Legion

Legion is a boss in the Castlevania series. 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. 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.

Origins


The origin of Legion's design is a biblical account of a large number of demons who possessed a man. The New Testament outlines an encounter where Jesus healed a man from Gadara possessed by demons while traveling, known as "the exorcism of the Gerasene demoniac". Thus, from the concept of being "composed of many" came the design of the shell composed of a large number of human bodies.

The Symphony of the Night boss, Granfaloon, is named after a concept from a 1963 novel called Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. In the novel, a "Granfaloon" is a satirical reference to a group of high-minded people who share a similar belief. The group is described by Vonnegut as "a proud and meaningless association of human beings". The Granfaloon in Castlevania would be a literal representation of this idea.

Castlevania: Symphony of the Night
Legion is found as the boss of the Catacombs. The shell has nine parts (arranged like spaces on a tic-tac-toe board), and destroying the center part is sufficient to expose 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 a 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.

Castlevania: Circle of the Moon
The Legion found in Circle of the Moon is very different from the rest of his incarnations in the series. For starters, it is a lesser enemy, not a boss. Instead of being a composed of many full corpses, it is smaller and is only composed of heads. It is still relatively large, however, has a rather deceptive high mobility, and will inflict Curse status on contact.

Nathan fights many of these in the Observation Tower.

Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance
In Harmony of Dissonance, there are two Legions:

Legion (saint)
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.

Legion (corpse)
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
Similar to its depiction in Symphony of the Night, Legion is an amalgam of featureless bodies, this time arranged to resemble a fetus during a sonogram, surrounding a tentacled golden cage containing a demonic fetus.

It can be found at the end of the Underground Cemetery, after Soma tracks its shambling husks through the level to a large, square room. Once Soma enters the room, the last of the bodies are sucked into the sphere and Legion awakens.

Legion slowly chases Soma around the rectangular circuit of the room, occasionally shedding husks. It consists of four shells parts and a core. Each of the shells has 5,000 HP, 55 ATK and 0 DEF. While the core can be damaged without destroying any of the shell, the boss's soul, Legion Laser, will not drop unless the shells have been completely destroyed before the boss perishes. As the shells are removed, the tentacled core will begin firing lasers at Soma, and if the shell is entirely removed, the core will gain the ability to infrequently retract the tentacles and rapidly bounce around the circuit.

Once slain, Legion's central cage will shatter and release the demonic fetus, which will either immediately die in a burst of flames if defeated while still having one or multiple shells attached, or float up, open it's eyes, and vanish in a small circle of light if defeated after destroying all the shells.

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 most disturbing bosses in the Castlevania series, along with Beelzebub and the Forgotten One.
 * The Legion's core somewhat resembles depictions of the Ophanim, a type of Angel that is said to hold up God's Throne, and the highest ranked in the angelic hierarchy. They are described as several wheels spinning and rotating within each other, similarly to a gyroscope, with rims covered in eyes.