Specialists in the magical study of eros, romantic love in all of its aspects, the spiritual and the profane. One of the few Amicitian fellowships in the history of the Order able to replicate the Power Trio's feat of combining their talents when working together in the lab. Founders of the smallest and most primitive of the cottage covenants, the Covenant at Talchester.
Rosamund of House Touccio and Pronuba of House Cristofer were raised together at the Covenant at Felchester in the first half of the fourth century. Rosamund was strikingly beautiful and cripplingly shy; Pronuba was gregarious and physically hideous. The two students were inseparable growing up, and they both shared an obsession with all facets of romantic love, a subject to which they were often exposed by eavesdropping on their teacher Lynx's frequent consultations with the women of the village.
Although the magi of the Covenant at Felchester were not at that time followers of Amicitianism, the close quarters in which they lived resulted in them following a number of Amicitian teaching principles as a matter of pure convenience. Lynx's student Pronuba learned a number of Touccian tricks from Chrysolitha, while Chrysolitha's student Rosamund would apply her Touccian talents far more extensively to Lynx's specialization of herbalism and potions than to her own master Chrysolitha's more craft-oriented foci.
Later adherents to what would come to be called "Castrian Amicitianism" like to argue that Lynx and Chrysolitha stumbled upon Spingelli and Cos' recommended methodology completely independently. Others, however, dispute this claim, pointing out that Lynx's childhood friends of the Power Trio were frequent visitors to the covenant; this, they say, makes it seem most unlikely that Lynx and Chrysolitha were unfamiliar with Amicitian principles, or that they were not in fact consciously utilizing those principles in the shared training of their apprentices.
Regardless of the degree of Lynx and Chrysolitha's familiarity with or adherence to classical Amicitian thought, though, their students Pronuba and Rosamund certainly displayed an interest in Amicitianism: they idolized the Power Trio and hoped to emulate them. Sadly, however, they found that in spite of their close relationship and shared fields of interest, they could not achieve the Amicitian ideal of working efficiently together on magical projects.
This all changed in 342, when a newly-orphaned Savacion apprentice, Julian, came to Felchester as a refugee from the fall of his own home covenant of Stony Hill to hostile native attack. Like Pronuba and Rosamund, he was only a handful of years away from magehood. Felchester's Savacion founder Aculeus agreed to undertake the remainder of his training. Both Pronuba and Rosamund found themselves strongly drawn to the traumatized young man, while Julian himself was attracted to each of them, albeit in completely different ways, a situation which he found exceptionally uncomfortable.
Where Amicitian training had failed, uncomfortable sexual tension did the trick: the three soon found that the interpersonal awkwardnesses between them unexpectedly enabled them to achieve the Amicitian ideal of combining their skills when working together -- although only when applied to magics concerning romantic or sexual love. Upon their graduations to magehood in 345, they declared themselves a "new Power Trio" and left Felchester to found a covenant of their own in the nearby tiny village of Talchester, where they soon became known as the "Talchester Trio."
While many assumed, perhaps inevitably, that the magi of the Talchester Trio lived in some perverse menage, they were in fact not lovers: to become so involved, they believed, would destroy their "Edge." Like their idols of the Power Trio, they were believers in Amicitianism, and they would raise all of their students in Amicitian Fellowship.
The Talchester Trio was not at all well-liked within the Order as a whole. Their particular area of specialization was one that the Order had historically viewed with suspicion, if not outright denunciation, and matters were not helped one bit by the war of propaganda, harassment and scandal-mongering waged upon them by Julian's elder brother Falx Astartis, who held a grudge against the Castrians and never missed an opportunity to spread ill-word of their exploits throughout the Order.
Nor were matters helped by the Trio's own aggressive disinterest in both Order-wide politics and in the good-will of their respective Houses. Julian gained notoriety within House Savacion for his life-long refusal to grant his accusers the satisfaction of any sort of fight, while Pronuba ran afoul of House Cristofer in 360, when she refused summons to fulfill her one-in-four oath by helping Annalum with their last-ditch attempts to halt the impending Schism War. Rosamund, for her part, was mistrusted as a Daughter of Daenae, and one who was far too beautiful at that.
The Talchester Trio's first fellowship, the "Morchester Trio," left Talchester to found their own covenant, the Covenant at Morchester, in 373. The magi of the Morchester Trio took their parentes' schtick one step farther -- perhaps a step too far. They really were sexually involved, and when they were eventually torn apart by ugly love triangle dynamics, not a few magi within the Order felt that the Talchester Trio's awful specialization must somehow be to blame for the indiscretions of their filii: the sins of the parents, they said, were clearly being visited upon the children. Much the same accusations were levelled against the Talchester Trio once again in 390, when the Order learned that one of the members of their second fellowship, the Cristoferean Sponsa, had fallen in love with a local farmer and effectively left the Order altogether, to wed him and live a mundane life.
The magi of the Talchester Trio themselves, however, encountered no such difficulties, and over their lives they greatly increased the Order's understanding of how to influence and work with love, lust and desire. They also created more than a few rather dangerous magical items: the Talchester Trio's own understanding of the matters in which they had specialized was somewhat abstract and intellectualized; both their items and their spells are known for often creating stronger effects than intended when used on those of an already passionate disposition.
In 405, when the Talchester Trio's Inceptum-found grandson [S125] was abducted from the covenant by members of the Inceptum/Opacan alliance, Julian left Talchester to search for him. He never returned, nor was his body ever discovered; the magi of Talchester were, however, able to receive magical confirmation of his death later that year. Rosamund fell ill immediately upon learning the news, and she passed away shortly thereafter. Pronuba, after a short period of waiting to join them, and then a much longer period of feeling terribly inadequate for having failed to do so, joined with a group of other elderly Plenilunial magi to found Covenant Niveum Pomeridianum. She is currently the oldest living member of House Cristofer.
