Heartless
Heartless: are hearts corrupted by darkness and without a body or a soul. They serve as most of the battles and challenges that the player must go through in the Kingdom Hearts games. They come in a large variety of types, categorized by being Pureblood or Emblem, both reproducing by taking more hearts and transforming them into other Heartless. Emblem Heartless were artificially created and are labeled with a heart symbol. Pureblood Heartless are black shadow creatures with bright yellow eyes. The Heartless obey those with the will to control them. However, in worlds too close to darkness, the Heartless get stronger and become uncontrollable.
Nature: Heartless, Emblem or Pureblood, possess several key characteristics that define them as Heartless. All Heartless are created when the darkness that resides in a person's heart consumes him or her, thus giving the darkness shape and form (this process occasionally forms Nobodies, which are born from the body and soul left behind when the heart is lost). Being born from darkness, they are mindless and master-less, and their only goal is to find hearts, wishing to consume them and consequently create more Heartless. But what they desire above all are the hearts of worlds, and thus they enter worlds in search of the way into the hearts of the worlds. When they consume these colossal hearts, the remains of the world form new worlds, such as Traverse Town and the End of the World. At the same time, Heartless seek out the users of the Keyblade, since the Keyblades are weapons of light, light being the greatest enemy of the Heartless. In order to stop the users of the Keyblades, the Heartless use the Keyblade itself as a homing beacon, but ultimately desire to take the heart that commands it. Because of this, Keyblade wielders are under constant attack.
Ranking: Heartless, being formed from darkness, have varying strengths, depending on the amount of darkness in a person's heart. And the greater the darkness that forms a Heartless, Emblem or Pureblood, the more powerful and more monstrous it gets. This is a direct contrast to Nobodies, which determine strength by the strength of the will, and the more powerful a Nobody is, the more human it appears. In some cases, there have been heartless that have risen so powerful that they were able to maintain their human form. These are the rarest, yet most dangerous of heartless.
Control: he Heartless, being mindless, usually have no master to direct their actions. However, there are some higher beings who can command them. But the key to controlling them is an affinity for darkness, and a strong will. Those with hearts, such as Maleficent, endanger themselves however, as the Heartless are attracted to their hearts. If they show weakness, the Heartless will not think twice of consuming their hearts.
Travel: Heartless make use of the "corridors of darkness", inter-dimensional pathways that connect the many worlds. These pathways are located in the Realm of Darkness, and thus are very dangerous to use if one is not accustomed to the darkness.
Kingdom Hearts: Heartless, as they seek and consume hearts, also desire to return to the greatest heart, the heart of all worlds, Kingdom Hearts, that resides deep within the realm of darkness. And because of this, Heartless seek immense darkness, enough to completely consume the realm of light. The entryway into this place of great power is the Door to Darkness, the door that separates the realm of light and the realm of darkness. However, with the efforts of Sora and the King, the door is closed, which causes the worlds lost to the darkness to be restored, and preventing a massive army of Heartless from pouring into the realm of light.
The forces of the heartless were extremely weakened after the door to Kingdom Hearts was sealed off, though there were still many left.
The history of the Heartless is a difficult thing to discus. What is known about them is either information gained from direct observation (a dangerous prospect), the oponions of those still sentient peoples who ally with them (and they usually sing the praises of the Heartless, or from Ansem's Report (itself a suspect document).
The best theory so far to describe the origin and birth of the Heartless isn't a theory at all, but rather a childern's story told on the world of Hollow Bastion before its fall. This tale tells of a world before all others, a world of light. But in this world, seeds of darkness began to grow in the hearts of the adults. Slowly at first, this "Darkness" spread throughout the world. Eventually the weight of the darkness grew to such an extent that the world could not support itself, and the world shattered. After this cataclysm, new and smaller worlds were formed around the remaining points of light, those in childrens hearts. And now those hearts and worlds are the stars in the sky.
This tale, aside from being the only evidence provided so far seems to describe the destruction of some sort of proto-super-world, and formed the current omni-verse as it is known.
How the Heartless fits into this story seems simple. Initial impressions give way to the thought that the Heartless are the Darkness described in this story, with the destruction of the world fitting in with the known modus operandai of the Heartless. However, upon greater thought, this theory has several holes in it. First is the description of this "darkness". While heavilly metaphorical, this darkness appears to be more a state of mind, or a feeling in the heart than an actuall material presence like the Heartless are known to be. And this leads to the second concern, that of the destruction of the world. The "Darkness" in the story simply grew in the hearts of those it touched, finally shattereing the world in qustion. Compare this to the established methodology of the Heartless, that of consumption, both of hearts and worlds. There seems to be no correlation between the two, beyond the descriptor of "Dark".
Perhaps, instead of being the cause of the Darkness, or being the Darkness itself, the Heartless are the result of this series of events, and not a cause. But an actual solution to this relation remains to be seen.
