Dramatis Personae:
- Sabin, a Resourceful Widow of a Rich Patrician (Played by R)
- Prim, Sabin's slave (Played by J)
- Cassius, a Devil-May-Care Poet (Played by W)
- Aetius, a ex-Mysteries Cult Assassin (Played by A, not present)
- Mystery Man, the Eagle's representative in Herculaneum and the PCs boss, called Quintus (a Equestrian) and Glaucus (a Patrician) by various folks
- Marcus Verus, brother-in-law of Sabin, murdered Sabin's husband and inherited everything, leaving Sabin and her child nothing
- Octavia, Marcus' wife, had a relationship with Cassius
- Kaeso, murdered Patrician Merchant
- Pomptina, second wife of Kaeso, probably having an affair with Kaeso's son, Antonius
- Antonius, son of Kaeso by his first wife
- Gymnasia, Antonius' girlfriend
- Kaeso's chief Butler
- Senator Senex
- Phillia, a widow and head of a powerful merchant house
- Lycus, a rich guest at the party, unknown what he does, is he a official or a criminal?
- Various guests, guards and servants
- The tiger's owner
- A tiger
The scene opens with Prim trying to escape through the secret passages in Kaeso's villa. She succeeds in escaping from the guards and servants and loses any pursuit in the passages.
Completely lost, she figures she's near the sleeping quarters and follows the sound of the party through the secret passages, eventually finding a secret door that dumps her out into the garden, screened by some potted plants and a palm tree.
As the secret door is closing, the tiger attacks and takes a swing at her but she avoids being hurt, knocking over the potted plants and gaining the attention of the party goers and the tiger's owner, who berates her loudly with "where is my tiger!?!?!" This brings Prim to the attention of Marcus Verus.
Marcus comes over and grabs Prim, demanding to know about Sabin. He starts beating her but Sabin arrives with Cassius and intervenes, not before Prim gets bloodied by the brute.
Sabin successfully embarrasses him in front of the other guests and in a rage he turns and sees his wife Octavia talking with Cassius, the man who had an affair with Octavia just a few months ago.
Filled with murderous intent, Marcus charges towards Cassius, who promptly fades into the crowd with Octavia and they disappear to have a private assignation.
Prim thanks Sabin for saving her from Marcus' brutality. Sabin, after a quick look at the ledger with the bribes and other payments in it, figures out three possible marks in the crowd: Senator Senex, Phillia (a widow and merchant who Sabin hopes to emulate) and Lycus, a rich man of mysterious occupation.
She realizes that Senator Senex is the most important and observes that Lycus is talking to him. Senex is looking very uncomfortable, like a man who thought his problems were over but now they are doubled.
As Sabin drifts through the crowd toward Senex, Lycus takes the Senator's toga (which Sabin sees have blood on them) and wanders off.
Prim decides to go back to the library to complete the job the Mystery Man gave her. After her beating, with a black eye she figures she's unrecognizable but she grabs the toga that Lycus sets down and heads into the house.
With her puffy, bruised face, she gets by the guards with no problem and encounters the servant she shut the library door on right outside the library. Expressing concern, she helps the servant to go rest elsewhere. The servant fails to recognize her and goes off.
Prim sneaks into the library, where Pomptina and her maid are still passed out and Kaeso is still dead. She rifles through the desk and finds the fake ledger that Sabin left behind. She realizes that this is the ledger to show the taxman or a city official to fool them. She pockets it and tries to leave.
Meanwhile, Cassius and Octavia are having sex in one of the bedrooms in the villa when Marcus bursts in with a sword, intent on killing the poet. Cassius escapes into the secret passages by the skin of his teeth and exits into one of the other bedrooms, where he, buck naked except for a lute, encounters the tiger's owner.
Boldly Cassius greets the tiger's owner, as Gymnasia, Antonius' girlfriend and also naked, walks into the bedroom. The tiger's owner, confused about what's going on, leaves. Cassius charms Gymnasia with his good looks, nakedness and lute.
Meanwhile, Sabin approaches Senator Senex and he spills the beans: he killed Kaeso because Kaeso was blackmailing him. Now he fears that Lycus will also blackmail him. Sabin convinces the senator that she has friends who can help him and bundles him off to her villa outside the city, escorted with her guards who have orders not to let the senator leave.
Prim hides in the library when she hears people outside the library door, fearing they will come in. She hides herself among the unconscious Pomptina and her maid, until she decides to bluff her way out.
Prim opens the door to the library and boldy walks out, right into a servant telling her friend Gallus all about Pomptina's fascination with peas, green peas, yellow peas, and the various sauces for them.
Sabin notices that Lycus is looking around for the toga that Prim took and approaches him with a goblet of knock-out drugged wine. He foolishly drinks it and drops unconscious for a good 14 or 15 hours. Sabin summons the Chief Butler and asks him to have some servants take Lycus to sleep it off.
Gallus tries to escape the peas-talking servant by getting Prim involved in the conversation but both are soon trapped by the boring servant. Several guards come up and Prim and Gallus manage to switch places with them, leaving the guards to talk peas with the servant. As they walk away, they hear one of the guards talking about how much he likes peas. Prim offers up one final bit of pea advice: a nice butter sauce, before escaping.
The Chief Butler orders his servants to take Lycus to the bedrooms and they open the first bedroom door, to find a sword stuck in the wall and Marcus making violent love to Octavia, his wife.
They kick the door shut and move to the next bedroom, where they find Cassius making love to Gymnasia. The other servant kicks that door shut and they move on to the third bedroom.
Opening the door, they are startled when Aetius comes charging out with a naked Antonius over his shoulder, hotly pursued by the tiger. The two servants drop Lycus and run like hell away, as the final visual shot is the tiger roaring over the unconscious body of Lycus.
One more session to wrap it up!
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