"Gentle Lion"
filius Ambrose, House Aegidius and House Derleth
apprentice 398, mage 413
A devout Aegidian and a strong advocate of the University system, Leonis was a strong contender with Perdyx for Loriat of their year. He specialized in the art of familiarization, and familiarized a magic lamb as his graduation project (possibly the only mage in the history of the order to take a familiar while still an apprentice). While he had to specialize to a ridiculous degree to accomplish this, and even though he was not as strong a mage over all as Perdyx, this was such a stunning accomplishment that he would almost certainly have been made loriat if not for the horrible personality of his familiar. "Gentle Lambkin", as his familiar insists on being called, is a foul mouthed lecher of stunning intensity, and the ridiculous contrast between pious Leonis and his familiar led to a series of grotesque and embarrassing incidents that eventually caused Leonis to have something of a nervous breakdown.
After graduation, Leonis left the university for Lapidis, where he remained for the next four years, impressing the Lapidis Aegidians with his devout simplicity. However, Circumsessor and Laetitia both agreed that the new university in Gaetan would need a truly devout mage to lead the effort to convert the heathen Gaetani, so they pleaded repeatedly with Leonis to abandon his quiet life of contemplation to aid them in founding the new university. Eventually, their efforts were successful, and in 417 Leonis joined them in founding Manu Tenere.
At Manu Tenere, Leonis has led the efforts to develop a version of Holy Church doctrine that is comprehensible to the Gaetani. He has championed the position that the gods of the village priesthoods are a corrupted version of the appearance of Love and Reason and that they should be restored to what they would have been if the Gaetani Priest King had not rejected Love and Reason. His version of the Holy Church ceremonies attempts to incorporate the village priests, an effort which has been only marginally successful so far.
