Swine Prince

The Swine Prince/King/God is a Beast boss that appears in the Warrens.

Ancestor's Memoirs: The Swine Prince
"The ways and rituals of blood sacrifice are difficult to master. Those from beyond require a physical vessel if they are to make the crossing into our reality. The timing of the chants is imperative: without the proper utterances at precise intervals, the process can fail spectacularly.

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My first attempts at summoning were crude, and the results disappointing. I soon found, however, that the type and condition of the host's meat was a critical factor. The best results came from pigs, whose flesh is most like that of man.

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The great thing I had managed to bring through was brutish and stupid. Moreover, it required prodigious amounts of meat to sustain itself. But this was only a trifling concern. After all, I had a village full of it.

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- The Ancestor.

History
After he mastered necromancy, the Ancestor’s thirst for Forbidden Knowledge was still not quenched, so he tried his hand at ritualistic blood sacrifice and blood magic to summon beings from the "outer spheres". However these proved to be very difficult to master, as without the right timing of the chants and the proper utterances at precise intervals the process can fail spectacularly. Not only that, the Ancestor's biggest problem was that the eldritch spirits and entities he was trying to summon could not exist in our reality without some kind of physical vessel to inhabit.

Still having a small vestige of human decency left within him, the Ancestor decided to use pigs as test subjects for his grim experiments rather than humans. Since the flesh of pigs is so similar to that of humans, they made nearly perfect vessels for the eldritch entities he was attempting to summon via blood magic and dark rituals. Many of the pigs that were possessed by these unspeakable horrors began to walk upright and gained more human-like features and intelligence, while others became weak and misshapen wretches -- the lucky ones, that is. Those specimens unfortunate enough to have been neglected and forgotten were left as little more than twisted piles of undulating, misshapen flesh.

After countless failures, which resulted in the creation of the Swinefolk and other far more horrid abominations, he eventually managed to summon a particularly powerful entity, and the pig it possessed grew to a gargantuan size. The resulting abomination he had summoned was brutish as it was stupid, it required prodigious amounts of food to sustain itself, and feeding it become problematic when it developed a taste for meat. However this was only a trifling concern for the Ancestor for he quickly found a "creative" solution for feeding the abomination -- namely, by using people from his village as its meat supply. After he had pried all the knowledge he could gain from the entity and could not learn anything new from it, the Ancestor moved the abomination into the Warrens with the rest of his failed experiments.

By the time the Heir arrives at the Hamlet, the Warrens have become home to the descendants of those experiments called the Swine, a warrior race of pig men that have developed their own primitive culture and religion. And as for the entity, it appears that the Swinefolk have made him the ruler of their people, not to only due it to being larger and stronger than the rest of them, but due to being the only one strong enough to protect the Swinefolk from the accidental by-product of the Ancestor’s demonic summoning rites. After numerous battles, the entity succeeded in driving off the shapeless abomination deeper into the labyrinthine tunnels of the Warrens, but not without sustaining hideous battle scars and grievous injuries; his body is covered in open sores, his brain is exposed, and he sits in a massive pile of his own viscera. Thankful that this mountain of muscle and rage had saved them, the Swinefolk of the Warrens made him their King. The Swine King’s first order was that he desired meat, but the Ancestor’s actions had left the Swine King with a ravenous appetite for human flesh. So to please their savior, the Swine have become proficient at hunting and butchering humans -- and to make things worse, some of the Swine have taken a liking to the taste of human flesh themselves.

We must take advantage of its weakened state and kill this beast before more people disappear down his ravenous gullet.

Behavior
The Swine Prince always appears taking up rank 1, 2 and 3, with Wilbur taking up rank 4. Wilbur can be moved though it is ill advised.

During battle, Wilbur will use End This One or End These Two on one or two of your heroes. This marks your heroes for extra damage from the Swine Prince's attacks, as well as targeting those specific heroes for either Obliterate Body (for one target) or Obliterate Masses (for two targets).

An Arbalest with the Rallying Flare ability can clear marks from all heroes (except herself), and the Swine Prince will use Wild Flailing instead of Obliterate Body or Obliterate Masses, for substantially less and much more manageable damage. Additionally, if one of the marked heroes has been stunned by Wilbur, Flare will clear the stun and prevent that hero from missing a turn.

Note that hitting Wilbur with any damaging attack whilst the Swine Prince is still alive will result in immediate retaliation by the Swine Prince in the form of all the heroes being attacked with Enraged Destruction for increased damage and a chance to stun. Therefore the best ways to manage Wilbur is to either clear the marks with an Arbalest each round as above (hoping Wilbur doesn't stun the Arbalest), or hit Wilbur with a stun attack that does not do damage, such as the Bounty Hunter's Flashbang or the Plague Doctor's Blinding Gas.

