** Early Afternoon, North East Boundary Hills, June 3rd, 52 Years After the Fall of Bhall **
Tombstone Road, the Trail of Blood, Slaver's Way, you can call it whatever you like, but it doesn't change the suffering of those that are forced to take it. This is the road of the Calabim Slavers out Cindermere. From that foul city the slavers and their caged wagons roll east for league upon league passing across the river at Grimdale, then northeast through the Boundary Hills skirting the Calabim and Malakim nations. Anyone unlucky enough to have been caught along the road at the wrong time could end up in their cages. However most of the slaves come from the blasted lands east of Calabim. Gnoll tribes in the Boundary Hills and parts east collect and capture people all year long to sell to the Calabim, some are wanders, tribesmen of Malakim, or even their own kind of rival gnoll tribes.
The caravan wagons, like mobile jails make the long trip from end to end, then turn around and make the return trip loaded with poor souls destined for the slave pits in Cindermere, Achtep Keep or even the Citadel of the Ebon Hand. Slavery is, as expected, legal, and profitable, and used as punishment for criminals, or political dissidents of the country. Occasionally good aligned folks from Icatia or what's left of Braduk raid the caravan freeing slaves. Once and a while Elohim or even Malakim Clans might do the same, but freed slaves, unless able to get far to the south, rarely survive long after being released.
Now, in the middle of summer, the caravans are working their way south once more with fully loaded wagons. There are a half dozen different slave merchant companies, some working under the banner of noble houses of Calabim, others for the glory of the Ebon Hand Knights, some government funded, they are all rivals of one another, but much in the same way that many cobblers in one city compete with one another for customers.
The sun beats down, its sweltering out on the Boundary Hills, currently there is no shade or cover, save for the spiked roof of the rolling wagons of the Black Wheel Merchant Company. Dozens of guards sway along on camels, commonly used in these hilly and near desert regions on the eastern edge of Calabim. The wagons, seven in all, rolls along pulled by tired oxen and a few heavy horses. Teamsters sit and drive them forward in single file snaking along the baked road under the hot sun.
In the cages are dozens of slaves, but not every wagon cage is full yet. Smack in the middle of the procession is cage with two slaves. One is a tall and slender female gnoll, her finery she once had stripped from her, her wealth gone, her mood foul and her mouth parched. Sitting across from her is a brute of a man, a native to the Boundary Hills. Both gnoll and barbarian were captured at least a week ago, its hard to tell, time is tricky in these food and water deprived cages.