Courtesans of Idra

Little is really known about the Courtesans of Idra. The group is made up mostly of beautiful women, and they seem to seek information above all else. Beyond that, nearly everything about them is speculation. Possibly the most secretive group in all of Ghelspad, the Courtesans of Idra are a great mystery.

The Courtesans were first discovered only a few years ago when Anteas of Calastia divined that his young mistress was involved with an Idran cult of some kind. Hours of torturing the poor woman led eventually to an extended witch-hunt all over the Hegemony and to the executions of hundreds of women. Subsequent study of the event has fostered the distinct suspicion that most of those women were completely innocent and had nothing at all to do with the courtesans. Some have even gone so far as to suggest that the group never existed at all beyond a tiny Calastian sex cult that was surely wiped out in the purging. Certainly, few have seen any real evidence of the Courtesans of Idra, and the average person in many countries has never heard of them.

One trustworthy group of people who know of the courtesans’ existence, however, is the Vigils of Vesh. Several victims of the Calastian witch-hunt were in fact vigilant contacts rather than Courtesans of Idra, and ever since the incident, the vigils have Labored diligently to learn more about the mysterious Idran cult. Was it real, or simply a pet name Anteas gave to his suspicions ofwomen? Once they managed to sort the facts about the courtesans from Calastian paranoia, the vigils were able to locate nearly two dozen courtesan operatives in Vesh and began to observe them discretely.

All but six of the observed operatives disappeared without a trace within two months of vigilant discovery. The six remaining courtesans did lie low for several months, but the highly skilled vigilants who watched them succeeded at continuing to gather information about the group, and three clever vigilants managed to infiltrate the courtesans as members.

The reports of these last three vigilants have, of course, yielded more information on the mysterious courtesans than ever before, but even here a great deal of the available information is contradictory or implausible.

All three reports agree that the courtesans seek information on every topic, but especially those topics that are secret or hidden. The courtesans are mostly beautiful women, but many male members do exist and have even been known to rise to high ranks in the organization. The most common form of information gathering is to become a lover of someone with secret knowledge or the power to discover it, and to use charm and sexual prowess to gain the person’s trust. A remarkable number of Veshian officials had courtesans in their lives when the group’s operations were first discovered, and four of the six courtesans observed were wives or even mothers of men in high positions. No clear record abides of any direct action taken by the courtesans anywhere in Ghelspad’s history.

Beyond this small amount of information, however, the reports varied widely. One claimed the organization was a fairly small group (a few hundred members) started only a few decades ago for the purpose of improving conditions for women all over Ghelspad, but especially in the Calastian Hegemony. The leader is supposedly an aging and secretive Albadian witch called Amga.

The second vigilant reported that the courtesans were nearly ten times as numerous as the first, and that they had existed for thousands of years at least. This vigilant said that the courtesans see themselves as the true priesthood of Idra and gather secret information merely as a part of their worship - all to the greater glory of their goddess. The leader mentioned in this report is Idraia, a well-known and influential priestess of Idra in Albadia.

The third vigilant recorded that the courtesans report to Queen Geleeda of Calastia, and that the organization was founded by Idra herself just after the Divine War. Their information gathering serves the purpose of providing information quickly, on Idra’s command, to anyone who needs it, so that all the major events of Ghelspad generally turn out the way Idra wants them to. This report claimed that the courtesans number in the hundreds of thousands.

Whether any of these reports is accurate remains unknown, and indeed, as far as anyone knows for certain, there may well be three different groups, all calling themselves the Courtesans of Idra (there seem to be at least two - see the description of Idraia below). Certainly, the Queen Geleeda theory is by far the most implausible, but even it cannot be wholly discounted.

Though ignored as a wild and silly rumor in most of Ghelspad, the Courtesans of Idra are actively hunted in the Calastian Hegemony, and every year at least one woman - probably innocent and unaffiliated - is executed for being an Idran witch. In Albadia, the courtesans are almost never spoken of, but the subject seemed to be treated with a certain degree of awe and reverence when vigilants questioned native women.

Organization
The only certain aspect of this organization is that it is highly secretive. Any and all communication is carefully encoded in a wide variety of clever ways, some of which the vigils have now adopted as being more efficient than their previous methods. Other codes the vigils have as yet not cracked, and they suspect that many more remain entirely unknown.

Membership with the courtesans does not come with access to very many of the group’s secrets. Apparently, any single low-level courtesan only knows the identities of three or four other operatives at a time, and the newest members often have no direct contact with their immediate superiors for the first year or more. Messages are passed in total secrecy, and codes and passwords also are revealed only little by little over the course of many years.

Recruitment and training of new courtesans usually comes from a peer - often a trusted friend - of little more training and experience than the new member. New memberships and initiations are closely supervised and directed by local leaders, of course, but their involvement is never direct and is always kept secret from novices. Simply finding a local courtesan and choosing to join up is impossible. If the courtesans want your help, they come to you.

Only through great luck, ingenious cunning, and extraordinary patience were the vigils able to learn even what little they did. Other vigilants who tried were quickly discovered as spies, and two have even disappeared. Whether harm has befallen them at the courtesans’ graceful hands, or whether they have cut off contact voluntarily - to operate more effectively or to defect to the courtesans in earnest - is still unknown.

