Episode 12.1.b
>Alexandria, Aegyptus, 80 CE<
Tertius leads you through the streets to a huge building that has seen better centuries. One whole side is blackened by fire, and a section that fell long ago has been patched by builders who did not much care how it looked.
A tired guard sits on a stool by the gate. Tertius speaks to him in Greek, and the man looks him over with open suspicion, then laughs and waves you all through into an enormous atrium. It is laid out as a Roman atrium would be, but none of the Roman signs are there. Where the lararium should stand there is a true altar instead, dark with old blood.
Through the doorways around the atrium you can see shelves, and on the shelves, row after row of papyrus rolls. In one corner a man who looks as worn out as the guard sits reading.
"I told the guard your family wants to make a great gift to the Muses by way of this Musaeum," Tertius says quietly. "The place has been poor ever since the empire began. The fire destroyed a great many books, but the neglect is worse. No one looks after it now, and the learned men who are left here are not the best of their kind.
"So we ask the librarian. We want the books that show where the Lapis went after the Carthaginians took it. If we choose well, the next TSTT training will be a better one."
Prompt: Choose a book to ask for.
