Presumably the vis sources also remained the property of the covenant? Taking away shared resources that the magi could all use to learn and progress is probably worse than taking away any personal property the magi might have, as benefitting from each other's knowledge and wisdom is one of the fundamental reasons for establishing covenants in the first place. It's certainly worse in this case because the magi are also losing the advantages that could be gained by controlling a vis source that lots of other covenants want access to. And all this is because some idiot unwisely gave a clerical flunkey an animal head? As punishments go that's just way out of line. Don't be surprised if these NPC magi spend the next three years gathering support in the Tribunal in order to get this ruling over-turned and the people responsible for it punished, because I think this case establishes a precedent that a lot of magi are NOT going to like - if the Tribunal reserves the right to expel whole covenants from their sites because of the transgressions of individuals, then no magus is safe.
House Diedne was marched as a house, so collect punishment has a precedent. Not one many magi would invoke of course...
The Chief Quaesitor may have supported the collective charge (wtf?), but the Tribunal voted it through - the majority of the Tribunal agreed that all the members of a covenent were guilty for the crime of one. Scary idea. Wouldn't happen in a Saga of mine...
That was different in that the a tribunal ordered them to allow investigators in to their secret rituals and gatherings and there's no evidence that any of the diedne ever made any effort to see this carried out. So the group as a whole is guilty of not abiding by the decisions of a tribunal. Rather than the whole group being punished due to the actions of a a single individual it's the whole group being punished for the actions of the group as a whole.
Was it passed through tribunal though, Bash seemed to be saying they were between tribunals (the next in 3 years) and that some members might bring charges then.
If it was passed by tribunal, then it was a major political hoiking of the old magi, and could only be brought up further in the Grand Tribunal if the magi's houses think it was a ridiculous punishment for the crime. It was imposed by "God" as Bash says but "God" might want a plot of the covenant resources being contested for a few decades if it is the rich resource node he implies.
If it had just been imposed by the Senior Quaesitor who expelled magi from their own covenant, leaving the covenant resources which would include library, vis sources, and lab equipment then the ruling would certainly be disputed at Tribunal and might very well be reversed with punishment on the quaesitor and the characters for depriving magi of their resources.
Either way, what exactly kept the old members of the covenant from dividing up the library saying that each book was personal property of a magi. The Tribunal would hardly have a list of the covenants property to check against, and they couldn't have allowed the magi to take away their own stuff without allowing them access to the shared portable resources that they could carry away. The former covenant member who was carrying away the books need only claim that it was personal property to be in the right and the attack on his cart and resources to be in the wrong.
All were marched for the actions of a few. A collective punishment.
Perhaps if magi knew they might suffer for the crimes of their covenant mates, they would act to rein them in more. Perhaps they would expell them more readily. I can see how some sagas might rule along these lines.
Not exactly in the Diedne case. All of the Diedne were required to comply with the decisions of a tribunal. None of them did. They all broke the code.
This must refer to canon I am not aware of. If a grand tribunal ordered them to do something they were individually capable of and all individually failed to comply, then I sit corrected. 
They weren't individually capable of it but a subgroup of them could have opened up their secret rituals to investigators. The Diedne acted as a group to prevent this. In this way the analogy with Bash's group isn't perfect where one member of the group did ill and the others weren't in a position to stop it. In the case of the Diedne the ill they were convicted of was not confined to a single individual and all of the diedne were in a position to work to stop it, in fact they were breaking the code in failing to do so. That not every member of the Diedne was in a position to single handedly bring all of the guilty to justice or to singlehandedly open up the Diedne rituals to the Hermetic investigators isn't material in this case.
