From the Ancestor's Memoirs:

The Necromancer:
Mastery over life and death was chief among my early pursuits. I began in humility, but my ambition was limitless. Who could have divined the prophetic import of something as unremarkable as a twitch in the leg of dead rat?

I entertained a delegation of experts from overseas, eager to plumb the depths of their knowledge and share with them certain techniques and alchemical processes I had found to yield wondrous and terrifying results. Having learned all I could from my visiting guests, I murdered them as they slept.

I brought my colleagues back with much of their intellect intact. A remarkable triumph for even the most experienced necromancer. Freed from the trappings of their humanity, they applied their terrible trade anew. The dead reviving the dead. On and on. Down the years. Forever.

The Prophet:
Excavations beneath the manor was well underway, when a particularly ragged indigent arrived in the Hamlet. This filthy, toothless miscreant posted an uncanny knowledge of my ambitions and prognosticated publicly, that, left unchecked, I would soon unleash doom upon the world.

This raving creature had to be silenced, but doing so proved maddeningly impossible. How had he survived the stockades, the icy waters and knives i delivered so enthusiastically into his back? How had he returned, time and time again, to rouse the townsfolk with his wild speculations and prophecies?

Finally, resign to his uncommon corporeal resilience, I lured him to the dig. There, I showed him the thing and detailed the full extent of my plans. Triumphantly, I watched, as he tore his eyes from their sockets and ran shrieking into the shadows, wailing maniacally, that the end was upon us all.

The Hag:
I had collected many rare and elusive volumes on ancient herbal properties and was set to enjoy several weeks immersed in comfortable study. My work was interrupted, however, by a singularly striking young woman, who insisted on repeated calls to the house.

Her knowledge of horticulturism and its role in various arcane practices impressed me greatly. My licentious impulse gave way to a genuine professional respect, and together we began to plant, harvest, and brew.

As time wore on, her wild policy of self-experimentation grew intolerable. She quaffed all manner of strange fungii, herbs and concoctions, intent on gaining some insight into the horror we both knew to be growing beneath us. The change in her was appalling, and, no longer able to stomach it, I sent her to live in the Weald, where her wildness would be welcomed.

The Cannon:
Simple folk are by their nature loquacious, and the denizens of the Hamlet were no exception. It was not long before rumors of my morbid genius and secret of excavations began to fuel local legend. In the face of my increasingly egregious flaunting of public taboos, awe turned to ire, and demonstrations were held in the town square

The wild whispers of heresy roused the rabble to violent action. Such was the general air of rebellion, that even my generous offer of gold to the local constabulary was rebuffed. To reassert my rule, I sought out unscrupulous men skilled in the application of force. Tight-lipped and terrifying, these mercenaries brought with them a war machine of terrible implication.

Eager to end the tiresome domestic distraction, I instructed my newly formed militia of hardened bandits, brigands and killers to go forth and do their work. Compliance and order were restored, and annoysome population of the Hamlet was culled to more... Manageable numbers.

The Swine King:
The ways and rituals of blood sacrifice are difficult to master. Those from beyond require a physical vessel, if they are to make the crossing into our reality. The timing of the chants is imperative. Without the proper utterances and precise intervals the process can fail spectacularly.

My first attempts at summoning were crude and the results disappointing. I soon found however, that the type and condition of the host's meat was a critical factor. The best results came from pigs, whose flesh is most like that of men.

The great thing I had managed to bring through was brutish and stupid. Moreover, it required prodigious amounts of meat to sustain itself. But this is only a trifling concern. After all, I had a village full of it.

The Flesh:
My zeal for blood rituals and summoning rites had begun to ebb, as each attempt invariably brought only failure and disappointment. Progress was halting, and the rapidly accumulating surplus of wasted flesh had become... Burdensome.

I could not store such a prodigious amount of offal, not could I rid myself of it easily, possessed, as it was, by unnamable things from outer spheres. When excavations beneath the manor broke through into an ancient network of aqueducts and tunnels, I knew I had found a solution to the problem of disposal.

The spasmodically squirming, braying and snorting half-corpses were heaped each upon the other until at last I was rid of them. The Warrens had become a landfill of snout and hoof, bristle and bone. A mountainous, twitching mass of misshapen flesh, fusing itself together, in the darkness.

