Covenant Stony Hill
founded 316; dissolved 342
Founded as an annexe to the popular egalitarian covenant Plenilunium Album, it was plagued with difficulties and setbacks, and never really got off the ground. It was destroyed in 341, having only survived for so long at all due to its members' stubborn pride and refusal to accept it as a lost cause, and was officially dissolved early in 342.
- The Founding of Stony Hill
- Schismatics at Stony Hill
- Fax Lunaris at Stony Hill
- The Destruction of Stony Hill
- Aculeus, filius Iurgulus of House Savacion
- Spatha, filius Sica of House Savacion
- [A22b], filius [A18] of House Aegidius
- Lapilla, filia Daenae of House Touccio
- Lynx, filia Constantia of House Cristofer
- also brought to the covenant at its founding was Chrysolitha, apprentice to Lapilla
By 315, the new egalitarian covenant Plenilunium Album had become so popular that it no longer had room to house the young magi who flocked to Rhythnor to request admission, and its apprentices were also very cramped. So crowded had the covenant become that there was no place at all to house the latest two magi to come to Plenilunium Album, Aculeus and Spatha, both of House Savacion; unwilling to go anywhere else, the two young magi agreed to spend the winter in one of the covenant's outbuildings together until a solution to the problem could be found. It was a cold way to winter, and the Plenilunial magi all agreed that it was not a very satisfactory arrangement.
Over that winter, the two Savacions planned a solution. They decided to found an 'annexe' to Plenilunium Album, with an identical charter and organized in the same fashion, but located to the Twilight, which was just now emerging as a favored location for new Cholaeic covenants. The idea was that those magi drawn to the Plenilunial philosophy and charter could now have two such covenants to choose from: those from the Twilight Covenants could join the annexe, thus both saving themselves a long and perilous journey to Rhythnor and also relieving somewhat Plenilunium Album's population pressures.
Early in 316, with Plenilunium Album's support, Aculeus and Spatha set out for the Twilight, along with Lapilla, Daenae's filia and one of the order's only two female Touccians; Lapilla's apprentice, Chrysolitha; [A22b], a somewhat more experienced mage who had come to Plenilunium Album upon his graduation to magehood from Antrum; and Lynx, a talented young Cristoferean just graduated the year before.
In 316, this group settled on a site in a barren area of Picantea, in the mountains to the north of Trachis. The location was chosen for its nearby vis source, its emptiness, and its possibilities for later expansion — a problem which had plagued Plenilunium Album. The concept of an 'annexe' was a new one within the Order, and so to avoid confusion, the Annexe at Stony Hill, as it was called by its founders, was registered with Annalum as a Covenant late in 316, under the name the Covenant at Stony Hill.
Despite Plenilunium Album's support, the Stony Hill magi encountered difficulties right from the very start. They were nearly all very young magi, and none of them had the right sort of leadership skills to organize the founding of a covenant. Building the covenant's physical structure also turned out to be a tremendous task. The area they had chosen had no wood, very few people, and very hard rock. None of the magi were particularly terram-oriented, none of them had any experience with or knowledge of large- scale construction, and none of them had any idea how, in such a desolate area, they might even begin to go about commissioning the building of a structure. The younger magi seemed to expect Lapilla to be able to simply produce a covenant out of the bare rock, which caused quite a bit of lost temper among the founders. Lapilla was neither a mason nor a terram specialist: she had been trained by a weaver. She was quite annoyed that the others, influenced by standard stereotypes of Touccian magi, automatically expected such feats from her, and even more annoyed when she came to feel that they all seemed to consider it her particular responsibility to figure out how to resolve the issue. For quite some time, the accommodations at Stony Hill were quite poor--uncomfortable, badly-rigged shelters propped up by scaffolding; magically-conjured huts which disappeared at each sunrise--and in these conditions, tempers were easily frayed and patience ran thin.
