Murdaw

"How unfortunate for you - I'm much more powerful in reality than I ever was inside a dream! Are you ready for eternal sleep? This is a nightmare from which you shall not awaken!"

- Murdaw

Murdaw the Dreadfiend is introduced as the main antagonist of Dragon Quest VI and the one responsible for terrorizing the world with monsters. Its appearance is that of a green chubby horned creature and it's capable of putting its foes under eternal slumber spells. The king and queen of Somnia were of the most notable victims to fall to its slumber spell. Other offensive tactics include blinding with a flashing light and summoning forth lightning.

Story
Murdaw, the Dread Fiend, makes an appearance since the very beginning in the game when the Hero, a girl and a muscular fellow, whose identities are not revealed until later in the game, go up to confront him. He proves to be much stronger than them and before they even get the chance to make a move, he makes them levitate and turns them to stone. The next thing that the hero knows is that he awakens in the town of Weaver's Peak next to a girl with blue hair that introduces herself as her sister and tells him he just had a bad dream.

After the hero and his party get the Mirror of Ra and find out that the Hero's world is really the Dream World and what they knew as the Phantom World was really the Real World, they use the mirror to reveal the King of Somnia of the Dream World to be Queen Apnea of the Real World who disguised herself to save her husband from Murdaw. She asks them to be taken to Murdaw as well with the Mirror of Ra. After they defeat the fiend, the queen uses the mirror to reveal that the Dream World Murdaw was the true King Somnus, who was under the real Murdaw's spell. This makes sense since the real Murdaw never sleeps. After all of this is settled, the two monarchs can finally awaken and they direct the heroes to the town of Gent, where they can get a ship to take them to Murdaw's Island for the true battle with the real one. In Gent an acknowledged child prodigy called Nevan joins them and they set off to finish off the Dread Fiend.

Strangely, on the way to the castle, the same events that happened in the hero's dream at the beginning of the game happen in the exact same way. This is noticed by the hero, Milly and Carver. Shortly after entering the castle, they find a statue that seems to resemble Carver and then everything becomes clear: The "dream" that happened at the beginning of the game wasn't a dream at all; they had already tried to take down the Fiend, he did really turn them to stone and their dream selves were all that was left of them, left in the Dream World but without their memories. Carver's two selves rejoin and he recovers his memory but there are still Milly and the hero left. When they finally reach Murdaw he tries to do the same trick he did at the beginning of the game but since they have the Mirror of Ra it proves unsuccesful and Murdaw is left with no choice but to battle them. After the hardest battle thus far, the party manages to beat him. It is later revealed to be just the first of four Dread Fiends at the service of the Archfiend, Mortamor.

Other appearances
Murdaw has apeared in the Dragon Quest Monsters series since the first installment, Terry's Wonderland for Game Boy Color.