The King's Man: Part 1 (Patreon)

"There was once a monster that was to lead its master's regal procession. First the monster came as a herald, then its hungry masters. So fierce were the monster's masters that it never thought to protect its own back, knowing what horrors lay behind it."

If you wanted to point an arrow at the richest and most narratively interesting creations in the Kingdom Death universe, then you'd point at The Dragon King; but if you ended up pointing at the King's Man – well you wouldn't be completely wrong. The story and thematic design of this monster is one of the strongest in the entire series, and in addition it's certainly got the strongest lore connections to the story experienced during People of the Lantern.

Before we deep dive into that, let us very quickly work through the lore of the masters (multiple) mentioned in the King's Man text above.

The Hand

The Hand are the King's highest ranking guard. They see through the eyes of every Kingsmen that patrols the King's territory. The Hands are highly intelligent and master swordsmen.

There was once an entity that knew everything, but never spoke. For every secret that escaped, it became weaker and its enemies stronger.

The King

The rhythmic scape and clang of the King's Men's march heralds the arrival of the King. The King's ornate carapace is wrapped in shifting robes that hide the ravenous creature within. Everyone in the King's path is consumed without mercy as the King's Men look on from behind their passive, cherub masks.

The Scribe

The Scribe is the power behind the Kings and their armies. To men, he is a god made flesh, appearing in repose atop his throne with his tome hoisted by a grotesque tableau of slaves. In his book his words are writ into reality, sewing the seeds of small human settlements into existence with the stroke of his quill. Once the humans grow and reproduce the Scribe will return to harvest his crop.

Now the reason for all these pieces of flavour text and the interconnectedness between them is because the original place for the entire story of the King's Man, the Hand, the King and the Scribe was as the true ending to the People of the Lantern story. The cancelled 'Lantern Festival' story was intended to take the settlement into the post-Watcher portion of the settlement's story where the survivors would gradually move up the food chain until they got to slap their literal creator in the face for the insult of their existence.

These days, as you are all aware, the story has been abandoned and the King & Hand have been transplanted across to the new Gambler's Chest story. These kind of retcons are common in the development of Kingdom Death's content, so it's not a big deal. It is however surprising to not have any announcement of the King's Men being involved in the Gambler storyline given the appearance of both of their direct masters in the campaign. What that exactly means; we'll find out when the new campaign turns up; but we do know that if it matches the past trends – we're going to require a lot of adjusting of the current lore to fit the new pieces.

People of the Lantern

In isolation, the King's Man is the most common nemesis monster that the survivors can encounter during the campaign with a total of four potential appearances. (The second most common is the Butcher with three) – it's also the first nemesis monster with a story event that introduces it; and this sets off one of the most interesting external stories. Where the settlement is being groomed by the King's Men and the Hand for some nefarious purpose (it's to prepare the settlement for the King's consumption – something that never happens). This means that we get to know a lot about the King's Men – they're all former survivors, transformed by the King's Curse into their new form.

The King's Men is one of the strongest narrative creatures in the game; with every single portion of them building on the core concepts established during the fight. Unfortunately, this strength of narrative and theme are not carried across to the mechanics, but here in this article we're just looking at the thematic portion of the creature's design.

What Maketh A King's Man?

Manners of course is the correct answer; but in the case of the King's Men – we mean something more literal. What is the composition of the King's Man?

Well, the short and simple version is that they are the twisted remains of a survivor, contorted into a new form with their armor constructed from the substance of their very bodies by the virus that is known as the King's Curse. What the King's Curse exactly is, we don't know at this point, but its behaviour is something similar to a virus; where it reprograms the body cells to reproduce in a new fashion – it's like a malignant form of virotherapy, instead of curing diseases however, it exists to try and ensure that any fallen King's Man is replaced.

What happens to a survivor when this transformation begins to grip them is rather horrific, portions of their body are twisted into a new configuration as the curse turns their bone and blood into a hard plated exoskeleton, this process generates a huge amount of heat due to the speed it takes place at. The bone of the survivors body is literally pushed to the outside:

“Your thigh bones expand and hollow, while the flesh from your legs packs itself inside the bone. “

What this means is the King's Men may end up with two skeletons – their new plated metal exoskeleton constructed from the calcium of their bones and the iron in their blood, and a weaker version of their original endoskeleton on the inside. There likely needs to be this second skeleton located inside because exoskeletons, such as those used by insects, are incredibly powerful and useful for very small creatures, but they limit the size that one can grow to due to the increasing weight requirement. The largest insects we know of got to around a weight of  approximately 150 to 240 grams (Meganeura, aka Giant Dragonflies). However, there are a bunch of other factors that also limit insect size – and one of the key ones is oxygen content in the atmosphere. High oxygen environments allow for larger insects to grow – given that the oblivion mosquito is a thing, one can assume that the Kingdom Death world has an exceptionally high oxygen content level.

