Pillar Men

The Pillar Men (柱の男, Hashira no Otoko) are four powerful humanoids that serve as the main antagonists in Part II: Battle Tendency. Each one have a different-shaped horn that shows a hierarchical order. For them, showing their antennas is a sign of honor.

Pillar Men
File:Santana2.pngSantana	File:Esidisi2.pngEsidisi	File:Wamuu2.pngWamuu	File:Kars2.pngKars

History

Masks of the 4 Pillar Men. Starting from the top: Kars, Esidisi, Wamuu and Santana

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The Pillar Men came from an ancient race of humans that had extraordinary strength, intelligence and lifespan. This race once ruled the Earth, living at the top of the food chain and consuming ordinary humans. But because of their great abilities and physique, the race followed the "rule of evolution" regarding the trophic level: the "higher" it "evolved", the fewer its population became, and it was unable to overcome its adversity to sunlight.

Hoping to overcome their weakness to the sun's rays, Kars invented the stone masks, which can bring out the race's full potential through acupuncture. However, he found that although the mask worked on ordinary humans (and would turn them into vampires), its stimulation was too weak for powerful creatures like the pillar men. However, the race of pillar men, fearing Kars's genius, sought to execute him. Kars massacred the opposing members of his race, including his parents, and subsequently travelled with Esidisi along with two children (presumably Wamuu and Santana).

The Pillar Men awaken after their two thousand years of sleep

Kars sought to combine the stone mask with the Red Stone of Aja to achieve his goal of evolving into an "ultimate life form". To this end, he, Esidisi, and Wamuu travelled to Rome to seek the Red Stone, and defeated the Ripple Clan in a war. However, they were ultimately unable to find the Red Stone of Aja and transformed into stone pillars and went into hibernation  two thousand years prior to the start of the events of Part II. It was predicted that they would awake in the year 2852 of the Aztec calendar, the equivalent of the year Part II takes place: 1938.

Powers and Abilities

• Body manipulation: Pillar men can freely and quickly change and manipulate their bodies. Along with this, they have the ability to regenerate any physical wounds, much like vampires. This ability requires training however, as Wamuu, Esidisi and Kars are more capable at doing so than Santana who was classified as a "disciple".
• Elemental Battle Mode: The more experienced Pillar Men each have their own specialty element, such as Fire, Wind or Light. When activating powers based around these elements, they are referred to as "Modes" (流法（モード）, Mōdo). Along with Body manipulation, this ability appears to be only accessible for those associated with Kars and have presumably tested the Stone Mask. The Pillar Men race originally used primitive weapons such as spears before they were massacred.
• Absorption: The pillar men's method of eating is absorbing living beings (including Vampires) from any part of their body. Pillar Men can also chain this effect, by fusing multiple beings together, and simply touching one will absorb the rest. 
  File:Pillar Men race.png

  The Ultimate race known as "Pillar Men"
• Enhanced Sensory: Pillar Men possess enhanced senses, although to what extent is unknown. These are demonstrated a number of times, such as Santana smelling the area much like a dog, or Kars being able to analyze the number of people in a room via heat signatures.
• Advanced intelligence: The pillar men's most dangerous trait is their intelligence. They are all geniuses: able to analyze and understand languages, machinery and people's minds and actions within a matter of seconds. A couple instances of this include Santana dissembling a gun that would have taken hours to learn, and Esidisi being able to predict Joseph's speech pattern.
• Ultimate Life Form: Obtained after a Pillar Man dons a stone mask with the Red Stone of Aja. In this form, a Pillar Man is practically invincible, as they are unable to die. Aside from a massive boost in their previous abilities, new ones include:
  • Being unaffected by sunlight.
  • The inability to grow old.
  • Dismantling one's body on a cellular level to take the shape of any kind of human or animal.
  • The ability to use the Ripple.

While only Kars has achieved this form, it can be assumed this would apply to any of the Pillar Men after donning the mask.

Trivia

• All four Pillar Men were defeated by Joseph Joestar.
• Having fought both Joseph and Caesar twice, Wamuu had faced the most opponents during Part 2. The second was Kars who fought Joseph, Lisa Lisa and Stroheim once time each. Both Santana and Esidisi have only fought against Joseph.