Gecko Moria

Gecko Moria (ゲッコー･モリア) is a member of the Shichibukai who resided on the floating island, Thriller Bark, when he was originally introduced in the story. His former bounty was 320 million belli. He is the main antagonist of the Thriller Bark 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, Spoil, requested from Luffy to defeat him.

Appearance
Moria is a large person with devil-like features. Like every Shichibukai member, he has an animal theme, which 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 resembles the frill of a lizard. Around his neck, Moria wears a necklace with a blue crucifix-like ornament with claw-like 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 is "Ki shi shi shi". He apparently wants to be the new Pirate King and believes that if he has strong underlings, he can achieve his goal. He almost always smiles and only seems to change expression when something bad happens to him. He maintains a relaxed and laid back stance at all times, seemingly appearing to think he cannot lose. Like Luffy, he had many good friends in the past, considering them valuable nakama and considered himself as once too overconfident like Luffy himself is. His loss to Kaidou changed his outlook on life severely, making him believe that subordinates are better off as zombies since, due to their undead status, they cannot be harmed by any physical damage. They can only be "purified" by the sea or elements of the sea. Even if they were purified, he could just as easily find other shadows to reanimate them.

He feels that a true pirate should fear nothing, even death.

Abilities and Powers
Moria is able to steal a person's shadow with the Kage Kage no Mi. 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 in comas for two days. If they die, the zombie with their shadow loses the shadow.

He creates a shadow duplicate of himself that fights for him, while he does nothing but watch. The shadow is mostly solid, and can easily change its form to things like tiny bats. The shadow will not be destroyed and will continue to reform. Moria is able to change his location with his shadow's location, which can also be used to dodge attacks.

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

However, if there is no one left to fight for him, he will fight using his trump card: He will take every shadow from every zombie on Thriller Bark and absorb them to make a form exactly the same as "Nightmare Luffy" except he has 1000 shadows in him instead of 100. This form increases his mass to the size of a giant, as well as giving him a monstrous boost in physical strength.

Physically, he was capable of rising back after a small amount of time during a devastating attack of Nightmare Luffy that Oz toppled over. Due to his size, he can easily carry a normal human with a single hand.

Past Story
My words... come from experience. My subordinates... they were famed far and wide... Why did I have to lose them all?!!! -Part of Moria's speech on the use of Zombies over real crewmates.

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 one of the Yonkou, Kaidou. While there, his entire crew was apparently killed. Their deaths apparently affected his entire outlook about subordinates. After his defeat Moria set about trying to gain enough power to beat even Kaidou.

Ten years before the current storyline, Moria, along with Absalom and Perona, sought after a man named Dr. Hogback. Upon meeting the doctor, Moria offered the doctor a way he could have his deceased love, Victoria Cindry, back to life. Through the use of his Devil Fruit powers, Moria implanted a stolen shadow into the corpse and gained the doctor's allegiance in return. Together with the doctor and Moria's two associates, they set up the ship called "Thriller Bark" and traveled to the Florian Triangle. There they began to ambush anyone who entered, looking for those with strong shadows, such as pirates with high bounties. With those that they ambushed, Moria started making zombie minions with shadows stolen from his victims and creations supplied by Hogback.

Five years ago, a skeleton named Brook came to Thriller Bark in hopes of fixing the rudder to his ship. The skeleton was captured and Moria implanted his shadow in to the corpse of Ryuuma. The skeleton came back to Thriller Bark and purified several of Moria's zombie minions in an attempt to retrieve back his shadow. Though the skeleton was defeated by Ryuuma, Moria was forced to rebuild his army from the mess the skeleton left behind.

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 prepared for the attack.

As the attack commences, Moria takes Sanji's and Zoro's shadows as they are brought before him. With Sanji's and Zoro's shadows, he implanted them in the zombies, Inuppe and Jigorou respectively. Later, Luffy was brought forth before Moria. After a brief escape attempt by Luffy, Moria grabbed a hold of Luffy's shadow and cut it off with a pair of scissors. With this shadow, with it he decided to place it in the giant 900th zombie named Oz. A zombie he stated 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. Moria then lead Luffy deep within the forest of Thriller Bark. He then switched with Doppelman the moment Luffy caught him. Doppleman then left Luffy in the middle of the forest and returned to Moria's feet.

Moria, on the other hand, had been hiding in his dance hall 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 Straw Hats. Moria, not believing this, told Kuma to just sit back and watch him as he defeats the Straw Hats. Using his Doppelman switching technique, Moria entered Oz's stomach and aided the behemoth against the Straw Hats he was fighting with. With his Devil Fruit powers, Moria aided Oz with his technique by making the behemoth's body stretched during the battle. Slowly, Moria and Oz defeated each Straw Hat one after another. In the middle of the battle, Moria was momentarily held back by Robin's Hana Hana no Mi powers however, he stopped her by cutting off her shadow and continued aiding Oz in the behemoth's belly.

With Moria aiding Oz both by allowing the behemoth's body to stretch and protecting his mouth from swallowing salt, Moria was about to witness Oz defeat the last two Straw Hats when they were suddenly saved by Luffy. With Luffy in the scene, Moria was then suddenly shocked when the Luffy stopped a punch from Oz and threw the behemoth several yards away. To Moria's surprise, Luffy had suddenly become extremely powerful and was now able to land massive hits on Oz. As Moria tumbled around within Oz's belly as the behemoth took hits, the Shichibukai decided to get out before anything could happen to him. Unfortunately, Moria was just then punched in the face by Luffy. Moria was then caught in middle of a barrage of punches sent by Luffy's Gomu Gomu no Storm against the Shichibukai and Oz. Having been punched several times by Luffy, Moria was knocked out.

Moria, however, would not be defeated so easily, and using a mass of tendrils emanating from his body, destroyed all his zombies and sucked their shadows into himself. This gave him a massive power boost and transformed him into a large, lizard-like form. This form, while more powerful, was also quite unstable; filled to the brim with shadows, Moria would occasionally overspill and burp them up. Luffy used this to his advantage during their battle, punching Moria to make him give up more shadows. Though both combatants fought hard, Moria - beginning to realize the futility of the situation that he recklessly gotten himself into - was eventually hit by Thriller Bark's toppling mast, effectively pumping his stomach and making him give up all the shadows.

Straw Hat...Ughah!... Then you go see for yourself... What a real nightmare is...! In the New World! -Moria's final words upon defeat.

He was last seen lying unconscious on a ship, steered by Absalom and Hogback, and on its way away from Thriller Bark.

Major Battles

 * Moria vs. Kaidou
 * Moria vs. Luffy
 * Moria and Oz vs. Straw Hat Pirates (minus Luffy) and Brook
 * Moria and Oz vs. Nightmare Luffy
 * Moria vs. The Strawhats
 * Moria vs. Luffy

Translation and Dub Issues
In the introduction 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.

Trivia

 * His first name is not only based on the gecko, but it is also a pun on the Japanese word for moonlight, Gekkou, given his nightmare theme.