Jere Gertan
Jere Gertan was an operative of the Ironworks' "Department of Lost Property," the bureaucratic euphemism for the apparatus that identified and recaptured escaped Iron Slaves. Based in or near Arch City, Gertan demonstrated a callous proficiency in his work, able to identify an escapee's city of origin from physical evidence as subtle as the type of grease ground into their hands.
Gertan's clinical approach to slave recovery reflected the broader machinery of the Ironworks' labor system. Escaped slaves were not people to be found but property to be returned, and the Department treated them accordingly. A Motor City escapee was identified by industrial grease; a Rail City fugitive by coal dust. The system was efficient, impersonal, and thorough, and Gertan was one of its practiced instruments.
Arch City maintained a devil's bargain with the Ironworks: the city drugged and returned escaped slaves in exchange for autonomy. Gertan appears to have operated as part of that arrangement, the point of contact where a desperate fugitive's bid for freedom ended and the train back to the stockyards began.
Gertan's clinical approach to slave recovery reflected the broader machinery of the Ironworks' labor system. Escaped slaves were not people to be found but property to be returned, and the Department treated them accordingly. A Motor City escapee was identified by industrial grease; a Rail City fugitive by coal dust. The system was efficient, impersonal, and thorough, and Gertan was one of its practiced instruments.
Arch City maintained a devil's bargain with the Ironworks: the city drugged and returned escaped slaves in exchange for autonomy. Gertan appears to have operated as part of that arrangement, the point of contact where a desperate fugitive's bid for freedom ended and the train back to the stockyards began.
Mental characteristics
Personal history
Gertan served the Ironworks' slave recovery system from a position near Arch City, where the local government's arrangement with the Ironworks made fugitive recovery routine. His ability to identify escapees by physical markers, the grease in their hands, the dust on their clothes, made him effective at a job that reduced human beings to inventory discrepancies. The Department of Lost Property was one of the quieter horrors of the Ironworks: a bureaucracy dedicated to ensuring that no one who escaped bondage stayed free for long.
Department of Lost Property operative; slave-catcher who could identify escapees by the grease on their hands.
Children
