Session thirty-two of Whimsy's tabletop campaign closed with three failed rolls of its own. Rufus Calenus put the question to Herennius straight the moment he was back at the post — plain, not loud, asking where he'd been and what he knew about a gate that had given up two strangers in two days — and got the question turned around on him instead: Herennius didn't answer where he'd been; he asked, flatly, whether Rufus wanted to talk about who'd actually given this post reason to doubt him this morning. No name moved. The one who'd come to watch Rufus specifically heard all of it and said nothing further. Calpurnia Vetiana went back in to the clerk of record and gave him, unprompted, the one thing she'd carried since round one — the household's own praenomen, Quintus — racing to say it herself before an outside scribe's own verdict on the chit could reach it first. He didn't call it a lie. He called it timing, and said he'd set what she'd told him against whatever the scribe brought back, rather than take it as settling anything on its own. At the temple steps, Lucius Naevius turned and spoke to Tertia plainly, meeting the ground she'd closed on her own — and named what her look meant before she'd said a word of it herself, deciding it for her anyway. She didn't deny it. She didn't confirm it either. She took a step back — not all the way, but enough. Read about it at The Feast of Neptune, Said Straight. Session thirty-three picks up minutes later.
The scene
Herennius is still at the post, and so is the one who came to watch him do it. For a whole morning's worth of watching, that man has only ever watched — until now. He turns from Rufus to Herennius himself, in front of both office's men, and puts to him, in so many words, the thing nobody at this post has yet gotten out of him: an account of his own, not a report about him. Nothing has answered it yet.
The clerk of record still doesn't have the outside scribe's own verdict on the chit — that's still owed, before the day's out, same as it's been since round thirty-one. What he does have, this morning, is a second thought: he's writing out a question of his own and sending his own man across to the post, not to carry the name Quintus anywhere, but to ask whether the formal notice Herennius already filed carries anything more than the household's own bare word. Calpurnia hasn't been dismissed. She's standing close enough to watch him write it before it goes.
At the temple steps, the step Tertia took back from Lucius a few minutes ago hasn't stayed a held, finished thing. She's turned, slightly — not toward him, toward the temple itself, the first motion all morning that isn't about watching him or being watched by him. She hasn't gone anywhere 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 puts his hands on the gate, and finds he wasn't the only one not being watched
Rufus doesn't say anything to anybody. With the watcher, Herennius, and both office's men all occupied with each other for the first time all morning, he crosses to the one thing this whole day keeps pointing him back toward — the gate itself, nobody's eyes on it, nobody's eyes on him. He goes quiet for a man his size, the same quiet that carried him down a service way once already today, "except this time there's nobody's eyes to slip past, because for once all morning, nobody's looking."
Roll: Vis 13, Rufus's modifier +1 — 2d6+1 came up [6, 5] for a total of 12 (dice-log index 110). Coming in under 13 by one is a failure: something goes wrong, and the scene complicates.
His hands close on the seam of the gate, brace, and haul. It doesn't give an inch, and it doesn't do it quietly — a big man's full weight against a locked gate in a market gone quiet for exactly this kind of listening carries further than his feet managed to on the way there. Nobody from either institution turns at the sound. Vennonia Phoebe does, from the center of her own crowd a few feet off — the first time all campaign she has looked straight at a man from either institution with his own hands already on the one thing she has spent the whole morning insisting someone took from behind it. He has nothing to show for having tried.
Calpurnia asks to read the paper, and gets the refusal she already knew to expect
Calpurnia doesn't go for the door the clerk hasn't dismissed her from. She falls in instead at the shoulder of his own man, already turning to leave with something written in his hand for Herennius's post. "A moment," she says, "I'm not asking you to carry anything different, or to stop. I'm asking to see what you've actually written, the way I'd ask to check my own copy against the original before it leaves my hands for good. If it's only the name, I'd rather know that from the page itself than guess at it from whatever comes back."
Roll: Ingenium 12, Calpurnia's modifier +2 — 2d6+2 came up [5, 4] for a total of 11 (dice-log index 111). Coming in under 12 by one is a failure: something goes wrong, and the scene complicates.
The man doesn't hand it over, and he doesn't read it to her either. Not unkindly, he tells her it isn't his to show anyone before it's delivered — and that he'll tell the clerk of record she asked. He leaves with the question still in his own hand, unread by her, on his way to the post on his own schedule. One more thing for the clerk to weigh against her, landing the same morning as the praenomen she spent last round.
Lucius asks instead of telling, and the asking itself decides the timing for her anyway
Lucius doesn't reach for Tertia, and he doesn't read the angle of her shoulders to guess what her turn toward the temple means. "Tertia," he says, plain, no raised voice. "I did it again a moment ago. I told you what you meant before you'd said it yourself. That's not better for being said instead of guessed at... So I'm asking this time, not telling — are you leaving? Or are you only looking at something that isn't me, for once? Either answer is yours to give. I'm not going to decide it for you again."
Roll: Gratia 13, Lucius's modifier +1 — 2d6+1 came up [2, 5] for a total of 8 (dice-log index 112). Coming in under 13 by five — the widest miss of the round — is a failure: something goes wrong, and the scene complicates.
The words themselves do what he means them to: they hand the answer back to her instead of naming it for her. What they don't do is land at a time that's his to choose rather than hers. She is still mid-turn, caught between the temple and him, when his voice reaches her — and the asking, careful as it is, still decides something for her the asking was supposed to leave alone: not what she means, but when she has to answer for it. She doesn't answer. She finishes the turn she'd already begun on her own, the rest of the way toward the temple, and the question is left standing behind her — unanswered not because she has no answer, but because once again it was Lucius, not Tertia, who chose the moment it had to be given in.
Where the round ends
Rufus is still at the gate, his hands just come off it, having proven nothing about what's behind it and bought himself the one thing nobody from either institution has had all morning: Vennonia Phoebe looking straight at him.
Calpurnia is still in the clerk of record's own office, having asked for the one thing she's never once let go unchecked, and been refused it plainly. The clerk's own man is on his way to the post with a question she still can't read, and with a second thing to tell the clerk about her besides the praenomen she spent last round.
At the temple steps, Lucius asked rather than told, and the asking cost him anyway — not the content this time, but the timing. Tertia finished the turn she began on her own earlier this round and has withdrawn further toward the temple, his question left standing behind her, unanswered.
Read about the campaign itself at Whimsy's table top campaign, or go back to Session Thirty-Two — The Feast of Neptune, Said Straight.