Insect Spies

You summon one or more glossy black beetles, which have a measure of intelligence and make for excellent spies. When they are in your presence, the insects obey your mental commands, and you can issue orders to any number of them as a single standard action, provided that you issue the same orders to each one. In order to issue different orders to different insects, you must spend a separate standard action for each set of orders. An insect in physical contact with you can answer simple questions about what it has observed, at a rate of one question per round. It can relate only what it perceived with its senses, and can't repeat speech. It has difficulty making subjective judgments, and questions that demand such reasoning are unlikely to yield a clear answer. For example, an insect is unable to relay someone's emotional state or determine who among several people it saw might be in charge. Each insects' size is Fine. Each insect has 1 hit point, AC 20, a move and climb speed of 5 feet, and a fly speed of 20 feet (perfect maneuverability). The insects use your saving throw bonuses, have a Perception skill bonus of %1, and can't make attacks. They can make Stealth checks to avoid being noticed even if they lack a source of cover or concealment, and they have a Stealth skill bonus of %2. The insects can even climb onto creatures of Tiny or larger size while using Stealth, possibly riding on those creatures unnoticed. A Tiny creature gains a +16 bonus on Perception checks made to notice one of these insects currently climbing on it. For each size category larger than Tiny the creature being climbed is, this bonus is reduced by 4 (to a minimum of +0 for Huge or larger creatures). You also maintain a faint mystical connection with these insects, which allows you to sense where they are. As a full-round action, you can concentrate on the spell in order to learn the direction and relative distance of each of the insects.