The Obsidian Cabal

The Obsidian Cabal is a criminal enterprise that operates across Canthia. Staffed mostly by reprobate mages and the like, the Cabal's goals are simple expansion and wealth. They are, however, quite good at achieving those goals. Additionally, they hold great influence in the Fringe, those areas in the Crownless Lands that remain relatively lawless.

Founding
There have been a great many smaller criminal groups founded by renegades and reprobates over the years. The reasons that the Cabal stands out amongst them is more than simple power or longevity. The Cabal has been cleverer than their predescessors.

Like with most criminal organisations, there is little to go on when we look for facts and figures. What we can tell from anecdote and deduction is that some time in the 11th century, a group of reprobates was lost in the Evadren Forest in southwestern Vaelorn. In the ensuing decades, reports came out from those towns bordering the forest of thefts, assaults and highwaymen. All in some way or another were involving magic. This, some have said, is the beginnings of the Cabal. Though much of this is supposition and any proper historian would laugh a person out of the room for suggesting to place our faith in such flimsy arguments.

Where the facts do come in is a few centuries later in 1327, when a man by the name of Elbrecht Penser was arrested by the local guard in the town of Red Barge on the shores of the Huth river. On his person was found a rather strange document, a manifesto almost, of a strange group that had named itself the Obsidian Cabal. Penser was eventually sent back to the Spire as a reprobate and the document was treated as a minor curiosity.

Assassination of Keldrek Wurrell
It wasn't until fifteen years later that the name of the Obsidian Cabal came to the public eye again. This time it was after the murder of the Crownless Lands Vice Minister of Judicial Investigation, Keldrek Wurrell. The Ministry of Justice took the matter with deepest of seriousness and their investigations lasted for the full years, eventually coming up with a conspiracy to kill the minister headed by the mysterious Cabal.