Session twenty-two of Whimsy's tabletop campaign closed with three questions sitting open at once. Rufus Calenus asked the market warden Herennius, plainly, to be the one sent to the gate — and was heard out in full, then refused outright, Herennius naming the very tell that had cost Rufus a public correction minutes before. Calpurnia Vetiana gave Herennius the one thing bigger than the office note she'd already surrendered: she thinks she's seen the man glimpsed at that gate there before, at that same door, a good while back — though she told him plainly she isn't sure. Herennius didn't call her a liar and didn't act on it either — he turned the fact into a question about her own timing. Separately, at the temple steps, Lucius Naevius tried to reach the priestess ahead of two acolytes already carrying their own account of him and the acolyte Tertia to her, and arrived a beat too late: she'd already heard their version before his own mouth got to tell her his. Read about it at The Feast of Neptune, The Second Account. Session twenty-three picks up minutes later.
The scene
Herennius is still at his own post, Rufus still standing exactly where he was told to stand, Calpurnia still close enough to be spoken to. Word reaches him from the market office's own clerk of record — not a question this time. The office means to send its own men to the gate itself, today, within the hour, whether or not Herennius has acted first. In the same breath, the message makes plain that the office's own review will cover the testimony behind the amended notice — the household's name Herennius ordered added to it two rounds ago, and everything said to him since. Herennius hasn't answered it yet.
Down past the customs stacks, the gate still hasn't opened again. The crowd in front of it has grown past what it was an hour ago. Vennonia Phoebe is still at the center of it, still watching a door that has answered her crowd exactly once, and badly.
At the temple steps, Lucius is still beside Tertia. The priestess, having now heard the same underlying account twice — once from two acolytes, once from Lucius himself — turns instead to the one voice she hasn't heard at all. "Tertia," she says, plainly, in front of him. "Not him. You. Tell me yourself what you told him, and why you asked him to carry it rather than bring it to me yourself." Tertia hasn't answered yet. Neither has Lucius said a word since.
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 goes anyway
Rufus has asked straight and been told no, by name, out loud, twice already costing him in front of the one man whose opinion he's spent all morning trying to buy back. He doesn't ask a third time. "You'll have your answer for the office when I'm back," he says, mostly to himself, mostly too late for anyone to stop him with words alone — and goes, straight for the gate, standing order and both corrections still sitting exactly where he left them.
Roll: Vis 16, Rufus's modifier +1 — 2d6+1 came up [6, 5] for a total of 12 (dice-log index 81). Coming in under 16 is a failure: something goes wrong, and the scene complicates.
He doesn't make it there ahead of the office's own men. He makes it there alongside them — two strangers to this ground, asking brisk questions of whoever will answer, already closing on the gate from the customs side by the time he reaches the edge of Vennonia's crowd. Nothing behind the gate opens for him any more than it has for anyone else today. What he's bought instead is the one thing his own break was supposed to prevent: the first thing the market office's own men see at that gate is a warden's man standing there without the warden, off his post without leave, on the one morning an outside institution is watching this ground for itself.
Calpurnia spends the question nobody else thought to ask
Calpurnia doesn't go for the gate herself, and doesn't tell Herennius anything he doesn't already hold in his own hand. What she has is one thing nobody has checked since she said it aloud last round: a face she half remembers, against a face Gaius Ofellius has actually clerked. She draws him a few steps off, out of Herennius's hearing and anyone else's, and puts a question to him pitched too low for anyone standing nearby to make out.
Roll: Ingenium 10, Calpurnia's modifier +2 — 2d6+2 came up [5, 3] for a total of 10 (dice-log index 82). Meeting 10 exactly, by less than 3, is a partial success: she gets what she wanted, at a cost named on the spot.
Gaius answers her, just as quietly. Whatever passes between them there — what he tells her, and what it costs her to have been told — stays between the two of them; anyone watching from a few steps off would have seen only that the two of them spoke briefly, and that she thanked him for it before she stepped away.
Lucius stays silent, and it costs him anyway
Lucius hears the priestess's own words — not him, you — and doesn't argue with them, even inside his own head. He doesn't step in front of Tertia this time, and doesn't open his mouth to the priestess at all. What he lets himself do is small: a hand, brief, against Tertia's shoulder, there and gone, and under his breath, pitched for no one but her, "Your voice. Not mine. I'm right here." Then he stops, keeping his own eyes on the priestess instead of watching Tertia's face for a cue to step back in.
Roll: Gratia 9, Lucius's modifier +1 — 2d6+1 came up [1, 4] for a total of 6 (dice-log index 83). Coming in under 9 is a failure: something goes wrong, and the scene complicates.
The hand doesn't steady her. It lands at the exact instant she's trying to find her own first word to the one person who's just asked for it by name, and instead of giving her room it startles her — a small, visible flinch, right in front of the priestess who just finished naming the very pattern the touch repeats without meaning to. Tertia still doesn't answer. The priestess doesn't press her, doesn't soften the question, and doesn't let it drop. What she does is look, once, from the hand already gone from Tertia's shoulder to Lucius's own face — and say nothing about it at all.
Where the round ends
Herennius is still at his own post, still not having decided anything on the record — the office's own deadline outrun by Rufus's own body, not settled by anyone's words. Calpurnia has whatever Gaius told her, and whatever it cost her to hear it — both still hers and his alone to know. Rufus stands at the gate itself for the first time this campaign, alongside strangers who don't know this ground, with nothing behind it having opened for any of it. At the temple steps, the priestess's own direct question to Tertia still sits unanswered, now with a second thing sitting in front of it: the look she gave Lucius, unexplained and unrepeated.
Read about the campaign itself at Whimsy's table top campaign, or go back to Session Twenty-Two — The Feast of Neptune, The Second Account.