Ancestor

"You still foolishly consider yourself an entity separate from the whole, but I know better. And I. Will. Show you."

- The Ancestor

The Ancestor is both the Narrator of the Game and part of the final boss of the Darkest Dungeon. Whether he is an illusion brought on by the madness of the dungeon or he has truly betrayed his humanity for other-worldly powers, he has come to put an end to your party.

History/Biography
As paradoxical as it may sound, we know very much and very little about the enigmatic Man who is our Ancestor. This biography will mostly be speculation based on a reconstruction of the timeline of events that led him down the path of Forbidden Knowledge, his opening of the gates to Oblivion, and his ultimate failure of being a human being.

A Noble Bloodline & Pressures of Nobility
Little is known about the Ancestor’s past or his family, only that he is descended from a long line of powerful nobles. They had armies of loyal soldiers to defend their lands, and they were unbelievably wealthy.

It is believed that the Ancestor was born in the Manor like his ancestors before him. While we don’t know much about his early childhood, but in his youth, the Ancestor was liked, even beloved, by the people of the Hamlet. Whenever he could get away from the Nobility of the Courtyard and their lavish, unbridled hedonism, he would walk among the common folk, raise his glass in the tavern, and drink with those he considered to be better than those who claim to be of Noble Blood.

While his kindness and generosity towards the common folk made him some kind of town hero to some, the Ancestor considered his popularity to be only a temporary escape from his duties to uphold his family name and societal stature. There was even a young, homeless village lass who had a crush on the Ancestor, and followed him everywhere he went. While he originally found it charming, he could not accept her affections, for he knew that she would never be accepted by the upper echelons of society due to her low birth, and his own states with the nobility would come into questioning.

Every single time he had to return and socialize with the vile denizens of the Courtyard and partake in the degenerated activities and entertainment, he felt his own sanity and patience dwindling with the aristocrats and their debauchery and depravity disguised underneath a thin veneer of sophistication and ridiculous powdered wigs.

First Bloody Encounter with the Supernatural
During a lavish party he was host at his Manor, the Ancestor met a woman of almost unearthly beauty. While all the other guests were bewitched by her beauty, though outwardly urbane, the Ancestor could sense something was not right with her and that she was a threat. Driven half-mad by cloying vulgarity and dwindling patience for his fellow aristocrats, the Ancestor plotted to rid himself of this lurking threat, in a grand display of sadistic sport.

While they where dancing underneath the moon, the Ancestor was just moments away of murdering the Countess, but a ray of light from the gibbous moon revealed her inhuman desires in all their stultifying hideousness.

The morbid encounter resolved itself in the Ancestor’s favour, and with Countess laying decapitated on the cold stone floor of the terrace overlooking the Ancestral Manor’s gardens. With adrenaline still rushing through his veins, the Ancestor watched the woman with silent awe and horror as a morbid scheme crept into his mind.

For years he was forced to partake in the degenerated activities and entertainment of the vile denizens of the Courtyard to uphold his family name, for years he has watched as their disturbing diversions became worse with each passing year. The Aristocrats and Nobles of the Courtyard were the worst kind of humans in his eyes; the Baron, a hunched-backed fiend who orchestrated grotesque entertainment at parties, various performances so filled with such cruelty, depravity, and debauchery that disturbed the Ancestor greatly; the Viscount, a ravenous gourmand with unhealthy and vile appetites who continuously devoured everything he could even as the once-fine feasts turned into a putrid slurry.

He could have stopped them, but the weight of upholding his family name and societal stature with these horrid excuses of human beings forced the Ancestor to lower his standards to their level and eventually he became slave to his own appetites, and any restraint would have rendered him a hypocrite and an outcast. For years these bloodsuckers have been leeching off his family fortune and good name, and now he going to get revenge by pursuing degeneracy in its most decadent forms.

The Crimson Curse & the Vision from Beyond
Instead of quietly disposing of the Countess then and there, the Ancestor dragged the unconscious vampiric temptress to the Manor’s wine cellars, there he hanged her from the ceiling, and then began to drain and collect her blood like a pig being drained for the slaughter. Then he began to mix the blood with vintage wine stored within to the Manor’s wine cellars until all barrels and bottles of the House Vintage were tainted by the blood.

Why the Ancestor executed such a heinous act of iniquity one can only guess; maybe the encounter with the vampiric temptress had final broken whatever sanity he had left, maybe it made the Ancestor realize that after years of socializing with degenerate nobles and partaking in their enervating activities and entertainment may have rubbed off on him and he had become very thing he hated most, or he realized there was no escape from uphold his family name and his societal stature with the vile aristocrats and wanted end it all, taking rest of his tormentors with him. Was it after all those years that the Ancestor’s dwindling patience for his peers finally ran out; letting him to believe that the Nobility has become too degenerate and corrupt to function properly within society and, for the good of the common folk, they have to be purged to save the realm, regardless the consequences? Or, perhaps he had once heard whispers and rumors of nightmarish creatures similar to the Countess and was planning to use her to get his revenge upon the Nobles of the Courtyard.

