Madmen’s eyes hold an unsettling fury and intensity. Curiously, so do the eyes of many inquisitors. This is not coincidence.
The absolute belief, the driving faith of an inquisitor is a palpable thing. Conviction is far more than a feeling that God exists, it’s an absolute knowledge
of His existence and a driving urge to do His bidding to the best of one’s ability. The inquisitor’s relentless sense of humility and subordination to the Lord is as terrifying as is his loathing for anyone or anything serving the Adversary. In such a worldview, there is no room for doubt. Inquisitors may doubt them- selves, they may doubt others and they may even doubt the Church, but they never, ever, doubt God. The above beliefs and traits, when combined, are what make up the game mechanic called Convic- tion.
While any pious man might feel a moment of connection to the Divine, a moment of absolute certainty about God and the world, a moment of righteous rage that gives his crucifix the ability to ward off a vampire briefly, this is the level of inten- sity that inquisitors live with night and day, year after year. It can take its toll.
Callousness is the most obvious cost of such a burning faith, but Callousness is only a problem for some inquisitors some of the time. The day-to-day interpersonal elements of Conviction can be much more difficult to deal with; for an inquisitor, they’re an issue constantly.
The Flock
Members of the flock are uncertain how to perceive inquisitors. An inquisitor’s passionate faith often polar- izes the laity. The more pious folk see inquisitors as exemplars, role models leading lives worthy of imita- tion by all good Christians. Those whose faith is less perfect, however, may find an inquisitor’s intensity off- putting, unnerving or even terrifying. Such intensity can only come from absolute knowledge or delusion verging on madness, and it can be hard to tell which is which.
Those faithful in the former category are likely to idolize inquisitors as living saints. They may become strangely driven to serve the inquisitor to the best of their ability, to be in his presence as much as possible, or to pray with him on a regular basis. An inquisitor developing this kind of cult of personality is likely to have his humility challenged, and is better off doing everything in his power to prevent such a following from developing in the first place. Young inquisitors may be inclined to revel in such attention from the faithful at first, but such arrangements can go wrong in such a terrible variety of ways that the inquisitor never makes the same mistake twice. Wise inquisitors, therefore, take steps to prevent such things as soon as they sense any such tendency.
Those members of the flock who fear the inquisitor, however, are potentially more trouble. These individu- als may feel that the inquisitor’s extreme faith somehow minimizes or degrades theirs. They may grow bitter and resentful. While they’re still faithful to the tenets of Christianity, they may find themselves doing things to undermine the inquisitor in question, trying to prove him a hypocrite. So long as the inquisitor is acting above board, he’s not likely to have a problem with these petty faith-enviers. God save the inquisitor caught in any kind of compromising position (like some of those that might be brought on by Callousness), how- ever, if such a member of the flock catches him.
Pagans
Pagans, on the other hand, are not divided at all in their perceptions of inquisitors. To pagan eyes, inquisitors are not so different from attack dogs. It’s bad enough that monotheists are insistent that there is and can be only one god and that it’s their own, and that those not worshipping him must convert or die. Almost worse than that, however, is their insuffer- able self-righteousness, adding insult to injury as far as the scattered pagans of Europe are concerned. Run-of-the-mill Christian soldiers are hard enough to deal with, but haughty, overzealous Christians with a hint of madness in their eyes and no room to doubt their own strange views of the world are nothing short of a plague in human form.
Pagans perceive the unquestioning certainty of Conviction as ignorance, arrogance and naïveté. Those qualities alone would be enough to cause the pagans to despise the inquisitors, but when the inquisitors are so quick to use violence to enforce their view of the world, that seals the pagans’ loath- ing. Consequently, a direct correlation exists between how much Conviction an inquisitor has and how much a pagan will hate her. An inquisitor with a high Conviction rating, even one whose Piety is also high, still incurs murderous rage among pagans. God help an inquisitor who opens his mouth in any village where pagans outnumber Christians (and while such places are rare throughout most of Eu- rope, they still exist — in the Norse lands and in the Balkans, primarily).
The Enemy
The allies of the Adversary feel the God-given confidence of the inquisitor as a challenge to their dark master’s power over the world. On the whole, such foul creatures are used to feeling superior to the mortals in their herd. It amuses them momentarily to
see a mortal show such arrogance. That amusement often changes, once the inquisitor has channeled the power of her faith into the monster’s undoing.
Vampires in particular fancy themselves the masters of humanity. Many are used to being treated with deference by the mortal slaves in their retinue. When they meet an inquisitor who has the effron- tery not to show them deference and — more shockingly — the arrogance to show them the mani- fest revulsion of the Almighty, it infuriates these children of the Devil, at least the first time they see it. Any vampire who survives an initial encounter with an inquisitor (or, worse, a company of them) is likely to show a great deal more respect to those with true Conviction.
Other creatures vary in their approach to in- quisitors with the true fire of the Lord in their eyes. Feeling certain of their prowess in battle, the more bestial of Satan’s minions are likely to attack the inquisitor the moment he challenges them. Sorcer- ers vary widely in their approach to the members of the Inquisition. Some are simply pagans and respond in true form. Others claim to be Christian, and may even challenge the inquisitor to a test of whose connection to the Divine is more legitimate. Most inquisitors would agree that magi gain their power from some source entirely unrelated to God, and many witches often relish opportunities for battle with an inquisitor who is arrogant in his faith.