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Dynast Grausherra (Supreme King in the original Japanese) is the main villain in the third cycle of the Slayers novels, never adapted in the anime. He is a Demon Lord created by Ruby Eye Shabranigdo, who manipulates events from the shadows, from the ninth novel to his defeat in the thirteenth, to cause a world-wide war between demons and dragons. However, his true scheme is only put into motion in the fourteenth novel, which results in awakening the fragment of Shabranigdo dormant within a young mercenary named Luke.
Appearance[]
Dynast Grausherra only appears transformed into the man whose identity he stole to further his schemes: Who is described as a tall, muscular man in his thirties, with long black hair and aristocratic support.
His main human aspect is described as a very young man of regal stature, with short dark hair and eyes, wearing rich garments.
A witness describes his true self as a gigantic darkness, in the novels, without further precision. Only his demon form is seen in illustrations. it is depicted as a purple-eyed giant in a dark spiked armour and a gold-trimmed red cape.
Personality[]
Dynast Grausherra is described as the most ruthless Demon Lord, cold, arrogant and cruel, but refined and calculating. He is always poised, collected and uncaring, casually talking of his crimes, but violent and sadistic.
He revels in sowing torment and dragging out battles, just for the thrill. He taunts and boasts, but gives earnest praise and chastises moves he finds subpar.
He does not care one bit about his servants, callously dismissing them as tools only fit to serve, and paying no mind to casualties. It is stated that the more of them he can spread everywhere to further his plots the better.
More importantly, he is exceptionally intelligent, cunning, manipulative and strategic. Like Hellmaster Fibrizo, he waits for openings before acting, sets up multi-layered plans, and pushes targets where he wants without them knowing. He is more secretive, acting through proxies from the shadows and carefully hiding his true goal with false tracks and smoke-screens until it is reached, but more rash. While he acts innocuous and perfectly covers his tracks, he prefers spreading many plots to a single detailed one.
Powers and Abilities[]
Dynast's true form (left) alongside Sherra (right) in SD style
In Slayers, demons are evil spirits from the Astral Plane, who can project themselves into the Earthly Plane.
As a Demon Lord, Dynast Grausherra can access everywhere from the Astral Plane; shape-shift his projection to mimic any life-form; create objects of all sorts and size as part of it; absorb places in it to control them; teleport, levitate, or turn invisible. Only magic able to target their astral self can harm demons, but they can regenerate.
Grausherra is immensely powerful. He can spawn (and reabsorb) demons from his essence; brainwash or empower anyone; corrupt, twist, transform, teleport and levitate things and people; sense auras; alter the landscape; open pocket dimensions; and use the dark powers basis of Black Magic to perform all manners of spell-like feats. He also controls the Ice element, and the Lightning element to a somewhat lesser extent.
The Black Magic spells drawing from his power are the Dynast Breath (a tremendous ice blast which freezes solid and shatters everything in a large area) and the Dynast Brass (a huge and devastating lightning pentagram).
He is an immensely strong, fast and skilled fighter, who effortlessly takes on two of the best swordsmen alive, sends foes flying in one blow, shatters steel with his bare hand, and hurls waves of pressure or energy in a swipe. He can infuse his longsword with his power, create blue energy blades or shields, block, cut, and divert magic attacks, or absorb them in a dark orb.
Background[]
Creation[]
Dynast Grausherra is the Demon Lord ruling the Frozen Wasteland of the North, the Slayers counterpart of the North Pole. He was created with the others around five thousand years before the story, sometime before his liege, the Demon God Ruby Eye Shabranigdo and the Dragon God, Flare Dragon Ceifeed defeated one another: Ceifeed's spirit being scattered and Shabranigdo being divided in seven fragments.
The War of the Dark Lord's Resurrection[]
Over a thousand years before the story, Hellmaster Fibrizo staged a war he spread throughout the word before swarming the lands with demons. His goal was to make the great archmage Lei Magnus fall into despair, to awake the fragment of his liege he discovered sealed in his soul. The newly titled Demon King of the North took command of the demons to start the War of the Dark Lord's Resurrection against the dragons, the worst conflict in history.
The Demon Lords destroyed most of Ceifeed's temples to eradicate nearly all knowledge of Holy Magic (the best weapon against them). After that, they created the Demon Barrier: a gigantic force-field cutting the world in two and cancelling Holy Magic, drastically weakening dragons. The war ended after Dragon Lord Ragradia's demise, who had fused Chaos Dragon Garv with a human soul and sealed Lei Magnus in the glaciers of the Kataart Mountains.
