Outside the Septizodium

From the gatehouse the magi should proceed directly to the Septizodium. It is easy to find and, due to the recent events, anyone can direct the magi to the building. The first thing they notice is the 500 crows roosting on the building's roof and upper balconies. Armed guards can be seen in the plaza in front of the building and a sizable crowd mills around wondering if the cardinals will reach a decision. Orsini's guards keep a tight watch on the Septizodium, preventing the eleven cardinals from leaving the building and prohibiting visitors. Matteo Orsini has ordered restricted rations for the cardinals, who remain thirsty and dangerously underfed. One meal is delivered at noon, consisting mostly of cheese, bread, and weak wine. The cardinals are denied even the most minor human decencies. Without chamber pots the men must urinate and defecate in a corner of their room, the same room they use for sleeping, eating, and deciding the next pope.

Orsini's guards restrict the front entrances and patrol the roof, using the external staircases to avoid the building's interior. The guards know about the cardinals' deliberations, having heard them repeatedly screamed from one cardinal to another. While Latin is the lingua franca of the Church, most of the deliberations are spoken in Italian. The guards, as well as most citizens living nearby, know the state of things inside the building, making it easy for the player characters to get accurate information.

The four Guelphs, Riccardo Annibaldi, Rinaldo Conti de Segni, Gil Torres, and Sinibaldo Fieschie, want to elect Romano Bonaventura, who will continue the struggle against the emperor. The three Ghibellines, Giovanni Colonna, Rainiero Capocci, and Robert Somercotes, favor Goffredo da Castiglione, who will not oppose the emperor. Two cardinals, Tommaso da Capua and Stefano dei Conti, did not have strong convictions either way. The winner needs a two-thirds majority, or eight out of the eleven votes. Most Romans thought that the Guelphs would win and elect Bonaventura.

The debate hung in stalemate for a week, until Annibaldi announced that he wanted to be pope and stopped supporting Bonaventura. Soft-spoken Tommaso da Capua did the same, declaring that he should be pope. The soldiers overheard Guelphs voting for Ghibellines and Ghibellines voting for Guelphs, and then heard the situation reversed the next day. Where at first they thought a Guelph would win, now they don't think anyone will. To unlock the stalemate, Colonna and Somercotes demand that Matteo Or-

sini instruct the emperor to release the three captured cardinals. This "conversation" happens in the morning, shouted from the interior to Orsini standing in the street. Thus far Orsini has told them to decide themselves.

The crowd thins after lunch is delivered, and is smallest during the afternoon, the hottest part of the day. It grows larger again toward evening, when the cardinals make their daily vote. They vote once each day, writing their choice on small slips of parchment and letting one member of the group read the results. The crowd waits for a winner to be declared. If nothing happens by dusk, the crowd disperses, realizing that another day has passed without a decision being made.

As the characters survey the scene, they may notice a woman fishmonger bringing a meal to the guards. The woman notices the magi unless they have take careful steps to remain hidden. This is Alyates, in his Malgarita persona. Even if they are hidden Alyates had a good chance of noticing the player characters. His Visions Flaw has already indicated that other magi will interfere with his plan and his Premonitions Virtue rings like a bell once he is close to the player characters.

Alyates has a plan and is in the middle of following it through. As the player characters arrive, Alyates has manipulated Bonaventure to take his first Arcane Connection to another cardinal, a slipper belonging to Sinibaldo Fieschi, and made Bonaventura decide to throw the slipper off the upper balcony. Alyates is waiting for Bonaventura to appear and toss the slipper to the plaza below, where she hopes to scoop it up. Noticing the player characters disturbs the magus and he abandons his plan. The player character may notice Bonaventura casting a slipper to the plaza below on a Perception + Awareness + stress die roll against an Ease Factor of 9. On a truly spectacular roll, 15 or higher, the character also notices a particularly large crow watching Bonaventura. This is the demon Oriens, although the character won't know it at the time.

Alyates has no idea who the player characters are — unless they have Reputations within the Order of Hermes — and decides that the best way to investigate them is to interrogate any mundane companions they have in tow. He wants to know if the magi are after him. Disguised as Malgarita, he approaches the magi and offer to sell them a fish lunch. Pretending to notice that they are foreigners, she then offers them a room above her shop, at a very convenient price. If they refuse she casts a minor Mentem spell to influence one of the mundane character's decisions. Even with no voice and gestures and in a Divine aura Alyates should be able to cast Meet Me at Midnight on one of the characters, telling the character to meet her later, alone. She retreats to the shadows and waits for the character to slip away from the group. The aura directly outside the Septizodium is a Divine aura of 1.

If Alyates is successful he convinces the player characters to stay with Malgarita in the Piazza dei Satiri. Malgarita Ramberti will provide a quick background for the characters. She is a lonely fishwife who has had some success with three shops and three employees. She asks that she still be allowed to sell fish from the first-floor window, but if the characters insist, she can cease for the time being. She purposefully plays with a small bone hanging from a necklace, and if asked she says that it is a finger bone of St Jerome, her most prized possession. It is actually just a finger bone, but Alyates hopes that mentioning this relic will suggest to the magi that Malgarita has Magic Resistance and in this way he can keep his Parma Magica activated while he interacts with the characters.

With the player characters relaxed and off guard, Malgarita tries to take items that serve as short-term Arcane Connections to the player magi's mundane staff. This is merely to keep tabs on the magi and she will not risk discovery if acquiring an Arcane Connection proves too difficult. Malgarita leaves each morning, first to go to the Temple of Mercury and use the Cup of Carbonius to cast spells to control Bonaventura, then to the plaza in hopes of retrieving Arcane Connections. His success depends on what the player character magi do. If they do nothing, he gets one Arcane Connection to a cardinal each day, and in a week has Arcane Connections to enough cardinals to elect Bonaventura pope.

If he has an Arcane Connection to the magi's staff he uses it to watch the magi. However, he won't take the Cup of