Cyre 1313 The Mourning Rail domain

[Resonant Curse]

So... anyone have any ideas how to actually use this thing? There are basically no details and due to the very nature of the domain, it doesn't really make much sense to have it interact with other places. The whole point is the continuous flight from Metrol, so it can't even be like it stops to pick up passengers in Lamordia or Peridon or Mithras Court or anywhere else you might be able to make a reason for a train station to exist (although Mithras Court at least *has* a train station). The only way I can see the domain really working is due to the groundhogs day style weekend in hell nature they dumped on 5e Ravenloft, because realistically the train can't have that many cars. It is a passenger train and even for a relatively high (magical) tech setting like Eberron, populations, especially those that would need to go somewhere far enough to use a train have to be pretty small, especially in the middle of a major war where your side is currently beset pretty heavily (I'd have to dig out my Forge of War book to see exactly what the military situation at the time of the Mourning was) and you are already in the capital, so probably one of the safest locations. Maybe like 20 cars?

I guess they were maybe thinking along the lines of Snow Piercer or something, but that is a much, much larger train than this could possibly be.

There isn't really a reasonable way or real reason for adventurers to try to *board* the train other than magic and for just seeing what the thing is. And once there, I can't imagine it being too insanely hard to explore it and find the darklord, whatever/whoever it is. Not like it has a lot of places to go.

I guess you could have someone try to *disembark* from the train and you now have an undead/deathless/undying (it does say that everyone is already dead, so are they undead? Undying Courty style "not-undead?") refugee that might spark someone to go and investigate? Adding that some people somehow had forewarning about the Day of Mourning is an interesting tidbit for Eberron lore since Even in the novels that showed the events happening from a few vantage points no one seemed to know ahead of time. In the Heirs of Ash series it showed the mists that formed the wall around the Mournland emanating from the capital building itself.

[Resonant Curse]

I assume it kind of builds its own lightning rail line as it goes kind of like the Headless Horseman's road superimposes itself over things.

Having it show up in Mithras court and derail itself by hitting the damaged train blocking the tunnel there could be an interesting "help the darklord accidentally while helping everyone else out" scenario where maybe the adventurers are in Mithras Court trying to escape and they find the wrecked trains and have to repair Cyre 1313 to escape only to realise that they have trapped themselves in a new domain and that the passengers they were saving are already dead in whichever manner the DM chose.

[HyperionSol]

I would say that the train doesn't stop so long as the Last Passenger is awake, since he believes they're still outrunning the disaster which killed them all. His punishment is constantly seeing and being in constant fear of the calamity which killed him, which he experiences when he sees mist. When he sleeps, or tries to, the train pulls up someplace civilized enough to potentially have trains, and let people board, thinking they're helping people escape the same calamity.

That or part of the domain is a train station they escaped from and the Last Passenger thinks they finally escaped, only to see another wall of mist and immediately demands the train keeps going, preventing anyone from really leaving, just like how they forced the train to stay so they could board with all their retainers and belongings.

I think a lot of potential adventures on the train will be more mystery based. Like a horror Murder on the Orient Express only it's not till the end the party realizes everyone is already dead.

The Last Passenger is likely the key to any mystery or event on the train. The other ghosts on the train would despise him although they obey him because he is nobility and he has his entourage still. If something is wrong with the train, it's because he or someone he controls did something to speed up the train, or otherwise get away from the disaster which they think is hot on their heels.

Still, even if everyone is dead they all believe they are alive, so when something happens on the train and passengers 'die' either another ghost replaces them, or that ghost eventually returns with no memory of what happened, leaving them trapped in a loop.

Adventure Ideas:

Alchemist discovers how to use ghosts as fuel, manages to create an apparatus which syphons the train's energy and sends it on an endless loop around the area of their lair, destroying a settlement.

Characters board transport and pass through a tunnel, only to find themselves on the train where a murder has occurred and they are prime suspects.

