Once a day, Zella Zidlii can cast divination with an 81% success rate. When would you have the administration start to devote her to learning more about the Silver Ravens? What would you have her learn? How would you deal with this?
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The books do include information about how interested Barzillai is in the Silver Ravens by the time each book rolls around, so I'd link the amount of resources he uses to find them to that.
We know for instance that he's using the award ceremony in book 2 as a direct excuse to give the party scryable items and to get a good look at them, which would tell me that by that stage he's either going to be using divination magic right after or he already has and was unsatisfied with the results. Prior to that, he's been more preoccupied by his goals of finding the Soul Anchor than anything the Ravens do.
Personally, I'd say he might have tried at least a cursory investigation to learn who was responsible for Nox's defeat and/or the Torrent's escape when those events occur, as they're the first times the party actively inconveniences Barzillai in a way he'd care about. Otherwise, it's likely that he might use Zella to spy on the Aulorians as well if the party does something to the cerberi he was using to spy on them.
Those are the main moments in book 2 where he might be willing to put an important resource like Zella to task on the Ravens. By the time book 3 rolls around he might use her more actively on them, but more so in order to learn more about them in preparation for that book's finale. By book 4 I can see him using her full time against the party.
As for what to learn, by the mid-point of book 2 Barzillai is likely only interested in the party's identities. By 3 he's probably interested enough to learn about their goals and methods so that he knows how best to threaten/hurt them (in my game for instance, he used the fact that the party had a violent reputation to his advantage to run false flag operations and turn public opinion against them while making very specific character-driven taunts to make them incriminate themselves). By book 4 he'd be actively looking for the party's hideout (to trigger the invasion event) and trying to learn the party and organizational weaknesses of the Ravens to hit therm where it hurts most (which can be tied pretty easily to the event system in that book).
Everything Trichotome said: Amazing answer!
That will help to explain so many of the things happening in Book 4! (Like the assault on the base... that's the main one I was trying to figure out a justification for when the players invariably cry foul.)
Just amazing. Thank you.
I don't think my party has put together the danger that these divinations pose for them. I tried to hint at it with her playing a role in a dottari frame job of the serial killings, but they didn't quite get it or follow up after they solved the murders. (Trex, chief of dottari, was known to visit her frequently.)
Maybe they'll get it if they ignore the Award ceremony at the end of book two and the Faux Ravens who I have receive the items are much closer to being good copies of them than their notoriety has any right to be giving the Thrune Team.
If that doesn't work, I'm going to go for her being more public: creating garish public statues with permanent illusion of the Queen and the Paracount, magic mouths to scream for the guards when the words Silver Ravens are uttered near them, mage's decree for public announcements to the entire city, etc.
I'm doing the same profile elevation for Tombus, The Gardner, and Kyrre Ekodyre. I want the party to know and loathe the entire Thrune hierarchy before book four. They already loathe Bazillai.