CaV: JoJo vs Warhammer! - DIO (Reaperace) vs The Red Duke (Cheth)

@shroudofsorrow@mordhauextreme1@masterofmatches@army2442@firefly894@wut@exmaster3000

Just wanted to say, that because Reaper does not know the Red Duke, and he is not someone with much information availiable online, I have also chosen to not read up on DIO, meaning my knowledge of him and the JoJo verse extends to "DIO is a vampire". Furthermore, I want to say that any apparently hostile comments are not intended as such, at most as friendly banter, though sometimes I might seem harsh in debates, so apologies in advance.

Now have some music as you read about the potency of the Red Duke and the inevitable defeat of DIO

So going into this debate, I imagine that many will not know Warhammer, or at least not have a strong sense of how the setting works. So I wish to start off with a description of the setting, the Red Duke’s homeland, and the Red Duke himself. Warhammer is a setting fittingly named, for its entire purpose is to act as a setting for multiple fantasy races to fight in constant and never-ending battles against one another at all times. The Red Duke is from Bretonnia, and here you can see just some of the constant threats they face:

Orcs, goblins, Undead, Skaven, and chaos raiders. I hardly believe an explanation of what orcs and goblins are, though in the former case I would like to note that these are not the kind you see in LOTR. These are massive mountains of muscle:

Undead in turn range from simple skeletons and zombies, to superhuman vampires, superhuman wights, mummies, powerful liches, as well as great monsters like undead dragons and living statues (some of which have things like lazer-eyes):

Skaven are rat-like men, which might not sound impressive until one mentions that singular armies can range in the millions, they too field massive monsters, and that they have laser cannons, gatling guns, nukes and snipers:

He was forced to admit that it made sense, though he doubted Vorag had arrived at the conclusion through any studied process of consideration. Rather, it was the instinct of a jackal hunting a rodent and knowing that its prey will seek shelter. He glanced back at Rudek. ‘And how would you suggest we go about holding this place, Rudek? We have barely a third of the army here, and we’re likely sitting right on top of the main nest of the ratkin. There’ll be millions of them in here with us before long.'

Master of Death

Norse raiders are the equivalent of vikings, however not regular ones; every norscan is a massively strong man with the strength of a viking berserker:

Chaos raiders are worse yet, as they are even bigger superhumanly fast and strong warriors, clad in magical armor that even enchanted weapons can’t pierce:

And of course it did not mention threats like constant raids from dark elves, in which average members of their race can dodge arrows, and every warrior has centuries of training and experience. Or the wood elves, who are faster yet, impossibly skilled archers, and have massive treemen and their like to help them. Nor the beastmen, each strong enough to tear someone into two pieces barehanded. Nor the empire of man, which while usually on neutral terms with them often come into conflict, in which the empire wield cannons, rockets, guns, and tanks.

And against all this, Bretonnia’s only weapon to field in their defense are knights.

The many constant threats Bretonnia faces, and the fact that their only tool to defend themselves with are knights with no magical or special weaponry, should already speak highly to their skill and overall ability. However it's also worth noting the actual combative ability of a singular knight. Knights Errant are the weakest of the knights, not even true knights, simply men who try to prove themselves worthy for the position:

Yet even these “knights” can have years of combat experience. And even those that do not, that only just now have started their errant, are expected capable of performing feats such as defeating an orc warlord with hundreds of orc warriors single-handedly!

And this was not some extraordinary individual amongst Bretonnians; he was a simple peasant when accepting this errant, and who only was mentioned for a single page-long story:

Above these are the knights of the realm, the actual knights of Bretonnia, which are already fully capable of killing dragons:

Infact, here’s a list of all the “common” feats that a knight of the realm can accomplish:

Questing knights are greater yet, knights so accomplished that they go on another quest to prove themselves by performing even greater feats so they might drink from the grail of the Lady of the Lake, the protector goddess of Bretonnia:

However the strongest knights by far are the grail knights:

Grail knights are those questing knights who have sipped from the grail, and in doing so has been blessed into becoming superhuman warriors, repeatedly referred to as “living saints”:

Of course pure hype is all well and good, but what about actual combative potency? Here you see a simple unnamed grail knight fighting an entire army single-handedly.