The train pulls into a renaissance city and the characters board, not knowing what it truly is but so did a monster which attacks the passengers.

The characters have to stop the train, but the Last Passenger refuses to allow it, fearing the Mourning. The party has to find proof they are already dead.

The elemental spirit powering the train demands fuel and traps people it runs over inside the train. (Ghost train, so they don't die, but get transported) The train itself tries to devour their life energy to fuel itself.

The characters are already dead and the train picks them up. They must discover the proof about their fates or be trapped forever. Not knowing they are already trapped in Ravenloft.

[onmyoji]

My DM is planning on running it for us starting sometime in the coming months. It'll be a bit of a wait, but I can definitely let you know what he does with it when the time comes.

— onmyoji

[Nirnel]

I would say that the train doesn't stop so long as the Last Passenger is awake, since he believes they're still outrunning the disaster which killed them all. His punishment is constantly seeing and being in constant fear of the calamity which killed him, which he experiences when he sees mist. When he sleeps, or tries to, the train pulls up someplace civilized enough to potentially have trains, and let people board, thinking they're helping people escape the same calamity.

That or part of the domain is a train station they escaped from and the Last Passenger thinks they finally escaped, only to see another wall of mist and immediately demands the train keeps going, preventing anyone from really leaving, just like how they forced the train to stay so they could board with all their retainers and belongings.

I think a lot of potential adventures on the train will be more mystery based. Like a horror Murder on the Orient Express only it's not till the end the party realizes everyone is already dead.

The Last Passenger is likely the key to any mystery or event on the train. The other ghosts on the train would despise him although they obey him because he is nobility and he has his entourage still. If something is wrong with the train, it's because he or someone he controls did something to speed up the train, or otherwise get away from the disaster which they think is hot on their heels.

Still, even if everyone is dead they all believe they are alive, so when something happens on the train and passengers 'die' either another ghost replaces them, or that ghost eventually returns with no memory of what happened, leaving them trapped in a loop.

Interesting. Why would nobody try to go out of the train when it stops to get more passengers? Do they all still think they are outrunning the cataclysm? Do new passengers think the same after they have been trapped in the train for a while?

It might be because the doors are blocked in every car except the one where the Last Passenger is (perhaps in order to discourage the crew from stopping the train to get more passengers as much as possible while still having a way to get off when they are "clear" of the cataclysm). This person is usually either asleep or in the private toliet when the train stops for technical issues (which happen rather frequently, to their chagrin), or maybe the Passenger grudgingly welcomes newcomers. Either way, they are allowed to enjoy the luxury in this car until the train starts again; and at this point they are ushered to the rest of the train, from where they are usually not allowed back unless such permission is specifically granted, so nobody can actually get off the train.

In this case, it might also be interesting if this car is not at one end of the train, but rather in the middle. There are relatives separated from each other, couples, parents and children, assassins and targets, co-conspirators incapable of coordinating for their intrigues... Also there are some facilities in one part of the train or the other, like beds in one half and the canteen in the other. The PCs can be of some use to the Last Passenger and may be allowed limited passage through this car as long as they are supposed to be working for this person.

An interesting dread possibility is that the Last Passenger is not the noble they are supposed to be, but rather a Changeling impersonating them. They murdered the true noble and took their place, thus provoking the delay that got everyone killed. This Changeling has some reason to be paranoid about a witness of the crime who ran in the direction of the station. This witness's features are unclear, except that they are roughly of human size and not too fat or too thin. They were also awfully quick in the scene. The Last Passenger sometimes changes shape (they have a few established personas) and wanders the train in search of this witness, but this person might not even be on board. The neighboring cars are usually deserted because of the menacing entourage of the Passenger, so the Darklord can usually find places to change shape out of the thugs' sight.

Of course, when the Last Passenger closes the border it just means magically locking the only usable door. The train itself is immune to damage that would open a new exit (although it can be otherwise severely damaged, so worsening the life conditions of everyone on board). I considered that the Darklord could be able to prevent the train from stopping as a way to close the border, but if so the train would never stop at all.

