Pudge Lore

Pudge is the Butcher: a huge, patched-together brute who walks the battlefield with a hook, a cleaver and an appetite that has only grown with time. His story paints him as a worker more than a warrior. He cleans up after war, and he has come to enjoy the job far too much.

Who is Pudge in Dota 2?

Pudge is a butcher who never stopped working. Long before he became a hero, he cut meat for a king. Now he roams the battlefield, pulls his enemies close and carves them apart. He speaks with a rough Cockney voice, and his most famous line, "Fresh meat!", tells you how he sees everyone around him.

Where does Pudge come from?

In his youth, Pudge served King Brandalon as the royal butcher. The king's rule was a bloody one, and Pudge remembers those years as the best of his life. Few people who lived through that reign are still alive to talk about it. Pudge is one of them.

He will not talk about his family. Anyone who asks gets an angry answer, so the rest of his past stays a mystery.

What are the Fields of Endless Carnage?

The Fields of Endless Carnage lie far to the south of Quoidge. A curse hangs over them: nothing there can rot or break down. The dead never go back to the soil, however deep the grave. The bodies simply pile up.

That is where Pudge found his calling. He works through the night, cutting the fallen into pieces and stacking them so the field is clear for the next day's battle. Carrion birds follow him and wait for him to cut their food into bites small enough to swallow. His blades, the story says, only get sharper the longer he uses them.

Over the ages, the butchery stopped being just a job. Pudge always liked the cutting. Now he also likes what comes after it, and he eats what he carves.

Why is Pudge called the Butcher?

The name is literal. Pudge was a butcher by trade, first for a king and later for the dead of an endless war. He treats a fight the way he treats a carcass: hook it, pull it in and take it apart piece by piece. The title fits his job, his tools and his habits.

How does the story show in his abilities?

Each part of his kit echoes the tale. The links lead to what each ability does today, with its values per level.

• Meat Hook is the tool of his trade. A butcher's hook becomes a weapon that drags a victim across the battlefield to his feet.
• Rot wraps him in a cloud of decay. It is a fitting twist: in the Fields nothing could rot, so Pudge brings the rot with him.
• Meat Shield covers him in a thick layer of flesh that soaks up damage.
• Flesh Heap, his innate ability, makes him stronger as enemy heroes die near him. The Butcher grows on the fallen, just as he did in the Fields.
• Dismember is the cleaver at work. He holds one victim in place and carves away at them.

If you want to put the story into practice, start with how to hook from the fog and how to use Dismember.

What do we still not know?

The story leaves gaps. It never says how Pudge got from the king's kitchens to the Fields. Community wikis note that he left the Fields before the Rumusque Clerics came to purge the land, but nobody knows why. His family stays a closed subject.

Those gaps are part of his menace. He is a giant who steps out of the fog with a hook, and nobody dares to ask about his past.