Heroes (A-F, G-L, M-Z) | NPCs and Merchants | Darkest Dungeon: Monsters | Darkest Dungeon II: Monsters | DLC Monsters
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Darkest Dungeon
The Heir
"I beg you, return home! Claim your birthright! And deliver our family from the ravenous, clutching shadows… of the Darkest Dungeon."
"You answered the letter… now, like me, you are a part of this place."
As the last living member of a disgraced noble household, the Heir came to the hamlet at the request of the now-deceased Ancestor, who, after releasing a "crawling chaos" and other monstrosities onto their ancestral home, has begged the Heir to return and fix the damage the Ancestor brought forth.
- Ambiguous Situation: The ending to the game hints that the Heir commits suicide after defeating the Heart of Darkness, but the entire thing is ambiguous enough to be open to interpretation. Furthermore, there are hints that the Estate is trapped in an endless time loop, condemning the Heir, their heroes, and the monsters of the Estate to an endless struggle against the Heart of Darkness.
- Bad Boss: You are allowed to play in this manner; after all, keeping heroes sane and healthy takes a lot of work and money. Giving them insufficient supplies, letting them die and firing the crazies so you can hire new ones? This kind of depraved pragmatism is downright encouraged by both the intro, and the Ancestor himself in a few lines of dialogue. Alternately…
- Benevolent Boss: To the heroes that you spend the money on, you're their best friend. You pay for their medical treatment, provide them any luxury they want so they stay sane and happy, equip them with the finest weapons and armor money can buy, give them the best instructors and trainers so they're the best of the best, and make sure they have everything they need to fight the evil lurking in the dark. This is somewhat Enforced, as why not make optimal use of them when you've already invested so much time and money into their development?
- Driven to Suicide: The Heir is implied to commit suicide in the ending. Apparently, knowledge of the Heart of Darkness was too much for the Heir to bear.
- Featureless Protagonist: The only time you ever see the protagonist is a featureless silhouette in a cutscene. No other information is ever given about what the heir looks like. This isn't strange, since the protagonist is you. The ending shows a ghostly form implied to be the Heir, haunting the estate in death, but it's skeletal enough to remain featureless.
- Generation Xerox: Implied. Like the Ancestor, you are expending vast quantities of treasure and other people's blood puttering about with the occult. Like him, assuming the player acts as the Ancestor expects his heir to behave, you churn through vast quantities of dead bodies doing it, often abandoning those who are no longer useful. The only difference is that, unlike him, you are building instead of tearing down and acting to fix what he started. In addition, the ending implies that the Heir Ate His Gun like the Ancestor did upon learning all the details surrounding the Heart of the World. The ghost in the New Game Plus comments on how time repeats itself.
- Hearing Voices: Implied by the Ancestor's constant narration, which seems to switch between knowledge the Heir could find by going through his notes and direct commentary on the situation at hand. The ending implies he's literally a ghost.
- Hello, [Insert Name Here]: While you can't directly name the Heir themselves, you can name the Estate after them if you so choose.
- Impoverished Patrician: Your predecessor's luxurious existence bled the coffers plenty, before his other pursuits claimed the rest. There's still a fortune laying around the manor… but those heroes are an insatiable money pit.
- Non-Entity General: Manages the hamlet, hires heroes, and gives them orders, but is never seen or heard, except in the New Game cutscene (the featureless silhouette seen through the window of the coach travelling to the Estate is probably the only image of The Heir).
- Unwitting Pawn: Potentially. The Heart, disguised as the Ancestor or having assimilated him, claims that it drove you to "right his wrongs" so that it could feed on the dead heroes left behind by your crusade.
- We Have Reserves: Since it's pretty much unavoidable for heroes to get afflictions, diseases, or negative quirks (all of which can be expensive to heal), and you're bound to lose some of them along the way, the game encourages you to treat the heroes at your service as disposable assets.Ancestor: Trouble yourself not with the cost of this crusade. Its noble end affords you broad tolerance in your choice of means…
The Ancestor
" At last, in the salt-soaked crags beneath the lowest foundations we unearthed that damnable portal and antediluvian evil..."
"In time, you will know the tragic extent of my failings..."
Voiced by: Wayne June
The relative of the player character who unearthed the portal and caused this whole mess to begin with. Having committed suicide some time before the game's events, he now serves as the game's narrator.
- 0% Approval Rating: As the extent of his depravity and occult fixations became apparent to the Hamlet's inhabitants, they began to hold demonstrations. He was so thoroughly despised that the local lawmen rejected any attempt he made to bribe them to get rid of the problem, no matter how 'generous'.
- Aristocrats Are Evil:
- In life, he was well on the path to becoming a full-fledged Dark Lord, and in death, he possibly became even worse. Seriously, a lot of the antagonists you face look like angels compared to the Ancestor at his worst, and he's responsible for most of those antagonists existing in the first place.
- Before he entered the world of the occult, he threw massive hedonistic parties to lure in his rivals and hunt them down for sport. Then one day, he accidentally targeted a vampire, got lucky and killed her (or so he thought), then got REALLY unlucky when his "REALLY Bloody Mary" concoction drove everyone insane. Oops.
- He also possessed blatant malice and hatred toward the Miller, even expressing glee at the man's downfall and loss of humanity at the hands of the Comet. He explicitly states that his only regret was that he didn't get to see the Miller's home collapse from the Comet's infection of the Farmstead.
- Ambiguous Situation: It's unclear whether or not the Ancestor encountered in the Darkest Dungeon is the Ancestor, or whether it's the Heart of Darkness impersonating him to try and break the Heir's mind; as a consequence, it's also unclear whether or not his regret over all his terrible actions was genuine, or just a way of stringing the Heir along.
- Ancestral Weapon: You can acquire his old firearm, the Ancestor's Pistol, a powerful gun, which gives accuracy and dodge bonuses. Most notably, he used it in the intro to off himself.
