Dartz

Dartz (ダーツ) is the main antagonist in the Waking the Dragons (or Doma) story arc of the second series Yu-Gi-Oh! anime, known as ''Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters'' in Japan. Dartz and the Doma arc do not exist in the manga. He is voiced by Yuu Emaou in the Japanese version and by Wayne Grayson in the English dub.

Plotline
Ten thousand years ago, Atlantis was a perfect civilization, an island isolated from the rest of the world. One day, however, meteors rained down upon the kingdom. These meteorites were mysterious and powerful stones of the Orichalcos, and they 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 become a horrid, ugly beast. 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.

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 (episode 206). 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, cards 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, his most recent being &mdash;Rafael, Valon (Varon), and Alister (Amelda), a gang of Duel Monsters players called Doma's Three Swordsmen whose lives Dartz manipulated 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 revitalise the Leviathan. Subsequently, Yugi Muto (romanized as Yugi Mutou in the English-language manga), Seto Kaiba and Joey Wheeler (Katsuya Jonouchi in the manga and Japanese versions) free 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 (Dark Yugi or Yu-Gi-Oh! in the English manga and Japanese versions), 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. As Atlantis sank beneath the waves, Dartz's spirit was finally freed to be with his family.

On a side note, when Dartz was under the control of the Orichalcos, one of his eyes was the Orichalcos shade of green. However, when Dark Yugi/Yami Yugi banished the Leviathan and its darkness, his Orichalcos eye turned yellow, the same shade as his other eye.

Deck
Dartz's deck is based almost entirely around the Orichalcos, with his most important magic cards designed to either summon or enhance the power of the seal, 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: his Orichalcos Kyutora is able to absorb battle damage, transforms that absorbed damage into attack power as Orichalcos Shuneros when it is destroyed, and finally gains infinite power when the Divine Serpent is released from inside of Shuneros. Besides this, however, Dartz's primary offensive cards are his Mirror Knights, which mirror the power of whatever monster they are attacking, and are immune to damage while Mirror Knight Calling is on the field, effectively rendering them invincible. Dartz also uses the power of the Seal to make the knights resemble Yugi's captured friends, making him reluctant to attack.

Dartz