Alea Iacta Story Hour: A Mythic Rome Campaign (Baby Announcement: 8/17)

Alea Iacta VII: Lux et Veritas Post 10: Inspecting the Buildings

Metellus, Llyr, and Marcus are woken from their peaceful sleep in Metellus' father's house by yells of pain and odd crashing noises coming from Heilyn's room. Darting through the door, Llyr is the first to see that the elegantly crafted stone blocks of the ceiling above Heilyn appear to be somehow punching themselves out of the mortar and landing on the blinking, confused smith. Other stone blocks are falling from the wall. By the time Metellus reaches the room, however, the chaos has momentarily stopped, leaving a bruised and battered Heilyn and a rather more...airy chamber

Heilyn realizes, in his fog of pain and tiredness, that there are precisely 11 stones now lying on his bed, the same number which he punched out of the Temple of Mercury wall with the skills he learned from the earth spirit he made a bargain with back on the Druids' Isle. He's no longer so certain that casually reshaping stone walls is such a good idea, but manages to hide his confusion behind a calm facade as he heals himself, apologizes to Metellus for the commotion, and offers to help repair the room in the morning. Metellus, sleepy and startled, offers him another room for the night, but Heilyn decides that he'd rather sleep out on the safe ground of the courtyard. The rest of the night passes uneventfully.

Some of the group shares their dreams with each other; Marcus is confused by his. Clearly, his Eagle is still in trouble, but he has no idea of how to help It, and this only further upsets him. However, it is morning, and both he and Llyr decide to accompany Metellus on his trip to spend a day seeing what the life of a Roman Inspector of Buildings is like. Sure, it doesn't sound exciting, but you never know. Besides, after the recent spate of attacks against group members when traveling alone or without fighters, they've decided to stick together for the most part. [The GM is highly grateful for this.]

Metellus is shown into the office of one of the current building inspectors, who explains that his duties this morning consist of approving building leases and new building projects. He also goes on at length about the bribe possibilities in this job, and Metellus tries to steer a fine line between offending the greedy official and maintaining his own strict sense of honor. Llyr, meanwhile, out in the waiting room, notices someone familiar come into the waiting room - one of the Celts who was conspiring at the party a few nights earlier. The Celt recognizes him and turns and dashes out of the waiting room, closely followed by Llyr. After a short chase, Llyr, followed by the confused Marcus, manages to tackle the fleeing Celt and wrestle him to the ground. However, interrogation is quickly frustrated by the Celt's immediate response of biting his own tongue off, and swallowing it. In disgust, both at himself and his captive, Llyr lets the vigiles take the man away, and they return to the building office.

Inside the building office, Llyr and Marcus interrupt Metellus' conversation with the inspector to ask about who the Celt was, and why he was here. The inspector, surprised, responds that he was a man who had bought several properties in the last few weeks, paid for with good sestertii, and always reliably. Metellus asks to see some of the sestertii and discovers, to no one's surprise, that they're the same type of newly minted coins that our group discovered back in the Gallic village. The soldiers ask for a list of the properties this man has purchased, and plot out, after several hours spent going through documents and the inspector's records, the following map:

(This is a basic map of Rome. Unfortunately, the correct map isn't loading at the moment. But it showed about 17 dots indicating the purchased properties.)

Gathering together with the rest of us, we realized after much pondering that nearly all of the recently purchased properties were located near either granaries or baths, and that they formed a giant spiral which had as its center point...the House of the Vestal Virgins in the Forum Romanum.

Alea VII: Lux et Veritas Post 10: The Plot Thickens

We put the map together with the prophecy that evening, and my clever partner Meloch, working together with Cornelia and Centurion Marcus, who is unsurprisingly good with maps. After some time, we come to the conclusion that the Druidic Resistance Movement is plotting something, most likely fires, against the Roman granaries and possibly the temple of the Vestal Virgins on the night of the summer solstice, two days hence. The granaries are full, as they always need to be in Rome, and thus highly explosive, just as the granary that we exploded back in Caledonia was.

