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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.

 


 
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THE TREE OF LIFE
A SUPPORT-MATERIAL SITE FOR READERS
 OF
"THE BOOK OF THE RIGHTEOUS"
PUBLISHED BY
GREEN RONIN PUBLISHING, 2002
WRITTEN AND DESIGNED BY AARON LOEB