Why not completely reinvision the setting? It worked for Battlestar Galactica.
C'mon, forget about the convoluted backstory, the really forced cosmology.
You have a clean slate. What makes Ravenloft a favorite setting? Think of it as Ultimate Ravenloft.
It's a world born in evil and blood. There's something outside of space and time, handing out favors to those that embrace cruelty and maliciousness. Thick fog clings to everything, and sometimes it seems like it has a mind of its own.
The history of the realm is a history of conquest and bloodshed, of deposed tyrants and slaughtered uprisings. Everywhere you go you see evidence that something has gone terribly wrong. Gibbets hang from the crossroads packed with misshapen skeletons. The old men say that if you taste their flesh you'll learn the secrets of the grave. Children dare each other to do it and every season a few children come down with night terrors that take their lives.
There's a manor deep in the woods where only a black coach goes, pulled by horses that reek of grave earth. People know better than to look the driver in the face. A faerie circle in the deepining woods is avoided even by the elegant eldarin, who refuse to speak of that place and the screams that sound from it on winter nights.
There are some who do not hide from these things. All have been touched by that vile intelligence in some way. Some touched the dead hand of their loved one and knew that behind it was more than just a random murder. Others delved into the oldest secrets and learned the corrupting names of the still-born. Some simply asked too many questions. But all learned the same thing.
The world is wrong.
Someone has to fix it.
