Aculeus of Isrillion and Spatha of Antrum, Savacion magi of the early fourth century.
Both ambitious young magi, they were dissatisfied with the rigid hierarchical structures of their respective home covenants and so each left to join the new egalitarian covenant Plenilunium Album, where he could enjoy all of the rights and privileges of magehood. The two met at the juncture of the road up the Eleneth Valley and fell into a quarrel when neither would give way to the other. The quarrel turned into a duel, but when the young magi learned that they were both on their way to seek admission to Plenilunium Album, they instantly abandoned their conflict and continued on to Rhythnor together, becoming fast friends. The story gained wide circulation within the Order in the early part of the fourth century, as to many it seemed to illustrate and to encapsulate the unexpected success of the Plenilunial movement.
So successful was Plenilunium Album, however, that the covenant was desperately overcrowded, and Aculeus and Spatha were forced to spend their first winter at the covenant in an unheated outbuilding. Over that winter, they came up with the idea of founding an "annexe" to help relieve Plenilunium Album's population pressures: the annexe would be a kind of outpost of Plenilunium Album, with the same charter and organized in the exactly same fashion, but located to the Twilight, which was just then emerging as a favored location for new Cholaeic covenants. Plenilunium Album supported the project, and together with three other young magi, they founded the Covenant at Stony Hill in Picantaea early in 316.
The new covenant, however, was plagued with problems, and over the next ten years, Aculeus and Spatha's friendship soured to bitter enmity. In 325, in the course of one of their increasingly common disputes, Spatha called Aculeus a liar, and Aculeus prompty challenged him to a duel. Aculeus was the victor of the contest, but although gravely injured in the combat and clearly unable to continue to fight, Spatha nonetheless refused either to retract his insult or to yield, stating that should Aculeus kill him, at least one of them would die an honest man.
Infuriated, Aculeus was prepared to kill him on the spot, but the young Touccian Chrysolitha intervened by physically interposing herself between the two combatants. Repulsed by this disrespect for the field of honor, and disgusted with the covenant as a whole, Aculeus stripped Spatha of his arms and left Stony Hill at once, accompanied by his apprentice and by his ally, the Manerean Verpa Exigua. They would later also be joined by both Lynx and Chrysolitha, with whom they would found the Covenant at Felchester in 325.
Shortly after their departure, Stony Hill's central tower collapsed due to a flaw in its construction. Spatha, still recovering from his injuries, did not have the strength to get clear in time and was killed. His orphaned apprentice, later known as Falx Astartis, held Aculeus and Chrysolitha (who had constructed the tower) jointly responsible for his first master's death; he and his descendants would conduct a vendetta against Aculeus' descendants and allies at the Castrian covenants right up until his death in 401.
Just as the story of Aculeus and Spatha's friendship had been used as an illustration of Plenilunial success in the early fourth century, so the story of their later enmity and of the enmity between their descendants gained much currency among conservatives later in the century, when it was often used as an illustration of the ultimately hollow and unrealistic nature of Plenilunial amity.
