Eddie Drood's Abilities (The Man With The Golden Torc)

A description of Eddie's torc armor:

I put away my mobile phone and glanced up and down the street, but as always everyone else was far too caught up in their own important business to spare any interest for a nobody like me. So I just slipped into the deserted narrow alleyway beside Dr. Dee’s and activated my living armour.

Most of the time it lies dormant as a golden circlet around my throat. A torc, in the old language. Invisible to anyone who’s not a member of the Drood family or at the very least a seventh son of a seventh son. (There don’t seem to be many of those around anymore. I blame family planning.) I subvocalised my activating Words, and the living metal in the torc spread out to cover my whole body, embracing me in a moment from head to toe. It’s a warm, refreshing feeling, like pulling on an old familiar coat. As the golden mask covered my head and face, I could see even more clearly, including all the things that are normally hidden from even gifted humans like me. I felt stronger, sharper, more alive, like waking from a pleasant doze into full alertness. I felt like I could take on the whole damned world and make it cry like a baby.

The armour is the secret weapon of the Drood family. It makes our work possible. The armour is given to each of us right after we’re born, bonded forever to our nervous systems and our souls, and while we wear the armour we’re untouchable, protected from every form of attack, scientific or magical. It also makes us incredibly strong, amazingly fast, and utterly undetectable. Most of the time.

With the armour on I look like a living statue, golden and glorious, with no joints or moving parts and not a weak spot anywhere in its whole smooth, gleaming surface. There aren’t even any eye or breathing holes in the golden mask that covers my face. I don’t need them. While I wear it, the armour is me. It’s a second skin, insulating me from a dangerous world. -The Man With The Golden Torc

With his torc active, he's able to see an otherwise invisible demonic dog, and is also completely invisible to said dog himself:

Looking through the mask, I could now clearly see the huge demon dog guarding the back door to Dr. Dee’s. Night dark, big as a bus, and bulging with muscles, it sprawled across the cobbled square, glaring suspiciously about it with a flat brutal face and flaring hellfire eyes. It was gnawing lazily on a human thighbone that still had some meat left on it. More bones lay scattered before the dog, broken open to get at the marrow. I had a fleeting but very real temptation to grab one of the bones, throw it, and shout Fetch! just to see what would happen. But I rose above it. I am, after all, a professional.
I walked right up to the demon dog, and it couldn’t see or hear or smell me. Which was just as well, really. I wasn’t looking for a fight. Not with anything that big and infernally nasty, anyway. I eased past the dog, careful not to touch it. The armour does have its limitations. -The Man With The Golden Torc

Eddie's armor prevents him from setting off magical defenses and curses made to sense intruders:

Following the layout I’d memorised earlier, I moved on up a floor into the residential part of the building, where recovering patients were coaxed back to sanity. Everywhere I looked I could see ghost images of hidden defence systems, ready to spring into action at just the hint of an intruder. Only my armour prevented Dr. Dee’s security from setting off any number of alarms and retributions. There were cameras everywhere, of course, including infrared, and they were tied into the holy-water sprinkler system, but my armour redefines the word stealth. No one sees me unless I want them to. -The Man With The Golden Torc

On this particular mission, Eddie has been given a portable door. This is how it works:

Soon enough I came to the wall connecting Dr. Dee’s to Saint Baphomet’s, and all I had to do was take out the portable door the Armourer had sent me and slap it against the wall. It spread quickly out to form a perfectly normal-looking door complete with brass handle. I opened it, stepped through into the next building, and then peeled the door off the wall. It shrank quickly back into a small rubbery ball of something far too complicated for me to understand, and I put it back in my pocket. My family has the best toys. -The Man With The Golden Torc

Another example of Eddie remaining undetected by magical security measures, as well as being completely unnoticed by motion-sensing technology:

The hospice was all bright lights and walls painted in cheerful colours, but the magical protections were just as strong as Dr. Dee’s. There were cameras everywhere, whirring officiously to themselves as they turned back and forth, and motion detectors blinked redly at ankle height. But I was walking unseen, the ghost in the machine. No one sees us—unless we want them to. -The Man With The Golden Torc

