Deacon

## The Deacon

* The Deacon Portrait
* The Deacon Render 1
* The Deacon Render 2
* The Deacon Render 3
* The Deacon Render 4
* The Deacon Render 5
* Paintings of the Deacon
1/7

## Lore

*Any human heart can hide a core of pure cruelty, a black and viscid tumor... Pushed by a divine voice, the Deacon adopted The Child, but his heart was already too sour to love the poor creature. When the infant contracted the plague, the man of God locked him in his cellar, flooded and covered in clay. Disgusted by this disgraceful Child at first, his revulsion evolved into hatred. The Deacon never embraced a moment of virtue. He worked tirelessly to spoil and defile innocence in all its forms, protected by a hypocritical faith and a carnivorous smile. Corrupted by Suffering's powers, the Deacon became a shameful pig, barely hidden under a thick layer of organic clay and sticky bile. A Pandora's box of his own sins, a gaping lock is engraved on his chest and he welds a scepter shaped like a key.*
- The Mother

## Description

### Codex

The Deacon alternates between preparing and focusing on one Daughter for her "Confession". While he is preparing, he is well protected, uses delayed actions, and moves to attack the closest Daughter. After losing enough life, he starts extracting a Confession from the furthest Daughter, rooting all other Daughters for the duration of the confession. The confession ends once he has lost enough health and releases the other daughters. If the Daughters stay too far away, the Deacon will start or end confessions on his own and punish all the Daughters.

### Details

The Deacon is a Boss of the Second Era, and the adoptive father of the Child.

There are 2 interchanging states of the battle:

* **In Confession** - all Daughters are rooted (can't move) except the farthest one who was chosen as the Penitent. Rooted Daughters can use movement skills like Sidestep, Lightning Strike or Wrathful Rain to get closer and attack. The Deacon is vulnerable is this state due to lack of armor (actually negative, see Notes). The Confession also increases movement range twice and delay resistance for 30% making the Deacon absolutely immune to delay.
* **Out of Confession** - Daughters are free to move but the Deacon is hard to hurt due to significant amount of armor.

In the beginning of the battle the Deacon appears at significant distance from Daughters, if no Daughter come in his movement range of 6, the Deacon moves to the closest Daughter and performs **Damnation**. The Damnation starts the Confession but doesn't set any *Reaction*, so attacking the Deacon for any amount of damage is safe.

Later when Daughter are in reachable range, the Deacon uses **Absolution** and **Confession** reaction skills to change the Confession state. These skills work as *Reaction* and besides changing the state, reset initiative to 0. These *reactions* may be triggered:

* On a Daughter turn as a response on attack
* Between turns as a response on Delayed attacks or Action Over Time.
* On the Deacon turn, when interruption skills like Intercepting Round or Saving Grace are triggered. This is an especially dangerous scenario because it allows the Deacon to perform 2 turns in a row and automatically triggers Delayed actions that has been initiated, **Liturgy** as the example.

The other *Reaction -* **Fervor** is on the contrary doesn't change turns order, it's triggered only during the Deacon turn, usually in the beginning of his turn, (if 50% HP threshold is reached out of his turn) . The Fervor doesn't reset initiative or change Confession state, only unlocks new skills: **Holy Cross**, **Liturgy**, **Pilgrimage** and increases movement range.

The **Holy Cross** is a *Reaction* that does minor damage (75 - armor) but can push Daughters on the **Liturgy** AoE tiles. The Holy Cross pushes Daughters away from the Deacon for 2 adjacent tiles or 1 diagonal tile.

## Stats

Out of Confession
 HP
 Armor
 Dodge
 Delay Resistance
 Critical Damage
 End of Turn Delay

## Notes and Bugs

1. **Bug**: The Deacon in confession has negative amount of armor: -300. Armor displays as 0 but all attack has +300 damage bonus applied after regular multipliers, for triple attacks as Shot and Lunge all hits receive the damage bonus of +300.
2. The description about movement increase/decrease is not precise:
	* instead of "increases movement range by 200%" shall be 100% (2 times more)
	* instead of "loses 57% movement range" shall be 50% (2 times less)

## Quotes

* Now that we are alone, sweetheart, let me confess a little secret: I have never believed in any god. ~The Deacon, to his maid - 1894
* On your knees before me, so I may absolve you of your sins!
* Secrets. Must not know my secrets. The power of prayer protects me.
* Beg for forgiveness. A broken street pales before a broken soul.
* She is my servant, given by the heavens to reward my good work.
* Pretend the corpses are not the maids who came before. Pretend you won't join them.
* I do not hold the key. If you truly repented, you would be free.