Slan

Slan is sensual, sadistic and fascinated by the connection between pain and pleasure. She delights in suffering rather than viewing it with the detached solemnity of Void or Conrad, and she actively encourages people to surrender to violent and sexual impulses.

Her interest in Guts stems largely from his resistance. His refusal to submit to despair makes his suffering more entertaining to her, and she repeatedly encourages him toward choices that would deepen his rage and sever his remaining emotional bonds.

Slan also appears comfortable being worshipped through humanity's darker desires. Her influence is associated with ecstatic pagan rites and the pursuit of sensation without moral restraint.

As a God Hand member, Slan is an extremely high-level astral entity whose true existence lies deep within the astral world. Conventional physical attacks cannot normally reach her because she does not inhabit the material world in the same manner as humans or Apostles.

She can influence physical phenomena by manifesting through suitable astral or organic material. This allows her to construct temporary forms without fully incarnating.

Within Qliphoth, Slan creates a corporeal body from masses of troll intestines. She manipulates the environment around Guts and survives injuries that would destroy an ordinary physical creature because the body is only a manifestation.

Slan appears during the Eclipse and participates in Griffith's sacrificial ceremony. She watches the slaughter with obvious pleasure and develops a particular fascination with Guts as he continues fighting despite the hopelessness of his situation.

She later becomes the first God Hand member Guts directly encounters after the Eclipse. Within Qliphoth, she manifests through troll entrails, wounds him and attempts to tempt him into using the Count's behelit so that he might become an Apostle.

Guts rejects her temptation and wounds her manifestation with the Dragon Slayer. Because the sword has been saturated through repeated contact with astral beings, it is capable of affecting Slan despite her supernatural nature.

Guts fascinates Slan because of his rage, endurance and resistance to causality. She expresses both sexual attraction and a desire to push him further into violence.

Void, Conrad, Ubik and Femto are Slan's fellow members of the God Hand.

Griffith joins the God Hand as Femto during the Eclipse, with Slan participating in the ceremony surrounding his transformation.

Skull Knight opposes Slan and the other God Hand. He refers to her contemptuously as the "Whore Princess of the Uterine Sea."

Casca encounters Slan during the Eclipse as one of the Band of the Hawk members marked for sacrifice.