Clayman

Clayman (クレイマン), known as Marionette Master (人形備偏師), was a Demon Lord, in the era of the Ten Great Demon Lords. Being a Demon Lord Seed, he lacked some power in comparison to older generations of Demon Lords. He was considered a ghastly man, infamous for his acts of manipulating his subordinates and others like dolls.

Appearance
Clayman had an overall appearance of a wealthy noble. He had a slim, oblong head with a sharp chin and defined jawlines, having a pair of pointed ears on either side and thin eyebrows, tall and slim body, pale lavender hair color and red eyes, being overall considered as handsome to some extent.

Clayman wears qualitative, expensive and elegant clothing in overall white color scheme, which includes a long white tailcoat, grey vest, white shirt, slim white trousers and white shoes, alongside black bow-tie. In his inner pocket of tailcoat, he keeps gold-plated pocket watch with an engraving on its lid, the chain of which can be seen.

In his more suitable for a combat form his skin turns darker, his entire body morphs - four more prosthetic arms and tail appears. By ripping off his elegant tuxedo on its place occurs wrought-iron breastplate, codpiece, and spiked pauldrons and armor for the legs. When he put his mask on and acted as the "Crazed Clown," he seemed more like a mad beast instead.

Personality
Clayman was a cunning and manipulative Demon Lord, preferring to manipulate things in the background rather than get into conflict himself. He specialized in intelligence gathering with the use of his ability in order to perfect his scheme to obtain more power.

Clayman treated his subordinates and those he considered below him very poorly, and would throw away those who were no longer useful to him and force others to submit using his unique skill.

He was also very stubborn and prideful, refusing to admit when he made errors that put evidence about his involvement in many of his plots and every Demon Lord was aware of his conspiracy to become a True Demon Lord. Clayman also never liked to say his opinion of his fellow demon lords, when Milim was "mind controlled" only then he started to insult her and said his personal opinion of Milim, showing that Clayman was also a coward.

As seen in his actions and noted by his creator and comrades, Clayman was noted to be quite arrogant and overconfident in his abilities when things seemed like they were going according to his plan, as seen where he made several tactical errors during his plots against Rimuru and Tempest, such as assuming he had successfully mind controlled Milim despite her being infamous for being uncontrollable, assumed that Frey was his ally loyal to him alone and believed that he was powerful enough to overpower Rimuru and Shion due his supposed "control" over Milim. This personality trait was noted by both Kazalim and Laplace to be one of his most prevailing traits despite their warnings for him to adjust it.

However, Clayman was very gentle and considerate towards those who he considered his friends and comrades such as the Moderate Harlequin Alliance. He also respected and followed his superior's order with absolute loyalty. This is seen during his final moments, when he refused to divulge any information on his superiors or his comrades during his final stand against RImuru despite being threatened with the complete and utter eradication of his soul, with Raphael acknowledging and calculating that it would be extremely difficult to get Clayman to talk.

Background
Clayman was created by Kazalim as a Deathman many years ago to be part of the Moderate Harlequin Alliance, known as The Crazed Clown. Kazalim himself personally designed Clayman to be a tactical commander and a schemer, similar to himself and created him for the expressed purpose of turning him into a Demon Lord.

300 years ago, he became one of the Ten Great Demon Lords with Kazalim's help, in order to increase his own influence in the Demon Lord Council. The moment he became a Demon Lord, he began hunting down Majin and monsters to steal their hearts (literally). Making them swear loyalty to him, he inscribed a curse onto their hearts, making them his eternal servants. That's how Five Fingers was born, containing cursed pet Nine-Head Beast, Immortal King Adalman, top lieutenant Yamza, witch Mjurran, spy and intelligence collector harpy Pirone.

Eventually his master was killed and replaced by Leon Cromwell on the Demon Lord Council. With Kazalim gone, Clayman had to take over his domain, the Puppet Nation Jistav and all of his remaining forces. Clayman hadn't received any words from him for a long time, but still considered himself to be the subordinate of Kazalim. He still continued working on his goals, while still waiting for his master's return.

Clayman wished to get rid of Leon in retaliation for Kazalim's demise. In order to achieve this, he hired many mercenaries, however, they all failed to carry out the task, instead getting slain by Leon's entourage each time.

Clayman, alongside Carrion and Frey, were considered the new generation of Demon Lords, so they would work together, in order to expand and increase their influence and power base. Their goal, also was to bring the gap of power between them and older generation Demon Lords. Being one of the active Demon Lords, his name was greatly known among humanity and other nations. Clayman was close enough to taking over the entire world, and it was all through his trading relationships, which, generally most Demon Lords won't do. He was the wealthiest among all the Demon Lords, and his wealth did not only come from trading but from the artifacts that were buried beneath the ruins of Amrita which ultimately made him a powerful foe politically and economically. Damrada states that Demon Lord Clayman was a valuable trading asset for the Eastern Empire.

At some point, he met a mysterious patron who offered Kazalim's resurrection in exchange of the Moderate Harlequin Alliance's help in taking over the world. Clayman agreed to this request.

Trivia

 * The "Clay" from Clayman comes from the word Klei, which means string or wire. Thus his name can be inferred to mean Stringman.
 * Clayman needs to keep his mind sharp on daily basis, so in order to keep it astute, he supports this acute state by playing chess.
 * During the era of the Ten Great Demon Lords, Clayman was effectively the most wealthiest Demon Lord among his peers, with a large amount of wealth earned from trading with the Eastern Empire and several other influential nations and parties, while the rest came from selling several artifacts that once belonged to Kazalim's former kingdom of Amrita.
 * Kagali states that Clayman was created to be a schemer much like herself, even revealing that she had to sacrifice much of his raw power during his creation in exchange for more intellectual ability and intelligence.
 * Despite being killed during the events of Volume 6, his name was still often brought up in later volumes as a benchmark to describe the strength/magicule amount of new characters. The author jokingly mentioned that Clayman effectively became a "combat strength measurement unit."
 * His Japanese VA in anime,, is well known for playing twisted and manipulative evil masterminds, such as Dio Brando in JoJo's Bizarre Adventure and Sugou Nobuyuki in Sword Art Online. Needless to say, this is very fitting for Clayman's character.