Black and grey realism tattoo of riveted armour plates and a Celtic knot on a shoulder, with torn skin edges.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Torn skin armour plates on a shoulder

Realism · Shoulder · Black and grey · Photo

A shoulder and upper back tattoo shows overlapping metal armour plates with rivets and a buckle strap. A Celtic knot fills the rounded shoulder cap, and the skin appears to be torn open around the armour. The shading is smooth and grey, giving the plates a raised, metallic look against the skin.

Realism Shoulder Armour Rivet Celtic knot Torn skin

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The rivets had to be set cold, Tomas said, or they would sit on the leather like pebbles on a wet beach. Morag ignored him, as she always did, and worked the last of the plates over the anvil while the tide came in under the harbour wall. The order had come from a hired sword called Aodh who wanted his shoulder to look like it had been through three sieges. She gave him a round Celtic knot for the cap, copied from a grave slab at the abbey, because a man who paid in silver wanted something people would talk about.

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He came for the fitting on a windy morning, lifted his arm to test the plates, and the buckle strap drew tight against his collarbone. 'They sit like they were grown there,' he said, pleased. She did not tell him that the strap had been cut from the saddle of a horse that died on the ferry road, or that each plate was stitched so it would lift clean at the seam if the man went into deep water. He paid, shook her hand with his good one, and walked up the causeway toward the pass.

Weeks later a carter came down with news that the ford at the Carron had taken three men and a load of ironwork. One body had washed ashore still wearing knotted plates, the leather stripped clean from the shoulder. Tomas read the story off the carter's sack and said nothing. Morag went to her bench and sat with her hands flat on the wood for a long time.

Every buckle she made after that had a spare hole punched beside the first, a little lower, so that a man in deep water could loosen the strap with one hand and let the armour go.