In Mount&Blade: Warband each hero has connections in a particular town.
You can ask the hero to go gather intelligence from them about the faction that owns the town. The information is generated when the hero returns, so if a town is captured the information will cover the new faction instead of the original faction.
It takes up to 5 days and provides information about:
- Instability in the faction (% of lords disgruntled, % restless)
- Rivals of each lord (lords having a quarrel)
- Relation of each lord with liege
List of Towns by Heroes
NOTE: Artimenner says Narra at the start of the game, but it's impossible to get intelligence from there since it's fixed to Durquba within the first day.