This is a summary of The Order Pre-Diaspora, second chapter of A Brief History of the Order. The original is in 17 parts.
- Over the next thirty years, the Order expands rapidly, as the original founders raise their apprentices to magehood. The cumulative knowledge of the Order increases as all of the founders share their particular magical skills and techniques with one another.
- The Order recognizes that each of the founders has his own particular set of attitudes and approaches to magic and magical training, which in turn are passed on to his students. In 200-201, this fact is codified by the establishment of the seven Houses of the Order, each House descending from one of the original founders.
- Over the next fifteen years, the Houses take on their own characteristics and idiosyncracies, coming to serve as the primary identification for the Order's magi. By 215, the rights of the Houses have come to supercede the authority of the Order as a whole, and no challenge to House autonomy is allowed to pass.
- With the rise of the Houses to such a position of prominence, all attempts to draft a Charter of law or conduct for the Order as a whole are doomed. The Order never ratifies a Charter or a Code.
- In 224 the students of Savacion, after avenging their founder's assassination, are deemed to be a threat to the Order and are exiled to Gaetan. There House Savacion founds the Order's first Covenant, Covenant Sol Media Nox.
- Alienated by the worldliness and political involvement of the rest of the Order, Aegidius and his followers secede from the Order in all but name in 229, leaving Evasendia to found Covenant Lapidis in Lorencia. They are accompanied by one of Eleanor's students, Melia, who renounces Eleanor's teachings and is accepted as a convert to the House. Melia's descendants form the female branch of House Aegidius.
- Throughout the late 220s and 230s, the magi of the Order become increasingly involved in mundane politics, a trend which eventually divides the Order into factions. Mage involvement in Evasendian revolutionary politics leads to a popular uprising against the Order itself; in 232 the Order is attacked directly, and many of its members are killed.
- The Order decides that to protect itself, it must disperse throughout Tympania, an event known as the "Cholaeic Diaspora."
