Ok so in my campaign there is a realm known as "The Pale Lands" almost a millenia ago it was sealed off by an event known as the veiling. This was in response to a particular brutal uprising by an upstart vampire who tried to raise an army and assissinated the unofficial vampire leader. Rebellion was squashed by armies of good with help from the former leaders two sons. They(the brothers and their deceased Dad, hated being vamps) agree to be sealed off from the rest of the world. They are given a "Crop" of humans/demi-humans and set up in a land to the northeast.
The veiling is erected. You can pass inside the veiling but cannot pass back out. The empire often dumps criminals and millitary deserters here.
The pc's are going to experience the pale lands, be it the veiling comes down or they go through the veil. But I am at a loss for what it looks like. Other than the brothers are still in control. Help!
Well, the first place that where your good nation dumps criminals and military deserters is going to be known as Brigands Pass or the Feeding Grounds.
If you call it Brigands Pass, then anyone who goes there is going to be a target for all the thieves and criminals who know that the new "citizens" are going to be dumped there and they will waylay and ambush anyone crossing through. The purpose of this is for the brigands to buy off the vampire lords from being eaten themselves with the capture of anyone who comes acrossing the Veil.
Or if you call it the Feeding Grounds, then that's where vamps are going to be hanging out. Why damage your existing crops when you're getting fresh supplies from somewhere else? You're likely to not risk a rebellion in your own home nation when you're picking off the foreigners.
Physically, if you have the area in a set of mountains, make the pass maze-like so as to give any PC's who are in here a chance to survive by outwitting the locals. Or if you make it in the forest, then allow for a chance to hide and such.
The vamp nation itself can be a place of constant twilight. I'm borrowing an idea from LPJ games from their Obsidian campaign. The vamp nation, because of the Veil, is in constant twilight, so vamps can be out during the day and night. The vamps don't want a rebellion so they need to keep the villagers ignorant and compliant. Magic is forbidden, possession of magic items is confiscation, there is no divine casters except any practices or rituals that don't involve magic. Peasants are allowed to carry weapons to defend themselves since vamps have little fear of regular weapons. If you want to take it even further, reading and literacy is forbidden and a secret police rules the nation in the vamps' interests.
Villagers though are far from stupid though they may be ignorant. Come nightfall, the village bells will toll for everyone to get indoors. They will put up whatever holy marks, garlic and such on their doors and windows to keep the "bad spirits" away. The doors will be barred and locked and the windows shuttered. All inns have a coach wall around them. If the PC's are caught out at night, they are seriously in trouble because that's what the vamps, secret police, or other
things want.
Villagers are quite likely to be extremely guarded and paranoid because they will perceive the PC's as interlopers or agents in the vamps' employ. They will have little to do with the PC's as possible.
Trade in the nation is sporadic or more than likely representing the vamps' own interests in keeping their cattle alive, so they have agents who are charged with shipping goods from village to village.
The land itself will also be hostile. Farming is difficult and come winter, villagers always die from starvation. Every spring is a somber activity of bringing out the dead to be buried. The forests will have a lot of plant-like monsters in addition to the other real monsters. Swamps will have the constant threat of diseases that mutate and corrupt inhabitants and create fly swarms, maggot infestations, and gaseous hazards. Mountains will be barren, cold, and filled with monsters that eat trespassers. The mountains will be jagged and shear where only the most experienced climbers and mountaineers have a hope in hell of surviving. I wouldn't have your vamp nation have any deserts, but definitely wastelands where there is virtually no drinkable water and definitely no plant life (lots of dead trees though!).
Because of the war that created the Veil, there are tons of ruins of when the land was once a vibrant place. The vamps have no interest in rebuilding or razing the ruins as the locals' knowledge of the places as being monster-infested (rightly so) prevents them from wandering around.
Travel to village to village should be risky but doable. The villages will have gotten smart and that over time since the Veil, the villagers will be separated by no more than one day's ride from each other so that a rider can set out in the morning and arrive at the next village / hamlet before nightfall.
Justice in the village is harsh. Criminals are cast out of the village where most will die before the sun rises the following day because they will have been killed / eaten by
whatever is out there.
