The three first founders of the Order all began their training in Evasendia in 155, under a shadowy figure they referred to only as Trismagistus, the "thrice-wise." The true identity of this personage remains shrouded in mystery: by the last...
January 2005 Archives
When Evasendia fell to the Andar Prince of Princes Rollo in 167, Trismagistus was put to death and his three students scattered.1 Palenti returned to his homeland of Ventria, Aegidius fled north into the war-torn Tyrrian countryside, and Cristofer took...
In the decade after the fall of Tympania, Aegidius encountered chaos and disorder everywhere he traveled. The Tympania he had known was gone, and it seemed clear to him that the world had entered a great Dark Age. Slowly, he...
For the next four years, Aegidius and Cristofer wandered the wreckage of the kingdom of Tympania, searching for other magical practitioners. Magi, however, were depressingly hard to find; while rumors of sorcerers abounded, once followed to their sources they invariably...
In 188, Aegidius and Cristofer brought Touccio to Abrisia, where they introduced him to Palenti and insisted, a bit smugly, that he hold to his promise. The two older men, however, got along so badly that Palenti initially insisted that...
After leaving Palenti in Abrisia, Cristofer and Touccio traveled to Evasendia to begin procuring quarters, laboratory space and a library for the Order, while Aegidius continued the quest for magi accompanied only by his student, Cesiper. For four years they...
Over the next three years, Aegidius and Cesiper met with no further success in their quest, and in 194, exhausted and demoralized, they returned to Evasendia, declaring their search to be at an end. The very day after this pronouncement,...
Over the next three years, Aegidius' search took him even further from Cholaeic lands, as he chased rumors and legends of sorcery through the far-flung corners of the Known World. In 197, his quest took him all the way to...
Palenti joined the other founders in the autumn of 198. He brought with him not only his first student Luke, but also a second apprentice and his response to Aegidius' challenge of a decade before: the newly-perfected technique of the...
By all accounts, the first several years of the Order were a time of unbridled creativity, as all seven founders conducted their various research in an atmosphere in which ideas flew thick and furious from one to the other. Due...
This revelation was brought home to the Order early when it became clear that the founder Touccio was simply incapable of the same ease and facility with spell-casting that the other founders enjoyed. He could not cast spells quickly, nor...
The idiosyncratic talents of Touccio and his students was an extreme case, but other obstacles to the notion of a united magecraft were quickly accumulating. Many of the Order's magi had great difficulty with the more mystical aspects of Lem's...
In 200, two years after the founding of the Order, Palenti finally stated openly the thought which had been in everyone's mind. In a public address to the Council, he set forth the idea that each of the Founders had...
Although more than half of the founders had now declared the formation of their own Houses, Aegidius and Cristofer refused to have anything to do with this new notion, and it was not until late in 200 that the Council...
The recognition of the Houses served both to decentralize the Order and to allow the descendants of the founders to develop a peculiar identity all their own. The next thirty years saw the rise of House unity and House identity...
Upon his return from the Andar Plains in 208, the demoralized Savacion had spent less and less time on the Council, preferring instead to patronize the taverns of the streets of Evasendia. In addition to his two Andarean wards, he...
The same concern for mage autonomy which granted so much power to the Houses in this period also made it impossible for any universal code of law or conduct to be ratified by the Order. In 203, five years after...
In 191, shortly after his arrival in Evasendia, the founder Lem had caused great controversy by his apprenticeship of his first student, the girl Tresmillia. The acceptance of Eleanor to the Order three years later had effectively silenced the debate...
Around 214, Savacion finally roused himself from the depression which had afflicted him since his return to Evasendia six years before. He began to take an interest in the political situation surrounding him, and he and his pack of young...
The Order's mission for Savacion's descendants was clearly nothing more than a delicately-worded term of exile, but in order to save face, Pilafian and Vir Macer chose to interpret the Council's command as a mark of honor, a sacred trust....
The exile of House Savacion had been a victory for Aegidius in his struggle to keep the Order removed from mundane politics, but it was to be a fleeting one. In 225 Cristofer's second student, the brilliant orator Cassius, took...
Early in 229, Aegidius returned to the Council, bearing with him the completed manuscript of e chao omnia, a compilation of his thoughts on theology, cosmology, magical theory and ethics. E chao omnia proposes that Cholaeic magic is the controlled...
Eleanor's second student Fucina, the only non-Aegidian to vote for the ratification of e chao omnia, also left with the Aegidians. A staunch defender of e chao omnia and a firmly apolitical—even anti-political—mage, Fucina had become increasingly alienated from her...
