Steel Inquisitor
Tall, bald enforcers of the Lord Ruler's Steel Ministry with thick steel spikes driven point-first through the eyes; powerful Allomancers who sense the world through their spikes rather than their eyes. New ones are made by hammering spikes through living donors and into the recipient beneath, and at least some of them — like Marsh — are not free in their own bodies: Ruin reaches them through the spikes and uses them as its hands. MB1:HoA:Prologue
An elite agent of the Steel Ministry under the Lord Ruler — said to outclass a thousand soldiers in single combat. Each is fitted with spikes driven through the skull and out the eye sockets, and carries full Mistborn Allomantic power despite having begun life as some lesser Misting. A hidden chamber beneath the Conventical of Seran — bloody tables, racks of spikes of different metals — suggests that where Inquisitors come from is something done with those spikes to a living person on those tables. MB1:WoA:Ch 12 superseded at MB1:HoA:Prologue
Elite spike-eyed agents of the Steel Ministry. Each carries eleven metal spikes — two through the skull, eight through the chest, one through the spine to bind the rest — every one of which aches by Marsh's account, in time with the bearer's emotions. Pull the spine spike (or, as Kelsier did, behead them) and the creature dies. The Luthadel order is finished; somewhere around twenty more are scattered across the empire. MB1:TFE:Epilogue superseded at MB1:WoA:Ch 12
Elite spike-eyed agents of the Steel Ministry under the Lord Ruler's direct command — and, as Marsh now reveals, men kept alive by a cluster of metal spikes driven through their bodies. A spike between the shoulder blades binds the rest; pull it, and the Inquisitor dies. The order in Luthadel is gone: Marsh killed the others in their sleep. MB1:TFE:Ch 38 superseded at MB1:TFE:Epilogue
Elite spike-eyed agents of the Steel Ministry under the Lord Ruler's direct command, said to outclass a thousand soldiers in single combat — and now known, after Kelsier beheaded one at the crossroads in Luthadel, to be mortal — and capable of fearing their own end. MB1:TFE:Ch 34 superseded at MB1:TFE:Ch 38
An elite agent of the Steel Ministry under the Lord Ruler's direct command. Said to outclass a thousand soldiers in single combat; said to hang skaa rebels on meathooks driven through the throat. MB1:TFE:Ch 4 superseded at MB1:TFE:Ch 34
Known facts
- allomancerA Steel Inquisitor uses Allomancy at Mistborn strength or beyond — Pulling weapons out of an opponent's hands, hurling triangles of sharpened metal by Steelpush, leaping spire to spire across Kredik Shaw — and carries atium of their own.MB1:TFE:Ch 14
- age-and-recruitedMarsh learns from the Ministry that Inquisitors do age and eventually die — they are not immortal — and that new ones are recruited from noble Mistings, not born. They appear to have access to all the Allomantic powers, suggesting they were Mistborn before being made into what they now are.MB1:TFE:Ch 27
- can-be-killedAn Inquisitor can be killed. Cornered with its head pinned to wood by the spike-tips jutting from the back of its skull, the creature Kelsier fights at the crossroads goes down to a cobblestone and an obsidian axe. The crowd of skaa sees it happen.MB1:TFE:Ch 34
- abandoned-conventical-northwardHave abandoned the Conventical of Seran entirely — Marsh knows without being able to say how, and they have left behind only a mass-killing of their servants. Where they have gone he can describe only as "north, among other things," with Luthadel on the list.MB1:WoA:Ch 12
- seen-in-luthadel-by-survivor-faithfulLarn and other members of Demoux's congregation swear to Elend that an Inquisitor is moving through Luthadel at night around Kredik Shaw — the first confirmed sighting of one of the spiked creatures inside the city since Vin toppled the Final Empire.MB1:WoA:Ch 42
- destroy-keepers-and-synod-at-tathingdwenDozens of Steel Inquisitors attack the Terris capital with a koloss army; the brutes occupy the Terris defenders while the Inquisitors strike the Keepers and Synod directly, killing or capturing them and carrying off the bodies. Terris is left in ruins; survivors — mostly elderly stewards — straggle south.MB1:WoA:Ch 56
- shown-to-move-faster-than-pewter-explainsAt Vetitan an Inquisitor takes a brief jolt of speed faster than Vin has ever seen an Allomancer move — faster, she is sure, than even a duralumin-fed pewter burn would allow. The new ability comes and goes in a flash, and is the first of several signs in this fight that the Inquisitors are running on a power other than Allomancy alone.MB1:HoA:Ch 3
