Derlethian elation over the recognition of House Derleth did not last long. The instant it subsided, members of the new House fell to debate over precisely what membership in House Derleth signified, who properly qualified for it, and what direction the House ought to take in the future. Debate was particularly heavy between Derleth's own four students, who assembled at Bethelion late in 418 to attend at the bedside of their dying parens.
There was not much love lost between the students of Derleth. Odger, the eldest of the four, a graduate of the University's first graduating class of 385, had spent his entire career at Annalum, which he had joined immediately upon his ascension to magehood. Claiming joint-membership in Houses Aegidius and Cristofer, he was valued by Annalum as a dutiful and responsible worker, and by Aegidius as a pious monk. Although Odger would never have labeled himself as a New Traditionalist, his values were in keeping with those of the young movement: he took pride in his membership in his two chosen Houses, and believed in the particular services he felt they provided to the Order as a whole. Although he also considered himself a Derlethian, he had not been particularly enthusiastic about the formation of the new House and had supported its creation largely out of filial loyalty to his parens.
The firebrand Mavis Loriata, whose admission to Antrum had paved the way for University graduates back in 398, was a staunch adherent to Elizabeth of Po's original mission—a mission she felt had been first diluted and then abandoned by the University. She believed that graduation from the University should not be considered sufficient proof of Derlethian status in and of itself; instead, she thought that students ought show true mastery of the arts of all six Houses before they could be recognized as Derlethians. Mavis herself was the first to admit that she could not personally rise to these standards—corpulent, uncoordinated and asthmatic, she had never mastered Savacion's combat techniques—but she had made much of her intention to apply these criteria to her own student before she would recognize her as a mage. Mavis rarely used the term "Derlethian" at all, preferring the original name "Elizabethan;" she insisted that Derleth himself would be horrified to hear that the House's name had been so changed.
Derleth's third student, Paschal Loriatus, had been the ring-leader of the founders of Lord of Misrule. Many felt that his arrival at Bethelion in 419 was in extremely poor taste, as his 404 decision to travel to the Dawn had, it was widely claimed, broken his poor parens' heart. Paschal believed that the defining feature of House Derleth was its University training. He and Mavis fell to quarreling almost immediately when he insisted that Mavis' student could never be a Derlethian, no matter how well-trained she might be, as she was not being raised within a University system. Paschal also believed that House Derleth would never come into its own until its members agreed to forswear their other House allegiances, becoming solely Derlethians. The others hastened to point out that this was an easy thing for Paschal to say: he had already been struck from the rolls of House Aegidius for his refusal to answer the First Speakers' summons to interview.
Derleth's youngest student, Sayer, who had only graduated to magehood two years before in 416, agreed with Paschal that Derlethians would have to abandon their other House affiliations if they were ever to become a real House of the Order. Unlike Paschal, however, he did not think that University training alone was what made a Derlethian. House Derleth, he claimed, had passed far beyond anything either the original founders of Bethelion or Elizabeth herself could have imagined: it had developed its own unique and recognizable magical culture, whose characteristics could be passed from master to student even outside of the University environment, just as the characteristics of the other six Houses were. Due to his relative youth and lack of oratory skills, the other three paid Sayer little heed. His perspective, however, soon found a more aggressive proponent in Odger's filius, Abelard.
Accompanying his parens Odger at Derleth's bedside, Abelard had listened to the debate for some time without comment. When he finally spoke, he silenced the others by announcing that, although he had been raised in a traditionalist manner at Annalum, he too was a Derlethian by virtue of his descent from Odger. Furthermore, he claimed that his own descendants would also be Derlethians. Just as Cristofereans trained Cristofereans, and Manereans trained Manereans, so it only made sense that the students of Derlethians were themselves Derlethians.
This bombshell sparked a raging argument among Derleth's descendants, none of whom was more outraged than Odger himself, whose unthinking rebuke—"You, be quiet! I didn't raise you to be a Derlethian!"—was to become one of the most often and gleefully cited quotations among the University's opponents. Each of Derleth's students claimed that, if only Derleth could speak, he would support them, and each of them had anecdotes about the master's words supporting their own theory. Derleth himself never regained consciousness; he died in the first week of 419 while his students squabbled by his bedside.1
By the spring of 419, both magi and students at the University had divided into factions, each supporting one of the theories of Derleth's four students. "Mavan" Derlethians, who also called themselves "Elizabethans," believed that Derlethians ought prove themselves capable of gaining recognition in all of the other six Houses. "Abelardians" held that Derlethians were a breed apart, not just an agglomeration of the other Houses' wisdom; they argued that the descendants of Derlethians should be admitted to the House, and that the House's members ought renounce all of their other House affiliations to become solely Derlethian. Those who, like Odger, considered the University's exposure to the teachings of all six Houses to be primarily beneficial in the choice of affiliation it allowed its students were considered to be New Traditionalists, a fact which irritated Odger himself no end. By far the majority view of the University's surviving founders and elder magi was that which Paschal had advocated: that University training was the proper criteria for membership in House Derleth. This position never gave itself a name, and its proponents tried as best they could to downplay the fact that the founder of Lord of Misrule was among their number. By 420, however, Abelard and his followers had taken to referring to them, scornfully, as the "Old Derlethians," and the name, much to the dismay of the University elders, stuck.
1 The story that Derleth's students were so intent on their argument that their parens' body was cold and stiff before any of them even noticed he was gone is almost certainly apocryphal. Its popularity does, however, reveal the distaste with which many at Bethelion viewed the behavior of Derleth's students at their master's death-bed. Derleth's last student, still an apprentice in 419, was in fact so disgusted by the entire affair that upon Derleth's death he abandoned his studies and left the University altogether. [back]