He knows a pressure point technique for putting people to sleep:

An armed guard was sitting right outside his door, for the moment concentrating totally on his muscle man magazine. I checked carefully, but that was it. One armed guard. They weren’t even trying, really. I walked straight up to the man, and he didn’t even know I was there until I squeezed a particular nerve cluster in his neck, and he went straight to sleep. -The Man With The Golden Torc

Eddie's armor is completely bulletproof:

As far as the security cameras were concerned, the corridor was empty; but the operators knew somebody had to be there, because they’d seen the door open. So they just opened up with everything they had and hoped for the best. The gun barrels swept back and forth, keeping up a murderous rate of fire, but even the occasional lucky hit just ricocheted off my armour. I didn’t even feel the impact. -The Man With The Golden Torc

“You worry about the bodies I wear,” he said, smiling with his stolen mouth. “That’s always been your weakness.”

“Step aside,” I said. “Or I’ll damage you.”

“Not a chance in hell. I’ve always wanted to kill a Drood.”

He opened fire with a machine pistol, spraying me with bullets. They ricocheted away from my armoured chest and face, and I walked right into the hail of bullets and slapped the gun out of his hand. -The Man With The Golden Torc

The torc armor allows Eddie to rip apart steel with ease:

I rounded the far corner just in time for a heavy steel grille to slam down from the ceiling, blocking my way. I didn’t slow, hitting the grille with my shoulder, only to lurch to a sudden halt as the heavy steel buckled but held. I grabbed the grille with both golden hands and tore it apart like so much lace, the steel squealing loudly as it sheared apart. I forced my way through the opening and raced down the next corridor. The armour makes me supernaturally strong, when I need to be. Wonderful stuff, this living metal. -The Man With The Golden Torc

Possible bullet-timing feat:

I eased the door open and slipped out into the corridor. More guns thrust out of the walls, opening up immediately when they saw the door move. I sprinted down the corridor, my armour giving me supernatural speed, running laughing through the bullets like so much rain. -The Man With The Golden Torc

Eddie forces open elevator doors, then jumps down the shaft, hitting the bottom without feeling a thing:

I found the elevators, forced the protesting doors open with my armoured hands, and jumped down the empty shaft. I dropped all the way to the bottom, one golden hand tightly gripping the steel cable to guide my descent. Fat sparks from the cable filled the shaft’s gloom like fireworks. I hit the bottom of the shaft with one hell of a bang and didn’t feel a thing. I forced the elevator doors open, stepped out into the lobby… -The Man With The Golden Torc

Eddie effortlessly tanks enough explosives to blow out the ground floor of a hospital:

I started past him, hoping it was over, but he surged to his feet again, drawing dangerously on his body’s reserves, one hand full of plastique explosive. He slapped it against my armoured chest, and it stuck fast. He laughed hoarsely as I tried to pull the sticky stuff off, but it wouldn’t budge. Archie held up the detonator before me, brandishing it mockingly.
There was enough plastique on my chest to blow out most of this floor. My armour would withstand it…but the blast radius would almost certainly take out half of Saint Baphomet’s underpinnings and bring all the upper floors crashing down. Hundreds dead, maybe more, most of them probably innocents. Archie didn’t care; he’d just jump to another body. Hundreds could die, if it meant he could boast of killing a Drood. He didn’t care. But I did.
I grabbed Archie by the shoulders again and pulled him to me, slamming his chest against mine with the plastique crushed between us. He struggled fiercely, but I held him easily with one golden arm. He cried out in a pettish fury as he realised what I intended, and then my free hand closed over his and activated the detonator.
My mask darkened briefly to protect my eyes from the glare of the explosion and my ears from the blast, and when I could see and hear again, I was surrounded by smoke and rubble and small bloody gobbets of what had been Archie Leech’s stolen body. My armour and his body had absorbed most of the explosion, and the walls around me looked scarred but still solid. The hospice would stand. Archie was gone, of course, his soul wafted away to his next bolthole, along with the amulet. I had no doubt I’d see them both again, some day. -The Man With The Golden Torc

