Session twenty-nine of Whimsy's tabletop campaign closed with three failed rolls of its own. Rufus Calenus crossed to a shape standing too still at the ragged edge of Vennonia's crowd and put a straight question to them — who sent you, what do you want with me — and it was the directness itself that cost him: whoever it was read his approach for what it was a half-second before he closed the distance, and used the one beat everyone else's attention needed to register a raised voice to step back into the press of bodies and simply not be where he was looking a moment later. No name, no answer — gone the same way Nitidus himself has gone to ground, except this time it was Rufus's own bluntness that bought the gap. Calpurnia Vetiana went to the customs house's own registry daybook, looking for something true and checkable — and found the registry clerk cagier than a daybook request had any right to make him: the page she wanted had already been pulled and re-shelved once that day, by a hand nobody there could name. At the temple steps, Lucius Naevius stepped back a real distance from Tertia and turned to the offerings rather than watch to see whether it worked, and his hands weren't as steady as the rest of him — something in the basket went over, clattering down the temple steps loud enough to carry, and the priestess, already as far as the doorway and no further, turned her head back at the sound; Tertia, who hadn't looked at him since she stepped back, looked now, at the noise rather than at him. By the round's own close, nothing having contested either summons, Herennius left his post for the market office — for the first time all campaign, nobody answerable left standing over the gate in his place — and Calpurnia went on to the clerk of record's own office, carrying not the clean answer she'd gone looking for but a second unexplained disturbance instead. Read about it at The Feast of Neptune, Called Away. Session thirty picks up minutes later.
The scene
Herennius has reached the market office and presented himself, exactly as the summons required — the first time all campaign he has stood anywhere but the post he's held since round one. Nothing here decides who hears him there, or when. Calpurnia has reached the same building. The clerk of record is already holding the manifest and the warehouse record, the mark beside her signature still as unexplained as the day it first reached him, and before she can say a word herself he states plainly what he already has in hand. Neither Herennius nor Calpurnia has sought out the other since arriving.
At the gate, Vennonia Phoebe's crowd stands exactly where it has stood for rounds now, nobody from behind the gate having answered for any of it since its one brief appearance, nine rounds back. The two office's men who spent the morning questioning Herennius are still there, watching a post that, for the first time, has nobody standing over it but Rufus — and they say so, to each other, loud enough for him to hear, as something their own report will have to note regardless of what either institution decides about anyone's conduct. The figure who crossed Rufus's path and ran is gone, unconfirmed as anyone; nothing here says whether they, or whoever sent them, come anywhere near this ground again.
At the temple steps, nothing has moved since the clatter on the stairs. The priestess is still at the temple's own doorway, her head still turned back toward the sound rather than toward the temple proper, neither descending nor withdrawing further. Tertia has not looked away from where the noise came from — except that her eyes have left it and settled on Lucius's own back instead, and stayed there.
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 holds the gate, and the quiet he wanted costs him anyway
Nobody has told Rufus to do anything, which is new. The two office's men are still there, picking over an empty post with nowhere else for their attention to go, and one of them says it plainly to the other, loud enough that he clearly doesn't mind Rufus hearing it: a post standing open the one morning somebody's watching goes in a report regardless. Rufus plants his boots the way he's planted them in front of every warden, merchant, and office's man since before midday. "Nobody told me to," he tells the two men, "so I'm telling you myself. I'm not walking off this gate till somebody who actually runs it tells me otherwise." He means to say it quiet. For once today, he tells himself, he doesn't need to raise it.
Roll: Firmitas 12, Rufus's modifier -1 — 2d6-1 came up [6, 1] for a total of 6 (dice-log index 101). Coming in under 12 is a failure: something goes wrong, and the scene complicates.
It's the one thing in him that's never once held up clean under exactly this kind of pressure, and it doesn't hold up now either: with nobody over him to answer for it either way, the back half of his own sentence comes out sharper and louder than he meant it, the old parade-ground pitch creeping back in right when he needed it least. The two office's men don't hear a man holding a line steady — they hear a crate-hauler squaring up to tell them their own business, unprompted, with nobody standing over him to vouch for it. One of them writes something down this time, for the first time all campaign about Rufus himself rather than about the post or the warden who left it. Rufus doesn't move from the gate. He also doesn't get the quiet he was reaching for.
