The Nightingales
The Nightingales are a Harper cell placed under Gootcha on her elevation to Ciphermaster. Their clerk stays at Nuts Deep and their agents go wherever she sends them.
The letter
Merrivet Ashcombe arrived at Nuts Deep in the first days of the fortnight's downtime, on a hired mule cart, with two crates of paper and no letter of introduction. The letter itself came four days later, carried up from Elturel by a courier who would not come inside the walls and would not give a name. Gootcha keeps it folded inside the front cover of her notebook.
Their eyes must be sharp.
Gootcha,
Merrivet will have reached you before this did. I had meant to send her with the letter in hand and instead she left Berdusk three days early without telling anybody, which will give you a fair idea of her and saves me writing a paragraph on the subject.
You are in one place for a fortnight. That is the first fixed address you have had since the winter of '86 and I intend to use it, so please read the whole of this and not the first half.
Four matters, in the order they are likely to cause you trouble.
One, the notebook. Write your question in it. Merrivet reads it and answers in it, and how long that takes is not up to either of you. It depends entirely on whether anybody we have ever employed happened to learn the thing you are asking about. Ten minutes if it is already in a drawer somewhere. Ten days if a person has to go and stand in a place and find out. Most fall between the two and I cannot tell you in advance which yours will be.
Questions about creatures follow the same rule, and you will feel it more sharply there. Ordinary things come back quickly and come back accurate, because we have fought them and buried people over them and written it down afterward. The old and the singular come back slowly, and what arrives is half story. Nobody writes a reliable account of a thing that killed everyone who got close enough to see it properly, so weigh what we send you about a great wyrm against that. I would rather you doubted us than trusted us into a cave.
Two, one question at a time. This is tradecraft, not manners. A clerk chasing four answers at once produces four poor ones. Worse than that, four sets of people asking after four subjects in the same season is how a cell gets noticed, and we have lost cells exactly that way — twice in Amn, in my lifetime, and I knew most of them. If you have a question open and you want a different one answered more, drop the first and say so plainly. You will not get it back part-finished. Whatever was underway simply stops, and if you come back to it later it starts from nothing.
Word your own people send you unasked does not count against this. That is only an agent doing their job.
Three, the four of them. Four now. A fifth when your name carries further than it does at present, and a sixth after that, though I have known only two Ciphermasters reach a sixth.
Where they are standing is most of what determines what you can learn. An agent on the ground in the place you are asking about will find you the thing that nobody ever wrote down, and I would trade the whole Berdusk archive for one of them on a good day. An agent walking between two postings is no use to you at all. So move them rarely and deliberately. Hours to cross a city, three to five days to cross a region, ten days and usually more to cross the coast, and that is with good weather and no reason for anybody to stop them.
Leave one somewhere long enough and they will begin sending you things you never asked for. Read those carefully. In my experience they are worth more than the answers.
Four, send us what you find. A dispatch taken off a body, what a prisoner said before the end, a place properly mapped, a name finally attached to a face. Give it to Merrivet and have it filed. Every subject you feed us comes back to you faster and fuller from then on, and the Harpers reckon intelligence delivered above intelligence requested, which I mention because your standing will climb quicker by sending than by asking. Most agents work that out too late to benefit from it.
Now the parts that are not instructions.
We are not diviners. I write that sentence to somebody every year, always to somebody who has begun to believe otherwise, and it has not once been unnecessary. We do not scry and we cannot see forward. What we have is what a Harper learned, and past the Sword Coast we have very little of that, and I would not act on the little we do.
What we send you is what we believe rather than what is so. It can be years old. It can be a lie that somebody fed one of ours in the summer of '85 and that has sat in a drawer since, waiting for a Ciphermaster to act on it. Where our word and your own eyes disagree, believe your eyes, and then write and tell me we were wrong so I can have it struck.
Last. They are people. They can be followed and they can be taken, and they can be bought, and a bought agent looks exactly like a working one for a considerable time. Every question you ask moves somebody, and somebody moving can be watched moving. There are those who would find the four of them a great deal easier to reach than they would find you, and I expect you have already worked out who I mean.
So think before you move them. I am aware you will do as you judge best regardless, because you always have. I have written it down anyway.
— Leosin
P.S. Merrivet will tell you inside the hour how quickly she works. Let her. She is not exaggerating and it is the only vanity she has.
The cell
They named themselves, as cells do. The Nightingales — for the bird that sings after dark, and for the older Harper sense of the word, meaning the one who talks. Merrivet chose it and maintains it was obvious.
Merrivet Ashcombe — gnome cipher clerk, resident at Nuts Deep. Does not leave and does not fight. Reads the notebook every waking hour and a fair number of the sleeping ones, answers in dry marginalia, and is openly smug about how fast she is.
