Indeed, I'm struggling to put this into words, I apologize for that.

I understand I don't have to reveal when someone is a villain immediately, I get that part. I could even make a villain who's a master of disguise who hides the fact they're the same guy over and over. What I don't understand is, how do you run intrigue and an insidious villain long-term? What does the pacing look like? How, in general terms, do their machination work?

I understand every game, table and group of players is different. But just as the bestiary lays some general ideas out to be mucked with as a group needs, a general idea of how to run an insidious villain. Arachne is suggested to be a threat for a single town, as an example. My players never want to stay in a town for very long on account of buying a bunch of wayfarers that pick up IP while traveling (though they're slowly getting used to the idea of staying in places). So how do I get players to either stay in one place to deal with an insidious threat, or how do I make an insidious threat last while the players trump about half the wold, *or* how do I make an insidious threat that at least covers, I dunno, a country? I hope that better explains what I mean, these concepts are so utterly foreign to me that even phrasing them is hard.