Seeker Archetype
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"The call me the seeker —The Who, "The Seeker"
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A seeker quests for the truth, uncovering mysteries, lies, deception and gaining knowledge about themselves and the universe. They may sometimes consider themselves beyond good and evil, being purely interested in facts and information, and not care about its meaning. The protagonists may need them to gain information, but this character may have become so distanced from humanity that they're reluctant to give it. At the same time, they may be searching for truth for its practical use- whatever it may entail for them. This could produce a character like the Intrepid Reporter, who will do anything to get to the bottom of a mystery.
A list of subtypes can be found on the Seekers page.
Examples of Seeker Archetype include:
Anime and Manga
- In Wild Rose, Kiri grows tired of his small world and leaves his family to find out for himself the truth of things.
Comic Books
- Tim Hunter in the Books of Magic. In early drafts, his name was actually Tim Seeker.
Literature
- Simon in Equal Rites from Discworld.
- Liza from Bones of Faerie.
- The Sword of Truth centers around the Seeker of Truth. It's The Seeker's job to be this trope. Notably, in that respect Richard wasn't the Designated Hero - in fact, most of the previous Seekers were only politically-appointed, and the latest was only appointed because he deserved to be. It turns out he had good upbringing and approximately thirty kinds of inherited or conferred destiny, so being qualified to be The Seeker is probably the least of his accomplishments, although it becomes more and more useful over the course of the series.
Live Action TV
- Fox Mulder of The X-Files is the living embodiment of this trope, so much so we may as well name it the Mulder Archetype
- Gil Grissom on CSI
- Jessica Fletcher on Murder, She Wrote
- Locke on Lost
- Richard Cypher from, oddly enough, "The Legend Of The Seeker". He is the Seeker of Truth, armed with, coincidentally, the Sword of Truth.
Mythology
- Odin of Norse Mythology
Video Games
- Neku from The World Ends With You; For 75% of the story he's trying to figure out how he entered the UG and how he was killed.
- Takius from Ragnarok Online: The Animation
- Adam Jensen in Deus Ex Human Revolution; one of his more memorable lines in the game's trailer is "I'll never stop looking."
- In .hack GU Games, the fluff sometimes describe Hasseo and Ovan as "Seekers of the Truth". Hasseo is driven to figure out the mystery behind the P Ker known as "Tri-Edge", and to save the coma victims (particularly Shino) he seems to leave in his wake; Ovan wishes to find "The Key of Twilight" as he is actually "Tri-Edge", or rather, his PC is infected with the malevolent AI that started the whole mess. He wants to find a way to purge it so as to save his little sister, who was the first coma victim.
Web Comics
- In Holiday Wars, Tegan is seeking The Holiday Spirit to end a war between all of the Holidays. An example of this can be seen here.
- Finder
Web Original
- Shin of Sailor Nothing. Seriously, her name means truth.
- Luigi of There Will Be Brawl, along with Badass Longcoat and Private Eye Monologue. He drives the plot with his inquiries into the disappearance of Princess Peach.
- J of Marble Hornets does some rather stupid things in his quest to find out what happened to Alex. Until Entry #23, where he swears off the whole thing, due to having the living crap scared out of him by Slender Man.
- It doesn't last, by the way.
Western Animation
- Avatar: The Last Airbender brings us two, both from the same episode. The first is an anthropologist from Ba Sing Se university who is desperate to learn everything he can about the world. While he's not too distanced, he cares about knowledge much more than his own life. Eventually he finds the largest library in the world, the one belonging to Wan Shi Tong, He Who Knows Ten Thousand Things. The owl-spirit is one who has stopped along people access to his information, due to how people always use it to hurt others.