Landia

"Kirby, I believe it's time for the final showdown. And Landia truly is one formidable foe... So team up if necessary, and use your combined powers to fell the beast!"

- Magolor

Landia, the four-headed dragon who appears in Kirby's Return to Dream Land. It is revered as a guardian of Halcandra, the inhospitable planet on which it lives. It is a guardian who has kept the legendary treasures of Halcandra safe since ancient times, most notably the Master Crown.

Landia is inadvertently responsible for setting the events of the game in motion. According to Magolor, it suddenly awoke from its long-lasting slumber and rampaged, attacking the Lor Starcutter and sending him spiraling to Pop Star; but what Magolor did not explain is that this was in response to Magolor stealing the Lor and trying to do the same to the Master Crown atop one of its head. Magolor battled Landia in the Starcutter and lost, forcing him to flee to the safety of another planet to recover.

Physical Appearance
Landia is an orange dragon that has four heads that is roughly the size of Dyna Blade when compared to Kirby. The position of the heads are that of the four cardinal directions of a compass. The northernmost head wears the Master Crown, which has a blue jewel in its center. Each of the heads have dark green eyes, two orange ridges along the sides of their faces, and dark orange marks shaped like stars across their faces. Around the necks of Landia's heads is a mane of what appears to be white fur. Its wings are like that of a bat, with the webbing colored yellow and a single light red talon atop each wing. Each of its heads have pink and red striped horns on them, with the side heads having three horns and the top and bottom heads each having two. Landia has two large feet, each foot having three light red claws on them and being a lighter shade of orange than the main body. Its underside is a shade of peach and it also has a long orange tail that ends in purple arrowhead with small orange stripes.

When knocked to half its health, Landia taps into the power of the Master Crown and splits into four smaller dragons after roaring. One of the dragons still retains the Master Crown on its head, which now has a green jewel in it. Its eyes turn from green to red and each dragon has two face-ridges instead of three. The smaller Landias each have two striped horns and their own manes of white fur now. Their wings lose the talons they previously had and their feet are much smaller, each only having a single dark orange claw. The ends of their tails also lack the purple arrowhead from before.

In Extra Mode, it looks almost the same, save for a different color scheme: it is purple instead of orange. Landia EX also has a light blue underside, black star-shaped facial markings, dark red eyes, and yellow fur around its necks. Its horns, claws, and arrowhead for its tail are all black, and it has orange webbing for its wings. Its eyes still turn red when it splits into four after it loses enough HP. The Master Crown's jewel during this fight is orange and remains the same color even after Landia EX splits.

Kirby's Return to Dream Land
Landia appears as a boss in the seventh level, Dangerous Dinner. Landia is able to split into four separate dragons whenever needed, but attacking just one will cause damage to all four dragons. After defeating it, Magolor steals the Master Crown from the fallen dragon, and heads into an interdimensional tunnel connecting his world and Kirby's Pop Star. Landia, in its four separate forms, will help Kirby and friends get through the level, acting in a similar fashion to the Starship ability. They can shoot normal and charged fireballs at the Lor Starcutter and Magolor. Landia is only seen separated after that. Once Magolor has been defeated, the entire space around Kirby, Bandana Waddle Dee, King Dedede and Meta Knight will start to collapse, but Landia and the Lor Starcutter save them and bring them all back to Pop Star before the darkness closes in on them.

When Kirby enters the fight against Landia in Extra Mode, a new scene will play. At first, normal Landia flies in and roars like before, but then apparently uses the Master Crown's power to enhance its own. It alters its colors and turns purple with a blue underside. When it is defeated, Landia EX reverts to its normal red-orange color scheme.

Kirby: Triple Deluxe
Landia makes a cameo appearance during the game's second boss battle. Paintra incorporates them into the fray by painting them into existence to attack Kirby. Paintra draws four of them, but one of them is a decoy that immediately falters and falls to the ground. The other three let out a stream of fire that they blast full-force at Kirby.

These aren't the actual four dragons encountered in Kirby's Return to Dream Land, but rather knockoffs, identical in nature to the creations of Ado and Adeleine. Landia's appearance is a direct callback to those fights, which also featured painted versions of bosses from previous games.

Main Game
Landia in its first form will use a variety of attacks, such as shooting fireballs at a downward angle, blowing wind with its wings that sends energy blades along the current, and flying down low across the screen. Another attack Landia has is to fly in the center of the screen and have its two side-heads belch out streams of fire at the ground. It will then use its two heads to sweep the flames across the ground, sometimes rising high into the air to cover more ground. Another variation of this attack is for Landia to shoot out the fire-streams underneath itself, then fly to another spot to breathe down fire again. Landia can also hover low to the ground and use its tail like a whip by spinning forward a total of three times. It may sometimes spit out a single fireball in between tail-whips.

