"Be careful," Lantry says with a shake of his head, "The Chorus - my guess is it's mostly just what he does for fun. I suspect he's at his least dangerous 'conducting' his army. Sure, he gets a lot of his knowledge by being an inhuman monster that rightly terrifies even Verse, and he causes needless chaos, terror, and destruction in his wake - but in what he does with the knowledge, he's got the track record to make up for it, and Kyros must think so, too. Or, at least, he must have thought so until recently - obviously the Edict indicates he's dispensable. Not to denigrate Bleden Mark, who I don't doubt has plenty of ability to gather information past all kinds of barriers, but our current Archon of Shadows doesn't seem to have the talent or the inclination for running a network. If you want to win a war, crush a rebellion, prevent one of either, or - hell - start one, the best assassin and spy who's ever lived still isn't nearly as valuable as a good spy-master."

"I rather think Kyros uses him for the chaos.  Not despite it.  And if he is an Archon of spying, then Fatebinder Calio well ought to be an Archon in her own right for thwarting him repeatedly.

"But we are quite far afield from what I originally came here to discuss.  Perhaps we should continue another time, and see to informing the Marshal of what has eventuated with the testing.

"...Once we've fetched Verse, rather."

"Fair enough. If we're going to make an aid to her memory, she's the best judge of what will work."

And she'll go back to where she left Verse, then.

She's out by the quartermaster looking through what looks like a pre-packed bag. Colus's squad are nearby with matching packs.

"Hey, boss. Looks like they pack for scouts enough that they got bags ready for us before we asked."

"That's good.  I want to have you in on figuring out the codes we're going to need for passing messages, while we're out there."

She huffs slightly, then meets Colus's eyes with a shrug. He nods back, and she stands up to follow Ophelia.

"Sure, what'ya need?"

"The advice you can only learn how to give from experience, about the sort of things a wilderness scout needs to be able to say," she says, with a wry and slightly embarrassed look on her face.  "Goodness knows I'll try, but I bet I'd muck it up.  My first real wilderness mission was Cairn, past camping aside, and on that one we just didn't have two-way signaling capabilities.  Well.  Ones that weren't vulnerable to even half-competent interception, which..."

Her hand drifts to her throat.  "...Cairn may have been a blunt instrument, tactically speaking, but his chosen hunters are incredibly capable."

"They sure were. Yeah, let's work that out. Back in a few, boys."

"Actually, do you want my advice as well, Fatebinder?"

"If you're interested in giving it, certainly."

"Happy to give it, if it's useful. We are more ...habitually organized than Verse is probably accustomed to."

"More habitually organized or no, this code is going to be hers first and foremost.  Keep that in mind."

She is vaguely disappointed in the implicit sniping, but not enough to do more than allow a slight downturn of her tight-pressed lips.  (If it gets worse she'll say something, but Verse is usually pretty good at sticking up for herself.)

"Let's get this done and get to searching.  I don't want to waste daylight, nor waste days.  Lives depend on us."

"Oh, no question. Just - correct me if I'm wrong, Verse, but it always seemed like Nerat sort of threw twenty balls up in the air and then waited for them to fall back down eventually, rather than bother to communicate with the balls - uh, the scouts - while they were out in the field."

"True for the chaff, but not so much for the wheat. He pays more attention than that to elite scouts like my old squad. There's a picture code to be sent by bird, I think the mages had some flares."

"I - probably should have guessed that. Matches the whole style. Apologies, if you want them."

She shrugs it off.

That's better.

Shall they get this done and be off, then?

Yeah, let's.

She is in fact fluent in the pictogram code and has some message suggestions taken from it. There's a couple ways to encode distance and direction that can be mapped to motions of the body in a way that should carry across.

Lantry suggests the memory aid idea. Verse is sloppy with a pen, but she can use charcoal fine, and for long signals she does actually like the idea. Lantry offers to copy it over to a new parchment in ink, and this sort of works.

Colus has some suggestions for specifying maneuvers, but mostly lets them work.

Ophelia finds herself considering other things they might need to say, like 'How do we say we've encountered allies, enemies, neutral forces, civilians,' and 'should we encode some specific types of forces'.

...Huh, now that she's thinking about it, she wonders if "invoked a Sigil" is something that transfers across the link.

Then soon they will have an adequate code that both Barik and Verse are confident they can remember.

Good!  She makes a copy for reference, for each of them.  (Verse will be learning how to read properly!  Even if this involves Shenanigans!  It's embarrassing!  ...Well, it's not really embarrassing, per se, at least because it is Known to People that trying to get Verse to do things she isn't interested in often ends in stabbings - but Ophelia's a bit sad about it.)

Barik can handle reporting to the Marshal, she rather hopes; it's absurd of her but she doesn't want to spend another minute on something that is not directly solving problems.

Oh by the way Barik should probably learn some Vigor magic.  (And since there are any Earthshakers present in the camp, he should talk to them, even if he isn't having trouble.  The scrolls aren't as good at catching bad habits as another pair of eyes.)  Verse could - actually, no, not Fire, maybe Illusion, and she's had some thoughts about Emotion but The Scroll for that doesn't exist yet, not like how the Fatebinders' Library has one for most 'elemental' sigils.  (Which reminds her: Lantry, she wants to make one of those for Preservation magic.  It would be a loss to the world if that faded from Terratus; she's pretty sure it's unique.)

A scroll like the sort she means probably exists somewhere in the Chorus, or in Nerat's head, but she certainly doesn't have and couldn't get it, and the time she met Archon Sirin didn't allow for much talking about magic - honestly she wouldn't have asked even if she could.  There's a lot there.  And that isn't her story to tell, so she will not be speaking of it further.

...Anyway, she wonders if Ice would suit Verse better, come to think of it.  The way she's - dispassionate, more prone to annoyance than anger, that's often the right sort of state.  ...And pretty much anyone can get Force, but it's pretty much equally annoying for everyone she's ever asked what it was like to try.  One of her worse Sigils, actually, but it's too useful to avoid just because of that.

(She's actually brought scrolls for Fire and Ice for her own professional development, and one of Vigor she was planning to loan out to someone who'd take to it that might as well be Barik for the moment.  She knows Life well enough to teach from memory, as well as Illusion, but Illusion's rather tricky by nature.)