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 king of the city of Atlantis and his history is tied to that of the lost city.

Design


Dartz' usual outfit consist of closed white and blue robes, including 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 Atem (Yami Yugi) and Yugi.

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. But 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 also gave him control of a powerful beast, 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 goodly 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 wickedness in his heart. The transformation the Orichalcos had inflicted on his fellow Atlanteans was, he believed, the punishment for being wicked, 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 remake it in the image of glorious Atlantis. And 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 witnessed the Pharaoh, with Slifer the Sky Dragon pursuing Bakura and his Diabound, however Dartz could not capture the Pharaoh's soul because Bakura was in his way so he had to wait 5000 years for the Pharaoh to resurface and get his second chance.

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 (unnamed 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 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.

Present day
Dartz most recent minions; Rafael, Valon, and Alister, a gang 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.

Once aware of the fact that the Pharaoh had been reincarnated and his spirit revived in the present day, Dartz began his plan to take his soul by stealing the Egyptian God Cards, using their power along with human souls to revitalize the Leviathan. Subsequently, Yugi Muto, Seto Kaiba and Joey Wheeler freed and unite forces with the Legendary Dragons as the souls of both them and their friends come under threat. Events eventually converge on a duel between Yami Yugi, Kaiba, and Dartz, in which Yami Yugi claims victory by unlocking the power of the Legendary Dragons and returning them to their true forms. Kaiba, Joey and Yugi's souls are freed from the clutches of the Leviathan. However, Dartz sacrificed his own soul, with his body reduced to dust, to give Leviathan enough power to fully resurrect and raise Atlantis once more. In the ensuing battle, Yami Yugi freed the spirits of the Egyptian Gods from within the Leviathan, and together, they destroy it, freeing all the captive souls. However, a trace of its darkness remains, 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 father and daughter and wife. As Atlantis sank beneath the waves, Dartz's spirit was finally freed to be with his family.

Deck
Dartz plays an Orichalcos Deck, with his most important Spell Cards designed to either summon or enhance the power of the "The Seal of Orichalcos", and many of his monsters named after and presumably linked to the evil stone. In keeping with this theme, his cards, like the Orichalcos, become stronger and more influential as the Duel progresses. "Kyutora" and "Gigas" both get stronger when destroyed, and "Deuteros" increases his Life Points every turn.