Orichalcum
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Alea Iacta VI: When in Rome 5th Session: Look both ways
In the next day or two, the group splits up and the foreigners decide to explore Rome. As Llyr is walking along a crowded road one afternoon, an amphora full of wine barely misses his head and shatters into pottery fragments just behind him. He looks up, trying to see who was so clumsy, but sees only a pair of hands disappearing over a windowsill, and can’t figure out any way inside the building.
Llyr thinks little of this until a few hours later, when he runs into Meloch, who tells him about our hair-raising encounter with several nasty-looking Romans. Two or three of these men cornered my companion and I in an alley after we had gone to buy some entirely innocent little elixirs from a local wise-woman (and get her to identify some of the vials we took from the pirates). They began mocking Meloch’s size and parentage, and when he responded with his usual scintillating wit, they drew clubs and daggers and attacked us!
Well, Meloch is often reckless, but even he knows a bad situation when he sees one, and so he quickly made us Invisible and we skulked out of the alley, leaving some very confused robbers. While Llyr and Meloch were talking, Verix the pearl merchant casually mentioned that he, too, had been the victim of two or three odd recent near-fatal accidents – a cart whose wheel-wedge slipped and another amphora falling.
Llyr put these stories together with Kynton’s complaint that he had been denied victory in a practice race by the wheel suddenly falling off his chariot and gathered the rest of us all together, announcing that the “Black Chain Philosopher,” as the group had begun to call him, was trying to fulfill his telepathic threat at the gates of Rome and gradually kill us all off. Metellus, sensibly, ordered everyone to take precautions and to travel in large groups of at least 3-4; he also requested that Cornelia cease walking around the city and instead use a litter like a proper lady.
Despite this extremely rational advice, Meloch, of course, conspires with Llyr and Verix to defy it entirely. They decide that they need to find out who these foul assassins are and to set up Verix and Meloch as bait, with Llyr lurking invisibly, ready to take any potential culprits out. I try to tell Meloch that this is a horrible plan, certain to get them all killed, but he tells me I’m a cowardly monkey and I can just stay at home if I don’t like excitement and adventure, so I go sulk in Cornelia’s mother’s private bath.
Over our connection, however, I can still see through his eyes and feel his thoughts, so I’m well aware when he and Verix stroll down a deserted alleyway, only to find three thugs approaching from either direction, and a skilled crossbowman shooting from an upper window down at them. Furthermore, as Verix and Meloch both quickly realize, the crossbowman’s bolts are poisoned; Meloch, smelling his increasingly painful and bleeding shoulder, realizes that it is in fact the same poison that he bought the previous day from the wisewoman.
Both Verix and Meloch nearly faint from their wounds and the poison, barely staying upright as the lowly thieves slash at them. Meanwhile, Llyr goes up the wall, climbing dexterously, trying to take out the crossbowman before he can further poison his friends. Meloch manages to tumble through the legs of one of the assassins and reach a clear space of the alley, where, barely able to remember the appropriate words and gestures, he turns invisible in desperation at a fight increasingly gone wrong.
With Meloch vanished, the five remaining thugs surround Verix and beat him until he is a bloody pulp on the ground. Llyr manages to knock out the archer before the archer can poison him, and then jumps down into the melee combat, becoming visible.
Meanwhile, Meloch, still low on combat spells, whispers the word “Fight” to the small onyx goat statuette that the noblissima Hadriana gave him long ago in return for the fertility assistance. He has never used the goat before, although Hadriana hinted at its powers, and he is thus as surprised as anyone when it enlarges into an enormous, snarling billy-goat with long, curved, pointed horns. It charges at the thugs along with Llyr and together, they make reasonably fast work of the remaining bandits, knocking two out for later questioning, while Meloch, meanwhile, slips into near unconsciousness from the poison, and Verix’s body remains crumpled in the dust of the alley.
In the next day or two, the group splits up and the foreigners decide to explore Rome. As Llyr is walking along a crowded road one afternoon, an amphora full of wine barely misses his head and shatters into pottery fragments just behind him. He looks up, trying to see who was so clumsy, but sees only a pair of hands disappearing over a windowsill, and can’t figure out any way inside the building.
Llyr thinks little of this until a few hours later, when he runs into Meloch, who tells him about our hair-raising encounter with several nasty-looking Romans. Two or three of these men cornered my companion and I in an alley after we had gone to buy some entirely innocent little elixirs from a local wise-woman (and get her to identify some of the vials we took from the pirates). They began mocking Meloch’s size and parentage, and when he responded with his usual scintillating wit, they drew clubs and daggers and attacked us!
Well, Meloch is often reckless, but even he knows a bad situation when he sees one, and so he quickly made us Invisible and we skulked out of the alley, leaving some very confused robbers. While Llyr and Meloch were talking, Verix the pearl merchant casually mentioned that he, too, had been the victim of two or three odd recent near-fatal accidents – a cart whose wheel-wedge slipped and another amphora falling.
Llyr put these stories together with Kynton’s complaint that he had been denied victory in a practice race by the wheel suddenly falling off his chariot and gathered the rest of us all together, announcing that the “Black Chain Philosopher,” as the group had begun to call him, was trying to fulfill his telepathic threat at the gates of Rome and gradually kill us all off. Metellus, sensibly, ordered everyone to take precautions and to travel in large groups of at least 3-4; he also requested that Cornelia cease walking around the city and instead use a litter like a proper lady.
Despite this extremely rational advice, Meloch, of course, conspires with Llyr and Verix to defy it entirely. They decide that they need to find out who these foul assassins are and to set up Verix and Meloch as bait, with Llyr lurking invisibly, ready to take any potential culprits out. I try to tell Meloch that this is a horrible plan, certain to get them all killed, but he tells me I’m a cowardly monkey and I can just stay at home if I don’t like excitement and adventure, so I go sulk in Cornelia’s mother’s private bath.
Over our connection, however, I can still see through his eyes and feel his thoughts, so I’m well aware when he and Verix stroll down a deserted alleyway, only to find three thugs approaching from either direction, and a skilled crossbowman shooting from an upper window down at them. Furthermore, as Verix and Meloch both quickly realize, the crossbowman’s bolts are poisoned; Meloch, smelling his increasingly painful and bleeding shoulder, realizes that it is in fact the same poison that he bought the previous day from the wisewoman.
Both Verix and Meloch nearly faint from their wounds and the poison, barely staying upright as the lowly thieves slash at them. Meanwhile, Llyr goes up the wall, climbing dexterously, trying to take out the crossbowman before he can further poison his friends. Meloch manages to tumble through the legs of one of the assassins and reach a clear space of the alley, where, barely able to remember the appropriate words and gestures, he turns invisible in desperation at a fight increasingly gone wrong.
With Meloch vanished, the five remaining thugs surround Verix and beat him until he is a bloody pulp on the ground. Llyr manages to knock out the archer before the archer can poison him, and then jumps down into the melee combat, becoming visible.
Meanwhile, Meloch, still low on combat spells, whispers the word “Fight” to the small onyx goat statuette that the noblissima Hadriana gave him long ago in return for the fertility assistance. He has never used the goat before, although Hadriana hinted at its powers, and he is thus as surprised as anyone when it enlarges into an enormous, snarling billy-goat with long, curved, pointed horns. It charges at the thugs along with Llyr and together, they make reasonably fast work of the remaining bandits, knocking two out for later questioning, while Meloch, meanwhile, slips into near unconsciousness from the poison, and Verix’s body remains crumpled in the dust of the alley.