Lei Magnus-Shabranigdo being sealed near his domain, Grausherra became his spokesman of sorts, and spawned major demons as his enforcers. Hajime Kanzaka, the author, first explained that he spawned a Priest and a General, like the others, replacing them after they died in the war. Yet, he later stated that he spawned two of each, across the centuries following the war.
A few years before the story, Dils Rwon Gyria, King of Dils, led a foolhardy attack to slay Lei Magnus-Shabranigdo. But while sealed, he is as sentient and powerful as ever, wrecking the army and turned the king into an immortal, ever-suffering chunk of flesh, doomed to endless misery in his castle.
Role in the Series[]
The first plots[]
The ninth novel starts sometime after Fibrizo's death (or the anime-exclusive seasons following it). The heroes, the powerful sorceress Lina Inverse and the master swordsman Gourry Gabriev are looking for a powerful magic sword to replace Gourry's lost Sword of Light. They befriend two fellow adventurers and powerful mage-swordfighters: Luke and Mileena, whom he loves.
Sherra, Grausherra's General.
The four notice that the land is swarming with demons, with mysterious black-clad people seemingly using them for some nefarious plot. Learning that they covet the Cursed Sword of Bezeld, Lina and Gourry get involved. They protect a young girl named Sherra from the guys in black, only to discover that she is Dynast Grausherra's general. To which Lina mockingly replies that he lacks imagination when naming his vassals; much to her annoyance.
Sherra is the creator of the sword: in fact a demon named Dulgofa, who can drain power and transform people into half demons by contact. She made up the legend as a trap, and it turns Galva, the leader of the guys in black, into a giant "hyper demon" who attacks the mining city of Bezeld. Despite its instant regeneration and its life-absorbing tentacles, Lina and Luke slay it combining their two mightiest spells, the Ragna Blade and Ruby Eye Blade.
After this, the heroes discover that many factions are plotting to take over their lands all across the continent. First, they are hired by Larvas, the son of Krain Langmayer, ruler of the city state of Solaria. Only to learn that Larvas is an impostor named Bergis, who poisoned Krain's real son Beisam to take his place and wants to raise an army of powerful chimeras to retake his kingdom of Ruvinagald, from which he was exiled. The heroes kill Larvas and his followers, who all turned themselves into powerful chimeras, but quickly stumble into another plot in Crimson Town.
They are hired by the sorceress Aria Ashford to rescue her sister Bell from Cairus, leader of the Sorcerers' Guild. Cairus poisoned Bell's lover to force her to marry him, and plots to take over the city. However, Bell turns out to be the true brain of the plot out of revenge, and wields Sherra's demon sword Dulgofa, obviously getting it from her. Bell turns people into a horde of half-demons and herself into a mightier one, able to absorb powers, only to get slain.
Investigations in Gyria City[]
The heroes' investigation leads them to Gyria City, capital of Dils Kingdom. It was almost destroyed by demons and King Wells Xeno Gyria, is raising a huge army of mercenaries to protect his country. Among them is Sherra herself, who with her enormous fighting skills, has quickly risen to the rank of general. Fearing that Sherra might manipulate the king like she did with the other conspirators, the heroes resolve to stop her.
Helped by two officers the Dils army, they discover that Sherra turned many royal advisors into half-demons, again with her sword, and is holding the king under her sway. They kill Sherra, who dies with a smile, satisfied to have served her liege, and the royal officials reward them generously. Unfortunately, the crisis is not over. The kingdom is still swarmed with demons and the heroes find out that the officers who helped them against Sherra and most of the royal advisors have been transformed into half-demons in turn, if not replaced by shape-shifted demons.
They are later recruited by Milgasia, the ruler of the Gold Dragons of Dragon’s peak, and Memphis Linesword, an elf sorceress owner of a Zanaffar Armor: an immensely powerful artifact that can cancel magic by severing the links to the Astral Plane and summon an immensely powerful titan made of energy.
They enter the castle to ask the king about it, and learn that soldiers are ordered to stay in, leaving the population suffering. They first suspect the corrupted advisors, but Lina deduces that Sherra could only have taken orders from a higher-ranking demon, and that King Wells is in fact Dynast Grausherra, usurping his identity and his throne. Everything was in fact a complex plot by the Demon Lord to start a second War of the Dark Lord's Resurrection:
- Grausherra first impersonated the real Wells Xeno Gyria but kept him alive in a secret place, most likely to learn how to act like him. (He turned the king into an immortal, ever-suffering chunk of flesh, just like his predecessor. With one cursed king already in the castle, his anguished laments would be mistaken for that of the first.)
- As the king of Dils, he holds great political power among humans. He had demons attack the city, giving him a pretext to raise an army under the pretence of defending his people. Starting there, he would have free reins to ignite a war between mortals and demons, with a foot in each side to better control both.