With singular strikes he cuts through multiple people at once, even shattering swords. Their return blows are useless, spears, arrows and swords breaking when touching his armor. A single grail knight can slaughter entire armies without even taking damage. And this is no isolated event or outlier: grail knights have defeated regiments of minotaurs single handedly, they casually beat the greatest fighters of other factions, and so on. Even before Sir Amalric drank from the grail, he was so blessed his mere presence destroyed armies of undead, and as a questing knight he defeated a horde of beastmen, a horde of goblin raiders, and a wight lord twice. All that just to be allowed to drink the grail:

And here Calard, who only recently had been made a grail knight, casually moved faster than and destroyed multiple vampire lords (more on vampires soon). We even see him having such great speed that he sees the world in slow-motion (though speed is irrelevant to the topic of this debate):

"Merovech!" roared Calard, his voice suffused with the power of the Lady.

Unholy seneschals moved to interpose themselves between him and their dark lord. Their eyes were filled with hatred, but there was fear there too the shining light of the goddess Calard exuded was anathema to these creatures of the night, and it caused them pain even to look upon him.

Garbed in archaic armour of ancient design, each was a mighty warrior and dark champion in their own right, but even so, they could not hope to slow Calards furious charge. He plunged the elven lance Elith-Anar through the chest of one, skewering its blackened heart and hurling the blood-sucking fiend from its saddle. His sword flashed, and a dragon-helmed head flew into the air, mouth locked in a silent scream.

"Merovech!" he bellowed again, and another dark knight fell beneath his blade. He batted aside a vicious swinging broadsword, and his lightning riposte stabbed deep into the face of a further seneschal, the white flame flickering up the Sword of Garamonts blade making the devils flesh blacken and blister.

Grail Knight

So even the least of the bretonnians are supposed to be capable of acting as one-man armies. Mid-tier generic knights are dragonslayers, and the greatest? For them even vampires are fodder.

The Red Duke is now known as a powerful vampire lord. But before that he was a bretonnian knight, and the duke of Aquitaine. Knights of Aquitaine are already noted to be renowned even amongst other bretonnians, speaking of their great skill:

However the Red Duke was not just any knight. He was known as the most courageous knight in Bretonnia, and was their greatest champion in the crusades:

But more importantly for the purposes of this debate; he was by far the most skilled knight of his time and any time since. The King, Louis the Righteous, a grail knight, stated that in the crusades the red duke was their greatest knight:

It is in these crusades the Red Duke gained the title the Northern Sword, or El Syf, for his skill with the sword:

King Louis, his little brother, was afraid of the Red Duke even before he turned into a vampire:

And perhaps his most ridiculous showing;

Any knight in all of Bretonnia only had to scratch him in a duel and they would be given a purse of gold, and noone ever claimed it. This would include knights of the realm, questing knights, grail knights, and other nobles. And this is all before he ever turned into a vampire.

Being poisoned in an ambush, he was turned into a vampire by Abhorash, who says that he has seen few with his skill. Why is this important?

Abhorash is one of the first vampires in the world, and the supreme warrior of the original vampires. The blood dragons, those vampires turned by Abhorash, are themselves stated the greatest warriors of all the undead:

This is once more not just empty hype, as Abhorash is an incredible warrior who beat a dragon in a pure melee battle, even going as far as throwing it with pure strength:

A lesser blood dragon is capable of casually fighting his way through an army of orcs (which is also shown to have giants and trolls) and then an army of undead they were fighting against:

This Blood Dragon is beaten in swordsmanship by another blood dragon (though he wins by throwing them onto stakes):

And both of these were former bretonnian knights of the crusades, explicit inferiors of the Red Duke:

And as you can see, these two, and many other bretonnians, all at once were no match for one of Abhorash’ original disciples. These disciples are even capable of matching first-generation vampires (and one who himself trained with the sword for centuries), despite the fact that the older vampires are explicitly physically stronger and more powerful (Abhorash is also again noted to be the greatest warrior ever as of the time):

They traded blows for a moment. W’soran was impressed by the other vampire’s strength. His was still the greater, but Walak was a trained warrior, and deadly. W’soran had learned much of swordplay in his centuries, but Walak had been trained by the greatest warrior to ever tread the world’s sands. They spun about, their blades weaving a wall of steel between them.

Master of Death

Though the four disciples are noted to be almost as good as Abhorash himself:

‘But surely it won’t hurt to hear us out, eh? Otherwise you’d have set those ravening devils of yours on us,’ Ushoran said, indicating the silent, unmoving shapes of Abhorash’s Hand – the four men who’d stood by him since Lahmia’s fall. W’soran knew them by name, if not by appearance. Walak of the palace guard and his cousin Lutr, of the harbour guard, were both Harkoni hillmen rather than true Lahmians, and had been given position in the military by Abhorash in better times. Mangari of the Southlands, a savage-turned-soldier, and Varis of Rasetra, a cunning duellist and former mercenary. Each was almost as formidable as their master and their eyes glowed red through the chainmail masks they wore beneath their ornate, high-peaked Arabyan helms.