- shielded-the-dorsal-spikeThe Inquisitor Vin tears the robe from at Vetitan has plated his own back: a sleek metal shell, riveted on like a turtle's shell, hides the dorsal spike between his shoulder blades. That spike is normally an Inquisitor's one reliable kill point — pulling it free kills the creature — and Vin suspects the Lord Ruler would not have allowed the shield, since he wanted his servants to keep that weakness.MB1:HoA:Ch 3
- counted-ten-spikes-with-distinct-metalsThe dead Inquisitor at Vetitan carries ten spikes — two of steel through the eyes, one of steel between the shoulders, six through the ribs (two of steel, four of bronze), and one fresh spike of pewter driven straight through the heart of the chest. The one he tried to use as a weapon against Elend was a further steel spike, longer and sleeker than the others. The metal of each spike, Elend guesses, is meaningful: it would not be like Allomancy or Feruchemy for it to be otherwise.MB1:HoA:Ch 5
- elend-suspects-third-power-behind-themAfter counting the spikes and ruling out Allomancy and Feruchemy as full explanations of what they have seen, Elend floats out loud the idea that the Inquisitors run on some third metal-driven power neither he nor Vin yet understands.MB1:HoA:Ch 5
- lord-ruler-withheld-spikesThe Inquisitors of the Lord Ruler were deliberately made incomplete: their creator withheld certain Hemalurgic spikes — the chest and back set Marsh now carries — to ensure his Inquisitors remained dependent on him and could never threaten him. The rib and dorsal spikes Ruin now drives into its Inquisitors are what the Lord Ruler kept back.MB1:HoA:Ch 6
- made-by-fusing-multiple-allomancersElend gets the Canton of Orthodoxy rumour confirmed by his scribe Noorden: an Inquisitor is forged by combining the Allomantic powers of many people into one. The spikes in an Inquisitor's body transfer those powers from the dead to the host. This is why the Ministry hunted skaa Mistings so violently: not only to enforce the Lord Ruler's half-breed laws but to keep the Canton of Inquisition in fresh stock. It also explains the corpse Vin and Kelsier found in Marsh's room the day he was taken — what they thought at the time was Marsh's body had really been the body of several people, what little of them was left.MB1:HoA:Ch 40
- burn-the-food-stores-of-the-empires-villagesOn his way to Luthadel, Marsh stops at four villages and burns out their food stores — killing the guards first, then setting fire to the granaries. The buried part of him understands that the other Inquisitors are doing the same thing across the empire while they hunt for the thing Ruin wants most: methodical starvation as an arm of the search.MB1:HoA:Ch 42
- pierce-coppercloud-explained-by-layered-powersThe in-world epigraph clarifies the mechanism behind the Inquisitors' ability to pierce copperclouds. An Allomancer who later gains a Hemalurgic spike for a power they already had becomes nearly twice as strong in it as an unenhanced natural. Many Inquisitors were Seekers before their transformation, and the bronze sense layered on bronze sense is enough to break through the masking coppercloud of an ordinary Smoker.MB1:HoA:Ch 44
- tap-feruchemy-through-their-spikesWhen Vin fails to seize Marsh with a single vial's duralumin-Soothing, he grabs her throat and his hand grows large and beefy in her grasp — an Inquisitor tapping strength out of Feruchemical storage through one of his spikes.MB1:HoA:Ch 65
- new-spikes-grant-feruchemical-powersThe Inquisitors Ruin sends against Vin at Kredik Shaw carry more spikes than the Inquisitors of the Lord Ruler's day — and the extras grant them Feruchemical powers like the Lord Ruler himself: strength, speed, healing in storage. Vin recognises the speed as the same kind of speed she has seen Sazed tap. Each of these creatures is, in effect, a smaller Lord Ruler.MB1:HoA:Ch 72
- killed-by-removing-both-eye-spikesVin learns at Kredik Shaw that pulling a single eye-spike from an Inquisitor only maims it — the creature gets back up screaming with one socket gaping. Removing both eye-spikes is what kills.MB1:HoA:Ch 72
Events
- MB1:TFE:Ch 14 Three Steel Inquisitors are waiting inside the central chamber at Kredik Shaw when Kelsier opens the door; one stays to fight him, the other two pursue Vin and one of them tracks her down across the spires in pitch-dark rain.
