What is Operation LAPIS?

Operation LAPIS is a two-year, 28-mission Latin curriculum built as an alternate reality game (ARG). Students are not passive recipients of content: they take on roles, make choices that shape a narrative, and use Latin as the instrument of their participation. The learning objectives and the game objectives are the same thing.

The name is a double reference. Lapis is Latin for "stone" and the object at the center of the story is the Lapis Saeculorum, a mythical artifact of immense power whose location has been lost to history. It is also a wink at the broader project: LAPIS is the stone on which the curriculum is built.

The Premise

The story begins in 79 CE Pompeiī, just before the eruption of Vesuvius. Two young Romans, Recentia Octāviāna and her brother Gāius Recentius Bellātor, are drawn into a mystery that will take them across the Roman world and through centuries of history. The trail of the Lapis Saeculorum leads from the streets of Pompeiī to Roman Britannia, from Alexandria and the Aegyptian coast back to Rome itself.

Students become part of this story. In the RPG approach, they play as members of the Recentii, the extended family and circle of Octāviāna and Bellātor, navigating the ancient world through Latin immersion. In the CYOP approach (LAPIS Fabulae), students guide the two protagonists directly through a branching Latin narrative.

The Shape of the Curriculum

The 28 missions are organized into five arcs across two years:

Arc	Missions	Setting
Pompeiī	1–6	The Bay of Naples (79 CE)
Britannia I	7–10	Roman Britain (81 CE)
Aegyptus	11–14	Alexandria and the Pyramids (80 CE)
Britannia II	15–22	Return to Britain (81 CE)
Rōma	23–28	The city of Rome (82 CE)

Each mission is divided into three episodes. Each episode usually has two immersion prompts, a part (a) and a part (b), so a typical mission runs to six prompts. (A few episodes vary, with an extra prompt or a reflective task.) The episode is the unit of classroom activity, and the CODEX, the curriculum's information backbone, is organized per episode, providing the grammatical, lexical, and cultural scaffolding students need to engage with the Latin.

What Makes It Different

Most Latin curricula organize content around a grammar syllabus: here is the ablative absolute, now practice it. Operation LAPIS organizes content around essential questions that spiral through the story: Who were the Romans? What did they believe? How did empire shape the lives of people inside it?

Grammar and vocabulary emerge from the narrative rather than driving it. Students encounter Latin because their characters need to act: to respond to events, read dispatches, compose messages. Proficiency grows because engagement demands it.

The curriculum is designed to meet ACTFL proficiency targets, beginning at the Novice level and building toward Intermediate across the full arc. Cultural and historical learning is not supplementary; it is essential.

A Note on Terminology

A few terms appear throughout this guide with specific meanings:

Term	Meaning
Agent	You, the teacher. The instructor's in-world role.
Operative	An individual student, tracked in Mission Control.
Recentius / Recentii	The player characters in the RPG. Each team controls one persona.
TSTT	The Texto-Spatio-Temporal Transmitter, the in-world framing device for the immersive episodes.
CODEX	The curriculum's reference backbone; replaces a textbook. CODEX Links
Mission Control	The web app used to manage cohorts, track LP, and handle character data. Agents use mc.practomime.com/agent; students use mc.practomime.com.

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Next: Practomimetic Learning, the pedagogical framework behind Operation LAPIS.