Plenilunium Album's Annex at Stony Hill did not attract the new magi it had been expected to. Its location was unpopular, its accommodations poor, its reputation bad. Plenilunium Album's mystique had simply not rubbed off on its annexe, and the same magi who were willing to sleep in the stables at Rhythnor were not willing to come to Stony Hill even if they could be assured of the best quarters available there. The young covenant's only new members in its first five years were Lapilla's student Chrysolitha, who graduated to magehood in 321, and the Plenilunial Manerean Verpa Exigua, who was ordered to Stony Hill that same year by her parens and sigil-holder Vespera, who was begging the younger magi at her covenant to please consider the annexe? Plenilunium Album was once more filled to capacity.
When the Stony Hill magi heard that even the over-crowded Plenilunials didn't want to come to their annexe, they grew even more disheartened, and by the early 320s, the magi were squabbling constantly among themselves, disagreeing on every last detail about how the covenant ought be run, fighting over access to Stony Hill's few resources, and nagging at the Touccians incessantly to hurry up and finish the damned tower they'd been working on already. Schismatics had started to form: [A22b] and Spatha generally fell down on the same side of issues, and on the opposite side of Aculeus and Verpa Exigua; everyone harried the Touccians, who would snap back that they were herbam magi, dammit, and would someone else like to give the tower a try?; and Lynx, desperately trying to remain neutral, would attempt to ajudicate and wind up resented by all parties. As a Plenilunial covenant, Stony Hill had no leader and no hierarchy: there was therefore no efficient way to resolve schismatic disputes. Aculeus and Spatha, had now grown to loathe each other, and they refused to agree on anything, which made consensus impossible. Gridlock set in.
In 325, after nearly killing Spatha in a duel, Aculeus left the covenant altogether, accompanied by Verpa Exigua. Shortly after their departure, the "damn tower," which had finally been completed early in the year, collapsed due to a flaw in its construction, killing Spatha and a number of the covenfolk.
The younger of the Touccians, Chrysolitha, had been to blame for the collapse: under pressure to complete the project, she had risked using experimental methods in her part of its construction. Aware of the ugly mood of the magi, she fled Stony Hill even before the dust had settled, bolting for the An Valley, where she caught up to Aculeus and Verpa Exigua and, relating the incident in such a way as to suggest that Spatha had been responsible, was accepted by them and joined them in their travel down the An.
Chrysolitha's analysis of the Stony Hill magi's mood was accurate. After the collapse of the tower, Spatha's now- orphaned apprentice, a harsh and vindictive youth, demanded that an investigation into its cause be carried out immediately and restitution made for Spatha's death. He was joined in this by [A22b], who insisted that negligence in something as vital as construction constituted criminal behavior, and that some form of justice would have to be administered. Lapilla, the obvious target of this line of argument, demanded to know what they were all insinuating. Chrysolitha's departure soon made her responsibility apparent, and the magi fell to bickering over what was to be done, [A22b] and Spatha's apprentice continuing to call for restitution, Lapilla trying to defend her filia.
The Cristoferean Lynx, meanwhile, quietly gathered together her belongings, a few of the covenant's pawns of vis, and the books she considered 'hers,' as she had scribed them for the covenant herself, and quietly slipped away, unnoticed by any of the others. She sent word to Plenilunium Album of the disaster and suggested that the Plenilunial magi send aid; as she herself had now absolutely washed her hands of the entire affair. Then she, too, headed for the An Valley, where after several days travel, she caught up with the others and joined them. These four magi would later found the Covenant at Felchester.
When Plenilunium Album received Lynx's message, it sent a Savacion volunteer, Fax Lunaris, to the covenant's aid. Fax Lunaris arrived at the end of the year, adopting Spatha's orphaned apprentice and, despite Stony Hill's Plenilunial charter, effectively taking control of the covenant, settling the disputes between its magi and leading them to an organized reconstruction.
