Bone Courtier

There are innumerable graves, tombs and crypts within the Ruins, serving as final resting places for many of the people who used to call that place home. These burial grounds are filled with servants, warriors, and heroes alike, people that served our great family with honor and loyalty. Like us, some of them were of noble blood. The Bone Courtiers appear to be nobles, perhaps in life they were friends or allies to our family or they may even have been some of our ancient long forgotten ancestors. Though not born warriors in life, these deceased noblemen were still brought back to serve the Necromancer's dark purposes. Their decadent taste persist even in death, drinking their minds away and inviting heroes to madness with the tainted contents of their goblet. With just a few splashes from their unholy goblet, the Bone Courtiers are more than able to drive even hardened adventurers to the brink of insanity. Care for a drink?

Behavior and strategy
The Bone Courtier is an Unholy enemy that appears in the halls of the Ruins along with his fellow undead. The Bone Courtier always appears at the back of an Unholy party. As long as he is in ranks 3-4 he continuously uses Tempting Goblet, a ranged attack that can hit any rank of the player's party and deals low health damage, while inflicting heavy stress. Since stress damage is harder to heal than health, leaving the Bone Courtier free to act will endanger the rest of the mission with the threat of affliction, especially if encountered early in longer expeditions; as such, he should be focused down as quickly as possible.

As all skeletal monsters, the Bone Courtier is immune to bleeding, but not to blight: his low HP make him a good target for blight attacks if there is no faster way of dealing with him. His resistance to stun is also very low, and most unholy enemies are not particularly tough, so stunning him can be an effective method to keep him at bay while the front ranks protecting him are being decimated, if there is no option to attack him first.

Another effective course of action against him is exploiting his low move resistance to place him in the front ranks of the enemy formation, thus impeding him from using his Tempting Goblet: when in the front ranks, the Bone Courtier will instead attack with Knife in the Dark, a weak melee ability that causes no stress and has limited damage potential. Unlike other "desperation attacks" of ranged enemies forced to the front, Knife in the Dark will not move the Courtier back, so landing a single move attack will usually render him close to useless for the rest of the fight; he can then be either focused down or left as the last enemy while now more dangerous foes are brought down with higher priority. It's important to note that if currently in the second rank of the formation, the Courtier can still be able to toss his Goblet, though the Knife attack can also be randomly selected; if bringing him to the absolute front is hard, he should be focused down even when in second position. Characters such as the Bounty Hunter or the Occultist are optimal for moving him to the front, while this can also be attained by a Plague Doctor equipped with Disorienting Blast, who can also stun him together with another foe in front of him.

Trinket
Bone Courtiers have a very low chance to drop a unique Trinket. While always low, the odds of this trinket dropping increase for the more advanced forms of the Courtier.

Abilities
Apprentice =

Veteran =

Champion =

Trivia

 * The Bone Courtier is regarded as one of the most iconic enemies in Darkest Dungeon, due largely to its distinctive design and appearance early in the game.
 * "Knife in the Dark" is the name of one of the chapters in J.R.R. Tolkien's "The Fellowship of the Ring".

'''All Areas

 * Bone Rabble

'''Ruins

 * Bone Soldier
 * Bone Arbalist
 * Bone Defender
 * Bone Captain
 * Bone Spearman
 * Bone Bearer

'''Boss

 * Necromancer