The Dark Army forms the antagonist faction in the Dragon Quest: The Adventure of Dai, and has the ultimate objective to completely conquer the world for themselves, wiping out the human race in the process.
The first incarnation of the army was led by Hadlar, when he was the Dark Lord fifteen years prior of the current time, commanding them from his Underground Palace, before being stopped by the legendary hero Avan and his party.
Fifteen years later, the same name was used for Dark King Vearn's own army, with Hadlar now serving as its Dark Commander. Their new stronghold was the massive Sovereign Rock Castle. Having caused the demise of their master Avan, the Disciples of Avan, lead by the young Dai, swore to avenge him by defeating the Dark Army, and by extension, King Vearn himself.
Background[]
More than fifteen years ago, at the time of Hadlar as the Dark Lord, the army was simpler in composition, with only four great generals under Hadlar's direct command. Furthermore, Hadlar's power over monsters, while great, was not absolute, and there were many other powerful dark entities who craved the Dark Lord seat, such as the mermaid Otogili. Furthermore, while the army's rampages were very destructive in their own right, they were never able to completely subdue any of the human nations. After one of such attacks to the Kingdom of Carl, one youthful knight brimming with potential, Avan, stood out against Hadlar himself, beginning his journey to stop the Dark Army, and earning the seething emnity of the Dark Lord.
After many fights against the dark forces, a brief respite was given to the world when Avan sacrificed himself by time freezing himself and Hadlar, but around a year later, Hadlar, and consequentially Avan, were freed from the spell, and the conflict continued for few more months, until, after an epic struggle at the base of operation of Hadlar, the Underground Palace, Hadlar was apparently struck down for good.
At the time, Dark King Vearn, one of the god-like monarchs of the shadowy Underworld, had already began planning his future invasion since many millenia before, but chose to not overtly interfere in Hadlar and Avan's conflict, prefering instead to watch it from afar; he only briefly stepped out of the shadows a few times to discreetly assist Hadlar, who had piqued his interest: after a particularly brutal encounter with Avan, Hadlar, who was injuried and at the peak of his frustration, was contacted by the disembody voice of Vearn, identifyed himself only as the "god of the Underworld", flaunted his power, and then leaft the Dark Lord with a small object of worship, which healed Hadlar. Unseen, Vearn would continue to spy on Hadlar thorugh that object. Later, through Mystvern, he assisted Gangadia in finding a way to free Hadlar from his time-frozen state. After being freed by the prison of time, Hadlar had strong suspicions about who had assisted Gangadia, but he was at the time unable to verify his theories, as Vearn chose to remain silent. Vearn once again made himself known only later on, when he revived the defeated Hadlar after his fight to the death with Avan. Hadlar immediately entered a long slumber to re-gather his full strenght, leaving the world and Avan unaware of the danger that was brewing in the dark; Avan took the role of a teacher for the future generation of warriors.
Meanwhile, while the surface had been battling Hadlar, the malevolent Velzar, the last intelligent dragon, owner of enormous dark powers, and an old and somewhat friendly rival of Vearn, was planning his own invasion from the Underworld, but he was stopped by the current Dragon Knight of the era, Baran, and then sealed into stone by the spirits of the Heavens. Despite having basically lost all means to act, Velzar still desired to monitor the situation in the off-chance he would ever be released from his prison, so he sent his last subject, codenamed Killvearn, to supposedly loyally serve Vearn, and then eliminate him when the need would rise; despite fully knowing of his true objective, Vearn welcomed the challege, and accepted the services of Killvearn, making good use of the powerful Reaper. Meanwhile, despite his heroic actions, Baran's homecountry, Alkeed, did not appreciate his efforts, and instead treated him horribly, even leading to his wife's death and the disappearance of his son. Losing all hope in humanity, Baran destroyed the kingdom; as he saw Baran as one of the two greatest threats to his plans, Vearn immediately took the opportunity, and swayed the heartbroken Baran to join his cause, a feat that the Dark King took particular pride in achieving.
After thirteen years of regenerative slumber, Hadlar's resurrected new body was ready, signalating the start of the new invasion by making most monsters of the world go berserker once again. As the first task of the Dark Army, Hadlar was sent to personally eliminate the supposedly second biggest obstacle to Vearn's plans, Avan himself; after seemingly succeeding in the task, Hadlar was rewarded with even more power, and the actual military campaign of the Army began, attacking all known human kingdoms.
This new Dark Army, created directly by Vearn himself to conquer the surface world of humans, was split into six different regiments to maintain control over their vast numbers. Every group was focused on conquest with the exception of the Mystic Legion, which dedicated itself more with studies and experiments to help further the Dark Lord's plans.
