Jack-o-Lantern

Hollow-headed and lit from within, the jacks are the dark mirror of the Wisps: where wisp-light is celestial, jack-light is foolsfire, born of rot and marsh gas. They drift the reed channels and crossroads of the fens by night, and their lanterns can lead a traveler home or lead them under.

They are cheerful, morbid, and fatalistic, being the only fey who visibly burn down — a jack hollows further with every passing season until metamorphosis takes them. They are the only people in either category who can see it coming, and they treat the fact as a joke that everyone else is too polite to get.

Appearance

Thin-limbed and lantern-headed, with a light inside that shows through the eyes and mouth and dims measurably with age. A jack's remaining seasons can be estimated by anyone who knows how to look, which is considered extremely rude to do in company and is done constantly.

The dimming is not painful and is not resisted. A jack in their last season is treated with a mixture of affection and open betting that other peoples find appalling and jacks find perfectly reasonable, since the alternative — everyone being solemn about it for a year — is unbearable.

Attuned Magic

Foolsfire. A nascent jack makes cold light and carries it. A powerful one can put a light anywhere within sight, make it move convincingly, cast the appearance of a lit window or a distant campfire, and — the trick the fens are named for — make a traveler certain they are walking toward something.

The certainty is the part that matters. It is not an illusion of a light; it is an illusion of destination, and it works on people who know exactly what a jack is and have hired one to stop.

Life

Wick-houses and ferry-stations along the causeways, reed-camps that drift, and a working night that starts at dusk. Work is guiding, tolling, and myrtle — the aromatic that keeps the biting clouds off, and the fens' one honest industry.

Names. Counted. A jack is Nine-Wicks, Four, Long Tallow — the number recording something the jack chooses: crossings made, seasons left, or debts settled, and they will give you a different answer on different days, cheerfully, and mean all of them.

Arrival. A new jack is given a lantern that is not their own light and told to carry it for a season without using their own. It teaches the routes, teaches restraint, and — the real reason — means that for one season a jack cannot lead anyone anywhere except honestly.

The count. Everyone knows roughly how long everyone else has. Bets are placed openly, paid honestly, and a jack who dies owing a bet has it settled by the fens on their behalf.

Society

Loose, itinerant, and organized entirely around the causeways: who guides which route, and what the crossing costs. Jack Nine-Wicks is the eldest and has burned down to almost nothing.

There is no law. There is licensing by the Wick-Houses, and the sanction is simply that an unlicensed guide gets no clients and an offending traveler gets no guide — after which the marsh handles it.

Currents

The Wick-Houses. The guide families, holding every route between them and deferring to Ninewick by custom rather than obligation.

The Toll. An institution rather than a body: everyone who uses a crossing pays a jack, including the Kingdom, discreetly, through intermediaries the Chancery would deny under oath.

The Far Bank. Jacks who work the human side and know the Waking World nearly as well as a hobgoblin. Suspected at home, invaluable everywhere.

The Leshy. Those who hold that leading the unwelcome in circles is no longer defensible now that the traffic includes refugees. Nine-Wicks has not ruled. The ambiguity is doing a great deal of work.

Relations

The jacks are the Wilds' ferrymen. They will lead a traveler through for a price, honestly and reliably — and they will lead an unwelcome one in circles until the marsh takes them, with exactly the same cheerful courtesy. The distinction between the two services is not made explicit at the time of purchase, and the fens have swallowed more Faerie expeditions than every other region combined.

Playing One