Furybear

Furybear, an alternate phrase for 'Raging Bear' as pronounced in English.

The house’s news was too out of date. The slow speed at which news traveled to them put the house at a serious disadvantage. Lorist intended to remedy this situation. He set up a department with the sole purpose of gathering intelligence. He wanted to speed up the rate at which they received news about the happenings on the continent enough so that they would always have enough time to prepare and react to anything that concerns them.

The department Lorist formed wasn't one that would spy, but one that would simply gather intelligence. One could even call it an investigations department. They required some form of spies, but they were designated as intelligence operatives.

They were people at every place that know their base very well, just like Tarkel when he was working at Geldos. Tarkel’s mission was to scout them out and hire them. Make them into their intelligence operatives that would send them important information about the area.

As for information from the noble circles, they did not have to get a person to mix with them. They could just bribe their servants and attendants. The information they got from them was sure to be more reliable and detailed. If nobody met those criteria, they could train some themselves. There were many of their house's soldiers who had retired because of some injury or other. If they were still willing to serve the family, they could train them to gather intelligence. Have them master a trade and move them back to their hometown where they could set up some kind of shop. Just like that, the house would have another source of information.

Tarkel, Camorra, and Els were in joint command of this new department. Tarkel, was responsible for the management and placement of their informants, Camorra, worked on sorting and analyzing the reports, and Els, would be heading the operations department. Els would do “fieldwork” and cooperate with Tarkel and do anything he requires. During the selection process for informants, Tarkel might run into some deep trouble. Some local crime syndicates might try to interfere, some local hooligans might get in the way, or people their informants bear grudges against. Tarkel would compile a list of those that were obstacles to their operations and Els would eliminate them. He could pick people to fill the positions from his guard brigade. At first, they were to keep it small and have at most three squads of men.

He had them take note of quick-witted recruits that were potential intelligence operative candidates as well. After they made sure they were of the reliable sort, they would have them transfer to the new department for training to form its foundations. They would send them out in the future as required. After all, Tarkel alone couldn’t go everywhere to set up their intelligence-gathering facilities.

Camorra proposed to have hen harriers to deliver letters. He knew an old hunter who happened to be know how to train hen harriers. He had seen him tie several types of medicinal ingredients to the claws of the birds and have them deliver it to his son's shop in a city, 50-odd kilometers away. After more research into if they could indeed be used for communication, they would begin breeding and training them en masse. The house was willing to invest a lot of money in this endeavor. Lorist theorized that when they did have hen harriers that could deliver letters, the forces of the house could react more swiftly to sudden changes on the battlefield.