- The Atoner: He did monstrous things to innocent people simply to sate his boredom and curiosity. All the evils that now assail the estate are his fault. By the end, however, he appears to genuinely regret it all, and his shade seems at least moderately remorseful and happy to see you restoring its former order and glory. Sort of twisted at the end: The Ancestor was always a corrupt noble, but when he discovered the Heart, he gained enlightenment and a newfound faith in the eldritch gods in the core of the world. All of his "mistakes" were just pragmatic applications of who he always was, and his entire foolish quest to unearth his god was him paying atonement and tribute for his human failings. And assuming The Heart isn't lying (which it is known to do) or impersonating him, he doesn't regret a thing: even in death, he serves the Heart of Darkness as its herald, having lured the Heir and the party to the Hamlet to help accelerate his master's awakening.
- Badass Normal: He fought and incapacitated (and nearly killed) the Countess with a simple knife when she was in her Vampire form; a very impressive feat considering how powerful she is, and the fact he was just a normal human at the time.
- Badass Longcoat: In his later years, he wore a very impressive leather greatcoat, one which you can actually acquire in-game as a powerful trinket, the Ancestor's Coat. It provides a massive bonus to dodge… at the cost of increasing the hero's stress levels.
- Bad Boss: Sweet light. Let's preface this by saying he practically betrayed almost everyone who worked under him or was in his employment, and usually inflicted a Cruel and Unusual Death in the process. The Pirates who plundered loot and gathered artifacts for him? He put a cursed anchor on their ship that plunged them into the depths for eternity (and he did this as punishment for them asking for extra hazard pay). The Necromancers he invited to the estate to learn the shadowy art? He murdered them in their sleep and stole their secrets. The Miners who helped him unearth The Heart of Darkness? He abandoned them while he fled in terror. Desperate miller under his employ who asked for help with his barren fields? He fooled him into thinking he was using magic to help their growth while really arranging for them to be hit by an eldritch meteorite. And countless other examples. This is by far his most detestable trait.
- Beard of Evil: He sported a goatee and moustache in his youth, while his older self has a rather impressive beard. He's also a complete and utter bastard who stabbed everyone around him in the back, treated those under him horribly, and may still serve the Heart of Darkness in death as its herald.
- Better to Die than Be Killed: His dialogue implies that he committed suicide while the townsfolk/soldiers were storming the manor to try and arrest him. Given the horrible things he has done it's likely they would have led him to the gallows in short order anyways.
- Break Them by Talking: Does this to the Gibbering Prophet, when he runs out of ways to get rid of the self-proclaimed prophet ranting in his estate. He invites the man to his manor, and shows the Prophet what he's been doing. It works.
- Chronic Backstabbing Disorder: A most definite carrier of this disease, he seemed almost incapable of not fucking over everyone he dealt with in some manner. Only the Hag ever really got away from him, mostly because he got disgusted with her... which, rather than an Even Evil Has Standards moment (given the kind of shit the Ancestor got up to), was probably more driven by her getting fat and ugly.
- Continuity Cameo: He makes two appearances in the sequel. The "unsettling portrait" that may in the Academic's Study is one of him with an eldritch tentacle curling around his body, while the "Obsession" flashbacks all but confirm he was the host of the ritual the Academic and Scholar attended.
- Death by Origin Story: The Ancestor's decision to plead for the Heir's help then off himself during the introduction is what sets the events of the game in motion, and heavily influences the Heir's actions.
- Defector from Decadence: His Start of Darkness occurred when he became so unbelievably jaded with the endless, hedonistic parties he and the other nobles were throwing in the Courtyard day and night, that he decided to murder a random Countess who was hitting on him, just for a change of pace. Unfortunately for him, he wound up killing the one Countess who was also a bloodsucking vampire mosquito monster, and after he distilled her blood into wine and served it to his guests, he was rewarded for his efforts by learning of the existence of the Heart of Darkness, which led him to begin the excavation under the manor.
- Despair Event Horizon: He crosses over it once he realises the sheer magnitude of what he's done, promptly putting a bullet into his head in pure despair.
- Determined Defeatist: He tends to flipflop on how much he believes in you, but ultimately thinks you have a chance.(stoically) "A trifling victory..." (hopefully) "but a victory none the less."
- Dirty Old Man: He was a rake all his life, and the opening cinematic shows him with a group of prostitutes who are obviously a few decades his junior.
- Driven to Suicide: The sheer weight of all the horrible things he's done and the villagers taking advantage of his weakness to serve him a dose of long-overdue karma, eventually drive the Ancestor to put a bullet in his own head after he sends the heir the letter.
- Dug Too Deep: His worst, and final mistake. Uncovering the Heart of Darkness and the Darkest Dungeon was what originally drove him to madness and death, as well as setting the wider events of the game in motion.
- Even Evil Has Standards:
- He personally found the Hag's experimentation, transformations, and appetite to be disgusting, and banished her to live in the Weald. Even though he himself kidnapped villagers to feed to the swinefolk he created. It's implied, given his focus on her good looks beforehand, that it's less that he found her personally detestable, and more that he didn't like her getting fat and ugly. Alternatively, he just has a particular distaste for cannibalism.
- Of all the horrors and monstrosities he set loose upon the manor, he never intended to create the Formless Flesh, the creature coming into being when the pile of half-corpses he dumped into the Warrens fused into one being. He considers it horrendous even by his own standards and it's the one thing he regrets creating.
- He also never thought much of his noble-blooded friends, finding their entertainments, appetites, and other such activities a little too disturbing for him. Of course, much of his dialogue about this comes from an early period of his life... it's possible that he got worse as he got older.
- He has some choice words for the Fanatic, too, condemning his Black-and-White Insanity and deeming him an animal that needs to be put down. When you defeat the Fanatic, he has nothing but contempt for the man, calling him a "whimpering dog" who is "fleeing back to his kennel."
- Everyone Calls Him "Barkeep": His name is never said, and he's only known as the Ancestor. One of his lines implies the villagers did this on purpose.
- Evil Genius: When it comes to the act of formulating and enacting an Evil Plan, the Ancestor was fiendishly intelligent. What he had in intellect, however, he was sorely lacking in the wisdom of not pursuing them in the first place.
