What you read can down there, is my atempt to create a more modern ravenloft-domain with a slightly higher tech-level than other domains (but still "steampunk").
It was a bit inspired by Fritz Langs "Metropolis", a bit by Terry Gilliams "Brazil" a bit by "Modern Times" with Charly Chaplin and at least a bit by (please don´t laugh) Scrooge McDuck. The domains darklord is somehow very similar to him
Now, what ist your opinion about my homebrew-domain ? What do you like and what would you change ?
(And please forgive me my awfull english. It´s not my native language)
Mortenhafen
CL: 9+ (The live of most citizens does not differ much from that of citizens in other renaissance-domains. However, the technological knowledge of the people in Mortenhafen is much higher than in much of the other ravenloftian domains.)
Landscape:
Mortenhafen is relatively small pocket Domain. The domain consists only of the city of Mortenhafen and a few square-miles of surrounding countryside, which is either used as farm-country or is overgrown with dense, sickly forests.
Acid rain or ice-cold hail nearly constantly rains down on the city. If not, dense, grey clouds cover the sky. Mortenhafen is a dark industrial metropolis of enormous size. Most houses are three to four floors high blocks - grey, sooted brick-buildings with mostly dirty windowpanes. Visitors will look for ornaments or ornamentations in most quarters of the city in vain. The only „decoration“ are printed posters with propaganda-slogans. Most of the paved roads are narrow and dark. Between the high houses clothes-lines stretch themselves, and are used by the citizens as soon as it the weather permits. The road lighting consists of simple, plain gas lamps. The gas lines are partially openly shifted and copper tubes of innumerable size run crosswise at house fronts and along over the lanes.
The noblequarter in the center of the city looks somewhat more pleasant. Here stand the decadent urban estates, in which the aristocracy of the metropolis resides. But the delicate beauty of the baroque city-estates is a melancholic one. The city apears also here dark, claustrophobic and dirty. The noblequarter is heavily guarded. Permanently, security guards armed with pistols and acompanied by watchdogs patrol the roads , in order to keep unwanted visitors away. A high wall, fortified with watchtowers and beatifully elaborated but rusty steelspikes surrounds the noblequarter.
West of the city are the factories of the mighty Company „Kronheimer-Werke“, a monstrous, rampantly growing factory-complex, whose chimneys blow incessantly smoke and soot into the atmosphere. From the discharge pipes of the industrial complex viscous, green glowing slime pours into waters of the surrounding countryside. The slime is high-grade poisonous and corrosive. Those factories are the ultimate economic powerhouse of city. Most of the goods, one can buy in Mortenhafen are manufactured there. The complex also includes the cities central gas-station. Over two thirds of the population works in the Kronheimer-Werke-Complex. The company-administration can be found in a 25 floors high towerlike highrise, that full of bueraus, document-camps and conference-rooms. At the top of the building is the private residence of Heinrich Kronheimer, owner and mastermind of „Kronheimer-Werke“
The surrounding countryside of the city is trist and almost dead. The grain on the fields seems to be sickly and dirtily. The only other vegetable that prospers in Mortenhafen, is a strange, black cabagge with an unpleasant, strict taste (called Schwarzkohl). The five small farming-villages, which belong to Mortenhafen, consist of poor „Bretterbuden“ with straw roofs.
The forests of the domain consists of dead, black stumps, wich rise up their branches into the air like fingers of dried corpses. The soil is covered over-rampantly with yellowish grass, grey, foul moos and strange mushrooms grows. Waters of the domain are almost exclusively a greenish-brown soup . People, who drink from it, without cooking that water before, get sick nearly reliably.
Larger settlements: Mortenhafen itself (15.4000)
The people:
Population size - about 16.0000; Humans 98%; Gnomes 2%
Languages: Lamordian or Falknovian (or at least a very similar language...)
Religions:
None (the "Theory of the Proletarianismus" is a kind of spare religion for many citizens of the lower classes)
On first view differ the inhabitants Mortenhafens by nothing from the Lamordians. Prevail the same basic culture, nearly the same language and the same mentality forwards.. Most mortenhafeners are pale and seem to be underfed.