The Siren:
My lofty position wasn't always accompanied by the fear of office, and there was a time, when I could walk the streets or raise a glass at the tavern, without concern for molestation. Faithful, as the tide, one precocious village waif made it her hobby to shadow my every errand. It was charming, then. Troublesome, later.

In financial desperation I've struck a bargain with the ancient things, that surfaced in search of sacrifice, when the moon was right. Their price was the delivery of an obscure idol and one other item of troubling portent. The pact struck, my new found accomplices slipped silently beneath the brackish water. A fearful stirring at the edge of the torchlight betrayed a familiar witness and gifted me with malign inspiration.

Under the blood moon I lured my wide-eyed prey to the pier's edge. Before she could properly appreciate her position I clamped down a manacle, chaining her to the leering idol. A small push was sufficient to send both into the icy waters. And one at length the tide receded, jewels of the most magnificent grandeur lay scattered upon the shore.

The Drowned Crew:
Prying eyes had become a nuisance along the Old Road, and so I undertook to receive my most curious deliveries by a way of marine shipments. A sheltered jetty was accessible by a narrow stone stair off the back of the manor, and the discrete system of pulleys could hoist even the heaviest prizes up the rock face from the securely tied dingy below.

I employed a crew of particularly unsavory mariners, who, for a time, sailed the four corners at my behest, retrieving many valuable artifacts, relics and rare texts. Predictably, they increased their tariffs to counter my intense stipulation of secrecy. Such resources had long been exhausted, of course, and so I prepared an alternative payment.

While the greedy dogs slept off their revelry, I hexed their anchor with every twisted incantation I could master, imbuing it with the weight of my ambition and my contempt for their crude extortion. At the witching hour, the anchor pulled with preternatural force, dragging craft and crew down into the depths. They must have cried out, but no sound escaped the swirling black waters...

Comments on Boss quests:

The Necromancer:
A Devil walks these halls. Only the mad or the desperate go in search of him.
Towering. Fierce. Terrible. Nightmare made material.
With no living sinew to actuate them, will these walking bones finally fail?
Even the reanimated bones can fell. Even the dead can die again.

The Hag:
There's method in the wild corruption here. It bears a form most wretched and malevolent.
Twisted and maniacal, a slathering testament to the powers of corruption.
Leave her corpse to rot, consumed by the spores she spawned.
The wood is still poisoned, the way is still blocked, but, less people will be eaten.

The Swine King:
A nameless abomination, a testament to my failures. It must be destroyed!
It is a travesty. A blundering mountain of hatred and rage.
This thing is even more horrible in death. Liquefaction cannot come soon enough.
How many rats will it take to gnaw through a ton of putrid flesh?

The Prophet:
The echoes of his mindless teetering reverberate maddeningly.
The madman hides there, behind the pews, spouting his mindless drivel.
Did he foresee his own demise? I care not, so long as he remains dead.
In life, his claims to precognition were dubious at best, in death, they are ridiculous.

The Cannon:
The smell of sulfur and gunpowder hangs in the air. The war machine is close.
A marvel of technology, the engine of destruction!
The corpse of twisted metal and splintered wood... At home amongst the headstones.
The brigands are UNDONE. Our family crest is once again the symbol of strength.

The Flesh:
The thing is more terrible, than I can describe. An incoherent jumbled organ, sinew and bone.
Squirming, contorting and ever expanding. This horror must be unmade!
It is as grotesque in death as it was in life...
Its destruction is a small consolation, giving the implications of its terrible existance.

The Siren:
I always wondered what become to the unfortunate little waif.
The aquatic devils remade the poor girl in their image. Now, she is their queen and their slave!
Tedious matriarch! Vile queen of the aquatic depths! She has no place in the sane world!
Seafaring trade, the bloodlife of any port, can resume again, now that the routes are safe.

The Drowned Crew:
The poor devils, chained and drowning, for eternity...
Even in death, the captain shouts his orders and his crew obeys!
They are cursed to float forever, deep in the swirling blackness, far beyond the light's reach.
Finally, a sailors' death for captain and crew... Fitting.