Miller

"A lifetime of pious toil, an eternity of suffering"

The Miller is a boss found within the Farmstead. Another poor soul whose rights, liberties and will were taken by the Ancestor's tyrannical ambition.

Ancestor's Memoirs: The Miller
Ancestor’s Memoirs: The Miller’s Desperation [The Farmstead (1/3)]

"Blight had struck the harvest again that year and the Miller was desperate. He came to me, hat clutched tightly in filthy fingers, stinking of sweat and manure. Seated comfortably in observatory, surrounded by telescopes and other delicate apparatus, I recognized his misfortune as an opportunity, and I agreed to lend him my... expertise."

Ancestor’s Memoirs: Celestial Designs [The Farmstead (2/3)]

"Slabs etched with certain celestial designs were erected around the perimeter of the Farmstead. The Miller, lamentably eager for some early sign of improvement, fixed his watery eyes intently upon the wilted fields and listless mill. My gaze however was cast skyward and I marveled at the limitless profanity of the stars, wondering what harvest might come."

Ancestor’s Memoirs: Thrice A Victim [The Farmstead (3/3)]

"The poor Miller. Thrice a victim. The seasons took his livelihood. I took his land. And, incountable years later, the comet has taken his humanity. My only regret is that I did not live to see that shoddy mill smashed to pieces by miraculous bounty I reaped from beyond the void."

The Miller was once a normal human being and the owner of the Farmstead and the surrounding lands. He, his family and his group of loyal and swarthy Farmhands worked the fields day in, day out, providing grain, flour, livestock feed, and other kinds of agricultural goods for the Hamlet. However, after losing a substantial portion his crops to a blight for the second time in a year, the Miller went to the Ancestor and desperately pleaded for help to save his farm. Though at first, he was repulsed by the Miller's dishevelled and ragged appearance he soon accepted his request. However, his acceptance was not out of altruistic intent, but rather because it afforded him an opportunity to use his newly acquired knowledge. For by that time the Ancestor, in his quest for forbidden knowledge, had begun to delve into the darker side of astrology, studying the movement and relative positions of the heavens to glean information about the supernatural and otherworldly events.

Not long after striking a deal with the devil disguised in human skin, the Miller and Farmhands began to construction of Stone Slabs around the Farmstead and it’s acres of land. Under the watchful eye and instructions of the Ancestor, each slab was adorned with elaborate carvings of arcane texts, blasphemous equations and unknowable constellations. While the Miller believed that enchanted slabs would help his farm, unbeknownst to him and the rest of Farmstead’s inhabits, the Ancestor had turned their farms and surrounding farmland into a giant Celestial Array designed to search the infinite blackness of space and to draw in a unnameable cosmic terror to our world. The Ancestor was planning to capture the cosmic entity and harvest it for all its knowledge and parts. While it would take many years before he would see any results, he quietly imagined with sadistic glee what unnameable thing might fall from the sky, hoping it would destroy that ugly windmill that was in the center of his Celestial Array.

Many years passed and things have gone worse for the Miller and his family; when the Miller made a deal with the Ancestor he did not know that he would be effectively giving over all land he owned to his "benefactor". While the Ancestor allowed the Miller and his family to live on their ancestral farm, they were basically forced to work the fields and give large amounts of what they grew to their new landlord, not leaving them with much to sell to the Hamlet. Making things even worse, the Ancestor hired a group of sadistic Foremen more akin to slave drivers to keep the Farmhands in check. As for why did the Ancestor needed such large quantities of food from the farm and what did he do with all that foodstuff… Let’s just say that the test subjects used for his experiments were better fed than the people of the Hamlet were.

Not long after the Ancestor died, an eerie glowing Comet came screaming from beyond the darkest reaches of the cosmos and struck the Windmill with terrible force.

By all rights, the Windmill should have collapsed entirely, but the parts that were not outright destroyed in the impact seemed to remain floating in the air in nearly the exact same places they were when the Windmill was whole. From within the Windmill, an eerie, otherworldly glow shone from the half-ruined building and an equally eerie pale blue mist flowed forth from the wreckage like vaporous blood. Everywhere this mist went and on everything it touched, mysterious crystals began to grow like a mysterious fungus. Soon the entire area around the Windmill was covered by this strange plague.

The Miller, his family and Farmhands went to investigate, but never returned. There has been no word from the Farm in a fortnight, save for the unearthly groaning that echoes from the ruin of the Mill....

And so the poor Miller became thrice the Victim: first the seasons took his livelihood; then the Ancestor took his land; and as the finally insult, the Comet took his humanity. He now haunts the fields he once tended, stuck in eternal torment as a phantasmal wraith, frozen in time with no memory, yet unable to forget. He has become the Overlord of the crystalline corpses that infest the countryside. His sad wails maddeningly echoing through space and time as he commanded his army of Husks to search for his family and his beloved wife. Unable to find them, they themselves end up lost within distortions caused by the Comet.

Beginning close to the crash site of the Comet, distortions are so strong that time itself starts to slowdown or accelerate. Time starts to flow back and forth, so that people creatures and objects are displaced through space and time. It is unknown how long the Miller has been trapped within those distortions but it could be more than an eternity.

End his suffering so that he may find peace in death.

= Strategy = The Miller is a very powerful soul, considering his nature as a shriveled husk. He has 181 HP, 20% PROT and a number of powerful moves capable of doing devastating damage to your entire party. It would be more than ideal to equip one of your heroes with Mildred's Locket so that you might be able to weather his terrible storm.

The Miller has two moves, and when the battle begins he will most likely use "The Master Beckons" to summon an enemy, most likely a farmhand but potentially any type of enemy from the Farmstead. On his second move he will either attack or use a buff ability on the farmhand. If he attacks he will most likely use his Reap ability to do 10 to 15 damage to every hero in your party, but if his health is at 70% or less he may use Harvest to do just as much damage to a single hero, and heal himself for 20 HP.

If he uses his buff ability Winter's Breath on the farmhand, it will transform the farmhand into a more powerful enemy, and will not only force it to guard the miller, but give PROT bonuses to both the mutated farmhand and the miller.

This is ultimately a battle of endurance. Destroying his summons can make things easier, but he will continue to attack while you are doing this. His massive damage output can quickly destroy even a full health party in short order. He is extremely resilient to bleed, but weak to blight, and his habit of retreating to the back slots makes him particularly vulnerable to Plague Doctors.

Related Monsters
Shared
 * Thing From The Stars

Farmstead
 * Farmhand
 * Foreman
 * Scarecrow
 * Plow Horse
 * Crystalline Aberration
 * Sleeper's Herald
 * Sleeper's Dream

Bosses
 * Frozen Farmhand
 * Fracture
 * Focus Point
 * Unfinished Aberration
 * Finished Aberration
 * The Sleeper