- Evil Sounds Deep: Wayne June gives him a gravelly, sonorous baritone voice that perfectly portrays his weariness and the sheer depths of his depravity, and, when serving as the Heart's puppet, adds the necessary menace to his proclamations.
- Fiction 500: Every gold piece, precious gem, and priceless heirloom you recover was once part of his Estate's vast fortune. The Ancestor was stupendously wealthy.
- For the Evulz:
- Everything he did, from the experiments on the swine, creating the necromancers, working with the Hag, and opening the portal beneath the manor, were done out of simple boredom.
- He planned to kill the Countess when she showed up to the Court both because he sensed she was a threat and also as "a grand show of sadistic sport." When he discovered she was a vampire, he then took her blood and added it to the wine served at the Court for the sheer hell of it.
- His solution to the Miller's plight regarding his poor harvest was to summon an eldritch horror from the stars to infest the Farmstead and turn everyone there into crystalline husks. He doesn't even really bother justifying this beyond his own curiosity and sheer hatred for the Miller.
- As
Chris Bourassa said shortly
after The Color of Madness DLC was announced to be in the works.
A highlight of doing @DarkestDungeon DLCs is I can keep making the ancestor a bigger and bigger jerk :) - Gory Discretion Shot: His suicide in the opening cutscene is represented by a gunshot heard and the screen turning red while you just see the outside of the Estate being deprecated and sprouting tentacles.
- The Hedonist: He started out as a lazy scoundrel spending all his time on pleasures of the flesh… before he got jaded and started taking up more "rarified" pursuits.
- Greater-Scope Villain: The sheer scope of the consequences of his actions is felt even in the sequel. As it turns out, he had invited the Scholar and the Academic to the Estate to show off his research, which led to the Scholar becoming obsessed with discovering the truth about the Iron Crown and kickstarting the whole mess of the second game.
- Hypocrite: The Ancestor calls the Abbot thinking his religion gives him a connection to the divine to be madness… when the Ancestor is very much aware that higher creatures exist and possibly has sworn his loyalty to one in death, or is in some way connected to it.
- Hypocrisy Nod: He mentions that he supposes he could have put a stop to the Baron's torturous depravities, but admits he indulged similarly and casting stones at the Baron would have made him one. Not that he wasn't already one in other aspects.
- Idle Rich: This all happened because he "…tired of conventional extravagance…" and decided investigating rumors of unimaginable power underneath his manor would be an exciting thing to look into.
- Instant Expert:
- With his attempts at necromancy at least. He managed to raise the scholars he had killed with most of their intellect intact, something he remarked was a great accomplishment for even someone who was very skilled in the trade. Though that did come back to bite him in the ass.
- Averted with blood rituals. He was far less successful with it. The failure pile got so big that he decided to dump the whole mess of twitching flesh into the Warrens and forget about it, where it became the Formless Flesh. Even his semi-successful summoning of whatever turned into the Swine King isn't very spectacular, as the monster was created without eyes or the lower half of a body, and was stupid to begin with.
- I Was Quite the Looker: Whilst he aged rather gracefully, the Crimson Court reveals the Ancestor wasn't just devilishly handsome in his youth, he was downright ravishing.◊
- Kick the Dog: Whilst almost everything he did in life qualifies, his quote when you encounter the Miller shows that even in death, he feels no remorse for what he did to that poor farmer."Ha! The poor fool still stands, battered and broken as his precious mill."
"My only regret is that I did not live to see that shoddy mill smashed to pieces by the miraculous bounty I reaped from beyond the void!" - Laughing Mad: Seeing The Thing From the Portal in the introduction wasn't exactly kind to his sanity."In the end, I alone fled laughing and wailing through those blackened arcades of antiquity, until consciousness failed me."
- Mad Scientist: He conducted experiments with pigs, later coming to admit that this was a terrible mistake. This didn't stop him from anything else he did, of course.
- The Man Behind the Monsters:
- Directly or not, he's responsible for every enemy you face. The only thing stopping him from being a full-on Big Bad is that he's trying to help you stop what he unleashed. And he's dead.
- By murdering and resurrecting a group of expert Necromancers to test his new skills in necromancy (and kept their intelligence intact to boot), they moved into The Ruins and began raising an undead army, which overran the Estate with an massive amount of armed skeleton soldiers.
- After giving The Hag plenty of time to research witchcraft and a highly invasive, parasitic and poisonous fungal spore in his own laboratory, he banished her to The Weald after she turned fat and unattractive. Thus, The Weald is now overrun with giant poisonous mushrooms and hordes of fungal zombies (supported by the Hag's own cult of witches).
- When the townspeople began to rise up against his rituals and secrecy, he mercenaries to put down rebellions brutally. Said mercenaries (alongside their artillery pieces) are the bandits roaming the lands around the hamlet, looking for more loot to line their pockets.
- While striking a deal with ancient eldritch beings in the ocean to get some necessary funding for his experiments, he sacrificed a homeless girl who was both in love with him (and happened to be watching the deal take place) by luring her in with implied romance before tying her to an idol and pushing her into the ocean, presumably into the waiting grasps of the aquatic creatures below. Given that when she's seen again as the Siren later, and how she's described as the Pelagic's queen and slave, it's entirely possible that she's been breeding a massive amount of fished to the point of overtaking The Coves and threatening all marine shipment activity around the Hamlet.
- While trying to learn blood rituals and demonic summonings, he used a large amount of pigs (and possibly humans) as bodily vessels for the incoming demons from the far beyond. Frustrated with the lack of impressive results, he dumped all of his failures in The Warrens and promptly forgot about them. Years later, it turned out that the failed experiments were breeding and multiplying into an army of Pig/Demon/Human hybrids called the Swine, and they've developed a primitive war-culture alongside a monstrous appetite for human flesh, being led by the colossal Swine King (the Ancestor's only 'successful' demonic summoning in his own opinion).
- The Courtyard was originally a Decadent Court where grand parties were held, but for one reason or another, he decided to slip vampire blood into the wine pool after successfully killing the Countess. The entire party went mad with cannibalizing each other, and what remained was a gigantic entourage of vampiric aristocrats and mutated wildlife who threaten to spread their vampirism to the Hamlet.
