. SK didn't lose his sanity and was able to control his power quickly.

I hope I'm 100% wrong so i can marvel at what miura chooses for his explanation of things to come. And if I'm somewhat right in the future, sorry for spoiling :)

gh-zodd said:

I think the curse they share is the brand. I also think that some brands are unique with different attributes..

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While it's possible, we have no proof of who actually did the sacrificing (such as, say, the wiseman which Mozgus referred to), and if Skully was a sacrifice at all.  And no, there is only one kind of brand.  It's explained pretty clearly in volume 3.

Where as in Casca's case, they didnt attack her when she was standing on the hill by herself in Vol13. Maybe because the child had some influence over the spirits.

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It's only because of the child.  SK was wondering why the spirits weren't harming her, then figured it was the demon child's influence.

SK's repells them(Vol13 it says somewhere that it does, maybe only for weak demons)

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Nope, it doesn't.  That's a mistranslation.

Perhaps SK had been wondering and fighting off demons a long time in spirit form and having his flesh rotting away before meeting Flora, she might of put some crazy ward

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SK and Flora knew each other long before his flesh rotted away, since he needed flesh to put on the Berserker armor (it kinda takes the point away if he didn't have any flesh...).  As for some crazy ward, who knows?

I hope I'm 100% wrong so i can marvel at what miura chooses for his explanation of things to come. And if I'm somewhat right in the future, sorry for spoiling :)

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Well, not 100% wrong, and if you are somewhat right, well, this is the speculation section after all :) .

if Sk is Gaiseric and if Void was the Wiseman and if.. (too many if's)
If Void sacrificed Gaiseric and his kingdom, the 4 angels came to "see" the Eclipse.

Gaiseric, by that time, should already have the berserker armor because according to "stories about Gaiseric", he was a ruthless fighter (berserk mode on).
So what im saying is..
The 4 angels came to the Eclipse, and SK killed them all, except Void who was supposed to be the 5th God Hand but.. He turned out to be the first cuz all the others were dead.. Gaiseric killed them all but the fighting "drained all the blood from is body and broke all his bones" so is Od passed onto the armor, then someone took him from the Eclipse (maybe Flora or Hanafubuku himself).

The only flaw is.. If he died in the armor and if his od passed on to the armor then what is that armor that he is wearing? If Guts is wearing the armor that belonged to Gaiseric.. hmm..

Since I can't read japanese and just have various translations to go on, I cannot be sure if this is a proper interpretation. But doesn't Flora refers to the "children" (I assume she means Guts but not sure who she includes in this) as sharing the same "curse" or "disease" as Skully?
(Aazeahl, you would probably be the best one to answer this)
If this is an accurate translation, then the curse could very likely be the brand. Sorry if this doesn't make sense, I am exhausted...

P.S. the statement is on Pg 147 of volume 24

gh-zodd said:

I think the curse they share is the brand.

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It's not a correct assumption, the translation of that part isn't accurate. See below.

gh-zodd said:

I also think that some brands are unique with different attributes..

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Like yota821 said, there's only one Brand, everybody has the same. The people at the bottom of the Tower of Rebirth have the same Brand than Guts and Casca, and they were sacrificed when Gaiseric's empire crumbled.

gh-zodd said:

Where as in Casca's case, they didnt attack her when she was standing on the hill by herself in Vol13.

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Yota821 is right again, the specters didn't attack Casca because of the child only. No other reason.

gh-zodd said:

I think SK's brand is kind of like A daytime vampire

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Hahaha no, I doubt that's the case.

gh-zodd said:

He has the ability to "feel" the presence demons and not die from it(he did strike at void)

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Well Guts fought with Slan and Femto too and he didn't die. SK also has no blood to spurt anymore so...

gh-zodd said:

his repells them(Vol13 it says somewhere that it does, maybe only for weak demons)

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Horrible mistranslation as yota821 pointed out, I'm insisting just to make it clear that anybody reading this should banish this idea forever.

gh-zodd said:

Perhaps SK had been wondering and fighting off demons a long time in spirit form

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Actually I speculated about something similar once, that SK might have been wandering in the astral realm at some point, refusing to die.

gh-zodd said:

Was able to Enter Flora's mansion because his spirit allowed him to see it- Met flora -Put on the cursed armor

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I don't understand why his flesh would rot and his body decay after the Occultation and before he even found the Berserk's armor. Nothing hints at this in the manga. Also, I think he knew Flora before that, he didn't just met her and she happened to have the Berserk's armor, I think she only took it with her after SK got the current one. She kept it safe. IMHO they got it together when the need arose to fight beings that they couldn't defeat (or hardly) otherwise. SK told Guts and Schierke that Flora and him were like them at the time, so I see their relation as deeper than just meeting like that, and besides Flora didn't live in the spirit tree house at the time, she moved there after the Holy See's influence spread everywhere (which is relatively recent compared to the rest).

gh-zodd said:

"mini hell"

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Why mini?

gh-zodd said:

Or his resolve was so strong that he continued fighting until the beast within completely took over his spirit

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The Beast of Darkness is a character unique to Guts. While SK might have had his own demons (skull?), the Beast itself is about Guts.

fuxberg said:

If Void sacrificed Gaiseric and his kingdom, the 4 angels came to "see" the Eclipse.

