Next each player draws three cards off the top. Again, if they’re worth a lick, one of them is gonna be a Home card. Home cards will be where the character’s from, or else where the story starts: the Far Yonder Mountains or the Cold Dark City or the Long Lonely Prairie. A setting helps round the character out, it does. You have a person and you have a home, then you got the beginnings of a story.

After the Home cards is when things get trickier. Each Parsnit player draws seven cards, one at a time. These are called the Journey cards, and they’re cast one at a time on the other player’s character. A Journey card can be anything, really: a place like the Bramble or the Craggly Hills, a different Person card, something trickier too, like Didn’t It Rain? or Lilyswamps Bloom or When Your Way Grows Dark. Of course, once a player lays down a Journey card, the other player has to Orate around it. Change the story, adapt, be quick in his mind, make something good. Because you can tell real quick when the Orating goes bad. You get bored, for one. Or worse, the sitting witch gets bored. You’ll start sweating, you’ll get a burning feeling in your feet. I’ve heard tell about men gone running straight out the room to dunk their heads in a bucket of water, they were feeling so sick from a round of bad Orating. No bigger shame is there for a Parsnit player.

Once the Journey cards come into play, a Parsnit duel is hard to describe, because there isn’t any standard Parsnit duel. Depending on the players and how good they are, a duel could go a million different ways. It could last twenty minutes or two days—who knows? The only rule is you can’t take a break, and you can’t go to sleep. If the witch can stay awake (and witches have been known to stay awake for weeks if they so desire) then the match carries on, players laying down cards against one another, adapting around them, changing the story. Eventually the two Person cards have to meet. More cards will be drawn, places named, conflicts brought in. Side characters, supporting cards. Heaven help you if a duelist plays a Red Bride against you. Near impossible to beat a Red Bride. She walks right in the room and lays waste to near everything. And if you’re not careful, she’ll steal the story right from you, and you’ll lose. Red Bride’s the hardest card to draw, even for an experienced Parsnit player. She bides her own time, only showing up when she best feels like it. As I was saying, Parsnit cards tend to have a mind of their own.

Fine and good, but how do you know when there’s a winner?

The answer to that is obvious. How do you know when a story’s finished, when it’s any good? You just know, is the answer. That, or the player stops Orating and just says, “The end.” If he did it right, the whole room will burst into applause. Grown men weeping, women dancing around, clapping their hands like they were in a tent chapel. I’ve heard of witches themselves shed a bloodred tear for a Parsnit duel well played. If you win, you win, and everyone knows it. Even the cards know it. A losing Parsnit card will sometimes bear a mark, if the shame is too great. Losing in Parsnit is obvious, and the cards themselves feel it too.