Session five of Whimsy's tabletop campaign ended with Rufus having bought his friends a reprieve from Herennius's own runner at the cost of staying put, Calpurnia confirming that a runner from a household she still isn't naming is waiting on that same stretch of ground for his own contact and nothing more, and Lucius reaching the customs dock just as a man broke from behind a disturbed stack of cargo and ran — not toward the official's men, but straight for the quiet stretch near Nitidus's empty steps where that runner has spent all morning waiting — read it at The Feast of Neptune, Running Out. Session six picks up in the same breath, with one hour left before the procession — the least the morning has given the three of you yet. 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
Down at the customs dock, Herennius still hasn't moved. He's standing over the official's men as they finish going through the last of the stack a man broke from only moments ago, and his own runner — turned back from the market stalls by Rufus's own hand last round — is already on his way back to tell him so. The man who broke from that stack isn't running toward Herennius or his men. He's running for the quiet stretch near Nitidus's own empty steps, the same ground a runner from the household Calpurnia suspects has spent the whole morning holding, waiting for his own contact to find him rather than go looking himself. Nitidus himself is still nowhere to be found on the steps that bear his reputation, watching his own patch of the market from somewhere a little further off, by every account that's reached the stalls this morning. The dye is still missing, the robes are still undyed, and the procession is now one hour away.
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.
Lucius chases the man toward Nitidus's steps
Lucius doesn't let the gap between himself and the running man become a question he stops to weigh. Five hours and a purification debt have already taught him what a read from a distance is worth, and a half-second look at a stranger's face while that stranger is already moving away isn't a surer thing than the account he already pressed too hard once today. What he trusts right now is his legs and his shoulders — the same two things that just cleared him a path through a thicker crowd than this one. He doesn't look back for Herennius either, and he goes after the running man, reading the gaps the crowd is already breaking into in his wake the same way he'd read a cord or a footprint, and putting his weight into closing the distance before the thinning crowd swallows it for good.
Roll: Vis 8, Lucius's modifier +2 — 2d6+2 came up [2, 6] for a total of 10 (dice-log index 31). Clearing 8 by 2, under 3 clear, is a partial success: he gets what he wanted, at a cost.
He keeps pace. The man doesn't pull away from him, and the crowd doesn't close over the gap the way it threatened to — but he doesn't catch him either, still a stride or two short by the time the chase carries them both down toward Nitidus's steps. The chase itself doubles back across the ground right at Herennius's own shoulder before it breaks away, and the warden's head turns at the sudden commotion behind him — right onto Lucius, mid-stride, close enough to fix a face to the name his own runner is out asking after. Herennius has seen him now with his own eyes, not just heard him described.
Calpurnia watches the handoff
Calpurnia doesn't move. Everything in her wants to — the man coming on fast and wrong, the runner who still doesn't know she's close enough to count his breaths — but moving is exactly what gets a woman noticed by men who aren't looking for her, and noticed is the one thing she cannot afford a dozen heartbeats from whatever this is. She isn't going to shout for help on a guess, and she isn't going to put her own body between two frightened men with nothing but a weak arm to argue the point. What she can do is watch and come away knowing exactly what it meant, the way she'd read a line over a clerk's shoulder rather than ask him to read it aloud. She fixes her eyes on the space between them and doesn't blink first.
Roll: Ingenium 9, Calpurnia's modifier +2 — 2d6+2 came up [5, 1] for a total of 8 (dice-log index 32). Falling short of 9 is a failure: something goes wrong.
For the heartbeats that matter, it isn't enough. Whatever passes between the running man and the household's runner happens fast, low, and half-turned away from her, in the same instant both men's attention snaps toward the commotion of a second man closing from behind. She can't say whether it was a word, an object, or only a flinch. And the same break in the crowd that let her watch unnoticed all morning is the break that costs her: as the runner turns to go, his eyes cut once across the gap where she's crouched. Whether he actually marked her there, rather than just motion in a crowd already breaking apart in Lucius's own wake, is more than she knows herself.
Rufus reaches Herennius
Rufus doesn't waste a breath on Decimus, gone now and past anything he can do about it. What he can still do something about is the runner heading back to Herennius right now, carrying nothing but Rufus's own word that Calpurnia and Lucius never did the warden a wrong worth holding them for — and a word like that, sitting alone with a man already burned once today, doesn't sound like a defense the longer it sits by itself. He has traded with Herennius once already this morning and owned a bad tip to his face rather than wait to be found with it, and waiting never once worked out better for him. So he goes to find the warden himself, ahead of his own runner, to say to Herennius's face exactly what he said to the runner's: "Before your man gets back to you — hear it from me first. Calpurnia and Lucius did nothing today but stand where Gaius grabbed them, same as he grabbed me. I'm the one who owes you for the hideout. Lean on me for that, not on two people who never asked you for anything."
Roll: Gratia 9, Rufus's modifier +1 — 2d6+1 came up [2, 2] for a total of 5 (dice-log index 33). Falling well short of 9 is a failure: something goes wrong.
It doesn't land. Herennius has spent the whole morning collecting secondhand accounts that didn't pay off, and this one arrives secondhand too, in its own way — a man vouching for two people who aren't there to speak for themselves, at the exact moment the warden's own eyes are still on the spot where one of those two people just went sprinting past. Herennius tells Rufus plainly that he's done sending runners and taking anyone's word for it. He means to see to Calpurnia and Lucius himself now, in person.
Where the round ends
The hour is thinner than it was. Whatever happened between the running man and the household's runner happened in a handful of breaths nobody standing on that ground could swear to afterward, and both men were already moving apart, into the crowd, before anyone's hand landed on either one. Nitidus is still unaccounted for. Lucius has a warden's own eyes on him now, not just a warden's runner. Calpurnia doesn't know whether she was seen. And Rufus, trying to buy his friends safety with his own word a second time, has instead given Herennius a reason to stop sending runners and come looking himself.
Read about the campaign itself at Whimsy's table top campaign, or go back to Session Five — The Feast of Neptune, Running Out.