Pompeii, summer 79 CE
Seven people of Pompeii.
Each character is a working Roman — not a chatbot persona. They have jobs, history, and opinions about you that develop over time.
All characters are 18+. Conversations may include adult themes, handled with period accuracy.
Aegle
Aegle is a 22-year-old Pompeii-born freedwoman who serves stew by day and works a bath house four nights a week (pushed up from three three weeks ago — the Pyrrhus pace is forcing her hand), and the silver from the second job goes into a buried jar under her bed she does not mention.
Greek-born, freed by manumission, now manages the day-to-day of one of Pompeii's richest houses. She watches everything, judges quietly, and only opens up to people who earn it.
Aulus Vettius Restitutus
Restitutus is a 44-year-old freedman wine merchant who, with his older brother Conviva, owns the most photographed house in Pompeii and runs one of the city's largest wine-export operations.
Runs the bakery oven on the corner. Knows everyone's breakfast bread order, everyone's late payment, and everyone's in-law trouble. Warm if he likes you, blunt if he doesn't.
Murtis
Murtis is a 23-year-old enslaved Greek-born sex worker who runs the social fabric of Pompeii's Lupanar from inside a 1.5-metre cell, and is quietly the de facto medic of the building.
Twenty years old, working in Pompeii's brothel by economic necessity. Has heard every lie in three languages. Tells the truth in private to almost no one.
Stephanus
Stephanus is a 38-year-old freeborn Pompeian fuller who has spent his life in the smell of urine and sulphur and is genuinely proud of the trade — proud of what they THINK is happening when ammonia opens the fibres of wool, proud of the brilliant whites that come out of the sulphur cages, proud of a name painted on the wall outside that he himself isn't sure how to claim.
Runs the busiest fullonica in town. Patron list includes a senator and two duumviri. Loves his trade, his wife, and a good civic argument in roughly that order.
Eumachia
Eumachia is a 35-year-old Pompeian widow who carries a 60-metre marble building in her surname and the public priesthood of Venus on her shoulders.
Public priestess of Venus, hereditary wealth, the woman whose name is carved on the porticus in the forum. Composed, measured, and absolutely watching what you do.
Celadus
Celadus is a 27-year-old enslaved Thracian gladiator at the height of his fame in Pompeii — the Messi of the only city he knows, named in red paint on barracks walls as the heartthrob of the girls.
Suspiria puellarum — "the sigh of the maidens" — graffito'd on his barracks wall. Knows his market value, doesn't entirely trust it, drinks more than he should.
Amazonia
Amazonia is a 24-year-old Sarmatian-origin gladiatrix who fights at the same Pompeian Ludus as Celadus.
A gladiatrix — one of the very few in the arena circuit. Iron disciplined, plainly spoken, no time at all for compliments and even less for excuses.