Re: Assassins

From: Peter Larsen <plarsen_at_...>
Date: Sat, 19 Mar 2005 17:13:24 -0500

At 9:57 AM +1200 3/20/05, Peter Metcalfe wrote:
>At 05:38 PM 3/19/2005 +0200, you wrote:
>
>>PS. Personally I'm not fond of the idea that the empire has half a dozen
>>compeating "intelligence organizations". This sounds very modern to me,
>>and not in the spirit of Glorantha (or our history either) as I
>>understand it.
>
>Intelligence organizations go a long way back. The Mauryas
>of India had a secret police organization, Hadrian had
>_frumentarii_ who went around digging up dirt on important
>romans while the Byzantines had a "Bureau of Barbarians".
>They are simply an organized version of informers and
>undercover agents.

        I don't have a citation handy, but I recall that, based on some relatively-recently discovered archives, the Hittites seem to have had a fairly extensive system of spies, plus they seem to have processed diplomatic and trade documents for intelligence purposes.

        Given the cobbled-together nature of the Empire, I can easily see them having a bunch of different groups gathering intelligence -- old Solar agencies, new Lunar agencies, cults, family groups that have been "nationalized," groups originally intended for other purposes (perhaps a group originally charged with a trade census of the Provinces evolving into a "watching for the stockpiling of weapons and other rebellious resources" agency," etc. Given that the first mission of any successful agency is its own continuation, surviving and competing with rival organization seems natural (and a good source of plots).

Peter Larsen