The Nightingales

The Nightingales are a Harper cell operating out of Nuts Deep, run by Gootcha since her elevation to Ciphermaster, the third rank of the Harpers.

They named themselves, as Harper cells do — for the bird that sings after dark, and for the older Harper sense of the word: the one who talks.

At the third rank the Harpers stop treating an agent as an asset and begin treating her as a handler. Gootcha was given 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 she was given is not sight. It is reach — the Harper intelligence apparatus, already gathering along the whole coast, became something she could ask.

The Notebook

Gootcha writes a query in her notebook. Her clerk at Nuts Deep reads it and answers.

• An answer comes 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.
• 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.
• The notebook holds one open question at a time. The moment an answer arrives, she may write the next.
• She may abandon an open query whenever she likes and ask something else instead. The dropped question is gone; asking it again later begins from nothing.
• Word the Nightingales send on their own initiative does not occupy the notebook.

The Field

Gootcha directs a number of field agents equal to her proficiency bonus. Each is stationed somewhere, and where they stand governs what she can learn.

• An agent on the ground makes anything about that place far faster to learn — and turns up what no archive holds.
• An agent on the road answers nothing and gathers nothing.
• Moving one takes hours within a settlement, three to five days within a region, and ten days or more across the Sword Coast.
• A posted agent gathers on their own account, and sends word unprompted when they see something worth the parchment.

The Files

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 precisely this.

What they are not

• They are not diviners. They do not scry, do not see what is coming, and do not read minds.
• They know only what some Harper learned — saw, overheard, filed, or was told.
• Their reach thins to nothing beyond the Sword Coast.
• What they send arrives as they believe it. It can be stale, partial, or secondhand, and they are sometimes wrong.
• They are people. They can be followed, caught, bought, or killed.

The cell

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. Hers is the hand that does the actual deciphering; the rank is named for the work she does.

Will — Gootcha's squire, a Harper placement out of Baldur's Gate. Courier and liaison. He does not count against the field complement, and most deliveries arrive in his hands — which means most requests put him on a road.

Standing postings

Agent	Specialty	Currently posted
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
Hollis Renn	Fixer. Finds things, forges papers, and mentions what it cost. Keeps a running tally he expects settled eventually.	Baldur's Gate
Sera Dunwick	Face. Drinks with the right people and remembers all of it.	Luskan — working the Arcane Brotherhood connection
Corvin Ashe	Field scholar. Walks sites and reads what is left of them.	Travelling — The Grove Burnings

See also

• Harpers — the faction; standings are tracked on the Renown Tracker
• Nuts Deep — where the cell keeps its clerk
• Gootcha