- Out of scientific curiosity for a gigantic and anomalous meteor he calculated to be soaring through space, he arranged to have it crash land in the Estate by pretending to be helping a desperate farmer with his failing harvest seasons. Sure enough, the farmstead was practically nuked by the meteor when the Ancestor's idols attracted it. All life present was converted to crystalized shadows of their former selves. The entity also distorted time itself that crash landed, meaning that all of the previous monstrosities listed before can find themselves transported from another timeline into the present one.
- Finally, he is indirectly responsible for throwing the entire universe out of alignment, creating the Body of Work, and therefore every single monster in Darkest Dungeon II by showing the Scholar how to do the ritual to unlock the secrets of the Iron Crown.
- My God, What Have I Done?: After decades of occult-inspired mayhem, and increasingly ridiculous plots to gain ultimate Eldritch power, he had a long-overdue moment of this right after completing the portal into the Darkest Dungeon, finally coming to realise the sheer evil of his actions, with the collective burden of all he's done crushing him in practically a single instant. He doesn't take it well.
- My Greatest Failure:
- Considers opening the portal in the Deepest Dungeon under the estate to be this, if his narrations are anything to go by. Considering the amount of lapses in judgement and sheer callous disregard for life he displayed prior to his death, that's really saying something.
- It's also implied that he seriously regrets not completely killing the Countess. He even commends your party if you beat her, saying they succeeded where he failed.
- Necromancer: While not his primary pursuit, he brought in necromancer teachers and took to the art quite well. He even managed to bring his teachers back with their intellects intact after killing them.
- "Not So Different" Remark: When speaking to his second apparition in the path to the Final Boss, he claims that the Heir consumed the lives of those that came to the Hamlet in their path to "redeeming" the family. Meaning while the Ancestor sacrificed so many lives in order to awaken the Heart, the Heir sacrificed the lives of the heroes to redeem their birthright and, at the same time, inadvertently feed the Heart.
- O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Normally when recounting his past crimes during loading screens for boss dungeons, the Ancestor sounds fairly stoic and subdued. When he describes what he did to the Miller, he sounds outright gleeful at the poor soul's damnation. It sets a particularly unsettling tone when you're headed to the Farmstead if you're used to his more reserved narration. This tonal shift is never really explained.
- Opportunistic Bastard: Despite being the root to all of his problems, he also shows an impressive ability to take full advantage of any opportunity that might give him an easy way out of them. Such as the way he dealt with the hedonistic aristocrats of Hamlet after accidentally stumbling upon a real pure-blood vampire during one of his parties…
- Pay Evil unto Evil: More motivated out of greed than anything else, but he happily screwed with people who deserved it. He would go on to betray his fellow evil aristocrats, the smuggling mariners, and The Hag outright and apparently led the Brigands on even though he was spending the last of his wealth.
- Posthumous Narration: Since he's dead by the time the Heir arrives at the Hamlet, every single form of narration is this.
- Psycho Knife Nut: Incredibly skilled with a dagger; the Ancestor was able to fend off the Countess note with just his mundane shortblade.
- Retcon: In the first game, it was never implied that The Ancestor knew anything about the Iron Crown or unlocking its cosomological secrets, and that the occult findings he dabbled in primarily resulted in the unearthing of the Heart of Darkness. In Darkest Dungeon II, it's revealed that he had either uncovered or devised a ritual to learn the secrets of the Crown when he was alive, some time before the first game, and that he had invited the Academic and Scholar to his manor to partake in it after they uncovered an Ancient Conspiracy concerning the Crown, planting the seed of ambition that the Scholar would be consumed by in the process.
- Rich in Dollars, Poor in Sense: Played With. His great wealth and his jaded pursuit of occult knowledge to alleviate his boredom may be literally dooming the world. However, on a more ordinary level, he doesn't seem to have been great with money anyway. The Heir finds the estate in poverty and ruin, and the Cove bosses are tied to his decreasing financial stability as his schemes wear on.
- Sanity Slippage: It's implied he was undergoing this even in his younger days, primarily due to his annoyances with other aristocrats. He tried to kill a guest at one of his gatherings simply because she seemed like a temptress, then proceeded to harvest her blood and drink some of it while also serving it to his other guests. His dive into witchcraft only quickened his descent.
- Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness: The Ancestor has a rather flowery way of talking, which emulates the more purple prosey aspects of Lovecraft's writing.
- Stupid Evil: Does murdering a cabal of powerful necromancers and then raising them as unholy abominations sound like a good idea in either the moral or practical sense? And that's just the first step on the Ancestor's long path into ruin.
- Too Dumb to Live: Every single boss in the game was brought into being by his shortsightedness and dark meddling. Some are merely the result of gross negligence and carelessness, like the Flesh and the Hag, some are by-products of his disturbing experiments and bargains with dark powers, like the Swine King and the Siren, and all the rest are the direct result of his deliberately doing very evil things.
- Torches and Pitchforks: Was on the receiving end of this, but killed himself before the mob got to him.
- Villain Protagonist: The Ancestor is ultimately the most important character in Darkest Dungeon by far, not The Heir. Not only does he have the most pieces of dialogue, the game centers around fixing his mistakes, righting his wrongs, and putting down the many people he's betrayed or hurt. The Crimson Court's storyline is solely dedicated to showing his Start of Darkness.
- You Bastard!: He'll call you out if you fire multiple heroes. Given, what he's done ensures he has little room to talk. Though considering what he says as you venture through the titular Darkest Dungeon about it 'fattening itself on your failures', this might be his frustration over no longer having the weaker heroes available as unwilling sacrifices to his dark god.
- You Have Outlived Your Usefulness:
- He invited scholars of the dark arts to the mansion to study with him and, when he was sure he had exhausted the extent of their knowledge, murdered them in their sleep and reanimated them to flaunt his newfound talent in necromancy. Like all of his experiments, however, it backfired on him horribly and created an endless cycle of the dead reviving the dead that overran the ruins.
- The Ancestor also hired pirates to raid and plunder ships and smuggle him treasures for his collection. When they tried to demand a higher salary for their services, the Ancestor tied them to their own anchor and had them dragged down to the depths. Unfortunately for your heroes, they didn't die.
