Saoirse Beoraidh

Overview

During the Autumn Equinox 387YE, the Lepidean Librarian, Hazelelponi of the Shattered Tower, charged the Heirs of Lepidus to read the past life vision records of Liissá Reparador Sigeing. This vision was experienced during the Winter Solstice of 386YE under the guidance of Ethelfrith Sigeling, and revealed the visionary’s past life as Saoirse Beoraidh, a well connected and informed spymaster-madam of the Golden Turtle inn and massage parlour.

The Vision

Details of this vision can be found in Echoes of the Labyrinth Volume 11, as published by the Seer of the Gateway and distributed at the Turbrewlent Priest in Anvil.

In summary, the vision focused on the decision around who to trust with intelligence regarding the location of a powerful magical item known as ‘The Breath Of The Vortex’. Saoirse had recently learned via an agent that this had been dropped into the regio known as the Ribbon of Salt by ‘the Maelstrom’, a clear reference to the eternal Siakha, some time earlier. This information had been confirmed by a herald of ‘Old Bottlenose’, doubtless a reference to the eternal Rhianos, though said herald had been fatally wounded gathering this information.

Saoirse, accompanied by her secretary Shea, was then approached by three parties who wished to learn this information. One was a representative of the Salt Lords, who promised the visionary a lifetime of luxury as their companion if she handed over the information. One was a pirate and Siakha cultist, who offered to murder Saoirse’s enemies in payment. The third offer, made by letter, was from a Urizeni: Aetheria of the Lighthouse at Nikephoros. What she offered was uncertain, but the letter indicated that she wished to utilise the knowledge for magical purposes. Saoirse chose to play for time with the Salt Lords and the pirates, and declared her intention to flee to Urizen with Shea and take refuge there, taking what wealth the two could carry and dividing the rest between the Golden Turtle’s employees.

Divination rituals carried out after the vision revealed that Saoirse and Shea’s flight to Urizen was successful, and that the pair lived together until Saoirse’s death from old age. Aetheria and her spiremates were never able to make use of the knowledge regarding the Breath of the Vortex, and eventually the secret was lost once again.

Beoraidh

The visionary’s past name and the character of the individuals who sought her out gave a strong indication as to where more information might be found. The researchers were able to secure passage on a Sarcophan vessel in order to avoid any potential difficulties with the Grendel or the Children of Wrecks. Upon our arrival in Beoraidh we were amazed to find that the Golden Turtle, sometimes called the Gleaming Turtle in certain records, was still open and operating. The establishment’s staff, who are also its proprietors, were pleasantly surprised that we knew the name of their founder. They agreed to furnish us with whatever details we cared to ask for, so long as we agreed to relay to all our readers that the Golden Turtle remains the most palatial house of rest on the Broken Shore, where skilled hands can soothe your muscles and enchanting conversation can stimulate your mind. Considering the welcome we were offered during our interviews, this was a Prosperous deal that we had no hesitation in making.

Little is known of Saoirse Beoraidh’s early life. She was certainly born into poverty, and had no contact with her birth family when she came into wealth. The staff of the Golden Turtle spoke of her as a woman of singular drive and Ambition, whose desire to better her station in life could not be dampened. After bouncing around the various jobs accessible to a young woman without connections or training she found her way into the sex trade, where her skills at reading people enabled her to build a good reputation and attract a higher class of clientele. She parlayed this network into a role as an information broker of sorts, keeping track of any interesting data she could find and either selling it on to the highest bidder, or else burying it to earn the favour of those who wished to keep their secrets. In time her wealth grew great enough that she was able to buy out the brothel at which she had once worked, refitting it and turning it into the Golden Turtle that is known today. According to stories told at the time, she never forgot her origins and treated her staff with great Loyalty, or fidelity as the Grendel would have it. Her network of contacts was alleged to stretch across the entire Bay of Catazar, and even beyond.