While King Vearn and his closest allies, Mystvearn and Killvearn, were actually more than enough powerful to, at least in theory, completely destroy the surface world by themselves without much problem, Vearn had created the new Dark Army out of the desire of possessing the mightiest military force on the planet, one of his many petty display of power towards both the humans and the gods he mocked and despised, hence this incarnation of the Dark Army was both so massive and well structured. Even their massive and autonomous main base of operations on the surface, Sovereign Rock Castle, was described as being basically little more than a giant toy for Vearn, as it was created in the image of his most poweful, but completely monstrous form, a form he thought he would never be able to achieve due to its heavy price. Furthermore, Vearn did not even want to rule the surface world at all: his ultimate goal was to spread just as much misery and suffering as possible to humanity, before using his floating phoenix-shaped hidden palace to place six gigantic Black Core bombs in strategic locations around the world, to completely annihilating the surface land and expose the underground Underworld to the sun, and scorn the gods in the process even more.
However, Vearn's pride, narcissism and complete underestimation of his adversaries, ended up to be his ultimate downfall as, while the initial attacks of his Dark Army proved to be devastating, with many human kingdoms either falling or being completely wiped out, in merely three months the Disciples of Avan, particularly the young but powerful Dai, thanks to their outstanding rapid growth in strenght, were able to thwart most of the Army's operations, sway to their side or eliminate all of the Dark Army's lower key figures, destroy their major bases of operations and most powerful assets or tools, and, with the help of a still alive Avan and some divine intervention, even take the head of Vearn himself, ending the threat of the Dark Army once and for all. Furthermore, following Vearn's demise, Killvearn was also destroyed for good, seemingly leaving Velzar also completely powerless to ever endanger the world ever again.
Members[]
The first Dark Army[]
The first Dark Army had no known internal structure, other than being commanded by Hadlar and his four generals:
- Death Troll Gangadia; bespectacled, tatooed, leaner and much more insightful than the average Troll, Gangadia was Hadlar's personal advisor and strategist, as well as a surprisingly powerful Spellcaster, although he had a real sour spot when he was compared to his much fatter, far more stupid brethen. He eventually died, defeated but at peace, after a battle against his greatest rival and inspiration, Matoriv, in the colosseum arena of the Underground Palace. He had a particularly powerful Leger-de-man as one of his subordinates, to which he had entrusted the role of guardian to an ancient library full of powerful spells, seized from its original, benevolent spirit guardians.
- Demon Woodman Kigiro; he is the one responsible for the creation of the Dark Forest, a massive woodland in the outskirts of the Romos kingdom near Nayle Village. Unlike other Treefaces, Kigiro had a general humanoid-shape, wore a military uniform, and was much stronger than any regular Treeface, as well as being extremely ambitious, while wearing a false mask of cowardice. In truth, he was much smaller than average, but had an absurd control over his poweful roots, as well as regenerative powers, which he used to form what it appeared to be his humanoid body. While he just barely avoided death many times, only to return again and again, he was eventually vanquished for good during the final battle at Hadlar's palace, although at the cost of Roka's life, who was felled by the aftereffects of Kigiro's cursed attacks after his victory over the mutant-Treeface.
- Hell Knight Bartos, a Skeleton swordsman and strongest of the knights under Hadlar, who was also tasked with guarding the Hell Gate of his Underground Palace, which lead directly to Hadlar's chambers. A noble soul just like Brass, he had adopted and raised an orphaned Hyunckel before, unbeknownst of the child, he passed the duty of raising him to Avan after being honorably defeated by him, as he knew that, in a way or the other, his demise would be imminent after Hadlar's defeat. Sadly, such nobility sit ill with a resurrected Hadlar, who proceeded to execute him before entering his thirteen yearlong coma, which lead to Hyunckel misinterpreting the situation, and misguidedly blame Avan instead.
- Lump shaman Brass, the newest and seemingly weakest of the quartet, and the very same Brass that would later on, adopt and raise the young Dai, after the newborn child survived a shipwreck and had washed ashore of Dermline Island. His job in the Dark Army was to gather and train strong monsters, which he planned to do in his base at Dermline Island, a task that he however, left mostly incomplete due Hadlar supposed death; otherwise, he did not participate much in the conflict, other than assisting in the recovery of Kigiro, and he did not even see Avan once. As such, once the battle was seemingly over for good, Brass instead decided to quietly retire, and lived peacefully until his faithful finding of Dai, inspired by Bartos's own adoption.
