Most Towns are Ghost Towns

**Most Towns are Ghost Towns**, more commonly known by its working title **The Caged Underworld**, is an upcoming webcomic first conceptualized in 2013. Originally intended to be release as a fanime, no official content for the animated series has been released, other than a  practical joke of questionable effectiveness, mostly due to the project's high level of ambition. Development of the manga series is underway, although as of 2018, The Orchard House has been given top priority.

## Synopsis

The story is a subversion of the post-apocalyptic genre. With a realm known as The Cauldron, a middle ground between the material world and the afterlife, as a backdrop, six teams of soul reaping ghosts are competing against one another to reap as many souls as they can, with a common goal amongst individual ghosts to become the next Guardian of the Afterlife. Weltraum of Team Liberty and Kleinod of Team Mauve are supposed to be rivals, though the two lovers work together in secret with hopes of becoming co-guardians and abolishing the tradition of segregated teams. An embarassing failure results in the two of them losing almost all of their progress in soul-reaping and forcing them to start from scratch, sending them on a journey that requires them to face and overcome their flaws, fears, hypocricies and past crimes, all the while learning about The Cauldron's dark secrets.

## Main Teams

### Team Liberty

* **Donner**

Team Liberty's leader, known for being an edgy tryhard and his drill-sergeant personality, causing his retinue to either resent him or try to one-up him. He seems to be a bootlicker for Sternenglanz and rarely questions him or his actions. The team has a longstanding tradition of having breakfast meetings at specific restaurants every morning, which is assumed to be Donner's idea.
* **Licht**

The youngest of the team at 13 years old and the most detatched from his human life. A lover of music, his main location for haunting is a cruise ship with an impressive karaoke bar and he is almost never seen without his headphones an MP3 player, which is filled with heavy metal and alternative rock songs. He has an unrequited crush on Helen and a strained relationship with Weltraum.
* **Weltraum**

The series' main protagonist, usually depicted as a pessimistic, sarcastic, and high-strung young man with a Type A personality. He takes his soul reaping tasks and his identity as a member of Team Liberty very seriously, and combines his travels around the world to reap more souls with his love for learning foreign languages. He looks at his human life with deep nostalgia, which puts him at odds with Kleinod. Despite being 18 when he died, he was born four years before Kleinod.
* **Helen**

Team Liberty's only human member. She is a possession vessel for two ghosts, a husband and wife, who take control of her body when Helen is asleep. Since these two ghosts express themselves through her body, not much is known about Helen herself, though she seems to either be unaware of the ghosts inhabiting her body or completely resigned to this fact.
### Team Mauve

* **Berater**

Team Mauve's leader, albeit an ineffective one. A 46-year old stereotypical hippie with a odd penchant for leisure suits, he spends most of his time eating or doing illicit drugs with Ratten. Unlike his opponent, he has a neutral view of Team Liberty and frequently bestows peace offerings unto its members, none of which are accepted.
* **Fernweh**

A dreamy, airheaded girl who can make friends with little difficulty and among the series' most pacifistic characters. In stark contrast to ghosts from other teams, she rejects the idea of stealing reaped souls from others and prefers to obtain souls through her own works. Due to the disjointed nature of her team, she and Kleinod are the only ones holding it together, and while the two are not unfriendly with each other, their inability to get along is fairly obvious.
* **Ratten**

A redneck with a misleading genius-level intellect, he is something of an enigma due to him spending all of his time with Berater and almost all of his lines being repetitions of things said by the former.
* **Kleinod**

The main protagonist along with Weltraum, an unfailingly optimistic young man with simple pleasures in life, including a love for cats, 80's pop music and bad puns. Although slightly less reserved than Weltraum, there is some mystery regarding his human life, which he absolutely refuses to acknowledge or even discuss. He is canonically asexual and has been in a romantic relationship with Weltraum for some time prior to the beginning of the series.
### Team Gold

* **Verlies**

Team Gold's leader, with an eclectic trio of characters under her command. Unlike most team leaders, she is still a ghost and has yet to claim a material body for herself. Frequently scolded by both Sterbenfrau and her team members, she has garnered a reputation for being flighty and inept. Despite these flaws and her undisciplined nature, she has a suspiciously impressive cache of reaped souls.
### Team Scarlet

* **Sterbenfrau**

Team Scarlet's leader and a former protegee of Sternenglanz. She is highly competitive and has a deep-rooted contempt for other ghosts, especially Foppen and Sternenglanz. Her team and Team Liberty are in solidarity with one another, though this is a closely guarded secret. Despite her grouchy personality, she has a more mischiveous side to her and enjoys classical myths.
### Other Characters

* **Sternenglanz**

Former leader of Team Scarlet, he is the current Guardian of the Afterlife and figurehead for The Cauldron. He has a reputation for being charismatic and encouraging, but also firm and inflexible. In his past life he was a scientist and still partakes in projects that will benefit The Cauldron.
* **Foppen**

A narcissistic flirt obsessed with Sterbenfrau, Foppen frequently appears as a rival for Kleinod and Weltraum, being particularily hated by the latter. Motivated by his jealousy of the two's success in the soul-reaping field, he derives sadistic glee from any misfortune they suffer. He is not a member of Team Gold, though Verlies has made several fruitless attempts to join forces with him.
* **Kotori Miyazawa**

A 11-year old human girl who unknowingly throws a spanner in the works in Kleinod and Weltraum's goals to becoming Guardians of the Afterlife. For the most part she is shown to be cheerful, family-oriented and a lover of penguins with a tendency to rely on escapism when faced with problems.