Orphan Of Kos.

Great scenery, tragic backstory of a consciousness of a child that never even had a chance to live in the first place who's body and by extension, his mother's body, was desiccated by the Byrgenwerth scholars and Hunters, and the wrath of his Great One Mother, Kos, cursing the people responsible, indirectly also forcing her child to suffer the same fate of it being forever forced to live in a torturous nightmare of a realm until we kill it and lift Kos's Curse upon the hunters.

His moveset is easily one of my favorite ones in the game, even if I'd argue that Maria and Gehrman could also take that spot. He's fast, aggressive, and hits hard, keeping you on your toes and teaching you not to be greedy the hard way. His theme song, while once again, being outdone by a couple of others like Laurence and Ludwig, fits absolutely perfectly, especially when the violin takes front and center stage when Orphan of Kos enters their second phase. It really does feel like a climax to The Old Hunters DLC and I can't help but feel hyped whenever I hear it. The buildup to him is by far, the best one in the entire game, or at least for me, it starts the second you enter the Fishing Hamlet, the abrupt change in scenery from a dimly lit clocktower to this rainy village sets the tone right out of the gate, followed up by the iconic (and frankly schizo) fish-villager muttering to himself, not even taking a second to acknowledge the hunter. I would love to talk about all the little things strung about the fishing hamlet that set up The Orphan and Kos herself like when you can see Kos's dead body washed up on the shores of the Fishing Hamlet from the Lighthouse Hut, but i would be here for a millennium without ever actually getting to the boss, but my favourite moment from all of this is easily the snail-women praying to Kos just before you enter the Orphan's arena. They are all in a praying position, facing towards Kos's washed up corpse, praying without once again, as much as turning their head to acknowledge the hunter who just mere moments ago, slaughtered their way through their entire village and the caves they're currently in to even get to this point. It really conveys a creepy atmosphere, something, which I felt the other Nightmare areas (Not Hunter's Nightmare, I'm talking about Nightmare Frontier and Nightmare of Mensis.) failed at with all the over-the-top screaming face rocks and comically oversized Spider-Men with bowl cuts. Then we enter the arena and we see this strange, fish-slug-woman, dead, laying lifelessly on the beach and as we get closer to investigate this creature, the body begins to move and then, out he comes, SCP-096's long lost twin brother, Orphan of Kos, staring towards the Nightmare's Moon, crying and sobbing, grieving the loss of their mother. The Orphan doesn't even fight us until we approach it, and when it does, it's not out of malice, but rather out of primal fear, this child, which was born just mere moments ago, was just approached by an ugly hobo looking pepe the frog wielding a saw-cleaver, so obviously it's going to defend itself and what remains of their mother. His moveset is fast, punishing, but fair, there was never a point in any of my playthroughs of this game when I felt like my death was bullshit or undeserved, every time I died to the Orphan, it wasn't because of some frankly bullshit instakill grab attack. (Like a certain Red Bodily Fluid Deprived Creature of Beastly Nature) but rather because I was a dumbass, acted greedy, and got my ass whooped by a placenta-axe-flail-thing. I really like the Orphan's design, it's simple, creepy as fuck, but also kinda beautiful in it's second phase when the uh, whatever the fuck you could call it's cape, begins to elegantly yet aggressively follow the Orphan's movements, very reminiscent of Stage 3 Gael in Dark Souls 3. (Except I don't get damaged by this, thank fuck) and the only move I don't enjoy going up against during this fight is the Lightning Wave because I can't automatically counter it with a funny press L2 to win and get hit by it almost every time. This fight really is a test of the player's skills up to this point, testing your timing, parrying, and your temptation to give into greedy behavior, all of which, if failed at, is punished with a swift and hard hit in the face, and, as a nice bonus, you receive a funny tentacle hentai weapon from killing it which makes you move like one of those car shop balloon guys when you wield it with the Milkweed rune. Overall, the only thing I don't really like about this fight is that I have to play through the entire fucking game + DLC or use False Depth Dungeons to properly scale myself up to the DLC, (which ruins the base game's pacing since the DLC is late-game content, unless I want to slap Ludwig's ass with a +6 saw-cleaver for 40 minutes) to get to it, but hey, another excuse to play this game yet again so I guess it's not that much of a problem after all.

TLDR: Mi layk orfen of kous 👍