Vargas

Vargas cuts a disturbing figure, his body maimed by the Count's cruelty. His nose, right eye, right ear, and both legs were taken from him, along with the skin down the right side of his face, and he gets about on a pair of wooden peglegs where his legs once were.

Beneath that grim exterior Vargas is a gentle, well-meaning man who wishes kindness on everyone he meets, reserving his hatred solely for the Count. When Guts, then at his most callous as the Black Swordsman, humiliates and abuses him, Vargas never retaliates, seeking instead to win the swordsman as an ally against their shared enemy. His compassion shows plainly when he throws his own body over Puck to shield the elf from falling debris during Zondark's raid, and through his talks with Puck he even begins to wonder whether he might set his vengeance aside and live for the future, a thought cut short by his capture.

As the Count's court physician, Vargas grew sickened by his master's savage inquisitions and tried to flee the castle with his wife and children, only to be caught and hauled back. Locked in a dungeon, he was made to watch his family dismembered and eaten before being mutilated himself, but his medical knowledge let him fake his own death, slip free with the Count's beherit, and spend the next seven years hungering for a revenge his ruined body could never manage alone. He meets Guts during the swordsman's flight from the Count's soldiers, aiding the escape with smoke bombs and leading Guts and Puck to his underground laboratory, where he reveals the stolen beherit and, under Guts' rough questioning, recounts his whole story to clear his name.

After sheltering Puck from Zondark's second attack, Vargas shows Guts a passage into the castle, and Puck urges him to abandon his vengeance and live. Instead he is seized by the Count and set up for public execution as bait. When Guts coldly refuses to save a man he brands as weak, Puck exposes the real reason: Guts is unsettled by how much of himself he sees in Vargas. Puck's own rescue attempt fails, and Vargas dies cursing the Count and promising retribution as an axe falls on his neck. His oath is fulfilled in the end when the Count, refusing to sacrifice Theresia, is pulled into the Abyss, with Vargas among the first souls to bind and drag him down.