That portable door of his also works as a trapdoor if attached to the floor of a place:

Once again, there was the sound of a hell of a lot of running feet, approaching fast from above. The security guards here were nothing if not persistent. I took the portable door out of my pocket and slapped it against the floor, where it immediately became a nice new trapdoor. I opened it, dropped through into the basement, and then pulled the portable door away from what was now my ceiling. Let them search the rubble for my body while I calmly and quietly made my way up the back stairs and walked right past them to the nearest exit. -The Man With The Golden Torc

Eddie keeps the portable door after his mission and, later on, uses it to BFR a guy:

The bartender was already looking meaningfully in our direction, getting ready to intervene, and I really did consider letting him handle it. For about a second or two. But I didn’t spend most of my life being trained to fight the good fight just so I could let a mere Hyde push me around. Besides, if I let him get away with this, I’d never be able to drink here in peace again. Even the weird and terminally strange have their pecking order. Still, given that Boyd was a Hyde and more than twice my size, I sure as hell wasn’t going to fight fair.

So I held his gaze with mine, quietly retrieved the portable door from my pocket, activated it, and flipped the door neatly under the Hyde’s feet. Boyd had just enough time to look startled before he fell through the new opening and into the cellars underneath the club. He landed with a satisfyingly loud crash, followed by a series of low moans. I picked up my portable door and the floor returned, sealing Boyd in the cellars until someone could be bothered to go down and rescue him. The bartender nodded his thanks, glad he hadn’t had to get involved, and the watching crowd gave me a round of applause. Janissary Jane and I shared a high five, while Charlatan Joe considered me thoughtfully.

“Where did you get your hands on a restricted device like a portable door, Shaman?”

“Found it on eBay,” I said. -The Man With The Golden Torc

Eddie drives a modifiedHirondel sports car. This is what it's got under the hood:

The Hirondel is a 1930s model, perfectly restored, but it also has many modern extras and some extraordinary options, courtesy of the family Armourer. Who firmly believes in every member of the family being prepared for enemy attack at all times. He also believes in doing unto others before they get the chance to do it unto you. As a result of his very talented work, speed cameras can’t see me, my license plate is Corps Diplomatique so the cops don’t bother me, and any car that makes the mistake of getting too close can suddenly find itself experiencing severe engine problems. For those who insist on getting too close, I have fore and aft electronic cannons capable of firing two thousand explosive fléchettes a second, flamethrowers, and an EMP generator. If you ask me, the Armourer’s seen too many spy movies. I prefer to put my faith in driving like a bat out of hell and leaving my enemies behind to eat my exhaust. -The Man With The Golden Torc

The Armourer supplies Eddie with some new items. The first is a Colt Repeater:

He led me over to another testing bench, shooing away half a dozen interns, and picked up a large silver handgun. He weighed it thoughtfully in his hand, and then passed it over to me. I raised an eyebrow at how heavy it was, and he smiled proudly.

“That is a Colt Repeater. It never runs out of bullets, and it aims itself. All you have to do is point it in the right general direction, and the gun will take care of the rest. Even you should be able to manage that, Eddie.”

“What about recoil?” I said, just to be picky.

“Since I made it with people like you in mind, none worth the mention. Try not to use it for too long at one time, or the binding spells will overheat, and the replacement bullets might not be able to find the gun.”
“Why is it so heavy?”

He grinned nastily. “So if you do run out of bullets, you can club the buggers to death with it.” -The Man With The Golden Torc

Another thing the Armourer supplies him with is a "reverse watch", which does roughly what the name implies:

I’d got it more or less into place by the time the Armourer was ready to show me his next creation. It looked a whole lot like an ordinary wristwatch.

“It looks a whole lot like an ordinary wristwatch,” I said.