Whatever reasons he had we may never know: maybe he did it on purpose or unintentionally, in desperation or mad disillusion; however, we do know the results of those actions.

Few days later at Courtyard, all nobles revived an surprising invitation by the Ancestor- as a sign of generosity and friendship he was giving away entire supply of exotic and decadent wines his family collected over years to all members of the Courtyard free of cost, and they joined him in the Courtyard Gardens to taste a new Vintage that came in to his possession. Blinded by their greed and curiosity, the Nobles began to ordering their servants to collected the Wine Barrels and Wine Crates from the Manor and transported to their Mansions and Houses in the Courtyard. Many accepted the Ancestor’s Invitation to taste this new Wine, after all if the young lord was giving away all the other wine within family’s wine cellar to make room for this new wine then it has to be good.

As the guests gathered at the stone terrace overlooking the courtyard gardens, the air pulsed with anticipation as the Ancestor revealed the "new" house vintage. As they raised their glass for a toast in the Ancestor’s honor, the Ancestor felt a rising joy and happiness as his devious plan reached its final conclusion, but his exultation was cut short as the attending gentry turned upon themselves in an orgy of indescribable frenzy: some of the guests began tearing their own eyes out, while screaming madly at the heavens; others began to rip and tear their skin and flesh from their arms and bodies in act of auto-cannibalism; other surviving members of the feast attack each other and drinking their blood in a mad frenzy of bloodlust.

Behavior
The Ancestor has only 5 health points, but is immune to all forms of damage during this phase. He will first summon 3 Perfect Reflections which you can deal damage to. After dealing a deathblow to any one of the Perfect Reflections, the Ancestor will summon more reflections to fill in the missing positions at the start of the next round.

Sometimes the Ancestor will summon Imperfect Reflections, and when these are killed the Ancestor will take 1 damage. Be sure to kill at least one reflection every round, because if all ranks are full on the Ancestor's turn he will use Time Heals All and heal every reflection. Once 5 Imperfect Reflections have been felled to wipe out the Ancestor's health, he will move on to his second form.

To explain in detail how this phase of the Ancestor acts, here are the exact probabilities/odds:
 * He will only use Perfect Replication ONCE; afterwards, it will be either of the other two options;
 * Imperfect Reproduction starts with a 2.0 chance of being used by the Ancestor, increasing by 6.0 each round that goes by. That means, the longer the fight goes on, the more likely he is to use this skill.
 * Sporadic Reproduction has a fixed 50.0 chance of being used by the Ancestor, disregarding how many rounds have already passed.
 * Time Heals All has a mere 5.0 chance; this skill will most probably only be used if all Reflections are alive, and he cannot use either one of his other skills.

Strategy

 * For the first form, killing an Imperfect Reflection will always deal 1 damage to the Ancestor. The Ancestor himself does not attack, only summons, so you'll be dealing with at most 3 attacks. If you're able to kill the Reflections quickly, your party won't suffer damage, following similar strategies when dealing with The Collector.
 * Note although the Ancestor's resistances to DoT skills is extremely high and under normal circumstances he can't be Blighted nor Bleeded, with the right Trinket and skill combination, you can pull it off.
 * Namely, this is possible with two Grave Robber using Poison Darts and one of them having the Blighting Satchel+Blight Amulet combination. Although the initial chance won't suffice to cause Blight to the Ancestor, stacking the Blight Resistance Debuff will let you achieve it realistically after 2 rounds.

Abilities
* 50:50 chance to summon either.

** Twice as likely to summon the Perfect Reflections

Second Form
"The flesh is fluid, it could be changed, reshaped, remade!"

- The Ancestor

Behavior
The Ancestor's size grows bigger and he summons 3 Absolute Nothingness. These summons function much like the Shattered Pew of the Prophet fight in that they simply are there to set the Ancestor's position to the back. The Absolute Nothingness have extremely high resistances and dodge, which makes them impossible to hit.

When killed, he will cocoon himself within a Gestating Heart.

Strategy

 * Although you're unable to deal damage (or hit) Absolute Nothingness, they can still be attacked. This allows your party to self-buff or adjust position in order to prepare for the second round.
 * In this phase, the Ancestor's resistances plummet down as depicted in the Stats Table. Therefore, in this phase you can apply DoTs to him with very high reliability and even Stun him, which, considering the Resistance chance, can also be done pretty safely and thereby prevents him from acting.
 * All in all, this part of the fight is pretty straightforward and easy, giving you ample time to recover from the last part, should you have the necessity to do so. Stunning him while healing HP/Stress can be a good idea, since the next part is set on a timer and will advance to the Heart of Darkness after 3 turns.

Trivia

 * Even if the ancestor in his first form is immune to all attacks in game he is shown to have 80% protection. This is, because protection was programmed to cap at 80%. Ancestor in reality is protected by something else.
 * Some of his quotes for example: "Remind yourself that overconfidence is a slow and insidious killer" or "How quickly the tide turns" became internet memes.