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 the appearance of a wealthy noble. He had a slim, oblong head topped with pale lavender hair; a face with a sharp chin and defined jawlines, and a pair of pointed ears on either side and thin eyebrows. He sported a slender figure, and his eyes with red irises exuded intelligence even as they suggested he was rather high-strung.

Clayman wore expensive and elegant clothes sharing an overall white motif – a long white tailcoat, grey vest, white shirt, slim white trousers and white shoes, alongside black bow-tie. In his inner pocket of his tailcoat, he kept a gold-plated pocket watch with an engraving on its lid, the chain of which could be seen.

In his combat form, his skin was darker, his entire figure changed - four more prosthetic arms and a tail emerged. In place of his elegant tuxedo was a wrought-iron breastplate, codpiece, and spiked pauldrons and armor for his legs. When he donned his mask and acted as the "Crazed Clown," he seemed more like a mad beast instead.

After his Pseudo-Awakening following him being severely wounded by Shion, his appearance drastically changes. In this form, his dismembered arms are replaced by arms made of energy in purple color, with the upper additional pair of arms being large and long while the lower pair of arms being longer in length. His eyes also glow with a flaming aura.

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, even having the force of will to make almost anyone follow his orders.

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 almost every Demon Lord was already aware of his conspiracy to become a True Demon Lord. Clayman also never liked to state his opinion of his fellow demon lords publicly. This is shown clearly when Milim was "mind controlled" by his artifact, and when he believed she truly was under his control, only then did he start to insult her and gave 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 Kagali and Laplace to be one of his most prevailing traits despite their warnings for him to adjust it.

It should be noted however that his overconfidence and arrogance may have been attributed to his forceful brainwashing by Tatsuya Kondou, which resulted in him making rather poor and heavily flawed decisions, which was unlike his cautious and cunning self.

However, for all of his manipulative and power-hungry tendencies, Clayman, much like his creator 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.

Clayman was also known to be a very cautious Demon Lord, and was noted to have a backup plan for almost every situation he would encounter, and would also reinforce those backup plans with additional backup plans as well. This is seen on multiple occassions, most notably during Walpurgis, where he fought with Shion using a sword (in the anime, this is not shown) and after its destruction he quickly resorted to using Marionette Dance. He only resorted to using his trump card, the Demon Marionette curse only after the Art was rendered useless and finally decided to take matters into his own hands by transforming into the Crazy Pierrot form.

When transforming into his Crazy Pierrot form however, his calm personality is reversed and instead, he seemingly becomes more aggressive. However, despite his offensive maneuver against Shion which would have been seen more of an outburst, it should be noted that this was a more practical approach against his enemy, as by restraining them, he could freely attack and neutralize his opponents.

Clayman was also a prideful Demon Lord, and was very much proud of his title and position as one of the Ten Great Demon Lords. This is further supported by him finally lashing out against Shion by transforming into his Crazy Pierrot form to get back at her comment of calling him an unworthy Demon Lord. He even claims that as a Demon Lord, he should dispose of his enemies with elegance and style.

In Clayman Revenge after looping for a second time his personality changes as he tended to be more cautious and more alert. As well he tended to train to be stronger to avoid his demise at the hand of Rimuru Tempest in the future.

Background
Clayman was created by Kazalim as a Deathman many years ago to be part of the Moderate Harlequin Alliance, known as The Crazy Pierrot. 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 Ninehead, 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 was to bring the gap of power between them and the older generation Demon Lords. Being one of the active Demon Lords, his name was greatly known among humanity and other nations, though much more infamously due to his manipulative tendencies. 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.
 * 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 role.