Up next on the hit parade, New Orleans meets the fabled Morrocan InterZone.

[Snargash Moonclaw]

I don't see them as working together - merely the city farming the various groups that they have significant interactions with to begin with - many on the council are Freetraders, the heavy gnomish population creates greater interaction and favorable relations with the Open Wayfarers and halfling population in general than most cities would heave, etc. - the official office just makes a point now of taking more advantage of that - asking specific questions rather than the city passively waiting for whatever info and rumors to trickle to them when a merchant decides its in his best interest to share something. Those groups are essentially separate sources of info with minimal interaction beyond what they would have anyway totally outside of city bureaucracy.  Actually *not* doing a particularly great job is part of the point in the public exercise - the real intelligence agency has not yet been discussed and exists virtually entirely outside of the official city administration, being run by the church of Beldamh on the city's behalf.

[Snargash Moonclaw]

Got nothing written this weekend and very little tonight beyond the really bad acronym. (Is there a formal term for that particular compulsion? Oh yeah, government.) This is actually going kind of slow since I'm having to think very carefully about how they'd actually put the bureau together - definitely some unconventional approaches in the mix.

All the while, the actual Bureau of Advanced Diplomatic Affairs, Secret Services and Espionage Sciences was slowly and carefully developing the city's real intelligence behind the screen of overwhelmingly plausible deniability of the Church of Behldamh. (While the clergy of She Who Cares are well aware of the fact that no amount of definitive proof could ever convince anyone in their right mind that they were in fact seriously and comprehensively engaged in such activities, they have nevertheless conducted these affairs with such impeccable discretion that to date no suspicion has been raised that Salis Freeport is served by any agency other than the incredibly amateur formal Office. . .) The Bureau developed its network very cautiously, taking decades to reach its full scope, but it is fairly certain that by the end of his third and final term Mayor Szandroess had begun to receive reliable reports regarding various covert activities and developments in not only the neighboring Twin Kingdoms but from within the Malenorian Empire itself.