Durham's Barcidae Intel Briefing

[written up by Joel, pursuant to certain information his character Durham has been digging up during downtime in the past year]

Durham presents this information to the survivors at Bob hall, during Bart's end of the year feast.

An assistant perhaps, entering with an armload of documents

Durham and Pako have snooped around gathering Intel on the Barcidae, using a variety of methods, combing through records, visiting taverns in disguise, greasing palms and consulting with informed minds.

Major Intel

This is information that Durham has gathered that he believes to be true and has specific details on.

Secret Tunnels

During his intel gathering the rumors of tunnels under the Migdol have kept recurring.  After journeying to the undercity and gaining the favor of Quinn, a southron of dark skin and hair, Quinn shares that the Barcidae have tunnels into and through the Undercity leading out through their Lightning-Tower especially (the one in Cothon); they once uncovered an Undina through those tunnels, among other strange finds. An Undina is a kind of ageless maiden (or ephebe) of strange beauty who has little will of her own, but will follow the orders of her master.

The tunnels lead east–presumably into whatever undercity remains beneath Tsurr al Qadeem, and possibly up to the Migdol or into the Tel al Safina itself. They're guarded by servitors of the Barcidae and bound underworld creatures, so it would be a whole thing to find out where specifically they lead.

Durham has heard that the Barcidae often buy slaves from mines or tomb-digger slaves, and are known to always keep a sapper-engineer on their staff.

Smuggling Ring

It is clear from the letters recovered from the Ocean’s Throat that there was a smuggling ring that involved the pirates of the Ocean's Throat, Souffet Fadhlan (former co-leader of the Cities) and circumspectly the Barcidae. Codenames and aliases or elisions ("Mr. M—" or other such devices)  were used to obscure identities, but given everything Durham and the Survivors have uncovered in the sea caves, it seems fairly obvious to them that the Barcidae were involved.

It is unknown if the smuggling ring is still currently running after the pirates lost their base, now currently Fort Doghouse.  The operation was largely used to smuggle in goods to get around market fees and bring in a few illegal items, such as the Sakkra-blood potions made by Yragram.

Minor Intel

This information was acquired with a minor amount of investigation and requires more work to develop details.

Zortrium

It's unclear when or how the Barcidae became familiar with working Zortrium, but they are acknowledged as smiths who have the secret know-how. They have traded this knowledge with the Attine Sixth House, but with few others. The Barcidae are known to possess a number of Zortrium artifacts, mostly of their own make–but there are no records of them purchasing any raw alloys.

More of these artifacts have "made their debut" in use by the Barcidae within the past 100 years, compared to artifacts attested in the deeper past.

Former-Souffet Fadhlan

Fadhlan is friendly with his successor, the Souffet Urodas. Neither are particularly well-disposed toward the Hanse. Fadhlan was opposed to the pirate campaign, but popular opinion overcame that so that he and former-Souffet Khousra allowed private citizens to help loan the Hanse money through war bonds. Fadhlan was known to be friendly with the Barcidae.

Actions to take

Armed with this new information there are a variety of actions adventures could take. And Durham has a few ideas on that.

• Making more trouble: certainly with the discovery of these secret tunnels there is plenty of opportunity to make trouble for the Barcidae. But it could cause more legal troubles or other problems for us.

• Law & order: there is a unique opportunity to bring legal action against the Barcidae. However, this requires a few things, first a powerful enough person to sue the Barcidae, second money to fund the lawsuit and third, developing more evidence. There is a range of charges that could be brought to the court of the moon from a smuggling charge to more serious ones. It is likely in all such cases that if the Barcidae lose in the Court of the Moon that they will appeal to the Court of the Sword (the Arena), and may well do their best to make sure that their champion wins.