Heresiarch



The Heresiarch is a boss enemy from Hexen that appears as a large demonic sorcerer. Three mana container-like cubes circle his head. He makes a cameo aat the end of The Dome of D'Sparil in Heretic and appears as an enemy at the end of two hubs: Hub 3: Heresiarch's Seminary and Hub 4: Castle of Grief. In Hexen: Deathkings of the Dark Citadel, there is one at the beginning of the Constable's Gate hub and another in Chantry, one of the maps in the Nave hub. He has 5000 hitpoints making him just as tough as Korax himself.

The Heresiarch can cast four different spells:


 * Create a barrier that makes him invincible and deflects projectiles.
 * Shoot a stream of purple fireballs in a waving pattern.
 * Summon two fireballs that bounce along the floor and home in on the target.
 * When his health is low, he can summon Dark Bishops.

There are three cubes orbiting slightly above the Heresiarch, and it is these cubes from which the Heresiarch draws his power. The purple cube allows the Heresiarch to use attack #2 (as listed above), the blue cube allows the Heresiarch to generate his reflective/invulnerable shield, and the green cube allows the Heresiarch to summon Dark Bishops. If the Heresiarch enters a hallway or a room which is tall enough for him to fit in but not tall enough for the orbiting cubes, the cubes will disappear, and the Heresiarch is rendered harmless (he will continue to attempt to cast spells, but there will be no 'swooshing' sound effect as they came from the cubes, and the Heresiarch will no longer be able to use any of his abilities).

For players using Baratus (the Fighter), the Heresiarch can be hard to kill because he can only be hurt while his barrier is down. However, players using Parias (the Cleric) can kill the Heresiarch easily with large numbers of gas clouds (using fléchettes which will hurt the Heresiarch even when his barrier is up. For players using Daedolon (the Mage), repeated pummeling with the Sapphire Wand, preferably from behind cover, is a slow but sure way to bring the Heresiarch down.

When the Heresiarch dies, the cubes will fall to the floor and bounce several times before exploding. The explosions are very powerful and the blast radius is much larger than is apparent from the explosion sprites. Extra danger comes from the fact that a player might mistake the cubes for mana containers.

The Heresiarch incurs splash damage from its own purple missiles. However, the ZDoom source port changes this behavior so that he does not.

Uses outside of Hexen

 * The Heresiarch is the final boss in Void by Mike "Cyb" Watson.
 * The Heresiarch also appears in the EarthBound Doom modification.
 * There is a random chance that the Heresiarch will replace the Cyberdemon in Æons of Death.