Those chosen by the courtesans are invariably beautiful or charming and highly intelligent, and they usually have some important skill or connection that the courtesans can use, such as magic, family ties, or experience in information gathering. All courtesans are neutral in some way, and one rumor holds that their purpose is the balance of power between the gods of Scam.

History
Recording any kind of accurate history of the Courtesans of Idra proves difficult, not only because of how little is known about them, but also because so much of what is known is contradictory. All that we know for certain only dates back to the courtesans’ discovery in Calastia.

In spring of the year 147 AV, Anteas, Archmage of Calastia, suspected that his young apprentice and lover, a fantastically lovely woman of partial Albadian descent, was secretly trysting with a younger man. Casting divination spells on the girl as she slept, Anteas discovered that her secretive activity was, while perhaps less damaging to Anteas’ own ego, much more dangerous to the Hegemony than he had ever suspected. The girl was gathering information for the Courtesans of Idra.

Using an appallingly effective combination of magic and torture, Anteas discovered the identities of a few more courtesans over the next several days and had them brought in for questioning as well. The same techniques were applied to these women, and they too gave a few names of conspirators. The new list of women proved impossible to locate, however. Some had never been heard of at all, others had disappeared scant days before and could not be found by any means, including magic and unchecked violence. Predictably, the tortured prisoners were blamed for what Anteas’ soldiers failed to find, and the questioning resumed.

In the mean time, some kind of unpleasant interview took place between Anteas and his young lover, Mabda. No one heard the conversation, but the positive side of it was that Anteas spared her further torture when he apparently killed her with a single word. The negative side was that, after Mabda’s death, Anteas seemed driven to exact vengeance from the courtesans. The interrogations increased in brutality, and women from all over the Hegemony were brought in for questioning on the slimmest of suspicions.

Most of Idra’s Calastian clergy were executed in the following weeks;and as mentioned above, nearly a dozen attractive Veshian Vigilants died for the thinnest of suspected connections to Idra’s Courtesans. Any beautiful woman with the slightest chance of overhearing the secrets of her betters feared for her life, and those caught trying to flee the sudden persecution were naturally executed for proving their guilt by running away. When the search began to include the lovers, wives, and families of the nobility, however, the “public” outcry was enough for Virduk personally to declare the Hegemony cleansed of courtesan activity, and the widespread terror ceased.

It is interesting to note that while QueenGeleeda did fall under Anteas’ suspicions for a time, King Virduk calmly allowed her to be questioned and magically probed (without torture, of course), and Geleeda herself seemednot at all annoyed by Anteas’ paranoia. Some even say she exhibited mild approval. All suspicions were dropped within a day, and Anteas apologized formally. After the incident, Geleeda occasionally deigned to aid Anteas in his interrogations, and some evidence suggests that she helped to uncover a few suspects herself. Quite possibly, Geleeda’s cooler head during the hunt as well as her access, as Queen, to high society gossip, led Anteas to the apprehension of the few actual courtesans captured after Mabda’s death.

Since the Calastian purging, little has been seen or heard of the elusive courtesans, though the vigils have confirmed Anteas’ suspicions that they operate in both Vesh and Darakeene as well as the Calastian Hegemony, and it is suspected that a few courtesans are stationed in every major city in Ghelspad, at the very least.

Before the witch-hunt, not much is known, but the predominance of Albadian and Albadian-descended members points to an Albadian origin of some kind for the Courtesans of Idra. Which parts of which histories are accurate, none can say as yet, but the two possible leaders of the courtesans, Amga and Idraia, have both been discovered truly to exist, and they are both indeed remarkable women as outlined below. Geleeda’s involvement with the courtesans seems exceptionally unlikely by all accounts, but the vigilants never make assumptions.

Locations
This aspect of the Courtesans of Idra is entirely unknown. Current thinking believes that the courtesans choose deliberately not to have physical headquarters of any kind, simply because what does not exist cannot be discovered. If they keep records, they perhaps use magical means do to so, as no cache of courtesan secrets has ever been found or even hinted at. At lower levels, courtesans exchange information with expertly feigned casualness in all manner of public places. Most probably, this is the preferred procedure at all levels of the organization, but with magical enhancement.

Members
The vast majority of the courtesans seem to come from sorcerer or bard backgrounds, or are clergy of Idra. A surprising number are also nobility or have even more astonishing educations behind them, such as former vigils or exemplars. As well, many courtesans have training from and loyalties to the Scaled, the two organizations not seeming to conflict noticeably. One almost wonders why Lucera of the Scaled has never been implicated as a courtesan leader, but intelligent as she is, it is unlikely that she possesses the subtlety of the courtesans.

The Courtesans of Idra are far more than mere women of pleasure (for one, not all are female). Many Ghelspadians are unaware of the group’s existence, and most of those who do know that the courtesans are real believe it to be a simple sex cult or prostitute’s guild. This is far from the real truth about the courtesans, but their leaders are quite happy to maintain the charade.

A Courtesan of Idra is an expert in the arts of performance, seduction and lovemaking, but can also function as a highly skilled infiltrator and spy. The true purpose of the cult is unknown, but those few who have dedicated themselves to investigating its secrets know that in addition to their more pleasurable duties, the courtesans are dedicated to gathering information and finding what is hidden. Their ultimate agenda remains a mystery to all but the courtesans themselves, and they are not talking.