The Ekopakan Inquisition

Justifying the Means

The followers of Kudukis believe in a simple moral philosophy - laws, well-written and well-intentioned, beget good. To sacrifice order and the rule of law for the public good is a fundamental oxymoron unless those laws were written in malice. Every Ekopakan child is taught from a very young age to trust their leaders, priests, and the many other authorities in their lives. Of course, it's impossible to create a perfectly orderly society, where everyone conforms and accepts the leadership of their authorities. That is handled by local militias and their omdura leaders, and paladins in the more difficult situations. But sometimes, heresy, sedition, blasphemy, and lies can linger in the most insidious cracks in society. For this purpose, there is the Inquisition.
The Inquisition is, in no uncertain terms, the secret police of the Dominion of Ekopaka. Not just responsible for religious crimes, they are just as, if not more, involved with eliminating secular crime. They are equipped for espionage, infiltration, assassination, kidnapping, blackmail, manipulation, and many more dark and sinister ends, all in the service of their faith and state. The Inquisition is given the privilege of violating orthodoxy and religious law to protect those very same things. They consider themselves a necessary evil - and from inside and out, many can't help but agree with the "evil" part - but to simply label them as such would be to undersell their genuine commitment to their cause. That is perhaps what makes them the most frightening...

Structure and Composition

The Inquisition is, at a glance, highly decentralized. They have no known central headquarters, instead operating from a series of safehouses, meeting spots, and seeming unaffiliated institutions, often with cover identities and even day jobs, and operate in smaller cells and cabals that ultimately answer to the Grand Inquisitor. In the context of the Ekopakan Inquisition, a "cell" defines an official group organized from above, whereas a cabal is an association of peers or peer groups for the purposes of a mission or task, though they try and minimize the number of direct connections between cells. However, the hierarchy of the Inquisition is very strict, and orders from above are absolute and may not be disobeyed, though lower-ranked Inquisitors may ask for clarifications and provide their own advice. This does not include the Inquisitorial Footsoldiers - Neophytes, Lictors, and Vicars - who are initiates and low-ranking members who operate as the open branch of the Inquisition, and who operate from various barracks present in most major settlements in Ekopaka. The Grand Inquisitor is one of the members of the leader triumvirate, and currently the most politically influential and powerful among them, but is never present in-person, instead sending a representative from among the ranks, trusted to receive communications from the Grand Inquisitor. While the footsoldiers are responsible for open police work and providing support to local law enforcement, full Inquisitors are responsible for covert action. They have been known to target heretical cults, apostate organizations, and false converts, but most of their day-to-day work involves infiltrating secular criminal organizations; rooting out counterfeiting, moonshining, and bootlegging operations; dismantling political conspiracies; capturing promising candidates for certain positions; acquiring or fabricating incriminating information on political opponents; and many more.
Footsoldiers are a vital part of the Ekopakan military - while the Paladins are dedicated to melee combat, and Omdura to leadership, the Inquisitors represent both ranged combat and special operations. Every Inquisitor and footsoldier must be an adept archer as a basic requirement to join and are furthermore trained well in melee combat to allow them to best survive and succeed in battle. They also wield divine magics of various purposes, using them to weaken targets and coordinate allies. Higher-ranked Inquisitors tend to avoid such combat when necessary but have been known to interfere against opponents of particularly dangerous disposition, and will involve themselves in major defensive operations against important targets. In battle, these experienced agents will typically target enemy leadership, supply lines, equipment, and other sensitive soft targets as they present themselves.
The Inquisitors are organized into a simple hierarchical rank structure - Neophytes, Lictors, and Vicars are the footsoldiers responsible for public policing. Prefects both lead these footsoldiers and form the rank-and-file of the secret police wing of the Inquisition. Dux, Legates, and Magisters form the rest of the secret police, each rank with authority over more agents and resources than the last. And of these secret police, there exist two organizations. The Shadowlords, the group known to be permitted the most leeway in their approach to religious orthodoxy and commit actions that would otherwise risk accusations of heresy and blasphemy, are the first and are the Inquisitors most likely to know the name and face of the Grand Inquisitor. The second is the enigmatic Sinlords - not even the name of this organization is known to the average person, and they are permitted to outright flout and ignore religious restrictions. They are even permitted to use firearms, considered outright sacrilegious weapons.