- MB1:TFE:Ch 33 The lone Inquisitor at the crossroads lowers its hood and says it won the draw.
- MB1:TFE:Ch 34 The Inquisitor who hunted Vin through the keeps; rips an iron cage off its cart to throw, kills Renoux with an axe to the back, and is caught around the throat by Kelsier.
- MB1:TFE:Ch 34 Final stand at the overturned cart: cornered by Kelsier's swarm of small flying metals, its spike-heads pinned in the wood, beheaded with an obsidian axe.
- MB1:TFE:Ch 36 Two Inquisitors block the way to the pack-rat den under the dome; one falls to Vin's arrowhead trick, the other limps after her, takes a glass dagger to the thigh, and still gets hands on her from behind.
- MB1:TFE:Ch 36 Wakes Vin in the cell with a bucket of water, twists her arm until she swallows the unknown metal that wipes her reserves, and leaves.
- MB1:TFE:Ch 36 Nine Inquisitors stand in the spire chamber. Six of them tear Tevidian to pieces with obsidian knives when the Lord Ruler hands him over.
- MB1:TFE:Ch 38 The rest of the Luthadel Inquisitors file out toward their rest chambers after the ceremony, exhausted enough to sleep through what Marsh is about to do to them.
- MB1:HoA:Ch 3 Walks the army to confront Vin on the hilltop, fights her to a draw and almost kills Elend with a metal spike pulled from his own body; shows a flash of speed no Allomancer should be capable of; dies when one of Vin's hijacked koloss crushes his head from behind.
- MB1:HoA:Ch 6 Other Inquisitors gather around Marsh at the centre of the koloss camp — silent, controlled by Ruin like him, all visibly carrying both the standard skull-spikes and the new rib and dorsal spikes.
- MB1:HoA:Ch 72 Thirteen of Ruin's strongest, carrying Feruchemical powers from their extra spikes, converge on Vin in the rain at Kredik Shaw; she kills one of them by accident on a spire and beats herself bloody on the others before Marsh steps in.
- MB1:HoA:Ch 73 The twelve surviving Inquisitors Ruin sent against Vin try to bring her down before her transformation completes. All twelve die at her hands among the wreckage of Kredik Shaw.
