Crossroad Hanged

Overview

Some Human lords of the cradle-web hang outlaws, and anyone else who crossed them badly enough, at a crossroads and leave the bodies on the gibbet as a warning. Those dead are buried without rites, if they are buried at all, and nobody grieves for them in public. That is how remnants form, and the Crossroad Hanged are among the commonest.

Appearance

By night a shape hangs from an empty gibbet, turning slowly though no wind blows, and is gone when a lantern is lifted. Travellers hear the creak of a rope, a choked breath, a voice repeating the words it said on the ladder. Some see a figure standing under the gibbet with its head at a wrong angle, or walking beside a cart for a few paces with a noose trailing from its neck. The air at the crossroads is colder than the road on either side and smells of hemp and damp earth.

Habitat and Range

They linger at gibbets and crossroads where executions have been carried out, and around the unhallowed ground beside them where hanged bodies are put. They are found across the Human cradle-web, wherever lords and towns hang at the crossroads.

Behaviour and Temperament

Each holds the feeling it died with, usually rage or terror, and turns it on those who pass. Most only frighten. The stronger drag: horses balk and will not pass, a traveller's feet go heavy, a man walking alone at night feels hands at his throat. They seem to know the rope-makers, hangmen, and gawkers who were there, and are harder on them.

Abilities

They chill, frighten, and move small things, as remnants do; the strong ones can drain a passer and leave them weak for days. What grows under the gibbet is part of their lore: the forked root folk call Gallows Root, believed to grow from a hanged man's last breath.

Uses and Dangers

They are dangerous mostly to night travellers and to the lonely. Their uses are dark ones: necromancers buy what grows under the gibbet and the rope that hanged a man, and some go to the crossroads to speak with the dead there. Carters time their journeys to pass the crossroads by day.

Lore and Belief

Humans believe a hanged man's ghost cannot leave the crossroads because it does not know which road to take, and so crossroads burials are thought to hold the dead in place. Some villages hold a quiet rite of their own for the hanged, against the lord's will, and say the crossroads goes still afterwards; that is close to the truth of remnants, which settle when they are grieved. Sanctified clergy burn Gallows Root wherever they find it.

Outlaws of the cradle-web meet at the crossroads gibbets because nobody else will, and their own tale is of the outlaw who sat a night under his hanged brother and was told by the ghost where the lord's silver was kept.

Where It Appears

• Overview: The Risen Dead