Wilbur can also be killed to stop the marking of your heroes, however, this will result in the Swine Prince going ballistic and using Enraged Destruction on every turn for increased damage and a chance to stun (as you have no hope of outhealing this, it will result in a total wipe very quickly unless you kill the Prince or retreat). Be wary of using Riposte attacks, as Wilbur's mark will trigger them and the Swine Prince will not react immediately but he will still start using Enraged Destruction once Wilbur dies.

After the Swine Prince is defeated, the heroes will also have to defeat Wilbur. Wilbur will use Squeal, which does one to two points of damage, but mainly inflicts stress damage on your heroes, and has a high chance to stun them in the higher levels.

Trophy
After completing the Swine Prince's champion quest, Wilbur will drop his flag as a Trophy.

Abilities
Apprentice =

Veteran =

Champion =

* When a Hero uses an ability on Wilbur, Swine Prince will automatically perform Enraged Destruction after that action, ignoring any status effects already on it (stun etc.). If Wilbur dies, said ability will be used every turn by the Swine Prince/King/God afterwards.

Strategy
The most important thing to remember in this fight: don't target Wilbur first. The Plague Doctor's Blinding Gas and the Bounty Hunter's Flashbang can stun him without enraging the Swine Prince, but in all other cases attacking Wilbur will invite disaster.

The Swine Prince, for his part, is a powerful but predictable damage dealer. Since his Obliterate attacks can only land on marks, they can be mitigated by Man-at-Arms' Defender, or prevented by Arbalest's Flare. He's also weak to debuffs and it's possible to stack damage debuff on him - having two Occultists/Lepers on debuff duty is enough to lower his damage to manageable levels.

This fight is all about firepower: you want to kill the Swine Prince as quickly as possible. As such, the Leper is an excellent pick for this fight, due to his heavy damage, strong self-heal, and the fact he can increase his PROT with Withstand. This can be stacked with Antiquarian's Protect Me to great effect. Another effective technique is to utilize the synergy between the Grave Robber and Antiquarian: keeping 1-2 stacks of Toxin Trickery or Shadow Fade coupled with Protect Me provides a significant dodge + PROT buff to half of the team, and can reduce incoming damage significantly. For this to be most effective the Antiquarian should be in position 2, with the Grave Robber in position 3.

If you defeat the Swine Prince, you will be credited with completing the quest even if you flee the fight without finishing Wilbur off. In point of fact, you will be credited with completion even if Wilbur manages to kill your party outright - though this is, of course, far from ideal. In any case, if you're on the ropes near the end of the fight, consider retreating: Wilbur's full-party Squeal attack is easily capable of finishing off someone on Death's Door. One interesting point to note is that killing Wilbur with a Riposte from either the Highwayman or the Man-at-Arms will activate the Swine Prince's enrage mode.

Extra numbers: Using the Arbalest's "Rallying Flare" every round will reduce the Swine Prince's average damage output by about 70% (71.5% to be exact, assuming average dodge of heroes to be 26.61 at Champion level and equal chance of Obliterate Masses/Body). This damage output reduction is primarily due to removing of marks, but also due to removing the Obliterate Masses ability (hence cannot target two targets for additional damage) and reducing the accuracy of the Swine Prince.

One viable party composition for Stygian Swine God is Vestal / Man-at-Arms/ Leper / Leper. With so much PROT, the fight is much more manageable.

Trivia

 * Despite a red light appearing in his eyes when he attacks, the Swine Prince appears to be blind. This might explain why he is so protective of Wilbur; he needs the smaller Swine to direct his attacks.
 * Despite appearing to lack eyes, a Plague Doctor can still stun The Prince and his higher forms by using "Blinding Gas".
 * The Ancestor using pigs as vessels for creatures from "outer spheres" is potentially intended as a reference to Legion, a man possessed by many demons from the Bible who begged Jesus to allow them to possess a sounder of swine instead of being sent back to hell.
 * Due to its relation to Wilbur, the Swine Prince may be somewhat inspired by the Dunwich Horror, the monstrous brother of Wilbur Whateley.
 * Wilbur's name and runty appearance comes from the book Charlotte's Web written by E.B. White, which follows the adventures of a farm pig named Wilbur who was the runt of his litter.
 * The achievement you receive from having a member of your party killed by Wilbur, "That'll do pig..." is a reference to the movie Babe where Farmer Hoggett tells his pig Babe, "That'll do, pig. That'll do."
 * The Swine Prince also seems to largely influenced by the "great unclean ones" of the Warhammer universe.

Swinefolk

 * Swine Chopper
 * Swine Slasher
 * Swine Wretch
 * Swine Drummer
 * Swinetaur
 * Swine Skiver

Bosses

 * Wilbur
 * Flesh