With Aegidius and his followers gone, there was now nothing to stand in the way of the rising tide of political factionalism on the Council. Whereas previously the political magi had served their mundane clients in a purely advisory capacity,...
In the winter of 231/232, appalled by the damage they had caused, the magi of the Order, all rivalries now put aside, retreated from the world of politics, abandoning many of their residences and laboratories to avoid meeting with any...
The first group to leave Evasendia in 232 were the descendants of Cristofer's first filius, Clement. On the Council, Clement had taken it upon himself not only to build and maintain the Order's library, but also to establish a network...
The other magi of the Council were divided into two separate groups, one sent north and the other sent south, each charged with the mission of carrying the Order out into the world Although the founders of Annalum had all...
The Cholaeic Diaspora was to have effects well beyond those anticipated by the Order in 232. Over the next thirty years, the urban and centralized institution which the magi had known as the Order would be transformed into a loose...
The fully-expanded table of contents of the 234-page Brief History of the Order, presented here for ease of reference.
The rise of the covenants to prominence within the Order was accompanied by the steady decline of the Council as an effective regulatory body. From the beginning of the diaspora, the Council had been left with no real claim to...
The Houses were weakened in this period not only by the rise of the diaspora covenants, but also by the loss of their original founders. Touccio and Savacion were already gone by the time of the diaspora; Palenti was killed...
The sole surving mage of House Touccio, Cyril, was a grandson of Touccio, as were his four adopted apprentices; all of Touccio's filii had been killed in the uprisings of 232. Cyril completed the training of all four apprentices at...
One of the first signs of the growing power of the covenant as an institution came at Covenant Trismagisti, one of the original diaspora covenants. Among the founders of Trismagisti were the Primus Manere Luke and his filius, Salerno, a...
After ceding the title of Primus Manere to his filius Luke in 232, Palenti had announced his retirement both from the Council and from active teaching. He chose as his final home distant Covenant Sol Media Nox, the home of...
It was also in this period that the first followers of Aegidius began to rejoin the Order, paving the way for the return of House Aegidius as a full participant in the diaspora. Luke and his followers, on their way...
The existence of Melia and her female students posed a problem for the monastic Aegidians at Lapidis. Although the covenant's female members lived somewhat apart from the others, their proximity made true separation of the sexes impossible; in fact, it...
The athletic and charismatic Balbo, eldest of the Grandsons of Touccio, was the originator of the concept of "Touccian Obligation," the idea that the members of House Touccio, because of their their unique skills and understanding of the phenomenal world,...
Covenant Melos had been founded with the aid of Helde, one of the so-called "witch kings" who ruled the land of Rhythnor at that time. Attracted by the more potent magic of the Cholaeics, Helde had consented to allow the...
The modern face of House Lem was born in the early diaspora period, when the House first divided into schools of Lemmite interpretation. The first sign of dissension within the House came as early as 233, when the north-bound diaspora...
The division of House Lem reflected not only that House's doctrinal disputes, but also a fundamental change in the way that the covenant itself was coming to be viewed by the diaspora magi. The original diaspora covenants had been intended...
In 261, a young Annalum Cristoferean named Tiburt made quite a stir with the publication of a treatise entitled "Ad Vim Per Veritatem." "Ad Vim" derided the Order ideal of truth as an end unto itself. Rather, it claimed that...
As the diaspora covenants proliferated and grew increasingly independent, it became harder and harder for the magi of Annalum to keep track of all of the Order's far-flung members. By the 240s, no one was even certain how large the...
The First Tribunal was held at Annalum in the late summer of 269. Forty-five magi were in attendance, among them representatives of all of the Order's seven Houses and fifteen covenants with the exception of Covenant Matercula, whose members had...
The Annalum Cristofereans, who had hoped to see their Tribunal bring about a new level of unity within the Order, were now forced to watch as it became the launching pad for an investigation directed against the entire Eleanorean House....
Late in 269, perhaps in an attempt to stop Nexus' rapid rise to power, the prosecutor's first and favorite student, the Trans Paludan Leander, was accused of involvement in the Eleanorean conspiracy. The trial began in a relaxed fashion: Nexus,...
Far more damning charges, however, were to come. As the trial progressed, the details of the Eleanorean conspiracy, at first shadowy and vague, began to come into focus. It was alleged that Leander and Luscinia, aided by Luscinia's parens Xyris...
The details of the conspiracy of the Trans Paludan and Ultorum Eleanoreans convulsed the Tribunal, which immediately called upon the members of those covenants implicated in the plot to hand their Eleanorean members over to Annalum for questioning. Realizing that...
