Pillar Men

Though the Pillar Men resemble humans at a glance, they descend from an ancient breed of superhuman giants that once thrived on the American continent hundreds of thousands of years ago. Their physiology works quite differently from a human's, and the single obvious tell is the horns on the brow, which may number one or several; putting them on display counts as a mark of honor.

Sunlight and the Ripple stand as their two great weaknesses. Their near-deathless nature means they produce very few offspring and slumber for ages at a stretch rather than mere nights. The four who remain, Kars, Esidisi, Wamuu, and Santana, earned the "Pillar Men" name after being found asleep inside stone columns.

Their control over their own flesh outstrips any vampire born of the Stone Masks; they can dislocate or snap their bones and flatten organs to reshape themselves at will, often forging body parts into weapons like a bladed bone. Paired with regeneration and near-immortality, this lets them endure attacks and rebuild even when reduced to just a brain. Age and disease cannot touch them, and the survivors have lived for thousands of years.

Their intellect is arguably their deadliest gift: flawless recall and the power to grasp languages, machinery, tactics, systems, and people's minds within seconds, as when Santana instantly worked out how to strip a gun and Esidisi traded wits with Joseph. Their senses run far past human limits, Santana sniffing an area like a hound and Kars reading heat signatures to count people in a room. For sustenance they absorb living creatures through any physical contact, their cells secreting an acid that dissolves prey at the cellular level while a numbing enzyme keeps victims unaware until the touch is broken, though Ripple energy renders the process useless.

The more seasoned among them wield elemental fighting "Modes" built around fire, wind, or light. Ultimately, fitting a Stone Mask with the Red Stone of Aja can turn a Pillar Man into an Ultimate Being, a state reached so far only by Kars, granting immunity to sunlight, complete immortality, total cellular shapeshifting into any human, animal, or plant, and even the use of the Ripple.

The Pillar Men spring from an ancient people of extraordinary strength, mind, and lifespan who once sat atop the food chain, feeding on humans who either worshipped them as gods or dreaded them as demons. By a rule of evolution, the higher the race climbed, the fewer its numbers grew, and it never overcame its fatal weakness to sunlight, yet lived content all the same. One member, Kars, rejected that way of life and chased perfection, crafting the Stone Mask to unlock his kind's full potential through a form of acupuncture. The mask turned humans into vampires but only partly awakened his own thick-skulled species. Fearing his genius, the tribe moved to execute him, and Kars answered by slaughtering nearly his entire race, his parents included, leaving only himself, his ally Esidisi, and two infants, Wamuu and Santana.

Some five thousand years before the events of Battle Tendency, the four seized countless humans for Stone Mask experiments. Learning that a flawless Red Stone of Aja, the Super Aja, was the key to perfecting the mask, Kars led Esidisi and Wamuu toward the old world while Santana stayed behind in Mexico. The trio pushed as far as imperial Rome and nearly wiped out the Ripple Clan, but failed to find the stone and fused themselves into a hidden stone wall beneath the Colosseum to hibernate, rigging it as a trap to feed on greedy intruders. The Aztecs correctly foresaw their return in the year that matched 1938.