Session twelve of Whimsy's tabletop campaign closed with the warehouse-keeper Gaius Ofellius finally answering a straight question from someone who could act on it: pressed by the market warden Herennius himself, he allowed, haltingly, that there's a storage building in the warehouse district that has never once shown up on any manifest he's clerked stock through — still without saying whose it is. Rufus Calenus tried to hold himself still and silent while it happened and couldn't; his nerve broke anyway, and Herennius moved him back a few paces without so much as looking at him. Calpurnia Vetiana reached the dye merchant Vennonia Phoebe first, before a looser, secondhand telling could, and gave her a clean account — at the cost of Vennonia taking it as confirmation and setting off on her own, loudly, toward Herennius's post. Lucius Naevius noticed a household's place in the processional order had gone unfilled this year for the first time anyone could remember, and asked the acolyte Tertia whose place it was; she didn't have the answer ready, only a promise to have it once her hands were free. Read about it at The Feast of Neptune, The Witness at the Post. Session thirteen picks up moments later, with Herennius turning from Gaius toward Rufus for the first time all morning to ask him something straight, rather than only threaten him.
The scene
A few stalls off, loud enough to be heard before she can be seen, Vennonia Phoebe is working her way toward Herennius's post with an account of her own — a gate with no record on it, a household's mark, something carried through inside the hour, same as Calpurnia gave it to her, except nobody told Vennonia to be quiet about how certain to sound saying it. She hasn't arrived yet. Calpurnia is alone, a short way off, the one person who can see exactly what Vennonia's louder voice might do to a lead twelve rounds of careful legwork built. Lucius is at the temple steps, with an acolyte's promise that an answer is coming the moment her hands are free, and nothing yet to tell him whether that moment has come. Herennius, for the first time all morning, has a question for Rufus rather than a threat — and hasn't asked it 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 answers plainly
Rufus has spent the whole morning either saying too much too fast or saying nothing and having that cost him just as badly. He doesn't try a third way to play it. Herennius isn't threatening him right now — he's asking, straight, for the first time since before the sun was properly up, and that's a shape of this morning Rufus actually knows how to answer. "I didn't hear the whole of it — you had me stood back, remember, your own doing. What I caught: a gate. Behind the warehouses somewhere. Not on any manifest. That's it, that's all of it. I'm not going to sit here and pretend I caught more than I did just to sound like I'm worth keeping close."
Roll: Gratia 8, Rufus's modifier +1 — 2d6+1 came up [5, 3] for a total of 9 (dice-log index 51). Clearing 8 by less than 3 is a partial success: Rufus gets what he wanted, but at a cost.
He gets the answer out exactly as plainly as he meant to, and it's exactly the kind of flat, unhedged account Herennius has been waiting all morning to hear from somebody. Herennius doesn't thank him for it. He asks, instead, how Rufus came to catch any of it at all, standing as far back as he'd just been put — and Rufus's own honesty leaves him nothing to answer with but the truth: he'd been standing closer than he was told he could. Herennius calls it exactly what it is, in front of Gaius and the runner both — twice in one morning now, Rufus has told him things he had no business being close enough to hear — and the formal reckoning he's been threatening stops being something for later. "You're not walking off from this to go do something useful somewhere else," Herennius tells him. "Whatever this is, you're standing here for the rest of it."
Calpurnia gets there first
Calpurnia doesn't try to catch Vennonia and steer her — she tried to steer something already loud and moving once before and came away with less control than she started with. What she has instead is the one thing Vennonia doesn't: Herennius already took her word as real three rounds ago, without her needing to raise her voice at all. She goes straight to him, quickly enough to arrive first, not fast enough to look like she's running from anything. "One more thing, plainly, before anyone else tells it to you louder," she tells him. "Everything I gave you about that gate still stands exactly as I gave it. If a dye merchant arrives in a minute saying the same thing with my name attached to how she heard it, that's hers to carry, not mine."