The confrontation between the Trismagistan Manereans and the other members of their covenant turned violent early in 270. A band of Savacion survivors of the ambush at the Dove's Nest marched to the aid of the anti-Eleanorean forces and in...
The confession and execution of Balbo cast the Order headlong into a crisis of confidence. After all, if a Grandson of Touccio could be corrupted by the Eleanoreans and their theocratic magics, then anyone could be. And they probably were....
Late in 270, Lem and his followers succeeded in tracking down Eleanor. Amazingly, when brought before the Tribunal, she maintained her innocence, claiming that she had no knowledge of her descendants' activities and challenging the Tribunal to prove her alleged...
The turning point of the Eleanorean Purge was marked by the trial of Procopius, whom Nexus prosecuted posthumously for Eleanoreanism in the spring of 271. Upon the death of Procopius in 269, his apprentice had been entrusted to the care...
Nexus, apparently unable to comprehend that the hysteria was fading away, next compounded his error in judgment by accusing the Cristofereans of the Council at Evasendia of theocratic leanings and complicity in the Eleanorean conspiracies, implying as well that Cristofer...
There were still, however, a small but dedicated group of magi who agreed with Nexus' contention that House Cristofer was hopelessly corrupt. In Symmetry of 272, Nexus led this group, composed mainly of Savacion magi from Covenants Ultorum and Trans...
At an informal census taken by the Annalum Cristofereans in 269, there had been one hundred and three magi in the Cholaeic Order. By the end of 272, there were fifty-seven. Over forty percent of the Order's magi had died...
The effects of the Eleanorean Purge on the Order cannot be overstated. The violence of the years 269 to 272 is indelibly etched on the collective memory of the Order, which to this day remains haunted by the spectre of...
The Eleanorean Purge marked the end of an era of Order history. It swept away the last vestiges of the early Order, completing the Cholaeic Diaspora. By 272, not a single founder was left alive, the Order's library lay in...
As the Order struggled to redifine itself in the wake of the unparalleled destruction of the Eleanorean Purge, the Houses began to reassert their influence. The internecine war of 269-272 had largely fallen along House lines—the solidarity of the diaspora...
The first such challenge to the old House structure was to come from an unexpected quarter: the female branch of House Aegidius. The descendants of Melia had once comprised a full third of their House. By the spring of 271,...
The Melians of Verbi Meliae considered it part of their mission to stand up on behalf of all of the Order's female members. In 274, they brought to their covenant Daenae, Granddaughter of Balbo and the last female survivor of...
Not all of the survivors of Covenant Trismagisti were to be as fortunate as Daenae. The Trismagistan Manerean Salerno and his descendants had also survived the purge, but the Order they had lived to see was now one dominated by...
Although the Primus Manere Thopas had played his part in the vendetta against the Trismagistan Manereans, he now began to feel that things had gone too far. House Manere had been built upon a tradition of competition between parens and...
The Ultorum Savacion Wendell, who had turned on his colleagues to aid the escape of the Cristofereans from the destruction of Annalum during the Eleanorean Purge, was hunted by the other members of his House for three years. House Savacion...
Lem's last act before his final disappearance in 271 had been to give his last work, the Indigo Book, to a young Circulan Lemmite named Deiphebus, who took it back with him to Circulus Ruber later that year. It was...
After the destruction of the library in 272, Wendell had led its Cristofereans to safety at Covenant Ad Vim Per Veritatem, where they had been shielded from harm by the magi of that covenant. Once it became clear that no...
While the Order showed little physical expansion during its recovery from the devestation of the Eleanorean Purge, the last two decades of the third century were years of rapid change and innovation, characterized by the proliferation of new trans-House philosophies...
The slowly-growing dissatisfaction with the values and hierarchies which had characterized the diaspora before the purge was first made manifest at the Third Manere Conjugation of 280, at which the very nature of the House was to be changed forever....
A relatively young mage at the time of his betrayal of his fellows at Annalum, Wendell had never been considered the brightest star in Savacion's firmament. He stood no chance against the combined might of his pursuers and had really...
During his years with the Annalum Cristofereans, Wendell took a particular paternal interest in the orphaned apprentice Caesius1 and gave him training in the secret combat lores of House Savacion, as well as in his own new "fugitive magics." Upon...
In 257, the Antrum Aegidian Nephythus had announced preliminary success with the theoretical art of recreo, a technique first hypothesized by his parens Gnaeus, who had believed recreo to be the sole province of the divine. Nephythus' reported success with...
