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"I, GARLAND, WILL uh... KNOCK YOU ALL DOWN!"
—Garland
Garland

Garland is the founder of the Dark Warriors and the Light Warriors' archnemesis and most frequent enemy. Despite this, Garland is generally portrayed as a friendly cook and the nicest character along with Fighter. He is the first recurring villain to appear in the story. One could also argue that the monsters which appear on the first random encounter and/or the Giant's Forest's Giant would be the first villain.


First Appearance: Episode 052: Meanwhile...


Overview[]

He is the first villain the Warriors of Light face. He somehow managed to kidnap Princess Sara. Throughout the series, Garland has been shown as an incredibly incompetent villain.

He also has an extreme fear of Forest Imps, the weakest creatures in the world (aside from Bikke's scurvy stricken pirate crew). It has been shown that the Forest Imps have been doing various things to impair Garland's goal throughout the series.

While the Light Warriors made their way to the Temple of Fiends, Princess Sara was attempting to make Garland into a good evildoer. However, everything she tried just proved that he was a nice guy.

When the Light Warriors were captured by Princess Sara while she was helping him, Garland went to talk to them. They were petrified in fear at first, thinking that he "is so evil he can be nice to us before he kills us".

Garland's greeting speech to them was originally "Hello, I am Garland, would you like some cookies?". Sara then wrote a much more evil speech. However, when Garland went to greet the Light Warriors, the speech had been stolen, forcing him to improvise and proclaim "I, Garland, will knock you all down". The Light Warriors promptly burst out laughing, and Garland thought the line was so evil it had driven them insane.

Needless to say, the Light Warriors escaped after Garland lowered them into a pit of what everyone thought was acid, but turned out to be Mountain Dew which Forest Imps had put in the pit. Black Belt proceeded to beat Garland to a pulp.

Since that incident, Garland formed the Dark Warriors along with Bikke, Drizz'l and Vilbert von Vampire. He is the leader for no other reason than Bikke and Vilbert being too incompetent to do anything about it and Drizz'l having lost his swords. They have tried (and failed) to defeat the Light Warriors time and time again.

The only time they succeeded was when Garland launched a slander campaign that turned everyone in Corneria against the Light Warriors.

As of Comic 981, he has lost leadership of the Dark Warriors to Drizz'l, who was himself usurped by Black Mage, one of the former Light Warriors, in comic 1019. Garland was shortly part of the Wildcats alongside Generic Half-Elven Dual-Class Ranger, Fighter (who somehow managed to put himself in every team), and Rogue.

His sprite was originally a Magic Knight from Final Fantasy III (This is most likely his old military uniform) but from Episode 53 and onwards he is shown wearing his "Bad guy outfit" which he is seen wearing for the rest of the series.

Dark Warriors appearances[]

  • Launching a slander campaign that turned everyone in Corneria against the Light Warriors. No one paid any attention.
  • Debating with BM on how to handle the Light Warriors.
  • Trying to invade Corneria Castle - at the request of King Steve, so he could declare war on some country - being botched by Sara. Drizz'l invited her to join the Dark Warriors, and was met with serious laughter.
  • Become crew of the Light Warriors ship (when they were sent by Sarda to the Arctic) in order to kill them. They tried poisoned food (Garland threw it away), crashing the ship into icebergs (Black Mage exploded all in the way, even one he only stabbed), exploding the cannons while the Light Warriors cleaned them (Black Mage put extra powder, and the concussive forces annulled each other), summoning monsters (Black Mage killed them), and they finally abandoned the ship when the Light Warriors other than BM were about to discover their identities.
  • In the arctic, they killed the yeti and found the Light Warriors hanging on his cave - and despite Drizz'l suggesting on getting them down to kill the Warriors, Garland vetoed the idea. They only escaped after finding the Real Light Warriors' ship, and hiding themselves in a crate as the light Warriors stole the ship and used it to ride it back to Corneria. In Corneria, Garland discovered all about the Light Warriors by talking to Fighter.
  • Bikke organized a meeting so he could plot a mutiny against Garland - but he invited Garland to it, since he would make the food. Garland explained that he accepted because the mutiny wouldn't give results, and the food had amnesia pepper anyway. It is unknown if Garland ate any of the food himself.
  • After King Steve lost the kingdom to a string, and the Dark Warriors witnessed him "killing it" to get it back, he hired them as his accountants as a bribe. They were fired in less than a week, but Garland didn't tell them that because he thought it would be bad for morale.

