The Pumpkin King of the Rotting Field

Every year, on the night when the veil between the worlds is thinnest, the Rotting Field behind the village glows orange with a thousand burning lanterns. No one has lit them. Among the twisted vines and the moldering pumpkins a figure rises with a hollowed-out pumpkin for a head, a crown of roots, and two eyes of fire: the Pompoenkoning.

He bids for souls, not by force but through game, riddle, and temptation. His will-o'-the-wisps dance across the field and lure the villagers one by one into the dark, where they become entangled in his games and never return. Every extinguished lantern is a soul he has already harvested, and pitifully few still burn.

You follow the will-o'-the-wisps through rows of rotting pumpkins, endure the three trials of the Pompoenkoning, a game, a riddle, and a temptation, and free the villagers already ensnared in his vines. Along the way you unravel the old bargain the village once struck with him, and the price that has gone unpaid for generations.

Whoever survives his three trials before the last lantern gutters out saves the village. Will you beat the Pompoenkoning at his own game before the dawn drags him back beneath the earth, or will your souls burn from tonight on as lanterns in the Rotting Field, waiting for next year?