After his second direct attempt on Avan's life, which ended up once again in failure, Hadlar, with Gangadia's help. developed the Killing machine, which they attempted to use to eliminate Avan. Thanks to Roka, this ended up again in another loss, with the damaged but overall still intact device, being recovered by Temjin of Papnica, who. fifteen years later, would use for his own schemes against the royal family; during the final battle of the human forces at Hadlar's palace, Temjin would also capture one of the surviving Evil scorpions into a Magic cylinder.
Not a direct subject or member of the Dark Army, due to his desire to increase his status by choosing to play the "hard-to-get" act, Zaboera was at the time only a collaborator of Hadlar, as he and his son Zamza would occasionally lend an indirect hand to him, such as lending some experiments, like fused monsters and enhancing magical crystal supplements for Hadlar. A younger Crocodine, under payment from Zaboera and unaware of Hadlar's true character, also briefly but significantly assisted the Dark Army, by retriving the time-frozen body Hadlar from the safe he was locked into; he however, chose to not offer further help at the time and departed soon after. Zaboera did such an act only to gain further clout with Hadlar, also condescendingly offering to help save him, if his servants would ever ask for his help, continuing his hard-to-get attitude, doubting that a skeleton and troll like Bartos and Gangadia would be able to do much. As said above, Gangadia would however, succeeded in freeing Hadlar, but only thanks to the unseen help of Mystvern.
What would appear to be an earlier version of the future Flazzard was also hastily created by Hadlar shortly before the final battle against Avan. A being just as psychotic as Flazzard, this monster, Grandard, was made up of granite scraped from the Underground Palace's very walls, and as such, he could easily shape in any form he wanted, particularly very sharp or pointy ones, erect barriers, or meld himself into any of his rocky surroundings, essentially being one with the palace itself; he posed a difficult challenge, before Leira decided to cave-in the passage behind Avan, allowing the hero to proceed towards the Hell Gate, while she dealt with the creature, eventually defeating Grandard after a brutal fight by driving her magic staff into his core.
The second Dark Army[]
By comparison, the second incarnation of the Dark Army was much more organized, constituted of six specialized Legions of monsters, each lead by a mighty Legion Commander. Three of the Legion Commanders were directly appointed by King Vearn himself: Mystvearn, Baran and Hyunckel, while the other was chosen by Hadlar, with Flazzard being a creature directly created by Hadlar with the use of Forbidden Magic.
While Hadlar was overall a very strong, but all-around fighter, each of the Legion Commanders were instead superior to him in their own forte. For instance, Crocodine was physically stronger. Hyunckel was also shown to be superior in close combat and swordmanship and Zaboera was reputed as the most cunning.
At the first meeting of the Six Commanders, when the Sovereign Rock Castle was completed about a year before Dai's journey began, Flazzard became known as Blitz Captain of the Dark Army for being the one who caught the Infernal Emblem that Vearn incased in fire.
In the third cinematic adaptation, Dragon Quest: The Adventure of Dai - Six Great Generals, the six Legion Generals are shown to be led by the Strategist of the Dark Army, the shadow of the Dark Commander Hadlar, Galvus.
The Six Legions were:
- The Furfang Legion was led by the Beast King Crocodine, and included the Beast, Bird, Plant, and Bug families of monsters. It was effectively disbanded after Crocodine's defeat at Romos and his subsequent defection to the side of the Disciples of Avan. One Garuda in particular was very loyal to Crocodine, and continued to serve as his main means to aerial travel even after his defection.
- The Undead Legion was led by the Dark Swordsman Hyunckel, a young human swordsman who was trained in the dark arts by Mystvearn himself and included the skeleton monster family, zombie, and general undead families. The entire Undead Legion was destroyed when the Underground Palace was flooded with lava, and Hyunckel, who had by then already let go of his misguided hate for Avan, opening his heart of humanity and justice and joined his fellow Disciples of Avan.
- The Blizzblaze Legion was led by the Blizzblaze General Flazzard, and included dancing flames, frostburns, Magmalices, Firn fiends and rockbombs among their numbers. The legion was known for employ dirty and mercilless tactics, such as unleashing the Blizzblaze Curse Field on the battlefield, which divided their adversaries strenght by five times.
- The Dragon Legion was led by the Dragon Master General Baran, who commanded green dragons, Hydras, ethereal serpents and other various dragons. Baran further divided his Legion in three squadrons, one for each type of terrain, which was commanded by one of Baran's personal and loyal lieutenants, the Dragon Masters, said to be as strong as a Legion Commander themselves.
- Sky Rider Galdandy, commander of the flying dragons, and a cruel individual with no empathy towards humans whatsoever, he was the most agile, but also the most fragile of the Dragon Masters.
- Sea Rider Borahorn, commander of the sea dragons, a hulking individual who was not above using dirty tactics, even if they bringed shame to the Dragon Legion.