Calpurnia offers a page to answer a page, and the clerk hears a convenience instead
Calpurnia doesn't spend a word on Herennius being somewhere in the same building — he isn't the account in front of her. The clerk has already stated his own fact plainly: the mark beside her signature is still unexplained, manifest and warehouse record both sitting in his hand and not in hers. "You're holding two pages and calling the mark between them unexplained," she tells him, level, the same flat register she'd use reading a line back to be sure she'd copied it right. "I went looking for a third this morning — the customs house's own daybook, nothing to do with either page in your hand, stamped by a hand that isn't mine and isn't Fadius's. I didn't get to read it; it had already been pulled and put back before I asked for it, by somebody nobody there could name. That's one more document behaving exactly as strangely as yours did, not proof of anything on its own. Let me hold the manifest and the warehouse record together, in my own hands, now, with that in mind. If the mark sits on both the same way, that tells you something no word of mine could. If it doesn't, that tells you something else. Either way it stops being my account against your doubt, and starts being a page answering a page — the only kind of answer I've ever trusted myself to give."
Roll: Ingenium 13, Calpurnia's modifier +2 — 2d6+2 came up [3, 4] for a total of 9 (dice-log index 102). Coming in under 13 is a failure: something goes wrong, and the scene complicates.
The clerk doesn't hand either page over. Worse for her, he doesn't hear the daybook the way she means it: a second unexplained disturbance, volunteered by the one woman already under suspicion for the first one, on the very morning she's finally being made to answer for it, reads to him less like good faith and more like a complication produced exactly when one would help her. He says so plainly: he'll not be handing her anything to examine today, and since there are now officially two unexplained marks touching her hand instead of one, he means to send to the customs house himself and put the question to the registry clerk directly, rather than take either her account of it or the clerk's. She leaves with the same two pages still out of her hands, and a second institution about to start asking the same question the first one is.
Lucius turns to the priestess, and the words carry further than he aimed them
Lucius doesn't turn around to Tertia. He gathers what spilled, steadies it in his hands, and calls out instead to the priestess, who's already turned her head back toward the noise on her own: "Nothing here is lost, and nothing here was meant — I'll see it set back in order before it's carried." It's temple business, said like temple business, to the one person whose business it actually is — he doesn't lower his voice to make it anything smaller than that.
Roll: Ingenium 12, Lucius's modifier +1 — 2d6+1 came up [6, 5] for a total of 12 (dice-log index 103). Meeting the difficulty exactly, by less than three, is a partial success: Lucius gets what he wanted, at a cost the scene names on the spot.
He gets exactly what he was reaching for: a proper, correctly spoken address to the priestess's own authority over the offerings, not a man using the moment to call anyone back to him. It works — she turns the rest of the way from the doorway and back into the temple, satisfied, rather than going on hovering at the threshold. The cost lands somewhere he didn't aim it. A rite spoken plainly enough to carry doesn't stay contained to the one person it's addressed to: Tertia, a short way off, hears every word of a man promising to set something right, just as clearly as the priestess does. What she makes of hearing it isn't his to decide, and he doesn't turn around to find out he was overheard at all.
Where the round ends
Nothing this round reached Herennius at the market office; he goes on waiting to be heard, with nothing deciding yet when that is or what he says once it happens.
Calpurnia leaves the clerk of record's own accounting with the same two pages still out of her hands, and the clerk's own plain word that he means to put the daybook question to the customs house directly — two institutions, for the first time, about to compare notes on her signature rather than each holding half the picture alone.
Rufus is still standing exactly where he's stood all morning, the only one left at the post with any claim to it — but one of the two office's men has, for the first time all campaign, written something down about Rufus's own conduct rather than Herennius's or the post's. The figure who crossed his path last round stays gone, unconfirmed as anyone. Nothing reached Vennonia or the gate either; the crowd continues as it has, nobody from behind the gate having answered for any of it since its one brief appearance, now nine rounds back.
At the temple steps, the priestess has what she came back for — Lucius's own words were enough to turn her the rest of the way into the temple. What isn't settled is Tertia, who heard the same words meant for someone else and landing on her anyway. Nothing this round decides what she makes of them, whether she says anything, or whether Lucius ever turns around to find out he was overheard at all.
Read about the campaign itself at Whimsy's table top campaign, or go back to Session Twenty-Nine — The Feast of Neptune, Called Away.