We consult Lucretius, the friendly Praetorian Decurion who was our liasion on the Triumph, for his advice and suggestions regarding this. He notes that two days hence, the annual Praetorian-Vigiles mock battle game is taking place during the afternoon. Consequently, 4/5ths of the Praetorians and 2/3rds of the Vigiles (the watch which draws the short straw still has to stand guard and not play) will likely be tired, wounded, and very drunk that night, and therefore unlikely to present a good defense if unprepared to people attacking the granaries. He agrees that this is a serious problem, and suggests taking it directly to Cimbrus in the morning, as well as perhaps consulting the Vestals.

The next morning, we go and tell most of the story to Cimbrus, leaving out the entire damnatio memoriae aspect, which no one is certain how it relates anyway, and placing all the blame on the Druidic Resistance Movement. Cimbrus seems genuinely worried and authorizes us to investigate more, as well as gving us a letter of introduction to the Chief Vestal, and saying that he'll instruct the vigiles who are on duty that night, under the command, as it turns out, of Cornelia's ex-stepfather Q. Ennius Candidus, to pay special attention to the locations on the map, and raid them if necessary.
He notes that the vigiles will not have enough resources to both raid all 17 locations and fully protect the House of the Vestals, about which there is much less evidence in any case, and suggests that we focus on that particular threat. Hadriana is notably absent from this meeting.

Metellus and the soldier boys, together with Meloch, go off to Metellus' appointment at the Imperial Mint, both for him to try out that potential job prospect for a day and find out more about the origin of the newly minted coins. Llyr comments that while the housing bureau was run by L. Faenius Merops, the most bored man in Roma, the Mint seems to be run by the most boring man in Roma, one M. Saufeius Constans, a middle-aged Roman patrician who apparently took many years to get successfully elected. After poking and prodding into the sources of the new coins, they eventually successfully establish that Saufeius was the only person with the right access and times, and confront him, with the help of a carefully cast Charm spell. With the promise of protection, Saufeius finally tearfully confesses that he's been funneling money to the Druids in exchange for promised fertility spells, as he's been unable to produce an heir on his own or even copulate successfully. He's supplied a man that Llyr identifies as Sycorax, the red-headed leader of the DRM, with substantial amounts of sestertii, and much more in recent weeks. They decide to have him quietly resign from the mint, and report it to Lucretius, who can make the final decision about whether or not to prosecute.

Alea Iacta VII: Lux et Veritas Post 12: A Short, Nasty, Brutish Fight

It is now the evening before the summer solstice. Much against my own wise monkey advice, the group decides to go and stake out one of the supposed Druidic resistance hideouts and see what they can learn. They pick one in the north-center of the city, near one of the major baths. For a long time, there is no sense of movement, and finally they send me into investigate. I tell them that there do appear to be a few people inside the building, down some stairs in some sort of wine cellar which smells bad. When Meloch asks me how bad, I tell him the truth - like bad eggs. You should never eat a bad egg, my mother said in the days before I was sold into slavery. It will make your stomach hurt.

Meloch apparently felt this answer wasn't satisfactory and turned himself invisible to investigate and came in himself. Well, he couldn't make it any farther down the creaky stairs into the wine cellar than I could without being noticed, so he mostly just noticed that one of the humans was the Bull Chieftain who had escaped from the Triumph, and still bore bloody gashes on his arms where he had excised the cold iron. There was then a whispered huddle as to whether to attack the room itself, and potentially risk being exploded (apparently bad eggs are dangerous for humans externally as well as internally) or wait for them to come out. Eventually, they decided to wait, and to hide.

Of course, have you ever tried to hide a Roman Centurion? Marcus' armor gleamed in the moonlight like Artemis' mirror; he'd probably polished the darn breastplate that very morning. Meloch and I, now, we could hide, and even Cornelia and that stupid owl Cato weren't so bad, or, surprisingly, the Praetorian Lucretius. But it was pretty clear that as soon as someone came out, they'd see Marcus.

