Over the next few weeks, Amicus and Sister Helena hope to charm and speak to as many woodland creatures as possible in hopes of building a spy network of regular animals. Foxes, raccoons, and particularly social songbirds will all be recruited. In exchange for food and other treats, these magical scouts will keep an eye on Yoesville's borders and tell us if any of our enemies are on the move.
I'll assume that each morning Amicus has cast "Speak with Animals" on himself to make contact with the network of animal mercenaries. Do you all think it would be worth it to create a network of carrier pigeons to go with the Yoesville Civil Messaging Service?
Carrier pigeons, I would imagine, would be made much more easily trainable because of speak with animals.
ReplyDeleteAs for the rest of the animals, you'd probably be better off using birds to help monitor things, especially crows. Foxes and raccoons and similar animals would work, but having to run across open ground to get a message to you is rather dangerous to the animals themselves (dogs, vengeful property owners, kids with slings, hungry people, fur hunters, etc), not to mention they might not be able to move very fast. Birds can cover a huge amount of territory, and just fly to the roost in your tower/temple if they see something notable. Look up some of the stuff that crows are actually capable of. You use speak with animals to communicate with a smart and social bird like crows, and I think you'll quite easily form up the sort of warning system you're looking for.
Holy crap! You are right!
ReplyDeletehttps://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&ei=gKjzVM_5CND5yQTZsoLgCQ&url=http://www.cracked.com/article_19042_6-terrifying-ways-crows-are-way-smarter-than-you-think.html&ved=0CBwQFjAA&usg=AFQjCNEq_tkX2m5vgvxgvBoa0D2zaslMWw&sig2=4bpSnF2ZNxSUv-pPKsNJAA
The animal network is now officially only made of crows.
I don't know if it was BS or not, but I read a real-sounding story about a guy who would be mean to one group of crows and be nice to another group. After some time, the nice bunch started escorting the guy, and trying to protect him from the crows he was mean to. In the end, there was this apocalyptic confrontation between the two groups of crows that ended with the crows he was mean to being driven off in a bloody manner.
ReplyDeleteMuttering Osborn can contribute to this network, he has charm and speak with animals.
ReplyDeleteOsborn should have his network scout the West, and Gorna should take the South. Amicus will watch the North and East.
ReplyDeleterinaldo can also assist in getting the initial group numbers up
ReplyDeletepersonally when i started reading this about using a carrier bird messaging system i was hoping it was going to be coconuts tied to swallows