"In this world, is the destiny of mankind controlled by some transcendental entity or law? Is it like the hand of God hovering above? At least, it is true that man has no control, even over his own will. Man takes up the sword in order to shield the small wound in his heart sustained in a far-off time beyond remembrance. Man wields the sword so that he may die smiling in some far-off time beyond perception."

"Tell me why, tell me why"
It all started when I first discovered that Lucien Flavius could recognize the name "Guts." Since then, I've been thinking of ways to properly integrate Guts into the world of Tamriel via a highly convoluted role-playing save file. I did everything from downloading custom Berserk races to adding a fully functional cannon arm. I even watched the 1997 anime and am currently reading volume 2 of the deluxe edition manga (with no plans to watch the 2016 CLANG-ime in the future), just to get as accurate of a representation of Guts as possible. As such, when I came across ZidanReign's port of Zenl's Black Swordsman Armor, complete with two different Dragonslayer mods, I thought that my Guts role-play save file would be complete.

There was just one tiny problem, though: while the armor itself was great, I discovered that it had a few kinks, dents, and bugs that I felt could be addressed and fixed, in order to bring the armor up to Anniversary Edition standards. That's where this mod comes in.

So what does it do?
This update modifies Zenl's Black Swordsman Armor to bring it to modern-day Skyrim modding standards, by adding some quality of life changes and fixing bugs present in the original mod. What's more, this update is flagged as ESPFE to save a slot in your ever-growing load order. Below is a complete catalogue of what this update brings to the table:

ALL ITEMS

• Added "Survival_ArmorWarm" keyword, allowing players to cosplay as Guts and stay toasty at the same time.
• Fully incorporated Dragoon23's female meshes, allowing players to either cosplay as Guts or "Gutsette." :)
• Rebalanced all items (minus the cape) to have Armor ratings matching Ebony. These stats are meant to indicate that the armor is powerful, but not meant to be overpowered.
• Added option to install optimized textures courtesy of HerrValkyr upon porting to Xbox (1k diffuse and 512 normals), for better performance.
• Added all items to Eorlund Gray-Mane's merchant chest via Container Item Distributor (CID) by ThirdEye3301, allowing them to be purchased from him at the Skyforge while minimizing conflicts to other mods that touch his chest. (NOTE: This part requires CID to be of use, without which the included .ini files will do nothing.)
• Added an optional loading screen showcasing Guts from Bagserk's Berserk Races mod, preparing to fire his cannon arm. (NOTE: This part requires powerofthree's Photo Mode to be of use, without which the included .dds file will do nothing.)
  

BLACK SWORDSMAN CUIRASS

• Raised value from 100 to 1100.
  

BLACK SWORDSMAN IRON ARM

• Added "PerkFistsSteel" keyword, allowing it to properly benefit from the Fists of Steel perk.
• Raised weight from 10 to 11.
• Lowered value from 800 to 500.
• Added "dxWearWhenStripped" and "SexLabNoStrip" keywords via powerofthree's Keyword Item Distributor (KID) to prevent it from being unequipped when using Flower Girls or SexLab, since it wouldn't make sense to unequip a prosthetic arm only for a fleshy arm to magically grow in its place. (NOTE: This part requires KID to be of use, without which the included .ini file will do nothing.)
• Added "Cannon Arm", a new spell designed to be used with skypia's Berserk | The Black Swordsman | Cannon Arm Add On. This spell is meant to be used only while the Black Swordsman Iron Arm is equipped and cannot be obtained via normal gameplay. The spell itself is a projectile that deals 100 points of Fire damage in a 15 foot radius; basically, it's a Fireball that deals as much damage as Fire Storm. After all, that thing is known to critically wound Apostles!
• To use the spell, make sure you have skypia's mod installed, then edit "(Skyrim Directory)\Data\SKSE\PayloadInterpreter\Config\CannonArm.ini" (which I cannot include in the main download due to permissions) and change "@CAST|0x1C789|Skyrim.esm" to "@CAST|0x0080D|MP03BerserkAE.esp" (without the quotations). After that, acquire the Iron Arm in-game and fire away!
  

BLACK SWORDSMAN BOOTS

• Raised weight from 5 to 6.
• Raised value from 50 to 200.
  

BLACK SWORDSMAN CAPE

• Renamed from "Black Cape" to "Black Swordsman Cape" for consistency with the rest of the set.
• Now has an actual Armor rating, at 9 Armor.
• Relocated from equipment slot 60 to slot 46 for congruency with other popular cloak and cape mods, including the "Civil War Champions" and "Divine Crusader" Creation Club content.
• Added tempering, using 1 Leather.
• Removed "ArmorLight" keyword, allowing it to be worn without negating the Well Fitted or Mage Armor perks.
• Added "ClothingBody" keyword, allowing for body enchantments.
• Added "VendorItemArmor" keyword, allowing it to be sold to blacksmiths as well as clothiers.
• Added "ArmorMaterialImperialHeavy" keyword, allowing it to benefit from Steel Smithing.
• Raised value from 1 to 300.
• Changed mesh and mesh path to match the "Cloak - Black Hide" mesh from Nazenn's Cloaks of Skyrim mod, since both it and Zenl's original mesh are virtually identical. Notably, this means that any texture replacers for Cloaks of Skyrim will affect the Black Swordsman Cape as well, and if you have both Cloaks of Skyrim and Zeridian's Artesian Cloaks of Skyrim installed, along with an appropriate HDT-SMP framework, HDT-SMP physics will also apply to the Cape. To apply physics, make sure to let Zeridian's meshes overwrite this mod's.
• Added optional patches that change the armor type of the Black Swordsman Cape from Light Armor to Heavy Armor or Clothing. No edits are made to keywords in either patch, meaning aside from the changed armor type, the Cape is exactly the same as it is without either patch.
  

