This is a summary of Tribunal and Purge, the fourth chapter of A Brief History of the Order. The original is in 13 parts.
- Lem, long assumed dead, reappears at the opening ceremonies of the First Tribunal and accuses the only other surviving founder, Eleanor, of theocratism and murder. Eleanor and her followers walk off the Tribunal in protest.
- The Tribunal, gradually convinced of Eleanor's guilt, begins formal investigations into Lem's charges. Meanwhile, Houses Lem and Savacion send parties out to search for Eleanor, who has vanished.
- The Order learns the details of an Eleanorean conspiracy to unite Tympania under the rule of a magical elite by: (a) harnessing the power of the theocratic citadel of Pandrell; (b) rediscovering the lost secret of Iam's Pact of Ventria; and (c) raising the magical children of the witch-king Helde to dominate and overwhelm the Order. Trials and executions of those complicitous in the Eleanorean conspiracy begin. A Manerean from Covenant Antrum, Nexus, rises to power as the Tribunal's chief prosecutor.
- As details of the Eleanorean conspiracy emerge, the Order is gripped by a rapidly-mounting hysteria. Violence erupts throughout the Order, and a witch-hunt atmosphere prevails on the Tribunal. At the height of the hysteria, all women come to be viewed as inherently suspect, and the Order purges itself of nearly all of its female members and associates, with the exception of those of House Lem. Nexus and his allies of Covenant Antrum rise to positions of unparalleled power.
- By the end of 271, all of the members of House Eleanor are dead, and five of the Order's fifeen covenants have been destroyed. The Order begins expunging all mention of House Eleanor from written memory.
- Nexus begins to fall from power at the postumous trial of the Annalum Cristoferean Procopius, when the magi of the Tribunal come to believe that the self-accusatory testimony of Procopius' orphaned apprentice has been prompted and coerced. The hysteria begins to subside. When Nexus next accuses the Cristofereans of the Council at Evasendia of theocratism, the magi of the Tribunal walk out on him. Support for the prosecution vanishes, and the Annalum Cristofereans disband the Tribunal and send its magi home.
- The tiny minority of magi who remain convinced that Annalum is hopelessly corrupt march on the library and destroy it early in 272. News of its destruction horrifies the Order and sweeps away the last vestiges of enthusiasm for the purge. The only holdouts, the magi of Covenant Ultorum, are forced by the rest of the Order to desist from aggression in 275.
- Around forty percent of the Order's magi died in the Eleanorean purge. The violence of the event traumatizes the Order, which for the rest of its history will exhibit a marked aversion both to intra-Order hostilities and to pan-Order organization. The very word "tribunal" becomes synonymous with that of "mage-war" in the collective mind of the Order; there is never a Second Tribunal.
