The air in the atrium of Lucius Sergius Catilina's Tusculan villa was cool and still, smelling faintly of old wine and dust. The gilded masks of his ancestors, the Sergii, stared down with blank, haughty eyes, a silent testament to a lineage that had run out of money and influence. Catiline himself stood not beneath them, but by the window, a broad-shouldered silhouette against the fading Etrurian light.

He turns to you and smiles, with flash of white in the gloom, charismatic and predatory.

"Welcome," he said, his voice a low, compelling rumble. He gestured dismissively at the opulent, slightly shabby room. "Forgive the state of things. We old families cling to our memories while the new men, the Ciceros, build their palaces with the sweat of our tenants."