El Aleph

El Aleph

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SPOILER WARNING: El Aleph spoiler details may follow.
Joaquín Ruiz-Jorruda
El Aleph

This is the page for the Stand. For the novel of the same name, see here.
“
This kind of power cannot be considered a boon. It's a real curse... A true "evil spirit" capable of distorting the laws of nature is flowing endlessly without control.
”
—El Aleph Chapter 11: XI - Peru Arc

El Aleph (無限の王(エル・アレフ), Eru Arefu, lit. Infinity King) is the Requiem Stand of Octavio Luna Kan, featured in the light novel El Aleph.

It envelops Octavio and Joaquín Ruiz-Jorruda's surroundings with darkness to create a night that lasts eternally, making anyone around feel lethargic. It can also create otherworldly entities from the night that infinitely multiply.

Appearance

Main article: Joaquín Ruiz-Jorruda

As a result of Octavio's former Stand ability before it evolved into El Aleph, the Stand appears like an ordinary human man. El Aleph's physical form is the "human" Joaquín Ruiz-Jorruda, a mestizo with amber irises,[2] fair skin,[3] dark bags under his eyes,[4] and braided hair.[4] Joaquín is visible to everyone, regardless of whether they are Stand users.[5] He is normally not transparent,[5] but is sometimes seen as being semi-transparent.[4][6]

Joaquín has a black mark like a birthmark that resembles a dragon tattoo coiled around his wrist. When the ability is activated, the black mark slides up his skin toward his fingertip. It is a thick, dark liquid like tar or oil.[4] It covers his body when he is defending himself or attacking other Stands. After Joaquín learns that he is actually a Stand and not human, the black marks engulf his entire body, including the whites of his eyes. At that point, his gaze changes to look as if he is staring from a place much darker than the night, as if his eyes encompass infinity itself.[5]

Personality

Main article: Joaquín Ruiz-Jorruda

As a sentient Stand, El Aleph has an individual personality which is Joaquín's own spirit. Although he doesn't stray far from Octavio's own desires and falls into evil alongside his user, Joaquín still has deeply ingrained morals. He cries upon realizing how many cruel acts he committed for Octavio's sake. Moreover, he defies Octavio's orders more than once, choosing to protect Lisa Lisa whenever Octavio tries killing her. Nonetheless, Joaquín still has an unbreakable bond with Octavio, protecting him whenever he can. When The House of Earth does the finishing barrage on Octavio, Joaquín shields him to take the punches instead.[5]

The creatures summoned by El Aleph are cruel and ferocious, voraciously preying on anyone.[5]

Fernando Alhorn names the Stand after witnessing its power.[7]

Abilities

El Aleph is a calamitous Stand that naturally activates a never-ending night around its user, causing harm to the user and the Stand itself, as well as indiscriminately to friend and foe alike. Not only is it considered to be the negation of life itself,[7] but it also has the ability to create life.[5] It embodies the infinite nightmares inherent in the night, manifesting the hallucinations created by the human psyche in pitch darkness into real eldritch beings. These beings have the sole purpose of devouring anything in their path.[5]

Infinite Night Inducement

Localized Darkness

El Aleph's primary ability is to automatically induce a night that lasts eternally around its user. Thus, the sun never rises in that area, unrelated to Earth's orbit. When it first awakens, it has a small area of effect, only covering a room Joaquín is inside.[8] Twelve years later, it has a very wide range, enveloping a roughly five square kilometer stretch in the depths of the Amazon rainforest; a range that encompasses an entire village within the jungle. As the night continues permanently but only locally, it is essentially a temporal anomaly. It causes environmental changes akin to a disaster, as plants wither from being unable to photosynthesize, animals that feed on the plants die, temperatures drop, and both fauna and flora mutate drastically.[1] Plants devour each other and crossbreed, spiraling vines grow hooks and claws, tree sap drips and overflows, and twisting and sprawling roots spread across the entire jungle.[4]

The phenomenon of the eternal night is likened to a nuclear winter. The Speedwagon Foundation makes various hypotheses of how the ability functions. One assumption is that suspended particulate matter like ash or smoke are blocking the sun's rays. Atmospheric water vapor then becomes saturated and creates a thick layer that suppresses the release of energy out of the Earth, which is why the region doesn't become freezing cold. Another hypothesis is that the ability causes a mass hypnosis, distorting the cognition of everyone in its area of effect, including plant life.[4]

Thick, sticky, dark liquid consisting of the night itself seeps out from Joaquín's skin. When he lets it drip from his finger, it forms a small black whirlpool which silently spins and gradually increases in size. Nothing can be seen inside the darkness, akin to a black hole from space.[8] Joaquín can use the night defensively, creating black marks around his body, which he uses to protect Octavio and block attacks from other Stands. He can also condense the night into an immensely dense aura and cloak himself with it, making his body nearly impossible to see.[9] Alternatively, he can send it out as black gas, capable of removing lights such as the flames from torches.[5]

The never-ending-night's effects only dissipate when Octavio and Joaquín are incapacitated or killed.[5]