- Land Rider Larhart, commander of the land dragons, wielder of the Dark Armour Spear, adoptive son of Baran, and the strongest of the three Dragon Masters.
- The Mystic Legion was led by the Mystic Bishop Zaboera, and included mage-like monsters, like lump wizards, as well as madusas, muddy hands and Heyedras, the latter of which were used by Zaboera to spy on every battlefield. Within the Mystic Legion, a specialized group, of which Zaboera own son, Zamza, Mystic Scholar, was part of, extensively researched ways to improve the Dark Army's troops, culminating in the creation of the Superior Beings super-soldiers.
- The Shadow Legion was led by the Shadow Vizier Mystvearn, an individual placed close to Hadlar by King Vearn himself, and his armies included incorporeal monsters difficult to see with the naked eye and creatures deeply connected with the dark, such as dark skeletons, shades, restless armours and miasmas. Despite on paper having been put under Hadlar's command, in truth Mystvearn was a much more high-ranking member of the Dark Army, outranking Hadlar by a longshot, as he was considered his own right-hand man by Vearn himself.
The supreme Dark Commander of these six legions, Hadlar himself, also had his own elite guard, including Archdemons and Gargoyles. He eventually replaced them for the Hadlar Royal Guards, five chess pieces made of Orichalcum by Vearn himself, and animated with Forbidden Magic by Hadlar. However, Hadlar's rank and supposed status were little more than lip service from Vearn's part, as not only Mystvearn, on paper under Hadlar, was actually more important than him, Vearn from the very start, had no intention of actually rewarding Hadlar with dominion over the surface, despite his own claims of the contrary; Vearn also had basically turned Hadlar's body into an living weapon, making him unable to die on his own free will, even going as far as secretly implanting a bomb into him. After the three months battling Dai, Hadlar had grown more honorable, and as such, once the depths of said treachery were discovered by him, he rebelled against Vearn, with his efforts ultimately being partially responsible for the Disciples of Avan's ultimate victory.
While not part of any of the six legions, another powerful member of the Dark Army and a direct servant of Vearn, was Killvearn The Reaper, a personal executioner and grim reaper for the Dark King, and as such, a being who ranked even higher than Hadlar, being the de-facto left-hand man of Vearn. He was always followed by the loyal Piropo, the Jinkster.
Additionally, Vearn only gave Hadlar five orichalcum chess pieces of the set to animate with Forbidden Magic; the other eleven were kept by the Dark King, who animated them by himself, creating a group of guards for his own personal floating palace. These other pieces were lead by Maximum, the King piece of the chess set, and the only one possessing a will of his own, as the rest of his chess squadron were little more than souless dolls.
Sovereign Rock Castle was also in a way, a monster of the Dark Army, as it was a colossal golem-like being entirely enchased in rock, with an even sturdier building underneath it; it was modelled after Vearn's very own ultimate form, a form Vearn thought he could only fantasize about, because achieving it would have permanently warped his body into a monstrous visage, and as such having a very steep price to pay. Sovereign Rock Castle was activated through the use of the Key of Vearn, an object directly given to custody by Vearn himself only to his two most trusted servants, Mystvearn and Killvearn.
The true trump card of the Dark Army was, however, the hidden Palace of Vearn, the personal residence of Vearn on the surface, which he had hid underneath the barren Field of Death. This phoenix-shaped building was made of a hybrid material between rock and metal and was able to float without the need of propulsion by Vearn's magic and a semi-organic central power core. The very center of the palace and its five circle-like extremeties, were in truth launching stations for six tower-like structures; while the impact on the ground from these projectiles was already destructive enough to laid waste to entire regions, their true danger lied in the Black Core that each one housed. Ten times as powerful as a continent-destroying Black Core, these bombs were not laid in random locations as initially belived, but rather they were placed in strategic locations at the outskirts of the world, forming a magic circle hexagon (or a six-pointed star of evil in the original release) that would amplify even more their already gigantic power. Vearn's plan was to detonate these absurdly powerful bombs, each activated through a chain-reaction with previous one, in order to annihilate the surface and expose the Underworld to the sun.
Trivia[]
- The Dark Army would later inspire the Spectral Sentinels from Dragon Quest XI, both being 6 commanders of an army (Tyriant, Alizarin, Booga, Gyldygga/Mia, & Indignus) assigned to fully secure a Demon Lord (Mordegon)'s grip over the human world with a Supreme Commander (Jasper) assigned to oversee them.
Gallery[]
Other languages[]
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| French | Armée du mal |
| German | Dunkle Armee |
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| Latin American Spanish | Unknown |
| Italian | Esercito delle Tenebre |
| Dutch | Unknown |
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