Dartz

Dartz is the main antagonist in the Waking the Dragons story arc of the second series anime. He and this arc do not exist in the manga. He was the last potentate of the city of Atlantis and his history is tied to that of the lost city.

Design


Dartz's usual outfit consists of closed white and blue robes. His outfit also includes a foot length cloak which trails behind him, padded shoulders, cuffed wrists, a raised collar and a stone bearing the symbol of the Orichalcos around his neck. He wears a fragment of the Orichalcos Stone in a chain on his forehead. His light blue hair features a two locked fringe and trails to near knee length and is tied at waist length. Dartz originally had gold irises, but after being corrupted by the Orichalcos, he has heterochromic irises; his right iris is green and his left is gold. His right iris became green when he was corrupted by the Orichalcos, but returned to the gold color after he was defeated by Yami Yugi. During the final duel he wears a Chaos Duel Disk.

Abilities
Being the master of the Orichalcos, it has bestowed upon him powerful magical abilities rivaling those of the Millennium Items, like materializing Duel Monsters, and bestowing his power onto his followers.

Dartz has also demonstrated the ability to cause weather storms, rain energy blasts from the sky, conjure a sword from nothing, communicate with people telepathically, remote viewing, show visions, the power to control minds, and using telekinesis.

Life in Atlantis
Ten thousand years ago, Atlantis, an island isolated from the rest of the world, was a perfect civilization. One day, however, meteors rained down upon the kingdom. These meteorites were mysterious and powerful stones of the Orichalcos, and glowed a bright greenish blue. These stones imbued the people of Atlantis with ultimate knowledge and power. In just a few years, Atlantis became the most advanced civilization on the planet, even more advanced than the modern world of today. However, with power comes corruption and greed.

Ironheart, the king of Atlantis, gave his throne to his son, Dartz. Soon, the stones of the Orichalcos began to expose the evil in people, turning those with darkness on the inside into monsters on the outside. Dartz witnessed his own wife, Iona become a horrid, ugly beast (In the Japanese version, she attacks him and he kills her with his sword). Confused and frightened, Dartz consulted a stone of the Orichalcos for guidance. The Orichalcos granted Dartz great power and lent him soldiers to do his bidding. It told him to resurrect an ancient dragon known as The Great Leviathan (Orichalcos God in the Japanese version), which would help him to destroy the world and create a new one that would be free of evil. Eventually, Dartz became corrupted and misguided.

Ironheart and Dartz's daughter Chris fled and called upon the world of Duel Monsters and its guardians, the three Legendary Dragons (in actuality, three soldiers whom Dartz had transformed into dragons) for help against the corrupted Dartz. One day, an army of benevolent magical creatures—including the three dragons—led by Ironheart met with Dartz’s army of evil Orichalcos Soldiers and The Great Leviathan, and the Battle of Atlantis took place. The battle concluded with neither side being victorious. The three dragons were frozen in ice, and the magical creatures were sent back to their own world. The bestial soldiers of the Orichalcos were destroyed, and the Great Leviathan was sealed away from this world. The island of Atlantis sank beneath the sea.

Gathering Souls
The corruption of the Orichalcos made Dartz believe the world to be a wicked place, and that man had an inherent malice in his heart. The transformation the Orichalcos had inflicted on his fellow Atlanteans was, he believed, the punishment for being evil, as the outside of man became as twisted as their inside. Dartz was driven to revive the Great Leviathan to raze the world, so that he may reconstruct it in the image of glorious Atlantis. To do so, Dartz required human souls. He proceeded to wander the Earth for the next 10,000 years, presumably kept alive by the power of the Orichalcos, and knew he had found one of the powerful souls he required when he encountered the Pharaoh Atem in ancient Egypt, witnessing his control of the powers of darkness and his ability to command Duel Monsters. He also witnessed the Pharaoh, with Slifer the Sky Dragon pursuing Thief King Bakura and his Diabound. However, Dartz could not capture the Pharaoh's soul because Bakura and Zorc Necrophades were in his way. He therefore had to wait another 5000 years (3000 in the Japanese version) to capture the Pharaoh's soul.

It is unclear precisely when Dartz began to collect souls, but eventually, Dartz established a multinational conglomerate named Paradius, which became a well-known, yet mysterious force in the business world. But this was not the only organization Dartz had formed. He also controlled the Doma Organization (Paradius in the English version), a group formed to gather souls to feed the Great Leviathan by challenging unsuspecting players to games of Duel Monsters only to have their souls taken by "The Seal of Orichalcos", a card he had suffused with the Orichalcos' power.

For ten thousand years, Dartz collected the souls of his adversaries and many innocents in order to fuel the return of the Great Leviathan into this world. With time, the number of souls Dartz had stolen stretched into the millions, thanks in part to his minions.

Yu-Gi-Oh!
Dartz's most recent underlings, Rafael, Valon, and Alister, a trio of Duel Monsters players (called Doma's Three Swordsmen in Japan) had their lives manipulated by Dartz to make them feel only hatred, molding them to be ideal servants to his cause. He gave them each a small fragment of the Orichalcos, which can be used to break the Seal of Orichalcos from outside in case of emergency, and gives them magical abilities that rival the Millennium Items.

Once aware of the fact that the Pharaoh had been reincarnated and his spirit revived in the present day, Dartz began his agenda to take his soul by freezing over the Tablet of Memories, preventing the Pharaoh from remembering his own past. Later, he ordered his minions to steal the Egyptian God Cards, using their power along with human souls to revitalize the Leviathan. Subsequently, Yugi Muto, Seto Kaiba, and Joey Wheeler released and joined forces with the Legendary Dragons as the souls of both them and their friends come under threat. Dartz's surviving family, Ironheart and Chris would assist Yami Yugi in recovering his self-confidence and the trust of "Timaeus". Events eventually converge on a Duel between Yami Yugi, Kaiba, and Dartz, in which Yami Yugi claimed victory by unlocking the power of the Legendary Dragons and returning them to their true forms. Kaiba, Joey and Yugi's souls are liberated from the clutches of the Leviathan.

However, Dartz sacrificed his own soul, with his human body reduced to dust, to give Leviathan enough power to fully resurrect and raise Atlantis once more with himself combined with the Great Beast. In the ensuing battle, Yami Yugi released the spirits of the Egyptian Gods from within the Leviathan and together they destroyed it, discharging all of the captive souls. However, a trace of its darkness remains, revealing the Leviathan's original form, along with Dartz's soul, which Yami Yugi is able to banish, freeing Dartz from the influence of the Orichalcos and allowing him to be reunited with the spirits of his family and enter the afterlife as Atlantis sank back beneath the sea.

Deck
Dartz plays an "Orichalcos" Deck, centering on "The Seal of Orichalcos" and its upgraded forms, "Orichalcos Deuteros" and "Orichalcos Tritos", both of which add an additional ring to the glyph around the field. Much of his attack force is provided by "Mirror Knight Calling", who can generate "Mirror Knight Tokens" (who can copy the ATK of whichever monster they battle and protect themselves from destruction by removing their Shield Counters instead) and Shield Counters for those Tokens that are unprotected. However, his actual strategy involves "Orichalcos Kyutora", who can reduce all Battle Damage Dartz would take to 0. The negated damage is what fuels the ATK of "Orichalcos Shunoros". However, "Orichalcos Shunoros" can weaken itself very quickly (because it loses ATK after it battles a monster, or if either "Orichalcos Aristeros" or "Orichalcos Dexia" are battling an opposing monster), so as a very last resort, if "Shunoros" is destroyed, Dartz can Summon his infinitely strong "Divine Serpent", but if this monster is destroyed, he automatically loses.