The Hierophant
Tradition, Conformity, Knowledge, Teaching, If Everybody Else Jumped Off Of A Bridge You Would Definitely Also Jump Off That Same Bridge, Perhaps The Most Impressive Hat So Far, Finger Guns, Two in the Pink, A Backscratcher I Found At A Flea Market, A Coterie of Bald Hangers-On
I know what you’re probably thinking: “What in the hell is a hierophant?” It’s a word that basically doesn’t see use any more, and that word mostly just means “High Priest1”.
Remember earlier when I mentioned that the transition from Catholic playing cards to occult-themed divination cards involved The Pope and The Popess evolving into The Hierophant and the High Priestess2?
That’s right: the Hierophant is nothing more than a dollar-store Pope!
That strong undercurrent of Pope provides a lot of this card’s interpretation. Guidance. Big, institutional spirituality. There are a lot of common visual elements between this card and the High Priestess, but while the High Priestess is intuitive, flexible, and mysterious, the Hierophant is traditional, rigid, and well-established.
While the card has strong Catholic Church vibes, this particular institution can be substituted out for any large, traditional, didactic institution. Modern academia? Finance? Worship of the Great Old Ones?
Friends & Foes
the Anxious Actuary has zero tolerance for risk or danger. They have a safe, stable job and wear gloves to reduce the risk of paper cuts. If forced to participate in any kind of adventure, they will drag their feet and whine.
a Professor Exposition is vital for explaining a lot of complex information.
a Priest For a God With An Incredibly Niche Portfolio has the same vibe as that one friend you have who’s really, really in to trains. Some gods get to be about the Sun, but some gods get the short end of the cosmic stick and end up being the patron of something obscure, like transportation logistics or onion varietals.
the Insufferable Busybody has never met a rule they wouldn’t enthusiastically tattle on someone for breaking, and any opportunity to add new rules is a good one.
the Herald of a Plague God is going viral: their enthusiasm is infectious. The challenge is honestly to avoid becoming one of their congregants.
the Sadistic Inquisitor is here to root out heresy, and they are not interested in your feeble excuses: they are working on the side of good. Torture will bring out the truth.
the Big Tent Evangelist is a charismatic, popular miracle-worker, bringing in new congregants by the hundred. Some might suspect they’re accomplishing this through dishonest means - why do they need to grow their flock so quickly?
Hooks
If the players do not stabilize the devil’s gate quickly, there’s a very real risk of crossing the demon inversion event horizon, which I am told would be very bad.
The catalogue of creatures is frustratingly incomplete, and your players have been enticed to contribute. There’s talk of a particularly rare Oobli nearby.
Locations
The College, the Library, the City Hall, and the Cathedral are all hugely Hierophant locations that I don’t have to describe to you in any more detail than that. You know what a library is like.
The Impossible Anomaly is an otherworldly effect or object that absolutely should not exist, and it’s right here. If it’s been around for a while, researchers have been dispatched to very carefully study it from a distance. Why is it here? Where did it come from? Maybe gravity is getting wonky, or we’re dealing with an Akira glob situation3 - whatever it is, it seems dangerous.
Not all research gets to be exciting, which is why Research Station: Mundane is out there, deep, deep in the boonies, remote and filled with lonely, bored scientists who very badly want to talk about their unexciting specialty4.
The Border Wall Entrance is navigable by most folks, but in order to get through they’re going to need to show some paperwork and go through an inspection.
Treasures
The Junior Explorer Monster Identification Cards are a vital resource when it comes to determining exactly what kind of thing that puddle of goop is.
Names
Curie, Hillary, Anastasia, Ada, Lovelace, Alice, Grace, Jean, Paul, Peter, Linus, Clement, Alexander, Sixtus, Soter, Victor, Zephyr, Callix, Urban, Caius, Marcel, Mark, Max, Penrose, Lagrange, Babbage, Niels, Drake, Diesel, Cousteau, Gauss, Lysenko, Rutherford, Wilbur, Orville