The Caretaker
"Oh Light, burn my soul! Ha ha ha ha ha!"
"I fear his long-standing duties may have… affected him."
The old, weary, and completely insane groundskeeper of your family estate, now employed to you as part of your inheritance. He manages most of the day-to-day work so you don't have to, but he also uses his wages on the Tavern and Church, leaving you with one less stress-relief activity time slot for your heroes. To be fair, he definitely needs it.
- Arc Symbol: The introduction makes it a point to have his riding crop/whip form the Iron Crown over his deranged face when you're told that 'There can be no bravery without madness'.
- The Alcoholic: Spends much of his free time drinking himself to death at the bar.
- Almighty Janitor: Not a janitor, but instead the estate's groundkeeper, and despite being hopelessly old and mentally broken beyond repair he's able to handle all of the Hamlet's essential needs by himself. Notably, when the stagecoach crashes in the Weald, he's nowhere to be found, and Reynauld and Dismas (two armed and experienced adventurers) have to cross through a path that has a decent chance of killing them before they even see town. The Caretaker meanwhile is implied to have just ran through the Blighted Woods and all of its threats and straight into the Hamlet despite just being in a large crash.
- Broken Smile: Constantly sports a permanent, deranged grin due to being driven utterly bonkers by the Ancestor's experiments.
- Despair Event Horizon: He crossed it long ago, and occasionally partakes of the Hamlet's facilities to try and soothe his mind, taking a sometimes really needed slot in the process.
- Dirty Old Man: Clearly he's way out of his prime, and he refers to the local brothel girls as "his pets"…
- Eldritch Abomination: After a few rounds of the final dungeon, he'll occasionally appear briefly as a tentacled abomination, most notably on the provisions screen. While it may be a hallucination, it may also hint to something far more sinister.
- Laughing Mad: When indulging in a stress relief activity he'll occasionally break out into manic laughter, underscoring how utterly unhinged he's become."Take my blood as you have taken my mind! Whoo-hahahaha!"
- My Master, Right or Wrong: Despite being utterly broken beyond repair, the Caretaker will always be there to drive the stagecoach bringing you recruits, provide you with supplies, and keep the graveyard clean and well maintained. It's heavily implied the Caretaker knew about and assisted the Ancestor in doing his vile, horrible crimes against humanity."Let me share with you the terrible secrets I have come to know…"
- Perpetual Smiler: He has a constant and manic ear-to-ear grin when doing practically anything. He can't seem to control it either; when showing you the Graveyard for your fallen Heroes, he makes a point of covering his mouth while otherwise appearing sombre.
- Undying Loyalty: Despite being a crazed, weary, elderly shell of a man, the Caretaker is utterly devoted to the Heir and the Ancestor's family. Probably the only reason he hasn't put a bullet into his own skull.
The Crier
"Despondency and ambivalence seem to be on the wind."
"What little there is must suffice, for the time being..."
The Town Crier of the Hamlet who announces town events as they come up. Like the Caretaker, he might take up one of your Tavern or Church slots for the week.
- The Alcoholic: Even when frequenting non-bar activities, he'll often mention drinking, and can be found hiccuping when in the Cloister.
- Fat Bastard: Very portly, but no more evil than most characters in the Hamlet.
- Flat Character: Has the least amount of story relevance and quotes for a Hamlet character by far; all he does is announce the town events.
- Jerkass to One: His opinions on the hired heroes are mostly ambivalent, with the occasional showing of respect. When it comes to Hellions and Flagellants, however, the Crier will state in their related events that if they've come here to find death, that they hopefully find it quickly.
- Not Distracted by the Sexy: Tells prostitutes to leave him alone when he's visiting the brothel, instead staying there just to rest.
The Light
"We are the Flame! Burning brightly for all the world to see!"
A divine being worshipped by humanity. Despite the overall hostility of the world, the Light does truly exist and grants divine boons to its adherents.— The Academic
- Anthropomorphic Personification: According the the devs, it's the personification of humanity's collective belief in a benevolent god.
- Badass Creed: Followers of the Light tend to utter the phrase "We are the flame!" Whether whispered under the breath or shouted at the top of the lungs, it represents how they see themselves as the light that stands against the darkness. It's also the name of the first Darkest Dungeon quest, representing the bravery your heroes feel marching into The Very Definitely Final Dungeon.
- Clap Your Hands If You Believe: According to Word of God, the Light is the creation of humanity's belief in a higher good.
- Deity of Human Origin: Given the oppressive and bleak atmosphere of the world of Darkest Dungeon, humans' collective belief in goodness and in a higher power wound up creating a Sentient Cosmic Force to rival the Iron Crown.
- God Is Good: The Light, as far as anyone can tell, is a benevolent deity. While some of its worshippers may be cruel and extreme, the Light itself is kind, especially by those prosecuted by its so-called followers.
- Good Counterpart: In a world where The Iron Crown is seemingly a cosmological constant, a very fact of reality itself, humanity created a Tulpa to be its equal in power while embodying everything The Iron Crown is not.
- Light Is Good: The Light is directly responsible for elements like the Vestal's healing spells and is seemingly capable of intervening to protect those persecuted by its more corrupt followers.
- Sigil Spam: You won't find the Light's symbol plastered upon anything physical, because the Light is a very personal force, but whenever someone fights against the influence of The Iron Crown - Whether by refusing to give up, forming positive relationships, or banishing its influence - a different arch sigil to The Iron Crown will appear: That of a radiantly golden half-halo with no points.
- Tulpa: It was created by humanity's belief in a higher good come to life.
The Butcher's Circus
The Ringmaster
- Arc Symbol: The spiked helmets she and her troupe are wearing are in fact once again the Iron Crown.
- Flat Character: She's the head honcho of the Butcher's Circus, and that's all we know about her.
- Repulsive Ringmaster: Her "circus" is just a gladiatorial arena where people beat each other to death. If the deranged grin she gives in the after-battle screen is any indication, she's pretty happy with her job.
