Intelligence Bureaus

What players would know #

Every power center keeps spies. Politics isn’t only speeches and votes; it’s sabotage, rumor campaigns, coerced witnesses, and disappearances politely attributed to bandits.

Most people can’t name the bureaus, only the symptoms: a rival’s caravan “misroutes,” a scandal breaks at the perfect time, a clerk loses the only copy of a document that mattered.

Common rumors #

• Assassins travel with caravans.
• Magistrates hire thieves’ guilds for deniable jobs.