The changes in The Marshquisitor's voice (normal, then grindy, and back again)

[+robardin]

Sazed arrived to TLR's throne room after Vin removed his metalminds, in time to witness Rashek's last words and Vin's killing him with a spear through the heart...

And also to hear Marsh speak to Rashek as well, before his death: "Your obligators will forget you. I will see to that. The other Inquisitors are dead, slain by my own hand. Yet, the gathered prelans saw you transfer power to the Canton of Inquisition. I am the only Inquisitor left in Luthadel. I rule your church now."

And later, he had time to chat with the both of them as well about the nature of TLR's power, making an educated guess that the mechanism revolved around compounding Feruchemy with Allomancy, before Marsh left to try to take up control of the obligators.

The next time Sazed meets Marsh is in The Well of Ascension, when he was in a skaa dwelling teaching - forcing - some of the children to learn to read and write, when a woman comes up to tell him "The Lord Ruler" had "come back". Instead, it was an Inquisitor, Marsh, who had been actively looking for Sazed, to bring him with him to the Conventical of Seran (for reasons still not yet revealed):

Quote

"You are a very difficult person to track, Terrisman," Marsh said - and the sound of his voice shocked Sazed. It had changed, somehow, becoming more grating, more gristly. It now had a grinding quality, like that of a man with a cough. Just like the other Inquisitors Sazed had heard.

It didn't have to do with Ruin being close to escaping; it was a sound that Sazed already associated with Inquisitors, but had NOT yet associated with Marsh. So whatever caused Marsh's voice to change in timbre, it hadn't happened yet in the throne room. That was relatively soon after Marsh's Inquisitorization, so maybe it took a bit of time, somehow?

Given the time delay it can't have just been a side effect of the hemalurgy involved in making him an Inquisitor, which should have happened at the same time as all the other changes to his body, so I wondered if it was a Cognitive thing, like with Kaladin's brands. Maybe Marsh had not yet "accepted" himself as an Inquisitor by nature yet then, but had done so by the next time he saw Sazed?

But then, in Era 2, Marasi meets and speaks with him at the end of Alloy of Law, and later gives feedback to Wayne on the accuracy of his accent when imitating him as Death, in The Bands of Mourning:

Quote

"I wasn't sure how Death 'imself would sound, you know? I figured all important-like, like Wax when he's tellin' me to take my feet off the furniture. Mixed with some real old-soundin' tones, like a grandfather's grandfather. And grindy, like a man what is choking to death."

"In fact," Marasi said, "he's quite articulate, and not at all 'grindy.' And the accent is strange - not like anything I've heard before."

So Marsh is back to sounding fully human again, albeit with his native accent which is now over 300 years out of date and unrecognizable to Marasi!

Brandon's pretty careful with his choice of words, and I doubt the statement of Marsh NOT sounding "grindy" was a coincidence, when he'd also written in an explicit mention of how shockingly "grindy" his voice had changed to become before (long before).

Edited March 26, 2020 by robardin

[Faceless Mist-Wraith]

I would say it probably had something to do with his Cognitive aspect. When Marsh was under Ruin's control, he probably viewed himself more like an actual Inquisitor, but after getting free of his control probably felt more like "himself". That change would then be reflected whenever he healed/de-aged himself.

[+Harrycrapper]

Could be that Sazed did something to give him back some of his humanity. In the audiobooks, he is less gravelly in AoL compared to HoA. 

[+robardin]

On 3/27/2020 at 1:27 PM, Harrycrapper said:

Could be that Sazed did something to give him back some of his humanity. In the audiobooks, he is less gravelly in AoL compared to HoA. 

Ooh the audiobooks convey this too? How about the way he sounded in TFE as a human?