- He then ordered Sherra to travel the continent and incite as many ambitious wannabe rulers as possible to take over their land, and if greedy enough, to conquer the neighbouring nations, using her sword to raise demonic armies in fact obeying her. So as to involve more factions in the upcoming war and beget further strife.
- Pretending to be a mercenary who rose in rank in the army of Dils would enable Sherra to remain in contact with her liege without suspicion, and would direct attention on her only should someone investigate, leaving him free to readjust his plans and blame his change of behaviour on her influence. Even with her gone, he could still shift the blame onto his corrupted advisors, pretending to be strong-armed or corrupted in turn.
The heroes battle Grausherra, but even at six versus one they are no match for him. He toys with them, greatly enjoying his sword fight with Gourry and Luke, until Lina places Memphis' Zanaffar Armor on him, cutting him from the Astral Plane and preventing him from using his formidable powers, but he still overwhelms them with strength and skills alone. The tide turns when he breaks Gourry's blade, revealing the legendary Blast Sword underneath. (An extremely powerful magic sword, encased in a mundane one due to being uncontrollable.)
Taking advantage of the surprise, Gourry wounds Grausherra, enabling Lina to destroy his avatar with her Ragna Blade spell. He survives, but cannot manifest in the Earthly Planes before fully recovering. As the depart, Memphis and Milgasia reward the heroes with treasure and a seal enabling the Blast Sword to be wielded normally.
Hatred in Sellentia[]
Lina and Gourry are hired by the Sorcerers' Guild of Sellentia, the famous City of Shrines, dedicated to the Dragon God Ceifeed and each Dragon Lord. Ceifeed's shrine was destroyed in a fire, killing the Head Priest, with the four high priests fighting for the position, all claiming that Ceifeed himself had declared them the new Head Priest.
Later, Airlord Valwind's High Priest is killed and Luke and Mileena are hired as bodyguards by Aqualord Ragradia's High Priest, as the three of them are hiring mercenaries and assassins in what soon degenerates in an all-out war. In the ensuing battles, Mileena gets fatally wounded by a poisoned dagger, and the only priest able to cure her refuses because she is working for his rival. Overcome with grief and hatred, Luke kills all the priests save from the one who had hired him in the first place, who only owes his life to Lina's and Gourry's intervention.
Lina figures out that the "divine orders" that started all this debacle were staged, and ferrets out the culprit: Zenui, a demon working for Dynast Grausherra, who gloats that he only "advised" the priests and they did the rest on their own, before a grieving Lina dusts him. It all turns out to be yet another of Grausherra's schemes, whose endgame becomes clear. His demons were searching for a fragment of Shabranigdo and far from just stirring chaos to feed from despair, it was to drag him in the conflict and awake him. Sherra died smiling because she identified Luke as its host when he touched Dugolfa without ill effect. Even the battle against Grausherra was staged to that end.
Grausherra' plan worked flawlessly. Even his own defeat matters little with Luke-Shabranigdo taking command of the demons to finish the second War of the Dark Lord's Resurrection that he started. Fortunately, Luke's mourning of Mileena matches the Demon God's evil influence, and he retains enough control to challenge Lina and Gourry to a fair fight for the fate of the world. In the end, Lina uses his friend's longing for death to grant his final wish.
The New Cycle[]
Norst, Grausherra's second General.
Hajime Kanzaka restarted the novels in 2018. Dynast Grausherra does not appear, but his second General Norst serves as a minor villain in the seventeenth novel. He starts to secretly influence the actions of the mayor of the city of Lakota, probably under orders from his liege.
There, he meets with Lina and Gourry, whom he traps outside of time and space, from which they can only escape by defeating him. However, upon learning that he is facing the ones who defeated his liege and his "sister", he falls on his knees, rather pathetically for a high-ranking demon.
He offers to send the heroes wherever they want and avoid humans for ten years if they spare him. Yet, he sends them in another city named Lakota, outside the Demon Barrier.
Trivia[]
Like his fellow Demon Lords, Dynast Grausherra is based on an Arch Demon described in the Ars Goetia, the first chapter of the grimoire The Lesser Key of Salomon, describing seventy-two demons who according to Biblical Lore, were trapped and enslaved by King Salomon.
Grausherra is based on Eligos, the fifteenth demon and a Grand Duke of Hell, who takes the aspect of a handsome knight, is related to war and attracts rulers. Like him, Grausherra is a war-like demon, manipulating people in power and assuming the aspect of an attractive man wearing aristocratic military garments.
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| Slayers Villains | ||
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Deities Shabranigdo's Generals Greater Demons and Major Villains Demon-worshiping cult | ||