Okay,
@veekie, I'm liking most of this, but another wave of comments in an effort to polish things up:
[X] [Julia] Hire her, buy her a good quality inn room in town near your residence, with the intent of moving her to your underground place once you have fully secured her loyalties.
-[X] Her job would be to manage your informant networks in general, particularly sorting through the reports and picking out what's significant versus chaff.
-[X] For your initial meeting, first, ask her if she's willing to accept being memory wiped in the event that she disagrees with certain confidential suggestions, and write a note to herself to the effect of giving consent. If not she'd only handle the more aboveboard networks.
--[X] If she agrees to a potential Mindhole sound her out on her religious beliefs, particularly relating to Ranald. You cannot feasibly have her work in your base or with your Ranaldite agents if she's not at least open to the idea. If it goes poorly, simply Mindhole her, have Anton reintroduce you, and ensure that she's isolated from the Ranaldite/Thief elements.
On the living arrangements, I don't like the "with the intent of moving her to your underground place" bit. Aside from the issue of whether our buried palace is actually suitable for being an office building for the Stirland intelligence agency rather than our personal home and laboratory, and the question of whether we want to weaken its security by increasing the number of people who know where it is and can be tailed to it, the vote should address what we're doing now instead of writing about future plans that we may or may not implement. What would be the trigger for "okay, now I've fully secured her loyalties", anyway?
For the moment we should just buy her a fairly nice house in town (from the discretionary budget) that she can live in and use as a fairly subtle place to receive reports and conduct analysis work. Maybe move in a reliable guard or two with her. The alternative is to move her into the castle, which is far more protected, but then everyone knows about her instead of just Van Hal.
Actually, we should have the "her job" part of this make clear exactly who is allowed to know who she is and that she works for us- Van Hal, obviously, but Anton introduced us so we can't squeeze him out, and we probably want at least a handful of people who recognize her and know that she's one of our agents in case she needs to communicate with someone urgently and we're not around.
Are there any other topics that we should bring up during the mindwipe-okay interview? Assassinations (of anyone up to and including really annoying priests), kidnappings (of high nobles!), enticing demons (it's authorized by Van Hal I swear), aiding us in wizardy nonsense, dissecting the undead, torturing prisoners, general skullduggery... as long as she's signing off on that thing we might as well give her the full scope of what our job and thus hers may entail. It'll show us where she flinches, if anywhere.
[X] [Greatswords] Greatswords will stay in the castle, except when we're going somewhere publicly, or interrogating potentially hostile persons.
This seems fine. If we have Julia live anywhere other than with us (and I don't really want her living with us) then she/her office will need guards, though. We can't let someone kidnap and interrogate our analyst or break in and get at her reports and notes. Should we be drawing on the greatswords for that, or find some other source of (more subtle) personnel? If she lives in the castle we could dodge the problem by relying on the castle's defenses and anti-infiltration methods.
[X] [Public Report] Plan Points for public consumption.
-[X] The castle infiltrators were sleeper agents.
--[X] They have not been conducting any significant sabotage.
--[X] Their loyalty was secured by a necromantic spell that would kill them if they even thought of betraying their master, or if their master did not meet them for more than a few days.
--[X] Said master had fled the area the very night an infiltrator got caught.
--[X] The monsters in the castle walls were previous victims of the spell. Refer to Van Hal's paper on details if anyone is interested.
--[X] They were lying about having any religious beliefs, but got away with it because nobody could probe them further on Morrite or Shallyan practices.
-[X] All other castle servants have been examined, their backstories hold up and all future servants would be rigorously examined to prevent more of this.
This seems solid enough. Nothing to add that it's important for everyone to know, I think.
[X] [Private Report] Plan For Van Hals Eyes Only.
-[X] Tell him about everything you learned in the interview. Especially how they produce infiltrators.
-[X] Give him all information you have gathered on your fellow council members.
-[X] You have acquired some subordinates.
--[X] Introduce him to your prospective Number 2 in Julia. In case any unfortunate 'accidents' happens to you(like say, the pseudo-demonic snake), he can pick up some of your networks through her so he wouldn't need to start from scratch.
--[X] The veterans have been assigned to gather gossip in the cities and the army to get a barometer of events
-[X] You have a lead on permanently sealing the snake away. Give him as much information on the process as you have, if he's interested. Noting the cost in mirrors and possibly some assistance with construction since the damned snake can pop out of mirrors if you're building it yourself.
-[X] Confess your religious belief in Ranald to him. Mention how the god of Luck had been looking out for and helping you along with your work so far(particularly avoiding being killed by the Shyish-kebabs, and finding leads at crucial moments), and the belief that Ranald as Protector has a vested interest in Stirland's people not being eaten by vampires and turned into abominations by necromancers. The revolutionary thing happens only in places where their lords are actively abusing the people, which Van Hal of course, is doing the opposite of!
My understanding is that due to GM policy, an order to "give him all the information" will bounce.
@BoneyM, please confirm if this is so; if it is, then this plan needs to track down exactly what additional information Van Hal is getting here. I can't think of anything other than the Jade Wizard bit, to be honest.
It sounds like constructing the mirrors is going to require either hiring a specialist to do it, assigning Julia to the job, or asking Van Hal to manage it- the process was presented as something we'd need a high-Learning individual to manage. If that's the case we should probably make that clear, although I don't think we actually want to request another personal action from Van Hal.
[X] [Orders] Plan Obvious Items
-[X] There's definitely evil afoot in Drakenhof. Perhaps there's a way to survive investigating this.
--[X] That said, the castle itself is off limits. You're certain you aren't up to the task. But you can try to send feelers into their periphery villages if Van Hal feels the risks is worth it.
-[X] The disappearance of your predecessor is very concerning, especially since he's actively trying to sabotage the hunt for him. He must be found, and you've got a lead: Julbach.
--[X] He's likely involved in the matter of the servant infiltrators and the Stirland League. Rolling him up is the next step now that your castle is secured.
-[X] The Stirlandian League is a cancer eating at Stirland's economy, and it must be destroyed.
--[X] This would likely be difficult while the previous spymaster is still at large to run counterintelligence, but it can be done.
-[X] This religion business has gone far enough. It's not really your place, but maybe you should step in and deal with it yourself... somehow.
--[X] There's alternative ways to verifying faith and beliefs than having a priest interrogate them. You could task your city and rural informants to focus on their local practices to identify if theres anything untowards happening religiously.
I would like to explicitly give Van Hal a recommendation for our action this turn- there's been a lot of recent focus on the undead but we've determined fairly solidly that their threat is not immediate, so unless he strongly objects I think it's time to try and hunt down our predecessor. Also, the current predecessor action says that he's likely involved with the servant infiltrators, but we just learned that they were dispatched from Drakenhof and there was no mention in our interrogation of the former spymaster at all, so that seems like something we don't want to say (unless you've got a justification for it?).
The "this religion business" option might actually be a place where we could go "I can spread a bunch of Ranald cults deliberately and have them report to me; it'll increase crime a bit but they're pretty good at catching other cultists". If you're actually telling him that we worship Ranald and have thief-priests on our payroll that makes exploiting such resources in order to make up for a lacking Piety advisor viable.
That said, we don't know if he's going to walk into the meeting and tell Kasmir he's fired or what, so.
. But, I recall only two fights, the undead in the mound and the undead in the castle. 