After taking out half of its health, Landia will turn into four smaller dragons with one head each. They will start out by flying to the top part of the screen and will spit a fireball downwards. They will repeat this action several times, but quickly fly to random spots and altitudes, making it hard to dodge. After shooting about four rounds of fireballs, they will move to new locations and surround themselves in electricity. Each Landia will shoot out an electrical beam to connect to another and move about in random patterns. The beams can be arranged both vertically and horizontally. After enough patterns have been done, the Landias will each gather into groups of two and stare at the middle of the room. Each pair will then take a turn to perform a spinning swoop towards the ground in order to hit Kirby and his friends. Another attack for them is for each dragon to move into a corner of the screen, and one will spit up a fireball. The dragons will then take turns passing it around to each with their wings. After they pass it around for a bit, one will knock the fireball into the background where it will then come crashing back down into the center of the room. Should enough time pass by while battling them, the four small Landias will eventually reform into their combined form and can spilt again into four if enough time passes by.

Extra Mode
Landia acts quite different when in EX Mode. The main differences are its new purple and blue color scheme and alterations to its attacks. Its heads spit out two fireballs at a time that actually aim for the player characters in rapid succession and when it flaps its wings for the wind, it will fly to the opposite side of the screen and perform the attack a second time. The energy blades that ride along in its wind-currents also home in on the player character faster. When Landia EX touches down for its tail-whip attack, it strikes at a much faster pace with no pauses in between. Its fire-stream attack now has it slowly move from left to right as it breathes fire at the ground. Landia EX can also sometimes fly into the background and quickly dive at the characters.

Things become a bit more frantic after Landia EX splits into four. It now uses its lightning attack in a different manner than before. One Landia, each in the corners of the field, will surround themselves with electricity to form vertical beams and move across the field while flickering their power on and off, acting in a similar manner to the Spark Sphere Doomer's lightning attack, only the electricity lasts longer. When the four of them start spitting fireballs at the ground, they may actually begin to follow the player's position as a group and attack several times in a row. Sometimes, three of the Landias will be spitting out fireballs, while the one wearing the Master Crown will attempt to tackle the player from the air. The newest change to the dragons' moveset is after they start passing their large fireball around. The four will start moving closer towards the center of the room as they take turns passing, trying to give the player characters less room to avoid the fireball. After they eventually move back to their corners, they will toss the fireball into the sky like before; only this time, three fireballs will rain down instead of one. Like before, if enough time passes, the four dragons will revert to the form of Landia EX.

Related Quotes
"Kirby... That dragon... Its name is Landia. It's lived on this planet for ages, but it's always been fast asleep. Recently, however, it awoke and went on a rampage! Please, Kirby, you must defeat that crazy dragon!"

- Magolor

"Kirby, it's finally time. Landia is a truly fearsome foe. Super fearsome, even. So team up if necessary, and use your combined powers to fell the beast!"

- Magolor

"A four-headed dragon that sleeps on Halcandra, Landia has been revered as a protector since ancient times…until now."

- VS Landia

"Landia has lived on Halcandra since ancient times, protecting the land and guarding the world’s most legendary items, but …"

- VS Landia EX

"Landia to the rescue in Planet Popstar’s – no, the entire universe’s – time of need! Joining up with Kirby, the dragon takes to battle!"

- Pause-screen description

Trivia

 * Landia is the only boss in the Kirby series to have multiple heads, excluding tag teams, Computer Virus, and Twin Woods.
 * Landia is one of the few bosses to help Kirby. The others are Meta Knight, King Dedede, Bandana Waddle Dee, Dyna Blade, Daroach, and the Lor Starcutter. This does not include the anime.
 * When the battle starts, Landia's eyes are green (dark red in Extra Mode); when it separates into four dragons, they turn to red and when Landia is finally defeated and helps the party, they turn blue.
 * Although introduced as a four-headed dragon and described as such in the background info, Landia does not recombine after being defeated and spends the rest of the game as four separate dragons that seem to share the same mind, even departing Pop Star in this state. It is therefore not clear if the combined form is Landia's natural form or a result of the Master Crown's power.
 * It is also possible that Landia started as a four-headed dragon, but without the Master Crown's power was not able to recombine into that form after being defeated; this is supported by the fact that Landia has to visibly tap into the master crown's powers in order to accomplish the split for the first time.
 * Landia is one of the few characters in the Kirby series to start as a villain and to become an ally of Kirby's later in the same game; ironically, Magolor does the exact opposite shortly before Landia allies with Kirby.
 * Landia's theme music is reused for the second phase of the battle with HR-D3 and later in The True Arena for the first phase of Galacta Knight.
 * When split into four smaller dragons, damaging the dragon that's wearing the Master Crown will actually do more damage than damaging one of the smaller dragons that does not have the crown on.
 * Many of Landia's attacks are based off the similar-looking Computer Virus Great Dragon.
 * Landia's concept may be based around the mythological dragon known as Hydra. Both are dragons with multiple heads. According to the myth, once a hydra's head is cut off, two additional heads regrown. This could be the inspiration behind Landia's technique of splitting into four dragons halfway through the battle.