#writing spies
Thank you very much for the information, I will change the breed to an elf
-kaiservonalgo
You’ve stumbled into the canon answer. For those who didn’t see where this came from, we’re talking about the Qunari question last week.
You won’t see me compliment Bioware’s writing often, but this was a piece of world building in Dragon Age that was remarkably realistic, and is worth considering if you’re including espionage in your fiction.
Dragon Age’s elves are a permanently disaffected minority. There’s history there that muddles the issue, but in the current era of the setting they are (almost always) an oppressed group (to an almost comical degree.) This means, they have no interest in maintaining the status quo of the cities they live in.
While it’s not clear how much is opportunistic, the Qunari make extensive use of elves as spies. Elves are a social group that human society tends to glaze over and ignore when they see them, making them ideal for use as spies.
So, as I mentioned, this is realistic. If you’re setting up a spy ring, people with grievances against the existing regime, and no potential for social advancement are a goldmine. Offer them a better future, and the opportunity to get some vengeance against those who they feel have wronged them, and they will do exactly what you need them to.
This also works in reverse, if your characters are investigating a spy ring, it’s quite reasonable for it intersect with the downtrodden or dissidents. It also means it’s quite plausible for an external spymaster ingratiate themselves into an existing resistance movement or rebellion. This can even create a complex, messy, and very realistic scenario where your protagonists are part of an existing resistance movement that is then corrupted by an external entity, into following their agenda.
While, similarly exaggerated, the Qunari’s inability to operate openly some reality in actual espionage. Not because spies are unsubtle in the extreme, but because, over time, it becomes increasingly clear when someone is a spy. So, for a lot of situations a spy’s best option is to act through intermediaries.
For example: If you need to get into a secure facility and extract some documents, it’s far safer to bribe a member of the cleaning staff to “accidentally,” drop it in the trash, than it is to break in to an unfamiliar building, stumble around hiding from the guards, and hope you can find exactly what you need, without accidentally tripping every security system in the place.
Want to tail someone? Hire a private investigator, or better yet, pay someone else to hire them, and put them on your target’s trail. (Which is another option in this case.)
With each action your spy needs to take, they want to create as many layers of anonymity between themselves and things they need to get done.
Want to kill an official? Send out one of your operatives to hire an investigator to track the official, spinning whatever lie won’t arouse suspicion. That operative is done for this work.
Get a feel the official’s itinerary. (Or, actually get another operative to hire someone to steal the itinerary. The cleaning staff option isn’t the only possible solution, but it is an option.) Strategies like this may also matter for obtaining other forms of information, especially if the goal is blackmail instead of assassinations.
Have one of your operatives test the official’s security. This can be as simple as splashing some hard liquor on their face and throat (to create the illusion of the smell) and then “drunkenly” stumble into the official (or their entourage.) Because they’re actually sober (mostly, the fumes will get you very mildly intoxicated) they’ll be in a good mental state to track exactly what the response is. If someone’s security is exceptional, they won’t even get close, though if they’re able to stumble into the official, then the security response is a mess.
Once you have a good profile of the official, your spy just needs to send in an assassin to seal the deal. They should have a rough idea of where the official will be. They should have a pretty solid grasp of any gaps in the official’s security. (This may be based on surveillance of specific places the official frequents.) At this point, the only thing left is to wait for the perfect moment to exploit the vulnerabilities they’ve identified.
Importantly, at no point in this chain, has the actual spy been anywhere near the actual work being done. The irony is, for the Dragon Age example, if they’re operating as actual spies, it’s not a problem that the Qunari are massive, horned, and incapable of social subterfuge, that’s all things that would be farmed out to their operatives, who would not be visibly Qunari.
So, using an elf is the canon answer for the Qunari, and there’s some actual logic to it.
-Starke
