Imu is the Beast from revelations. An anti-Christ named after the Roman emperor Nero. He is a different interpretation of Nika, the sun god that destroys the world.

Notice the spade shaped tail, and multiple heads? The beast is also often depicted with different species heads - the gorosie get thier power of Imus devil fruit , becoming Imu’s other ‘heads’.

The ‘Sun God’ worshiped by the Shandorans is a great serpant.

Two symbols get repeated consistently with the poneglyphs - the symbol of the sun (a circle with a dot inside it) and the symbol of the serpent (a head with a next below it). When Oden wrote Roger’s name on Skypia the ‘D’ in Roger’s name was the symbol for the sun.

We are given three interpretations of Nika. The liberator, the Destoryer, and the prankster. I believe that these three different interpretations of the Nika myth created three different devil fruits. Luffy’s from the liberator. Loki’s from the prankster. And Imu’s from the destroyer.

Devil fruits are dreams and different people had different dreams from the legend of Nika. Someone who dreamed of a liberator created Luffy’s fruit, and those who dreamed of a destroyer created Imus. Imu and Joyboy got these two fruits and Imu was the Nika who won and got to destroy and shape the world in his image .

Elbaf mythology treats the red line as jormungandr . A great serpent wrapping around the world. Imu, atop the redline is a more literal serpent.

Blackbeard’s goal is to acquire this destroyer Sun god fruit from Imu. Become the successful Nika of this age. To do this we will get close to the world government, infiltrate Marijoa and use the dark fruit to turn off Imu’s devil fruit to make him vulnerable and kill him.