Spy gadgets in fantasy/low-tech setting

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ChaseJxyz

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I have a human character who will go in and spy on the bad guys (humans + very magical leader who's a different race/species) and will send info back to the good guys (many different races). The thing that's tripping me up is how he would be able to send information back to the good guys. Here are the particulars about the setting that would influence this:


  • The ruling class/race are phoenixes (intelligent magical birds), so there's no homing pigeons
  • Therefore there's nothing like telegraph lines, either. Info is normally carried on the wing by a phoenix
  • Magic is based on scientific concepts and roughly the same energy costs and limits (so no teleportation for the same reasons why we don't have it irl, but you can heal a broken bone by pushing the body to do it faster)
  • Telepathy is something that exists but having a second good guy close enough near by so they can "talk" would be difficult to keep hidden for long
  • The non-magical tech is roughly middle ages
  • If you stick magic/energy in a crystal it can be released to do something specific
  • The gadget would have to not arise suspicions (so no crystal balls)

The only solution I can come up with is the "cellphone" used in Dr Stone, which was an AM radio system and could work using piezoelectric crystals (Rochelle salts or otherwise), but I feel kind of bad taking an idea from somewhere and for it to just look like "it's a cellphone! But magic." My googling tells me that civilizations like ancient China and Egypt used spies.....but not how they actually DID anything.

So I'm open to both historical spy gadgets, fantastical ones, and modern ones that work on simple concepts or energy manipulation. I'd be grateful for any info or ideas you may have!
 

Bing Z

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- a trained rat (or squirrel or mountain lion or dog);
- a rogue phoenix (or soldier/guard/messenger) that is gold obsessed (or has a very sick mother & needs money or is in love with a spy girl);
- a magical recorder that can be feigned as normal goods (eg jewelry) and sent out via normal trade routes;
- a magical recording device small as a dust particle and attached to a hand written letter;
- sleeper messengers (w/ horses / phoenixes / very fast legs);
- magical devices (or a system of human/phoenix operators) that can transmit preset codes to secret relay stations;

These have all be done throughout history in one form or another.

Or if you must have real-time transmission... long forgotten telepathy skill only 3½ characters know; 3 are phoenixes and the half is thought to have been locked up in a dungeon 7¾ miles underground.... Or a magic charm that can restore crystal balls from crystal powder (but only Dr. Bing knows this charm and his fee is horrendous)...
 

lonestarlibrarian

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re: telepathy, you say they have to be close. Why is that?

I was reading "Neither Wolf Nor Dog" for a class assignment. I couldn't tell you three things about it, but the one thing I do remember is the scene where Dan and the writer are walking around talking, and Dan's dog runs off, and they keep on talking, and then Dan shows the author that he's able to summon his dog back without words, without gestures, without being in a line of sight, without being in hearing, etc. The dog might have been a mile away or whatever--- but the dog knew it was being summoned back, and it responded to the call, even though the call was nothing physical.

So, you might have bonds like that in your story, where a link is able to go beyond the limits of ordinary senses.

re: ancient spies, it was generally the collection of information--- ie, you have someone planted in a foreign court to send gossip back home--- with the occasional sabotage or assassination thrown in. They would collect information about the temperament of the political bodies--- would they be amenable to diplomacy, or were they hostile and you should go straight to force? A country without spies is like a man without eyes and ears.

Sun Tzu listed five kinds of spies: local, inward, converted, doomed, and surviving spies. Because war was so expensive, and affected so many families, being ignorant of your enemy was pretty much a crime against humanity. You needed to spend freely to get the best information possible, and when you use a mix of all five kinds of spies, no one can pin down your system. Local spies are going to be the local inhabitants of the district. Inward spies are going to be cultivating civil or military officials who are unhappy with the current regime, or ambitious for something they can't get otherwise... officials who have been demoted or degraded, concubines who are greedy, ambitious men who are kept in subordinate positions, or people who are trying to straddle the two powers and be on the winning side, whoever it turns out to be. These kind of spies, however, are not always trustworthy, and can often turn into double-agents. Converted spies are when you identify your enemies' spies, and seed them with false information to bring back to their masters, either knowingly or unknowingly. Doomed spies are spies that you send off with false information and the full knowledge they'll be captured, and when they're captured, they'll spill the beans... and then probably be killed. The doomed spies, of course, have no clue they're being sacrificed so easily. And surviving spies are going to be spies who infiltrate a place, and then come back safely with information--- like disguises or names or passwords, for example. But it's because of the converted spy's information that you learn who to approach for local spies and inward spies, so that kind of spy is the most important, and the most generously rewarded.

--edit--

So what you can do, for example, is have an Inward Spy of some sort, who's highly placed at court, who makes note of important information. When he has important information to convey, he might write it down and go hide it under a certain rock in a public garden, or put it in a hollow of a designated tree. And then he might hang a colored handkerchief in his window, or light a candle on his windowsill, or something. That's the signal for the next person to go check the rock or the tree and get the information and pass it on to where it needs to go. Inward Spy never needs to deal directly with anyone else, beyond the initial arrangements--- it might be an agreement as simple as, "For every interesting note you leave us, you'll find $x deposited to your credit at a particular high-end shop your wife likes." The less information/contact, the better. But see if you can swing things so that the surveillance is happening by an authorized individual with ulterior motives for x that allows him to put his loyalty up for sale, whether it's for monetary reimbursement, or access to medical care for his sick relative, or because he strongly disapproves of wrongs perpetuated by the current regime.
 
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Al X.

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To expand on the telepathy/distance factor, it might be worth your while to read up on the CIA's Stargate remote viewing program. It's the only government program that not only acknowledged the existence of telepathic powers, but actually used them, and by all accounts, successfully. Physical proximity was not a limitation to the remote viewers.
 

frimble3

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Read up on traditional spying methods, like dead-drops, codes and ciphers. People have been spying since long before modern technology.
Lonestarlibrarian has an excellent post.
There are mentions in the Bible, they did it in China and Rome, Elizabethan England was a hotbed, and they all learned how from earlier, unmentioned ancestors.
Sneaking around, following trails and looking for little clues to the 'prey' are gifts given by our hunter ancestors.
 

FletcherHavarti

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The only solution I can come up with is the "cellphone" used in Dr Stone, which was an AM radio system and could work using piezoelectric crystals (Rochelle salts or otherwise), but I feel kind of bad taking an idea from somewhere and for it to just look like "it's a cellphone! But magic." My googling tells me that civilizations like ancient China and Egypt used spies.....but not how they actually DID anything.

So I'm open to both historical spy gadgets, fantastical ones, and modern ones that work on simple concepts or energy manipulation. I'd be grateful for any info or ideas you may have!

Could they use something like a spark-gap transmitter (late 19th century technology in our world), substituting some magical components for any technology that doesn't exist in the time and place of your story? This would be a form of radio transmission, but very rudimentary: Pulses, not a continuous signal, sort of like a telegraph but without any wires. The sender and recipient would have to agree upon some patterns of pulses so the message could be decoded.
 

ChaseJxyz

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Thank you for all the tips/suggestions everyone! I've had this thread in a tab the past few days and have been looking at and thinking about things, thought it would be prudent to say thanks even if I haven't come up with a solution just yet. I do appreciate the insight.
 

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A code hidden in a seemingly innocent kessage. One of the Phoenix messengers could unwittingly be delivering the message that leads to it's own demise.
 
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