Mazares, the Median-born commander who bridged the fall of Media and the rise of Persia, served Cyrus the Great as a disciplined troubleshooter rather than a banner-chasing conqueror. After Croesus fell and the Lydian noble Pactyes stirred a sudden revolt, Cyrus sent Mazares west with precise orders: seize the ringleader and punish the cities that abetted him. He hunted Pactyes from Sardis across the Aegean littoral until the fugitive was surrendered, then turned to method—storming Priene, chastening Magnesia on the Meander, and making examples that restored the king’s peace without wasting the kingdom he intended to keep. Mazares died on campaign, his work unfinished, and Harpagus took up the command to press Persia’s frontier to the Aegean. In the deck’s black suit of origins and ordeals, he is the Jack of Spades: the steady hand in a hinge-time, a Median blade keeping order while a new empire found its shape.