What to do with a Scout force?

[randomling]

My 12th level rogue has just picked up Leadership, and along with her ranger cohort she is negotiating taking over her liege's scout force. There are about 20 scouts available, mostly rangers, rogues, and ranger/rogues, running from 1st to 8th level.

Ultimately, I want to create an unrivalled, international intelligence-gathering and scouting network: in theory I'll go from providing intelligence to my liege to being the one person in the world that most world leaders know of to go to for reliable and accurate intelligence.

However, this is my first serious attempt at making real changes in the game-world, and I'm not very experienced at high-level play. So I'm not sure how best to organize the scout force, etc.

As I understand it, these 20 scouts are currently focusing the majority of their attention on one region which presents a number of potential threats. On the other hand I wonder if they could be more use investigating the invading force who are coming at us from the west in the next few months (and if so how they'd gather intelligence on that without me losing my scout force).

I'm also trying to make political allegiances with other armies' scout forces across the world in the hopes of uniting various allied and semi-allied intelligence gathering forces under my control.

I'd appreciate some ideas about how to put things together, though!

 

[Piratecat]

Also work on recruiting bards. Once you have some, send them off as wandering tale-tellers into the west -- and use them as much-beloved spies.

 

[DungeonmasterCal]

Rush out right now and purchase or check out from your library "Mistress of the Empire", "Daughter of the Empire", and "Servant of the Empire" by Raymond E. Feist and Janny Wurts. I may have the order of the books wrong, but so much of those books deal with internecine espionage and byzantine plan/counterplan against major houses in an ancient empire. And they're dang good readin', too!

 

[randomling]

Also work on recruiting bards. Once you have some, send them off as wandering tale-tellers into the west -- and use them as much-beloved spies.

Hmm, I'm not sure how common bards are - but they certainly exist.

Nice idea!

I'm probably going to pick up some pearls of Sending that are keyed to me - I have some money and an "in" with the local wizards guild - and make sure that each of my scouts has at least one. That way they can relay information back to me.

I think I also need to figure out a way of deriving an income from this, 'cause it may work out expensive...

 

[randomling]

Rush out right now and purchase or check out from your library "Mistress of the Empire", "Daughter of the Empire", and "Servant of the Empire" by Raymond E. Feist and Janny Wurts. I may have the order of the books wrong, but so much of those books deal with internecine espionage and byzantine plan/counterplan against major houses in an ancient empire. And they're dang good readin', too!

Thanks, I'll have a look for them!

 

[Thanee]

Also work on recruiting bards. Once you have some, send them off as wandering tale-tellers into the west...

Some propaganda never hurts...

In general, as a whole, you'll need some scouts in strategic positions all around the region, as some kind of first line of observation to quickly find out about incoming threats.

Then you would probably need some "special forces" to send out to such threats, once identified as such, to gather strategical information (strength and composition, etc).

That is mostly from a regional defense viewpoint, of course, going towards espionage will take this a step further, since detection of enemy plans will occur much quicker and once you have replaced important figures, you can even start to influence...

Bye
Thanee

 

[Calico_Jack73]

Sounds like the crux of the problem is that you want your undercover agents to remain undercover but you still want to be a known Intelligence entity. You'd need to hire "Front Man" in each nation's capitol. This person won't be a spy and won't even know the identities of your undercover agents just in case he/she is ever questioned. A Merchant would work well for this as they would be the ones that would deal with the "Customer" for whatever intel they need (fees). Taking a page from FR I'd hire a Wizard you can trust (or blackmail) to create a special magic item (similar to the Harper Pin) which creates a Non-Detection effect and also allows the possessor to cast "Sending" (or whatever the spell is now) once per day which is how you'd get your Intel reports as quickly as possible without the danger of using a flesh and blood messenger. Your "Merchants" would need them as well so that you could send the needed Intel to them when a "Customer" has paid them for the information.

Hope that helps.

I'm probably going to pick up some pearls of Sending that are keyed to me - I have some money and an "in" with the local wizards guild - and make sure that each of my scouts has at least one. That way they can relay information back to me.

Edit: Doh... you beat me to it with the Sending item. I was busy typing the rest out.

 

[S'mon]

Just a note from DM - the realm (the Borderlands) is European-ish, with walled cities, hills & forest. Cailin's scouts are all wilderness scouts, currently focussed on watching the realm's borders against the (diminishing) threat of the goblinoids - orcs, goblins, etc, who have been recently heavily defeated.

Meanwhile the western army threatening to invade the Borderlands & other nearby nations is a huge (100,000+) Mongol-type horde, the Mongali, located on open steppes hundreds of miles away. Only 1 of Cailin's scouts, Jen, is Mongali, but he's a deputy cmdr and is 7th level (Rog 4 /Rgr 3).

 

[randomling]

Some propaganda never hurts...

In general, as a whole, you'll need some scouts in strategic positions all around the region, as some kind of first line of observation to quickly find out about incoming threats.

Then you would probably need some "special forces" to send out to such threats, once identified as such, to gather strategical information (strength and composition, etc).

That is mostly from a regional defense viewpoint, of course, going towards espionage will take this a step further, since detection of enemy plans will occur much quicker and once you have replaced important figures, you can even start to influence...

Bye
Thanee

Ooooh - thanks Thanee! (I knew coming here was a good idea.)

Certainly the force I'm working with now is based on regional defence, though from my point-of-view this project is a jumping-off point for much bigger and better things.

Right now I have allies in at least two regional leaders - one of whom is my liege, the other of whom is one of the other PCs, (the character is Sigurd who has been made a king in the last year or so of gametime). If I can liaise with Sigurd and perhaps ally my scout force with his we might have some kind of starting point.

Placing scouts in strategic positions for info works though...

 

[S'mon]

Sending pearls - these are one-shot items that allow the user (who can be anyone holding it) to send a message to the keyed recipient & receive back a message, as per Sending spell, one time only. They are a Wondrous item and cost ca 1125gp* from a Wizard, or 700gp** if you can find a cleric who can make them (rare).

*5th level spell, caster level 9, x25gp/level.
**4th level spell, caster level 7, x25gp/level.