Ganishka

Template:Infobox Character

Emperor Ganishka (ガニシュカ大帝 Ganishuka Taitei?) is the head of the Kushan nation, a large nation-state most closely resembling real-world India. He is also an Apostle of the God Hand.

Background

Ganishka is the only known Apostle to fail to acknowledge Femto's overlordship as the fifth God Hand and Prince of Demons. His army combines a large number of conventional forces with numerous supernatural creatures (Daka, Pishacha) and magic-users and is currently engaged in a protracted war with Midland and its allied nations under the authority of the Papacy. Sonia called him the "King of the Crows" during her tale of the current happenings to Schierke.

Abilities

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Ganishka in his Lightning Mist form

He employed his dark magic via his mist, which he can transform into. In this form, he showed no visible weaknesses and was able to hurl lightning at his enemies. However, Schierke figured out a weak spot in Ganishka's mist form (right between the eyes), where the astral core body is vulnerable to weapons with strong spiritual presence, such as Guts' Dragonslayer (due to countless slaughterings of evil beings during Guts' last two years journey). Griffith exploited another weakness he had in his mist-like form, that of how his body can simply be scattered by the wind.

Life

After first turning Wyndham into his demonic capital base, and aiming to take down the Holy See stronghold of Vritanis to the west, Ganishka would agree to a draw with Griffith for a final battle in Wyndham, after Griffith with his New Band of the Hawk had halted Ganishka's attempt at taking down Vritanis.

Ganishka then returned to his capital to preform a ritual involving absorbing the strength and lives of everyone nearby in order to "Transcend the Apostles". He believed this was necessary to beat Griffith, and the process was described as "using an Artificial Behelit", meaning it could be used as a means to reincarnate into being superior to what it formerly was. His new form is a massive monster as high as the sky, with hundreds of tentacles called "Shiva".

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Ganishka reincarnated

The circumstances of Ganishka's transformation into an Apostle are shown in chapter 303, through a flashback into his childhood, where it's revealed that his young brother was poisoned by his own mother, who later was killed, to ensure the throne to Ganishka. The king, later, lost his life in a trip, when he fell off his mount after being hit by a toxic dart. The throne then passed on to Ganishka, who took the decision that only fear could ensure his survival, but it prevented him of his duties as a father and husband. Years of conquest later, when he was in a feast for one of his victorious campaigns, his own son tried to kill him. Moments from death, his bloodied hand grasped the behelit, which was revealed to have been given to him by Dhaiva. His son was sacrificed and Ganishka was reborn as an apostle.

Shiva Transformation

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Shiva

Shiva is the name given to Ganishka by his followers during his transformation. He used the same "rig" of apostles that he used to create his demon soldiers. When he lowered himself, he disappeared in the liquid. A slow creeping fog killed everyone in the area, except for Dhaiva because he erected a personal barrier to protect himself. This was noted to be a "Man-Made Behelit."

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"Ganishka-spawns"

In this state Ganishka looks like a two-legged tower, from far away. His head is a mound of multiple heads and they can all breath fire. There are many whip-like arms. Ganishka can also create apostle-spawns of himself. All uniformly looking like big heads with sharper teeth and tentacles where the neck should be in order to move around. Also, probably because of the power that he attained by his own way, he lost all sense of rational thinking and self (much like Guts 's Berserker rage): this is shown when he kills thousands of his soldiers and thinks of it like "crimson flowers".

Death

As of chapter 307 Ganishka is confirmed as being defeated/dead, apparently by a blow from Skull Knight's Sword of Resonance that was avoided/deflected by Griffith. The event caused his corpse to form a giant tree (described to be much like holy trees from many religious stories) from the base of which sprouted the mysterious new castle "Falconia," implied to be Griffith's new kingdom.

Trivia

• Emperor Ganishka is based on Kanishka, who was a king of the Kushan Empire in Central Asia, from 127 AD until 151 AD.