(I think that Hermetic law often follows this pattern , first someone screws up, second a general agreement as to what the code says and what the correct interpretation is arises, third people argue over the schism war)
But speaking of Hermetic society:
Invent a spell of at least seventh magnitude: I've done plenty but I'll choose Oath Breaker’s Remorse here: spellswiki.wikidot.com/creo-mentem
Be famed for some great deed that is significant enough to be known throughout the order: this one's tougher but how about these:http://www.atlas-games.com/pdf_storage/SpellIndexbyForm.pdf
atlas-games.com/pdf_storage/ ... hnique.pdf
atlas-games.com/pdf_storage/ ... yBonus.pdf
atlas-games.com/pdf_storage/ ... yShape.pdf
Defeat a certain challenge: perhaps this would work
https://forum.atlas-games.com/t/level-10-15-spells/245/1
woohoo!! [size=150]Archmagus[/size]
N.B. An order to reveal magical secrets is plainly illegal!, but lets not get drawn there...
The tribunal in Bash's case (if there was one) may have thought that the other covenent members should have stopped the sheep-head incidient. They might has consided them all guilty of letting the whole situation get to that point. They might have all been charged with 'endangering the order' for the bad relations with the local Churchmen. The sheephead incident might have just been the final straw. Imo this would be a plausible case.
So it's plainly illegal to investigate any wrongdoing whatsoever including blatant breaking of the code if the accused claims that it involves magical secrets? (OK you said let's not go there but I did, I'm a bad person).
In Bash's case were the other covenant members ordered by the tribunal to stop it? The difference is that the Diedne had a fair amount of not abiding by the decisions of a tribunal on their rap sheets (and they were marched for dealing with the infernal). I don't think that the unfortunate covenant in Bash's game had the same resume.
(I'm going to retire from the "Diedne are a precedent for punishing magi based on actions of others" discussion and let you have the last word here unless you write something really really interesting.)
The OoH is based more on peer pressure than on a really binding "consistution", so anything that a (fairly well attended) tribunal decides is what really matters. They decided that and the guys in Bash's saga got sacked. Easy as that. In the case of the diednes everybody has conflicting opinions, but reading the current cannon it reads to me that they were far from popular because they were secretive, that the tremeres wanted them out and decided to simply go for the violent way of expelling them. The rest just jumped into the wagon once it was in motion: no real tribunal decision at all. If they were guilty or not is tottaly worthless as a piece of legislation here: they werre sacked and declared guilty of whatever you can fancy about (including chamber pot nailing and casting pink dots on your average sword)
Cheers,
Xavi
Except that in this case, IIRC, it hasn't been clarified whether it was actually a Tribunal that made the decision or not.
Exactly. The Code of Hermes itself is a lot shorter and more brief than the US Constitution (have you read that lately? No wonder it ties us in knots for generations!) and thus open to "interpretation." Many quaesitors may be just and honorable, but there is always a bottom line. It's not "justice" in the modern sense, it's what keeps "good civil order", aka obedience. And magi being as vulnerable to the churchmen and the masses as they are, those that rock the boat too hard and too often get sacked, and legalities be damned.
The Schism War makes a poor analogy to this case, but it should be noted they were never found guilty of any high crimes...only of refusing to submit to quaesitor intrusions. I think the point of the lore has more to do with the corruptibility of magi and not their perfect adherence to legal procedure. BTW, in the middle ages there is no such thing as "legal procedure" in the modern sense. We play the order being more enlightened than the rest of Europe, but it's still a crude and primitive system. There's no "right of discovery" for the accused, no right to a lawyer, etc. It could be argued that a mage could be tried and convicted in absentia without being able to speak in his own defense (this was done to me), although you'd have a really good gripe at Tribunal, and this would most likely be rectified. But ONLY if the Tribunal concurs with you! Ultimately, whatever the Tribunal says is law, is law. That's getting medieval.
Yes, it was a Tribunal decision. The barony we are under is in a very precarious situation, with the lord's mother (who hates us) holding considerable power, while her ineffectual son, the actual baron, is a poor ruler (darnit, he's the one that likes us!) Apparently the previous members were often blamed for a variety of problems in the barony, and the tirade against the churchman was the last straw. It was either "fire" the magi, or watch the whole region crash and burn, or so the Tribunal believed.
