The Qabal of the Mariners
The Myriad Islands, the ancestral home of the world's greatest mariners, are a mess of various petty kingdoms, chiefdoms, and fiefs. The real power resides in the hands of the leaders of the various trading houses. Collectively called "the Mbaré" by other nations, this is a designation that although the traders will use with foreign powers, it implies a unity that is simply not extant. However, there is one organization that is unified in purpose and it is, translated in Raachern, "The Qabal of the Mariners." It has hundreds of different names in throughout the Myriad and the greater world, although few know the name or even of its existence. It is, perhaps, one of the greatest organizations in the world as well as its most secretive. Founded shortly after the dawn of the mercantile fleets dominance of the oceans, it serves one purpose: assure the absolute monopoly of the "Mbaré" on all waterborne trade. Their greatest secret that initially enabled their dominance: the fact that the world, PÈRYL, is an oblate spheroid. It is not, as most believe, flat. The earliest of the mercantile houses sent out their (arguably expendable) scout ships to discover new areas of trade and ambitious captains wanting to out-do their rivals took full advantage of crackpot theories and traversed the great open expanse of ocean beyond Tcha... and emerging from the empty sea, its storms and maelstroms in Tzai-Léi. Since this time, the Qabal of the Mariners, has suppressed any knowledge of this "secret passage." Their agents are found in Mbaran ambassadorial parties, on board most ships, appearing as everything from lowly sailors and cabin boys, to the nobility, to captains, to fleet admirals, to historians. In addition to their primal secret, the agents of the Qabal of Mariners actively root out rival shipping technologies. If they cannot convert artificers and shipwrights to their cause, they eliminate them and all their work. It is for this reason that for hundreds of years the "Mbaran" Mercantile Fleets have (and will likely perpetually) absolute hegemony on all trade and travel on the seas of PÈRYL. No one leaves the Qabal. One can age out and die, but there is no leaving. Defectors are killed as are anyone they are intimate with. Ships are scuttled. Houses burned.
Public Agenda
They are not publicly known. Even elites in the various mercantile houses are often ignorant of the Qabal's existence.
We are the Sea
Founding Date
Uncertain. Estimated circa 1000 PA, likely earlier.
Type
Alliance, Economic
Alternative Names
The Seamen, the Lords of the Sea
Parent Organization
Related Species
As vicious as they are, this version of a "Flat Earth Conspiracy" made me giggle. Are there astronomers the Qabal has to keep an eye on also?
LOL. You know the worst bit? That had never occurred to me because I conceptualized this so very long ago, where the notion of an extant flat earth culture seemed impossible. Yet here we are. The Qabal certainly would challenge texts that were to note that, given the planet has numerous moons, surely many of them have noticed the curve of the planet's shadow during a lunar eclipse...and speculated. Their main concern is not letting anyone advance in maritime technology. The Mbaran Mercantile Fleet has comparable to late 18th, early 19th century earth schooners and shipwrights. The contemporaries have at best Greco-Roman-Egyptian or Tang Dynasty level ship building technology.
Numerous moons, hmm... Are they big enough to cause frequent eclipses? Because if so, it could be common knowledge that a shadow cast over a very long distance takes the shape of the light source. Therefore since the sun is round, the Qabal could support scholars who argue that of course the planet would cast a round shadow on the moons no matter what its true shape. The only way to refute that would be to observe a lunar eclipse during a simultaneous occurrence of a solar eclipse. (That is, assuming nobody really knows the true sizes and distances of celestial objects.)
The smallfolk might have ideas but the Qabal would definitely try to shut down scholarship that speaks to that "myth." Should such a scholar come to prominence and spout off about these "lies," they would act as they did with new shipwright technologists: buy them out and into their service, if that does not work, well, unpleasantness might have to come about. The scholar's works would disappear and/or be discredited and the scholar might meet with an accident or merely just disappear.