Regardless of the truth of the matter; what we do know is that the King's Man armor is constructed from the very bodies of its wearer and that inside contains very little or even no bones at all. The survivors are almost literally turned inside out by this process and their organs are torn and twisted up – with the survivor's stomach acid being spread across most of the inside of the body.

This is what gives the King's Man acidic blood; they end up with their organs being converted into a new configuration and their stomach is now employed as part of a new defense mechanism. Like an acidic tube of toothpaste.

It's worth mentioning that acid as a defense mechanism is not unusual on our planet; one of the mammalian examples of this is hipposudoric acid; an acid secreted by the Hippopotamus (like it didn't need more ways to be terrifying, but hey – on top of being the best animal killer of humans, it also sweats acid). Yes, hipposudoric acid, that's what it's called. Fun right? Have fun explaining to someone that hippo's skin turns a reddish colour during the summer because they secret an acid that works as a kind of sunscreen and it's called hipposudoric acid. I am sure they'd be impressed by that fact.

Of course what the King's Man produces is a relatively weak form of Hydrochloric Acid (we know it's weak because even leather shields protect against it completely) – but this switch to an acidic based defense mechanism pushes the King's Man once again towards the insectile portion of our animal kingdom. Invertebrates tend to employ chemical defense strategies more than any other portion of the animal kingdom (not exclusively though, the now extinct Spitfire Bird was known to spit acid at predators, because it was a badass).

What this means is one can think of the King's Man as being a pseudo-insectile conversion of the survivors, which fits neatly into their role as the 'soldiers' and 'farmers' of the King/Scribe/Hand Hivemind (the survivors are the food).

The King's Men are, just like the Hand, entirely mute – the only noise they make is their armor, movement and weapons. This theme of silence/muteness is nicely tied across both showdowns and one hopes that the King continues this theme. We'll see more of that when we drill into the showdown. Including a great example of when themes are translated into poor mechanics!

But before that, we should also dive into their introductory event, which is one of the really thematic world building moments in the original campaign.

Armored Strangers

“You are visited by enigmatic figures, fully-enclosed in armor. They march silently through the settlement. The only noise is a metallic clang, as they pausebefore each survivor and tap their lantern halberds against the ground. The survivors have no choice but to helplessly await their mute deliberations.

Add King's Man to the nemesis encounter list. The Strangers Count People and take action based on the population total.”

The results of this vary and depends on the population, what the King's Men care about is a population that isn't too big, because large population settlements would be a problem for a King to devour (can you imagine a King trying to handle one of my ten thousand+ population settlements? It would probably pop from over feeding if they didn't collectively hand shove its helmet where the sun doesn't shine).

When the population is small the settlement gains the Guidepost innovation, which represents a lantern halberd jammed into the ground and it has a bunch of benefits – helping departing survivors,  signaling to The Hand during the Regal Visit that the settlement was struggling when the King's Men inspected (The Hand then sometimes helps the survivors in a significant fashion). The guide post also seems to be disliked by Satan-X (Stan) and also holds some import to the Bone Witches.

In the case of Satan, this is because it is either slightly opposed to the plans of the Scribe or it enjoys screwing with him (probably both of these and more besides); in the case of the Bone Witches though, this isn't as clear and it's something that maybe we'll learn more about in the near future.

Most of the time for the small population settlement, the King's Men will gift survivors with resources and then plan to return in a few years in order to see if they have grown sufficiently.

On the other hand, if the population is eight or higher then that is the point where the King's Men become concerned that it's too large (there seems to be no population number where the King's Men are content, I guess one can never please them). When this happens they will tend to do something that most of the time requires resistance from the settlement. If they decide you should lose 5 population, then there is almost no reason to not try resisting (because resisting will cause a loss of 4 population at max and also if you have Graves it will net more endeavors). Losing the survivor with the highest courage is a situational decision, it depends on the value of that high courage survivor – but typically one experienced is worth multiple 0 Hunt XP ones. Likewise losing the innovation is a bit of a serious setback, because not only do you lose settlement progression, but it adds a small amount to the deck bloat and that is something that isn't desirable. However the 10 roll is pretty decent, I'd trade one population for the Guidepost innovation because I get to choose who to lose.

So that's a bit of a look at the King's Man outside of the showdown, and next time we'll get into the showdown itself. Including the fun tactics that allow you to cheese the King's Man without almost any risk to the survivors and also a discussion of the beneficial parts of the showdown, because there are some good things to get from this showdown!