How to Communicate Something Secret to Many People in an Urban Fantasy World? [closed]

Question

(Hi, this is my 1st question on here, so feel free to LMK if you need more info to help answer...)

In my story, the world is like ours, with the exception that there are some aliens who telepathically communicate with certain humans and humans who have a link to flying creatures of Earthly origin. A war is brewing between the aliens, who essentially take over willing humans to use as soldiers, and the flying creatures, who have allies in some of the population. The link that the flying creatures have to certain humans allows them to dream about the human without having met them. The flying creatures need to meet up with these humans at different locations within the next few months, but they need to figure out how to tell the humans to get there without alerting the humans allied with the aliens.

The flying creatures have a tie to a form of magic that no one has been able to make sense of. It was the magic that formed a tie between the fliers and the humans in the first place. What I'm saying is, the way to alert their human allies could be magical OR technological in origin--I just have no idea what this "way" would be. Any ideas?

Answer 1

Dream Manipulation

Ok, I'm a flying creature, and I have beef with these aliens, but I can't take them out alone, I need a human, but if that human snitches my plan is over. Do I have that right?

So first off I have this magical dreaming power. Given how dreams on Earth carry significance across cultures, I suspect that in this world that is supercharged because my flying species has had a long symbiotic relationship with humans. So using my dream powers I can influence the dreams of humans I deem worthy by injecting strong symbolism, like a bridge or clock tower or a big tree, something that has an analog in or near the city but only one. I add some important event that happens there in the dream and when the person wakes up they're likely to visit that place because they saw it in their dream. Maybe I have to do this a couple of nights in a row to get the message across but as long as my first meeting isn't time critical that should be fine.

I'm not sure on the status between my species and the aliens, but it doesn't seem like open war, yet. So I should be fine to travel to these locations freely so long as I'm not doing anything suspicious there. Once the human arrives, given that it's normal for our two species to interact that also shouldn't arouse suspicion. If I can communicate in some way other than dreams, I can emphasize the importance of dreams and hint that more will come and they should take heed.

Now how to avoid the telepathic aliens? Well since the aliens don't seem to have a telepathic link with all humans, my guess is that either they can't force a link or there are not enough aliens to link with everyone. So long as my human doesn't do anything suspicious they shouldn't have a link forced on them, and so long as they don't willingly give themselves into the aliens there's no worry there. I will just have to trust them.

I assume this isn't just my plan, there are probably more flying creatures that will try to gather their own humans for this cause. The more humans we enlist, the more likely we are to expose ourselves. We'll have to keep our humans in the dark as much as possible without making them feel manipulated. If we have some big event planned that requires a lot of humans, with some smaller prep steps along the way, we may need to have each human perform some seemingly insignificant task that when tied together actually becomes important, and have none of them know the full picture.

Answer 2

If the Flying creatures know which Human is linked to them - then the easiest way would be for them to simply put a birthday invitation (or similar appealing sounding invitation) with a Time and Place on it - to encourage the Human to show up.

No need to overcomplicate it.

Answer 3

There's been many solutions developed over time to this problem of secure communications in a time of war, especially during World War Two where there was considerable resources available for developing such communications by all parties involved.

Consider "code talkers" that used an obscure language to communicate. This was a relatively simple kind of code that could have been broken fairly easily in time but given the short time frames involved in implementing the code and the impact on the enemy this was considered a viable option.

Consider the use of code books if time and logistics allow for it. There's all kinds of theories on this being behind the "numbers stations" heard on shortwave radio.

The one time pad form of encryption has been mathematically proven to be unbreakable but requires considerable prior arrangement to work. Well, any encrypted messaging system will require some prearranged system to work if only to setup trivial things like which radio channels to listen on. With that prearranged system in place then any means of obscuring meaning from those not involved but listening in to derive meaning would be inhibited could also be established. As an example if some American separatist in the 1770s whispered into some stranger's ear that the king is sending forces without first establishing this person is loyal to the cause or is loyal to the crown then that makes such communication very dangerous. There would have to be some means to securely establish loyalties in private, such as in a tavern while sharing beers, before giving out information to decrypt an encrypted message sent in the future.

There's a lot to be learned on how to secure communications by looking at what has been done in WW2. A part of what made this secure communications work was sending false orders and reports to see how the enemy reacted. This helped find holes in the system as well as force the enemy to devote resources away from objectives to gain an advantage when things got "kinetic" on the battlefield.

Most anything developed since WW2 in secure communications will be a secret or just a variation on a well established theme. WW2 was a very well documented war and so is a deep well from which to draw on how a modern military functions.