Investigator

A collage of diagrams, maps, and small items litters the wall, pinned with nails and connected by a spiderweb of colorful strings. An elf stands nearby, contemplating the mystery splayed out in front of her and readying her crossbow for work.
A half-orc wearing a wide-brimmed hat leafs through a thick tome, double-checking the preparations: a sturdy net trap, holy symbols on the doors, cloves of garlic, and several dozen wooden stakes. The preparations made, the half-orc slinks into the shadows and readies himself for the bloodshed.
Hastily tracing symbols in chalk, a human wearing a long coat whirls about in a wide arc, completing a rough magic circle in mere seconds.
A monstrously fat demon, blood dripping with its drool, lunges at him, but instead impacts off an invisible magical barrier, a cylinder raised from the circle’s edge. The fiend howls with rage, and the inquisitor breathes a sigh of relief.
Supernatural detectives and monster slayers, investigators are always on the hunt for malevolent outsiders. Whenever evil seeps into the world—be it fiends, undead, or strange abominations from beyond the stars—investigators will be the first to locate them and banish their foul corruption from the mortal plane.
Paranormal Investigators
There are forces more ancient than time, foes more sinister than the foulest men, and beings more titanic than gods. The world stands at a precipice of woe and terror, being threatened nightly by dark agents and hordes of monsters. At risk to their own lives and sanities, investigators penetrate the evil that creeps in the shadows and banish it from the world. Their battles are never-ending, for victory only delays doomsday another night.
Investigators track supernatural threats ranging from incorporeal spirits, to nefarious vampires and lycanthropes, to incursions of demons and devils.
Often in their investigations, they often uncover secret cults and maligned individuals who bring these supernatural threats to bear. It is always their goal to impede these evildoers by any means necessary, resorting to trickery, guile, magic, and bloodshed when necessary. To an investigator, no tactic is unthinkable when the world is at stake.
Exorcists and Occultists
Even as they strive to contain its influence from the world at large, investigators dabble in forbidden magic to give themselves an edge against supernatural threats. Prepared investigators keep a well-stocked grimoire of magical secrets, containing rituals, incantations, notes on monsters’ powers and weaknesses, recipes for poisons, and arcane diagrams—everything needed to confront their foes on an even footing. Even so, an investigator’s
occupation is perilous. A grimoire might spell out a vampire’s fear of sunlight and aversion to silver, but it
does little to hinder their fangs.
Creating an Investigator
As you build your investigator, consider what sort of supernatural threat first drove you to investigating and combating the occult. Did one of your family members strike a bargain with a fiend? Were you kidnapped by a cabal of vampires or a pack of lycanthropes? Did you stumble across evidence of an eldritch abomination, such as a Great Old One? The
type of creature you first did battle with likely shaped
your tools and methods later on.
Did you apprentice under a seasoned monster
hunter, learning the ropes of tracking a threat,
uncovering its weaknesses, and setting a trap for it?
Or did you strike out on your own, compiling your
own grimoire from hard-earned research? Perhaps
you learned everything about monster hunting from
someone else’s grimoire, a masterwork containing
an abridged library of occult knowledge and a
lifetime of experience. It’s even possible that you
signed a contract with a minor fiend and turned to
supernatural investigation in a last-ditch effort to
save your soul.