First appearance: S7E4 — The Cheese — Sila v Ol’ Pumpernicklejack · watch it on YouTube
Ol’ Pumpernicklejack is a hunched, three-foot redcap with enormous iron boots, a red cap that soaks up blood, and an iron sickle bigger than he is. The Arbiter pulled him into The Void for a Season 7 Deathmatch against the treasure-hunting rat Sila. He was on the toilet when the summons came. The fight began in a graveyard, detoured through a lava flood and the Grandmaster’s cheese platter, and ended in a tavern, with Jack soaked in toilet water. Jack walked out the winner, dripping, triumphant and still looking for parchment.
Story
In S7E4 — The Cheese — Sila v Ol’ Pumpernicklejack, a large iron boot stepped through the Arbiter’s portal, then another, and then the disappointingly small, emaciated man wearing them. “I was on the toilet, what’s going on?” he asked, as the Grandmaster wondered aloud whether the Arbiter had grabbed the right one, since “this one looks mostly dead already.” The Arbiter vouched for him: Jack had been on his watchlist “for a number of seasons.” Ordered to pull up his pants, Jack asked politely for parchment. A row of goblins carried in the Dread Fortress’s finest selection, and he picked the roughest sheet and shoved it down the back of his trousers to finish wiping.
In The Midnight Mausoleum, under a huge moon and a ring of cheering Acolytes, Sila struck first with a dull dagger that trimmed his beard. Jack saw his own blood dripping and held his red cap under the wound so each drop could darken it. “Oh, Missy,” he said, then put the cap back on and drew from underneath it a giant iron sickle that matched his boots. He went into a rage among the gravestones. His wild magic raised a ghostly minotaur beside Sila, and then he landed a perfect natural 20 and the spirit exploded beside her, though Sila skipped clear of the blast. When the Grandmaster’s chaos event sent hundreds of three-inch minitaurs to drag the champions into their graves, Jack shrugged them off and enjoyed the stabbing at his toes like a foot massage. Later his magic called up the spirit of Sila’s long-lost best friend, Chuck the Cheese, and then a floating “octopussy kind of individual,” while he mopped his fresh wounds with his cap and chanted “Blood, blood, blood.”
When the graveyard turned to lava, Jack hopped tombstones easily. Then, taking pity on the Grandmaster’s run of fizzled chaos events, he volunteered to fail: his iron boots went white-hot and began to melt. Sila surprised everyone by inviting him into the plastic coffin she was rowing across the lava (“But you were just throwing knives at me. Not five seconds!” Jack protested). From her balcony, the Grandmaster offered Doug the Pug’s prized cheese to whoever killed the other. Sila asked Jack how much he liked cheese, and he gave a simple answer:
“I like blood, that’s kind of my whole thing.”
Jack left it to fate whether he would go along with Sila’s plan or give in to his nature, and fate answered with a natural 1. His eyes went red (“Oh, Missy, Missy Mouse”). Charged with a heroic surge from the crowd, he tackled her off the raft. When his boots hit the lava, the pain launched him like a rocket, Sila still in his arms, and the pair crashed into the cheese platter beside the Grandmaster and Doug. The Arbiter scruffed them both and punched them across the Void like meteors, through the roof of Emmery’s Tavern.
There Jack’s magic teleported them both into the chimney. Sila hit the fire at the bottom, and he landed on top of her. With the Acolytes chanting his name, he dragged his sickle across the floor toward the smouldering rat: “Burned blood is still blood.” One more burst of wild magic dropped him into the overflowing toilet. After a splash, wet brown liquid seeped out under the door, and he burst out through it, leaving a cartoon Jack-shaped hole, dripping brown, and landed a devastating blow. Sila went down. To her eyes he was “the silhouette of a fecal monster.” He swung again anyway, slipped in the toilet water and landed on his back (“Ah, my sciatica, ah”), soaked at last in the wave of blood he had wanted from the very beginning. The bartender, Emmery, honoured Sila’s last wish by encasing her in fondue, then told Jack the tavern was closing. Jack replied, “Oh, like now? Do you have any parchment paper at all?” The Grandmaster arrived with a roll of it in hand: “Oh, Pumpernickel Jack. Congratulations. For victory is yours!” His victory speech was a single burp, which the crowd hailed as the greatest they had ever heard in a finale. As she raised his hand and flew him into the sky, his pants, fresh from the bathroom, fell down and he mooned the crowd, “leaving a full moon for our acolytes.”
Personality and Abilities
Jack stands about three feet tall, hunched and emaciated, with leathery skin, bloodshot red eyes, and bushy white whiskers that make a rough beard around his sunken face. Under the cap his white hair is very thin; he is bushier on the bottom than on the top. He wears a loose leather vest, huge iron boots, and an oversized red gnomish cap that cascades down most of his body. His player described him as a redcap, a kind of creature whose iron boots are meant for kicking people. Sila pointed out after the match that he never even tried to kick her.
He is creaky, crude and cheerfully single-minded. He suffers from sciatica, calls his opponent “Missy” and “Missy Mouse,” and cares about blood above all else, including the Grandmaster’s most prized cheese. His cap soaks up blood, growing darker as it fills, and it hides his giant iron sickle. Each soaking seemed to whip him into a deeper frenzy. The Grandmaster’s one compliment was that “at least his boots and his weapon match,” and the Arbiter added that it meant he was already dressed for his funeral.
He fights as a wild magic barbarian, raging with an unpredictable magic that does the strangest things around him. In his one Deathmatch it raised spirits from the graves that exploded beside his foe: a minotaur, Chuck the Cheese, and a floating tentacled thing. It also teleported him into a chimney and into a toilet. Combined with lava and melting boots, it made him a one-man source of chaos and scene changes.
Relationships
- Sila: His opponent, a rat searching for the cheese. She offered him a seat in her coffin; he chose blood and killed her in Emmery’s Tavern.
- The Arbiter: Kept Jack on his watchlist for several seasons before summoning him, and openly rooted for him. Later he scruffed Jack and punched him across the Void.
- Grandmaster Elusia Skypiercer: Teased him about his thinning hair, accepted his pity freebie with wounded pride, and crowned his victory with a roll of parchment and a flight into the sky.
- Doug the Pug: Jack crash-landed in Doug’s prized cheese platter.
- Emmery: The unflappable bartender whose toilet erupted when Jack landed in it and who threw him out at closing time.
Memorable Quotes
- “I was on the toilet, what’s going on?” (S7E4 — The Cheese)
- “I don’t suppose you have any parchment paper, do you?” (S7E4 — The Cheese)
- “Would you rather fight one giant-sized minotaur or a thousand minitaurs?” (S7E4 — The Cheese)
- “I like blood, that’s kind of my whole thing.” (S7E4 — The Cheese)
- “Burned blood is still blood.” (S7E4 — The Cheese)
- “Oh, like now? Do you have any parchment paper at all?” (S7E4 — The Cheese)