[Resonant Curse]

Having reasons the train needed to stop but that nobody could leave for people to end up onboard and whatever repair crews wouldn't bail on them was part of the problem. I guess one way would be for part of the retinue of the Last Passenger to be extremely loyal warforged that are out "supervising and protecting" the workers.

[CrackedMack]

I was under the impression that the Mourning Rail didn't stop at all, but since it is effectively a ghost train it can inadvertently scoop unsuspecting people up and into itself (like many domains do). It could be rushing across a countryside and happen to draw in some mortal souls who, in a blink, find themselves in one of the coaches.

I think that could be interesting since Cyre 1313 sort of rushes blindly through the Mists and across different domains. While not reliable, someone who wanted to travel between domains could use it like a roll of the dice and try and hop off again when they get where they want to be. That could take awhile and would be exceedingly dangerous, but adventurers tend to do outlandish things like deliberately board a fast-moving ghost train wreathed in lightning.

But since there have been some points made about the Mourning Rail showing up in a reliable way, I'll say this: personally, I don't want the train to stop. The runaway nature of it gives it a nice breakneck feel and matches with the sense of escaping from disaster that the undead passengers are doomed to experience. I also don't feel it needs to be on a track, since it rides a cushion of phantom lightning. That said, over time the train might have formed a semi-regular "loop" across the domains, to the point where it passes some points at predictable intervals. Maybe it follows some inscrutable leyline or Mistway that serves as a sort of occult "track." If one could find out where and when the Mourning Rail tends to appear, they can stake the location out and see it/attempt to hop aboard.

This might be a personal headcanon for what I might use it for in my games, but one of those regular spots could be near a certain lonely country inn in Lamordia... The place where van Richten saw the Thundering Carriage. I think it would be a neat twist that what the doctor beheld that night (and tried to frame in a way he understood at the time) was the Mourning Rail going by. It could be that the Mourning Rail does occasionally pass near the Thistle and Bonnet yet.

[Tobias Blackburn]

The Black Dice Society did a special patreon episode on the Mourning Rail. It even added the idea that the train wasn't exactly peaceful and normal before it was taken by the Mists.

They made the train fairly short (as it was a one shot) and did something like Snowpiercer in it's set up, with various cars being various social classes. The take on who the Last Passenger is was interesting as well, though not enough time is spent with them to get a good feel of who they are.

It isn't and official presentation of the domain, of course. But it is a very interesting take.

[Resonant Curse]

Almost assuredly not what canonically or even homebrew Keith Baker's cause for the Day of Mourning, but we know that the Mists occassionally have Masques that touch various worlds (still wish we had gotten that 3e one that was planned), what if the Mournland was the result of a masque where Ravenloft essentially left a domain behind while it was picking up Cyre 1313? It does have a variety of weird magical effects included messed up scrying/divination and no known magic has been able to break up the border of the Mournland which is a wall of mists and teleportation magic in/out does not function. Perhaps there is a darklord trapped within the Mournland, whether it is the Lord of Blades, one of the artificers of House Cannith, the last ruler of Cyre, or whoever.

Alternatively, instead of an intentional thing by the mists, perhaps the artificers of House Cannith or one of the Lords of Dust or someone managed to punch a hole from the Material Plane that Eberron is on to the Prime Material standard D&D cosmology is (we saw Lloth manage it for the FR/Eberron D&D Online crossover as part of the Demon Weave/Rise of the Underdark summer events, so presumably others could too) With how hard pressed Cyre was in the final days of the Last War I could see some of the artificers trying to weaponize a connection to another plane and accidentally dragging the mists and the attention of the Dark Powers to them. Perhaps whatever experiment they were doing started to go awry and the head researcher noped out of there on Cyre 1313 and got scooped up by the mists and the demiplane left some stuff behind as the Mournland. The Heirs of Ash series of novels did say that the mists that washed over Cyre emanated from the palace.