The events of the vision were a well-known part of the Golden Turtle’s history, and took place in or around 315YE, which would have been during the reign of Empress Deanne. The stories told at the Golden Turtle matched with the account of the visionary, with the additional note that after Saoirse and Shea’s flight, the staff of the Golden Turtle tricked the Siakha Cultists into believing that the agent of the Salt Lords had been given the information about the Breath of the Vortex. This led to a brief blood feud between the two factions, by the end of which the Golden Turtle’s role in inciting this conflict had been quite forgotten.

Redoubt

Our next stop would have been the Lighthouse at Nikephoros, but the spire’s recent destruction during battle with the Grendel and the Children of Wrecks have rendered that plan untenable. We thank the surviving members of the Lighthouse-That-Was for their willingness to assist us despite their difficult circumstances. While any physical records were lost during the lighthouse’s collapse, knowledgeable members of the spire were able to confirm to us that there had been a person called Aetheria at around that time, and that the spire’s failure to make proper use of the information Saoirse provided to them fit entirely with the state of decline their predecessors had been complicit in maintaining throughout much of their history.

Our search took us next to Cargo; as the largest city in Redoubt, we guessed that this would have been a likely next step for a new arrival to Urizen used to urban living. At this point we must once again thank Florus Acropolita, a local historian, for answering our call for information regarding this time period. Florus had acquired a set of letters penned by Shea, the secretary who had accompanied Saoirse on her flight to Urizen. With zir kind permission, we were able to inspect these letters and put together a picture of the pair’s life in the Empire.

According to Shea’s writing, Saoirse already had contacts in Cargo who knew her name and could introduce her to people. Sticking to what she knew, she purchased a house and converted it into a brothel. Her keen ability to read people enabled her to adapt quickly to her new market, where she made great play of her years of experience and considerable arete in her trade, offering an experience tailored to the client’s level of comfort with physical touch and personal intimacy. While she never attempted to reach out to her contacts on the Broken Shore, both Shea and Saoirse cultivated the beginnings of a new information-gathering network along the Empire’s southern coast. Despite initial reluctance, both Saoirse and Shea eventually bound themselves to Menos, the egregore of Urizen, and became full citizens of the Empire.

Death

According to Shea’s correspondence, Saoirse began experiencing symptoms of an unspecified but serious illness throughout the late stages of 323YE. Sensing that the end was drawing near, the pair sold up their business and moved to a small coastal estate near Elos. It was during this time that the record settles a matter that had been the subject of some speculation among the researchers, as Shea records the pair finally deciding to undergo a formal marriage ceremony, officiated by “...a curious and open-minded priest who did not baulk at the mention of audacity and fidelity.” From this point forward, Shea’s letters become few and far between. The last entries in Florus’ collection indicate that Saoirse finally died in 324YE.

On The Breath Of The Vortex

From all the information that we have been able to find, the Breath of the Vortex remains in the same place that it was during the vision of Liissá Sigeing – somewhere in or around the Ribbon of Salt regio off the coast of Optarion in Redoubt. While we can only speculate, the continuing pattern of violent eruptions would seem to be suggestive that some of the Maelstrom’s power still influences the regio.

The Lepidean University is not a magical institution, and cannot speak directly to what means might be taken to locate and possibly retrieve this item. However, we may suggest potential further means of investigation. The Eternal Kimus has offered its’ services in the location of notable items several times in recent years, and might well be prevailed upon to do so again in this case. A herald of Rhianos was able to confirm the artefact’s presence, albeit at the cost of its’ life, and it is possible that either Rhianos or one of its’ servants might be of some assistance in gaining access to that part of the regio where the Breath of the Vortex rests. Siakha, being the source of the item in question, might potentially have more information, although this would likely be illegal for anyone to investigate.

Finally, while we trust in the sense of the Lepidean Librarian, we would nonetheless be failing in our Vigilance if we did not urge people against exploring the regio themselves. The fishing captains of Visten can recite a long list of curious citizens who were absolutely certain that they would be the first ones to unlock the Ribbon’s mysteries and return unharmed. Sadly the list of those who returned is considerably shorter.

