Session sixteen of Whimsy's tabletop campaign closed with two separate kinds of patience actually running out. Rufus Calenus went after the dye merchant Vennonia Phoebe to keep her from going to look for the mystery gate herself, and failed — she heard one more man deciding where she was allowed to walk, said so loudly enough for the post to hear it, and kept going toward the warehouse district anyway, with nothing to go on but clerk Calpurnia Vetiana's own earlier words about a mark and a building with no record on it. Calpurnia, not knowing Rufus had already gone, turned to speak to him and found no one there — then gave the warden Herennius the plain answer he'd been waiting three rounds for: that she'd chosen Vennonia's question over his on purpose, last round, because one had a clock on it and the other didn't. It landed as an answer, but it also handed Herennius the one thing he hadn't had on anyone's word but hers — confirmed intent — and he acted on it rather than waiting any further: a runner left his post carrying formal notice of an undeclared storage violation to the market office's own clerk of record, the first time anything about this morning has moved out of Herennius's own private suspicion and into a process with its own momentum. Lucius Naevius, a separate stretch of ground away at the temple steps, listened for whether the household Vennonia was shouting about matched the name given to him in confidence — and came up with neither a match nor a clear mismatch, only the acolyte Tertia noticing, for the first time, that he'd gone somewhere else in his head. Read about it at The Feast of Neptune, No More Waiting. Session seventeen picks up moments later, in the same stretch of ground, with a runner and a merchant both already walking away from the post in two different directions.
The scene
Herennius is still at his own post, having just watched his own runner set off for the market office carrying the formal notice. He still holds exactly what he's held since round ten — a gate with no record on it, a household's mark, and the household's own name — seven rounds back now, unchanged in its particulars. What's new is that, for the first time since he planted Rufus at this post four rounds ago, he turns and finds that spot standing empty. He already heard, in Vennonia's own voice carrying back across the post a few minutes ago, exactly what kind of thing had just been said about Rufus by someone other than himself — "now you decide where I walk." He hasn't yet decided out loud whether a man leaving a post to chase a witness is the same thing he warned Rufus against doing a second time, or something else entirely. He's decided only that it's his to ask about, now, directly.
Rufus is standing where Vennonia left him — a short way off from the post, toward the warehouse district, not back at the spot Herennius planted him at. He has not moved again since she shook him off and kept walking.
Calpurnia is a short way off from the post herself, having just given Herennius his answer. She watched both Vennonia walk off toward the warehouse district and, a moment later, Herennius's own runner set off toward the market stalls in the opposite direction — two people carrying two different pieces of this morning away from her at once, in two directions she can't both follow.
Vennonia Phoebe is already some way into the warehouse district, on her own, with nothing to go on but a mark and a building with no record on it. She doesn't know the way. Nobody has caught up to her yet.
Lucius is at the temple steps, a separate stretch of ground away, still holding what Tertia told him, still having told no one. Tertia is a few steps off, having just asked him, quietly, "You've gone somewhere else" — the first thing anyone has asked him about his own distraction all morning. He has not answered her yet.
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 goes after her himself
Rufus doesn't have the clever answer for Herennius — he never has. What he's got is his legs, and a woman only a little way off yet, moving slow in a crowd that hasn't swallowed her whole. "Vennonia!" he calls, not gentle about it. "I'm not here to tell you where to walk again. I'm here because I know this ground and you don't, and I'd rather you be angry at me for following than be the one who finds out the hard way what's past that mark." He goes after her fast, the same way he went after Secundus at the top of the morning, rather than stay and answer to Herennius for the empty post at all.
Roll: Vis 9, Rufus's modifier +1 — 2d6+1 came up [1, 5] for a total of 7 (dice-log index 63). Coming in under 9 is a failure: something goes wrong, and the scene complicates.
It isn't enough. A knot of dockhands moving a handcart closes across the lane right as he's nearly on her, and by the time he's past them she's gone — not shaken off this time, simply lost, swallowed into a row of warehouses he doesn't recognize. He turns back toward the post with nothing to show for having left at all: not Vennonia, not an answer for Herennius, not even a direction worth reporting.
Calpurnia goes after the runner instead
Calpurnia doesn't chase Vennonia. She said her piece to her two rounds ago and meant it, and sixteen rounds of refusing to put her own mark on an unchecked claim doesn't end because the other claim got harder to reach. What she can't let go of is the runner. "A moment," she says, falling in alongside him rather than blocking his way. "I'm not asking you to stop or to hand it over. I helped put whatever's in your hand there in the first place, and I want to know one thing before you carry it where it can't be unwritten: does it name the household, or only the building?"
Roll: Gratia 9, Calpurnia's modifier 0 — 2d6 came up [4, 1] for a total of 5 (dice-log index 64). Coming in well under 9 is a failure: something goes wrong, and the scene complicates.
He doesn't break stride, and he doesn't answer her question. "He told me you'd ask," the runner says, not unkindly, "and told me not to let you close enough to read it." Herennius didn't just act on what she told him — he'd already anticipated the next thing she'd try. She's left holding exactly what she had when the round opened. The runner keeps walking toward the market office; whether the notice he carries names the household or only the undeclared building is exactly as open as it was when the round began.
Lucius tells Tertia the truth, without the name
Lucius doesn't pretend he didn't hear her. "You're right. Something's pulling at me, and it has been since before today started," he tells Tertia, keeping his hands still, the offerings basket steady under one arm. "I'm not going to tell you what, not yet — not because I don't trust you with it, but because I still don't know myself whether it's anything at all, and I won't hand you half a thing and call it honesty."
Roll: Gratia 8, Lucius's modifier +1 — 2d6+1 came up [3, 6] for a total of 10 (dice-log index 65). Clearing 8 by less than 3 is a partial success: he gets what he wanted, at a cost.
She hears it as the straight answer it is — the same shape that bought the two acolytes a reprieve two rounds ago. That's the success: she doesn't press him further today. The cost is what she asks for in its place. "When you do know," she says, "you tell me. Not the others. Me." He agrees — a smaller thing to owe than the truth itself would have been, but a debt the acolytes' silence never asked of him, and one he's given his word on rather than bought outright.
Where the round ends
Herennius is back at his post with the runner gone toward the market office and Rufus's own spot still standing empty — until, as the round closes, Rufus comes back into sight from the direction Vennonia went, with nothing to show for the chase, and finds Herennius already looking straight at him, the question he means to ask plainly visible and not yet spoken.
Calpurnia is left holding exactly what she had when the round opened — no word on whether the formal notice names the household, and now the knowledge that Herennius expected her to try exactly what she tried. Vennonia Phoebe is still somewhere in the warehouse district, alone, on nothing but a mark and a building with no record on it, having slipped even the one person who tried to reach her this round. Lucius, a separate stretch of ground away, has given Tertia an honest answer and taken on a promise instead of a reprieve — he still doesn't know whether the household being talked about at the post is the one she gave him days ago.
Read about the campaign itself at Whimsy's table top campaign, or go back to Session Sixteen — The Feast of Neptune, No More Waiting.