Pillar Men

"Awaken, my masters!"

- Wamuu, Chapter 64

The Pillar Men (柱の男) are powerful humanoids featured in Battle Tendency.

Description
The Pillar Men are from a race of ancient, humanoid, super human beings. These beings are now nearly extinct, but used to live hundreds of thousand of years ago in the American continent. They are highly intelligent, extremely strong, and able to manipulate their bodies to a very fine degree; however, they are vulnerable to the rays of the Sun and to the Ripple.

Their physiology is very different from humans, though outwardly they appear very similar. The only visible feature that can differentiate them from humans is the horns on their forehead. An individual being can possess one or several small horns; for them, displaying their horns is a sign of honor. Moreover, these beings are inherently powerful, have athletic physiques exclusively, and have long life spans. Their near immortality causes them to produce only very few children, as there is little need, and sleep for millennia instead of hours, staying awake for comparable periods.

The four remaining representatives of this species in the world are Kars, Esidisi, Wamuu, and Santana, in descending order of hierarchy, now called "Pillar Men" since they were discovered sleeping inside stone pillars. Led by Kars, this group awakens in 1938 to continue seeking out the Red Stone of Aja, which, combined with their technology of the Stone Mask, will transform them into "ultimate beings" immune even to the Sun.

High-Level Body Manipulation
The Pillar Men can freely change and manipulate their bodies to a greater degree and speed than any vampire created by the Stone Masks, being able to dislocate or even break their own bones as well as flatten organs in order to achieve any form they desire. With their near-immortality and powers of regeneration, they can survive, endure attacks, and restore their bodies even after being reduced to only their brain.

Near-Immortality
The Pillar Men are immune to age and disease, and the remaining Pillar Men have lived for thousands of years.

Advanced Intelligence
The Pillar Men's most dangerous trait is their superior intellect. They are capable of perfect recall and are able to instantly analyze and understand the mechanics behind anything including complicated things such as languages, machinery, tactics, systems, and people's minds and actions, within a matter of seconds. Santana instantly learned the procedure to dissemble a gun that might have taken a human hours to learn; and Esidisi was able to match Joseph in wits.

Enhanced Senses
Pillar Men possess extremely enhanced senses. These are demonstrated a number of times, such as Santana sniffing out the area like a dog, or Kars being able to detect the number of people in a room via heat signatures.

Absorption
The Pillar Men's main method of sustenance is absorbing living beings (including Vampires) via any form of physical contact. A Pillar Man's body is composed of cells that release a digestive acid, which melt the victim at a cellular level, creating the illusion that the Pillar Man is absorbing a victim into its body. The cells also appear to induce an euphoric enzyme as victims subjected to the process do not feel anything until physical contact is broken. The surviving Pillar Men displayed this ability in creative ways: Santana forced himself into another's body to control their movement while eating them from the inside, Wamuu grafted the hands of multiple targets and absorbed their innards by simply touching one, and Esidisi grafted a human limb to himself after losing his original forearm. This ability is ineffective against Ripple users as the cells perceive the danger posed by their energy.

Elemental Battle Mode
The more experienced Pillar Men each have their own special fighting style, characterized by a specific "element" such as fire, wind, or light. Powers based around these elements are referred to as "Modes".

This ability and their body manipulation appear to only be usable by those associated with Kars and the Stone Masks; the Pillar Men race originally used primitive weapons such as spears before they were massacred.

Ultimate Being
A Pillar Man can become an Ultimate Being by activating a Stone Mask affixed with the Red Stone of Aja. So far, only Kars has been seen to become an Ultimate Being. A Pillar Man in this state becomes much more powerful, with a massive enhancement to his overall capabilities and as well as new ones:
 * Being unaffected by sunlight
 * Complete immortality
 * The ability to reshape their body on a cellular level to that of any kind of human, animal or plant
 * The ability to use the Ripple

History
The Pillar Men come from an ancient race of humanoids that possess extraordinary strength, intelligence and lifespan. This race once ruled the Earth, living at the top of the food chain and consuming humans who regarded them as either gods to be worshiped or demons to be feared. However, because of their great abilities and physique, the race followed the "rule of evolution" regarding the trophic level: the "higher" it "evolved", the fewer its population became. They remained unable to overcome their adversity to sunlight, yet were content with their lives regardless.One among this tribe named Kars did not accept his kind's way of life and sought perfection. This led to Kars creating the Stone Mask to bring out his race's full potential through. He found that the mask worked effectively on humans (though turning them into vampires), but the thickness of his species' skull only enabled the mask to partially unlock its full potential. The result was enhanced body manipulation, presumably unlocking the use of Elemental Battle Modes, with a increased hunger. Fearing the threat posed by Kars' genius, the tribe sought to execute him in order to maintain natural order. Kars retaliated by massacring most of his race, including his parents. Only Kars, his co-conspirator Esidisi, and two infant children (Wamuu and Santana), were the sole survivors of their race.The four remaining pillar men first appeared in human history 5000 years before Battle Tendency, capturing hundreds of thousands of humans for experimentation with the stone mask. Kars found through his research that a flawless Red Stone of Aja called the Super Aja would be essential to perfect the Stone Mask and complete their transition into ultimate beings. To this end, Kars took Esidisi and Wamuu to the old world while leaving Santana behind in Mexico.

The three reached as far as imperial Rome where a emperor was rumored to possess a Super Aja, nearly wiping out the entire Ripple Clan in the process. Unable to find the stone, the Pillar Men were forced to hibernate, fusing themselves into a stone wall hidden within a cave under the Colosseum near the 1st Century A.D. The wall itself was rigged by the Pillar Men as a trap to feed themselves on any greedy humans while sleeping, as seen with Mario Zeppeli. The Aztec correctly predicted that the Pillar Men would reawaken in the year 2852 of the Aztec calendar, the equivalent of the year 1938.