Berserk for Horror Week.
This will be a three part post, with of stuff taken from the Guts first encounter with the forces of his universe's version of the Vatican.
This first part will mostly be introduction, but it sets the scene for the next two.
Our scene opens with Guts having been captured by the Knights of the Holy Iron Chain, who work for the dominant church of the Berserk Universe. They have been tasked with capturing him as a result of all supernatural occurrences that when he's around. These aren't actually his fault, but the HICKS (Holy Iron Chain Knights, IT'S A PUN) don't know that.
This is Lady Farnese, the HICK's general. She makes a halfway decent attempt to interrogate Guts, but he isn't thatinterested in answering her, He thinks it would be much more fun to hand her what I believe TV Tropes calls a 'Hannibal Lecture'.
That's Azan, The "Bridge Knight" that Guts mentiond, so named because of a battle from when he was younger, where he defended a bridge against a hundred men singlehandedly. Interesting and probably deliberate parallel to Guts himself, there, because Guts fought a similar battle back when he was with the Hawks.
Anyway, Azan attempts to chastise Farnese for going mental on a prisoner, but she's less interested in listening than Guts was in talking.
And that's Serpico, Farnese's squire. I love how clear an idea he has about who, exactly, was just torturing who.
Stay tuned for part two, in which things really start getting weird.