Monedula
("The Jackdaw")
First filia Merula (E2)
   Merula first filia Eleanor

apprenticed in 204; declared mage in 217; died in 261

Founder of Covenant Trismagisti
Committed ally of The Ultorum

Raised at Evasendia by Eleanor's first disciple Merula, the irascable Monedula was, like her parens, a political mage. While Merula supported the demagogue Tyrus, however, Monedula did not believe that a Tympanian would stand a chance of holding power within Andarean-dominated Tympania. She therefore followed Luke in supporting the revolutionary party of the Andarean aristocrat Gaultere.

Monedula's relationship with her parens had always been one of friendly rivalry. In 223, when she learned that Merula was secretly training Palenti's second student Ledo in the Eleanorean art of ritual magic, Monedula began training her ally Luke in these same arts, and the two often engaged in spirited debate during Council meetings. By the time of the civil war of 230, however, this rivalry had grown significantly less friendly, and it turned to outright hostility when Tyrus and Gaultere's factions went to war one year later. In autumn of 231, Merula and Monedula took the field against one another, meeting in a magical duel which destroyed much of Evasendia's waterfront district. The two were only reconciled due to the direct intercession of Eleanor herself.

Always attracted to rather violent magics, early in 232 Monedula aided Ennius in assassinating those of the Order's mundane allies who were feared to have fallen into enemy hands; unlike Ennius, she never displayed any particular remorse for her participation in this act. Later that spring, she joined her ally Luke, now the Primus Manere, on the north-bound diaspora party, and after parting company with the Lemmites at the base in Whinnie Moor late that year, went on to Chaeronia, where she and Luke founded the first of the mixed-house diaspora covenants, Covenant Trismagisti.

Although she had been willing to help train Luke in the art of ritual magic, Monedula felt strongly that men had no place in House Eleanor. When Eleanor's fourth filia Erix took on a boy as her apprentice in 235, she led the members of the House who spoke out in opposition to this act; even after Eleanor publicly announced that her House was not to be barred from men, Monedula was always to remain a vocal proponent of the maintenance of House Eleanor as an all-female institution. Although she was eventually forced to recognize that the inclusion of men in House Eleanor was not something she could prevent, her relationships with her sister Columba Rava and eldest filia Ardea were strained when, several years after Eleanor's edict, they both decided to take on male apprentices of their own, and she was only dissuaded from leaving the covenant in protest by the entreaties of the Manerean Salerno, who was coming to rely on her as his protector against his hostile parens, Luke.

In the thorny conflict between Covenant and House rights first encountered at Trismagisti in the 230s, Monedula came down fully in support of the primacy of the Covenant. She was supported in this by the other Trismagistan magi with the exception of Luke, who soon became her chief rival on the covenant's council. When Luke refused to heed the council's official command to desist from his harrassment of his filius Salerno, Monedula led the vote to oust him from the Covenant on Dissipation of 239/240. It was the end of their alliance: from that point on, the Primus Manere and Monedula were to be bitter enemies.

In 242, stunned by the news of the death of her parens Merula at the fall of Covenant Melos and infuriated by the apparent apathy of the Council at Evasendia, Monedula vowed to avenge Merula's death herself. She left Covenant Trismagisti for Rhythnor early the next year, accompanied by her sister Columba Rava and leaving her first filia, Ardea, as the leading Eleanorean of Covenant Trismagisti.

Whether the Trismagistan Eleanoreans' plan to reactivate and harness the theocratic power of Pandrell was originally Monedula's idea or that of her student Ardea is unknown. Evidence suggests, however, that the plan was in the works before Monedula's departure from Trismagisti: her second student, Alae Myrrhae, who left the covenant only days after she did, was later to give as her reason only that she had found the atmosphere at the covenant "religiously offensive." It is probable that Monedula was involved in the early planning stages of the Trismagistan plot before her departure for Rhythnor.

For the next twenty years, Monedula was to be one of the Ultorum's most committed members. She completed the training of both of Melos' orphaned Eleanorean apprentices and aided in the training of those of other houses, including—although in later years he would fly into a rage if anyone mentioned it in his presence—the orphaned Manerean Vindex. For a time her sister Columba Rava was to exert a calming influence on her, but as she became increasingly frustrated by the constant set-backs and defections afflicting the Ultorum, she grew more and more violent and fanatic in her devotion to the cause. She supported Vindex in his defiance of the Primus Manere Luke, and on more than one occasion threatened death on any who would attempt to act on the Primus' edict casting him from the protection of the House.

Monedula had been furious when one of the orphaned students whose training she had completed, Iassitor, had chosen to leave the Ultorum with Pilafian to found Covenant Isrillion in 245, and she was even further frustrated by her inability to make any headway with her other adopted student, Luscinia, who seemed to have been damaged permanently by the temporary Twilight she experienced in the course of the Ultorum's crushing defeat in 250. When therefore both her third student Declivis Glareae and her sister Columba Rava announced their intention to abandon the Ultorum and join with the Manerean Ebriola Pretia in founding the Covenant at Chalcyphon later in 250, Monedula considered it the last straw. She tried to physically prevent the defectors from leaving, and was only restrained from committing murder by the intervention of the Savacion Proclamator. It was probably due to this incident that when in 252 Luscinia—now having finally emerged from her Twilight and ascended to magehood—chose to make her own escape from the Ultorum, she did so during a week when her adoptive parens was away.

Driven by her vow of vengeance, frustrated by the Ultorum's lack of success, and embittered by Luscinia's defection, Monedula became increasinly bloodthirsty and reckless after 252. By 260, her excessive cruelty towards Helde's Rhythnorian allies could sometimes shock even the rabid Vindex, and her constant advocacy of rash and violent action disturbed her colleagues, who had come to view her as erratic and unreliable. She was killed in a foolhardy solo assault on Helde's central headquarters in 261. While she had failed to fulfill her vow to avenge Merula within her lifetime, her death was to bring about Helde's doom: through it, the Eleanorean captive Xyris was released from Helde's service, enabling her to lead the Ultorum to victory in 263.

Monedula taught three students of her own:

• Ardea (E8), from 221 to 234
• Alae Myrrhae (E10), from 227 to 240
• Declivis Glareae (E12), from 234 to 247

and also completed the training of two more:

• Iassitor (E11), from 243 to 245
• Luscinia (E16), from 243 to 252