Palenti's first filius, the charismatic but argumentative Luke, took his master's teachings on the subjects of power and domination even further than the Founder himself had perhaps intended. Known for his political activism, his combative spirit, and his notoriously vicious vendetta against his first filius Salerno, Luke's particular interpretation of the Principia Maneris was to shape both the eventual direction of House Manere and the Order's perception of its members.
Luke was born in the wastes of Abrisia. Possessed of both a precocious intellect and an inborn talent for seeing through magical illusion, he stumbled across Palenti's magically-hidden retreat as a young child, and when the paranoid Palenti offered him his choice between apprenticeship or death, he readily chose apprenticeship. Luke had been studying under Palenti for three years when Aegidius and Cesiper located his master's retreat, and he was present five years later when Palenti finally agreed to join in the founding of the Order. From 188 to 197, he aided his master in the creation of the parma magica, which he was the second person ever to cast. He was taken to Evasendia as an apprentice for the founding of the Cholaeic Order in 198.
Luke's active interest in the teachings of the other Founders was one of the spurs to Palenti's creation of House Manere in 200. Forbidden by the new House policy from studying under other magi, Luke nonetheless sought such training on the sly, eventually learning the art of physical enchantment from Touccio's first filius Sarcon, and the ritual spells of the Eleanoreans from Eleanor's granddaughter Monedula.
Late in the year 200, Luke demanded a seat on the Council, pointing out that he had been studying under Palenti for twenty years and was more than qualified to enjoy full status regardless of Palenti's unwillingness to formally recognize him as a mage. The Council, after testing his abilities, agreed: they complied with this request, infuriating Palenti, who threatened to secede from the Order over the issue. In 201, however, a compromise was reached: Palenti agreed to allow Luke mage status within the Order, but refused to allow him full status within the House until he could force his "doddering old master" to submit to him in a duel. It was to take Luke more than thirty years to achieve this goal.
Although he himself had been born a peasant, Luke adopted wholeheartedly his master's disdain for the lower classes. He was never to forgive his first filius Salerno for his populist beliefs, and his contemptuous treatment of many of the Order's mundane allies caused tension on the Council. While agreeing that the current Andarean leadership of Evasendia was both incompetent and corrupt, Luke refused to support the Tympanian demagogue Tyrus, instead throwing his full support behind an aristocratic Andarean, Gaultere. When Cristofer's first filius Cassius became Tyrus' political advisor in 224, Luke took on an equivalent role within Gaultere's camp, although unlike Cassius, Luke was never to accept an official position with his protege and therefore escaped much of the criticism which was directed against Cassius by Aegidius and his followers.
Although they were political opponents, Luke and Cassius had the deepest respect for one another, and Luke had only agreed to lend his magical aid to Gaultere in exchange for assurances of Cassius' safety once Tyrus was overthrown. When Gaultere went back on his word once his victory was assured late in 231, Luke took it upon himself to avenge Cassius' death: he killed his erstwhile political ally at the end of that year.
Due to his perceived role in Cassius' death, Luke had become unpopular even with his former supporters in the Order, and his unpopularity was only compounded when his murder of Gaultere had the unforeseen result of the anti-mage uprisings early in 232. His reputation was soon somewhat restored, however, in the face of his evident remorse, his championing of the Order edict prohibiting political service, and his publicly stated intention to leave Evasendia to help in the founding of the new diaspora covenants.
After thirty-two years and three failed attempts, Luke was finally able to defeat Palenti in a duel in the spring of 232. He did so through use of his brother Ledo's lab notes, which he had stolen once he had realized that Ledo was on the verge of a magical breakthrough which might enable him to defeat Palenti first, thus ascending to the position of Primus Manere. The better theoretician, Luke was able to complete the spell, which he named Wind of Mundane Silence, first and in 232 became both the second sigil-holder of House Manere and its Primus.
