'Mask in the image of a white-haired young noble. Customarily worn by the head of House Marais. Increases arcane. The Marais family has a dual history spanning generations, serving as both executioners and castellans of the Shaded Castle. This mask bears the likeness of the first of their line.' Maleigh holds an office that pulls in two directions: House Marais serves as both executioners and castellans of the Shaded Castle, and he is listed in the game as 'Maleigh Marais, Shaded Castle Castellan'. The house's celebrated artefact is the Marais Executioner's Sword, and its own text says where that blade went: 'Elemer of the Briar, the Bell Bearing Hunter, snatched the sword from the site of his looming execution.' The executioners' storied weapon passed to a condemned man, one whose winding, rusted iron briars are 'a mark of the guilty' and who 'murdered numerous instructors and merchants'. The game does not say what age the heads of the house reach; what it does say of them is that the sons are all sickly born.

'Robe with a black mantle across the shoulders. Customarily worn by the head of House Marais. The sons of House Marais are all sickly born. Little wonder that Maleigh Marais would be so beguiled by the beautiful and fierce goddess who was born into rot.' The robe supplies its own explanation for the castellan's devotion, and the Antspur Rapier dates that devotion back further: 'Scarlet rot is an old legend, of which Maleigh Marais of the Shaded Castle was a private believer. And indeed, he eventually found his own personal goddess.' Belief preceded the goddess he eventually found. The Valkyrie's Prosthesis, 'golden prosthesis once used by the one-armed valkyrie', says what that finding felt like: 'When Maleigh Marais, Lord of the Shaded Castle, embraced this prosthesis, he claimed to feel the presence of his personal goddess.' The robe leaves the goddess unnamed; the title 'Goddess of Rot' belongs elsewhere in the game to Malenia, so reading her into the robe is an inference, not a quotation. The game does not say that the family's executioner's office ever concerned her. What it records instead is the aftermath: 'House Marais is ruined...', 'Just deserts, for falling for that severed harpy.', 'No surprise that guilty cretin took the castle and our storied sword...'