You are in the clear then. It is not a common situation, but makes for some intersting (and powerful!) enemies for the covenant. Cool saga background 
You managed to have the church, the real noble power AND a bunch of powerful hermetics all pissed off at you BEFORE puting a foot in the covenant. Amazing 
You will live interesting times indeed!
Cheers!
Xavi
Welcome to the ranks
This is a often said, but what's your source? What's your measure of crude and primitive?
My sources are an accumulation of knowledge from studying history for some 30+ years. My measure of "crude and primitive" is the modern standard. If you travel all across Europe today you will find laws differ, but the system of jurisprudence is remarkably similar from Iceland to Greece. Granted there are differences and variations, but the majority of them are insubstantial, regarding what kind of hat the judge wears and such. But regardless of where you are if you find yourself accused of a crime you can expect many things: the right to a lawyer (representation), though it may not be free in every country, is universal in Europe, and most of the rest of the world. The right to see the evidence against you, and the chance to refute it; standards of evidence, findings of fact vs. findings of law. The right to speak in your own defense, and to present witnesses who may exonerate you. The right to present evidence on your behalf. You can expect hearsay evidence to be suppressed in most cases. And the actual construction, process and execution of legal proceedings to go along an orderly, predictable path; no secret hearings or surprise trials.
This was not so in the Middle Ages. Every petty lord, every middling local baron, and the grand counts and dukes alike had the same right to "ensure justice" in their realms, but they did not necessarily have a standardized procedure for doing it. When someone accused another of a crime there was no police force to report it to, there was the local lord or his knight. And that's where it ended usually. There was no district attorney, separate from the police, and the lord judge did not have to recuse himself if there was a "conflict of interest." The lord might be fair and impartial, or he might not be. Today you can appeal to the higher courts and expect your case to be reviewed according to the rule of law, not the best interests of the parties in power; in the Middle Ages you might have the right to appeal to your lord's liege, or not. And even if you did, more likely than not he's going to side with his man.
I call that crude and primitive, by today's standards. Frontier justice. The justice of hearsay equals guilt, and superstition ("He's got a wart on his forehead, that means he's GUILTY!"). Being unpopular could mean your guilt, as could any shadow of suspicion that today's judicial system would banish from a trial as being "irrelevant." In medieval courts nothing was irrelevant, not your parentage or birthright, not your childrens' behavior, or the health of your crops, unless the judge thought it was. This is just a generalized overview of jurisprudence across a continent, which also brings up the lack of standardization. Though many lords modeled their courts on Roman law, they were by no means consistent, and introduced "barbarian" custom into the mix. The fact that you could expect a fair trial by Lord Fairheart and then cross a river and get railroaded onto the gallows under Lord Manhammer for the same crime speaks to the idiosyncratic, subjective nature of medieval law.
Well, I have been officially given alpha SG authority for our tortuous saga (the "founder" of the saga is rather disheartened by it all) and I have been given a detailed briefing. Turns out the former members of our covenant were ousted NOT by a Tribunal vote, rather by the chief quaesitor of the Rhine Tribunal where we are. Hold onto your arguments, though. The situation was more of an imminent disaster than a calculated legal procedure, and the quaesitor made what we call a "command decision." As it stood, the offending magus (who cast multiple spells on the bishop's legate) started a mundane firestorm. Torch and pitchfork-wielding mobs were about to form and Falterhaus was soon to be extinguished. Rather than see this happen he "convinced" the members to leave; OK, he twisted their arms and promised all sorts of calamities too, but the point is although not a "formal" judgment it saved the covenant from being destroyed by the mundanes. Erik Tyrell put it rather succinctly:
The former members may not like it, may even complain at the Tribunal and demand concessions, but that will be in three more years. Say, it just might be an interesting Tribunal after all!