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{{InfoboxHour
| title = Our Excellent Host
| card =
| quote =
| origin = Flesh
| titles = Ephemerality's Epicure, What-Soon-Is-Not
| names = The Valet
| aspects = {{Aspect|Winter}} {{Aspect|Grail}}
| owners = A Blessed Feline
}}
Our Excellent Host is the Hour of fleeting pleasure, of savoring each moment, of embracing the temporary and transient nature of joy. Nothing lasts forever, all things must end, so what keeps us from enjoying ourselves while we're here?
The Epicure carries a Dolorous Wound, that some day will kill him. Until then, he is planning a grand revel which will serve as his funeral, during which living and dead alike will experience the heights of delight. To prepare, he gathers the recently dead from the House, leading them to his garden where they may choose to aid him in the preparation. He frequently attempts to negotiate a peace between the Hours, as a war would surely disturb the Revel when time comes.
== Appearance ==
Our Excellent Host takes the form of a tall skeleton with the skull of a stag, adorned by a long red cape and wielding a staff. Within his ribcage, the Dolorous Wound takes the shape of a beehive from which blood-red honey drips.
== Principles ==
== History ==
As the Stag was wounded by the Huntsman and cast into the Fourth History, he cursed the History so that nothing would die until the Dolorous Wound that the Huntsman had inflicted had taken its toll. Him being a God-from-Stone, the winter-influenced Dolorous Wound was not enough to kill him, and he expected to be able to heal from it and return to the Mansus. The curse rendered mortals unable to die, as people simply healed from their wounds and got up. This sounded good in theory, but in practice it caused total societal collapse as the rulers of the Fourth History were unable to feed the massive population. In addition, the Grail-influenced blood flowing from the Stag's wounds mutated the land around it into a hungering wasteland, and people who tried to brave this wasteland innsearch of food mutated into horrid things as well. The History was in chaos until the enigmatic order of Grail-Long known as the Charcutiers emerged. Who they were, nobody knew. Some said they were people who had ascended through the Stag's blood, others said they were servants of the Hours who the people had assumed had abandoned them, and others still speculated they were former servants of the Stag who had emerged from hiding and turned against it. None truly cared, as all were starving, and the Charcutiers had food. In fact, the Charcutiers had a surplus of food, as the Charcutiers extracted it from the biggest source of food in the History: The ever-regenerating body of the Stag. For a time, all were fed, and all were equal. The ceaseless butchering of the Stag also kept it from healing from its Dolorous Wound, as it had planned.
This however changed with the development of the substance known as Red Nectar, distilled from the blood of the Stag. Red Nectar was a solution to the two remaining grand problems that faced the History after the food issue had been dealt with: The mutation-inducing blood of the Stag and the fact that a vast majority of people were crippled or scarred and yet remained alive and unable to die. Red Nectar had the power to heal such scars and mutilations. There was however a problem. There was too little Nectar for everyone. Some say this was because it was developed for the Succulent Glow in exchange for a bee-based food-and-Nectar delivery system, and the Charcutiers now paid most of the Nectar to the Glow. In any case, this marked the end of equality in the Fourth History. First Red Nectar, and then the flesh of the Stag began being sold to the highest bidder as the Charcutiers slowly grew corrupt and abandoned their principle of equality
One Charcutier, however, never abandoned the principle of equality. He saw the growing unrest caused by his brethren's corruption and the unequal distribution of Stag-flesh and Red Nectar and he knew a new Starveling War would soon erupt and most likely mark the end of the Charcutiers. He knew that there was only one way to restore the equality that was. Death. All were equal in death. He dug deeper into the body of the Stag than anyone had ever before, and he found the Dolorous Wound that had not yet taken its toll. He took the wintry Wound upon himself, his Long body being too weak to survive, and for the first time in quite a while, someone died in the Fourth History.
He died to the wintry wound, and therefore he broke the curse and gave people the ability to die once again. The second to perish was the Stag, who succumbed to his wounds inflicted by the Charcutiers. The bees that had been growing inside the Stag stripped both it and the dead Charcutier bare of flesh, flesh that had been heavily Winter-influenced by the power released from the Wound. For the first time in a shorter while, there was enough to feed the entire Fourth History. The people who ate this wintry flesh died, and a large mass of Dead appeared on the shores of the Sea of Mists seemingly out of nowhere, extatic to be dead and free from their broken bodies
Whether it was the combined extacy of the liberated Dead, the need of the Hours to keep the Stag from returning from Nowhere, or some power he inherited from the Stag is a secret to all but the Excellent Host, but what is known is that he died as the last true Charcutier and rose as the liberator of the Dead of the Fourth History.
== Worship ==
=== Cults ===
=== Mark ===
# '''Temptation: X''':
# '''Dedication: X''':
# '''Ascension: X''':
# '''Ascension: X''':
# '''Ascension: X''':
# '''Ascension: X''':
=== Servants ===
== Locations ==
=== The Mansus ===
The Garden of Ephemeral Delights, where the Dead who serve him now congregate to harvest the fruits of marvelous trees. It is here that the Revel will be held, when the fruits and the scraps of divine flesh that the Host has fished from the Sea of Mists will be served to living and dead alike.
=== The Histories ===
== Items ==
=== Tools ===
=== Ingredients ===
=== Influences ===
=== Books ===
=== Rites ===
== Relationships ==
[[Category:Hours (Vol. II)]]