Luckily enough for us, the first person to come out was the Bull Chieftain, slightly drunk and wanting to relieve himself against the wall. Before he realized what was going on, Llyr had already hit him with a custom-blessed bolt, and Heilyn and the others were whaling on him as he called for help.

At this point, Cornelia decided she wanted to be helpful, and cast some sort of spell for Cato to deliver by swooping down and biting the red-haired barbarian's neck or something. Of course, Cato's pretty incompetent at even the easiest of jobs, and the barbarian was pretty skilled with his greataxe, so the obvious result happened - Cato lost most of a wing to the greataxe and failed to deliver the spell. Cornelia, in shock, sent him up to the roof top where I was hiding to wait out the rest of the fight.

Aha, I thought, here's my chance. At last I can get rid of this blasted useless owl and do everyone a world of good, especially myself, as then Cornelia will give me all the treats and petting that she gives the owl now. And the owl won't ever be able to grow any bigger and potentially eat me. So I crept forward, as the fight raged on below, getting closer and closer to being able to push the owl off the rooftiles onto the cobblestones below. I was only a few seconds away from the undetectable elimination of my rival when Meloch noticed the directions of my thoughts and sternly forbade me. We wrestled for a bit mentally, but I finally decided that having the approval of my partner was more important than dealing with Cato, at least for now.

Just about then, Wena managed to stun the barbarian and he was knocked out. Proceeding inside, the group discovered that any other Celts had fled at the noise of a fight, and found many many barrels of sulphur and Greek fire stacked up neatly in the wine cellar.

Alea Iacta IX: Lux et Veritas Post 13: Teatime

At this point, Metellus and Cornelia had to dash off for a rescheduled late dinner with Lupina Silvana, the Emperor's mistress, unbeknownst to Cornelia's mother. Metellus' father, on the other hand, had spoken highly when asked about Lupina Silvana. Apparently, she had been the wife of an old senatorial friend of his, and had come on the Emperor's campaign in Dacia along with her husband many years ago. Metellus Major confessed to having had a slight unrequited passion for Lupina - back before he met Metellus' mother, of course. While there was some gossip that the Emperor had deliberately sent Lupina's husband out on a suicide mission at the front of the lines, Metellus Major strongly discouraged his son from entertaining that thought, saying it was disrespectful both to the Emperor and to a charming, well-bred noblewoman.

Since the rest of the group was busy dealing with the prisoner, they decided to invite along Llyr's cousin Kynton the charioteer, on the grounds that he was polite and good at telling stories, and also, like Llyr, a Prince of the Brigantes.

Lupina Silvana, as it turned out, lived in a lovely villa on the Aventine Hill. She was not quite what either Cornelia or Metellus had expected, at all. Lupina Silvana is a woman in her late 60s, with carefully coiffed white hair wearing an elegant blue stola and palla of light linen, and only a few strings of malachite necklaces. She waved her guests into a comfortable dining room, and then asked if they would mind if her grandchildren joined them. "They do like hearing stories of faraway places, especially Britannia."

"Of course," Cornelia replied. Lupina sent a slave off to fetch them, and a few minutes later, a young boy of 11 or 12 carrying a ball came rushing in, followed quickly by a girl of 15 or 16, in whom the older refined beauty of Lupina could be seen in youthful, if still awkward, form.

"These are my grandchildren. I call them Silvanus and Silvanilla." Lupina said calmly, gesturing at them to recline on the remaining couch.

"Did you fight in the battle against the Druids and Caledonii? Did you kill lots of evil naked barbarians? Did you?" Silvanus says excitedly.

"Well, I helped kill the Chief Druid of all Britannia....<looks at Cornelia glaring> and Cornelia was there in that fight too, actually..."

"Oh, please, tell us what happened, Tribune, and I want to know how you were there, Cornelia Crispa," the pretty Silvanilla says with a smile.

