|
The Holy and Righteous Order of Inquisitors
OME
lands are ruled by wisdom and kindness; benevolent leaders assure the proper
rule of law and see to the safety of all their people. Sadly, this is hardly
the dominant mode. In many lands, fear prevails. Whether the local
authorities are corrupt, ignorant, ineffectual or powerless, many common
folk feel exposed to the most dangerous elements. Usually, this fear extends
no further than crime – merchants worry after their caravans, parents fear
for the safety of their children. But in dark lands, in places haunted by
the past, on the borderlands with the wicked, these fears are often of
powers far more malignant than petty crime. The undead, demons, devils and
other forces of profound evil haunt these places, and the inability (or
unwillingness) of the local authorities to protect their people forces them
to turn to the only people who can and will: the Inquisitors.
A grim order of the Great
Church, the Inquisitors ferret out evil that lies hidden. They do not shrink
from putting people -- common and noble -- to the question or even from
investigating those who most consider beyond suspicion. In lands haunted by
evil, they are its surest foes, finding tempters and the tempted, summoners
of evil outsiders and the summoned, necromancers and their vile creations.
They are tireless in the pursuit of the wicked, and merciless in their
prosecution.
Inquisitors usually wear
robes of black or red over considerable armor. On the front of these robes
they often have the white tree, Eliwyn, the symbol of the Church,
embroidered with five golden fruits. The archetypical Inquisitor is seen
with a blade in one hand and a torch in the other, casting light into the
dark places and smiting it with the wrath of the gods.
In many lands, the
Inquisitors are considered unwelcome – even by the members of other Great
Church holy orders. It is, in their minds, a fringe order that is wholly
incompatible with the Church’s dual missions of propagating the faith of the
gods and doing good in their names. After all, it fails the first mission by
putting a terrifying face on the faith. It fails in the second because its
members are willing often to rely on harsh methods that may lead to harm of
the innocent. “In fighting evil,” the critics of this order argue, “we must
not ourselves become it.” Be that as it may, this fringe order, while not
universal to the Church, has flourished in the darker lands where evil
infiltration is a severe problem. In many of their cathedrals, the dean is a
member of the holy and righteous order of Inquisitors (which accepts members
from the clergy and paladins as well as other faithful not yet a part of a
holy order but willing to commit to one).
How the authorities of the
Great Church feel about the Inquisitors is not known; however, the supreme
patriarch (or matriarch) has made no effort to “bring them to heel."
For an Inquisitor (Inq)
prestige class, click
here and go to page 6 of the document. |
|