As Primus Manere, Luke's first act was to institute the policy of ius victoris, whereby the victor in a Manerean duel is permitted to take one final action against his defeated opponent as a means both of reinforcing his dominance and of dissuading others from frivolous challenges. By declaring that Palenti was still in possession of Ledo's sigil, he also established that even after defeat in Manerean duel, a sigil-holder retains the sigils of those who have not yet managed to wrest them from him.
Despite his new role as Primus Manere, Luke was unwilling to remain in Evasendia as a member of the Council. He left the city with the north-bound diaspora party in 232, to found Covenant Trismagisti in Chaeronia one year later.
It was at Covenant Trismagisti that Luke's rivalry with his first filius Salerno became a true vendetta. As a member of House Manere without sigil, Salerno was subject to the commands of his parens. As a mage of the Order and Consul on the Council of Covenant Trismagisti, on the other hand, he should have been an equal partner in the administration of the covenant under the terms of its charter. In this conflict between the primacy of the covenant and that of the House, the Eleanorean and Touccian members of Trismagisti fell firmly in favor of the authority of the covenant. Unable to prevail against them, Luke resorted to direct magical attack to maintain his authority over his filius, a far weaker mage. He also courted the favor of Salerno's first student, the Evasendian aristocrat Gratus, whose sensibilities and tastes were far more in keeping with Luke's than with those of his own master.
Disgusted by this behavior and enraged by Luke's refusal to heed their official command that he desist from interfering with Salerno's training of his own apprentice, on Dissipation of 239/240 the Trismagistan Council voted to oust Luke from the covenant and requested that he leave at once. Luke complied, but only after using his authority as Primus Manere to claim Gratus as his own student. He took Gratus with him on his departure from Trismagisti, and declared him mage only two days later. This incident left Luke with a pure hatred of Houses Eleanor and Touccio which he was to impart to his own students: his vendetta against these two Houses was thirty years later to fuel the fires of the Eleanorean purge.
Upon his departure from Trismagisti, Luke decided to return to his homeland of Abrisia in search of a magical cave system which had been a popular legend in his youth. He found these caves in 240 and there founded Covenant Antrum in 242. In no time at all, Antrum was recognized as the covenant on cutting edge of the Order, and as it grew in power, Luke used his position as its leader to deprecate and slander the magi of Covenant Trismagisti whenever he could. He was to remain at the covenant until his death.
As Primus Manere, Luke was often far too absorbed in his own personal vendettas and projects to attend properly to his duties as the leader of his House. Although he did go out of his way to remain on good terms with the other House leaders of the Order, even visiting Lapidis in person in 240 to force a reconciliation with the estranged Aegidius, Luke failed on a number of counts to provide the authority and guidance it was his duty as Primus to display. His attacks on Salerno, and later on Covenant Trismagisti as a whole, were seen by many as beneath the dignity expected of a House leader, and his original refusal to remain seated on the Council at Evasendia in 232 was perceived by some as grossly irresponsible. It was his policy in regard to Vindex of the Ultorum, however, that ultimately proved the most damning evidence of Luke's failures as a leader.
Luke was so preoccupied with the founding of Covenant Antrum in 242 that when Covenant Melos fell to the witch-king Helde, he barely even attended the news. It was therefore not until three years later that he first learned that not all of the Melos Manereans had perished in the fall: one student, an apprentice of Strophius, had survived and was currently being trained in a slap-dash fashion by Melos' few surviving magi, not a single Manerean among them. When he learned of this blatant disregard for Manerean House policy, Luke commanded the orphaned apprentice either to continue his training under a Manerean mage or to face reprisals from the rest of the House.
The survivors of Melos, however, had little respect for the Primus who had ignored their plight completely for the past three years. The student refused to obey the Primus' orders, and the other survivors of Melos supported his decision. Luke then cast the young man from the protection of the House, but it quickly became apparent that the threat of reprisals had been an empty one. Of the living members of House Manere, only Luke's most recent students were loyal to him: Salerno would certainly not obey him, and Ledo's filia Ebriola Pretia, herself raised at Melos, was sympathetic to its survivors. The Primus was now seen to be toothless, and the Trismagistan magi made much of this fact, exacting a bit of vengeance of their own for Luke's constant attacks upon their covenant.