Tactics

When it comes to their general operations, the secret police branch of the Inquisition operates through a thick facade of absolute secrecy. The average Inquisitor may make use of as many as a dozen cover identities, and live in twice as many communities, before their retirement, assuming they live that long. Some Inquisitors even have their original identities expunged - with their immediate family quietly made to disappear into secluded government service jobs and all records of their past self being destroyed from government records. Inquisitors are trained to lie as naturally as they breathe, and having any perceptible tell at the end of training is enough to prevent one from becoming a member of the Secret Police. They are able to think quickly enough to consciously compose believable and convincing lies and stories.  This allows Inquisitors to act as if they had become their new identity, and as a result, easily infiltrate and construct a rapport that makes them able to gain clout and influence in their adopted groups. There have been incidents where Inquisitors had become high-ranking lieutenants or even leaders in illicit organizations - making it quite easy to bring in almost the entire manpower of these groups in sweeping arrests. On the rare occasion that an undercover Inquisitor is found out, the system of cells and cabals prevents the discovery of more than a handful of Inquisitors when one is compromised.
In battle, the Inquisitor footsoldiers operate as archers, firing from long distances. The cities of Ekopaka are often full of ornate and artful stonework, and this is designed to make it harder for attackers to take cover while defenders can. This allows the ranged fire of the Inquisitor footsoldiers to land well and hit hard. In pitched battles, their marksmanship skills allow them to operate in looser formation and take advantage of the rough terrain and taiga forests of Ekopaka. Footsoldiers will avoid melee combat when possible - however, they will take advantage of an engaged opponent with their swords in hand if there is a risk of friendly fire when using their bows, or they are out of ammunition. Their units are organized around Vicars and Lictors leading squad-sized units, coordinating under a Prefect responsible for leading regiment each. These Prefects and their regiments are subordinated under the general battle command but are expected to act with a fair degree of autonomy compared to other units of Paladins and militia.
Members of the secret police wing, the Shadowlords, and on rare occasions the Sinlords, will operate fully independently of the general order of battle. They may cooperate and share some information with the overall commander (excluding the Sinlords, who are fully autonomous and answer only to the Grand Inquisitor) but are otherwise fully autonomous and pursue their own objectives. They will tend to target soft targets, as mentioned before, eliminating leaders, officers, nobles, supplies, camps, siege equipment, bridges, pack animals, and mounts. Their general MO is to spend hours meticulously planning an attack that will last seconds. They act, cause damage, and flee as the chaos unfolds, splitting up and moving along pre-planned escape routes. A handful of Inquisitors can change a war more substantially in a minute than an army of paladins may in a week, if the circumstances allow.

Traditions

The secrecy and anonymity of Inquisitorial life preclude many kinds of traditions other organizations may have. However, there are a handful of notable organizational cultural events worthy of discussion. The first and most important is the Chance Encounter - once every 3-5 years, the Inquisition swaps its symbols and sigils, used for identification, as a matter of routine. Inquisitors are "encouraged" by their leaders to "go take a day off" and are suggested a locale to visit, typically a public house where they can have a warm drink. While there, another agent they do not know will strike up a conversation and pass them, under some pretense, an amulet, medallion, coin, or some other durable piece of metal with the new sigil on it. Inquisitors who do not receive a new sigil know they have been deactivated until further notice, and will live in their current cover life for a time. Inquisitors who fail to show are considered missing - an investigation will go into determining if they've gone rogue, died, have been captured, or however else they may have been compromised. This is done in a wave pattern - the Inquisitors closest to the capital receive their new sigils fastest, and those on the outskirts receive them last. This means that would-be infiltrators may end up with an old sigil just before the new sigil comes in - or they may get a new sigil when the area they are headed towards is still using the old one! Sigils will also change if and when there is concern that the current sigils are compromised.
Furthermore, at a random time, every member of the secret police will be subject to kidnapping by the Inquisition and interrogated under false circumstances. They are expected not to crack at any point during the interrogation - those that fail are relegated to administration away from any active operations, or killed if there is reason to suspect that they were too willing or eager to disclose Inquisition information. The timing is incredibly irregular - a handful of new Prefects only ended up getting kidnapped when they had already become Dux. This is to ensure that there is no way to truly prepare or know, what's happening, on the off chance that this event is known to be coming - despite the fact Inquisitors are not told this event is coming.
Sinlords have their own ritual - the Point of No Return, where the night of their induction, each Sinlord is made to drink wine while standing on Ekopakan soil, as well as fire a pistol and make an oath that they will do whatever it takes to defend Ekopaka and the Kudukan faith. Prohibitions against intoxication and firearms are strictly observed tenets of Kudukan faith, and thus these blasphemies truly emphasize the great responsibility and freedom afforded by this position. The wine is typically mildly poisoned - a morning spent vomiting after one cup of wine to hopefully convince the Sinlords not to indulge in such a frivolous vice!

Type: Religious Law Enforcement, Active
Size: Highly Classified
Role: Secret Police
Uniform: Various signs and sigils that change frequently
State: Active

Type

Governmental, Inquisitorial