“Well, you wouldn’t want one that shouted Look at me! I belong to a field agent!, would you? This is a reverse watch. Looks and works as normal, except for this button here. Don’t touch it, except when you mean to use it. Push it down hard, and the watch will reverse time, rewinding the last thirty seconds of your life. This will give you a second chance to undo your more serious mistakes. But be warned: any attempt to meddle with time is dangerous. Don’t use the reverse function too often; it might attract the attention of certain beings who take time disruption very seriously.” -The Man With The Golden Torc

The Armourer gives Eddie a compass capable of pointing its user to the nearest viable exit of a place:

I put the watch on, slipped my old Rolex into my jacket pocket, and looked at the compass the Armourer was holding. It looked a whole lot like an ordinary compass. The Armourer looked at me, but I just smiled politely. I hate to be predictable.

“This compass will show you the best way out of any situation, no matter how turned around you’ve got yourself. It’s preprogrammed to lock onto the nearest viable exit and take you there. Just follow where the needle points. The Matriarch specifically asked for something simple in this line, and this is so simple a dog could use it. Just keep it away from strong magnetic forces, or it gets confused. If it starts sticking, grease the works up with a little butter. Only the best butter, of course.”

“Oh, of course.” -The Man With The Golden Torc

Eddie's car has an alarm system that detects attackers:

An alarm blared suddenly inside the car, making me jump, and a flashing red arrow appeared on my dashboard, pointing straight up. I looked up, and there were half a dozen black helicopters flying in close formation right above me in complete silence. If it hadn’t been for my car’s detection system, I’d never have known they were there until it was too late. I hadn’t actually known my car could do that. Score one for the Armourer, and thank you, Uncle Jack. -The Man With The Golden Torc

The EMP generator in Eddie's car takes out six helicopters:

Right. Enough was enough. I was angry now. Who the hell did they think they were messing with? I hit one of the Armourer’s concealed switches, and a panel flipped open, revealing a big red button. I pressed my thumb down firmly, and an electromagnetic pulse radiated out from the car, swatting all six black helicopters from the sky like the hand of God.

They plummeted clumsily to the ground as all their electrical systems crashed and fried, and it was a credit to their pilots that only two of them exploded on impact. Thick black smoke curled up into the pale blue sky as I hammered on down the motorway, punching the air with one golden fist. I don’t normally celebrate my kills, but they had got me seriously angry. Killing me was one thing, stealing the Soul of Albion another; but vandalising a classic like the Hirondel…Hell was too good for them.

(Do I really need to explain that the car was shielded from its own EMP pulse? The Armourer’s not an idiot, you know.) -The Man With The Golden Torc

The Colt Repeater one-shots several elves and their mounts with its bullets:

I reached through my golden armour with my golden hand and drew the Colt Repeater from its holster. There was blood on it from my shoulder wound, and I shook a few drops off. I aimed the Colt at the nearest dragon rider, and the gun took care of the rest.
The cold lead bullet hit the elf lord right between the eyes and blew the back of his head off. For good measure I shot the dragon in its ugly head too, and it crashed to the motorway in an ungainly sprawl of flapping wings. I shot all the elves and all the dragons, all the vicious lords and vile ladies and their ugly mounts, and they didn’t have the time to fire off a single arrow at me. I just fired the Colt Repeater again and again and again, and the bullets just kept coming, and the gun never missed. A triumph of the Armourer’s art. The dead dragons piled up before me, twitching and shuddering as the last of their unnatural life leaked out of them, and not a single elf escaped my cold anger. God bless you, Uncle Jack. -The Man With The Golden Torc

Eddie's armour protects him from having his soul stolen:

The dead car drew level, its ghostly outline superimposed on mine, and then the demon driver dropped a thorny hand on my shoulder, ghosted right through my armour, and grabbed hold of my soul. I screamed, just at the touch of it. The demon pulled, trying to haul my soul out of my body, to be prey for the pack, for the phantom fleet. Another stolen soul, to drive the engines of the damned cars.
But my soul was linked to my armour, from the moment I was born. You couldn’t have one without the other. And together they were stronger than any damned dead thing. The gripping ghostly fingers slipped slowly away, unable to maintain their hold. I goosed the accelerator, and the Hirondel jumped forward. The ghost car fell back, the demon howling in outrage at being cheated out of its rightful prey. Pain surged up in my left arm again, and I embraced it. It meant I was alive. -The Man With The Golden Torc

