Aivah's Spies (mild Spoiler from HFQ Official Snippet 1)

A comment was made in HFQ Official Snippet #1 about Aivah's intelligence operations and I wanted to give my thoughts on her operations.

One concern was "how large it would be to get information from Charis to Zion".

Whatever else Aivah is, she's a business woman and "Knowledge Is Power" applies in business as well as other places.

With the economic power that Charis held on Safehold (both in manufacturing and shipping), a wise business person who have "commercial agents/spies" in Charis.

So she could easily be the first person on the mainland to learn about "Seijin Merlin" especially since knowledge concerning the "Powers That Be" in a nation can be useful for people doing business in that nation or would otherwise be affected by the politics of that nation.

If, as seems likely, she had other reasons to be curious about Seijins, then she may have wanted to learn more about Seijin Merlin and her spies would already be in place to learn more.

While she likely didn't learn anything that Haarahld and Merlin wanted to keep secret, she could have had more hard facts about Merlin earlier than anybody else on the Mainland learned.

Since Politics affects Business, she likely had strong information sources concerning the politics of Siddarmark and other economic strongholds.

Adding to her business reasons for gathering information, we have her strong interests in "cleaning" the Safehold Church thus she'd have active operations gathering knowledge about important clergy in Zion and elsewhere.

IIRC there's text evidence (or suspicions) that she contacted the Circle instead of the Circle contacting her.

As I mentioned in the HFQ Official Snippet #1 thread, intelligence gathering organizations are likely common on Safehold and in Zion.

Her personal organization (no matter its size) would pass somewhat unnoticed because there would be so many active intelligent gathering organizations in Zion and on Safehold.

Even if noticed, few would be concerned about it and may not be concerned about who's organization it was.

As for "where she learned the skills to manage such an organization", some have suggested that she may have learned some of the skills from her foster father.

She may also have made contacts with other spy masters (in bed or otherwise) and learned more from them.

Now some (including me) have speculated that she has contacts (including being a member) with another secret organization.

While I agree that it's possible, it is also possible that much of her success comes from being a truly remarkable person.

Such people existed in our history and will continue to exist in the future.

DrakBibliophile wrote:A comment was made in HFQ Official Snippet #1 about Aivah's intelligence operations and I wanted to give my thoughts on her operations.

One concern was "how large it would be to get information from Charis to Zion".

Whatever else Aivah is, she's a business woman and "Knowledge Is Power" applies in business as well as other places.

With the economic power that Charis held on Safehold (both in manufacturing and shipping), a wise business person who have "commercial agents/spies" in Charis.

So she could easily be the first person on the mainland to learn about "Seijin Merlin" especially since knowledge concerning the "Powers That Be" in a nation can be useful for people doing business in that nation or would otherwise be affected by the politics of that nation.

If, as seems likely, she had other reasons to be curious about Seijins, then she may have wanted to learn more about Seijin Merlin and her spies would already be in place to learn more.

While she likely didn't learn anything that Haarahld and Merlin wanted to keep secret, she could have had more hard facts about Merlin earlier than anybody else on the Mainland learned.

Since Politics affects Business, she likely had strong information sources concerning the politics of Siddarmark and other economic strongholds.

Adding to her business reasons for gathering information, we have her strong interests in "cleaning" the Safehold Church thus she'd have active operations gathering knowledge about important clergy in Zion and elsewhere.

IIRC there's text evidence (or suspicions) that she contacted the Circle instead of the Circle contacting her.

As I mentioned in the HFQ Official Snippet #1 thread, intelligence gathering organizations are likely common on Safehold and in Zion.

Her personal organization (no matter its size) would pass somewhat unnoticed because there would be so many active intelligent gathering organizations in Zion and on Safehold.

Even if noticed, few would be concerned about it and may not be concerned about who's organization it was.

As for "where she learned the skills to manage such an organization", some have suggested that she may have learned some of the skills from her foster father.

She may also have made contacts with other spy masters (in bed or otherwise) and learned more from them.

Now some (including me) have speculated that she has contacts (including being a member) with another secret organization.

While I agree that it's possible, it is also possible that much of her success comes from being a truly remarkable person.

Such people existed in our history and will continue to exist in the future.

Nice post. I agree with what you are saying here. I will only add that her focus does not center on her businesses but rather upon her contest with the church. Everything else is merely a means serving that end.

Don

Hi Don, Drak;

I also agree, with the caveat that her primary organization is older than she is, ie whoever taught her, made her think and inspired her, some of which may have happened after the convent, started or continued it and she is the current head; could one reason the inquisition never noticed it is because the leadership primarily consists of women [which the inquisition assumes could never participate in the vicarate?] and the old sister passed it on to her?

Granted we have no textev for such a proposition, but she hasn't had time to create it all by herself.

Given everything else she's been doing, where would she have had the time to train agents, based on what personal experience?

Now a quiet organization that had a few mementos of the war against the fallen like the original Holy Writ, possibly courtesy of Seijin Kody, and students of his, if he were fonder of the nobler sex or trusted them more for good reasons, that Nynian may already exemplify from her acute observations.

Fascinating times indeed.

L

n7axw wrote:

DrakBibliophile wrote:A comment was made in HFQ Official Snippet #1 about Aivah's intelligence operations and I wanted to give my thoughts on her operations.

One concern was "how large it would be to get information from Charis to Zion".

Whatever else Aivah is, she's a business woman and "Knowledge Is Power" applies in business as well as other places.

With the economic power that Charis held on Safehold (both in manufacturing and shipping), a wise business person who have "commercial agents/spies" in Charis.

So she could easily be the first person on the mainland to learn about "Seijin Merlin" especially since knowledge concerning the "Powers That Be" in a nation can be useful for people doing business in that nation or would otherwise be affected by the politics of that nation.

If, as seems likely, she had other reasons to be curious about Seijins, then she may have wanted to learn more about Seijin Merlin and her spies would already be in place to learn more.

While she likely didn't learn anything that Haarahld and Merlin wanted to keep secret, she could have had more hard facts about Merlin earlier than anybody else on the Mainland learned.

Since Politics affects Business, she likely had strong information sources concerning the politics of Siddarmark and other economic strongholds.

Adding to her business reasons for gathering information, we have her strong interests in "cleaning" the Safehold Church thus she'd have active operations gathering knowledge about important clergy in Zion and elsewhere.

IIRC there's text evidence (or suspicions) that she contacted the Circle instead of the Circle contacting her.

As I mentioned in the HFQ Official Snippet #1 thread, intelligence gathering organizations are likely common on Safehold and in Zion.

Her personal organization (no matter its size) would pass somewhat unnoticed because there would be so many active intelligent gathering organizations in Zion and on Safehold.

Even if noticed, few would be concerned about it and may not be concerned about who's organization it was.

As for "where she learned the skills to manage such an organization", some have suggested that she may have learned some of the skills from her foster father.

She may also have made contacts with other spy masters (in bed or otherwise) and learned more from them.

Now some (including me) have speculated that she has contacts (including being a member) with another secret organization.

While I agree that it's possible, it is also possible that much of her success comes from being a truly remarkable person.

Such people existed in our history and will continue to exist in the future.

Nice post. I agree with what you are saying here. I will only add that her focus does not center on her businesses but rather upon her contest with the church. Everything else is merely a means serving that end.

Don