Master of Death

So for Abhorash to claim that the Red Duke is one of the most skilled people he had ever met, is for him to claim that the Red Duke, despite having centuries less training than Abhorash and his disciples, himself should not be far behind Abhorash at the time. But that is not all. Whenever the greatest blood dragons are mentioned, The Red Duke is always mentioned (the only other to always be mentioned was Walach Harkon or Walak as he was known as before, best of Abhorash’ original disciples):

Whereas Lutr (or Luthor Harkon) and Mangari never are (Varis is also never mentioned, although Varison might be another name change). Implying that the Red Duke is greater than even at least two of Abhorash’ disciples, both of which were “almost as formidable” as Abhorash before spending millennia improving their skills.

Furthermore, the ultimate goal of the original disciples of Abhorash was to like him grow so skilled they could defeat a dragon in combat, and then to join him:

However even Walach Harkon has since then spent millennia without ever joining Abhorash, meaning he has not yet grown skilled enough:

The Red Duke on the other hand, did so before he was ever turned, and twice (once with help)! Cementing his position as the greatest blood dragon except Abhorash himself before ever turning:

For a final point, Abhorash took defeating the dragon as a test of “his martial abilities to the full”, and specifically stated that “when their prowess equaled his own” the other blood dragons could also do so. Meaning that the Red Duke could potentially be his equal even before he was ever turned.

Enough with just showing the accomplishments of others, or of statements entailing the Red Duke, lets see how he performs in his actual duels! Sadly we do not have any dueling feats from his prime, for all the details of his life was before turning to vampire, and after his first defeat. He was beaten in battle due to the divine intervention of the lady of the lake, and considered dead, he was trapped in a tomb protected by divine blessings after resurrecting. After being trapped there for decades he turned insane:

Said insanity meant that during his next invasion (which we have on-screen fights from), he was constantly under the belief he was fighting his previous war, constantly leading to his mind screwing him over:

So every feat I will show you throughout this debate, is either him before his prime as a blood dragon, or as completely insane. Either way, performing much below his Abhorash-level skill.

Even so, this is what happened when he faced the greatest blade of Aquintaine of this new era:

Now some might question if this is an empty brag from Armand, but no, this was a knight who had vast dueling experience and who the Duke of Aquintaine himself said was renowned as the finest blade of the land:

And who was so skilled that he could beat other knights on reflex alone:

Even so, despite the fact that before that the Red Duke stomped Armand’s father (also a knight), and the fight started with Armand’s sword already through the Red Duke’s chest, he got completely destroyed.

During his final battle, the Red Duke rode through two massive blasts of light. The first incinerated hundreds of undead instantly. The second also caused more undead to explode, and The Dark Knight, another vampire, was so weakened by it he was rendered to a human state of power:

This is despite even fodder vampires being strong enough to beat bears physically:

And The Dark Knight was not fodder. Even before being a vampire he was a powerful grail knight:

One capable of single-handedly fighting off an army of undead and a necromancer (renar):

And being turned into a vampire would only make him stronger yet. Even having tanked these blasts that so weakened the Dark Knight, the Red Duke killed a whole unit of Knights afterwards:

And defeated Duke Gilon, another grail knight, and one with a sword that gives him the strength of a giant:

Despite their combat grounds being a tomb that further weakened the Red Duke:

The effects of said tombs can not be overstated, as being in one burned Archaon the Everchosen to the point of lethality:

Shaking the impact from his head, Archaon found himself in a dangerous place. The holiness of the chapel - devoted as it was to the Lady of the Lake through the many pure deeds of Baron Lucus - drained Archaon of his potency.

It was like burning in the fires of absolution. His eye burned to open. His flesh burned within his plate. His mind burned with the hallowed nature of the place. Outside Archaon could hear the horror of the battle and the monstrous fury of the slaughterbrute. Archaon felt the ground tremble beneath him at its approach.

Archaon: Everchosen

Archaon being one of the strongest characters in the setting, the one destined to destroy the entire world.

So while exceptionally weakened by two anti-undead blasts and one anti-undead tomb, and while completely insane, the Red Duke defeated a grail knight with the strength of a giant.

