Jack O'Lantern (The Secret World)

A minor villain in the Funcom MMORPG The Secret World, Jack O'Lantern is one of Solomon Island's most famous monsters and the boss of an entire chain of missions spanning all three major zones of the Island. Though he has recently been usurped as the pinnacle of Solomon Island's supernatural food chain by the depredations of the Draug, Jack remains a powerful magic creature and a significant challenge to the newly-minted Secret Worlders.

Characteristics
As the name implies, Jack O'Lantern is essentially a monstrous hybrid of man and plant, his face twisted into into a permanent jack-o-lantern grin complete with glowing red eyes. Standing well over twelve feet tall, his limbs are long, spindly branches tipped with knifelike digits, and his misshapen torso is swollen with sprouting plantlife and rotten pumpkinflesh.

Despite his vast strength, Jack prefers to remain out of sight most of the time, his body remaining buried deep within a pumpkin patch until his prospective prey gets too close. In the tradition of his role as keeper of the pumpkins, he generally only kills those who trespass on his territory, particularly after dark; however, Jack has the power to manipulate the ghost lights known as wisps, and often uses them to lure unsuspecting children off the road into the pumpkin patches, where he is free to butcher them. Nonetheless, he also is discreet enough to avoid killing too many people in too short a space of time, likely to avoid negative attention from the townsfolk and those who might actually be capable of killing him.

Though children all over the island are taught to fear him as a bogeyman, even though he is responsible for some of Kingsmouth's most brutal serial-killings, Jack O'Lantern has somehow managed to acquire the praise and protection of several townsfolk. Every time someone aware of Jack's true nature suggests destroying him, these supposedly upright citizens rally, declaring him a living icon of the Island's proud heritage and citing all the damage that will be done to pumpkins if he dies - in strict contravention of the Pumpkin Purity Laws. This borderline-delusional publicity surrounding Jack has actually led to the town council granting him protected status: in the summer of 2002, Jack's most hideous murders to date were actually blamed on an innocent drifter by the name of Larry Checkon, all because the council didn't want the attention of the mainland reaching their deepest secrets - or their farmers' mascot.

When not killing, Jack amuses himself by any means available to him, most commonly by skipping through the old Henderson Farm, likely as an insult leveled at the long-dead proprietor. Unfortunately, this is all he can do lately, thanks to the arrival of the Draug: with most of the children on the island either dead or cloistered in the police station with the other survivors of the Fog, Jack has been left to his own devices as he waits for fresh victims to appear within reach, oblivious to the fact that this many never happen.

In the event that he is challenged by the player, he will fight ferociously - until it becomes clear that he's going to lose, whereupon he flees for his life and hides in another pumpkin patch.