On Espionage

The Lepidean Librarian stated in her announcement before Senate that the life of Saoirse Beoraidh might well “...help us to combat the ‘jewels’ across the Bay,” jewels referring to the Grendel’s espionage rings. While we do not believe that we spoke to any actual spies during the course of our investigations, and while we do not believe that Saoirse ever directly worked for the Council of Salt Lords, our research into her history has given us something of an insight into how such networks are formed and how they function. We must also offer credit to Teasag D’Apulian, a Leaguish merchant who we encountered in Redoubt and who held forth at length on our somewhat abstract speculations about the nature of this work. Teasag would like us to make it clear that she herself was never a spy, but that she certainly had worked with spies before becoming an Imperial citizen, and that in her youth she had briefly worked as a courier for a man in Vorlach who was almost certainly a serious operator.

Teasag’s first observation was that espionage rings are entirely unlike the spy networks used to gather military intelligence on the Empire’s enemies. Any attempt to understand one by examining the other is doomed to failure. The two work in different ways to achieve goals that are only superficially similar. The structure of an espionage ring bears a striking similarity to the Urizeni concept of the Net of the Heavens. Each ring begins with a small group of individuals, maybe even a single person, tasked with receiving and collating all of the ring’s information into a comprehensible form. This central cell may never even set foot in the territory where their ring is focused, communicating with their operatives only by letter or by Winged Messenger. This is the role that Saoirse Beoraidh herself would have taken on, likely with the assistance of her secretary Shea.

This central cell will be in direct contact with a small number of trusted professional spies. These agents will travel to areas of interest as directed by their central cell, likely with little or no direct knowledge of one another. Each one will have a legitimate reason for their travel, and will have a role that requires them to interact with a diverse range of people in many different settings. Many such agents work as merchants, although it is common for them to take on junior roles within larger organisations, masking their activities as errands undertaken on behalf of their employers. The Grendel embassy, though currently vacated, seems to have been overrun with such spies.

Each spy has a single job: to find people who know useful things, and get those people to disclose what they know. What constitutes useful information varies depending on the directives of the central cell and the judgement of the spy themselves. When a spy identifies a useful individual, they will attempt to become close to them and to establish a relationship that encourages the sharing of information. If the information is not restricted then the relationship may simply be friendly or professional. However, if the spy wishes to gain access to a person’s secrets, they will deploy a variety of techniques of subversion, including but not limited to bribery, blackmail, seduction, or ideological conversion. These relationships may be temporary, or may last for years if the ring remains undetected. The spies may even imply that they are the central cell and that their contacts are the professional spies, disguising the nature and scale of the operations that they are undertaking.

The outermost layers of the ring comprise those people who, knowingly or not, supply information to the professional spies. This is where the reach of an espionage ring becomes truly sinister. Any casual conversation with a curious stranger might be inadvertently feeding information to the enemy. Not only this, but even speaking to someone who is in a spy’s circle can end up providing information that would otherwise not have been known. Saoirse Beoraidh never truly operated an espionage ring, lacking the resources and connections to do so. However, by her example we can see that rooting out an espionage ring will require constant Vigilance by citizens.

Thanks

In Loyalty, we preface this research with thanks to the following people and groups:

• Alcuin, Seer of the Gateway, for allowing us access to his notes.
• Captain Meike Snijder and the crew of the Ochtenddauw, for granting us passage to Beoraidh.
• All the staff of the Golden Turtle, the finest luxury house of relaxation and companionship on the Broken Shore, where the conversation and the wine sparkle equally, for their generosity and flexibility on methods of payment.
• The fine people of The Lighthouse That Was for answering our questions at a very trying time.
• Florus Acropolita for allowing us to access zir library and private records.
• Teasag D’Apulian for providing forthright commentary on the nature of covert information-gathering.