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Stupid selfish bastards! When I get interrupted while I'm tryin' to kill or fuck something... I get really cranky!
– Wyald
Wyald (ワイアルド Waiarudo?) is an apostle with a simian face and a sadistic attitude made him more monstrous than human. He is also the leader of the Black Dog Knights.
Appearance
Wyald appears human at first glance but actually resembles an ape more than a human. His overall body structure and clothing resembles Zodd's, with a long, jutting face and wide eyes with wild, thick hair and heavy brows. Nude in his first panel, he is shown to be rippling with muscle with a coating of body hair almost resembling actual fur. When going into battle, Wyald donned thick animal skins and pelts alongside armor, including an actual skinned dog as a helm, increasing his brutish appearance.
In his apostle form, his arms fuse into his torso as his waist transforms into an ape-like body with a mouth in "chest" that has a flower-like penile tongue and multiple eyes across his body, one on each shoulder and one at the fusion of his upper waist and lower neck.
Personality
Wyald follows his motto "Excitement and Enjoyment", having an almost gleeful childlike lust for battle. While he is openly hedonistic and did not take his battles seriously, he fights with a log, imitating a child play fighting with a stick, Guts even comments that his technique is sloppy and he compensates with his inhuman reflexes. Often he puts his men in serious danger for the sake of "fun". He recklessly charges them through the Hawks traps and massacres them when they lost their morale. Wyald has absolutely no semblance of morality or empathy, he rapes and mutilates women, he burns children alive and he kills his own soldiers, and he strips Griffith naked to humiliate him in front of his own men.
However, when push comes to shove and Wyald is cornered, he is a coward who would do anything to save his own life. Holding Griffith hostage in order to summon the God Hand, he finds himself instead pleading with Nosferatu Zodd, who quickly kills him for endangering one destined to be a God Hand.
Abilities
Wyald has an unbelievable amount of strength, as he was capable of crushing one of his men's skulls with only two fingers, punched a falling boulder into pieces, stopped Guts' sword with his teeth, and ripped a tree apart with his hands. He also has superhuman reflexes and speed, being able to parry/block all of Guts' attacks with ease using a simple log and being able to impale a monster at speeds faster than the eye can see.
While he is already immensely powerful and agile in his human form, his demon form presents a massive boost in his basic abilities to the point where he can take out dozens of armed men with a tree trunk. His attacks also proved strong enough to break Guts' large sword.
History
Golden Age Arc
Very little is known about Wyald's life before he became an apostle, other than that he was a small frail old man who presumably regretted not living the life that he wanted. At some point after becoming an apostle he was taken prisoner, though how he was able to be captured despite being superhuman is unknown. It was this imprisonment which led him to meet the King of Midland, who ordered all able bodied prisoners to be assembled and drafted into war. Wyald volunteered as leader of this new army claiming that he was the strongest and the position was his by right. An enormous man known as Barbo the armor hacker approached to challenge his claim and the two fought to the death for the right of leadership. In order to earn the fear and respect of the other convicts, Wyald killed him in a spectacular fashion; by impaling him the spike of a tower. Wyald and his army of convicts named the "Black Dog Knights" gained an infamous reputation for being the most cruel and barbarous army in all of Midland as their habit of instigating atrocities caused them to be banished to the outskirts of Midland away from the King's sight.
Wyald appears before Guts
When the band of the Hawk rescued Griffith and escorted him out of Wyndam, the King ordered the Black Dog Knights to hunt them down. Though Wyald was reluctant to carry out the task, he changes his mind upon hearing the king's wish for Griffith to die. In pursuit of the Hawks, Wyald's group comes across a farm that aided the Hawks, having all the residents slaughtered and the women raped. When the Black Dogs came in contact with the Hawks, they fell victim to many of the Hawks' traps, with only Wyald and a few of his men continuing after them before the pursuit turned into a full on battle against Guts.
Wyald transforms before Guts and the Band of the Hawk
When Wyald realizes his men are outmatched, indiscriminately killing them when morale falls, he decides to assume his true form. After a long and brutal fight against Guts, Wyald is critically wounded and presumed dead with the scouts guarding the corpse. However, Wyald was feigning death and kills the scouts before crawling to the Hawks' camp and taking Griffith hostage, intending to start the Eclipse early to save his own life. After destroying the Hawks' morale by stripping Griffith down to reveal the full extent of the torture inflicted upon him Wyald panics, unable to find Griffith's Behelit. He is then impaled on the horns of Nosferatu Zodd who arrives to ensure Griffith arrives at the destined time and place of the Eclipse. Wyald begs for mercy, justifying that he was only following the God Hand's one law of "Do as thou wilt". Zodd rebuts that to be his reason to kill Wyald for endangering Griffith, ripping his stomach open. Now dead, Wyald's spiritual essence is dragged into the Abyss with his body reduced to that of the old man he used to be.
Trivia
- Wyald has not appeared in either the animated series or the movie series. Because of his omission, the destruction of Guts' sword during this particular part of the Golden Age arc isn't explored either. However, the silhouette of an apostle that looks nearly identical to Wyald's apostle form can be seen among the apostles gathered at the Eclipse before the Sacrifice begins in the 1997 version anime.
- Wyald's transformation is similar to the Mapinguari of Brazilian Mythology.
- Wyald is the first apostle that Guts successfully defeats, although not the first one he fought.
Template:Supernatural Beings Template:Golden Age Characters