Ferrolach Warden

Ferrolach Wardens are low-ranking jailer devils dispatched by ledger-keepers in the infernal bureaucracy to retrieve souls that have slipped their bindings. Born in the chainforges of the Ninth, they are animated by contracts—writs of service hammered into their chests and sealed with blood and iron. The devils answer to the obscure office known as the Iron Ledger, a cabal of clerks and binders who catalogue bargains and mete out sentence; the Wardens act as their field agents, permitted little autonomy beyond the strict wording of the writs they carry. Stories among gravekeepers and binders speak of a Ferrolach that patrolled the ruins of Kesthurn Hold after a cult erupted in undead bargains: the Warden took no pleasure in slaughter, only in the tidy re-binding of stray spirits. Scholars such as Mistress Ysobel Kett of the University of Malken have argued the Wardens can be bargained with if one presents the original contract language—an assertion many adventurers treat with caution, for the Ferrolach keeps copies of every bargain it enforces and prefers corrections to conversation.

A Ferrolach Warden stands roughly human-sized, but its form is a lattice of blackened metal ribs and jointed iron. Thick chains coil about its torso and limbs like living sinew; some end in hooked barbs or spiked shackles, others vanish into its chest where a small brass ledger-box is inset and perpetually latched. The 'head' resembles a hollow helm with a tight seam for a mouth and two recessed, faceted lenses that glow a dull cinnabar. Where flesh would show, plates of pitted iron and tarnished brass plate the Warden; thin wisps of ash and gray smoke leak from gaps between plates. Scars of welded links and stamped infernal sigils mar its surface. Scale reference: it is slightly taller than an average human (about 6 1/2 feet) and often pictured in doorways or chained to a stone post while tending to prisoners.