"Well, we were on a diplomatic mission to the Iceni at the time..." Cornelia begins, "and then the lightning bolt came down...." and the grandchildren both gasp in horror, "and then she transformed into a giant tiger through her foul Druidic magics!...." and the entire battle is recounted.


Kynton, who has been fidgeting impatiently during this whole time, bursts in, "But that was nothing! At the beginning of the battle, I was about to be sacrificed by the Druids to fuel their evil magics! But I managed to escape and rejoin Metellus and Cornelia just in the nick of time, nearly severing both my wrists and ankles in the process and fighting off enormous guards!"

Cornelia responds tartly, "I thought Llyr untied you and you ran."

"From the enormous guards, and only to find help and save Llyr and all the rest of you. Besides, it would have been dreadful for my career if my wrists had been hurt. I'm a charioteer!" Kynton announces proudly.

Silvanus is instantly rapt, much more excited than he was even about the battles. "Really? What color do you race for? I like the Blues. My dad used to own several Blue chariot teams, and once he took he to the stables when I was little."
Silvanus and Kynton dive into an arcane conversation about the current chariot teams of this season.

Meanwhile, Lupina Silvana skillfully directs the rest of the talk back to Britannia.
"I had heard that you earlier went north in search of the Ninth Legion? Did you ever find any trace of their fate?"

Metellus explains that they found the Eagle, and signs that the Ninth had been betrayed internally by Tribunes and Centurions in collusion with the Druids. Lupina pales and then flushes visibly with anger for a moment at this news, before controlling herself. "What a disgrace to Rome and her loyal officers!" she exclaims.

Cornelia has a sudden flash of intuition, and decides to pursue a hunch. "Lupina, your grandchildren are very well brought up. Are their parents in the countryside?"

"Their parents are dead," Lupina answers abruptly. "I have raised them for the past eight years. Thank you - I have tried to teach them to be good Romans, although Silvanus does not get as much fighting training as I would wish."

"The Emperor showed me how to throw a javelin before he left last month," Silvanus interrupts briefly to say with pride.

"Are you good with it?" Metellus asks.

"I can hit the column at the end of the porch almost every time!" Silvanus tells him.

Looking at the 3-foot wide column, Metellus smiles and says, "I hope you keep practicing!"

Some conversation about military training ensues. Silvanilla seems highly intrigued by Kynton's descriptions of daring chariot races through deep forests, and Lupina Silvana is clearly a little less pleased about Silvanilla's fascination with the charioteer.


Shortly afterwards, the children retire to bed, and Metellus and Cornelia make their excuses, anxious to get back to the prisoner interrogation. As they are walking away from the villa, Cornelia whispers, "Did you figure out why she summoned us?"

"Um, no, although she seems very interested in the Ninth and Britannia."

"I think those are the children of Gallus, the Emperor's dead brother who got damnatio memoriae-ed after committing suicide due to the shame of losing the Ninth! That's why she's so interested - she wants to redeem the memory of Gallus!" Cornelia explains.

"Do you have any evidence for this theory at all?" Metellus asks skeptically.

"Well, the two kids are named after her, Silvana, when they should be named after their father, which means that they're either illegitimate or something strange is going on. And she wanted them to hear the stories about Britannia. And their parents died 8 years ago, just when Gallus died. And Silvanus mentioned that his father really liked chariot racing, and remember, one of the slaves that Gallus freed at his death, the first one we found, was a charioteer!"

"Well, when you put it that way, it's almost convincing. But we need to go back and talk to her. But for now, we need to avert the burning of Roma!"

Hiatus

You know, I'll wager that Cato the Owl has a lot of really interesting perspectives on our recent adventures.

I think I'll go have a word with Domina Cornelia and see if she wouldn't mind dictating her familiar's recollections, since my own familiar seems to be off in a month-long sulk somewhere...

And right before the burning of Roma, as well! How cruel a cliff-hanger...

