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| '''Ciphermaster''' is a homebrew renown feat, granted to [[Gootcha]] on reaching '''[[Harpers]] Rank 3'''.
| | #REDIRECT [[The Nightingales]] |
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| At the third rank the Harpers stop treating an agent as an asset and start treating her as a handler. Gootcha is given a '''cell''' — a cipher clerk posted permanently to [[Nuts Deep]] to watch her notebook, and a standing complement of field agents placed across the Sword Coast at her direction. What the rank grants is not sight. It is '''access''': the Harper intelligence apparatus, already gathering across the coast, becomes something she can ask.
| | [[Category:Redirects]] |
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| == Benefit ==
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| === The Notebook ===
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| Gootcha writes a query in her notebook. Her handler at [[Nuts Deep]] reads it and answers.
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| * Answers come back in as little as '''ten minutes''' or as long as '''ten days''', depending on what was asked and on who is near enough to know it.
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| * Asking after a creature's strengths and weaknesses returns quickly for common things. The rarest and mightiest come back slowly — and come back as much '''legend as fact'''.
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| * '''One query at a time.''' The notebook holds a single open question. The slot frees the moment an answer arrives.
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| * She may '''cancel''' an open query at any time to ask something else instead. The abandoned question is dropped, and asking it again later begins from nothing.
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| * Reports her agents send on their own initiative do '''not''' occupy the slot.
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| === The Field ===
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| Gootcha directs a number of field agents equal to her '''proficiency bonus'''. Each is stationed somewhere, and where they stand determines what she can learn.
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| * An agent '''on site''' makes anything about that place far faster to learn — and turns up what no archive holds.
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| * An agent '''in transit''' answers nothing and gathers nothing.
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| * Relocation runs '''hours''' within a settlement, '''three to five days''' within a region, and '''ten days or more''' across the Sword Coast.
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| * A stationed agent gathers on their own account, and will send word unprompted when they see something worth the parchment.
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| === The Files ===
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| The network is only as good as what has been put into it. Intelligence the company delivers — a captured ledger, an interrogation, a location mapped, a name confirmed — is '''filed''', and thereafter that subject comes back faster and fuller every time it is asked after. Filing also earns standing with the [[Harpers]], who reward exactly this.
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| === What the network is not ===
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| * It is '''not divination'''. It does not scry, does not see the future, and does not read minds.
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| * It knows '''only what some Harper learned''' — saw, overheard, filed, or was told.
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| * It '''thins to nothing beyond the Sword Coast'''.
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| * Answers arrive '''as the network believes them'''. They can be stale, partial, or secondhand, and the network is sometimes wrong.
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| * '''The agents are people.''' They can be followed, caught, bought, or killed.
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| == Nightingale ==
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| Harper cells name themselves. This one is '''Nightingale''' — for the bird that sings after dark, and for the older Harper sense of the word: the one who talks.
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| '''[[Merrivet Ashcombe]]''' — gnome cipher clerk, resident at [[Nuts Deep]]. She does not leave and she does not fight. She reads the notebook every waking hour and a fair number of the sleeping ones, answers in dry marginalia, and is openly smug about her turnaround time. She is the one who does the actual deciphering; the rank is named for the work she does.
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| '''Will''' — Gootcha's squire, a [[Harpers|Harper]] placement out of [[Baldur's Gate]]. Courier and liaison. He does not count against her field complement, and most deliveries arrive in his hands — which means most requests put him on a road.
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| === Standing postings ===
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| ''Updated as Gootcha redeploys the cell.''
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| {| class="wikitable" style="width:90%;"
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| ! Agent !! Specialty !! Currently posted
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| | '''Tam Ossley''' || Watcher. Eleven years on the docks and noticed by no one. Reports in flat, unhelpful detail until something matters. || [[Waterdeep]] — on the [[Council of Waterdeep|Council]]
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| | '''Hollis Renn''' || Fixer. Finds things, forges papers, and mentions what it cost. Keeps a running tally he expects settled eventually. || [[Baldur's Gate]]
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| | '''Sera Dunwick''' || Face. Drinks with the right people and remembers all of it. || [[Luskan]] — working the [[Arcane Brotherhood]] connection
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| | '''Corvin Ashe''' || Field scholar. Walks sites and reads what is left of them. || Travelling — [[The Grove Burnings]]
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| |}
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| == Renown ==
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| Granted at [[Harpers]] Rank 3. Standings are tracked on the [[Renown Tracker]].
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| [[Category:Feats]] [[Category:Renown Feats]]
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