The Hanged Man
The day wears on…
We slink our way through a mirror-black gulley, the walls reflecting dark mimicries of our exhausted faces back at us.
At the far mouth of the ravine, we discover an abandoned gallows with precisely as many nooses as there are members in our party. We turn back, refusing to engage with the sickening omen — only to find our passage blocked. The gully behind has become a sheer rock face, tall and shining.
Just as we begin to believe that we are going mad, a hideous scream sounds behind us. We watch in horror as images of our own corpses fade into view upon the gallows, each poised beneath its respective noose. Below, a cowled hangman now stands. His voice is a terrible growl beneath his hood.
“A terrible game is life. A terrible game is death. If you wish yourselves to live, you must play such a game with me.”
The Challenge
We must play the Hangman’s game, or watch ourselves be hanged.
Find a blank piece of paper and a pencil/pen.
The Reader will play the Hangman.
The Hangman secretly chooses a five-letter word and marks five ‘blanks’ on the paper. Next to the blanks, the Hangman draws a complete scaffold and noose — but does not draw the hanged man in the noose.
The other travellers must guess the Hangman’s word by guessing letters. For every correct letter they guess, the Hangman will add all instances of that letter to the blanks on the paper.
For every letter the travellers guess that does not occur in the word, the Hangman will add a section of the hanged man to the noose on the paper: first the head, second the body, third and fourth the two arms, fifth and sixth the two legs.
At any point, the travellers may instead guess a whole word instead of a letter. If the word is incorrect, the Hangman adds another part to the drawing. If the guess is correct, the game ends.
If the Hangman completes the six-part drawing of the hanged man before the word is guessed, then the game enters ‘overtime’. Travellers receive two more additional turns to guess the Hangman’s word. Once these turns are exhausted, the game ends.
The game ends when the travellers guess the correct word, or eight turns (including ‘overtime’) have passed.
Success. If the travellers successfully guess the Hangman’s word before eight turns are up, the Challenge is passed.
Failure. If no traveller guesses the correct word before eight turns are up, then the Challenge is failed.
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————If the Challenge is passed and the word was guessed before the drawing was complete, the traveller who guessed correctly wins the Blessing of the Hanged Man. If the word was guessed in overtime, the Hangman receives the Blessing of the Hanged Man.
If the Challenge was failed, all travellers suffer the Curse of the Hanged Man. Take this spirit's card and place it in a designated area on the table so everyone can see it. If this is the party's third Curse, click here.
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We watch the hangman kick the buckets from beneath our phantom corpses. They tumble from the scaffold, decaying into dust.
“You’ll join them soon enough,” croaks the hangman. Then, turning, he and his scaffold become nothing once more.