Arrakan is the mother of calamity and great aunt to human suffering; a land that spawns wars, genocides, plagues and famines, human disasters of biblical proportions, and spews them onto the world with the wantonness of mad volcano. It is a persevering and generous land; a land that welcomes adventurers and mad men with open arms, promises bounteous treasures and boundless pleasures, but delivers, instead, a feast of unimaginable woes and unremitting cruelty. She is the visionary, the liberator, the sword of justice; sworn foe to anyone who would oppress her people. Her sole reason for living is to deliver her people from the shackles of neocolonial bondage, from the pseudo-socialist generals who have hijacked the revolution and slaughtered her dream and the aspirations of her people. He is a man of war, a merchant of death, a vile and despicable creature, or so she tells him; a selfish man who can't believe in any cause other than his own; a man incapable of love. When they first meet, she promises to shoot him dead herself, if it becomes necessary. Everyone wants to shoot Jack Adams, for reasons that have a lot to do with the fact that he is after his own and considers everything else, especially the tragic war, an extravagant waste of time. They spare Jack, each for their own reasons, and he eventually gives everyone enough good reasons to seriously want him dead. But he is not the only one who knows the might of the gun.