Nephythus' student Giovanni was not the only Aegidian to show an interest in the study of the dead in this period. The year 280 also saw the emergence of the Aegidian Foucault, whose descendants were to form their own peculiar...
Aegidius' followers had gained a land grant for Covenant Lapidis in 229 by portraying themselves as religious mystics to the Duke Lorencia—a superstitious Andar only newly converted to the Holy Church, who had hoped that his patronage of holy men...
The rise of the non-mage population at Lapidis inspired resentment among many of the covenant's younger magi, who felt that their position within the hierarchy had been usurped. Particularly disliked was Theophraste's failed apprentice Celathon, who had risen from the...
The Melians had always been more open to non-traditional magics than their male counterparts in House Aegidius. In this they were following in the footsteps of Melia herself, whose last student, Griselda, had been a Black Mountain Finder before her...
The same year that Melina left Verbi Meliae to begin her research, a young Gravite Lemmite named Arbor Largiloqua left Covenant Westmarch to travel far up the An, in search of the fabled land of Attica, where Titus was said...
While the Melians of Verbi Meliae turned to the folk customs of the surrounding villages for inspiration, and while Arbor Largiloqua dreamed of ancient Tympanian legends, a particularly talented clique of young Manereans at Covenant Antrum were instead casting their...
The Second Cristoferean Census was published on schedule in 298. It listed 98 magi as members of the Order of Cholae. In addition to the lists of the populations of the Houses and Covenants of the Order, the second census...
Upon the death of Eleanor in 271, Lem's last student Terminus, co-founder of the Gravite School, chose to don the Red. This act shocked the other Gravites, for whom assuming any mastery of the Books of Lem beyond the Black...
The Year of Spring was set off by House Lem, whose members founded two new covenants in rapid succession early in the year. The first of these, Lingua Sophiae, was founded by the revisionist Gravites. The revisionists had never returned...
Since the 290s, Covenant Antrum had seen a gradually rising tension between the followers of Nephythus and the covenant's more traditional members, who resented Nephythus' popularity among their own students. In 295, a dispute had broken out between the Nephythusian...
In the course of his travels in the north and Dawn, the Aegidian Tullius had become convinced that the magi of the Order must take an active stand against the diabolic magics of the practitioners of these lands. In the...
Also returning from her travels in the year 303 was the Lemmite Arbor Largiloqua, who had finally reached the fabled land of Attica and now sought magi willing to join her in founding a covenant there. Magi from both Trans...
By the summer of 303, the Order was so abuzz with talk of the "Year of Spring" that word of it reached even the ears of the Melian hermit Marisca, who lived alone in a hut in southern Rhythnor. Marisca...
The Year of Spring might have been lauded as a sign of new hope for the Order as a whole, but the older covenants of the diaspora had been weakened by the departure of so many of their younger magi,...
Nowhere was this attitude of resentment more apparent than in House Manere, where a sharp division had emerged between those who admired the ambitious young magi of Covenant Prima Lux and those who opposed them. In 289, the Prima Luxian...
Feeling against the new-fangled schools and covenants of the Year of Spring found another outlet in the rapid rise of the democratic covenant Plenilunium Album. The addition of Sonorus and Xiphias of the Ultorum helped to erase the perception that...
In 316 the Amicitian covenant Calvus Grigori was joined by three newly-graduated magi from Covenant Ad Vim Per Veritatem: Nocturnus of Cristofer, Quernus of Touccio, and Alcedo of Savacion. Quernus and Alcedo's parentes, Tectus and Alces, had been approached by...
The behavior of House Cristofer during this period was also a source of concern to traditionalists. Under the direction of Caesius and Contumacia, architects of the "Cristoferean Revolution," the Cristofereans of Annalum were to become increasingly interventionist throughout the fourth...
As dissatisfaction grew among the traditionalist magi, the political lines were drawn. By 310, the Order was beginning to be divided into Traditionalists and Liberals, or Plenilunials. Traditionalists still adhered to many of the values and mores of the diaspora....
House Manere convened for the thirteenth conjugation at Prima Lux in 310 prepared to witness a duel for the leadership of the House between the Prima Luxian Praecanus and the Ad Vim Traditionalist Vespa. They were not prepared, however, for...
That the dispute which was to define the Order in the fourth century was centered around accusations of Quintillican diabolism was hardly coincidental. It was, rather, indicative of a growing sense of religious apocalysm within Tympanian lands overall. The early...
Upon his graduation to magehood, Giovanni's second student Theophraste (referred to as "The Younger" to distinguish him from the Elder Theophraste, Aegidius' third student and the author of the Aegidian Code) had renounced the teachings of Nephythus and left Covenant...
