Cartel Al

Cartel Al
Race(s)	Broker
Theater of operations	Tazavesh
Status	Active

Cartel Al is one of the broker cartels. They are focused on following the path of the First Ones and securing their secrets. They appear to have a small presence in the broker city of Tazavesh. According to So'leah, the cartel is not doing well, claiming that it has "dissolved into dust". Emissary Ba'silk of Cartel Ba calls Cartel Al a lesser cartel.

History

After Cartel Al outbid Cartel Ta on leading an expedition to search for the Sepulcher of the First Ones and found a clue to its location, seemingly a piece of writing from the First Ones, Al'firim—who had earned a reputation for translation and codebreaking—began deciphering it. Despite his self-proclaimed genius, he almost faltered due to the difficulty of the task. He was eventually able to decode some of the glyphs which was more progress than other brokers had made in ages of study. However, as the expedition's search for the Sepulcher continued from afterlife to afterlife, each dispatch they sent back became less and less coherent. Al'firim embarked on journeys throughout the Shadowlands and sought out scholars and explorers, but found few who shared his interest in the "great mysteries". Eventually, many cycles passed without any more contact from Al'firim's expedition, and it was widely believed that he, like others before him, had gone mad from his study of the First Ones' fractals. The rest of Cartel Al ascribed his disappearance to his "troubled condition" and dismissed his reports as the writings of a lunatic, heretic, and criminal. They appointed Al'firim's rival as his replacement in the search for the Sepulcher and assigned operatives in Oribos to the task of tracking down the "criminal" and those who decided to join his "doomed expedition".

As Ta'lora of Cartel Ta delved into the First Ones' mysteries for himself, however, he started doubting this version of events and suggested that Al'firim had in fact succeeded in finding the Sepulcher and that he simply couldn't yet return because of the sheer amount of knowledge that had been revealed to him. This was indeed the case: the fractals had aligned and Al'firim and his expedition found the way to Zereth Mortis, the realm of the First Ones. According to the broker himself, no one else but him could have come up with the incredibly complex portal formulae required to succeed. Upon arrival, some expedition members tried to plunder the land's mysteries but were killed by the First Ones' servants. The survivors heeded Al'firim's warnings and founded the village of Haven from which they could begin their work. As the Al delved deeper into the land's mysteries, they began to regard the knowledge they gleaned as sacred. They decided they couldn't send word of their discoveries back to their cartel and allow outsiders to plunder and disrupt the realm. They destroyed their portals and Al'firim blotted out his own translocation equations from his mind, thereby willingly stranding themselves in the realm. They named themselves Enlightened and renounced their cartel prefixes, with Al'firim from then on being known simply as "Firim".

During the events of the Chains of Domination campaign, Al'dalil of Cartel Al enlisted the aid of Maw Walkers in stopping the leader of Cartel So, So'leah, from assembling a dangerous relic of the First Ones which she sought to use for her own selfish gains.

The Enlightened would remain in Zereth Mortis uncontacted until the events of the Zereth Mortis campaign when a doorway to the realm was opened in Oribos by the Maw Walkers and the Covenants seeking to stop Zovaal from rewriting reality in the Sepulcher of the First Ones. Al'dalil would travel to Zereth Mortis seeking to reconnect with Rana, an old friend who is now part of the Enlightened. Later in the story one of the leaders of the Enlightened, Elder Ara would rejoin Cartel Al and reclaim her old name, now being called Al'ara again.

Members

•  Al'dalil
•  Al'Ara
•  Executor Al'hatar
•  Overseer Al'rilan
•  Al'len

Former members

•  Firim
• The Enlightened

Unnamed

•  Toy Vendor <Cartel Al>
•  Dozing Laborer <Cartel Al>
•  Shipping Facilitator <Cartel Al>

Notes

The item  [Floral Print Button Down], mentions a "N'uth of Cartel Al" but that appears to be a mistake as the name does not follow the broker naming convention where the name of the cartel a broker belongs to is added as a prefix to their name.