In 250, when Luke learned that the student he had cast from his House was now not only calling himself a mage, but also claiming himself as a filius of Strophius—and thus, by extension, claiming membership in House Manere—he resolved to act. He declared the student, who had taken for himself the name Vindex, a rogue and called upon the Order as a whole to bring him to justice. Luke had failed to realize, however, the extent to which the rest of the Order supported the survivors of Melos, who called themselves the Ultorum. Once Savacion's first filius, Palenti of Covenant Isrillion, publicly declared House Savacion's support for both Vindex and the Ultorum, neither Luke nor any other member of the Order was willing to attempt to enforce the Primus' decree. Frustrated by his inability to command his House, after 250 Luke retreated even more deeply into his role as the leader of Covenant Antrum.
Luke was succeeded as Primus Manere in 263 by his youngest student Thopas, who had trained under Pilafian of Savacion at Isrillion for six years in order to learn the magical combat techniques which enabled him to defeat Luke in an open duel. Many have hypothesized that Luke was secretly relieved to cede the title. His last act as Primus Manere was to recognize the recalcitrant Vindex of the Ultorum not only as a member in good standing of House Manere, but also as a sigil-holder. Luke's public proclamation of Vindex's status within the House can be read as a foreshadowing of the House's later acceptance of the validity of "low certamen:" in it, Luke comments that by succeeding in ignoring the Primus' commands for two decades without reprisals, Vindex had more than proven his ability to hold and maintain power; and that by his defeat of Helde, he had more than proven his ability to wield it. Vindex paid a visit to Antrum in person to acknowledge this proclamation, and Luke and the Ultorum were thereafter to be on good terms.
Although no longer the Primus Manere, Luke was to retain a high level of status within the House as Palenti's eldest and sole surviving filius. He represented Covenant Antrum at the First Tribunal in 269, where he was one of the most vocal supporters of the investigation into Lem's accusations against Eleanor. Luke had never forgiven the Trismagistan Eleanoreans for ousting him from the covenant he had helped to found, and he was one of the driving forces behind the Eleanorean purge. His first filius, Nexus, acted as the prosecutor of the Eleanorean trials, and it was largely due to Luke's influence that the magi of Covenant Trismagisti came under scrutiny so early in the course of the investigations.
Even the execution of the Trismagistan Touccians and the extermination of the entire Eleanorean House did not quite satisfy Luke, though: his detested filius Salerno and Salerno's two filii had survived the purge. Aware that their long-standing feud with Luke and Covenant Antrum put them in a precarious position, Salerno and his students had gone into hiding in the city of Evasendia. In 271, they sent a message to Antrum, requesting that they be officially absolved of suspicion of Eleanoreanism. Largely due to Luke's influence, however, the Primus Thopas refused this request, and few of the magi of the Order, who feared Antrum's power, were willing to show any signs of sympathy or forgiveness for the Trismagistan Manereans.
In 272 Luke left Antrum to pay a visit to the squalid inn in which the Trismagistan Manereans were hiding. It is still debated what he intended by this visit: some claim that it was Luke's desire at last to reconcile with Salerno, while others believe that he meant to gloat over his first filius' final degradation. Whatever his reasons, upon his arrival in Evasendia, he was killed by Salerno in a duel for the rights of sigil. He was avenged by Salerno's two filii who, terrified that Luke's death would bring reprisals from Antrum, immediately turned on their parens and killed him.
The majority of Manereans descend through Luke, whose mixed legacy of vengeance and activism continues to haunt members of the House. He taught three students and claimed four:
- Salerno (M4b), from 210 to 225
- Nexus (M6a), from 225 to 240
- Gratus (M6b), claimed by Luke in 240
- Thopas (M10), from 242 to 257