Darkest Dungeon II
The Scholar
"Your insightful questions during my lectures gave me pause, and I recognized in you something... of a kindred spirit. You were my brightest student, my research partner, and my dearest friend."
The Player Character of the sequel. They are introduced in a morbidly rotted room, staring at an unsigned letter of confessions. The Academic bursts in, rallying them back to adventure in a desperate attempt to save the world. They drive the stagecoach carrying the heroes to the new Darkest Dungeon, managing the heroes between fights.
- Anti-Anti-Christ: Their research eventually made them into the bearer of the Iron Crown, and their body a dark god - but their mind was so horrified by what had happened that, after a pep talk by the Academic, they set off on using their newfound eldritch nature to destroy their body and the Crown.
- The Atoner: The Scholar's ultimate goal is to atone for their downward spiral into obsession with dark magic and eldritch forces, which resulted in them murdering at least five people, assisting the Ancestor, and causing the apocalypse that they're currently trying to undo.
- Contrasting Sequel Main Character:
- Like the Heir, they're the benefactors for your recruited heroes, who have gathered them together for the goal of stopping the main threat of the game. While the Heir was largely hands off with the heroes, sending them on expeditions on their own, and firing them should they become a detriment to them, the Scholar goes out into the world alongside the heroes, driving the stagecoach and providing for them in the inns. Furthermore, the Heir was essentially unconnected to the Darkest Dungeon and its monsters beyond having to clean up behind the relative who was; by contrast, the Scholar had a direct hand in sending the world to hell.
- Like the Ancestor, they're the direct cause for the current state of the world, with their reckless research of the occult unleashing chaos and destruction that has blighted and corrupted the land. They're even both introduced writing a confession! However, while the Ancestor was an unrepentant asshole who killed himself the moment his actions' consequences caught up to him, the Scholar willingly goes out to face their failures and clean up the mess they've caused, culminating in an implied Heroic Sacrifice to free the world from the Loathing and banish the monster they created.
- Dark and Troubled Past: The Scholar considered publicly admitting their guilt in some unknown crime. The Academic's narration in Obsession states that the Scholar became obsessed with divining the secrets of the Iron Crown, even participating in several dark rituals that cost several similarly-obsessed individuals their lives while shrugging off the Academic's efforts to reign his former protégé in. This culminated in them sacrificing the Academic and several others to the Iron Crown, unleashing the apocalypse upon the world and sending the horrified Scholar into an emotional spiral.
- Deceptive Disciple: The Scholar wanted to immediately publish their findings after discovering the Iron Crown, but The Academic reasoned that they should wait for a bit until they had more information and all their facts straight. The Scholar's resentment of The Academic began burgeoning from that point on as they continued their research and eventually (with the help of The Ancestor) recreated the ritual to reveal the Crown's secrets.
- Enemy Without: The Academic's narration in Cowardice heavily implies that the Confession bosses are the Scholar's negative emotions and traits, made physically manifest by the Iron Crown's power. The Body of Work worshipped by the Cult is a two-fold example, as it's both the physical personification of all their flaws and their corrupted, hostile body.
- Featureless Protagonist: You don't even see their silhouette this time, but the introduction is from their perspective. Whenever they appear on-screen after the introduction, their entire body is covered from head to toe in a hooded Black Cloak that obscures any features. During the game's end cutscene we do get a good look at their face, but it's been so horrifically mutated that it doesn't resemble a specific human anymore.
- Heroic Sacrifice: The Academic implies killing the Body of Work will cause their soul to pass on to whatever awaits them, while the world is reconstructed from their memories.
- Mad Scientist: The Scholar was definitely a participant in the Academic's occult experimentation, but they weren't all that mad or evil. Not at first, at least. Witnessing the Ancestor's Iron Crown-related ritual resulted in a severe amount of Sanity Slippage and drove them to begin "deplorable" experiments related to unlocking its secrets.
- Meaningful Name: A subtle example. The Scholar's confession is signed with the name "Reus Captivus" (Latin for "Guilty Prisoner"/"Prisoner of Guilt"), referencing their status as The Atoner and their guilt over their crimes.
- Mess of Woe: Implied. Though the Scholar's mental state is not explicitly stated, the room the Scholar is in at the start of the opening cutscene looks quite horrendous without being a complete pigsty. While not much is in the room aside from a few chairs, a stand with a plant on it, a fireplace and the table the letter of confessions rests on; the plant on the stand is completely wilted, one of the chairs has two books sitting on it topped by an abandoned food plate with bones and a partially-eaten fruit on it that has been left long enough for flies to be buzzing around it, and the fireplace is depressingly unlit and heavy with cobwebs. Considering the state of the room, the unsigned letter of confessions, and the Academic giving you a Dare to Be Badass, the Scholar was probably in rather low spirits before the game started.
- My God, What Have I Done?: After witnessing the consequences of their unrestrained ambition in the form of the apocalypse starting, the Scholar essentially fled into hiding and implied depression until the Academic arrived to kick them into gear and start their confession.
- My Skull Runneth Over: Unlocking the secrets of the Iron Crown allowed them to fully understand how the universe worked down to every minute detail, even impossible things that should not function according to all known laws. This partially contributed to the creation of the Body of Work.
- The Resenter: The Scholar deeply resented The Academic's decision to hold back on publishing their findings related to the Iron Crown, feeling he was being overly cautious and holding them both back.
- Sanity Slippage: Discovering the Iron Crown wasn't exactly kind to their sanity, as their interest in this occult subject slowly caused them to graduate from obsessive research of the subject to murdering multiple people - their mentor seemingly included - and unleashing the apocalypse upon the world.
- Science Hero: They're a former university student and were once a colleague of the Academic in the study of the occult.
- Suicidal Cosmic Temper Tantrum: Their personality traits and downward spiral resulted in the shattering of the order of the universe thanks to the release of the Iron Crown's knowledge.
- Transhuman Abomination: Their corrupted body is the new god the Cultists worship, while their mind and soul seem to exist within a shadowy realm. The Academic's dialogue just before the Final Boss heavily implies they're some kind of disembodied spirit or memory, slowly trying to undo the very existence of the apocalypse they wrought through the power of their memories and the Candles of Hope.
