The Ravens - A Spy Network

[Lord Sessadore]

And I think I like the "merkari femal aspect" idea. It is definitely very greek, and even seems like something the greek gods would do just for fun. Very childish those greek gods.

Yup. And I feel like Merkari would enjoy to no end having some of his followers think he's really female and he tricked everyone else into thinking he was male. Especially if he's not really female

And the Whispering Ravens is a wicked name!

Yeah, I like it too!

 

[Ozymandias79]

Except Merkari's animals are the tortoise and the roster
but maybe we should throw something celtic into the mix as Morrigan would fit your description

 

[Atanatotatos]

I think Morrigan is more reminiscent of Persephones (Proserphones/Peresefa) among the L4W deities. No?(not really an expert about northern mythologies)

 

[JoeNotCharles]

I'm not sure how I feel about the long-distance communication thing. On the one hand, it does seem a bit off in our setting. On the other hand, it's really no more powerful than Sending Stones. I think I'd be okay with them if they were a) limited to fairly high-level members, who might plausibly have access to sending stones anyway, and b) there was a way for DMs who find this inconvenient to temporarily nullify them or make them less effective. Call it ethereal static, or sunspots, or claim that this spy network is an outgrowth of a much older extraplanar organization and the tattoos simply don't work as well in the Transitive Isles unique planar structure. Whatever.

Well, I think Sending Stones are a bit of a problem too, then. Why don't we say that all forms of long-distance communication or teleportation only work within the same "region" of the Shifting Seas (basically, Daunton and surroundings, or a specific Far Land, or something like that - we can keep the "shifting" idea by making it somewhat fluid and up to the DM exactly how far they work) unless you have a fixed focus similar to a teleportation circle.

 

[Fragsie]

Hello all, sorry I’ve been absent for a couple of days; you’ve all come up with some pretty cool ideas and points, but they’re spread about a bit so I thought I would summarise and throw in a few new ideas:

The Whispering Ravens
-Once a powerful cult in the Allarian Empire, they lost a lot of their power and influence when the empire fell (can anybody point me to information about what happened in Allaria?).

-They are worshipers of a female aspect of Hermes/Hermethis/Merkari whose portfolio includes secret knowledge and spies, she is known as the ‘Elysian Raven’ or the ‘Secret Lady’. They believe that Merkari actually is female, and has duped the rest of the world into thinking she’s male.

-Merkai’s true female name is a secret; perhaps the higher tier of the cult know that name?

-The cult is organised hierarchically, with each member only knowing one person in the tier higher than them. Only area leaders (leader of a province or small country) have magical tattoos that allow communication over distance (more on this in another bulletin). Cult members lower than that are probably not aware of how large or organised the cult is; sects in different towns and cities probably have different names. This makes it difficult for anyone to realise their existence. The higher tiers of this hierarchy haven’t been defined too much to sustain an air of mystery about the organisation, they may have an eventual agenda; but right now they are only just beginning to reassert themselves after a long time hidden and inactive.

-The idea of long distance communication is kind of essential to the creation of a thriving and successful spy network. However, the whole mythos of the Transitive Isles is at odd with that idea; being a world where geography and so much more is unstable and unpredictable. However, there is magic stable enough to create long distance teleportation gates/portals. I posit that the Whispering Ravens communication magic can be made usable in this setting by using the same restrictions: Only a person with the tattoo can communicate (given during a ritual, permanently takes up a magic item slot). The communication can only happen at certain points in time (once or twice a year, perhaps linked to the stars or some other celestial phenomenon?), and a second ritual must be performed. And finally; the ritual will only work if performed in a permanent ritual site (i.e. a building of certain dimensions and shape, maybe built of a certain material, similar to teleportation rings) that takes a long time and a lot of money to construct.

Thoughts??

 

[covaithe]

Only a person with the tattoo can communicate (given during a ritual, permanently takes up a magic item slot).

I don't think it needs to take up an item slot. The Adventurer's Vault 2 previews include several tattoos as wondrous items that don't take up a slot.

The communication can only happen at certain points in time (once or twice a year, perhaps linked to the stars or some other celestial phenomenon?), and a second ritual must be performed. And finally; the ritual will only work if performed in a permanent ritual site (i.e. a building of certain dimensions and shape, maybe built of a certain material, similar to teleportation rings) that takes a long time and a lot of money to construct.

Thoughts??

Hmm, this seems to nerf the communications ability substantially. I'd prefer JNC's idea that the sending is limited to working in areas that are sufficiently local, i.e. something that you could reliably travel to on foot. If you need to use a portal or a teleportation circle or a nontrivial sea voyage, then the message would probably have to go through some intermediaries. The spy network might have a few high-ranked members that have tattoos and have access to teleportation circles, so that they can quickly pass messages on to other regions. One of the network's long-term goals might be to add more teleportation circles under its control, to expand the network, so that messages could quickly be passed from region to region to region.

 

[Lord Sessadore]

I agree pretty well with covaithe - might've gone a little too far in nerfing the communication. I like the idea of having the communication stable within a locality, but more unpredictable outside of that. I also like the idea that the communication requires performing a ritual which either a) can only be performed during some sort of celestial phenomenon, or, b) works better during a similar phenomenon. Perhaps the ritual requires a celestial phenomenon to be stable with communication between different rituals? I guess maybe some clarification of my thoughts here would be good: I don't really have a problem with guaranteed short-range communication. Being able to communicate with your buddy on the other side of the island of Daunton is fine. It's the long distance, intercontinental communication that, in my opinion, would need to be tempered.

Also, I thought I'd throw out the idea that we don't really need to fully define the organization. A good idea what it's about and capable of, and a bit about how it operates, should be enough for now. When DMs use it they can flesh it out more, and it also gives DMs a little more freedom if we don't nail down every detail now

 

[JoeNotCharles]

I agree pretty well with covaithe - might've gone a little too far in nerfing the communication. I like the idea of having the communication stable within a locality, but more unpredictable outside of that. I also like the idea that the communication requires performing a ritual which either a) can only be performed during some sort of celestial phenomenon, or, b) works better during a similar phenomenon. Perhaps the ritual requires a celestial phenomenon to be stable with communication between different rituals?

That gives me an idea: the Ravens have a common ritual, item or tattoo which lets them communicate over short to medium distances. The standard way to pass a message to another continent is to use the tattoo to send it to the nearest safe house, which will have some method (fast courier, teleportation circle, longer range communication magic) of getting the word to the next safehouse, etc, until finally it reaches one which has something capable of reaching across continents. Of course, the more complex this network is, the more chance there is of things going wrong (meaning the capability is there if the DM wants a message to get through for story reasons, and if they want to block it it's easy to find an excuse).

The highest-level leaders also have a long-range communication ritual that works between continents, but is unreliable, so they only depend on it during emergencies. The exception is during certain concordances when the state of the heavens and the shifting seas line up just right, which lets this ritual work without flaw.

That means that during certain astronomical conjunctions, the entire leadership of the Ravens, wherever they're located, "meets" to plan strategy and discuss the most privileged of secrets. They keep this fact well hidden, because if an outsider ever found out how to calculate the conjunction they might be able to find some way to eavesdrop or even mess with their great conclave. But they do it despite the risks because this is the only time such a meeting is possible.