The clothes of the ordenary people consist of a simple, grey worker-gap (worn by men, women and children equally), the "aristocracy" dresses similar as the aristocracy in Paridon. The broad worker-class is extremly poor and underfed. The claustrophobic blocks are overcrowded and it is lacking everywhere at the most necessary goods. Since for poor the only food consists of grain mash and schwarzkohl, deficiency symptoms are at the agenda. Most buildings of the city have flowing water, even in the worker accommodations. However, the water is high-grade contaminated and uncooked undrinkable. In Mortenhafen one will find likewise few churches because the people are mostly atheistic or have to little free time to practice a religion. Instead, a strange, new philosophy spreads under the poor of the metropolis. Leaflets and illegaly printed lampoons promise the imminent revolution of the proletariats and the dawn of a new, socialist order. In the underground secret cells and circles are formed, which prepare secretly the great revolution. The city administration takes the threat extremely seriously - only the suspicion on membership in the proletarian movement is punished with immediate death.
On the other side stands the decadent aristocratic high-class of the city. The nobles are absolutely convinced of their total superiority and are enormously proud about their scientific and technological achievements. Characters from domains with a CL under 7 have automatically a Outcastrating of 5 here. Nobody here wants to have something to do with primitive savages. Some particularly rich aristocrats have even a telephone system and gaslight within their mansions.
There are several daily newspapers, but all are published from the Kronheimer-Werke and thus are everything else than „independent press“. Workers are regarded as better animals and are kept at bay brutaly by the soldiers of the city administration.
Lately rumors of strange, living slime make the population uncertain. The strange, amorphous creatures are sayed to have killed several watchmen brutally. Outside of the city the poisonous industrial waste ensured for horrible mutations with the local fauna and flora. Among the workers there are frightening many Calibans - the harmful influence of the manufacturing plants. Absolute economical center of the city are the Kronheimer-Werke. What is manufactured exactly in the gigantic industrial complex, is even unclear to the innumerable workers. There are 15 underground-levels, which are still in use by the workers. Under the basement is a true labyrinth from maintenance pits and discharge pipes. The conditions of work in the complex are terrible and inhuman. The employees work in turns of 16 hours and around the clock loudspeakers shout work propaganda. Guardians ensure, that all workers remain on their post. The guard staff was reacently entstrenghtened with large iron-golems (with build-in-firearms).
The law:
The city is governed by a city-senat, elected by the high-class-citizens and the workers alike. That sounds democratic, but in fact it isn´t. Votings in the worker-quarters are all to often manipulated. Most time, the worker-class does not find this out. But when they do, Mortenhafen ist struck by bloody uprisings, that are beaten down brutaly by the city-militia.
The city militia consists of mercenaries and iron-golems, generously posed from the Kronheimer-Werke.
Workers are judged by martial law, aristocrat and rich citizens to mostly expect a fair judgement by a court. In every case, law in Mortenhafen is always overly buerocratic and complicated (Terry Gilliams "Brazil" shows, how the mortenhavenian gouvernment works
)Trade:
Schwarzkohl in cans (for an unlimited period durable and aviable in three flavours: Schwarzkohl, Schwarzkohl with grain-mash and Schwarzkohl with bacon. You better don´t ask where the bacon comes from...), high-quality clockworks, parts for steam engines, scientific knowlege and subversive worker´s literature.
Characters: Similar to Paridon
Important NPC´s
Baron Georg von Mechtersen:
Georg von Mechtersen is the mayor of Mortenhafen and was recently elected for his third five-year-legislature-period. The strongly over-weighty 47 years old man worries almost exclusively about its own interests and hardly about political matter. His only interests is the consumption of exotic foreign food (imported from all parts of Ravenloft), his flower garden (under the windows of a greenhouse) and his only daughter - Marianne. As soon as it´s about politics the mustached „Schwerenoeter“ shows remarkable incompetence. Most members of the city senate are happy, if he stays away from the senats daily affairs.
As a private person, Baron von Mechtersen is a really pleasant man – would´nt there be his depressing naivety .
Colonel Bertram Carstensen:
The gaunt officer is the commander of the urban militia and a fanatic of purest water. The soldiers called only "Bonecrusher" - a suitable name for this merciless man. The reformation of the city militia is his work. He transformed a harmless police troop into a brutal armed force. Most senators hate him, but his position ist relatively secure, thanks to the fact that he ist Heinrich Kronheimers brother-in-law.
Reverend Nathanliel Goodwinter
This young cleric came from the distant domain of Mordent – as a missionary. At first glance, his mission-project seems to be a complete failure. Absolutely nobody here is interested in the holy words of Ezra!
