*As you walk the winding road, you soon reach a stately manor house. Before you can even tentatively knock on the solid oak door, it opens. When you step inside, you can see who it was that pulled open the heavy door and you almost faint. To your right, a looming figure of about 6'8" stands, glowering down at you. His skin is ruddy and he's built like the door he opened. Long blond hair is pulled back at the nape of his neck with an ornate hair button and he is impeccably dressed in a black suit and tie. Cowering, you step inside, edging around him. Once you are within, the hulking butler shuts the door, and it echoes with a resounding thud through the seemingly empty house. The butler takes a step towards you and you immediately back up. Into a wall. A wall that you can't see because everything seems to be hidden in darkness and shadows. Before you can take another step, a woman materializes from nearby shadows. You look her up and down, for she is like no other creature you have ever seen before. Her skin is alabaster white, nearly translucent. You can see the noble blue veins just beneath the skin. Her green cat-like eyes watch you amusingly. They seem almost unholy. Like a green hellfire, piercing the pale opalescence of her face. Holding her head high, she glances over you. Shadows ooze behind her and around her. Her long, black hair, flows into her black velvet dress and her dress into the blackness of the room. She steps before you and extends a slender white hand with crystalline nails.*

"My name is Celaeno Pandora Verchant. Daughter of Archbishop Luthor DeMarco McVeigh. You have entered my home. If you enter in peace, I will let you stay. If you do not, I feel very sorry for you."

*She steps back a foot and the shadows move with her. With her petite, long fingered hand she parts the culminating shadows and you have a better view of the room in which you stand. It is a large manor house with high ceilings, chandeliers and oriental rugs. Chandeliers that are dimmed to almost the point of obscurity provides very little light for which the white pillar candles and candelabra attempt to make up for. Before you a red carpeted, winding staircase ascends into the darkness of a second floor, You think you see a figure at the top of the stairs, but with all the moving shadows, it is hard to tell. You see something move out of the corner of your eye and when you turn, you are face to face with the large scary man again. Stepping back in abject fear, you wonder what you have gotten yourself into. You hear laughter from the distance, but you can't tell from where, but you know what ever it is, it feels your fear, and mocks it.*

*Celaeno glides over to the the enormous butler, who in turn, dwarfs her by a good foot and a half. She smiles up at him coyly. And puts a small hand on his colossal bicep. He doesn't move, but looks on like no one is there.*

"This is Mr. Black. He belongs to me. My chaffuer and bodyguard. I control him and all the shadows in this house. Be warned. They are less friendly than I. Feel free to look around, it is no doubt you have come to see me because you have been told stories, heard rumors or were pointed here by superstitious neighbors. Perhaps it was that you just got lost. But at any rate, you may want to know if the stories are real. Well, they might be. It depends on what you hear. If you came here for answers you will find them through me and my house. Follow me to the Main Hall."