Monster of the Week: Hangman Tree

Monster of the Week, April 28

I'm as surprised as you are that I keep publishing these things.

Hangman Tree

When a person is hanged unjustly, the psychic wound of that injustice marks the world. If the person being hanged unjustly is both magically gifted and willing to call on the dark powers to avenge their suffering, those dark powers are more than willing to grant the wishes of the supplicant and gain more presence on the material plane.

These dark powers take the blood and the remains of the sacrifice, their rage and hatred, and the rage and hatred of the mobs that killed them and combine them with the earth itself and their own dark nature. From the ground where the body of the unjustly killed is buried or left to rot, the earth gives birth to a twisted, leafless tree. Eventually, the tree sprouts long filaments with eyes on the end of them, a great maw cracks in the trunk, and a misty gas issues from the tree.

The misty gas first summons animals, whose blood feeds the tree. Then it calls to it the livestock of nearby settlements, devouring those and growing huge and powerful before it calls the children, elderly, and adults of the nearby settlements in turn to fed on the flesh of the people of the community that gave birth to it.

Those who try to slay the tree find it extremely hard to damage, able to send out a powerful tongue to drag prey to it, and able to bewitch anything near it to come in and feed themselves to the tree.

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