Soldiers NPCs on the street should be able to answer a few basic questions when asked by a templar.
For example:
Who posted you here?
... Captain's orders, Lord Templar.
... Lady Templar Skye Tor did, Lord Templar.
What was the last thing you did?
... Nothing since I've been at my post, Lord Templar.
... I subdued a criminal and took her to jail, Lord Templar.
... I picked up a body on Lady Skye's orders, Lord Templar.
What crime did that body at your feet commit?
... He tried to escape arrest, Lord Templar, after he was seen picking pockets.
... He angered Lady Fale and she physically attacked him, Lord Templar.
And so forth.
Or even an OOC-ish style list for Templars and high-ranking soldiers (who would be higher ranking than the NPC) to see, that others don't even have to necessarily see when they're in the room (but could, if it makes sense)):
order soldier list activity
1. The soldier has been idle for (game days) 2 days, 2 hours.
2. The soldier's last activity (besides script-walking around the city) was transporting a criminal to jail.
2a. The criminal was transported for the crime of: theft.
2b. The accuser was: Jojo, the Salarr Shopkeeper
2c. The criminal is (dead, in jail, in transport, at large).
The soldier was successful in their last activity.
order soldier list criminal
The soldier has dealt with the following criminal(s) in the past game-week:
1. the tall muscular man (2 days, 2 hours ago)
2. the muscular, tall man (4 days, 5 hours ago)
Endlist
Hell yeh.
That would rock socks.
While the concept is cool, I'm reluctant to applaud anything that makes sneakies' already difficult job even harder. Maybe these NPC soldiers' 'memories' could be kept relatively short (maybe an IG day or two), and record both normal sdescs or hooded/face-wrapped/masked sdescs, depending on the circumstance.
What Ourla said. But I imagine something like this would be a sickening amount of work for a coder, wouldn't it? (I have no idea, I don't code)
I'd be a fan of certain NPC's having scripts that allow them to hold permanent and temporary jobs.
For example, a soldier of a city.
Tradesman's Way [EW]
A human soldier is standing here.
>ask soldier duty
You ask a human soldier their assigned duty.
Snapping a crisp salute, a human soldier says, in sirihish:
"I'm regularly on guard patrol along Tradesman's Way, m'lord."
>order soldier duty
You can order the soldier to do one of the following duties: guard, patrol, and break.
>order soldier duty guard
You must specify a period of time for a human soldier to guard.
>order soldier follow
A human soldier falls in line behind you.
>west
Tradesman's Way [EW]
>west
West Gate of Khara [EW]
>order soldier duty guard east 8
You order a human soldier to guard the east direction for 8 hours.
>ask soldier duty
You ask a human soldier their assigned duty.
Answering quickly, a human soldier says, in sirihish:
"I'm temporarily assigned to guard duty at the West Gate of Khara by Lady Templar Wyska."
This would help leader PC's have some flexibility over how they want to position the resources they have working beneath them. They could stack guards at a gate, a doorway, a choke point, etc... I also like the OP's examples of asking them about behavior where the response is fairly generic, "I hauled a criminal to the jail earlier."
-LoD
Anything that would reveal someone's sdesc might be going a bit too far. I do like the idea of a generic
"I took someone to jail yesterday," type response. Maybe if the list was limited to a certain amount of
game days, rather than multiple weeks? I don't always remember what happened to me 5 weeks
previous.