Legion

Legion is a recurring boss prevalent among newer Castlevania games. The general design is a floating sphere composed of numerous featureless humanoid bodies that acts as a shell concealing a center core of varying identity.

The boss has appeared in the following games: Additionally, Legion appears as an enemy in Castlevania: Circle of the Moon.
 * Symphony of the Night
 * Harmony of Dissonance
 * Aria of Sorrow
 * Curse of Darkness
 * Portrait of Ruin
 * Harmony of Despair (DLC)

The origin of Legion's design is a biblical account of a large number of demons who possessed a man. Thus, from the concept of being "composed of many" came the design of the shell composed of some large number of human bodies.

Generally speaking, the shell has to be defeated by repeated strikes before the core is exposed, and only by damaging the core can the boss be defeated.

Castlevania: Symphony of the Night
In Symphony of the Night, the shell has nine parts (arranged like spaces on a tic-tac-toe board), and destroying the center part (which covers the core) is sufficient to allow the player to damage the core. The shell "attacks" by dropping bodies which fall to the ground and then walk toward Alucard like zombies, and occasionally, if Alucard is closest to a non-destroyed portion of the shell, lets out a growl and then scream followed by a shower of bodies that do not form zombies raining upon Alucard. If the portion of the shell Alucard is closest to is destroyed, then the one of the eight tentacles of the core fires off a powerful laser instead. Legion can be destroyed without first destroying all nine shell parts (eight 2D directions and one directly covering the core), but if all shell parts are destroyed, then in between single laser shots, Legion's tentacles fire off sets of homing laser shots that are extremely difficult to avoid. Legion is found as the boss of the Catacombs.

Castlevania: Circle of the Moon
Though not the same as the rest of appearances within the series, Legion does appear in Circle of the Moon. A fact that separates this appearance from the rest of the series is that it is a normal monster, not a boss. Nathan Graves fights some of these monsters in the Observation Tower while searching for a method of being able to free his master from Dracula.

Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance
In Harmony of Dissonance, there are two Legions:
 * Legion (Saint)
 * Legion (Corpse)

The first, "Legion (Saint)", is found in the Sky Walkway in Castle B, and is similar to the Symphony Legion, but only has four parts, and destroying any one of them will expose the core. It apparently floats in mid-air using a pair of angelic wings (only a graphical feature, not gameplay-relevant). Also, Legion (Saint) does not drop bodies, but only occasionally produces a smaller version of itself which flies over to the player for contact damage and inflicting curse status. Destroying the shells reveals a small core with three tentacles (that looks like the Tentacle Golems, an enemy found in another Konami franchise, Gradius) which can periodically shoot dashed laser beams.

The second, "Legion (Corpse)", is found in the Skeleton Cave (a Catacombs-like area) in Castle A (it's the Skeleton Cave you hit later). Instead of a shell of bodies, this Legion is protected by a shell of bones, mostly human skulls--a shell that is actually indestructible. However, hitting this shell sufficiently causes it to open, and reveal a bobbing-head skeleton at the bottom of it (along with a graphical touch of flies escaping), and this skeleton is its actual weakness. The skeleton must be hit repeatedly quickly enough or the creature will attempt to re-close itself. If the shell is to any degree open, it will also drop strange-looking maggots that crawl slowly along the ground toward the player-character. Also, notably, even well-into its death animation, it stays on-screen, damaging the player-character if it touches (contact confers curse status as well as damage to Juste Belmont and Maxim Kischine; Simon Belmont cannot be cursed).

Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow
In Aria of Sorrow, Legion returns to being a coalescence of bodies and can be found at the Underground Cemetery. The chain of featureless humanoid bodies Soma encounters through the level, slowly walk toward the room located at the center of this area, which occupies a large, square-shaped room with a smaller square box on its center. Once inside, the bodies join together and form Legion himself, who first floats out of the box and then slowly chases Soma around the square "ring" between the walls of the room and the central box, occasionally dropping a few bodies when in horizontal passages. It has four shell parts and an inner core, but notably, this core can be damaged even before any shell part has been destroyed. Each of the shells has 5,000 HP, 55 ATK and 0 DEF. While Soma isn't required to destroy the shell before the core, it's the only way to earn Legion's soul, Legion Laser. If all the shell parts were destroyed, the core is revealed: a golden cage containing a fetus with three tentacles. The tentacles act like those in Harmony of Dissonance's Legion (Saint), and the core continues to chase Soma around the ring, although it can also retract its tentacles from time to time and bounce between the walls, moving much faster than when floating. Its death animation is most notable: the cage breaks, releasing the fetus inside, who immediately dies in a burst of flames.


 * Note: It's worth mentioning that the way that the humanoid bodies are piled together gives Legion the appearance of a fetus during a sonogram.

Castlevania: Curse of Darkness
In Curse of Darkness, Legion, when defeated, releases a creature known as "Nuculais". Legion is fought in a tall room, seemingly composed of flesh, under Garibaldi Temple. Legion hovers in the middle and is reached by climbing a walkway protruding from the wall. Legion itself doesn't attack, but zombies will rise from the floor and walkway and explode if they come into contact with Hector, for around 200 damage at level 50.

When Legion is defeated it releases Nuculais, which is a giant translucent white humanoid with no organs (except for a heart) that seems to have been corrupted by its early release from Legion. Nuculais is one of the hardest bosses in the game and has many attacks, including turning into a mobile pool of lava, throwing the aforementioned explosive zombies at Hector, and a powerful charge attack.

Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin
Graphically ported from Symphony, in Portrait of Ruin it appears as a boss enemy in the Nation of Fools portrait level of the game. Like its counterparts in previous games, it has a core with many naked men that fall from it and attack the player, possibly the former inhabitants of the Nation of Fools. This time, Legion has nine parts of body, excluding the core.

In Portrait of Ruin, Legion cannot be defeated without destroying its "body armor". Even if the player concentrates his attack on the core, all the bodies will fall anyway, revealing the bare core. In this form, Legion will not only fire the blue lasers well known from other games, but it will also spin slowly and launch fire (which does not poison) under pressure from the tentacles, which is especially hard to avoid. However if you move your character across the bottom of the screen this makes the fire easier to avoid.

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Trivia
Legion is considered by many players as one of the more disturbing bosses in the Castlevania series, along with Beezelbub and the Forgotten One.

In the English localization of some games, Legion is referred to as Granfaloon. This is presumably a reference to the novel "Cat's Cradle" by Kurt Vonnegut Jr. In the novel, a Granfaloon is a group of people that may be incorrectly assumed to be connected to God's plans for the world.