Meanwhile, at Verbi Meliae, the apocalyptic zeitgeist found its channel in a young Melian named Cletia, whose prophetic writings concerning the end of the world were published in 316. Cletia herself did not live to see her works distributed throughout...
The apocalyptic spirit of the early fourth century was felt most keenly, however, not in Cholaeic lands at all, but in the city-states of the near Dawn, those uneasy melting pots of Cholaeic, Tyrulean and Chalycidican influence which had always...
Even after the Manerean Schism of 310, the majority of the members of House Manere still held hopes that the House would shortly be reunited, and a great many of them planned to attend both Western and Dawn conjugations in...
Mediastinus' cause was greatly aided by the reappearance of the long-missing Prima Lux Manerean Umbratilis, who emerged in 315 at Covenant Fumus et Specula. Umbratilis refused to discuss where she had been or why she had left Prima Lux, and...
Members of the Carnifex were among the many in the Order who now began to consider the possibility that the Manereans of Prima Lux were indeed diabolist. The decommissioning of diabolists was, after all, an important part of their mission,...
At the Dawn House's fifteenth Manere Conjugation at Prima Lux in 316, which was attended by many members of the Western House as well, the Dawn Primus Tyndareus was approached by Votivus of Manere and Vertus of Savacion, both of...
Very late in the year 316, shortly before the Fifteenth Conjugation of the Western House, the two founders of Covenant Ad Vim Per Veritatem, Tiburt of Cristofer and Aglaspis of Savacion, died mysteriously while conferring with one another in Tiburt's...
The rising fear of the power of Dawnish magics was greatly facilitated by the Quintus Opacans, who now began to share their knowledge of the particulars of Tyrulean magical skills with the rest of the Order. Their tales of powerful...
The Western Primus Vespa had tolerated a good deal of neutrality during the first years of the Manerean Schism; his successor Mediastinus did not intend to follow his example. Mediastinus' first act as Primus upon his investiture in 319 was...
The rising tide of anti-Dawn sentiment within the Order was of particular concern to those magi eager to maintain Cholaeic peace, chief among them the Cristofereans of Annalum and the magi of Covenant Plenilunium Album. Shortly after the acclamation of...
Among those most disturbed by the emerging reports from Quintus Opacus in 320 were the magi of the Carnifex, who now became increasingly convinced that the magi it had sent to Prima Lux as spies were being brainwashed or corrupted...
The Cristoferean Cinifer, sent to resurrect Covenant Trans Paludem in 305, had achieved a good deal of success in his mission by forging new alliances with the covenant's neighboring Orsinian tribesmen. For a time this strategy brought new power and...
House Aegidius, while its members generally disapproved of the Dawn covenant Prima Lux, had not paid much attention to the Manerean Schism. Over the years, the Aegidians of Lapidis had developed a reputation for their passivity and isolationism; they did...
The First Speaker of House Aegidius, Anastasius, died late in 327, leaving the necromancer Giovanni as the eldest male member of the House. Twenty years ago, the House probably would have done nothing, but in the new atmosphere of Aegidian...
In the year 330, the magi of the Carnifex delivered the final blow to Western opposition to action against Prima Lux. In this year, they presented the Order with proof that the magi of Prima Lux had adopted the slave-holding...
The Twentieth Conjugation of 331, however, was to prove the high water mark for support for hostilities against Prima Lux. In the cold light of morning, removed from the persuasive arguments and heady atmosphere of the conjugation, the idea of...
While the fall of Mediastinus was viewed by many as a symptom of the rising power of the Plenilunials, the first third of the fourth century actually saw the decline of many of the experimental sub-Houses of the Year of...
The "noble experiment" of Amicitianism taking place at Calvus Grigori proved, to the glee of traditionalists, an abject failure in the end. Part of the problem lay in the difficulty of finding magically-gifted students. Spingelli and Cos' system required groups...
Nephythusianism, too, fell into disrepute in this period. The reason here was simple: Nephyuthus' early successes with the art of recreo, upon which the entire movement were based, could never be duplicated either by Nephythus himself or by any of...
The Plenilunial annex at Stony Hill was to go down in history as a covenant notorious for incompetence and mismanagement; it would eventually be destroyed in 342. The democratic charter which had proved so successful at Plenilunium Album was disastrous...
By far the most revolutionary movement in this period, however, was also the quietest, and it was the work of one woman: the Melian Elizabeth of Po. Even as an apprentice at Verbi Meliae, Elizabeth had felt dissatisfied with the...