Backreferences
- summaryMB1:TFE:Prologue
- summaryMB1:TFE:Ch 1
- summaryMB1:TFE:Ch 2
- summaryMB1:TFE:Ch 3
- factThe Steel Ministry
- summaryMB1:TFE:Ch 6
- factLord Renoux
- summaryMB1:TFE:Ch 7
- factSeeker
- summaryMB1:TFE:Ch 8
- summaryMB1:TFE:Ch 10
- factMarsh
- summaryMB1:TFE:Ch 11
- summaryMB1:TFE:Ch 14
- factSteel Inquisitor
- summaryMB1:TFE:Ch 15
- summaryMB1:TFE:Ch 16
- summaryMB1:TFE:Ch 17
- summaryMB1:TFE:Ch 19
- summaryMB1:TFE:Ch 20
- summaryMB1:TFE:Ch 22
- factHammond
- summaryMB1:TFE:Ch 23
- summaryMB1:TFE:Ch 24
- factMisting
- summaryMB1:TFE:Ch 26
- factTevidian
- factLord Prelan
- factFountain Square
- factSteel Inquisitor
- factThe Canton of Inquisition
- summaryMB1:TFE:Ch 29
- factVin
- summaryMB1:TFE:Ch 31
- factVin
- summaryMB1:TFE:Ch 32
- factMarsh
- factMarsh
- summaryMB1:TFE:Ch 33
- summaryMB1:TFE:Ch 34
- factKelsier
- factKelsier
- factSteel Inquisitor
- factKelsier
- factLord Renoux
- summaryMB1:TFE:Ch 36
- factTevidian
- factTevidian
- factThe Canton of Inquisition
- factKar
- summaryMB1:TFE:Ch 37
- factReen
- summaryMB1:TFE:Ch 38
- factMarsh
- factMarsh
- summaryMB1:TFE:Epilogue
- factReen
- factMarsh
- summaryMB1:HoA:Prologue
- factMarsh
- factHemalurgy
- summaryMB1:HoA:Ch 3
- factSteel Inquisitor
- factSteel Inquisitor
- factElend Venture
- summaryMB1:HoA:Ch 4
- factHarmony
- summaryMB1:HoA:Ch 5
- factVin
- factSteel Inquisitor
- factSteel Inquisitor
- summaryMB1:HoA:Ch 6
- factSteel Inquisitor
- summaryMB1:HoA:Ch 10
- summaryMB1:HoA:Ch 13
- factMarsh
- factMarsh
- summaryMB1:HoA:Ch 15
- factLestibournes
- summaryMB1:HoA:Ch 27
- summaryMB1:HoA:Ch 29
- summaryMB1:HoA:Ch 34
- summaryMB1:HoA:Ch 40
- factSteel Inquisitor
- factHemalurgy
- factHemalurgy
- summaryMB1:HoA:Ch 42
- factSteel Inquisitor
- factMarsh
- factHemalurgy
- factHemalurgic Bind Points
- factSteel Inquisitor
- summaryMB1:HoA:Ch 45
- summaryMB1:HoA:Ch 51
- factKoloss
- summaryMB1:HoA:Ch 53
- summaryMB1:HoA:Ch 55
- summaryMB1:HoA:Ch 56
- summaryMB1:HoA:Ch 63
- summaryMB1:HoA:Ch 65
- factSteel Inquisitor
- factMarsh
- factHemalurgy
- summaryMB1:HoA:Ch 66
- factkandra
- factBlessing
- factBlessing
- summaryMB1:HoA:Ch 67
- factVin
- summaryMB1:HoA:Ch 68
- summaryMB1:HoA:Ch 70
- factAllomancy
- summaryMB1:HoA:Ch 71
- factAtium
- factkandra
- summaryMB1:HoA:Ch 72
- factSteel Inquisitor
- factSteel Inquisitor
- summaryMB1:HoA:Ch 73
- factVin
- summaryMB1:HoA:Ch 76
- summaryMB1:HoA:Ch 77
- factVin
- summaryMB1:HoA:Ch 79
- factkandra
- summaryMB1:HoA:Ch 81
- summaryMB2:TLM:Ch 28
- factMarsh
- summaryMB2:SoS:Ch 13
- factBleeder
- summaryMB1:WoA:Ch 3
- factVin
- summaryMB1:WoA:Ch 5
- factElend Venture
- summaryMB1:WoA:Ch 7
- factMarsh
- factMarsh
- factConventical of Seran
- summaryMB1:WoA:Ch 9
- summaryMB1:WoA:Ch 12
- factConventical of Seran
- summaryMB1:WoA:Ch 13
- factVin
- summaryMB1:WoA:Ch 42
- factSteel Inquisitor
- factLarn
- summaryMB1:WoA:Ch 52
- summaryMB1:WoA:Ch 56
- factSteel Inquisitor