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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Orichalcum" data-source="post: 1607781" data-attributes="member: 3722">Alea Iacta VII: Lux et Veritas Post 10: Inspecting the BuildingsMetellus, 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.</blockquote>

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