Meloch the Pygmy said:

You know, I'll wager that Cato the Owl has a lot of really interesting perspectives on our recent adventures.

Click to expand...

Cato's a sweet owl, but not very articulate - he tends to communicate mostly in pictures, not words. The way he recounted that last battle to me, for instance, was: "Flying...flying...OUCH! OUCH! OUCH! whimper whimper."

He did manage to send me some images of what Shast tried to do, though. You really must have a talk with your familiar - we can't afford to have them squabbling like this. Not when we're about to face a challenge like saving the city...

Meloch the Pygmy said:

You know, I'll wager that Cato the Owl has a lot of really interesting perspectives on our recent adventures.

Click to expand...

Cato's a sweet owl, but not very articulate - he tends to communicate mostly in pictures, not words. The way he recounted that last battle to me, for instance, was: "Flying...flying...OUCH! OUCH! OUCH! whimper whimper."

He did manage to send me some images of what Shast tried to do, though. You really must have a talk with your familiar - we can't afford to have them squabbling like this. Not when we're about to face a challenge like saving the city...

Alea Iacta VII: Lux et Veritas Chp. 12: Oh, you mean _that_ scry sensor!

Shast apologizes for the delay in publishing the serial of his pulp reminiscences, but Shast has been working on his great analysis of Roman social mores, based on his own recollections of the international brothel scene in the Empire, and feels that this is a much more important work for his career.
***
Brief GM Sidebar Explaining why Cato is less eloquent than Shast:
Each of the familiars partners in Alea Iacta has his or her own special talent, above and beyond the normal D&D restrictions. Cato can maintain contact with Cornelia - and deliver touch spells - at indefinitely long range. Shast can read and write, neither of which are talents that Meloch possesses, and is also extraordinarily intelligent, and has a tail. Sapientia, Lucretius' elephant, who has so far only appeared in dreams, is, well, an elephant. This is balanced by my refusal to Poke-Paladin her and by my altering the Detect Evil power of Lucretius to Detect Pantheon (i.e. Celtic/Olympian/Hecate etc...).
Also, there were at that point 8 PCs in the game, and only one GM. Shast is much more eloquent in the SH than he usually was in game time, simply due to necessity.
***
Returning to the adventure....

My disappointment at failing to eliminate my rival, the filthy owl, was not helped by the angry glares of my partner Meloch. Everyone except Metellus and Cornelia, who arrive dlater, adjourned to a local vigiles post to interrogate the Bull Chieftain. We had barely begun the interrogation, which was its usual mixture of Marcus and Meloch threatening torture at every opportunity and Metellus and Cornelia, once they came back from Lupina Silvana's, resolutely ignoring these suggestions. The Bull Chieftain kept looking anxiously around for some reason while refusing to talk, and finally, Wena followed the direction of his gaze, watching closely, and noticed a small floating shadowy eyeball, surrounded by a thin halo of black chains.

"We're being watched," she whispered to the rest of us.
"What?" said Metellus. "The Black Chain Philosopher can spy on us from a distance psionically? Why didn't you tell us before?"
"I didn't notice it before!"
"Well, were you looking?"
"Um....no...."

Silence falls as the humans all realize that they have been being watched for perhaps a very long time. Metellus blushes briefly, as does Cornelia. I decide not to mention that I've seen Cato happily munching on shadowy eyeballs once or twice, as I'm already currently in enough trouble.

"Well, what can we do about this? This is totally unacceptable," Marcus proclaims.
"Well, there are stories that lead can block psionic powers somehow," Wena offers, searching through her memories.
"The sewers!" Llyr, who has been exploring Roma assiduously, suggests gleefully.
"The sewers?" everyone else echoes with a mixture of horror and resignation.
"They're entirely lined with lead. Quite a feat of engineering, actually." Llyr points out.

So, together with our bound barbarian Bull Chieftain, we all troop down the nearest marble-covered manhole to the Cloaca Maxima, Roma's largest - and therefore smelliest - sewer.
Once here, the sophisticated Romano-Britannian interrogation techniques quickly yield useful information.