However the small mission church with the soup-kitchen became a central point of approach for the poorest ones. Most of the people may not like to hear the boring sermons of the „Priesterchen“ (transl.: „little parson“)– but they love him for his good works. Goodwinter became a honest defender of the „Entrechteten“ (transl. „The Incapacitated“), as the workers call themself. He is respected by the leaders of the resistance cells as a friend. Should something happen to Goodwinter, hell will break loose....
Marianne von Mechtersen
The daughter of the mayor grew up protected in the mansion of her family in the city centre. She leaves the mansion only very rarely - and if, then only in a closed carriot. The pretty 17 years old lady was until recently still another spoiled, arrogant upper-class-girl. On a soriee she happend to meet the charismatic Reverend Goodwinter and was immediately in love with the young man. Finally she was persuaded by him in a secret meeting in the rose garden to visit secretly the mission church in the outer urban districts. Marianne was frightened by the terrible conditions in the workerslums – until now, she was of the opinion, that the enormous technical progress would bring welfare to mankind. The short (and forbidden) stay in the outlying districts of the city has brought Marianne to think...
The „Schocktruppen“
Nobody knows where they came from and what they are actually. The only known fact is, that Heinrich Kronheimer hired them somewhere and they are the elite of the city militia now. With them came also the nigthmarish irongolems that patrol the streets nowadays. The gruesome Guys receive instructions only from Kronheimer or the Colonel personaly. Their faces are always hidden behind strange gasmasks. They wear strange uniforms - heavy, long coats from crude, dark-green material and rough, nailed leather boots. Their heads are protected by heavy, green steel helmets. If soldiers of the shock troops say something, their voices sound strangely electrically warped – not like voices of human beeings. They are armed with large-caliber rifles with brutally serrated bayonets. In heavy cases they use also grenades with poisonous alchemischen vapors.
The Schocktruppen are feared by the normal soldiers of the militia and are avoided by them, if possible.
What nobody knows:
The „Schocktruppen“ are creatures of Kronheimers daemon – only kept alive by his will. If someone should succeed to kill a Shocktrooper, green steam will emerge from the uniform with a hellish hissing-sound and the uncanny warrior will coincide in itself - empty up to some bright bones, wich slowly disintegrate to dust....
The „Meister der neuen Ordnung“ (Master of the new Order)
This mysterious man is the author of the leaflets and lampoons, which give new hope to the suppressed workers. Nobody ever saw him. Only its voice is well-known, because it was him, who created the first revolution cells. Who the master is real ? In truth the Daemon, to which Kronheimer owes its power, itself is the author and the leader of the revolutionary-movement. The Daemon wants to vacate Kronheimer as soon as he served his purpose. The embarrased workers are the ideal tool for him.
The Slime
The whole thing is now already 40 years ago. Young Andreas Zager was simple, honest worker in the factory. With diligence and intelligence he managed it fast to climb up the Kariereleiter. Soon it was one of leading engineers of the factory. Owing to its friendly and fair nature he was well off with all workers and employees. However his security doubts and social thoughts disturbed one man - Heinrich Kronheimer himself. At one dark and cloudy night Andreas landed bound in a tank of poisonous industrial wastes. May it be an interference of the Dark Powers of Ravenloft or a strange biological phenomenon - Zager did not die, but merged with the poisonous mass. His very soul exists still in the slimy depths of drains and steers the viscous industrial waste. His principal purpose is it to release Mortenhafen from the bad influence of the powerful Kronheimer.
The Darklord
The neutral-evil Darklord of the domain is the scruplesless industrial-magnate Heinrich Kronheimer. Originally he was a small owner of weaving mill in Lamordia. Then its mysterios, cometlike ascent started. According to rumors he attained a pact with a daemon to receive paranormal intelligence and ingenuity. Kronheimer became suddenly an ingenious inventor and engineer. He moved to the, at that time still small and sleepy small town Mortenhafen and began to build up his factory.
Now, 50 years later, Kronheimer pushed all of his competitors brutally and scruplesless out of business. Officially its factory manufactures clockworks, machine parts, canned food and other goods - in truth however the plant serves a by far a much darker purpose. It is a part of the daemonic pact, which Kronheimer closed. A part of the machinery drains lifeenergie from the workers and sacrifices it to the demon. With enough lifeenergie, the demon can take a material shape and (thats the plan) leave the Demiplane of Dread.
"Neideritz" sounds asian ?? Interesting... 
)