Marsh || Steel Inquisitor

[Public Video]

The kitchen is, as usual, understaffed. We were understaffed before this latest shake-up and now we are more understaffed. We require at least one temporary warden supervisor for the lunch shift and four or five new inmates.

Those interested should speak to Riddick or myself.


[Open spam, backdated throughout the last few days]

[Marsh can be found in odd times at odd places - late and night on the deck or early morning in the greenhouse, hunched over, making soft, choking noises, his little cockatiel crooning worriedly and attempting to preen his short hair. Folded in a corner of the ice-damaged stairwell, a hand splayed over his spikes, breathing hitched, shoulders shaking, looking like nothing so much as a man desperately trying to sob and unable to manage it.

The crying from Iris's room - it's psychic, he doesn't just hear it. It gets in when he is too tired to fend it off from ripped-open places, and then it becomes him, the loneliness and fear and grief, the confusion of the very young. He remembers himself - it is not overwhelming, not like Ruin at its worst, nothing like that - but he cannot stop feeling it. And the feeling is not entirely unfamiliar.]


[Private spam for Bianca]

[He decides, eventually, that it cannot be a trick, that something is real, must be suffering. Or perhaps he doesn't care anymore, as long as it stops. He arrives at her door with his jaw clenched from the effort of holding the lost, abandoned feeling back, and it still drips through his cracks, stings like salt in his punctures. He knocks.]


[Private spam for C'Rizz the Dalek Emperor, backdated to shortly after the arena]

[It's not a pleasant return, but he falls to the necessary housekeeping with a grim sort of gratitude. He asks the admiral for a resurrection, then swallows a truly foul amount of powdered pewter and a small sliver of feruchemy-laced gold. Then cooks until he stops seeing Iris on every blank nonmetallic surface, and brings the egg soup to C'Rizz's room. He knocks, then lets himself in.]

It's me.

[Marsh is centered in the camera's view, the wall behind him plain, rough-hewn grey stone. The light flickers a little, as though not produced by an electronic source, glinting dully against his spikes. His voice is quiet and raspy, but the words are clearly enunciated.]

I am Marsh. I am a warden aboard this vessel.

If you have heard stories of Inquisitors from the others from my world - they are true. But they are not true of me anymore.

If you have not, simply know that I do not wish to hurt anyone.

[His mouth twists faintly, and he reaches up to tap one fingernail against the blunt surface of the left spike.]

Yes, they're real. Yes, they hurt. No, there's nothing to be done about it.

[Since that seems to be what everyone wants to know first. The message ends.]



( Spam for Zane, or anyone else likely to visit Kelsier's cabin while he was coma'ed )