"What was all the Greek fire for?"
"To set fire to things!"
"What kinds of things?"
"The big cylindrical buildings. Sycorax said they'd go boom, like the village back home, and we'd avenge all the Ouenikones."
"When was this supposed to happen?"
"Tomorrow night."

"What were you supposed to do tomorrow?"
"Go play in the theater."
"What do you mean, go play in the theater?"
"They're going to be having kids' play-fights in the theater, Sycorax said. But we won't be playing like kids," the Bull Chieftain smiles and guffaws, now thoroughly charmed by Cornelia.
Marcus thinks for a second, then exclaims, "The Praetorians-Vigiles mock battle tomorrow!"
"Oh no," Cornelia says, "the Celts are planning to infiltrate the battle and actually kill people!"
"Well, to be fair," Llyr points out, "Some of us had been talking out sneaking into the mock battle to have fun beating up on Vigiles too."
Metellus glares. Llyr and Marcus look a bit crestfallen. Lucretius, ever practical, says, "I'll tell my Centurion about this. We can at least try and search all the combatants to make sure the weapons are properly blunted."

"Were you planning on doing anything else tomorrow," Cornelia asks.
"Protect the little girls," the Bull Chieftain answers, surprisingly.
"What? Why do you need to protect the little girls?"
"They'll be running, and little girls aren't very good at protecting themselves."
"Where will they be running to?"
"Inside, to put out the flame. I can't go inside, though. I have to protect them outside," he confesses.

Our skilled minds quickly put this together with the prophecy and realize that the Temple of Vesta, with its ever-burning flame that protects the city of Roma and maintains the sacred barrier of the pomerium, is in grave danger.
Meloch puts this together with the reports he's been hearing of a lot of Celtic families of slaves disappearing, and soberly explains,
"Only female virgins can enter the Temple of Vesta, where the sacred flame is. They must have recruited a bunch of young Celtic girls to run in with water tomorrow night and put out the fire." He resolves to go against his principles and expose some of the known runaway slave safehouses he's discovered tomorrow to the vigiles, on the grounds that the girls will be safer as slaves anyway than as Celtic Liberation Front puppets.

"Well, we'll just have to stop them and kill them before they get there," Lucretius responds. "We cannot let the flame of Vesta die."

"But," Heilyn remonstrates, "They're just innocent little girls, tricked into this. They don't know what they're doing."
"They're a threat to Roma," Marcus says, and Metellus nods in agreement.

At this point, Wena remembers her young friend "Boadicea," the librarian's slave, and resolves to visit her tomorrow morning and get her out of this situation if necessary.

The others decide to visit Cimbrus and the Vestals in the morning and inform them of the dire situation and in the meantime, begin making plans to defend the outside of the Temple of Vesta, which only one among them, Cornelia, can actually enter. Some of these plans, depending on who is designing them, are more lethal than others.

*Battle coming soon. Really! And if not, you can blame Meloch's player, because he's visiting us this weekend.*

sweet

Well, I just discovered this pearl yesterday...and now that I'm all caught up I have to post. This is an awesome SH. I love the authentic feel of the setting and the way they characters interact.

The plot is juicy and the characters/players seem pretty quick witted. I'm excited to keep up with y'alls adventures!

Ladybird said:

Cato's a sweet owl, but not very articulate - he tends to communicate mostly in pictures, not words. The way he recounted that last battle to me, for instance, was: "Flying...flying...OUCH! OUCH! OUCH! whimper whimper."

Click to expand...

Exactly. Much preferable to Shast's tiresome editorializing.

Ladybird said:

He did manage to send me some images of what Shast tried to do, though. You really must have a talk with your familiar - we can't afford to have them squabbling like this.

Click to expand...

A little friendly squabbling never hurt anyone. Heilyn and I came out all right, after all, right? I'll keep the two of them from getting carried away.

Meloch