- Unexplained Recovery: They always survive the destruction of their stagecoach, though how is never explained. Not directly, anyway. As shown under Transhuman Abomination, death is a concept that might not normally apply to the Scholar, and the Academic implies the shadowy world every run begins in is where their soul flees to when resting between runs.
The Academic
"Ruin has found you at last!"
"Free yourself from this suffocating stillness. Fix your gaze on the horizon, and face the fearsome truth… of the Darkest Dungeon".
Voiced by: Wayne June
A mentor and friend of the player character whom he met at the university. Together they studied the occult and calculated that the world would be imperiled before going their separate ways. At the beginning of the game, the Academic confronts the player character in the Valley and pushes them out of their refuge to reach the Mountain with a party of heroes and stop the monsters that lurk within.
- Ambiguously Human: While the Academic is firmly on the Scholar's side, just how human he is is vague. He is incredibly gaunt and pale and yet has enough strength to break down the Scholar's door, his clothing is torn and disheveled, his eyes are sunken and pitch black, and he has a bizarre, glowing hole on the left side of his chest. Not to mention that, much like the Scholar, he always manages to survive whenever the carriage is destroyed. A late-game flashback shows the Scholar plunging a dagger into his back as part of some sacrificial ritual, which implies he actually died in the ritual, but came back somehow.
- The Anti-Nihilist: Even after everything that's happened to the world because of him and how hopeless everything seems, he refuses to just let the scholar sit on their ass and let the end come. As long as there is Hope, there is always a reason to keep trying, in his mind.
- Big Good: The Academic is sending you and your heroes on a quest to the Mountain, making him the de facto leader of the remaining forces of good on earth.
- Cassandra Truth: The Academic warned the Scholar every step of their descent into madness that what they were doing was seriously bad, except every warning fell on deaf ears. The Academic doesn't gloat about this after he's proven right, however, acknowledging that the Scholar was consumed by resentment, obsession and ambition (partially stoked by the Academic himself) that caused them to simultaneously reject the Academic's advice out of spite and continue down their path of darkness.
- Collector of the Strange: One can find many esoteric artifacts in the Academic's Studies, replacing the first game's curios.
- Contrasting Sequel Main Character: To the Ancestor, the previous narrator. Where the Ancestor was dour and always pessimistic, occasionally dangling a Hope Spot, the Academic is supportive and friendly, even as he admits that chances aren't high to save the world on any particular run. He also readily exposits your character's past with him whenever you're booted back to the Valley, while the Ancestor's exposition is limited mainly to the origins of the creatures he created or unleashed. Furthermore, while the Ancestor was directly responsible for all the issues afflicting the Estate, the Academic is only guilty of not doing a good job of restraining the Scholar. And while the Ancestor left the job of cleaning up his messes to the Heir, the Academic is working with the Scholar to clean up the mess they both contributed to.
- Crazy-Prepared: The Cache encounters are implied by some of his lines to come from him. This means that he somehow prepared them in many different places along the potential paths one can take to get to the Mountain. Of course, given he calculated the world would be in danger, it was also a bit Properly Paranoid.
- Creepy Good: When the Academic confronts you at the beginning of the game, he looks like an angry undead but quickly reveals that he's here to help. It's eventually revealed he may in fact be undead, but unlike Gaunts, has retained his mind and lucidity due to his absolute refusal to give up.
- Dare to Be Badass: The Academic berates the player character for hiding far away from everybody and pushes them to take action to save the world.The Academic: You were bold once. Be bold once more.
- Despair Event Horizon: Defied. The Academic steadfastly refuses to accept the world's fate, and lauds your party members when they fail to succumb to thoughts of hopelessness and become Resolute.The Academic: Many fall in the face of Chaos, but not this one. Not today.
- Determined Defeatist: Downplayed. He thinks you can save the world, but he expects you to lose plenty of times first, and that's fine — it's a major task. He’s also accepting that not everything is going to go perfectly, and so long as you’re making progress, there’s no shame to be found.The Academic: (after a Partial Victory in a lair): Cowardice - a crude term for the science of self-preservation.
- Dynamic Entry: He shatters the protagonist's door and shouts "Ruin has found you at last!"
- Establishing Character Moment: He enters the story through a Dynamic Entry and speaks of the dire state of the world to the protagonist before pushing them to take action to save the world and bestowing the last light of hope upon them.
- Heroic Resolve: No matter what happens to the Scholar and their party on the way to the Mountain, he will never stop positively reinforcing them to never give up regardless of how bleak things are looking.The Academic: There remains a foothold out of this mire. Now climb.
- In the Back: The conclusion of Act 4 reveals that the Scholar stabbed him through the back to complete a ritual sacrifice to the Iron Crown, unleashing the apocalypse upon the world.
- Knight in Sour Armor: He's pretty blunt about your chances of saving the world on any particular run: Not good. He's still willing to try his damn best to save it anyway and encourages the Scholar to do the same, happily consoling you when you fail and giving genuine encouragement.
- Mad Scientist: He alludes to seeking "firsthand experience" of the occult alongside the Scholar during his narration, and definitely assisted the Scholar in dozens of "deplorable" experiments following the ritual at the Ancestor's manor. The Academic's Study further underscores this, with findable curios such as eldritch music recordings, dissected test subjects, and caged masses of flesh resulting from their experiments.
- Mentor Archetype: The Academic was a mentor to the Scholar while they were at the university, having been a lecturer there who began to work with the Scholar after their questions on the occult fascinated him and outright calling them his protege. Their roles were swapped by Confession 4, however, where the Scholar was now ordering the Academic around and he had become their assistant.
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: By his own self-admission in retrospect, the Academic acknowledges that he is partially to blame for the Spreading Stain— after all, his stifling of the Scholar's attempts to make a name for themselves and overabundance of caution in researching the Iron Crown caused the Scholar to start resenting him and doing research behind his back, effectively beginning their Start of Darkness.The Academic: I understood your eagerness to build a reputation, and it pained me greatly to hold you back.
- Posthumous Character: Much like The Ancestor, The Academic (seemingly) died after being sacrificed by the Scholar to the Iron Crown, and now assists them to undo their mistakes.
