Whimsy's table top campaign opened its first session in Puteoli, the port on the Bay of Naples, on the eve of the Feast of Neptune. 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
The sun is barely clear of the warehouse roofs over Puteoli's harbor, and the dawn market is already loud. Tomorrow's rites are today's: at midday the priestess leads a procession of offerings from the temple steps through the town, and half of Puteoli means to watch it.
A man is shoving through the market stalls, and he has clearly not slept. Gaius Ofellius, warehouse-keeper on the harbor side, grabs the sleeve of whichever of the party is nearest and doesn't let go. "My warehouse. Someone forced the side door overnight. The dye is gone — all of it, the whole shipment, the purple for the priestess's robes for today." The procession is at midday. He knows which door was forced, who had a key, and who he saw near the warehouse before dawn — but he'll only say what he's asked. By most reckonings, the party has six hours.
Three citizens answered Gaius's plea this round: Titus Minucius (pleb) as Rufus Calenus, a legion veteran with more muscle than nerve; Appius Severus (censor) as Calpurnia Vetiana, a freedwoman clerk who trusts a ledger over a claim; and Marcus Vatia (aedile) as Lucius Naevius, a temple acolyte who reads omens for a living.
Rufus presses Secundus
While Gaius is still talking, Rufus's eye finishes its usual circuit of the square — and catches Secundus, one of Gaius's own dockhands, "hugging the colonnade like the stones themselves are hiding him." Secundus still owes Rufus from Tuesday, and he's walking away from the warehouses, not toward them.
"Oh, you've got to be joking." Rufus cuts through the stalls after him — "Secundus! Don't you walk off on me, you still owe me from Tuesday!" — and means to plant himself in front of the man and lean on him hard: the debt, the tavern, the timing.
Roll: Gratia 8, Rufus's modifier +1 — 2d6+1 came up [4, 5] for a total of 10 (dice-log index 15). Clearing 8 by 2 is a partial success by rules.md's table: Rufus gets his answer, at a cost.
Secundus cracks fast and loud — too loud. He owes money he can't clear; Nitidus set him up with a buyer who wanted purple no one could trace; there's a man coming for it before midday. But he hears his own voice carry across the market and panics at what he's just said in front of everyone — and bolts.
Rufus goes after him. Roll: Vis 7, modifier +1 — 2d6+1 came up [3, 1] for a total of 5 (dice-log index 18). Short of 7, a failure. Secundus ducks the grab clean; Rufus's own momentum carries him into a bread-seller's table instead, loaves everywhere, and Secundus is gone into the crowd — taking the fastest route to the dye itself with him.
Calpurnia weighs a name
Calpurnia doesn't reach for Gaius's sleeve the way he reached for hers. She lets him finish the whole account before asking, mildly, "Who did you say you suspect?" — not because she needs the answer, but because she wants to hear what he says before she says anything of her own. She's already back at a writing table four days ago, a manifest under her stylus with one line that didn't sit right: purple, any quantity, no provenance, timed to land before today, from a man who didn't want it written down twice. "Give me a moment before you point me anywhere," she tells Gaius. "I may already know something you don't. I want to be sure of it before I say it where it can't be taken back."
Roll: Ingenium 7, Calpurnia's modifier +2 — 2d6+2 came up [1, 3] for a total of 6 (dice-log index 16). Short of 7, a failure: the dates don't resolve as cleanly from memory as she'd like, and before she can settle it for herself, Rufus's crash into the stalls snaps every head in the square toward the commotion — Gaius's included. He glances back at her, expectant, as if her stillness through all of this were itself a kind of answer. She's holding a name she's not yet sure she should say, and now someone is waiting for her to say something.
Lucius reads the cord
Lucius doesn't go for the door first. He goes for the cord — the knotted charm nailed above the warehouse threshold, hanging by one thread. "I hung that myself two days gone, whole and fixed," he tells Gaius. "It doesn't tear itself loose like that on its own." He crouches at the threshold, reading the frame and the cord the way he'd read any omen brought to the temple steps.
Roll: Ingenium 7, Lucius's modifier +1 — 2d6+1 came up [3, 5] for a total of 9 (dice-log index 17). Clearing 7 by 2 is a partial success: he gets a read, at a cost. It won't resolve clean either way — ordinary damage from the break-in, or something meant — and rather than let it go unsettled, he commits himself to a purification rite before the procession, on top of whatever else the morning still asks of him.
Where the round ends
A name — Nitidus — and the shape of a debt, but not the dye itself, and not the man who took it, now loose somewhere in the market crowd. Calpurnia is holding a name of her own, unproven in her own judgment, with Gaius waiting on her to speak it. Lucius has bound himself to a rite the morning didn't budget for. The dye is still missing, and the sun is still climbing.
Read about the campaign itself at Whimsy's table top campaign.