The CD player in Eddie's car has a recording of the ritual of exorcism, which works to exorcise spirits and ghosts:

I forced my left hand forward and hit the emergency default button on the CD player. The system immediately began broadcasting a recording of the ritual of exorcism, read by the last pope in the original Latin. The sonorous words boomed out of the car’s speakers, and the ghost car was driven right out of the Hirondel. Around and behind me, the phantom fleet shrieked horribly and fell back. Some were already breaking up under the impact of the holy words, drifting away in long ghostly streamers. The thick curling mists reappeared in my rearview mirror, and the phantom fleet vanished back into them. -The Man With The Golden Torc

While in his armor, Eddie's casual grip crumpled part of a car door:

I undid my seat belt, forced open the door, and half crawled, half fell out of the car. I levered myself upright by leaning most of my weight on the car door, and the heavy metal crumpled under the strain of my golden fingers. I winced. That was going to be hell to beat out later. -The Man With The Golden Torc

Drood armour is durable enough to no-sells attacks from other Drood armour:

We sprang forward, golden hands outstretched. Equally motivated, equally fierce, equally determined. We slammed together, and the impact of armour on armour sounded like a great bell ringing in the depths of Hell. We hit each other hard, throwing punch after punch with all our amplified strength behind it, not even bothering to defend ourselves. The awful sound reverberated in the empty street, but neither of us took any hurt. Our armour protected us. The unstoppable force meeting the immovable object. I barely felt the impact of his fists, and I’m certain he didn’t feel mine. All we were doing was wearing each other out. We wrestled clumsily for a while, chest to chest, neither of us able to gain an advantage. -The Man With The Golden Torc

Eddie kicks Matthew Drood several yards away, closes the distance before he can get up, then tosses him into a building hard enough to shatter its wall:

Finally I tripped him up, and while he was down I kicked him so hard in the ribs he skidded several yards down the street. I ran after him, and while he was still scrambling to his feet, I grabbed him with both hands, picked him up, and threw him at the nearest building. He crashed halfway through the wall, held in place for a moment while dislodged bricks rained down on his armour. He pulled himself free with hardly an effort, and the wall collapsed behind him. -The Man With The Golden Torc

Matthew rips a street lamp out of the ground and uses it to send Eddie flying several yards away. He's not even scratched:

Matthew pushed me away, reached out, and grabbed the steel pole of a streetlight. He yanked it up out of its concrete setting, the jagged end trailing wires and sparks. He wound up and swung the steel pole like a bat, and I couldn’t move quickly enough to avoid it. The heavy steel smashed into my ribs, lifted me up off my feet, and sent me flying through the air. I hit the ground hard several yards away, rolling over and over, and was immediately up on my feet again, unhurt, not even breathing hard. -The Man With The Golden Torc

Their fight eventually causes buildings to collapse and fires to break out:

We went to it again, raging up and down the street, smashing everything we came in contact with except each other. We hit out with everything we could lay our hands on, punched each other through walls, demolishing the street from one end to the other. Buildings collapsed, glass shattered, and fires broke out, and we didn’t even notice. We fought like gods, trampling heedlessly through the paper and cardboard world of mere mortals. -The Man With The Golden Torc

Drood armor gives both Eddie and Matthew the strength to throw cars at each other like toys, and the durability to no-sell getting hit by them:The

I tried to back off, but Matthew was too far gone now to stop. He picked up one of the police cars as though it weighed nothing and threw it at me. I ducked, and it sailed past me to crash into a storefront. I grabbed a nearby parked car and threw it at Matthew. He stood his ground, and the front half of the car concertinaed as it smashed against his immovable form. It exploded suddenly into an expanding orange fireball. The closer buildings caught alight, and the air shimmered from the intense heat. And Matthew came walking out of the heart of the fireball, brushing blazing wreckage away from him, entirely unhurt. People were running now, screaming hysterically, and the police were on their radios yelling in unmanned voices for armed backup.

I looked at Matthew, in his gold, and the hairs stood up on the back of my neck. Was this how people had seen me? This terrible, inhuman thing?