Trivia[]

  • Garland seems to be a very good cook. He gets regular magazines concerning cooking and regularly meets with a baking club.
  • Garland has graduated from "Barry's Correspondence School of Arch-Villainy".
  • He has a deep seeded hatred for the Forest Imps, the weakest monsters in FF I.
  • He and the other Dark Warriors have the honor of being four of the nine people to out-Thief Thief
  • He seems to have a crush on Princess Sara.
  • Garland somehow can summon monsters - he summoned an octopus, a dinosaur to fight the octopus since it attacked the Dark Warriors, and a marmoset so they could escape by the sea in spite of the fact that none of the Dark Warriors could swim.
  • Despite being one of the nicest characters in the comic, he also appears to be one of the strongest, as Garland is capable of summoning powerful beasts and wearing armor that Red Mage isn't even able to stand up in.
  • At the end of the comic, White Mage paints out Garland as a hero because of Thief, Red Mage and Black Mage's sociopathy and Fighter's incompetence. This ended up eerily prophetic, as in Strangers of Paradise: A Final Fantasy Origin, Garland deliberately got the Warriors of Light to defeat him so Corneria would be free from the control of the villainous Lufenians.

Character History[]

Not much is known about Garland's past except that he was once a Conerian officer.
His full name is apparently Jim W. Garland, though as this was in a guest comic it is not canon.

At one point Garland was meant to be the Understudy for the Avatar of Evil, but was rejected by Darko. This alludes to Garland's role in the original Final Fantasy in which he became Chaos and attempted to destroy the Warriors of Light thus becoming the Avatar of Evil.

Relationships with other characters[]

DARK WARRIORS

Drizz'l: Drizz'l generally hates Garland's niceness and following cliché villain rules (such as assuming the heroes are defeated on their own as opposed to double checking). The two interacting are a key element of Dark Warrior scenarios.

Bikke: Garland sees Bikke as an idiot, and Bikke sees Garland as a sissy. However, Bikke is kept on the team because Garland fears him.

Vilbert: Despite Garland being the one who found and recruited Vilbert, the two are rarely seen interacting. They recognize each others' incompetence, yet the two do not seem to hate one another. Unlike Bikke and Drizz'l, Vilbert has not been shown trying to start a mutiny against Garland, although he did participate in theirs.


LIGHT WARRIORS

Black Mage: During Black Mage's time as leader of the Dark Warriors, the two were often seen talking to one another, with Garland questioning and complaining about Black Mage's methods.

Fighter: In most instances Fighter, a la the Light Warrior Idiot/Idiom sees the best in anyone he meets. He actually isn't too far off the mark for Garland since Garland is actually a decent person. Fighter confides in Garland ALL of the Light Warrior's weakness (about 1 to the infinite power minus 1) and is about to reveal strategies to combat them when he is taken away.

Thief: Thief sees Garland as a fool. The two rarely interact, presumably because Garland is not Elven. He does believe that Garland is smarter than Drizz'l initially. (This could have been said by any of the Light Warriors but the speech bubble is hard to track)

Red Mage: RM sees Garland as a clever adversary though ultimately as a means to obtain more stat boosts through repeated bashings of Garland's head.

OTHERS


Princess Sara: Sara first acted as a mentor of sorts to Garland in the ways of evil. She continues to mock the Dark Warriors' attempts to invade Corneria Castle, which seems to be a regular event.

King Steve: Although the two are never seen talking to one another, King Steve seems to view Garland and the Dark Warriors as his friends, perhaps because Garland used to work for him.

Darko: Garland was a candidate for an understudy to Darko (or possibly Black Mage Evilwizardington) at one point, with Darko ashamed of him much like his current peers are. It was unknown what the exact relationship between the two was, when it happened, and if it still continues.


Abilities[]

Garland has the strange ability to summon powerful creatures (such as a Deep One, a dinosaur, and a giant marmoset), perhaps meaning that he is a Final Fantasy summoner. This could be in reference to Golbez and Exdeath, as Golbez summons a Shadow Dragon and the two are shown to be casters despite being clad in incredibly heavy suits of armor. Alternatively, he might be a beastmaster, as he was put in charge of obtaining monsters to guard the Temple of Fiends and once ran a pet shelter there. His original outfit was based on that of a Mystic Knight, so that may have been his original class in the Cornerian Military. Incidentally all of these are classes found in Final Fantasy V.

The Many Looks of Garland[]

See Also[]

Garland Appearances

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