Ghost Army

The Ghost Army took the form of a vast column of moving stone warriors that answered to the demon Moryo. Because they were hewn from rock and appeared to march on some ghostly will alone, conventional arms did little against them and stopping their advance was extraordinarily hard.

Long ago a clan of shinobi struck a bargain with Moryo and sought to use his soldiers to raze the world and raise a thousand-year kingdom. That plan ended when the priestess Miroku sealed the demon away, and the army was locked in stone inside the shrine that held its master's soul, deep in the Land of Demons. Generations later Yomi, descended from that clan, broke the seal and roused the army along with the demon.

In battle the stone troops could crush swarms of shinobi underfoot and bring fortresses down simply by tramping through them. Spears, arrows, blades, and even a Rasengan barely slowed them, though their great weakness was speed, since they moved slowly and handled their weapons in a stiff, mechanical fashion. Acting as Moryo's stand-in, Yomi marched them toward the Land of Swamps to recover the demon's body, flattening villages along the route until Naruto Uzumaki, Kakashi Hatake, Shikamaru Nara, Might Guy, and Temari finally brought them down.

The army ultimately belonged to the demon Moryo, whose sealed spirit gave it purpose, while Yomi commanded it in the present by posing as the demon's avatar. Its design draws on the real Terracotta Army entombed with the Chinese emperor Qin Shi Huang, a legion of clay soldiers meant to serve and guard their ruler in the afterlife.