While I stood there, frozen by insight, Matthew picked up another car and smashed it down on top of me, catching me off balance and throwing me to the ground. He leaned on the car with all his strength, trying to pin me down, but I just pushed back, and the metal of the car tore like tissue paper under our armoured strength. I rose up through the wreckage of the car, and we threw the broken pieces aside to get at each other again. -The Man With The Golden Torc

Eddie traps Matthew inside of a building, then pulls the whole thing down on top of him:

Matthew charged straight at me. I waited till the last moment, and then sidestepped. He stumbled past me, off balance, one arm out to brace himself against the wall ahead of him. I took out my portable door and slapped it against the brickwork, and he fell through the new opening into the interior of the building. I ripped the door away, trapping him inside. And then I used my armour’s strength to pull the whole damned building down on top of him.

Ton after ton of brick and stone and concrete and steel came thundering down, piling up on top of Matthew. The ground shook with the impact, and the street filled with smoke. I waited a while, tensed and ready, but nothing happened except for the great pile of rubble slowly settling. I snapped my golden fingers at dear defeated Matthew. The armour would have protected him even from this, but he’d still be a long while digging himself out. By which time I fully intended to be long gone. -The Man With The Golden Torc

Eddie's armour is unaffected by a flamethrower:

Krieg raised his other hand, and a hidden flamethrower in his other arm bathed my armour in liquid fire. The heat was so terrible that even Mr. Stab flinched back, but I felt nothing. -The Man With The Golden Torc

Eddie absolutely dominates Solomon Krieg, a superhuman being capable of oneshotting elves and vampires:

The creatures of the night fell back as I strode through their midst. They recognised the golden armour. Solomon saw me coming and smiled again. His face was hanging in tatters from scratched and scored bone after Girl Flower’s attack, and one eye was just an empty red socket, but still he smiled. He didn’t bother with his built-in gun or flamethrower. Just stepped forward and threw a punch with all his mechanised strength behind it. I heard the bones in his hand break as his fist glanced harmlessly from my golden mask. I grabbed his arm with both hands before he could draw it back and broke it over my knee like a piece of kindling. Bits of shattered tech flew out of the gaping wound. Solomon Krieg grunted once, but that was all. I let go of his arm and grabbed his head, pulling it down and forward. He fought me with all his legendary strength, but it wasn’t enough. Atomic forces sputtered and shimmered on the air as he struggled to put an attack together. I ripped the top of his head right off, tearing along the old scarred fault line on his forehead, and then reached into his head with my other hand and tore his atomic brain out.
I held it in my golden hand for a moment, studying it, that nasty triumph of Cold War technology, and then I dropped it on the ground and stamped on it. The brain shattered into a thousand pieces, and Solomon Krieg’s empty body fell twitching to the floor. I walked away, and the creatures of the night fell upon the body, tearing it to pieces in a frenzy of rage and revenge. -The Man With The Golden Torc

Drood armour can reflect offensive magic:

Molly and I approached him cautiously. We both knew who he was, who he had to be. I was already thinking seriously about calling in reinforcements. If Mordred had come into his full power, he was way out of my league. Fortunately, Molly’s spell had brought him back prematurely, and he was still pretty confused. Or he’d never have launched such a basic attack spell at my armour. The armour reflected the spell right back at him and blew his as yet unprotected human form to pieces. Nothing left of him but bloody gobbets, spread over a wide area. -The Man With The Golden Torc

Even without his armour, Eddie is strong enough to break a man's neck with a single punch:

I passed right by one gunman as I followed Molly to the nearest street exit, and I paused just long enough to break his neck with one blow. Never involve civilians in our wars, you bastard. -The Man With The Golden Torc

His armour perfectly deflects an RPG rocket:

Men were leaning out of the car windows and firing at me with a whole assortment of weapons. One even had a rocket launcher. He fired the thing, and the rocket shot out, slammed into my armoured side, and ricocheted away to blow up a Gap store. I hoped there was nobody inside, but I had no way of knowing. Manifest Destiny didn’t care who got hurt or killed. -The Man With The Golden Torc

Eddie's Colt Repeater punches through bulletproof glass:

