Scions of Vemnesthis

Faction Type: Religious Organization (conscript order)
Patron Deity: Vemnesthis (God of Time)
Alignment: Lawful Neutral
Primary Base: A timeless citadel existing outside the normal flow of reality
Leadership: Arachne Tellwyrn (longest-serving Scion, acts as Vemnesthis's hand)

Overview

The Scions of Vemnesthis are the agents of Vemnesthis, the god of time, charged with policing temporal tampering across all of history. Unlike most Pantheon cults, the Scions are not a voluntary congregation of worshippers but a body of conscripts: mages who attempted to manipulate time for their own ends and were sentenced by Vemnesthis to an eternity of indentured servitude as enforcers of temporal law. Membership is not chosen — those who break temporal law are pulled out of time and inducted into the order as punishment and correction.

The Scions exist outside the normal flow of time, dwelling in a citadel that sits apart from the material world. From there they are dispatched on missions into the past and across history to halt unauthorized time magic and to recruit (never to kill) the very mages whose meddling brought them to Vemnesthis's notice.

Vemnesthis is largely motivated by what he believes is compassion, but as a god whose perspective spans all of time, he struggles to comprehend mortal, linear existence — a gap that shapes both the harshness and the strange mercies of the order he commands.

Goals and Mission

Primary Objectives

Police temporal tampering: The Scions' core duty is to prevent and undo unauthorized manipulation of time. When a mage attempts forbidden time magic, the Scions are dispatched to intervene.
Recruit, never kill: Scions operate under a strict standing order from Vemnesthis: targets of intervention are to be recruited into the order, not slain. The doctrine "we always recruit, never kill" governs every mission.
Clean up their own mess: Scions are held responsible for the temporal damage they (and those they pursue) cause. A Scion who triggers or fails to contain a temporal disaster is required to set it right, however painful that proves.
Preserve the fixed line of history: The order enforces Vemnesthis's principle that time flows in one direction and history cannot be rewritten, controlling those who would interfere with it.

Organizational Structure

Internal hierarchy

The Scions have little formal hierarchy. Practical authority is vested almost entirely in the longest-serving Scion, who acts as Vemnesthis's hand: assigning missions, inducting new recruits, and pacing the order's work. In the era of the serial this role belongs to Arachne Tellwyrn, who carries near-absolute day-to-day authority over the other Scions while herself answering to Vemnesthis. Missions are handed out on no fixed schedule, deliberately spaced to break up the tedium of an endless sentence and to keep tensions among the Scions from boiling over.

Beyond mission assignment, roles in the citadel are functional rather than ranked. Certain Scions take on standing duties — provisioning, cooking, library-keeping — but there is no chain of command in the ordinary sense; all are equally bound.

Membership

Membership is involuntary and permanent. Each Scion is a mage who attempted to bend time and was sentenced by Vemnesthis to indentured service rather than destroyed. Nearly every Scion wanted something through their time-meddling — power, a lost life restored, escape from a fate — and was caught and conscripted for it. New members are not welcomed so much as pressed; existing Scions, who describe themselves as "all prisoners together," wear "the same chains."

Major NPCs

Arachne Tellwyrn — The longest-serving Scion and Vemnesthis's chief agent; dispatches missions, inducts recruits, and exercises near-total authority within the citadel. (Vemnesthis grants her "some minor exceptions" regarding time magic.)
Cyria Aradidjad — A theoretical arcanist sentenced to the Scions after a temporal rift she created destabilized over Calderaas and flattened a quarter of the city; later a recruitment-and-enforcement specialist. POV character of the Scion side-stories.
Kaolu — The citadel's cook and groundskeeper, recruited from some four thousand years in the past after he attempted forbidden time magic to resurrect his destroyed village.
Idrie — An established Scion who greets and orients new inductees.
Dravo — A talkative wood elf Scion from the second century after the Elder Wars.
Chao Lu Shen — Keeper of the citadel's research library.
Other named Scions include Rispin, Yalda, and Styrronski, each occupying a dwelling of their own choosing within the citadel.

Practices and Observances

Mission protocol

Recruit, never kill. Scions sent to intercept a time-meddler are to bring them into the order, not execute them.
Unlimited attempts. Because the Scions work outside time, a botched intervention or recruitment can simply be rewound and retried; they "get as many tries as needed to get it right."
No service weapons on the material plane. Scions are forbidden to fire their service weapons in the mortal world.

Daily life in the citadel

Within the citadel the Scions feel neither hunger, thirst, nor fatigue. Food still exists and is shared, but it serves as comfort and ritual rather than bodily need. The order's luxuries — described below — temper, but do not lift, the fact of an unending sentence.

Travel through "the place between"

Reaching their targets, Scions pass through a chaos-space sometimes called "the place between." Only Scions and valkyries cross it with impunity; travelers must ignore the things that move in its sky, as paying them attention invites danger.

Bases of Operation

The timeless citadel

The Scions' home is a citadel set outside the ordinary flow of reality — a nexus of floating platforms, bridges, and structures drifting against a view of open cosmos. Several of its buildings are larger inside than their outer dimensions should allow. An elevator-like system links its levels.

For all that it is a prison, the citadel is lavishly appointed. It holds gymnasiums, swimming pools, botanical gardens, workshops, laboratories, a theater, five museums, and recreational libraries, alongside an official research library kept by Chao Lu Shen. Scions may claim any available dwelling as their own — one keeps a medieval castle, another a luxurious residence — with no restriction on where they live.

The Tilted Hourglass

The citadel's principal social hub is a pub called the Tilted Hourglass, the gathering place where Scions pass their idle time between missions.

Notable Details

Relationship with the Universal Church and Empire

The Scions stand almost wholly apart from the ordinary religious life of the Tiraan Empire. They keep no public temples, no congregation, and no presence in the Universal Church's hierarchy; they are a hidden order of conscripts encountered only when someone tampers with time. Their concern is the integrity of the timeline itself, not the politics of Church or throne.

Provisioning

Material life in the citadel runs through a small number of fixed roles: Kaolu provides food, while other requisitions are routed through a single quartermaster figure — a chokepoint that the Scions wryly grumble about.

A strange mercy

Even in punishment, Vemnesthis's intent toward his Scions is meant to be merciful rather than cruel; arrangements exist to ease the emotional weight of an endless sentence, reflecting the god's flawed, time-spanning attempt at compassion.

Sources

https://tgab.fandom.com/api.php?action=parse&page=Gods%20and%20Goddesses&prop=wikitext&format=json&formatversion=2 (Pantheon table: Vemnesthis / Scions of Vemnesthis / Arachne Tellwyrn)
https://tiraas.net/cast-list/ (Vemnesthis blurb: "God of Time. The deity stops mages who attempt time magic, with some minor exceptions for Arachne.")
https://tiraas.net/2018/04/09/bonus-25-scion-part-2/ (Bonus #25: Scion, part 2 — citadel, induction, mission rules, Kaolu, Idrie)
https://tiraas.net/2018/04/15/bonus-27-scion-part-4/ (Bonus #27: Scion, part 4 — citadel amenities, named Scions, Calderaas rift, Tellwyrn's role)