The Inquisitors

The Inquisitors believe in a personal Hell. Hell, to them, is found within. It’s a state of mind that can only be reached through attaining enlightenment. They know that wisdom exists somewhere out there. They intend to find it. The most important rule of the Paranoid Descent is this: Be on your guard. Anything could be a trap, any slip could cost you dearly, anyone could be out to get you. As a corollary to this, the Watcher knows she can’t work alone. To be on your own is death. They therefore dearly value reliable allies, particularly other demons. Many prefer to find allies elsewhere, maintaining only a few contacts among the other Paranoids, thus avoiding rivalry for information.

Their Descent focuses around gathering information, although many find they need to take breaks and relax lest the nickname “Paranoids” truly become fitting. Intelligence gathering is also more than sitting alone in front of your computer, although for some Watchers, the Descent does take that form. The truly skilled Inquisitors have a network of contacts and semi-trusted allies, built up through socialization and favors and even blackmail. Many are also conscious to make themselves valuable — after all, what better way to forestall betrayal? Occasional undercover work is common — Inquisitors are always following up leads. Some even try to go undercover as other supernatural beings.

At their heart, the Inquisitors are a pessimistic bunch. No victory is a given against the God-Machine. One can only stall, and maybe gain an advantage and improve one’s situation every so often. So they play the long game, trying to delay the inevitable until they can find their enlightenment and descend to Hell. This requires constant vigilance. They can never truly relax — instead, they sleep with one eye open. Some buckle under the strain and end up making a fatal mistake almost deliberately. It’s the price to be paid, and those who break are generally viewed with pity.

Inquisitors tend to pick Covers that give them access to information. They often find it useful to pose as journalists, professors, archivists, and detectives, both police and private. Second only to Saboteurs in terms of paranoia — a side effect of spending so much time looking into the world’s secret history and following the movements of its secret masters — Inquisitors are also likely to take on Covers that are expedient and innocuous, the better to keep their true natures hidden from those they seek to investigate. Because gathering information can be a slow process, Integrators value their Covers. Whether an Inquisitor identifies strongly with a Cover or not, he won’t throw it away, simply because it may come with laboriously gathered contacts and a huge library of stored information.

When it comes to humans, Inquisitors often have a sense of superiority. As demons, they are capable of understanding the universe and acting on that understanding with more power than most humans could even imagine. Humans are subject to the world’s rules; demons can hack that system, accessing back doors and secret codes, playing the game in an entirely different way. In their endless quest to learn all the universe’s secrets, Inquisitors frequently lose sight of the human lives all around them. Their heads are just too full of arcane secrets and conspiracies.

The stated goal of the Inquisitors is to either manipulate the God-Machine or find a way for demons to escape its attention. Either way, some Inquisitors don’t think that their endgame will have much of an effect on the lives of humans. They believe that they tread lightly upon the human world because it isn’t really theirs: someday they will find their own place, and for better or worse they will never have to deal with humans again.