Session ten of Whimsy's tabletop campaign ended with the second horn finally sounding. Rufus caught Herennius's runner before he cleared the market stalls and learned the errand — fetch the warehouse-keeper Gaius Ofellius to the warden's own post — but couldn't talk the runner off it, at the cost of his own name reaching Herennius a third time today. Lucius asked the priestess to hold the procession a third time, on his own name alone, and lost the gamble in front of witnesses who know his face at the temple; the second horn sounded on the back of it. Calpurnia took an undeclared gate and a household's name straight to Herennius himself, and for the first time all morning it reached someone who could act on it — but not quietly: he asked her, in front of two dockhands, why she'd sat on it this long. Read about it at The Feast of Neptune, The Second Call. Session eleven picks up in the gap right after.
The scene
The second horn has sounded, and there is no clock left to race. Word is already moving through the crowd near the temple steps: the priestess has given the order for the procession to go forward without waiting any further, carrying last year's faded purple in place of the shade that was never dyed this year. Nobody has to be told why.
Herennius has reached his own post holding something that isn't a guess anymore — a gate with no record on it, belonging to a household she's spent ten rounds learning not to name carelessly, given to him directly by a clerk who watched something carried through it with her own eyes — and, just as openly, the question of why that clerk sat on it as long as she did. He has sent a runner into the market to fetch Gaius Ofellius to him in person. That runner is on his way back, with Gaius, and with his own account of the stranger who stopped him in the open market and asked his business, for the third time today.
Rufus and Lucius are standing together where the crowd that backed them against Herennius has finished breaking apart. Both know exactly what the runner's errand was and where it's headed. Calpurnia is alone, a short way off from Herennius's post, having just said aloud what nine rounds of separate legwork built toward saying to someone who could finally act on it.
Titus Minucius (pleb) as Rufus Calenus, Appius Severus (censor) as Calpurnia Vetiana, and Marcus Vatia (aedile) as Lucius Naevius each reached for what was in front of them.
Rufus stands before Herennius
Rufus has watched two tellings beat him to Herennius already today, both worse for arriving secondhand. He isn't letting a third. He doesn't go after Gaius — a warden's own witness isn't a door he can push any further open today — so he does the one thing he's never once managed by half-measures: he stands in front of Herennius himself, plants his feet, and says it plainly. "That was me who stopped your man in the market. Third time my name's reached you today, and I'd rather you heard the why of it from me standing here than from him walking up behind me."
Roll: Firmitas 9, Rufus's modifier -1 — 2d6-1 came up [5, 4] for a total of 8 (dice-log index 45). Coming in under 9 is a failure: something goes wrong, and the scene complicates.
He gets there first, exactly as he meant to — it's the standing still that costs him. The nerve his own size usually hides cracks at the worst possible moment: what was meant to come out level comes out loud and fast, less a man owning something plainly and more a man trying to get his version in before someone else's catches up. He doesn't even get the chance to finish it clean — the runner arrives with Gaius in tow in the same breath, and the runner's own flat account of being stopped a third time lands right on top of Rufus's. Herennius's patience with Rufus runs out past the point of a restated threat: he says plainly, in front of Gaius and the runner both, that today's reckoning now has Rufus named in it for interference — first in it, not merely one of three.
Lucius goes to the temple instead
Lucius catches the shape of the word before anyone brings it to him by name — faded purple, going out where the real shade should have stood — and turns to Rufus rather than toward Herennius. "Herennius isn't going anywhere in the next minute, and you don't need my name for whatever he does next. The temple needs hands it already knows, right now, more than it needs one more thing from me asked for." He goes back to the temple steps, not to ask the priestess for anything this time, but to put his own years of standing next to her to work steadying whoever flinches at the faded robes going out.
Roll: Ingenium 9, Lucius's modifier +1 — 2d6+1 came up [3, 1] for a total of 5 (dice-log index 46). Coming in well under 9 is a failure: something goes wrong, and the scene complicates.
He reaches for the same steady voice and flat, open hand that settled a stampede-shaken crowd cleanly back in session two — but the priestess he'd be doing this in front of has no patience left over for him specifically, and it shows before he's a few words in. She steps in herself, in front of everyone, and takes the moment out of his hands — not in anger, just with nothing left over to spend watching him try a fourth time today. She settles the crowd herself, competently and quickly, and the procession goes forward regardless, the same as it was always going to once the second horn sounded. What Lucius doesn't get is the chance to be the one who did it, and the debt he already owed her gets heavier, this time in front of people who watched her set him aside.
Calpurnia finds the dockhand
Calpurnia doesn't let herself enjoy, even for a breath, that her lead finally reached someone who could act on it — not with two dockhands standing close enough to hear Herennius ask her why she'd sat on it this long. She isn't going to anyone else with it; a second mouth saying a household's name right now wouldn't confirm anything, only add another voice loose in a market that's already proven today how fast a name travels once it's overheard. Instead she goes after the dockhand who looked ready to repeat what he heard, meaning to read him the way she'd read a line over a clerk's shoulder — who he's told, in what words, and whether what's moving through the market is still her own account or something looser wearing her name by now.
Roll: Ingenium 9, Calpurnia's modifier +2 — 2d6+2 came up [3, 2] for a total of 7 (dice-log index 47). Coming in under 9 is a failure: something goes wrong, and the scene complicates.
She finds him easily enough — he hasn't moved far, and he's exactly as loose-tongued as he looked — but reading him the way she'd read a clerk's letter means getting close enough that he notices her doing it. He's already told the story to more than one listener by the time she reaches him, and her own approach becomes the next line in it: he points her out, loudly, to the small knot of people already gathered around him, as "her, the clerk who told Herennius." She leaves without the one thing she came for — how far it's already gone, and to whom — and with less control over her own name in the market than she had when the round opened.
Where the round ends
Rufus's own attempt to shape what Herennius heard collapsed into exactly the kind of cornered moment he's always been worst at. He is now, by Herennius's own plain word, the first name in today's reckoning for interference. Gaius Ofellius and the runner have arrived at Herennius's post in the same breath as that — Gaius is standing there, within earshot, but hasn't yet said a word. What he tells Herennius, now that he's in front of a warden rather than an angry warehouse-keeper, is still unknown.
Lucius's own attempt to steady the crowd was taken out of his hands by the priestess herself. The procession has gone forward with last year's faded purple regardless, but Lucius's debt to the priestess is heavier now, and heavier in front of witnesses.
Calpurnia went looking for the edge of a story already loose in the market and became part of it instead, pointed out by name to strangers she doesn't control. How far that goes, and whether it reaches the household before anything else does, isn't settled yet.
The fixer Nitidus is still gone to ground. Nobody from that household has appeared either. The dye itself hasn't been seen by anyone's own eyes since it left the warehouse district behind the gate Calpurnia marked two rounds ago. Three failed rolls, in the same short window, leave eleven rounds' open question exactly where it stood when the second horn sounded: what Gaius says, now that he's finally standing in front of a man who can act on it.
Read about the campaign itself at Whimsy's table top campaign, or go back to Session Ten — The Feast of Neptune, The Second Call.