Fax Lunaris was a leader, something that Stony Hill had previously lacked,and under his direction, the covenant began to pull itself together. It was still plagued by a number of problems, however: it had no source of water, and the magi had no success in digging wells which did not dry up within a month or two; it now had no money, as Fax Lunaris, wishing no repeat of the disaster of 325, had emptied the coffers to hire masons from Trachis to build a structure; the natives of the area were wild and barbarous, and they did not speak any language the magi could understand without the aid of magic; the covenant's military was badly disciplined and didn't get along well with the nearby tribesmen, whom they--themselves valley people--considered little more than animals. Word of the events of 325 had by now spread throughout the order, and no magi even considered joining Stony Hill. The covenant's only real advantage was its prolific vis source, but even this did not help them, as most of the supply had to be used to provide the covenant with water.
Faced with all of these difficulties, over the next ten years the Stony Hill magi developed a certain stubbornness, a sense of pride in their covenant. They refused to turn to Plenilunium Album for aid, and in their limited communication with the home covenant, made their situation out to be far better than it really was. Fax Lunaris' leadership had united the magi; no longer quarrelsome, they had now become clannish, determined to make Stony Hill work, suspicious of outsiders who might discover how weak they really were. In 334, when a newly-graduated Cristoferean, Lynx's sibling Gryps, was sent to Stony Hill by Plenilunium Album, she was viewed with suspicion and resentment by the Stony Hill magi, who had requested no aid, and who wanted none. Gryps was startled by the poor conditions at the covenant, but she wanted to be accepted by the other magi there: she was soon coopted into maintaining the illusion that all was well at the annexe.
In 337, the plentiful vis supply upon which the Stony Hill magi had come to rely inexplicably began to dry up. Even now too proud to admit that their sole advantage was gone, the magi decided that they would simply have to conserve. The covenant's elder founder, [A22b], by far the most magically capable of the Stony Hill magi, found himself increasingly burdened with duties; no longer a young man, he quickly became generally exhausted. In 338, Stony Hill's mundane population, which had never been very devoted, began to desert the covenant.
Drought struck Picantea in 339, taxing Stony Hill's dwindling resources to their limit. All of the covenant's vis now had to go to providing water; and there was still not enough. Food supplies were also low, and the accommodations were still poor. By late 339, [A22b] had fallen ill, and as there was not enough vis both to cure him and to maintain a minimal water supply, his health steadily degenerated. He died early in 340.
This was the last straw for [A22b]'s filius, Mosley, who left the covenant at once for Plenilunium Album, where he reported the appalling conditions at Stony Hill. Shocked by his reports, the Plenilunials sent a message at once, strongly recommending that the magi of Stony Hill abandon the annexe.
No sooner had this message arrived, however, than a united group of Picantaean tribes, who believed the magi to be responsible for the drought, attacked the covenant. Weakened by thirst and starvation, the magi were initially unable to fend them off: the covenant was sacked, Fax Lunaris and Lapilla were killed, and Lapilla's young filia Smaragda was dragged off into captivity. Believing himself to be the sole survivor of a hopeless battle, Fax Lunaris' apprentice Julian fled the field and made his way alone to the only other covenant he knew how to find--the Covenant at Felchester--where he reported Stony Hill destroyed.
The battle was not utterly lost, however: Spatha's student Falx Astartis, now grown into a most formidable warrior- mage, managed to rally the last of Stony Hill's loyal retainers, repulse the tribesmen from the covenant, and rescue Smaragda from captivity. The Cristoferean Gryps also survived the conflict. These three magi, however, then could not agree on their next course of action. Falx Astartis had sworn to avenge Fax Lunaris' death; he refused either to remain at the covenant or to allow either of the women to accompany him on his solitary quest for vengeance. Gryps prepared to return to Plenilunium Album to report the demise of the covenant. Smaragda alone was still set on making the covenant work: she refused to accept it as a lost cause and was furious at the others for their betrayal. When she was unable to convince either of them to remain to help her restore the covenant, however, she gave up and travelled south, where in 342 she joined Covenant Ultorum. What little was left of the Covenant at Stony Hill was left abandoned.
