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The Faerie Ring Characteristics: While few have recorded Jackin-Iron’s list of valor, his skin and face show the signs of great battles fought and won and of long years spent in martial training Jack-inIrons is twenty-five feet tall with a powerful torso and legs thick as tree trunks He wears a thick brass and iron collar from which hang hundreds of iron chains He also wears a breastplate and backplate made of boiled, cured hides dyed bright red His thick leather boots are shod with hobnails and studded with wicked spikes, the better to stomp sprites or other annoyances Jack-in-Iron’s teeth are half-rotted, and his lanky hair is woven with chain links in a crude form of armor His neck and arms seems to whiten and even bleed from the chains he wears, but the giant never complains With every step, his rattling chains strike fear into smaller fey, and Jack seems to enjoy inspiring that terror very much Relationships: Jack-in-Irons obeys Mab as he obeyed Manitou before her But if the rumors of Manitou’s return, or at least his interest in reclaiming some part of his Gift are true, the giant’s loyalties will surely be tested On the one hand, Manitou abandoned him as if he were not a loyal retainer but simply a pawn to be given away On the other, Queen Mab has not treated Jack much better: she orders him around as a sort of living weapon to smash any large gathering of Titania and Oberon’s that would overpower her sprites As it stands, Jack is ordered to remain within the borders of Manitou’s Gift when he is in Mab’s territory at all There, he watches over her interests faithfully Strategy & Tactics: Jack-in-Irons is a living machine of war, a walking siege engine who does not so much kill enemies as crush them much in the same way a boulder launched from a catapult crushes the hapless soldier it lands upon There is no subtly in Jack-inIron’s battle style He simply applies maximum force wherever his liege demands PUCK that shrewd and knavish sprite Call’d Robin Goodfellow: are not you he That frights the maidens of the villagery; Skim milk, and sometimes labour in the quern And bootless make the breathless housewife churn; And sometime make the drink to bear no barm; Mislead night-wanderers, laughing at their harm? —William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s Dream (II i.) The vain, preening, and power-mad queen has a friendlier side, and his name is Puck The stories of — 101 —