- Small Steps Hero: He's willing to take any easing of the world's troubles as a plus; it's the end of the world, so even if you ease its pain it's still worth something, though actually saving the world is the main goal.
- Smart People Wear Glasses: The Academic wears glasses and has worked with you on a complex calculation about the occult forces affecting the world, managing to predict that the World Gone Mad situation would occur.
- Uncertain Doom: The conclusion of "Ambition" reveals the Scholar seemingly sacrificed him to the Iron Crown to unleash the apocalypse, stabbing him through the back and attaching his body to a physical representation of the Crown. It's not entirely clear whether he somehow survived it or not.
- Unwitting Instigator of Doom: Though exactly how much of the current state of the world is to blame for it is up in the air, both him and the Scholar answering an invitation from the Ancestor and sharing their occult findings with him almost certainly didn't help anything, considering that the Ancestor later used that knowledge to unearth the Darkest Dungeon and Heart of Darkness. He also refused to stand up to the Scholar at first, until his life became the final component in the ritual to summon the Iron Crown, in spite of his growing misgivings.
The Hoarder
"His attention is unfocused. As if he is in two places at once."
"Anything that lets us travel further is worth the cost."
A strange, wandering old man who serves as a wandering shopkeeper in Darkest Dungeon II. In exchange for relics and baubles, he sells items for use in combat, inns, stagecoach maintenance, and special trinkets.- Ambiguously Related: He may or may not be the Caretaker from the first game. His pack is shown to hold busts and portraits, heirlooms once found in the estate, but beyond that, the heroes only express a vague familiarity with the old man.
- Broken Smile: Sports this when conducting business.
- Crazy Homeless People: He gives off this impression to your party, being a weird and scraggly wandering merchant who sets up shop in dangerous territory. The second they leave his store they'll immediately start bad-mouthing him and talking about how creepy he is.
- Grail in the Garbage: In The Binding Blade, he perpetually has the Crusader's worn-down sword as part of his stock until you exchange it for a potentially worthless treasure map. The Academic even comments that the Hoarder has no idea how much the sword is really worth and the player practically stole it from him.
- Intrepid Merchant: Travels out into the dangerous world to sell items as the game's between-inns shop.
- Took a Level in Badass: Downplayed, but assuming he is the Caretaker, he's gone from a broken old groundskeeper who rarely left the safety of the Hamlet and only really sold basic provisions to a skilled merchant traveling across the apocalyptic wastelands and selling a significant variety of items.
- We Sell Everything: Anything you could possibly want to buy with Relics or Baubles is available somewhere in the Hoarder's shop. Trinkets, combat items, inn items, stagecoach items and foodstuffs can all be found amongst his wares.
The Iron Crown (Spoilers)
"Whether by providence or happenstance, we stumbled upon the mark of some strange power invoked the world over, reflected in cultures predating mankind itself. A semicircle, radiating five points of power - a symbol hidden deep in the iconography of every ancient empire. The Iron Crown. Enigmatic, and ubiquitous."
—The Academic
The ultimate antagonist of the second game, and implicitly the entire series— a five-pointed crescent. A cosmic entity embodying all madness, despair, sorrow, and pain in life, and the very Arc Symbol of the series itself.
- Arc Symbol: The Iron Crown is the iconic stress symbol seen throughout both games; the Academic and Scholar's research indicate that it constantly crops up throughout history and predates even humanity.
- Anthropomorphic Personification: It is essentially nothing less than everything negative in the psyche of humanity and possibly all life given intelligence. It borders on a Sentient Cosmic Force because the apocalypse it unleashes on the world is described less as an eldritch infestation and more a cancer on reality itself, provoked by the Scholar summoning it and unbalancing the harmony of the universe.
- Big Bad: Of the second game. The unbalancing of the laws of reality have caused it to manifest as a spreading stain seeking nothing less than to corrupt everything that exists.
- The Corruption: Once unbound, it manifests as one, not only causing the Cult to become even more powerful, but spreading a plague of madness that mutated and corrupted each of the factions in the second game (aside from possibly the Fisherfolk) into what they are now. In this form, known as the Spreading Stain, its purpose seems to be nothing less than to corrupt existence itself.
- Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?: A Sentient Cosmic Force with a human-ish avatar that spews The Corruption into the world - and you end up completely unmaking its physical form and manifestations when defeating the Body of Work. It's probably still around, but it's more than respectable that your Heroes were able to banish it even at the apex of its power.
- Early-Bird Cameo: Obviously it was the stress symbol from the first game, but the Iron Crown was also referred to by name in the second Darkest Dungeon quest "Lighting The Way", as the three objects you needed to activate to complete the quest.
- Evil Counterpart: Being the embodiment of everything negative and corrupt about both human thought and existence itself, it's strongly similar to the Light, down to being entirely associated with darkness and loathing compared to light and benediction.
- Greater-Scope Villain: Implicitly this for the entire series, as its imagery exists across all culture, the environment, and even past evil gods such as the Comet and Heart of Darkness. Notably, compared to the Heart of Darkness and Comet, which are alien but ostensibly understandable lifeforms tied to cosmic bodies, the Iron Crown is implied to be something tied to existence itself, its spreading stain emerging to corrupt reality the moment its harmony was unbalanced. It's quite possibly the ultimate force of evil in the entire setting, especially as the closing narration of the game strongly correlates it with the sinister concept of the "Darkest Dungeon" itself.
- He Was Right There All Along: The overarching antagonist of the entire series was right in front of us all the time.
- Sentient Cosmic Force: It's a little unclear, but the way the Academic speaks of the Iron Crown implies that it's alive, and is the manifestation of all collective guilt, agony and negativity- A.K.A Stress.
- Sigil Spam: In both games, the Iron Crown can be found all over the vestments of the Cultists, hidden in innumerable objects and buildings, and, of course, is the symbol that appears when your characters acquire Stress and Afflictions/Meltdowns. The plot of II was kicked off when The Academic and The Scholar discovered the Iron Crown nested in the symbology of ancient cultures all across the globe.
