Investigator

Of the 6 Career Skills, choose 3 to get a free rank. Of the 4 Specialization Skills, choose 2 to get a free rank.

Sentinal Career Skills: Computers, Deception, Knowledge (Core Worlds), Perception, Skulduggery and Stealth

Investigator Specialization Skills: Knowledge (Education), Knowledge (Underworld), Perception and Streetwise

A Sentinal begins play with a Force rating of 1

Investigators examine unsolved crimes, using their knowledge and skills to figure out the who, what, when, where, and why. They don’t seek this information merely to satisfy some obsession over the ugly side of society but rather to honor the victims by bringing the perpetrators to justice.

Investigators piece together what has been lost or stolen by uncovering the past. Weaving the stories of what happened into a living chronicle, they discover secrets and untan gle lies. Only by understanding the how and why of a crime can Investigators bring the one who did it to justice.

Since crimes are inflicted upon (and inflicted by) people, these acts leave an impression in the Force. Particularly violent crimes leave a strong disturbance. Extremely evil crimes leave a wound—a cold, dark space that frightens the unwary and consumes the foolhardy. Investigators can tease out details from those impressions, unwinding them so they can heal. In many ways, Investigators are physicians for the souls of communities, solving festering mysteries, airing out toxic secrets, and cauterizing hidden crimes.

These violent impressions can also affect individuals. Even if they haven’t witnessed the crime in question, investigators have heard rumors, have felt their community suffer, and can read their peers with the insight of an insider. In many ways, a community functions as a single, living organism, and damage to that organism reverberates in both predictable and surprising ways. By tracing those symptoms, Investigators get to the source.

Investigators have many tools in their kits besides the Force. Understanding the local customs and language, being familiar with the unspoken rules of a community, and knowing how to bluff their way into a back room requires knowledge and social skills. Slicing a security camera, picking a lock to search an apartment, or staking out a person of interest in an investigation means breaking laws without getting caught. And sometimes—oftentimes—successfully sneaking into and out of a building can bring the Investigator one step closer to the truth.

The greatest tools of Investigators, though, can often become their greatest weaknesses. Their emotions can help them understand a person’s motives, giving context to a fact. If a perpetrator killed a dangerous drug lord, is that person a murderer or a savior? However, emotions can cloud an investigator’s judgment. If the good friend who saved a life turns out to be a slaver, is it a betrayal to turn that friend in? Finally, the constant exposure to suffering can burn out even the most stalwart of Investigators.

In the final analysis, Investigators see crime and victimization as a corruption of the Force. They feel the Force as something that flows through people, affecting their health, psychology, and well-being. A corruption of the Force makes people angrier, more fearful, and more likely to lash out and harm others. These constant cuts caused by crime chip away at a society, wounding the Force until the whole society falls to the dark side. Airing out the source of the wound allows the society to finally heal.

Potential Backgrounds

  • Activist: An activist Investigator may start work seeking information to incriminate an oppressor, whether it is an individual, group, government, or corporation. Unable or unwilling to attack the perpetrator directly, this character aims to expose secrets and to warn the public. A proper investigation—one about finding the truth rather than digging up dirt to slander someone—requires intuition, a questioning mind, and a keen eye. An Investigator finds vital clues for the cause through mystical flashes of insight, feeling the Force in these brilliant leaps.
  • Aristocrat: Driven by a sense of injustice from their privileged vantage point, some aristocrats see indifference or even corruption in their elite peers throughout the galaxy. What starts as a sudden insight inevitably branches into probing questions about the systems that gave them their titles in the first place. Just as they first examined their families, friends, elite organizations, or inherited corporations, Investigators pry up the veneer of aristocratic perfection to uncover the truth—that the power of the aristocracy was taken, not built. Their inability to keep silent about these truths and injustices means these characters can never return to a comfortable life.
  • Gang Leader: Investigators who were gang leaders build on the information networks they created with their gangs. Two dozen ears to the ground can gather more data than one, and those two dozen can quickly sift and analyze that information for truth, lies, and idle rumors. Investigators with this background find themselves further and further afield, encountering a spider’s web of secrets that threaten more than their original territory. Still, they remain in touch with their gangs, which serve as centers of their own information webs, while tapping into the biggest web of them all: the Force.
  • Laborer: Investigators who began as laborers often feel that life doesn’t make sense. After seeing their community suffer the death of peers, the collapse of the local economy, or the destruction of a beloved communal building, these laborers start asking questions and don’t stop. The questions, of course, lead to more questions, but they also lead to enemies— enemies of the workers, or worse. These Investigators form personal connections while stitching together broken communities, perhaps even establishing dialogue between different factions. When they find the culprit, they often find that the crime is a symptom of a larger societal disease, leading them to look into bigger questions, bigger mysteries, and bigger enemies.
  • Official: Officials who become Investigators start off with some sort of investigative authority: anything from local law enforcement to a corporate oversight committee. Their time spent investigating upward, grinding against the leadership structure, gives them an excellent command of bureaucracy, despite all its hurdles. Whereas other officials may burn out, unable to bring about the change they want, or give up and join the oppressors, Investigators accept that truth and justice far outweigh a title or badge of office, and they keep pushing.
  • Refugee: The Investigator serves an important role in the refugee community. Left on their own, refugee communities find themselves creating their own rules and structures. When a host planet fails to deliver on promises of security and enforcement, an Investigator may fill the void. The Investigator has an additional burden. Catching a criminal doesn’t simply bring one person to justice; it also elicits unfair judgment on the refugees’ ability to police their own. In many ways, this character has never left the refugee camp, believing that the only justice people can receive is the justice they make for themselves.