Roll: Gratia 8, Calpurnia's modifier 0 — 2d6 came up [2, 6] for a total of 8 (dice-log index 52). Meeting 8 exactly, by less than 3, is a partial success: Calpurnia gets what she wanted, but at a cost.
She reaches him first, with Rufus still standing right there newly told he isn't going anywhere, and lays her own exact words down again. Herennius takes it the way he's taken everything she's brought him since the gate itself — as something real. The cost arrives on her heels, almost literally: Vennonia reaches the post only moments later, loud enough to be heard before she's fully arrived, and gives Herennius the same account in her own, much louder register. Calpurnia meant to lay the clean copy down first and let the louder one land second, separately. Instead the two accounts arrive close enough together, right on top of Rufus's own fragment a moment before, that Herennius is standing in front of three mouths confirming the same undeclared building inside a few breaths — which reads less like three people independently telling him the truth, and more like something being managed in front of him on purpose. Herennius says nothing about it yet. The look he gives Calpurnia before turning to actually hear Vennonia out says he's noticed the timing as plainly as she has.
Lucius goes to Tertia
Lucius clocks the change in Tertia before he lets himself hope too much about it — hands still, nothing to fetch, nobody tugging at her sleeve. He crosses to her the unhurried way he'd cross to read a cord above a doorframe, and keeps his voice down under the ordinary noise of packing up. "You said you'd have it once your hands were free. They're free now. Whose place in the order was empty — just tell me, quietly, before the other two start asking you the same thing out loud."
Roll: Ingenium 8, Lucius's modifier +1 — 2d6+1 came up [6, 1] for a total of 8 (dice-log index 53). Meeting 8 exactly, by less than 3, is a partial success: Lucius gets what he wanted, but at a cost.
Her hands are free, exactly as she promised, and this time she has the answer ready rather than having to work it out aloud the way she did a round ago. She tells him, quietly, between the two of them, which household's place in the order went unfilled this year. Lucius has no ledger in his head to check the name against and no reason to know it means anything past a gap in a rite he cares about — but he's reached it all the same, from a direction that has nothing to do with the theft, the gate, or the market at all. That's the success, held clean and quiet, exactly as he wanted it. The cost is Tertia: a name that carries a trade house's own standing isn't one she says easily even at a whisper, and saying it rattles her badly enough that the effort of keeping her voice down shows on her face. The two other acolytes still turning the gap over between themselves don't catch the name itself — Lucius's own care sees to that — but they do catch Tertia going visibly tense over what, as far as they know, is nothing but an empty slot in a procession. Whatever answer they'd have settled for from her a moment ago, they won't now.
Where the round ends
Herennius now has the same undeclared building confirmed from three mouths inside a few breaths — Rufus's own fragment, offered straight for the first time this morning and costing him his freedom to be anywhere else for the rest of the day's reckoning; Calpurnia's second, exact restatement of what she gave him three rounds ago; and Vennonia Phoebe's loud, independent account landing right behind Calpurnia's own. Two of the three have never spoken to each other, and the timing of all three landing at once is plainly what Herennius is weighing as the round closes, more than anything any one of them actually said.
Lucius, a separate stretch of ground away, now privately holds something nobody at Herennius's post has: an answer reached from the temple's side of this morning rather than the market's, through a gap in a yearly rite rather than any gate or any manifest. He hasn't said it to anyone, and he doesn't yet know whether it connects to anything Calpurnia or Rufus have been building toward at the post. What he does know is that Tertia's nerve going tight over answering him has put the two other acolytes one step closer to asking her the same question themselves.
Nobody has appeared from the household itself. Nitidus is still gone to ground. Secundus is still gone and unreachable. The dye itself hasn't been seen by anyone's own eyes since it left the warehouse district behind the gate Calpurnia marked four rounds ago.
Read about the campaign itself at Whimsy's table top campaign, or go back to Session Twelve — The Feast of Neptune, The Witness at the Post.