Intelligence Agency
Coedd’s Intelligence Agency doesn’t literally throw its doors open for Hexennial visitors but purely because the doors are always open. One of them, in fact is broken and is at its most closed an inch or two ajar. There is a maintenance request in to sort it but maintenance have been busy preparing for the conference and this job was judged low priority. But it does metaphorically throw its doors open to visitors and that’s something.
Spies, helpfully wearing badges identifying themselves as such (“Hi, I’m Matt Harry 372.12. Ask me about spying for Coedd”), circulate; inviting anyone who expresses an interest to come and visit. Those that do get a novelty mug and have the sign up sheet pointed out to them.
Inside the converted warehouse, visitors are eagerly shown details of countless schemes and treated to a display of ostentatious codename usage. It’s clear to anyone visiting that those present are dilettantes who are largely “spying for Coedd” because it gives a break from their professional duties. “Its a LARP, not an intelligence agency” most will leaving thinking. Those a bit more attuned, though, might spot something else. Yes, they’re dilettantes, yes this is done in fun as much as anything else, but they are good at it. They’re plans could well work. They’re information gathering methods have been well thought out and well executed. They’re secret handshakes may be ridiculous and their codenames absurd (particularly given the fact they often slip up and refer to each other in plaintext) but the codes and ciphers they actually use are strong and at times unbreakable without magic. They might well just be playing a game, but they’re damned good at playing it and what’s the real difference anyway?
Coedd Arrival
Coedd is old. At the same time Coedd is ever young, eternal and everdying. To be specific, this particular avatar of Coedd is old. Never limber at the best of times it is now close to immobile and takes the best part of ten minutes to walk down the ramp from the ship that brought it here. The walk from there to the room where Ordo Roberts, the sixtieth and forty-two hundredths is preparing for his final mellification is agonisingly slow - acolytes accompany it in shifts to allow time for toilet breaks.
Eventually though, several hours after landing, it stands before the venerable scholar and by extension before the beers. Twenty chemical translators beep while those who have had augmented noses installed sniff the air.
Coedd !UNTRANSALTED! Tiny-meat.
“Tiny-meat” had come up before, on the rare occasions Coedd had felt the need to distinguish between the bees and literally every other form of non-plant life in Tekhum. But the chemical trace being displayed was new and there were excited glances between the linguists in the room. A new word! During its laborious walk from there to the grove they huddled in knots of conversation, occasionally one drifting from one group to another to ensure conversations were disseminated.
In the almost an entire day it took it to walk to the grove, a slow consensus emerged. Coedd’s traditional polite greeting had always been translated as “acknowledges” - it was essentially a simple messenger pheromone used as a handshake. Coedd is prepared to send and receive messages. And this new word was similar in structure but with deuterium groups attached. The only other place the linguists had seen deuterium in Coedd’s conversation was in its own identifier, “Coedd”. Their presence here couldn’t be a coincidence, it must be a way of…of elevating the term. The slow consensus emerged and that consensus was that: Coedd greets the bees. A level of respect it was previously thought Coedd was incapable of.
Eventually this avatar reached the grove and stood in the middle. Over the course of the year the last of its leaves fall. It can be used, acolytes agree, as compost to feed the hive’s ever present need.