Otherville

Otherville is tall and leaning in a beautiful way.
Even though it exists in the farming region of the world, there are no farms, only personal gardens that are judged every season (winners are celebrated like pop-stars).
The coal mines went deeper.
They found something down there.
It wasn't gold, but it was mysterious.
Steel mines of the Dwarven metal-gears.
Instead of exploring they just  keep digging.
Coal mine ridges that go down miles.
Mountains made from displaced earth.
A once-flat landscape rendered treacherous by constant landslides and long rains.
Gold-rush-style town turned into micro-metropolis, two miles long, a mile tall.
Train tracks laid instead of paved roads.
Travel by minecart is the norm.
Large forest grown out of control, surrounds edges of town, constantly swallowed by mile deep mines.
No one questions why the Dwarves are gone.
One day digging reveals monster hives.
Monsters are hungry for flesh and have hides made of steel.
They lay traps like spiders and travel in packs.
Years in the mines make them sensitive to sunlight, retreat to mines in the day.
Town attacked nightly by these creatures.
Watch is formed. The Shooting Star.
Miners become skilled in killing.
Many die.
People travel from all over the region for a chance to dig and fight.
Many more die.
Alcohol consumption sky rockets.
Personal breweries sprout up using fruit from personal gardens.
Every house is a bar with specialized beer that give special properties to the drinker.
Some get big, some die out.
All empty space in town is filled with new occupants looking to strike rich.
Shooting Star grows larger and polices town with brutality.
Tyrannical grip on mayor and the streets.
Crime is dealt with swift punishment.
No death penalty, but people are sent into the mines.
Sometimes they return, but not really.
They seem normal for several days but then they lash out.
When they are struck down they turn into gelatinous masses.
No explanation is given.
Many many more die.
Some mines collapse in on themselves after heavy rain or a misplaced stick of TNT.
Some mines purposefully collapsed to bury bodies, or hide things better left unseen.
Dark magics discovered deeper in the mines.
Literal dark magics. Things seeping dark matter.
This dark matter warps things, the earth, the holder.
It's undetectable in the darkness of the mines.
Crude electric lamps and moonboxes grow dull near these objects.
Outside in the sun, in a radius equal to the strength of its magics, vision is as if wearing sunglasses.
These objects are complicated, like rubix cubes made of valves and nozzles.
They are sold for high prices to strange men in gold armor.
Some are activated and things happen.
These "things" are hard to write in any other words than--
Many, many, many more die,
Technology isn't medieval, or modern. It's rail-punk.
Coal-punk.
Lots of coal-burning fire.
Lots of coal-burning electricity.
Huge smoke stacks stand from tall buildings.
Large dungeon-like coal burning facility pumps clouds into the air and is run by ancient war machines left by the dwarves.
These war machines break down sometimes.
No one really knows how they get built.
But I do.
They build themselves.
At nights they go into the mines and mine.
Inside the facility, they smelt minerals into metals and build machines using coal-based power.
No one goes inside the facility until the power goes out.
Then adventurers go in and the power comes back on.
They come back covered in blood and oil.