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Well it's said that the angels destroyed the city, not that they watched. It's also not clear whether they were four or five. And we're not sure that it was an Occultation either.

fuxberg said:

Gaiseric, by that time, should already have the berserker armor because according to "stories about Gaiseric", he was a ruthless fighter (berserk mode on).

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That's a rather incongruous correlation, being ruthless doesn't necessarily imply not being aware of one's own actions, killing allies and enemies without distinction, etc. Besides, you'll notice that we see Gaiseric in his armor when Charlotte mentions this story, and it's not the Berserk's armor.

fuxberg said:

The 4 angels came to the Eclipse, and SK killed them all, except Void who was supposed to be the 5th God Hand but.. He turned out to be the first cuz all the others were dead..

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So Gaiseric killed 4 God Hand members at the same time with the Berserk's armor when Guts almost died fighting Grunberd and a bunch of lowly apostles? Seems a bit far-fetched to me, especially since he'd have needed a special weapon to do it. Besides, why isn't he able to kill a single God Hand member anymore?

fuxberg said:

The only flaw is.. If he died in the armor and if his od passed on to the armor then what is that armor that he is wearing? If Guts is wearing the armor that belonged to Gaiseric.. hmm..

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Yeah, that means what you said is impossible. And Guts wears an armor SK wore at some point in time, there's really no indication that the emperor Gaiseric wore it during his reign.

jepn30 said:

But doesn't Flora refers to the "children" (I assume she means Guts but not sure who she includes in this) as sharing the same "curse" or "disease" as Skully?

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She says something approaching (the "children" are all of them), yes, that SK shares the same "experience/hardships". The disease part is a four kanji idiom about how people sharing the same disease can understand each other. It's not limited to diseases or anything, and doesn't relate to a curse specifically. I don't think she refers to the Brand in particular, and it's definitely not clearly stated or even hinted at.

Thanks for clearing that up. It is so hard to know what translations are even remotely accurate, which can make the story confusing, especially when it comes to key sequences of dialogue. I appreciate the clarification.

I suspect that Berserk's history is completely cyclical. The Godhand cycle seems to point towards this. I suspect that when Void became a Godhand, he was the fifth one. I'm not sure if he was the wiseman and Skull Gaiseric or vice versa, but either way, they had a relationship. Anyways, the Eclipse happened...and Skull was saved by the previous Skull. Yes, I suspect there was a Skull Knight before Skull Knight. He wasn't necessarily a Skull Knight; he could have been in any myriad of forms, but I suspect there was an entity who had gone through the same things Guts and Skull had gone through, probably being saved by the previous Skull, who was saved by the previous one, and so on back to the first Skull and the first (fifth) Godhand.

In other words, it's all a vicious cycle. A man becomes the fifth Godhand, his last sacrifice escapes and becomes the next Skull Knight and wipes out the other 4 Godhand members. He probably fails to kill the fifth one (the one who he wants revenge on), dying in the process. In other words, the person who saved Skull died trying to kill the Godhand who betrayed him in the first place. Skull will die trying to kill Void. Guts will destroy the four non-Griffith Godhand members. He'll either become the next Skull Knight, save the next Struggler 1000 years later, and die fighting Griffith or he'll find a way to break the cycle, probably by neutralizing the Idea. I think the way to permenantly stop the Godhand is through the Idea. If the Idea is currently evil, the obvious solution is to turn it into a Neutral Idea.

Of course, I could be wildly off base...

The cyclical history theory has been brought up before, but I'm not sure I can buy into the idea of a "previous set" of Godhand. I'd say it's much more likely that time works differently for them, but that's a digression. The concept of an Ur-Skullknight is interesting, but hard to support. Also, why would the branded human be the one who kills not one, but four GH? It would make sense for the one who is no longer human, using an incredible talent (an ultimate Yobimizu no Tsurugi?), but I still just can't buy the idea of GH being titles passed down through time.
Also, the Idea is evil because humans have made it evil. To change it would require nothing less than an overhaul of the psyche of every person alive, and even that might not be enough.

Tenro said:

The cyclical history theory has been brought up before, but I'm not sure I can buy into the idea of a "previous set" of Godhand. I'd say it's much more likely that time works differently for them, but that's a digression. The concept of an Ur-Skullknight is interesting, but hard to support. Also, why would the branded human be the one who kills not one, but four GH? It would make sense for the one who is no longer human, using an incredible talent (an ultimate Sword of Resonance?), but I still just can't buy the idea of GH being titles passed down through time.
Also, the Idea is evil because humans have made it evil. To change it would require nothing less than an overhaul of the psyche of every person alive, and even that might not be enough.

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They are titles passed down through time. Slan is about 216 years old, and that means that there were only three god-hand members before her. But in the Gaiseric story, there were 4 - 5 angels. That means that Slan must have replaced one (I'm just using her, because not including Griffith she is the youngest) because the Gaiseric story occurred about 1000 years ago. Remember, a God-hand is born ever 216 years. There is no perminant God-hand.

Kagami said:

Slan is about 216 years old

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You have no way of knowing this, your assertion is baseless. How do you know Slan didn't become a God Hand member about 864 years ago? We don't have any indication regarding these events.

could it be because of the order of appearence in the Eclipse? (Slann, Ubik, Conrad and then Void)