Will — Gootcha's squire, a Harper placement out of Baldur's Gate. Courier and liaison, and not counted among the four. 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. He is owed a great deal by a great many people and has never forgotten by whom. | 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 |
What you can ask
Write the question in the notebook. Merrivet reads it and answers in it.
| What you asked for | How long it takes |
|---|---|
| Something already on file — a name, a local rumour, who is who in a region | Ten minutes |
| A creature's strengths and weaknesses, common | Quickly, and accurate — they have fought it and written it down |
| A creature's strengths and weaknesses, old, singular, or legendary | Slowly, and half of what comes back is story rather than record |
| A person's history or whereabouts | A day if they are public, longer if they are private, ten days if they are hiding |
| A place — its layout, who holds it, the ways in | Several days |
| What an organisation is currently doing | Several days |
| A translation, a cipher key, or where a document came from | Days |
| Anything no Harper ever learned | Never. They will tell you so rather than guess. |
Standing rules.
- One question open at a time. The slot frees the moment an answer arrives.
- You may cancel an open question to ask something else instead. The dropped question loses everything — asking it again later starts from nothing.
- Unprompted reports are free. Word an agent sends on their own initiative does not occupy the notebook, and is often worth more than the answers.
- Complement: four agents. A fifth as your name carries further, and a sixth after that.
- Where they stand is most of it. An agent on the ground finds what was never written down. An agent in transit is worth nothing — hours across a city, three to five days across a region, ten days and usually more across the coast.
- File what you find. Send Merrivet a dispatch, a confession, a mapped location, a confirmed name, and that subject comes back faster and fuller forever after. Standing climbs quicker by sending than by asking.
- They are not diviners. No scrying, no seeing forward, nothing past the Sword Coast worth acting on. What arrives is what the network believes, not what is true.
- They can be bought, and a bought agent looks exactly like a working one for a long time.
Harper correspondence
Dispatches Gootcha sends down for filing, copied into the cell's archive by Merrivet Ashcombe, who corrects nobody's spelling and files everything twice.
Filed from the trail north of Boareskyr Bridge
Merrivet,
The following should be entered into the archives:
A Yuan-ti operative was located deceased northeast of Boareskyr Bridge. Hidden compartments contained a sketch identifying Varam, confirming Yuan-ti interest in locating him.
Evidence suggests spies operating at Boareskyr Bridge were watching specifically for Varam and his movements.
Varam's party continues north and northeast along the river. The group appears larger than expected and includes non-human members.
A cold Dragon Breath orb with one remaining charge was recovered from hostile operatives encountered by local paladins.
Othovir, caravanserai keeper of Boareskyr Bridge, has been recruited as a standing source for the Nightingales.
— Gootcha
Returned from Berdusk
The reply wrote itself into the notebook overnight, three days after the dispatch was filed, in Merrivet's small copying hand, under one marginal note of her own: copied exact.
Gootcha,
Your bridge dispatch is filed, all five items. It is good work, and the Othovir recruitment is the best of it, which I will come back to.
Four matters, and I want the fourth read slowly.
One, Varram. I have been through what Berdusk holds on him twice and there is nothing in it that a yuan-ti should want. He is the Cult's man and his value is to the Cult, and every account we hold has the serpentfolk indifferent to the Cult's whole enterprise. I do not know why they are looking for him. I will not guess at it, and I ask you not to fill the gap with a guess of your own. I have put the question to our own people in the south, and when something comes back you will have it unasked.
Two, the watchers at the bridge. Standing watchers keyed to one man are paid for, and paying for them means somebody with a treasury believes Varram will cross that water. Until shown otherwise, treat any stranger's interest in your own party's route as part of the same purchase.
Three, Othovir. Approved, and tell him nothing about the four. A keeper at a crossing hears everything and is seen by everyone, so assume from the first day that other people have also thought of him. What he sends is worth most before anyone knows he is sending it.
Four, Najara. Since midsummer we have had three reports of serpentfolk in the Backlands claiming to speak for a kingdom of that name. One came from a drover out of Soubar, one from a Zhentarim supply clerk who did not know what he was telling us, and the third I have promised not to source. I would trust two of the three. The archive lists Najara as a legend of the Serpent Hills, and that entry has not been touched since before I was born. If the serpentfolk are a kingdom rather than scattered bands, then most of what we hold on those hills is wrong, and wrong in the dangerous direction.
So, a standing instruction in place of anything you might have asked me. Send back whatever crosses your path that bears on the serpentfolk acting as one body. Shared signs or tokens. Orders carried between bands. Tribute moving in a single direction. Any of them speaking of a king. Do not go looking for it. What finds you on that road will be enough, and I mean that as an instruction.
Keep your eyes sharp. The watchword was chosen before my time and I have not improved on it. In the whole of our records I cannot find one account of the yuan-ti wanting the thing they first appeared to want, and I checked again before writing this.
— Leosin
P.S. The breath orb. We have seen its like twice, both times in Cult hands. Spend the charge if you need it, but before you do, write down every person who asks after it. The asking will tell you more than the orb will.
See also
- Harpers — the faction; standings are tracked on the Renown Tracker
- Nuts Deep — where the cell keeps its clerk
- The Anvil · Talonfall · The Broken Latch · The Hearthwardens · The Dawnwatch — the other companies' cells
- Gootcha · Leosin Erlanthar