There are few institutions more vested in the prosperity and survival of mankind than the Scholae of the City States. Their very creation arose from the self-sacrifice of one individual who beheld the horrors of divinity unchecked and sacrificed his very self to create an incorruptible entity that would stand against the horrors that plague mankind upon Ea. Today the scholae are at the gleaming forefront of mankind’s future: the City States are gleaming bastions of industry and progress and their armies some of the most powerful and disciplined forces on the planet. But all of these actions are the efforts of their gleaming, open, and visible right hand. The Scholae have spent countless resources and plumbed well past all ethical and moral limits of research to create the Inquisitors, the Left Hand of the Scholae.

Crafted from the bodies of criminals and traitors, the bodies of each Inquisitor is bloated to monstrous proportion through the judicious application of smuggled Spire growth factors and live phlogiston, the expense of which alone would beggar some smaller kingdoms. This formidable body is implanted with vicious blades, hydraulic pistons and mechanized articulations, turning it into a walking siege weapon even as the subjects mind is erased through the combined assault of drugs, pain and painstaking surgical grafts. The result is an unthinking automaton that exists only to obey the Scholae’s directives.

But what monster, what horror, could have forced the Scholae to plum these monstrous depths?
The answer is simple: human curiosity.

Early in his career Platon, founder of the Scholae, caught a glimpse of the power that human ingenuity could unleash and shuddered at the thought of its existence. Humanities ingenuity, naivete and greed are fated to combine and unleash forces no sane man would want to exist, before one even factors the presence of an inimical god of death.
And so, the Inquisition was born. Not to hunt witches and devil summoners. Not to hunt diabolists and deurgists who would threaten mankind with their shortsightedness, but to hunt down the best and brightest of mankind thus ensuring that their unwitting contributions did not doom mankind to extinction. Its inquisitors work openly in the City States themselves, their hulking presence in the academic City States a constant reminder of who holds the reins. Outside the city states, Inquisitors are paired with an Eidolon to form an autonomous Quad, which works to track down, identify and neutralize inventors and technological developments that the Scholae considers too dangerous to be allowed to operate.

The sheer scope, ambition and audacity of this work would beggar belief and induce most sane men to scoff at the mere notion it could be true. This simple fact shields the Scholae’s work from the eyes of the masses better than any amount of subterfuge or bribery ever could. It’s work has continued for centuries, its methods and targets growing increasingly refined as the Scholae learn to target those innovations which would bring about revolutionary change and threaten the status quo, while allowing smaller increases in efficiency to go through so that the burgeoning population of the human realms might endure.

In recent years, though, there has been a marked shift in the focus of the efforts of the Inquisition: shifting from murder and coercion to kidnapping and recruitment. The Scholae, it seems, have struck upon a new plan. Aware that all they could do with their original strategies was delay the inevitable, they have now embarked upon a Great Work, a project they hope will allow them to subvert not just the development of technology across the world of Eä, but the very principles it is based upon.