House Lem had been growing increasingly isolated from the rest of the Order ever since the end of the Purge, and its members, with the exception of the Quintus Opacans, paid little attention to the rising tensions of the Manerean...
In 316, the Circulan Lemmites shocked the rest of the Order by abandoning their first covenant, Circulus Ruber. It was the first time in history that a covenant had been abandoned for no particuar reason: no disaster had befallen it,...
The Manerean schism was not the only rift in the Order to widen during this period. The dispute between the rival Gravite schools of House Lem was also to turn rancorous and violent in the early fourth century, largely due...
The precarious peace established in 334 was shattered five years later, when violence erupted in the Dawn between the magi of Prima Lux and those of the Carnifex and Quintus Opacus. The Opacans and Carnificians had never abandoned the belief...
War between West and Dawn now seemed inevitable, and throughout the Order preparations were made for what everyone expected would be a conflict at least as devestating as the Eleanorean Purge. The leadership of House Aegidius at Lapidis sent the...
The Annalum Cristofereans and the magi of Plenilunium Album, however, were still unwilling to accept a second mage war within the Order. Over the next several months, even as covenants throughout the Order mobilized for war, they and their allies...
The First Manerean Schism was ended at the Pan-Manerean Conference of 340 when both Tyndareus and Pedisequus agreed to step down in favor of the Plenilunial Vespera, who became Prima of a reunited House Manere. As a gesture of good...
In 340, alarmed by the seeming inevitability of mage war, the First Speaker of House Aegidius, Bosporus, had sent the Lapidis Aegidian Ausonias on a mission to convince the hermit Theophraste to seek sanctuary at Lapidis for the duration of...
The Touccian Caldwell was raised at the Aegidian Covenant of St. Kevin of the Apples, the covenant which his parens Rollin had helped to found in 327. Rollin had originally joined with the Aegidians to help them to fortify Lapidis,...
When Covenant Calvus Grigori's Fifth Fellowship finally graduated to magehood after an apprenticeship of twenty years, it was seen as the final proof that Amicitianism was actively detrimental to magical training. While Amicitianism at Calvus Grigori was failing, however, the...
Tullius of Aegidius, the founder of the Carnifex, had become increasingly disenchanted with the violence of his own covenant throughout the 330s. While he still believed that non-Cholaeic practitioners were fundamentally opposed to Love and Reason and therefore must be...
The Melian Marra was particularly excited by news of the founding of the Inceptum. Raised by the folk-lore specialist Martia at Verbi Meliae, and herself trained as a Finder as well as a mage, she felt that she was ideally...
Ever since the diaspora, House Lem had become increasingly isolated from the rest of the Order, living in their own single-House covenants and for the most part remaining uninvolved in the issues which occupied the other five Houses. In the...
In 346, the Plenilunial Melian Muscula discovered a lost work of the Manerean Ebriola Pretia in the possession of a dealer in antiquities in Vestra. The founder of the Covenant at Chalcyphon, Ebriola Pretia had been considered an Eleanorean accomplice...
Although Covenant Prima Lux had opened its doors to the Order as a whole after the Pan-Manerean Conference of 340, it gained few new members from the West. Only those few magi whose curiosity about the Dawn was strong enough...
The "Anti-Primus" of the First Manerean Schism, Tyndareus, had never sought conflict with the West. Under his leadership, Prima Lux had ony taken hostile action when it felt itself to be under direct attack, and Tyndareus had taken great pains...
The tensions which led to the Second Manerean Schism were further exacerbated by the political changes sweeping Tympania at the time. The 350s saw the rise to power of the Chaeronian Andar lord Amboise, who with the aid of the...
The election of Regulus as Secundus shifted the balance of power at Prima Lux in his favor, and throughout the 350s, Tyndareus' hold over the covenant went into a steady decline. One aspect of this decline was that after 349,...
The magi of Virginis In Litus soon found that among the native plants of their island was a type of hallucinogenic berry which greatly enhanced the potency of their experimental dream magics. By the end of 357, they had discovered...
The Twenty-fifth Manere Conjugation of 358 was already a tense enough affair. The Prima Manere Vespera, who had succeeded in holding House Manere together for eighteen years, was now very old and sunk in a permanent state of semi-Twilight. It...
The events of the Twenty-fifth Manere Conjugation left the Order uncertain whether or not the Pan-Manerean truce still held. While the doves of Annalum and Plenilunium Album struggled to determine whether peace might still be maintained, however, the rest of...
The elusive and shadowy Decor finally revealed herself to the Order at Savacion's House-wide conference at Antrum in 359. A woman of obvious magical ability, she claimed to have been the apprentice of the Prima Luxian diabolist Illimis, whose tutelage...
