This article is about a organization. For other uses, see Qabal (disambiguation).
Learning again flourishes in Medinaat al-Salaam, with the doors of the Qabal Stronghold open to all who wish to learn. Even the Ashalan sometimes visit the Stronghold to share their esoteric knowledge. Most members of the Qabal enjoy their positions as the venerable scholars and wits in demand in the courts of the Sultan and Caliph. Others prefer to continue independent study, refining their art in solitude. Either way, it is a good time to be a member of the Qabal.
The hierarchy of the Qabal is that of an academic institution. At the lower level are the students, who range in age from children as young as ten to adults as old as 30. These members of the Qabal have lives filled with work and little else, as the discipline needed to learn the Qabal’s style of magic is formidable indeed. Qabal instruction styles are rigid and very unforgiving of failure, and almost a third of the Qabal’s students leave in their first year, unable to stand the seemingly nonsensical lessons in how to draw a perfect circle freehand or how to sign their name 70 times without variation. As their instruction continues, students are astonished to learn that they have been learning spells the entire time – they were simply not told how to assemble and perform the components properly.
The only conflict on the horizon for the Qabal is a generational one. Many of the younger generation of sahirs in the Qabal never knew what it was like to practice magic with the threat of the Khadi’s axes hovering over their wrists, and in the eyes of their elders they seem to take many of their freedoms for granted. The older generation, on the other hand, is seen by the younger graduates of the Stronghold as needlessly paranoid and hidebound. While this conflict is a long time from coming to real blows, tension is rising faster than the older generation is retiring, and the conflict is almost certain to come to a head unless something happens to unite the Qabal once more.