Session twenty-eight of Whimsy's tabletop campaign closed with three failed rolls and three doors shutting at once. Rufus Calenus went looking for Nitidus — the debt between them still unpaid since round nine — and found the door already shut: he laid the offer out anyway, to whoever was close enough to carry it back, and what answered him wasn't a refusal so much as a flinch, the name Fadius shutting the whole exchange down harder than the debt alone would ever justify. The debt stayed owed, the question stayed unanswered, and the one thing Rufus walked away with was the plain sense that he isn't the only one who's come asking lately. Calpurnia Vetiana offered to hold the warehouse record up against the manifest herself, before either page went anywhere — and the office's man didn't take it as the transparency she meant it to be. A woman asking to be the one holding the evidence against her own signature one more time read to him as a reason to get both pages away from her for good, not a reason to trust her with them; before the round was out, he sent the manifest and the warehouse record on to the market office's own clerk of record. At the temple steps, Lucius Naevius closed half the distance Tertia's own half-step had opened, meaning to leave the rest hers to close — and it didn't read that way from where she stood. Tertia answered it with a step of her own, back, away from him, retreating fully for the first time; the priestess, who'd stopped her own turn to watch exactly that, didn't wait any longer. She finished turning and walked back toward the temple, the question still unanswered behind her. Herennius, for his part, still hadn't answered any of the four things sitting on him, and nothing reached him either — no further word from Rufus, who'd already left without a word to anybody. The office's man who'd put the coordination question to his own face stopped waiting on an answer: before the round closed, he told Herennius plainly that he was done asking, and that his own report would carry the conclusion he'd already reached. Read about it at The Feast of Neptune, Three Doors Closed. Session twenty-nine picks up minutes later.
The scene
A runner arrives at Herennius's post — from the market office itself, not one of the two men already standing there — carrying word sent on the strength of the report the office's man has just finished: Herennius is to present himself at the market office before the day is out, to answer in person for his own conduct and his man's, rather than go on answering, or not answering, for it at his own post. The same runner carries a second word, for Calpurnia: now that the manifest and the warehouse record have actually reached the clerk of record's own hands, he wants her there too, to account for the mark herself rather than go on reading it without her. Neither summons says when the day runs out. Rufus, back at the post just as the runner finishes speaking, hears both delivered in the open, in front of whoever's close enough to listen — which, this morning, is most of what's left of Vennonia's crowd.
At the temple steps, the priestess has gone as far as the temple's own doorway and no further, out of easy reach for the first time all morning rather than standing over the question herself. Tertia hasn't moved since her own retreat a moment ago, arms still drawn in, a short way off from Lucius rather than beside him. For the first time since any of this started, nobody with any authority over either of them is standing close enough to hear what either one says next.
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 crosses to the stranger, and the stranger runs rather than answers
Rufus notices what nobody else at the post does — a shape too still at the ragged edge of what's left of Vennonia's crowd, watching him rather than the gate or the runner. Twenty years of knowing which doors are about to open on him taught him exactly what that stillness means, and he's done enough waiting today to last him a lifetime. He walks straight at it, the way he walked at Secundus before the sun was properly up and at Nitidus himself a few hours later — no grab, no fist, just himself, closing the distance. "You're not watching the gate," he says, loud enough to be heard and not a breath louder than that. "You're watching me. I've had one man flinch at me today already over a name I'm still chasing — Fadius — so I'll ask you straight, same as I ask everybody: who sent you, and what do you want with me, before you decide you'd rather not be standing here when I finish asking."
Roll: Gratia 12, Rufus's modifier +1 — 2d6+1 came up [1, 6] for a total of 8 (dice-log index 98). Coming in under 12 is a failure: something goes wrong, and the scene complicates.
It's the directness itself that costs him. Whoever it is doesn't flinch the way the man near Nitidus did last round — they read Rufus's approach for what it is a half-second before he finishes closing the distance, and use the one beat everyone else's attention needs to register a raised voice in the crowd to step backward into the press of bodies and simply not be where he's looking a moment later. No name, no answer, no second chance to ask — gone the same way Nitidus himself went to ground, except this time it's Rufus's own bluntness that bought the gap. What he's left with is the same thing he already had, only sharper: someone else is circling this name, and this one ran rather than lied.
