The youngest of Trismagistus' students, Cristofer was born to unknown parents on the streets of Evasendia. He was only seven years old when Trismagistus took him in and began training him in the magical arts. Possessed of a lively and precocious intellect, he threw himself avidly into his studies, to the surprise of his older fellow students Aegidius and Palenti, who would not have expected such a keen mind in a filthy street urchin.
In 167, left abandoned in Evasendia by the death of his master and flight of his fellow students, the nineteen-year-old Cristofer took to revolution and drinking in equal excess. In 171, he was captured by one Licius, a Tympanian noble who had sworn fealty to the first Andarean horselord he could find, and spent the next nine years languishing in Licius' dungeon, held fast by iron chains ensorceled to hold Theocrats by an ancestor of Licius’ shortly after the Fall. When his old fellow student Aegidius rescued him in 178 and told him of his dream for a magical Order, Cristofer was ready to give him all he had.
For the next ten years, Cristofer accompanied Aegidius on his search for other magi. It took them five years to track down their third fellow student, the suspicious Palenti, whom they found in 183. Convinced of the value of training young children by Palenti's apprentice Luke, Cristofer took on a student of his own one year later, while still travelling in search of other magical practitioners. After finding the self-taught smith-mage Touccio in 187, Cristofer returned to Evasendia with Touccio to make preparations for the founding of the Order, leaving the continuation of the search to Aegidius. From 194 to 198, he undertood the training not only of his own student, but also of Aegidius' first student Cesiper, as Aegidius' quest took him further and further from Evasendia.
The Council of the Order of Cholae was officially founded in 198 in Evasendia. By far the most idealistic of the Founders, Cristofer had high hopes for the Order: his writings from this period, some of which were later used against him at the Eleanorean trials, describe his dreams of a united magecraft, sweeping across the Known World to usher in a new age of peace, prosperity, and learning. It is this visionary fire that has led some of Cristofer's later students to claim, heretically, that the idea of the Order of Cholae was really Cristofer's and not Aegidius' at all; these Cristofereans claim that Aegidius had merely intended to find Palenti, but that it was Cristofer who insisted that the world ought be scoured for other magical practitioners to form a united Order of magi. In any case, Cristofer's enthusiasm and energy were infectious, and he was universally liked by the other Founders of the Order. His personal intercession was to prove time and time again the only balm to the strong-minded Founders' personal squabbles.
Like his idol Aegidius, Cristofer was not a supporter of the House structure proposed by his fellow founders Palenti and Eleanor, but he nonetheless accepted the role of the leader of House Cristofer in 201 and incorporated the House structure into his proposed Code for the Order of Cholae.
In 203, Cristofer presented his first draft of the Cholaeic Code to the Council, which refused to ratify it as written. Over the next seven years, he was to engage the magi of the Council in constant discussion of their needs and desires for a Code for the Order, attempting to revise the document in a manner acceptable to everyone. In spite of this effort, however, Cristofer's revised Cholaeic Code, presented to the Council in 210, was again voted down. Cristofer was never to accept the fact that the magi of the Order were fundamentally hostile to the ideals of unity and order which so motivated him; he would spend the rest of his life in unsuccessful attempts to create some form of overarching law which would be recognized by the Order as a whole.
In 215, swayed by the passionate advocacy of his second student Cassius, Cristofer gave his sanction to the inclusion of women in House Cristofer. He himself took on a girl as his own student later that year.
Although Cristofer disagreed with Aegidius about the proper relations between the Order and mundane politics, he did support the exile of the young followers of Savacion late in 224. He and Aegidius soon fell into opposition again, however, when Cristofer supported his filius Cassius' decision to take on a position as an advisor to the Tympanian revolutionary Tyrus. This disagreement caused a rift between the first two founders of the Cholaeic Order; nevertheless, when Aegidius announced his retirement from the Council in 225, he named Cristofer as his successor as its First Speaker.
It was mainly due to e chao omnia's proscription on political activism that Cristofer could not bring himself to approve it as an Order-wide charter in 229. Aegidius perceived this as a deep personal betrayal, and the rupture between the two was never to be breached. Although Cristofer did succeed, at length, in persuading Aegidius not to secede from the Order, upon leaving Evasendia, Aegidius severed all contact with Cristofer; the two were not to speak again until Aegidius lay dying in 249.
Cristofer's reign as First Speaker of the Council was characterized by a growing political involvement on the part of the Order's magi. An ex-revolutionary himself and a hater of the current Andarean rulership of Evasendia, Cristofer was proud of the Order's involvement, although he was never to explicitly enourage such activities nor to state a political position on behalf of the Order as a whole. Privately, Cristofer favored his filius' patron Tyrus, but he remained impartial towards those of the Order who preferred to support a rival revolutionary, the Andarean Gaultere. It was not until 230, when the rivalry between the two factions turned hostile, that Cristofer began to rethink his position on the Order's politicization, but by that time it was too late, and he found himself unable to stem the rising tide of intra-Order animosity. By late 231, Cristofer had lost all control over the Council, ineffectually calling for moderation and compromise while the rest of the Order hurled heedless into civil war.
In 232, devestated by the deaths of his students Cassius and Camilla and by the damage done to his first filius Clement, Cristofer succeeded where his predecessor Aegidius had failed: he led the Council to a unanimous proscription on political service for magi of the Cholaeic Order. Still a strong believer in Order unity, Cristofer was never comfortable with the idea of the Cholaeic diaspora, and while reluctantly agreeing that the dispersal was a necessary measure, insisted that the diaspora covenants not be single-House affairs. After the diaspora, Cristofer was take on a far less active role on the Council, leaving the leadership of his House increasingly in the hands of his third student Lemuel.
There are those who claim that Cristofer never really recovered from the shock of the civil war and the violent deaths of his students, and certainly after 232, his role within the Order became a passive one. Cristofereans, however, for whom their Founder's unshakable optimism is one of his chief virtues, hotly deny this charge; they claim that he was simply growing old. In any case, by 235 the leadership of the House had devolved upon Lemuel in all but name.
In 249, at the age of 101, Cristofer made the journey to Covenant Lapidis to be at the death-bed of his old friend and fellow Founder Aegidius. Whether the two achieved reconciliation is not known, but Cristofer returned to Evasendia in a state of very ill health. He died three years later, at the age of 104. As well as having aided in the training of most of the founders' first apprentices, he had taught four students of his own:
- Clement (C2), from 184 to 197
- Cassius (C3), from 198 to 210
- Lemuel (C5), from 208 to 220
- Camilla (C8), from 215 to 230
Upon his death, his third student Lemuel officially assumed the leadership of House Cristofer.
