I don't know. If there happened to be a mindbender around I suspect they should have had an easy time figuring out what was going on, at the very least I think they should have. However, its just lucky there were no mindbenders around in the entire city at the time I suppose.
Have you ever heard of the term 'security through obscurity?' Don't look like something you need to target and you won't be targeted. It doesn't always work, but there you have it.
These were
spies. They went in with a specific mission, but their primary purpose before being told their later goals was "avoid the notice of the templarate" and they were given specific instructions representing years of training. As I said earlier, we expected at least one of them to get caught at some point, likely due to a screwup. The whole point of being a spy is to
avoid notice. If you have a templar interrogating you, you are boned (I believe we went so far as to let each player know that if they ever got interrogated, they had essentially lost). Again, spy operation, compartmentalization of activities, etc...a lot was taken from fictional and real world accounts of how such things would work. For instance, as the plot and game progressed, each spy grew to know each other spy, so that was one more area of implication they could provide if they were ever interrogated...but they weren't, because they seemed normal, because they passed muster, etc.
You don't investigate people that seem normal, do you? Except...now, in Tuluk...you might. Because of this. This was also an intentional part of the plot--if the spies had been all captured/killed, we would've rolled with it and that would've made things amp up faster as far as Tuluki oppression PRIOR to the battle at Tyn Dashra...but that didn't happen, so we were able to utilize it later. This will (probably) be harder in the future because of the notoriety of this particular case, but certainly not impossible.
Each one had specific instructions to initially observe and report. They had to blend in and escape notice. And they did.
I think the spies had one benefit going for them and that is the fact I doubt anyone playing in tuluk at the time expected something like that to happen. A lot of people from soldiers to jihaens were shocked that this occurred, in the same way people would be shocked at seeing a tank just rolling through the city. Its just something people didn't think possible for one reason or another so it would be very difficult to put one and one together.
Probably so. We kept a tight lid on OOC secrecy regarding the plot, and we had the luxury of being able to pick from a lot of players people that were trustworthy (we could see their karma/notes and know that they'd do a great job if given a chance to do so). We did stack the deck in that regard. A normal PC that wants to set up a spy network isn't going to be able to review account notes and karma of people involved and might well pick someone that has notes to the effect of their past OOC coordination with roles. We also staggered the entry of the spies and set them up to be autonomous precisely to prevent the kind of OOC sniffing that might occur around a plot like this--just in case people assumed "hmm, three people entering the game at the same time, must be that secret role call, I will watch them for OOC reasons and see what happens!"
One of them also because a consort hulm noble too, right? I'm curious how this happened because I thought it was during the grey hunt that the winning person could chose a consort. During a ceremony, with templars present. I gues muk didn't show himself in this one, like the last either. Then again if it just happened later with no oversight or approval, its some more good luck.
Yes, that's exactly correct. When the Hlum existed, as the Grey Hunt finished, a new Hlum noble was selected as the winner. That noble could then either choose a consort that was also a commoner. And that's what happened. During a ceremony, with templars present. And if anything had slipped, then the plot would've been boned, and then the Hlum get wiped out faster than we on staff planned. I think we have a log of that. FWIW, we didn't orchestrate that. That was all PC action right there.
At the end of the day considering how beneficial it was to the lirathan order, I'm kinda hoping to see log with oralia negean as doing a little cameo, laughing in the shadows say, 'Good, everything is going according to plan' before giving a classical evil laugh. Or a log showing how these character were clearly far more special/ talented/skilled/mystical then most to have gotten that far.
Nope. All mundane with skills representing years of training. And as far as "beneficial" is concerned, it really depends on how you look at it. Short term, perhaps...maybe. I mentioned somewhere else that any Zalanthan victory is a Pyrrhic one.
I think the role play of these character was good though, I have nothing against the players who played these characters, and I am enjoying the logs and I am really hoping to see their bios. Its probably just the cynic in me when I think that most PCs would not be able to pull this off without the staff's approval and their utmost blessing. But these PCs did in the end so what do I know. 
Yeah, I was about to say...ya'll some cynical people.

If you want to do this, you absolutely can. But you aren't going to roll up a PC right now, join the Legions, and say "I want to be a spy embedded in Allanak." You would have to spend years IC working on everything, from learning about the culture of Allanak to passing as an Allanaki...etc. The same goes for the opposite, or for being a Kuraci spy embedded in either city-state doing this or that. The long game is what you'd have to go for, and that'd also depend on PC leaders willing to push for the long game and not short-term gains that are easier to realize. There's the possibility of failure. And yeah, you'd need staff willing to help (there are some things that would require staff assistance, probably not as much as you'd think though--just very basic stuff).
Like I said, we accelerated the process of what could have been achieved IC, and not much more than that.
Spy stuff is one of my favorite things in the game if done correctly/played out well. It relies on secrecy, not just IC, but OOC. You have to pick the people IC that you can trust, and they have to have people they trust, and so on. Any link in a chain can be corrupted, so you have to make sure there's a short chain or a set of trustworthy people, and then that's where you have the potential of OOC plot leakage. There's nothing worse than a plot ruined because someone blabbed to someone else (sometimes even in a well-meaning way) before it came to fruition.
Revealing these logs (as more come in/get posted) will show a few things, I hope:
- what was going on behind the scenes prior to and after the HRPT--like, what led up to it all, what these spies were doing, etc
- the kind of intrigue/plotty stuff that people sometimes hint at saying "happens all of the time" behind the scenes, but don't ever show it since they didn't have a log/etc (if you have logs of this stuff and it passes the rules of this subforum, please put in a request and I'll do my best to help facilitate posting after review)
- you can do this, too. you might not be successful, you might die in the process...but with effort, skill, luck, and not blabbing to people about your OOC plans with the role (this part is pretty key!) you can absolutely be involved in this kind of thing.