[brothersale]

i believe someone may have had a similar idea to using it as domain, the DM Guild has the Domain of Dread: Cyre by Christopher Sicari, which plays into Disaster Horror as the domain loops endlessly back to before the Mourning and counts back down to it.

[Muggs]

I just ran Cyre 1313 however one thing I found really lacking in the book version was that they missed the most interesting thing about a Eberron. - Eberron is home to the Warforged! A entire race of self-aware robots who were 'born' to fight a war they never chose to take part in.

So my version the ''Ghost' Train is more Ghost in the Shell then a straight horror adaption

To me the question the domain poses is what does it mean to be human? How far would you go to survive and what would you do or sacrifice along the way to get there?

I used the Battlestar Galactica miniseries as a base and blended it with the Snowpiercer TV series and obscure film called Zoe which is a different take on the 'engineer falls in love with his robot' genre.

Instead of dealing with yet more undead they got a tragic tail of love and robots and a genius artificer in love with a tragic queen who wanted peace - only to be doomed to fight a for what they think is the survival of the entire human race trapped in a endless hellscape of a war without end.

In my version the Dreadlords are the tragic pairing of Norran d'Cannith and Queen Dannel.
Norran is the Last Passenger and Dannel is the VIP - saved at the last moment but neither was fast enough to escape the mists and the judgment of letting the innocents die for their mistake.

The secret is that the real Queen Dannel died years ago after learning that Norran knew that their Pilot Project had gone rogue and instead of stopping it or doing something decided to flee and let her people die in The Mourning.

The version the players meet is a young 25 year old women who is shy but kind, beautiful but haunted by far too many close calls. Norran meanwhile is ragged, old and worn out, he lives in his lab and clearly hasn't slept properly in 20 years.
Dannel is the 'face' of the train and her entire focus is on saving the train and protecting Norran as 'he's the only one who knows how it works!' - secretly she is a new kind of 'perfect' warforged that looks human, but is metal underneath.

Her programming doesn't allow her to tell of this nor warn the party that all aboard the train isn't what it seems.

The people on the train live, but they are constantly on the edge and everything they do is put into survival - the air, water, food are all carefully managed and any mistake could speak disaster.
In order to survive they had to sacrifice much of their bodies and the only one who is not at least part cyborg is the children and Norran 'the engineer cursed to spend his existence maintaining them and pushing the limts to try and keep them alive - knowing any mistake could spell disaster.

You see the train picks people up, but those it collects either become passengers or food/fuel for the soul forge that keeps the train running on it's constant cycle, never stopping and never slowing down as it travels though each domain of Dread looking for a safe place untouched from the mists and visions of endless war that haunts it and every passenger on board. If it stops the shields fail and the mist and horrors would be bound to come in and consume them all!

To make matters worse Norran is more servant then ruler of his domain, he like everyone else on the train trust in 'The Pilot' to make the decisions. The machinery that runs the warforged AI and workshop was the reason why a entire cart of passengers was forced out to die.

While Queen Norran lives simple and focuses only on her people, and Norran spends every waking moment trying to keep a train that was only supposed to be a short journey alive for 10 thousand people due to countless extensions and retrofits it is the AI hidden away in a unmarked train cart who truly rules the train and decides who lives and dies.

I'm planning to post my homebrew-remix of both the 'classic' and homebrew domains of Dread somewhere for people to enjoy which includes a full expanded version of Cyre-1313.
I'm not sure the best place so maybe in the Fanfic?
There was a lot that I put into building up the lore that could easily be re-used by others? Anyway I hope you like it and it inspired a fresh way of looking at this Domain of Dread

[Resonant Curse]

On a somewhat related note, Keith Baker made a DMs Guild book Dread Metrolbook that turns the capital of Cyre into a domain of dread.