Lagopus

("The Ptarmigan")
filius Scolopax, of House Savacion
apprenticed 340; mage 355; died 419

Antrum: 340-361
Hermit (Dawn): 361-365
Antrum: 365-419

Raised by the Wendellian Scolopax at in the years between the schisms. Like his parens and many others of Covenant Antrum, he took a moderate stance on the Schism War until the diabolic attack on Covenant Ad Vim Per Veritatem in 361, which he and the other Antrumites all agreed constituted a declaration of war. Late that year, he was placed in command of a naval force mustered by Covenant Antrum and set sail for the Dawn: his particular magical responsibility was to obscure the fleet so as to ensure that this intra-Order conflict would not cause incident between the Quintillican Confederacy and any of the mundane authorities of Cholaeic lands. (A number of Antrum elders had also made it clear, however, that should this incident cause disruption within the mundane organization of the Quintillican Confederacy itself...well, that would be considered rather a bonus, really.)

Lagopus did succeed in avoiding setting off any mundane political conflicts. He also, however, lost the entirety of his fleet, which vanished without trace off the coast of the Quintilloth in 362. A group of the so-called "Opponents of the Dawn" from Covenants Ad Vim and Alae Fractae, who had also travelled to the Dawn to fight Prima Lux, found him alive, but amnesiac and raving, on the Quintilloth shortly thereafter and took him in to recover from whatever diabolic exposure had reduced him to such a state.

He did indeed recover, and even took on a new apprentice later that year; he would spend the next three years allied with the Opponents of the Dawn in their ceaseless, frustrating, inconclusive, maddening attempts to usefully engage Prima Lux. They never really succeeded--in the end, Prima Lux's defenses were brought down by its own internal strife--but they were on hand to fight Vescus's northern army on the Quintilloth and in the waters surrounding Prima Lux during the Battle of Virginis in Litus in 364, and to conduct clean-up operations afterwards. He returned to Covenant Antrum in 365.

Perhaps as a result of whatever had befallen him in the Dawn, or perhaps merely due to long exposure to the conservatives of Ad Vim and Alae Fractae, after his return to the West Lagopus was to be rather hostile towards the Wendellian combat lore of his lineage. He expressed the opinion that it was a form of combat unworthy of House Savacion, and while he did teach the fundamentals to his students, he strongly discouraged them from delving too deeply into the subject or from identifying themselves as Wendellians.

His participation in the Schism War and alliance while there with the Opponents of the Dawn exempted Lagopus from much of the usual conservative bias against the descendants of Wendell. In spite of his membership in moderate Antrum-- which many conservatives despised or mistrusted after the war, due to their strong alliance with Annalum and stranglehold on political power within both House Manere and the Order as a whole--he himself was to remain on relatively friendly terms with the more conservative segments of the Order. His friendship with the Opponents of the Dawn themselves, however, was severed after the founding of Covenant Corbis Ovorum in 377, when he refused to take their part in their dispute with the covenant's founders, their students. Nonetheless, like his parens Scolopax and erstwhile fellow apprentice Festinatio Diligens, he held a strong reputation as a neutral and non-partisan voice, a reputation which gave him quite a bit of unofficial political power within the Order.

Lagopus rarely made his considerable political influence felt. In 406, however, his understated and seemingly reluctant defense of the perpetrators of the Nonae Fidelitatis Incident, in which his second filius Ex Orientem had been implicated, had much to do with the relatively peaceful resolution of that crisis.

He taught two students and died in 419.

• Caligatus, from 362 to 377
• Ex Orientem, from 380 to 395

• The Wendellian-Scolopaxian Line: Descendants of Lagopus