One reason the Order was experiencing such difficulties in determining the state of relations between the West and Prima Lux was that the Prima Luxians themselves were now locked in conflict over this very issue. Tyndareus, who still favored peaceful...
The Twenty-sixth Manere Conjugation was held at Covenant Ad Vim Per Veritatem at the end of 361. Even at conjugation, the Plenilunial Manereans were still desperately trying to negotiate a last-minute peace, but the House was no longer disposed to...
The series of skirmishes and set-backs known as the Schism War was in fact little more than a long sequence of frustrations for the West. The problem lay in Prima Lux's magical defenses which, combined with its control of the...
Stalemate had not been Regulus' plan. His intent, after the initial attacks on the Western covenants in 361, had been to launch an all-out diabolic assault on the West until its magi were either destroyed completely or submitted to the...
Several months before Nissa's disappearance, a small boy had arrived at the island of Covenant Virginis In Litus, drawn there by visions of the Maiden On the Shore. He was Gifted and had come for apprenticeship, but he claimed that...
As the year dragged on and the Prima Luxians remained unable to breach Virginis In Litus' defenses, Regulus' spiritual allies began to turn against him, demanding that he make good on his contract in increasingly threatening terms. By 363, whatever...
The united forces of Quintus Opacus and Carnifex were by now themselves obsessed with Virginis In Litus, convinced that the island covenant held the key to breaking the mysterious defenses of Prima Lux. They were equally convinced that Virginis In...
In 364, the Opacans and Carnificians finally discovered a book, magically hidden in an obscure location, which seemed to contained writings explaining the secrets of the Litan defenses.3 Believing themselves now in possession of the key to the destruction of...
An unexpected presence at the Battle of Virginis In Litus was a group of magi from Plenilunium Album, who had been warned of impending disaster by the Cristoferean apprentice the Opacans had cast gibbering into the Storr. Vulpecula Versuta, a...
Among the damaged victims the Plenilunials had shipped back to their covenant were two just-graduated magi: a catatonic young Manerean from Prima Lux whose name no one knew; and a deeply embittered paraplegic Savacion, late of Quintus Opacus, who had...
While the Plenilunial magi had been taking care of the details of reconstruction, the rest of the Order had begun hunting for the Prima Luxian magi still unaccounted for. There were a number of them: even before 364, magi who...
With the acceptance of the last of the Dawn Manereans to Tempestatem Sedare, the Second Manerean Schism came to an end. The Antrum Manereans who had served as the House's de facto leadership throughout the Schism War appointed the Ultorum...
While the majority of the Order was focused on the events in the Dawn, a smaller group of magi turned its attention to more local affairs. The Ten-Years War between Tyr and Chaeronia was certainly a source of concern to...
With the rise of Plenilunialism to preeminence within the Order rose also the Plenilunial Elementalists, who in this period evolved from a quirky if popular magical school to a formidable political force in its own right. The power of the...
Early warning of the influence the elementalists would later enjoy came in 367, when the Melian founder of the Elementalist School, Maris, came into direct conflict with the First Speaker of House Aegidius and leader of the Inceptum, Tullius. In...
The rise of the elementalists was not without setbacks. In 373 the terram-specialized magi of Covenant Whitestone seceded from the elementalist movement, claiming that they found Chalycidican associations with elemental earth inconsistent with their own understanding of that element. By...
Three years after the terram magi founded Covenant Rockroot, the survivors of Mare Aeneum founded their own new covenant, Covenant Hart's Desire. Both covenants were to prove highly successful, far surpassing the original elementalist covenant Whitestone in wealth, power and...
The decline of traditionalism and ascendance of Plenilunialism had its effect even on the isolationist Lemmites. The abandonment of secular orthodoxy by the Quintus Opacans had begun a trend which was accelerated by the Lemmite Diaspora of the 350s. In...
The winds of reform were also being felt at the Circulan covenant Ambulator Caeruleus, where many magi felt that the rigidly hierarchic nature of Circulan Lemmitism was detrimental to the school as a whole. While unwilling to go so far...
The magi of Rockroot, once ensconced in their new home in the Skulstorren, developed an interest not only in their innovative teleportation magics, but also in the magic and culture of the fae, who were a powerful presence in that...
The Three Kingdoms Alliance brought a new court culture to the Tympanian aristocracy. Both Amboise and Marchand were patrons of the arts, and under their regimes, the Chaeronian and Tyrrian nobility began to place a high value on education, art,...