So I aimed at the driver of the nearest car. He laughed at me, through his bulletproof glass windscreen, right up until the Colt Repeater sent a bullet through the windscreen and blew his head apart. The car swerved wildly, mounted the pavement, and rammed through three parking meters before sliding to a halt. I aimed carefully and shot dead the other four drivers, and their cars skidded and crashed and slammed into storefronts. -The Man With The Golden Torc

Another example of Eddie using his reverse-watch to escape a threat:

Molly swung the bike around a sharp corner, and then hit the brakes so hard it would have knocked all the breath out of me if I hadn’t been wearing my armour. The street ahead of us was completely empty, cleared of all traffic and pedestrians. The only people who could have arranged that so quickly were my family. And sure enough, there they were. I looked over Molly’s shoulder and saw what she had already spotted. Halfway down the street three golden figures stood like statues, the morning light gleaming brightly on their armour.

I was actually a little flattered. Three field agents, just to bring me in. I had no doubt they could do it. So I put the Colt Repeater away and hit the stud on my reverse watch. God bless you, Uncle Jack. Time rewound itself, spinning the world back thirty seconds, so that once again Molly and I were just approaching the corner. As Molly started to turn, I yelled urgently into her ear, and she brought the bike to a skidding halt, the back wheel sliding back and forth as it locked. We both bailed off the bike, and she said the Words that turned it back into a silver charm. I armoured down, and we both disappeared into the nearest side alley. -The Man With The Golden Torc

Some more examples of Drood armour capabilities, for scaling purposes:

The three golden field agents were already sprinting towards us, but a dozen black cars came screeching around the corner. They saw the field agents and drove their armoured cars right at them, the fools. Molly and I watched from the shadows of the side alley as the first car reached the first agent. He just stood his ground, and then slammed his golden fist down onto the black car’s bonnet at the very last moment. The whole front of the car compacted, ramming into the ground, the back came up, and the car somersaulted over the agent’s head before crashing to the ground behind him.

The second agent launched himself through the windscreen of the next car, killed everyone inside, and burst out the back of the car and onto the bonnet of the car following. The third agent picked up one armoured car and used it to hit another. Black cars screeched to a halt, and men spilled out, firing all kinds of weapons. Soon the whole street was full of men in golden armour doing terrible things to men of ill will.

Made me feel proud to be a Drood.

“Time we were going,” I said quietly to Molly.

“Damn, your people are good,” she said. -The Man With The Golden Torc

Eddie's compass in action:

Without slowing my pace at all, I reached inside my jacket and brought out the emergency compass the Armourer had given me back at the Hall.

“I know which way is north,” said Molly. “And it really isn’t helping.”

“This particular compass is supposed to show me the best way out of any emergency situation,” I said, trying to hold the thing steady as I ran. The compass needle flicked back and forth and then settled on northeast just as a new tunnel opening appeared in that direction. The needle moved to point right at the opening. “This way!” I said.

“Your family always has the best toys,” said Molly, and we plunged into the new tunnel without slowing. -The Man With The Golden Torc

Some more Drood armour showings for scaling. Three Droods in armour decimate several army vehicles, tossing armored cars and ripping doors off helicopters with ease:

The Mole worked the remote controls on the arm of his chair, and the biggest plasma screen before us suddenly blared into new life, showing Manifest Destiny forces attacking three golden armoured figures right out in the open. The depth and definition of the image was outstanding, complete with full surround sound. It was just like being in the thick of the battle. I could almost smell the blood and smoke. Truman must have sent half an army to bring down the Drood field agents who’d dared defy him; and much good it had done him. Armoured cars, armoured soldiers, attack helicopters raining down fire from above…The street was full of thick black smoke from burning buildings, and burnt-out armoured cars, but still the three golden figures moved through the thick of it, untouched.

