The Art of War...Games

There were years where days happened, and then there were days where years happened. For Camp Jupiter, the past few days had been a mix of the two.

After being lost and declared dead, the First Cohort centurion Skye Maddox returned alive and — minus the burns and the fact she was in Julius Caesar Memorial Hospital — well. Her return marked the likely end of her year long quest with Caroline Hanson of the Third and Dominic De Luca of the Fourth, neither of which had returned from the Sibylline quest. While the general sense was of relief that the quest could be somewhat closed, not everyone was happy about who came crawling back from the pits of who-knows-where.

One of those dissatisfied campers was Dean Basilone, the son of Securitas, Centurion of the Third Cohort and a nine-year veteran of the Twelfth Legion Fulminata. Despite his equal of rank retuning and the First being able to begin a road back to normalcy, Basilone was upset by the fact that such a privileged hack like Maddox was home. He had voted against the threadbare quest back in one of his first Senate sessions, citing the vagueness of the prophecy and the notoriously poor relationship between Maddox and Hanson. With the daughter of Apollo unaccounted for and the lost centurion bearing burn marks, he could only imagined what went down between those two... and he did not like where his mind was going.

But war games were coming up again in a few weeks. After an embarrassing defeat against Carter Virgo and the First Cohort, Basilone felt more pressure to prepare for the midsummer outing. He had sent for a few of his opitio to help come up with ideas, though his office in the back of the Third’s barracks was only occupied by him, a full pizza box, his laptop and myriad papers spanning from ancient scrolls to 8.5”x11” documents.

Basilone looked up from his laptop, the monitor illuminating his faded camp t-shirt. “Hey Thurmond, things are good. How ‘bout you?”

To call Thurmond Porter an asset to the Third was an understatement. One of Dean’s oldest friends in the legion, the son of Salus had a knack for finding the danger in the tragic life Romans called mundane. A stickler for rules at times, the man had the best of intentions and that had to count for something. Plus it did not hurt to have someone who agreed healthcare was a right making the lower-end decisions.

Thurmond mentioned that he should wash his hands before touching the pizza, and odd statement to Dean because surely he had already washed them at least 50 times today.

“I think I have some hand sanitizer if you want that. I’m just waiting on Tiberia to get here — you know how New Romans are.”