At the time of the Cholaeic Amnesty of 365, no one really expected the survivors of Prima Lux to become fully reintegrated into the Order. Branded for life as diabolists, detested and mistrusted by large segments of the Order, the...
The Three Kingdoms Alliance had rekindled Cristoferean dreams of a unified Cholaeic Order. Throughout the 370s, advocates of Order unity cited the visible improvements which centralization had brought to Tyr and Chaeronia as proof positive that the Order, too, would...
As Plenilunial values and mores became the Order's status quo, even those covenants once known as the strongholds of conservatism—Lapidis, Ultorum and Isrillion—had largely abandoned their adherence to traditionalist policies. Tullius was to be the last actively conservative First Speaker...
The flamboyant twins Vertagus and Meles, both of Covenant Hart's Desire, were doubly distrusted by conservative Savacions: they were not only Plenilunial Elementalists but also Wendellians, having been raised in dual apprenticeship at the imaginem-specialized covenant Fumus et Specula by...
One unexpected result of Vertagus' scandalous confession was the attention it drew to the allied covenants Praeterita and Fumus et Specula. Long-time homes to the Wendellian Savacions and the Julio-Claudian Aegidians, these two covenants were by now practically one, their...
Just as the Order had for the most part forgotten about the scandal of Vertagus' confession of 380, it became clear that there was at least one person in the Order who could neither forget about it nor forgive it....
The obvious suspects in Vertagus' murder, from the elementalists' point of view, were the conservative Savacion magi of Covenants Ad Vim Per Veritatem and Alae Fractae, and Meles' investigators were sent to both of these covenants in the autumn of...
The Rogue Hunt of 386-390 was an expression of Plenilunial power at its height, but for many within the Order, it had a far deeper significance. By uniting magi behind a common enemy, the rogue hunt served to restore to...
For this purpose, the Order had selected the right mage. Siccoculus himself seemed to recognize at once the role he had been chosen to play. In a letter to Annalum, delivered shortly after he had been declared rogue by House...
The relevance of Siccoculus' attack on Whitestone had not been lost on anyone within the Order. He had chosen to destroy the covenant by means of its own elementalist specialties: earth and air. The Elementalists themselves, though, saw an added...
Siccoculus' targets, with a few notable exceptions, were predictable as well. He was after the Plenilunial Covenants and their clients: both Tempestatem Sedare and Nox Facis Caelestis were attacked in 387. Fumus et Specula and Praeterita, home to the magi...
Covenants Praeterita and Fumus et Specula were aware from the beginning that their magi must be at the top of Siccoculus' list of "those who had betrayed the Order." As soon as they learned of the murder of Scolopax, both...
In 388, the Plenilunials and the Annalum Cristofereans came to a parting of ways. The Plenilunials had always believed that Vertagus' murderer had not acted alone. While they had been willing to focus their efforts on Siccoculus for the time...
This rift between the driving forces of the rogue hunt particularly infuriated Meles, who from 388 on became increasingly accusatory towards conservatives within the Order. Late in the year he bullied his way past the protesting magi of the Hall...
So intimidating had Meles and his followers become that by 388, there were only four members of House Savacion who had not joined the rogue hunt without the excuse of either old age or the need to protect their home...
While the magi of Praeterita had chosen to defend itself through traditional magical and military means, the imaginem specialists of Fumus et Specula concentrated their efforts on hiding their covenant completely. Skilled though Siccoculus might have been, he could not...
In 390, Siccoculus finally broke his long-standing ban on hostilities against the Castrian covenants. The catalyst for this change of heart is thought to have been his discovery, in the spring of the year, that the Talchester Cristoferean Sponsa was...
With Siccoculus' death, Annalum declared the mystery of Vertagus' murder solved, and most of the Order was happy to agree. Only the Elementalists continued to insist that Siccoculus had been part of a larger conspiracy, but under pressure from the...
The First Savacion rogue hunt, in which nearly the entirety of House Savacion had come together to work in pursuit of a common goal, was to be the defining event for Savacion magi of generations to come. On the rogue...
Even on the rogue hunt itself, many Savacion magi had discussed the idea that the House needed a regulatory covenant, one which could serve a similar function for House Savacion as Annalum did for House Cristofer: to proclaim House policy...
The rogue hunt also had its effect on House Aegidius, whose influential pacifist branch, born in the wake of the Schism War, came of age at the end of the fourth century. Its leader, Anselm of House Aegidius, had only...
Siccoculus had left covenants Felchester and Whitestone in ruins. Felchester was simply a town house, and its magi were able to rebuild their home without undue difficulty. Covenant Whitestone, on the other hand, had been tunneled into the delicate chalk...