"I go by Killraven," Sebastion says, with a casual flick of his black-armored wrist. "And we'll be going now. These ones aren't going to be cheap, and we have much to discuss with the Baroness."
*The captain gives a twitch of his lips and motions for you to wait, going into the guardhouse. A few tense minutes pass as the guards talk amongst themselves, appraising the "new meat" on the wagon. Finally the captain emerges, an odd smile on his face.*
"Go right ahead. Continue straight on through the town until you get to the manor, the guards there will let you in. The Baroness is eager to see all of you," he says with a bow, and waves you ahead.
*Traveling into the Baroness' lands is like traveling into a small pieces of some twisted hell. Fields of grain are tended by skeleton peasents, ghouls and ghasts linger in empty fields, stripping the flesh from the bones of human and animal alike, and occasional flickers of things not-quite-seen has most of the party convinced there is more than one ghost here.*
*The town is even worse, sparkling clean and run by carefully wrapped mummies. Deep black curtains tells you that those creatures that hate sunlight probably lair in what were once living quarters for the working families.*
*At the gates to the Baroness manor, you see the wrought iron gates are decorated with scenes of suffering, necromancy, and death, a flagrent display of all that is evil and vile. Something else tugs at Sylinda, and after a moment, she realizes what it is. The little sounds of birds, rabbits, and other wild creatures are entirely gone. The forest around the manor is quiet as a tomb. The trees around the manor are twisted and dark, gothic in their splendor. Vines crawl over everything, giving it an air of decay. The plants seem sickly and dying, and fungus grows abundantly on the dead and dying plants everywhere.*
*The guards at the gate looked human at first glance, but a second reveals them to be some kind of carefully preserved undead. They wave you through the gates, unlocking them with an elaborate key in its massive lock. You have to twist through the haunted woods, passing a few artificially created groves that once may have been fine gardens, but now contain dead mockeries of life. Black roses with leafless stems, dead vines with dessicated, blood-red fruit, and purple-black grass with serrated edges now reign there.*
*The manor is one of the older ones, obviously made to be a very defensible keep. Its walls are high and thick, and well patrolled. One of the guards, for once a normal-seeming human, comes down to guide you around the keep to some kind of holding pen. People of various races exist here; you really couldn't call it living with chains around their necks, fused to stones to prevent them from ever leaving.*
"You can stop here. The Slavemaster will be out in a little bit to evaluate your wares. If you want to do any patching up, now would be a good time," the guard says, indifferent to the weak moans that come from behind him.