After the hail has smashed the roof and splintered the glass of the Cathedral windows, it melts again into the earth, like a dying lamb in the desert sun. Such is the parable of the madman.
Jinxes
Only 1 jinxed character can be in play.
The Demon cannot have the Heretic ability.
Only 1 jinxed character can be in play.
Only 1 jinxed character can be in play.
Only 1 jinxed character can be in play.
Only 1 jinxed character can be in play.
Only 1 jinxed character can be in play.
How to run it (Storyteller)
How to play
- Reveal early and loudly: your value is in forcing the town to consciously play toward the flipped win condition, and a Heretic who sits quiet causes their own team to lose by playing normally.
- Understand your inverted win condition concretely: good wins by keeping the Demon alive until final three, or by never executing the Demon — and evil wins by executing the Demon, so evil must be redirected away from standard Demon-hunting strategy.
- Coordinate with good players to protect the Demon from nomination and execution, framing it as the path to a good-team victory rather than an act of sabotism.
- Track who knows your flip is real versus who doubts you: skeptics will play normally and hand evil the win, so spend political capital convincing them rather than chasing information.
- The most common mistake is treating yourself like a normal outsider who hides — you have no ability that generates information, so your entire contribution is social and organizational, and silence is fatal to your team.
How to bluff as the Heretic
- Claim Heretic only when evil already has strong board control and a fake flip claim creates maximum confusion — it burns a critical outsider slot and inverts how town evaluates every nomination, which is deeply disruptive.
- As an evil Heretic bluff, tell good players that 'protecting the Demon' is actually good strategy, nudging them to waste days shielding the real Demon under the guise of the inverted win condition.
- The tell that exposes a fake Heretic is that a real Heretic pushes hard to keep the Demon alive while still claiming to be good — if you as evil are bluffing it, you must commit to this uncomfortable position or your story falls apart when town asks why you're defending the Demon.
- Use the bluff to sow doubt about win conditions mid-game: even if town doesn't fully believe you, forcing a debate about whether the Heretic is real costs the good team execution tempo.
Key interactions
Only one of Heretic or Evil Twin can be in play due to a jinx. This matters at script-building: if you see Evil Twin on the script, Heretic cannot also be present, so players can safely rule out a combined Heretic-plus-Evil-Twin scenario during the game.
If the Politician is most responsible for their own team losing after the Heretic flips the result, they can swap alignments and claim the win — this means a good Politician who accidentally helps evil win (which Heretic makes the good-team outcome) could pivot and steal victory, making the Politician a critical late-game piece to watch.
A poisoned Heretic has their ability disabled, reverting the game to normal win conditions without any announcement — evil can exploit this silently to win on standard terms while good players still believe the flip is active.