Calpurnia finds the daybook already disturbed
Calpurnia doesn't go to Herennius — he has his own account to give now, and asking him to spend part of it vouching for hers would ask more of him than she's ever asked anyone all morning. What she wants instead isn't someone's good word, it's a page that isn't the one already in the clerk of record's hands: Puteoli's harbor keeps more than one copy of anything that crosses a customs threshold, and a registry clerk at the customs house keeps a daybook of his own, stamped and dated the hour a thing is logged through — not proof of what the mark beside her signature means, but proof, from a hand that isn't hers and isn't Fadius's, of exactly when she clerked what she clerked. She goes quickly, without telling Herennius where, toward the customs house and whatever's left of that daybook before the day runs out from under her too.
Roll: Ingenium 13, Calpurnia's modifier +2 — 2d6+2 came up [5, 5] for a total of 12 (dice-log index 99). Coming in under 13 is a failure: something goes wrong, and the scene complicates.
The registry clerk is cagier than a daybook request has any right to make him. When she asks to hold the page herself, he does exactly what the office's man did with the manifest a round ago — won't hand it over, reads the entry to her instead. Reading it out, he stumbles, catches himself, and admits, when she presses him on it, that the page has already been pulled and re-shelved once today, before she ever walked in. He doesn't know by whom. It isn't the clean, checkable page answering a page that she came for — it's a second unexplained disturbance, on a second document, and she leaves with a new question sitting next to the old one, not an answer to either.
Lucius's hands aren't as steady as the rest of him
Lucius doesn't reach for the one piece of temple rite that could call the priestess back, and doesn't speak either — both, he decides, would only be him deciding again what this moment means before Tertia's had the chance to decide it herself. So he goes further than he's gone yet, a real distance this time, no half-measure answering her half-step. He turns his shoulder, finds the offerings basket he dropped a moment ago, picks it back up, and makes himself busy with the ordinary work of sorting what's left of the morning's offerings — nothing that asks anything of her, nothing that watches to see whether it's working. He doesn't look back to check.
Roll: Firmitas 13, Lucius's modifier 0 — 2d6+0 came up [3, 1] for a total of 4 (dice-log index 100). Coming in under 13 is a failure: something goes wrong, and the scene complicates — the worst miss of his morning.
His hands aren't as steady as the rest of him is managing. Something in the basket goes over, clattering down the temple steps loud enough to carry. It isn't the half-measure he was trying to avoid, and it isn't nothing either: the priestess, already as far as the doorway and no further, turns her head back toward the steps at the sound. Tertia, who hasn't looked at him since she stepped back, looks now, at the noise rather than at him.
Where the round ends
Nothing this round contested Herennius's own departure. Before the round closes, he leaves his post to present himself at the market office, with nobody answerable left standing over the gate in his place, for the first time all campaign.
Calpurnia goes on to the clerk of record's office carrying not the honest limit alone, but a second unexplained disturbance from a different document entirely — a question she didn't have an hour ago, sitting next to the one she still can't answer.
The figure at the crowd's edge is gone, unconfirmed as anyone, spooked off by Rufus's own directness. Rufus is left holding the same unsettled debt to Nitidus and the same unanswered question about Fadius he's carried since round nine, with one thread sharper than it was an hour ago: somebody else, still unidentified, is circling the same name closely enough to run rather than be caught standing still for it.
At the temple steps, the quiet nobody with authority was standing over has ended with a noise neither Lucius nor Tertia meant to make, rather than with a retreat and a departure. The priestess has turned her head back toward the steps without coming down from the doorway. Nothing this round decides whether she comes back down, whether Tertia says anything, or whether Lucius ever turns around to find out.
Read about the campaign itself at Whimsy's table top campaign, or go back to Session Twenty-Eight — The Feast of Neptune, Three Doors Closed.