NEW ITEM: BLACK SWORDSMAN HOOD

• A new heavy helmet designed to go with the rest of the set, made using vanilla meshes and free-to-use textures from "Project Clarity" by IconicDeath.
• Comes in three different variants: Heavy (default), Light, and Medium. Note that the Light and Medium variants do not include the optional optimized textures at this time.
• The Heavy variant uses the vanilla Black Mage Hood mesh and textures from "Project Clarity - Vanilla Clothing And Jewelry Textures Redone".
• The Light variant uses the vanilla Shrouded Cowl Maskless mesh and textures from "Project Clarity - Vanilla Armor Textures Redone".
• The Medium variant uses the vanilla Thieves Guild Hood / Serana Hood mesh and textures from "Vanilla Armor Textures Redone".
• All three variants also have a special mesh made specifically for Khajiit characters, made using meshes from Kitty Hoods - Khajiit shaped hoods by Alastryona.
• The three variants can be interchanged via FOMOD installer.
• Based off the hood worn by Guts in episode 1 of the 1997 anime and chapter 2 of the manga.
• Designed specifically for people who don't use perk overhauls like Ordinator or Vokrii, but don't want to wear something potentially mismatching just to benefit from the Well Fitted and/or Matching Set perks.
• Like the rest of the set, it has the "Survival_ArmorWarm" keyword, requires the Steel Smithing perk to craft (using 2 Leather and 1 Leather Strips), and benefits from said perk.
• It has a base Armor rating, weight, and value of 12/7/300.
• It can be tempered with 1 Leather.
  

DRAGONSLAYER

• Added ESLified replacer plugins for both Phate3's and DraculaOffspring's Dragonslayer mods, each hosted on ZidanReign's original mod page. These plugins cover both the Greatsword animation and Battleaxe animation variants of each plugin. These plugins still require their respective original mods from ZidanReign's page to function properly.
• Removed the edits to Eorlund Gray-Mane's merchant chest from each plugin in favor of edits made via CID.
  

And what about BodySlides?
Good news! While the mod itself doesn't include BodySlide files, I have plans to learn how to work the necessary programs and create at least HIMBO files for the armor! CBBE is still a long way off, though. If, however, anyone wishes to create said BodySlides, go for it--think of it as a little race between creators!

Requirements?
ZidanReign's port of Zenl's Black Swordsman Armor is a hard requirement. If you plan on using any of the ESLified Dragonslayer plugins, their respective original mods, each hosted on ZidanReign's mod page, are also hard requirements (you don't need to download both Dragonslayers--just whichever one you plan on using more).

Compatibility?
This update should be fully compatible with everything. However, since it includes Dragoon23's female meshes, using this with their own Female Berserk Black Swordsman Armor is not recommended. Furthermore, if you plan on using the ESLified Dragonslayer plugins, using them with save games that use the original hard plugins is not recommended.

Any known issues?
Due to the keywords used by the Black Swordsman Cape, certain follower mods, such as Sofia, may comment on you wearing clothing while wearing the Cape, even while wearing light or heavy body armor. There is currently no workaround for this.

How about an Xbox port?
Good news: HerrValkyr has graciously ported over a standalone version of this mod to Xbox, here! Note that the Xbox version of this mod has several notable changes compared to the PC version:

• The Xbox version is standalone; no other version of the Black Swordsman Armor is required for it to function. However, in order to maximize compatibility with other mods that depend on ZidanReign's original PC port, said port will still be a hard requirement for this version.
• Only the Heavy variant of the Black Swordsman Hood, with no special Khajiit meshes, is available in the Xbox version.
• Only the Light Armor variant of the Black Swordsman Cape is available in the Xbox version.
• Due to SKSE being nonexistent on Xbox, the Cannon Arm spell has been removed in that version.
  

Disclaimer
This mod has been created and published under the assumption and pretense that the mod(s) it's based on, as well as all other mods below whose assets have been used for this mod, have open permissions or have been abandoned by their original creator(s). If, for any reason, the creator(s) of the original mod(s) objects to the presence of this mod on the Nexus, the author reserves the right to remove this mod from without any prior warning to the user.

Recommended Mods (for a true Guts playthrough)
Berserk Races - Race Compatible
Berserk | The Black Swordsman | Cannon Arm Add On

Credits
Kentaro Miura (RIP) for Berserk
Zenl (and by extension, ZidanReign for porting it) for Berserk - The Black Swordsman
Dragoon23 for Female Berserk Black Swordsman Armor
Nikinoodles and Nazenn for Cloaks of Skyrim
IconicDeath for Project Clarity - Vanilla Clothing And Jewelry Textures Redone and Project Clarity - Vanilla Armor Textures Redone
Alastryona for Kitty Hoods - Khajiit shaped hoods
ThirdEye3301 for Container Item Distributor
powerofthree for Keyword Item Distributor (KID) and Photo Mode
HerrValkyr for porting to Xbox