Click here for Session 1.

After our last session, Caesar’s victims found themselves temporarily saved from the depredations of their boar-headed pursuer. They had little to celebrate, however. The party now found themselves facing a lemure – a strange demon of flesh and shadow – who presented herself as their only hope for escape from the horrors of the dungeon. The creature explained that the creature that hunted them was Caesar’s ‘son’, the first of a progeny of monstrosities that the lemure wished to unleash upon the empire. She also revealed that Caesar’s sister Julia was pregnant with the second of these demonic offspring and would soon birth an even greater horror than the boar-monster.

The lemure’s condition for helping Caesar’s victims escape the dungeon (and not being struck down where they stood) was that Julia should successfully birth the second monster. The creature spoke of coups and plots that threatened the successful delivery of Caesar’s second son. The party would have to make their way to the villa above and ensure that these threats were eliminated.

The party agreed to the lemure’s terms. However, the silk-winged demon insisted that one of them submit to a geas to ensure that her orders were carried out to the letter. Carraco the Dog volunteered to shoulder this curse. The lemure place her talon-like hand upon his head and, a moment later, the notorious criminal knew with grim certainty that he would die horribly should he fail to fulfil his strange duty.

After quizzing the demon about the layout of the dungeon, the party gathered the bright, light-emitting mushrooms that covered the lemure’s cavern and made their way north where – not immediately threatened by Caesar’s son – Antonios the Hellene decided to investigate a pile of straw. He found it to be riddled with strange, pallid insects and reeking to high heavens. Tantalisingly, he also saw the glint of something shiny beneath the filthy, makeshift mattress. Thinking quickly, Antonios set fire to the straw, killing the insects, who screamed with surprising volume as they were consumed by the flames. The threat eliminated, the Greek managed to grab the shiny object, which he discovered to be a jewel-encrusted music box.

Meanwhile, the rest of the party had made their way east. They recognised this room as the cell which had held the boar-headed monster who had claimed the lives of Euric and Amelianus. Raising their mushroom-lanterns, the eerie blue light revealed that every square inch of the cell was covered in crude carvings. A hundred childlike etchings proclaimed ‘love me!’ to the still air and silent darkness.

To the west, the party noticed that the bars which had divided their own cell from that of Caesar’s monstrous offspring had been pried apart, allowing access to the room in which their nightmarish adventure had begun. Having learned from the lemure that two possible exits to the villa lay to the north and that an invisible bridge allowed safe traversal of the chasm which had previously blocked their progress, the party retraced their steps.

On their way, they returned to the emaciated Petronella, who they found conversing with her two dead sons. They questioned her further, learning that she was a member of an old patrician family and the daughter of a well-respected proconsul. Her high birth meant proximity to the imperial family. While Petronella had no desire to attend the emperor’s infamous, orgiastic parties, she and her sons had rarely refused an invitation, knowing that to do so was tantamount to declaring oneself a traitor. She was also able to confirm their location; Caesar’s island-villa at Cadmae, a notorious charnel-house of debauchery.

Of Caesar’s two sisters, Julia and Drusilla, she knew that the former was heavily pregnant with an enormous child – too large to be a human – and that the latter was said to have birthed a hideous monstrous some months earlier and now spent her days in a narcotic daze. Petronella confirmed that the rumours which swirled around the capital – that the emperor offended the gods by sleeping with his sisters – were not only true, but did not even tell the true extent of his impiety; there was a fourth participant in his perversions – a shadowy demon with wings like silk.

Having discovered a possible escape route from the dungeon, the party offered to escort Petronella to the villa above (reasoning that – having attended the parties there – she would have insider knowledge of the villa’s workings and layout). Petronella agreed on the condition that her sons would join her. Clearly, the noblewoman’s madness prevented her from realising that the boys were dead. Unwilling to take the risk of adding two rotting corpses and a madwoman to their retinue, the party left Petronella to her cell and went north where they were faced with the chasm. Having learned of an invisible path that would allow a safe crossing, the party scattered dirt and loose pebble across the darkness. The path now revealed, the party grabbed the mace and offered it to the sinewy barbarian Mannus, whose physical prowess suggested he was best placed to make use of it. The Germanic spy examined the object and found it to be of ornate design and bearing a simple inscription; In truthfulness, victory.

Proceeding further north and (they hoped) towards their freedom, Caesar’s victims found the bloated corpse of a senator covered in a thick, undulating blanket of maggots. Carraco the Dog noticed that the corpse bore a brass lantern and an onyx ring. Never one to shirk danger, Carraco attempted to saw off the ring-bearing finger. In doing so, he disturbed the swarm of maggots, who began crawling up his arm with unnatural speed and agression. A fight ensued in which the party were able to drive off the maggots with torches. The party fled east while the imperial scion Titus Pullo secured their escape by stripping off his linen smock and lighting it. The flaming garment seperated the maggots from their quarry. Thinking better of pursuing such dangerous prey, the writhing maggots returned to their feast.

The immediate danger having passed, the party took in their surroundings. The bloodstained corridor they found themselves in had three exits to the north. From the lemure they had learned that one of these was a latrine pit which allowed a possible egress from the dungeon to the villa. The others would lead to their seized equipment and to a guarded staircase respectively. The stink that exuded from the first doorway left no doubt as to where it led. The other exits were blocked by heavy oak doors. The party made a virtue of caution and listened carefully at both doors. From one door came only silence. From the other floated two gruff voices with thick Hycanian accents. That strange dialect could only mean one thing; the Hyrcanian guard, Caesar’s private bodyguards, loyal only to him. Low on supplies, and with few resources to their name, the party decided to prioritise recovering their seized equipment. There was only one problem. The door was locked.

Displaying the ingenuity that comes with a life of espionage, Antonios the Hellene refashioned his brooch into a crude lockpick and successfully forced the door open. Inside, the party found their seized items.

Caesar’s victims ended the session in a better position than they had started it. They now had (theoretically, at least) a way out of the dungeon. Each had managed to acquire a weapon of some description. Incredibly, they had not taken any further casualties. However, greater challenges lay in store for them. To escape their dark fate, they would have to infiltrate Caesar’s villa, a house of horrors where the bloodthirsty emperor, his Hyrcanian guards, and a thousand other dangers lurked…