But the origin of the Heartless does not end here. Ansem of Hollow Bastion played (and may yet still have) a pivitol role in the creation and evolution of the Heartless. As described in the so called "Ansem's Report", Ansem devised a machine capable of artificially creating Heartless by feeding it Hearts. Without going into the morals or ethics of such a device and its use, the primary effect of this machine had, was to increase geometricaly the number of species of Heartless from a mere three to nearly 40 known species with almost a dozen more unique creatures. The exact lacation and mechanisms of this device are unknown, however that is is somewhere in Hollow Bastion is a given fact.
Detailed version of Nature
Know thy enemy. This is one of the most undamental aspects of warefare, and against the Heatless, this tenant holds more meaning than ever.
First, generic physical properties of the Heartless. With only a few exceptions, the Heartless are composed of a mirky black, semi-reflective, viscous liquid/solid substance. The precise nature of this substance has so far been impossible to determine as any material lost through sharp impact or 'killing' the Heartless so quickly decomposes or evaporates that getting a sample to stay long enough to be tested has been a futile endeavour. And so far, no one known has been able or willing to take a 'living' Heartless in for analysis, for reasons that should be apparent to anyone familiar with the Heartless. However, Ansem's Report indicates that Ansem was able to contain a Heartless, but gives no indication as to how that feat was done.
The substance of the Heatless, known by this author as "Shadowskin" holds a few interesting properties that deserve note. As said earlier, Shadowskin has both fluid and solid properties. It maintains its shape like a solid (or rather, as an organic solid, rather than an inorganic solid), but when subjected to impact, either magical or physical, Shadowskin can loose its cohesion and act like a thick liquid. When struck by a weapon, and with sufficent force, a Heartless will loose some of its mass as droplets of Shadowskin. To see this effect for yourself, and without going near a Heartless, wave your hand under a stream of running water. The disruptions in the flow of water closely resemble the effect upon the Heartless.
However, once seperated from the majority of the Heartless, these droplets quickly evaporate as stated earlier. Attemtps to seperate larger portions of Shadowskin from a Heartless leads to the same results, either an evaporated minority, or the total destruction of the subject creature. This 'critical mass', so to speak, for the destruction of a Heartless appears to be approxamatley 45% of the total body volume.
It must also be noted that Heartless' physical form is an all-or-nothing state. No matter how much Shadowskin is removed from a Heartless, it will appear to have the same mass and volume right upto the moment of its destruction. Some speculate that this is because a Heartless is created from the darkness, and so a Hearltess will draw more darkness into its form to replace lost mass, or even that a Heartless has no real mass or volume to begin with. These are hypothesis that need further testing to validate or disprove.
Color. All Heartless, from the lowly Shadow to the mighty Kurt Zisa, Neo-Shadow or Behemoth, are all cloured one way or another. This is important, not only for identification purposes, but because clolur seems to be contrary to the 'dark' descriptors given the the Heartless.
The three 'natural' Heartless, that being the Shadow, Neo-Shadow and Darkside, are all made totally of Shadowskin, and have the same murky black colour. But the exception to this lies in thier 'eyes', which are yellow pseudo-orbs that glow ever so slightly. These eyes have no distinguishing marks, either across the species or individually.
But all the other Heartless, all the artificial ones, are different. While I would refer you to each individuals entry in the Tome of Heartless for more accurate descriptions and details of the Heartless, some trends and theorys are better discussed here.
Why do the Heartless wear clothes to begin with? It is not nessicary for their existence, but they are accrued, often brilliantly with cloth, metal, other things. Two theories arise around this connundrum. First is the practicallity aspect of what they wear. Heartless wear what they do for the same reasons that normal creatures do. For protection and identification. While reasonable at first glance, the theory falls apart under the total similarity between individuals of a Heartless Species. All Heartless look alike when compared to thier brothers, and one would expect their protections to vary slightly between indiviuals. Supporters of this theory reply that Heartless are not normal creatures to begin with, no no discerable personality, and similar creatures produce similar results.
The second theory states that when a Heartless is created from the heart of another, the nature of that heart infulences the type of Heartless created. Similar Hearts become similar species of Heartless, and that the armor and whatnot of the Heartless is nothing more than a byproduct of this transformation. Dectractors point out that this theory has the same innate flaw that the first one has, that of the total similarity amongst the Heartless.
Unfortunately, no consencuss cna be reached at this time, and any such agreement will be long in coming. But in good news, the clothing can be used to quickly determine the nature of the Heartless, and often the best ways to defeat them.
Evolution
Perhaps this is something of a misnomer. Heartless do not evolve in the traditional sense of the word. What this section deals with rather, is the ways in which the Heartless become more powerful and versatile as time goes on.
(EdNote - I an still working on this, including a pretty chart that shows evolutionalry pathways that the Heartless may take. Further information will be forthcoming after the chart is done.)
As said, Heartless do not evolve, but they do change as time goes on, and as the characters advance in level. The best way to say this is that Heartless respond to the growing powers of those around them by creating more advanced forms to deal with the treats. These advanced types are not typically created to confront those without the strength of Heart found in more powerful foes.
