What Do the God Hand Do?

If I remember correctly, I think Conrad is responsible for plagues and stuff. But aside from that, and Griffith trying to fulfil his dream, do the God Hand do anything outside of accepting sacrifices and maybe doing stuff for the idea of evil? I remember when the count summoned them they were all just sorta standing together in astral world, and when the astral world merge happened ubik was just chilling in a dinner table with some people in a Hieronymus Bosch painting. But do they do stuff? Or do they just kinda fuck around in the astral world
 

Walter

Administrator
Staff member
Slan tells us in Vol 26 that they don't necessarily keep tabs on each other during the periods when they aren't gathered together for ceremonies. They work independently, but their aims coalesce around the Idea of Evil's overall plan for humanity.

Aside from their appearances at ceremonies and the handful of times we've seen them elsewhere (Slan in the flames of the pagan orgy in vol 18, Conrad spreading plague through the rats in vol 17) their day-to-day activities are kept mysterious. But those little glimpses give us a pretty good idea of the kinds of projects they have. They're manipulating humanity on a macro scale, shaping world events into the direction they want things to go.

I remember when the count summoned them they were all just sorta standing together in astral world
Not actually true. They converged, one at a time, after Guts, the Count, etc. arrived.

The Beherit slices through reality to a place in the astral world where everyone gathers. It doesn't lift an astral curtain to reveal Conrad at an inopportune moment with his pants around his ankles.
 

Oburi

All praise Grail
Given the sheer number of apostles just from the part of the story we've seen, answering a Beherit beeper for a ceremony could've kept them somewhat busy. Although that was probably over a few centuries at least. Still, spinning all those webs...
 
Given the sheer number of apostles just from the part of the story we've seen, answering a Beherit beeper for a ceremony could've kept them somewhat busy. Although that was probably over a few centuries at least. Still, spinning all those webs...
This makes me also wonder if at this point Guts has put a noticeable dent in the total number of apostles. I assume the last few years they've been losing more than they've been adding. There's probably high hundreds or several thousand left of course.

I've always been curious when the whole thing got set into motion, like if the first God Hand member and apostles came about 100,000 years ago in caveman times, or if it was somewhere in the bronze/iron age. Also now I'm picturing Zod in a Fred Flintstone outfit lol.
 
They get together every Sunday to play Monopoly. Void is busy building houses on the orange spaces, Slan has both utilities and is trying to get all the railroads, Ubik has nearly bankrupted himself setting hotels up on Park Place and Boardwalk, but this game will be his if someone lands on either of them, and Conrad has been in jail for the past 300 years.

This makes me also wonder if at this point Guts has put a noticeable dent in the total number of apostles. I assume the last few years they've been losing more than they've been adding. There's probably high hundreds or several thousand left of course.
We saw how many Apostles there were at both the Eclipse and the Battle of Windham, and the numbers were frankly obscene. There has to be hundreds of them, if not thousands. How many could Guts have possibly killed over the past few years? A dozen? Two dozen? I doubt he slew anywhere close to 1% of them, and the God Hand themselves dismiss the losses and call them inconsequential when the Count brings them up in Volume 3.
 
Not that I'd want it, but I could easily picture an expanded black swordsman arc that that would basically be Apostle Villain of the week for Guts and and Puck. You could cram dozens into those two years we only saw a few adventures from. God knows how many times he was accosted during the nights on the road by more than phantoms and puppets.
 
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