Gecko Moria

Gecko Moria (ゲッコー･モリア, Gekko Moria) is a member of the Shichibukai who currently resides on the floating island, Thriller Bark. His former bounty was 320 million belli. He is one of the main major antagonists of the current arc. He is the one who stole Brook's, and various other beings' shadows with the use of the Kage Kage no Mi. For this an old man with a big wound requested from Luffy to defeat him.

Appearance
Moria is large person with devil-like features. Like every Shichibukai member has an animal theme, his is the gecko. He has two horns on his forehead and stitches running down vertically from the top of his face. His ears and teeth are both pointed and his neck is rather thick and long in comparison with his body. His lower body is relatively fat with stubby legs. His hair is red and his skin is pale. His lips, his armbands, and the edges of his gloves are blue. His shirt and gloves are black while his pants are bright orange. The collar of his shirt ressembles the frill of a lizard. Around his neck, Moria wears a necklace with a blue crucifix-like ornament with clawlike appendages sprouting out from three of the cross' points. Moria is roughly the same size as Kuma. His overall design resembles a giant leek.

Personality
Moria is an incredibly lazy guy. His motto is "Relying upon others for one’s own objective" and his favorite phrase is "You do it!!" Like other characters in One Piece, he has a distinct laughter which goes "Ki shi shi shi". He apparently wants to be the new Pirate King and believes that if he has strong underlings, he achieve anything towards this goal.

Abilities and Powers
Moria is able to steal a person's shadow with the Kage Kage no Mi which he ate. The loss of that person's shadow causes them to be vaporized if they come in contact with sunlight. Moria is also able create various zombies by implanting a stolen shadow into a lifeless corpse.

People who have their shadow stolen are left knocked out cold for 2 days. If they die the zombie with their shadow loses the shadow. Moria has recently been shown using his Kage Kage no Mi powers to fight Luffy. He creates a shadow duplicate and if the duplicate is destroyed then it can turn to tiny bats and attack the foe, then reform.

Moria in general prefers to avoid fighting altogether, either making his shadow fight or ordering one of his zombies to do so.

Past Story
Moria was once a pirate who became a Shichibukai. It is unclear of when these events happened, but Moria was beaten in the New World by a person by the name of Kaidou. After his defeat Moria set about trying to gain enough power to beat even Kaidou. Ten years before storyline, Moria, along with Absalom and Perona, met a man named Dr. Hogback and together they began creating zombies. They set up the ship called 'Thriller Bark' and travelled to the Florian Triangle where they bagan to ambush anyone who entered, looking for those with bounties such as pirates.

Then 5 year ago a skeleton they dubbed 'Hanauta' sailed onto Thriller Bark when his rudder broke. Looking to replace his ships rudder and sail off out of the Florian Triangle, he landed and boarded Thriller Bark. he was however captured, Moria stole his shadow. He was put back onto his ship and set sailing out of Thriller Bark, but unfortunatly for Moria the skeleton was able to retrace his steps when he woke up. To his horror, Hanauta returned to Thriller Bark and began to wreck havok there, destroying everything, in the process somehow discoverying the secret to taking down the Zombies.

Finally it ended when the Zombie Moria put Hanauta's shadow, Ryuuma, defeated him and set him running away from Thriller Bark from the shame of his defeat. Later Moria began to rebuild.

Present Story
After four days of sleep and some nightmares, Moria is awaken by his servants and told of the night attack to be commenced on the Straw Hat Pirates. With this he prepares for the attack.

As the attack commences, Moria apparently takes Sanji's and Zoro's shadows and apparently implants them in zombies. Later, Luffy brought forth before Moria. After a brief escape attempt by Luffy, Moria grabs ahold of Luffy's shadow and cuts it off with a pair of scissors. With this shadow, with it he intends to place it in the giant 900th zombie named Oz. A zombie he states would be the most powerful in history, strong enough to beat even Kaidou.

After some time battling with Luffy, Moria is greeted by Oz, now completely obedient. With the behemoth, Moria commanded him to rampage through Thriller Bark, assemble the Straw Hats, beat them and put them on their ship. Moria then ran away from Luffy, smiling. At some point in the chase, Moria tricked Luffy into chasing his shadow instead. His shadow, Doppelman, then lead Luffy deep within the forest of Thriller Bark just as the first rays of the sun appear. Doppleman then left Luffy in the middle of the forest and returned to Moria's feet.

Moria, on the otherhand, had been hiding in his dancehall while his shadow lured Luffy away. He was then greeted by Bartholomew Kuma just as his zombie minions, Gyoro, Nin, and Bao came in to report what was happening to Thriller Bark. Kuma then informed Moria that Crocodile's successor was found. He also informed him to be careful to be not defeated by the Strawhats. Moria, not believing this, told Kuma to just sit back and watch him as he defeats the Strawhats. Moria then somehow entered Oz's and began controlling him like a giant robot.

Moria is currently controlling Oz against the Strawhats.

Major Battles

 * Moria vs. Kaidou (10 years before current story)
 * Moria vs. Luffy
 * Moria and Oz vs. Straw Hat Pirates (minus Luffy and Nami) and Brook

Translation and Dub Issues
In the introductionary pages when Moria was introduced, he is described as "moto shichibukai", which would mean "former shichibukai" which turned out to be a mistake. However, when Volume 47 was released this mistake was left uncorrected on this same place. This left further confusions between the uncorrected text and other references within the volume. This mistake often results in a common Misunderstanding about his status as a Shichibukai.