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Viceroy prime and warlord of the Madness who dies on his own surgical table chasing the Beautiful Place.
The last Viceroys left standing in The Madness Castle, Houston is found not defending his throne but strapped to his own operating table in the Surgical Theater, robes and mask gone, revealing the multi-limbed half-bug, half-monster underneath. The Grease Monkey is surgically splicing him nerve by nerve to the peeled corpse of the changeling Namico, suspended upside down above him. He begs Carl not to interfere, offering him victory outright if he is only allowed to finish his life's work, and reveals he is prime of the Viceroys purely because he has made the most scientific discoveries — most of them using this machine.
He rings the room in chained Containment Breach Trap Mark IV modules keyed to a dead man's switch on his own life, making him unkillable without incinerating Burcu too. As Carl frees her, Houston pleads that the answer is The Beautiful Place, that the changelings are the key and it was always here, cycle after cycle, right under their mandibles. He dies sobbing in triumph — "I found you" — is revived by a thrown Fine Healing Potion, and dies for good when Carl's Gloom Wraith Phase passes through and unravels him. His fall ends the Madness and hands all its assets to The Princess Posse.
Stripped of robes and mask on the table: a horrific multi-limbed creature, half insect and half monster, with mandibles, its lower guts slopping onto the floor as its own machine works on it.
Prime of the Viceroys and warlord of the Madness, whose death triggers the Peeling Phase.