Also, we should test the trustworthiness of Ariala and each of the fire-mage/apprentices in the Silver Moon Company by making up some juicy rumors for them, and instructing them to keep what you have said secret. If we find them trustworthy, we should, at some point, confide our own magical training with them, and invite them to train with us in secret when we travel back with a much smaller group. I vaguely remember Vukhara was some sort of mage as well, so might as well test her also.
-1. That should be a specific ruse we may play later on during a crisis of confidentiality or if we find out someone close to us is siphoning off information to our enemies. It should not be SOP to figure out trustworthiness of some guys we've only just started to know. IMO it's just a waste of a good ruse.
We never have to tell them its a ruse, or that we are testing them. We merely perform the test, and confide in them sometime after the results come back, perhaps waiting a week or so if we are afraid of them making the connection between the rumor and us trusting them.
Well we obviously don't
tell them about the ruse but I still think that we should save it for later when it's more critically necessary. At this juncture it may end up doing more harm than good. At the moment we have no reason to either trust or distrust them. If we play the ruse, then we
could find out what allies we would consider trustworthy but if discovered those same people may begin to distrust
us and we would eventually gain a reputation of skulduggery and spying on our own allies, which, of course, makes it that much more difficult to gain new ones. This is the worst case scenario but there are other variables to consider if we end up doing this plan. I will admit that performing this ruse now may well give us some experience if we need to use it during more important circumstances.
*
If we are going to perform the ruse then there are a few things we should do.
Firstly, we shouldn't overextend ourselves and "invite" to many people in the ruse. It could get difficult to manage all the lies we concoct and increasing the amount of people we're rumouring too may have them become suspicious. What would happen if a particular smart person took notice of all the new rumours going around that had begun by Raynor? True they may or may not suspect that we're playing
this particular ruse but it's still worth considering.
Secondly, as a partial corollary to the above point, we should focus our efforts specifically on people we either want to trust or of whom we suspect may be untrustworthy. We don't want to waste our time figuring out some nobody we don't care about.
Thirdly, we shouldn't make the rumours
too juicy,
too pedestrian, or
too important. If they're too scandalous the rumours themselves may cause unpredictable incidents to sprout which will probably not be to our advantage. If they're too boring the subject probably wouldn't even
want to spread the rumour in the first place which would make telling them of it a waste of time. If we make out the rumours we give to have too much actual impact then they may feel more obligated than usual to keep the secret to themselves, though this type of rumour would
definitely help in rooting out the snakes of our party.
Finally, we should either focus on the adults
or the other children. It would be too much work keeping track of the rumour mills of both social circles. Personally, I would recommend that we focus on the children since it would be easier to ingratiate ourselves within it and we'll be able to both spread the rumours and obtain feedback more easily.
Author
Topic: Prince: of Lords and Sorcerers (Read 64113 times)