The sinister spirit called Harvest Jack had a rival, a fellow bodiless Fae, who possessed a scarecrow so it might better interact with the physical world and to better facilitate a fascination with agriculture. The Scarecrow wanted to stop Jack’s reign of terror, or at least warn people of him. He tried his best, but they either feared his unnatural form, or scoffed at his warnings, dismissing Harvest Jack as a tale to frighten naughty children. He thought he was dismissed because he wasn’t clever enough, since his brain was only made of straw.
Days and days passed as he sat, contemplating his predicament. Then, he was spotted by a young hedge-mage called Dorothy Gale. She made The Scarecrow’s acquaintance and sympathized with his plight. She suggested he follow her to the Bibliotheque Spire, to seek the sagacious Emerald Wizard. Perhaps, by enchantment or alchemy, the Wizard could make The Scarecrow smarter.
On their journey, Dorothy and The Scarecrow met other strange companions: a Cowardly Lion called Sir Lowen who sought courage, and a metal man who wanted to regain his heart. They stumbled into the domain of an evil witch, who captured them with her patchwork homunculus minions. The Scarecrow tricked their jailor-creature by confusing its simple mind with guileful speech, and the group escaped because he came up with a plan to vault over a wall using the pulleys and weights of the keep.
In the end, they reached the Spire only to find the Emerald Wizard was no wizard at all, just a conjurer of tricks and mundane illusions. He did, however, help the party. He made a new brain for The Scarecrow of the finest bran, though he told him that it wasn’t truly needed: his quick-wittedness had been proven by his actions during his adventure, and grew every day with each mental challenge overcome.
After the wizard gave each companion a boon, they returned to their normal lives, but vowed to reunite someday. A few years later, The Scarecrow met a passing traveler who, like him, loved pondering riddles. He solved all of her offered puzzles, until she told him she had but one challenge left: a cipher used by the infamous Harvest Jack, which allegedly encoded a spell to summon him. The Scarecrow eagerly attacked the riddle and, through weeks of hard work, divined the solution.
Little did he know the traveler had been working for Ozilda, apprentice of the wicked witch that he and Dorothy had defeated before. The final syllables of the encoded message, as The Scarecrow spoke them aloud, completed a spell that forced him into a realm of darkness and fear conjured by Ozilda to wreak her vengeance in. He fell from the sky and became tangled upside-down in the branches of a tree, and birds began to peck at his innards. But before he was pulled apart, he saw his old friend, Dorothy.