Fatigue Manipulation

The night decreases the energy levels of anybody within its range. Their circadian rhythms will feel out of order, making them exhausted. This can eventually lead to sleep disorders and circulatory problems.[4] Joaquín was only able to sleep in incomplete fragments and started seeing hallucinations throughout his years of wandering.[6] However, it is possible for organisms to adapt to a nocturnal lifestyle and live within the Stand's range. Several residents, farmers, bodyguards, and Octavio and Joaquín themselves, live in a commune in the Amazon, as part of the Selva Cartel. Lisa Lisa, Sasha Loggins, J.D. Hernández, and the Rueda Squad also train their bodies to be capable of fighting in the jungle during the night.[4]

Joaquín can also send out the darkness as a black wave at his opponents to drain their energy, making them feel chills. He only does it to demonstrate his ability to Lisa Lisa, which doesn't cause any other damage to her.[4]

Teratogenic Miasma

El Aleph creates a dark mist-like gas that seeps from the ground and induces chills and shivers like the fog of dry ice.[10] It is a teratogen[7] invisible to the eye and undetectable by the nose.[4] The miasma lingers inside a closed building even several years after the Stand leaves the area. Sasha feels a sense of suffocation from miasmic air in a factory where Alhorn fought El Aleph years prior to her investigation.[11]

Infinite Eldritch Creature Creation

“
Joaquín had sculpted the night with his own hands, giving birth to life. A completely light-independent, ravenous life that doesn't exist anywhere on earth, let alone the Amazon.
”
—El Aleph Chapter 19: XIX - Final Arc

El Aleph can create life from the darkness, infinitely spawning creatures from within the night that surpass the wonders of the Burgess Shale-type fauna. First, Joaquín sends out black gas from his hands which spray out in all directions. The gas converges into a swirl above Joaquín's head, becoming thicker than any measure of density, until it forms a floating orb of darkness. This orb contains every night experienced by all of mankind throughout the planet. When Joaquín flutters his fingers like a shadow play, the orb unravels with black hair-like strands from the center of the sphere. These strands form a rib-like cage and then solidify into a cocoon-like mass which falls down. Finally, a coagulated mass of darkness spews out from the cocoon. Skeletons take form with flesh and blood, creating the eldritch beings born from primal fears and the deepest recesses of the human psyche.[5]

These entities would never be found in any normal habitat in the world, as they don't belong on Earth. Although they give off the impression of being a single entity, they are actually multiple at the same time. They have no thoughts or self-awareness. All they do is exist, react, and feed on their prey. Their sizes vary from human-sized to gigantic and each individual is unique. The majority of them are grotesque hybrids of crustaceans, cnidarians, and insects. All of the creatures are blind and violently attack anyone in their path. As they are real creatures, non-Stand users are able to see them and come into contact with them. However, they are also able to attack Stands.[5]

These creatures are so chaotic that they traumatize anyone who sees them, including horrific humans like Alhorn who gruesomely tortured people.[9] Bullets and blades don't affect them, and they are not afraid of fire. They are similar to vampires, as they are also beings living in the darkness who suck blood. As such, they are weak to the Ripple—and sunlight by extension—which destroys them.[5]

List of Creatures

  • A heavy lobster-like creature with eight legs or more jumps on a soldier's back and drips a viscous substance on his neck.[10]
  • A crawling creature with a dome-shaped head fringed with jellyfish-like folds at the edges and iridescent chitinous multi-segmented legs.[5]
  • Multiple organisms that combine to create swim bladders, tentacles, digestive organs, and a kind of nematocyst, forming a creature resembling a Portuguese man o'war.[5]
  • A creature with eight stout legs arranged in four pairs, arc-shaped mouths lined with serrated teeth, and no eyes, resembling a giant tardigrade.[5]
  • A creature that moves straight ahead, continuously producing new individuals from a mouth occupying most of its head, as if shedding its skin.
  • A frightening, worm-like creature covered in cilia.[5]
  • A cnidarian likely to be forty meters long.[5]
  • An invertebrate with crowned proboscises.[5]
  • A carnivorous sponge.[5]
  • A mollusk covered in mucus with scissor-like limbs and an armored exoskeleton.[5]
  • A clawed slug with multiple heads.[5]
  • An arthropod with rows of spiracles like insect mouths.[5]
  • A giant long-legged creature like a crane fly with four wings.[5]
  • A giant crustacean-like creature that makes Sasha's hand develop a rash upon contact. The rash swells into worm-like bulges, spreading to her arms and neck, resembling the marks of a branding iron or whip. Not only does she feel pain in the affected areas, but her fingertips become paralyzed.[5]
  • A coffee jelly-like bell-shaped creature resembling an umbrella. Its underside has wings and a mouth at the center. From the rim of the umbrella, it has tentacles about ten meters long with sucker-like ends, which it uses to drain blood.[5]
  • A few creatures with black wings swarm together.[5]

Chapters

Book Icon.png Novel Appearances
Chapters in order of appearance

References

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