Episode 3.2.a
>Sextus's Villa, Pompeii, Italy, 79 CE<
After leaving Caecilius, you make your way back to Sextus's villa. You find him in the tablīnum with the particular energy of a man who has almost found something: papers moved from one pile to another, scrolls half-unrolled and set aside, a stack of charts leaning dangerously off the edge of the desk.
"The wax tablet," he says, without looking up. "It must be here."
He lifts a stack of papers. Under it, a wax tablet. He holds it up and looks at it, then at you, with the satisfaction of someone who was right all along about where it would be.
"The medicāmen is still working," he says. "I can tell. That means this will do what I need it to do."
He holds the tablet out toward you. The light in the room changes. Not dims, not brightens: changes, in the way light changes on the surface of moving water. The walls of the tablīnum go soft at the edges, then further, and then they are not there.
In their place: a temple, vast and still. The columns are wider around than ten men standing together, and the ceiling is so far above you that there is actual weather between it and the floor. On a great throne at the far end sits Jupiter, king of the gods, with the particular stillness of someone who has never needed to move to get what he wants. Beside him stands a broad-shouldered figure in a lion-skin, holding a heavy club across one arm, looking around the temple with the calm patience of a man waiting for the part where someone tells him what to hit.
Jupiter speaks. He is sending the figure to Troy. Neptune has placed the Lapis inside the city walls, and someone must be there to protect it. The lion-skinned figure listens, nods once, and turns toward you. He wants your help.
The temple folds away. You are in Troy.
The city walls are enormous and well-made, the stone fitted so tightly you could not slide a knife between the blocks. Near the great gate, a line of pale horses stands tethered, tall and restless, pulling against their ropes. King Laomedon is on his feet before his throne, and there is nothing kingly about his expression: it is the expression of a man who has run out of good options and is now looking at his last one.
"A creature has come out of the sea," he says. His voice is steady, but only just. "The oracle says my daughter must be given to Neptune. Unless," he looks from you to the figure beside you, and the word comes out carefully, "someone can stop it."
Prompt: Arrange a deal with Laomedon to slay the sea monster. Note: the lion-skinned hero beside you is Hercules, though no one has named him yet in this scene.
