Session three of Whimsy's tabletop campaign ended with Rufus clear of Herennius but the hideout tip no longer his alone to use, Calpurnia confirming a rival household is watching the market as closely as she is without a page or a name to show for it, and Lucius leaving a witness's clean account less clean than he found it — read it at The Feast of Neptune, Converging. Session four picks up an hour later, with three hours left before the procession. Every roll below ran through the campaign's scripted, seeded dice roller. The post gives each roll's expression, the dice that came up and the total, with its index in the dice log: a reference into a log kept privately.
The scene
Herennius's runner is back from the hideout empty-handed, and the warden who spent an hour and a man on it has not come looking for Rufus again yet — but means to. Nitidus's own absence from his usual spot on the customs-dock steps has stopped being a quiet thing and started being something stallholders remark on out loud. And down at the customs dock, a handcart that went over in the crowd's rush three mornings ago still hasn't been righted, and the dockworkers still arguing over whose fault it was have argued long enough and loud enough that someone has finally sent for an official to sort it out properly — a different office than Herennius's, already on its way, indifferent to what any of the three of you still need from that stretch of ground before it arrives.
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 seeks out Herennius first
Rufus doesn't wait to be found. He reads Herennius's face the way he used to read an officer's before a dressing-down nobody wanted to be first in line for, and decides the worse fight is standing there cornered when it lands rather than meeting it walking. He finds the warden himself: "Your man came back with nothing. I know it, you know it, and I'd rather you hear that from me walking up to you than catch me somewhere trying not to be seen. The tip was good when I gave it — Secundus isn't there now, that's not on me lying to you. But it's on you, me, and your morning either way, so here I am."
Roll: Gratia 8, Rufus's modifier +1 — 2d6+1 came up [2, 2] for a total of 5 (dice-log index 26). Short of 8, a failure: something goes wrong, and the scene complicates.
Herennius doesn't hear a man owning a stale tip plainly. He hears a man who's had an hour to work out exactly the right thing to say before being asked, and a warden who's just burned a runner and a morning on bad information isn't inclined to reward someone for sounding rehearsed. Showing up first doesn't buy back the hour his runner lost, he tells Rufus — and for the first time says outright, rather than leaving it a general threat over the morning, that he means to find Calpurnia and Lucius too and hold all three of them to the same account if nothing solid turns up before the procession. He doesn't detain Rufus. He doesn't need to — the threat has three names on it now instead of one, said to the one person guaranteed to carry it back.
Calpurnia presses Philotas a third time
Calpurnia doesn't close on the runner she'd tailed the round before, and she doesn't open her mouth for Gaius — not with Herennius standing close enough to turn a guess into testimony, on a morning he's already been burned once by someone else's bad information. So she goes back to Philotas, a third time, before the sun finishes talking him out of standing still. She doesn't plead and doesn't threaten — she simply reminds him, quietly, exactly what he still owes her and exactly how little she's asking him to risk to clear it: "Not a copy. Not a telling. The page. You've run out of morning to keep almost giving it to me."
Roll: Ingenium 8, her own choice of attribute, modifier +2 — 2d6+2 came up [2, 1] for a total of 5 (dice-log index 27). Short of 8, a failure: something goes wrong, and the scene complicates.
A third ask is one too many for a clerk whose nerve was already thin. Philotas doesn't hand her a page, and doesn't hand her an excuse either — he goes pale, says he can't, not today, not with everyone already watching everyone else, and walks away from his own errand at the fish stalls rather than risk being seen with her a fourth time. A couple of nearby stallholders clock a flustered clerk hurrying off, nothing that reaches Herennius from across the square — but Philotas is gone, and with him the one route to paper proof Calpurnia has spent three rounds trying to reach.
Lucius breaks for the temple
Lucius looks toward the customs dock, then back toward the temple road, and for the first time all morning doesn't let the pull of the dye win on reflex. He finds whoever's closest before he turns: "Whatever's waiting at that dock is coming up whether I'm stood over it or not. I gave Gaius my word about the dye, but I made an older promise than that one, to the temple, and this is the last hour I get to keep it in the right order. Send for me if it breaks open before I'm back." He doesn't wait for an answer he isn't owed, and leaves for the temple steps with the offerings basket still under one arm.
No roll: reaching the temple, or being heard there, was never in doubt — only the time it cost, and this was the last round that cost was still "the better part of a round" rather than the window closing outright. Lucius keeps his word to the temple. The dye-hunt goes on without him for the rest of this round.
Where the round ends
Three hours have not yet become two. None of the three of you went anywhere near the customs dock this round. Rufus is free of a detention that was never formally made, but Herennius has now said Calpurnia's and Lucius's names out loud as people he intends to hold to the same account. Calpurnia has lost Philotas and the ledger page he never quite gave her, and has nothing left pointing toward the household she suspects beyond what she already learned tailing its runner last round. Lucius has kept his word to the temple, at the cost of this round entirely, and left asking to be sent for the moment anything breaks.
And at the customs dock, the official sent for the handcart dispute has arrived — on a schedule nobody this round raced or contested. Nobody has laid a hand on Secundus, Nitidus, or whoever the rival household sent to meet him. Now someone with no stake in any of it is standing in the middle of where this has been heading for three sessions, and what that official notices, asks, or disturbs simply by being there isn't something any of you decided.
Read about the campaign itself at Whimsy's table top campaign, or go back to Session Three — The Feast of Neptune, Converging.