They slammed through the advancing soldiers with supernatural speed, killing with a touch and moving on. The dead and the dying lay in piles up and down the street. The golden figures overturned armoured cars with a single heave, moving unscathed through a hail of bullets and explosions. A black helicopter came in low for a strafing run, and one golden figure leapt straight up into the air, propelled by the strength in his golden legs. He clung onto the side of the helicopter, ripped the door off with one hand, and disappeared inside. He threw the crew out one at a time, and they fell screaming to their deaths. The agent stayed on board just long enough to aim the crashing helicopter at an armoured vehicle, and then he jumped free at the last moment, landing easily and gracefully as his armoured legs soaked up the impact. Manifest Destiny had every advantage of modern warfare on their side, and it didn’t do them a damned bit of good against three Drood field agents.

It almost made me proud to be a Drood, to see so few standing firm against so many. Almost. -The Man With The Golden Torc

Drood armour is faster than bullets:

I finally thought to hit the button on my reverse watch and rewind time. I’d almost left it too long. The watch didn’t want to take me far enough back, but I just hit it again and again and again, until finally it took me back to the point where the armed men were just starting to train their guns on Molly. I threw myself in front of her, between her and the bullets, armouring up as I went. The living metal swept over me even as the bullets flew through the air; and fast as the bullets were, the armour was faster. Every single shot that would have killed Molly ricocheted off me instead. -The Man With The Golden Torc

Torc armour alerts the wearer of any illusion and aversion spells:

“There must be some way we can get to the library without being spotted,” said Molly. “How about an illusion spell? I could whip up something simple, make us look like someone else. Or an aversion spell: make everyone look everywhere except at us.”
“Wouldn’t work,” I said, “Our torcs alerts us to that kind of spell automatically. They’d just fire up their Sight and look right through them.” -The Man With The Golden Torc

Eddie can fuse his armor with another Drood's, allowing him to attack the person underneath:

I clung onto his throat with both hands, searching desperately for some last trick I could use against him; and that was when I remembered how I’d once fused both my golden hands together to contain and seal off Archie Leech’s Kandarian amulet. If I could fuse my armour together, why not mine and Uncle James’s? Just for a moment. Just long enough to do what I had to do. I concentrated, focusing all my willpower, sweat running down my face under my mask, and the living metal around his throat yielded to my greater will, my greater fury. His armour fused with mine, and suddenly my bare hands were around his bare throat, and I bore down hard.

He struggled fiercely, not understanding what was happening, throwing me this way and that by sheer brute strength, but I wouldn’t let go. He pulled his right hand back, jerking the sword blade out of me, and I cried out again as I felt things break and tear within me, but still I wouldn’t let go. Not even when he ran me through again, and again, sinking the blade deep in my guts and twisting it back and forth.

He was weakening fast, but so was I, and God alone knows what might have happened if not for Molly. -The Man With The Golden Torc

Drood armour can grow claws capable of ripping through other Drood armour:

More Droods in the corridor beyond. And these at least had seen some training. They held themselves well, all ten of them, fanning out so as not to bunch up and make an easy target. I didn’t waste time talking to them. I concentrated, applying what I’d learned from James, and grew supernaturally sharp claws on my golden hands. First thing a field agent learns is that any trick is a fair trick if it means you win and they lose. I took them down, one by one, fighting hand to hand, up close and personal. My claws ripped through their armour, and they cried out in shock as well as pain. Their flesh was torn, and they bled inside their armour, and that had never happened before. Some just turned and ran. The rest fell back, scattering, and Molly and I went straight through them. -The Man With The Golden Torc

Eddie's armour can only manifest and maintain its power as long as Eddie himself is in the right physical condition to use it. If he is on the verge of dying, the armour cannot maintain itself:

I was so tired. I’d fought for so long, refusing to give in, and all for nothing.

And then a little voice at the back of my head said, Then stop fighting, you idiot. The voice didn’t sound anything like mine. It didn’t sound like the Heart’s, either. So I took a gamble and stopped fighting.

I let the weakness flood through me, taking all the strength from my arms and legs. I stopped resisting and let the strange matter do what it would. I gave up…and the armour lurched to a sudden halt. Its golden hands stopped a few inches short of Molly’s throat, and then slowly and ponderously the armour sank to its knees before her. Because the torc was linked to me, body and soul, and even the Heart couldn’t break that link. The armour is only ever as strong as the man within, and this man…had nothing left. -The Man With The Golden Torc