It makes perfect sense to me
It all sounds perfectly sensible to me. No one can deny that these are difficult times... (Damn you, Kip! I'm going to be humming that all day now, I'll have you know.)

Certainly it's a safe bet that Cristofer would be pleased to have more eyes and ears up there in Gaetan. Now that Chiro's left, all they've got up there is their baby Derlethian (and if Perdix was "Best of Three," then this poor fellow was actually "Fourth Choice"), who is certainly a dutiful sort, but who is also young, and untried, and an outsider, and about as terribly obviously a sent-from-Annalum spy as a sent-from-Annalum spy can possibly be without wearing a big sign around his neck reading "I REPORT EVERYTHING I SEE, HEAR, OR EVEN IMAGINE BACK TO ANNALUM BY THE FASTEST AVAILABLE PIGEON. PLEASE HIDE ALL OF YOUR SECRETS FROM ME!"

So Perdix's reading of the situation seems pretty spot-on to me.

As for what they'd want him to do for them...well, that's always the sticking point with Cristofer, isn't it? Right now, they're probably more interested in keeping up-to-date on their information about what's going on in Gaetan than they are in anything else, but later on? Who knows.

As for the New Cosmopolitans, I don't think that anyone knows much of anything about them. Just to give you a taste, here's a sample of the entry I have written for one of them in my Bethelionite notes (the things I've been transcribing today):

"One of the “New Cosmopolitans” of the ninth graduating class, C117b remained in Evasendia after its ascension to magehood. It lives as a hermit in the city, where it is on very friendly terms with its fellow New Cosmopolitans A86 and T91b/D4d."

Yeah. That's it. And if you want to know what A86 and T91b/D4d's entries look like? Just cut and paste, and then switch the names around, and you've got it.

So the New Cosmopolitans are really an unknown quantity. At least, I certainly have no idea what they're like.

Charles would probably be able to give a better idea of the Manu Tenereans. I don't have much of a feel for them at all.

One thing I'm fuzzy on here—and that I suspect you have a better grasp on than I do at this point—is precisely what's been going on in House Manere lately. How serious are the 'abomination' mutterings within the House, and what are the factions involved in that, and what were the political undercurrents driving events during the conjugation? It's relevant here, I think, because for good or for ill (usually for ill), Manerean politics do tend to steer the rest of the Order, and it seems to me that a lot of what Cristofer has historically been concerned with is...well, trying to apply some damage control to those damned Manereans, quite frankly. So who precisely in House Cristofer might be willing (or even eager) to patronize Perdix would largely depend, it seems to me, on what the current implications of such a political stand might be.

What Manu Tenereans think of Perdyx
I think the Manu Tenereans liked Perdyx a lot more before they came to visit this spring. They really were an awful guest (and they are creepy as hell now). I think Laetitia and Somnex probably hung out occaisionally with Perdyx in Evasendia (after Perdyx graduated, but while Laetitia and Somnex were still students), if not nearly as much as the new cosmopolitans. However, I think Laetitia became frustrated with Perdyx's wastrel ways fairly quickly. As a fellow laureate, Perdyx really ought to have been doing something more meaningful than just hanging around mooching off of the University. Also, I'm guessing that Perdyx probably wasn't very sympathetic towards the whole Manu Tenere project that Laetitia and Somnex were getting wrapped up in, so that would have turned them against him as well.

Still, Perdyx was enough of a political light weight at that point (having not yet corrupted the new cosmopolitans) that Laetitia and Somnex came away from it with no particular ill-will towards Perdyx.

Leonis Lenis (who was in Perdyx's class) really personally dislikes Perdyx (and has since school). However, he is somewhat sympathetic to Perdyx's familiarization disaster, and very intrigued by its implications (Leonis is a serious specialist in familiarization).

Circumsessor doesn't care very much about Perdyx, although he has always found Perdyx's refusal to get involved with the Gaetan adventures frustrating and a bit insulting.

I don't know anything about the new cosmopolitans, although I assume that they must have turned against Perdyx after the familiarization disaster...

New Cosmopolitans
I'm starting to get some ideas about the New Cosmos. I need to think some more about it, but I'll definitely be posting some more about the Bethelionites (drawing off of the lists of graduates to come up with a synthesis of "what did the New Cosmopolitans live through while they were students?" and "who were they influenced by?"). I'm thinking that at least one of the New Cosmos turned against Perdyx during the familiarization, while the other two turned against him immediately afterwards.

Am I right in thinking that Perdyx familiarized his sister over the course of 424? Completing it shortly before the conjugation?

Earlier than that.
By about a year, I think: over the course of 423. There needs to have been some time for a catastrophic nervous breakdown, putting the pieces back together, packing up the apartment, traveling to Manu Tenere, spending at least six months there, and then on and up to Nimas Animae.

Inclinata and the Dream Ship
Sarah posting about the dream ship reminded me of something we had been talking about RE: Inclinata Resurgit.

As I imagine it, the thing that really brought Inclinata down was that when the Dream Ship arrived, the various candidates for Primus were still arguing about who should be the anti-Primus (on the dubious basis that a conjugation without Manereans can't select the Primus, so the non-conjugation outside the walls was the real conjugation). When the Litans offered to bring everyone along to meet the new Primus at Fumus, Inclinata told them off harshly, at which point all of her followers said "Ah, to hell with it, let's go meet the new Primus." The other candidates for Primus all joined in to go meet the new Primus, so Inclinata was the only one who specifically lost her followers to the new Primus, rather than simply bowing to the situation herself.

I think it may be her followers disloyalty, even more than the failure to become Prima, that she blaims on Perdyx. Even without a disgraced student, she probably wouldn't have made it to become Primus (although she clearly thought she was winning out for the anti-Primus slot), but she certainly wouldn't have been humiliated by her faction.

Kip, does that sound like a viable explaination?

Struck down, she rises again...
I’ve given it about as much thought as Perdix has, since the accident. Works just fine for me. But I do wonder what she’s got up her sleeve for the fifty-first.