This has already been a pretty long opener, so instead of going into the Red Duke’s wide array of abilities, I wish to go into the one I believe will be the strongest by far: will. The way undead in Warhammer works is that while vampires and necromancers are sentient beings that can control themselves, most undead can not; they are purely puppets controlled and maintained by the will of the vampires/necromancers:

This means that the more undead a vampire wishes to control, the greater the willpower necessary. Usually, most undead armies therefore have multiple vampires and necromancers to control all the troops. This includes the likes of Mannfred von Carstein, one of the greatest undead sorcerers in the setting:

The Red Duke however, single handedly raised thousands of undead at once:

And he planned to raise even more undead (they used his insanity against him to lead him away in the middle of it), that would raise his army from 12:1 against the bretonnians, to 50-100:1:

And this is also without accounting for the fact that the initial “thousands” did not count for the fact that he tried to summon his undead cavalry as well, but they didn’t come since they were trapped, joining his army later:

Nor for the fact that he robbed multiple graveyards on the way to summon his major forces:

Meaning that his army would be ridicolously large, in the tens if not hundreds of thousands.

While I assume that just the fact that he can raise extremely massive armies should be an impressive display of the willpower (and just power) he possesses, my argument is not that he will just summon this many undead to fight for him against DIO. No, my argument is that he will use this incredible will to dominate DIO’s own mind.

While like the Red Duke himself, DIO has a mind of his own, that does not matter to him. Waldakir Rahtep, a necrarch vampire lord, dominated the minds of several vampire lords:

Some vampires did resist Rahtep, but there are several things to note here:

1. For this to matter, DIO first has to show greater willpower than any basic WHF vampire, and then to have as much as the kind that were actually powerful enough to resist Rahtep.

2. While Rahtep is a strong vampire, unlike the Red Duke who could control tens or hundreds of thousands, Rahtep required a large host of vampires to control his own army. Indicating that the Red Duke is his vast superior. Not to mention that the host Rahtep was gathering was only meant to distract a single army of the empire, whereas the army the Red Duke was raising would have been the largest Bretonnia had ever seen, and one that could potentially take over the entire country, indicating his was much larger:

3. Rahtep, while powerful, is a lesser known one, and ultimately a mid-tier. Meanwhile the Red Duke was the greatest undead threat of all time in Bretonnia, which not only includes one of the most famous and powerful necromancers of the setting Heinrich Kemmler:

But it also includes Melkhior the Ancient, the most ancient and powerful necrarch besides W’soran, the first of their bloodline (and eventually Zacharias who defeated Melkhior after feeding on a dragon, meaning that the best Rahtep could settle for is 4th best necrarch):

Meaning that the Red Duke is massively above Rahtep no matter how you cut it. ‘Which in turn means that even if DIO has a strong enough will to resist Rahtep, you also have to prove that DIO could resist Kemmler or Melkhior. And then you would still have to prove he could resist the Red Duke himself.

With speed equal, there are less factors that will be important in deciding the fight. Two of the most important ones are skill and their abilities. In terms of skill, DIO would have to compete with El Syf, one of the most skilled fighters in a setting filled with skilled fighters. Someone who is comparable to one of the greatest warriors of all time, in a world where even generic unit types can solo entire armies of enemies without taking a hit. DIO would require a solid argument for his skill to even compete with a grail knight or a blood dragon, much less the likes of W’soran, someone who has centuries’ worth of training and experience. Who is still inferior to the likes of Luthor Harkon with the blade, who in turn is not noteworthy compared to the Red Duke’s inferior; Walach Harkon. We have this chain, and I’m interested to see how far DIO could possibly come up it:

The Red Duke = Abhorash > Walach Harkon > Luthor Harkon > W’soran (in skill) = centuries worth of training

And: The Red Duke = Abhorash > Walach Harkon > Luthor Harkon >>> average Blood Dragon > two consecutive armies

And: The Red Duke > King Louis > average grail knight = armybuster > questing knight > knight of the realm > questing knight = supposed to be capable of soloing hordes of enemies and monsters

In terms of abilities, the fight could be over the instant it starts unless DIO can resist the Red Duke’s power, which would require DIO to:

- Be more powerful than regular WHF vampires

- Be more powerful than the kind of vampires which would be powerful enough to resist Rahtep

- Be more powerful than the kind of vampires which would be powerful enough to resist Melkhior and Kemmler, Rahtep’s vast superiors.

- Be more powerful than the kind of vampires which would be powerful enough to resist the Red Duke himself, superior to Melkhior and Kemmler, and who is powerful enough to single-handedly raise one of the biggest armies in the setting.

The Red Duke is a monstrously skilled warrior and tremendously powerful sorcerer, one with few rivals in Warhammer, and I imagine none in JoJo. Ultimately, DIO might be the most powerful vampire in JoJo, but in Warhammer he’s just dinner.