Gecko Moria

Few characters look as monstrous as Moria. At 692 centimeters he stood as the tallest of the Seven Warlords, an enormous figure crowned by two horns jutting from his temples and crossed by vertical stitches that travel from the crown of his head down a long, thick neck. His ears and teeth taper to points, his lower half stays squat and rounded against the rest of him, and his cropped hair bristles in a dark reddish hue above pale blue skin. He favors a black coat and gloves, bright orange trousers patterned with faint window shapes, a fishnet undershirt beneath a cravat, and a clawed cross ornament; for the Warlord summit and beyond he added a fur-trimmed cape. Two years on, the cravat and cross gave way to a printed tie, his coat grew jagged edges, and the cape shrank considerably. Flashbacks to Roger's execution and his clash with Kaidou show him far leaner, longer-haired, and without the lower facial stitches.

One of the Grand Line's most seasoned pirates, Moria was once spoken of as Kaidou's equal, and at Marineford he traded blows with a Whitebeard division commander while barely taking a scratch, even shrugging off a burst of Luffy's Conqueror's Haki. His defining trait, however, is laziness. He prefers to let his shadow or his minions do the fighting, a reliance that visibly dulled his personal combat skill over time, as Jinbe pointedly observed when a single strike put him down. His motto translates to leaning on others for one's goals, and his stated dream is to seize the title of Pirate King through powerful underlings rather than his own hands. The trauma of losing the Gecko Pirates to Kaidou reshaped his entire philosophy: convinced living crewmates only bring grief, he resolved to surround himself with expendable, undying soldiers. Beneath the cruelty he still harbors genuine attachment, raising Perona like a daughter and storming an Emperor's island to rescue Absalom.

His power comes from the Kage Kage no Mi, a Paramecia fruit letting him command shadows as solid things. He can send his own shadow, Doppelman, to fight in his place, scatter it into bat-like swarms, or instantly swap positions with it, and the shadow simply reforms when struck down. Wielding a giant pair of scissors, he severs the shadows of his victims, leaving them comatose for two days and lethally vulnerable to sunlight, while their bodies and shadows remain a single linked existence. Stolen shadows planted into corpses create zombies loyal to him, blending the body's strength with the original owner's skills and personality. Absorbing shadows into his own frame swells him into a hulking last-resort form, demonstrated when his Shadow's Asgard packed a thousand shadows into him and let him split Thriller Bark with one punch. His scissors can also separate into twin blades for swordplay.

Born in the West Blue, Moria drifted as a child to Wano's Ringo, where the locals took him in and honored his strength with the Kouzuki name. He set sail as captain of the Gecko Pirates and attended Gol D. Roger's execution, leaving determined to claim the One Piece. Returning to Wano to confront Kaidou and the Beasts Pirates, he watched his whole crew slaughtered; shamed, he slipped away in secret, even robbing Shimotsuki Ryuma's grave of the samurai's corpse and sword. Driven to never suffer such loss again, he constructed Thriller Bark, joined the Warlords, recruited Hogback by reviving the doctor's lost love, took in Perona and Absalom, and gathered corpses worldwide to build his zombie legion.

When the Straw Hats arrived, Moria stripped the shadows of several crewmates and forced Luffy's shadow into the giant corpse Oars, directing the revived behemoth through a sprawling battle. Worn down at last, he unleashed Shadow's Asgard, only for Luffy's Gear techniques to force the thousand shadows back out and topple the main tower onto him; Hogback and Absalom carried his unconscious body away. He kept his Warlord seat long enough to fight at the Summit War of Marineford, where Jinbe felled him and he clashed with Curiel. Afterward the government deemed him too weak and dispatched Doflamingo and a squad of Pacifista to kill him under the cover story that he died in the war, but he escaped. Years later he raided Hachinosu hunting Blackbeard and the missing Absalom, learned that Catarina Devon had impersonated his crewmate, refused Blackbeard's offer to join, and was imprisoned, until Perona later orchestrated his escape during the Egghead period.