Alright rookie, you've finished yer book learning, let's see what kind of street smarts you got in you.

Don't worry. We'll start small like. All you have to do is get this handful of humans to stay in the same place.

Right...just humans. You don't even have to keep them in one spot, just in a general geographic area so they don't go running all amok and screwing with our plans.

Cake walk? That's as maybe. Heh. Let me tell you a few things it took some centuries to figure out.

Most of the physical world is easy to bind. Take your faeries for instance. Never mind what kind, just pick one. Hell, go out on a limb and grab one of them forest imps...or even a leprechaun. Any of them perky little bastards that are always prancing about. They all flit around like scared flies, but you wrap a bracelet of iron round one ankle and they stay right where you put them. Some says it's the weight, but I tell you it's the cold. Sucks the magic out of them.

You'd think the bigger creatures would be a problem, but everything's got its weakness, don't it. Take your dragons-all teeth and scales and wings and bad breath-are they a challenge? Nah, they're easy as pie. All you need is a little gold. Your average dragon, once you get him started, will do all the work for you, gathering up a solidus here, a doubloon there. Pretty soon he's got himself a nice cozy hoard and won't move to save his mother.

I know, dragons don't care about their mothers, but you take my point.

Humans though...humans are what you'd call problematic. They're...adaptable. In the early days, I'm told, we wrapped them in meat. Don't ask why, it's before my time. Maybe someone thought it was witty or poetic or some such shit. Things were strange in those days. Anyways, the humans just wiggled into that rotting flesh and started walking around in it like they'd found the latest fashion. That's the real reason they wear those skin suits...not because they're disgusting or intimidating or anything.

Remember that when you see one up close.

After that little setback we tried chains, but the buggers just picked those up and wore them. Jangly metal decoration dangling round their meat. We gave up on chains centuries ago, but they still go out of their way to beat gold into links as thick as your fingers and rope them round their fleshy necks. I tell you, even the dragons call humans vulgar.

We went through different materials over the years-stone, steel, someone even tried silk, but that only took hold in China. Copper worked for a little while. We pulled it into taut wires that kept their meat suits tethered to the wall for a wee bit over a hundred years. Then one day they just decided they were done standing around staring out the windows, rolled the wires up into little glass cases that they tucked in their pockets, and walked away. They still take the cases out and, get this, they talk to them. It's like the chains all over again.

I'd swear they're mocking us, but they don't even believe we exist.

Anyways, humans require subtlety. There isn't one thing you can use to bind all of them, so you have to study them a while. Get to know them. Trust me, it ain't easy getting to know a skin suit what's staring you down with it's bloodshot eyeballs. Sometimes you can chain one to a desk, or tie one down to a family, but money and blood ain't guaranteed to stick. Some of them respond to more esoteric motivation, like political ideology. Sometimes they just want sex.

You'll have to experiment.

That's all I got for you, rookie. Well...maybe start with denim. For some reason they're ape shit about it right now.