Deadeyez, you're actually not too far off from what it's like to have this disease. I venture to say that it's probably even more badass than that. One of the greatest heroes of Iceland's medieval Sagas (written during Iceland's golden age of literature, roughly between 1000 C.E. and 1300 C.E.) is called Egil Skallagrimson, a poet, a warewolf, a viking. Egil Skallagrimson was a real person, and though the eponimously named "Egils Saga," a fantasy epic is almost certainly pure fiction, one part of it is thought to be very real. Egil's skull is variously described as bony, unbreakable, and misshapen. It gives him protection in battle, making him somewhat impervious to less blows from weapons, when he is carrying his weapon. Indeed, at the very end of the saga, his skull is dug up from underneath a small church and is then struck at with an ax. The ax sticks in, but does not shatter the skull. Moreover, he is also described as suffering from headaches and spells of dizziness. To make a long story short, he is thought by many medieval scholars to have had the disease you see pictured here. And, scholars tend to agree that it probably did give his some protection in battle and probably did stab at him "from inside [his] face" because the growths you see are actually very hard, calcified growths. It's almost exactly like a spiked helmet.