As Ravenloft's Frankenstein equivalent, Viktra Mordenheim is the crafter of Flesh Golems. With a backstory that changed pretty dramatically in Van Richten's (previously she was the male Viktor Mordenehim and had a story closer to the original Frankenstein novel,) I think the key to Mordenheim is the coldness reflected in the climate of her domain of Lamordia.
More or less inventing modern science fiction with her novel, Mary Shelley's callous doctor embodies heedless scientific ambition without consideration for the consequences, and then a failure to take responsibility for his actions, to tragic results.
(As a note, I like Guillermo Del Toro, and enjoyed his adaptation, but I also felt that his choice to make the creature utterly blameless robbed the story of some of its nuance - the tragedy of Frankenstein is that if "Adam" had been given the love and affection a nascent person needs, he likely would have turned out just fine and no one would have died. But Viktor's visceral perception of him as a monster becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.)
In the case of Viktra Mordenheim, her initial creation is not simply done for its own reasons, but to resurrect her lover Elise. It does muddy the waters a little bit - her desire to recover the Unbreakable Heart that serves as Elise's core would effectively undo the recovery of her late lover.
But I think we can then perhaps see the somewhat sympathetic motivation - getting Elise back - was merely a story she told herself to justify the murders she committed in order to achieve this scientific breakthrough.
Here's my take: I think that Viktra Mordenheim's technological ambitions slot well into the kind of anti-humanist attitudes we've started to hear coming out of the Tech Bros of Silicon Valley of late. Empathy and emotions, to her, are things to overcome with efficient machinery. I think her grand ambition would be to eventually phase out natural humanoids in favor of compliant machines.
Mordenheim could start off as a friendly NPCs - perhaps if the party has an Artificer or Wizard in the group, or someone else who is technologically-minded, she might wish to perform research with them. At the very least, I think that she would be an influential figure in the scientific community, perhaps first introduced as a featured lecturer at a conference or something like that.
What I don't think you'll ever get from her is any warmth. Emotion - probably both positive and negative emotion - is muted for her. Even when the party comes into conflict with her, she would see them as bugs to be worked out, problems to be solved. Again, like most Darklords, she's a narcissist, but I think in this case it's a kind of cold materialism - she probably doesn't even consider her own emotions worth considering (hence her willingness to effectively re-kill Elise if it means recovering the Unbreakable Heart).
Thankfully, in Horrors Within, she got beefed up to CR 7, meaning she can hold her own in combat, and also now has thematic abilities. But this is a Darklord that should basically never be fought on her own. Naturally, Flesh Golems and Mordenheim's Monsters are the best minions for her (in the latter case, the minion is a bigger threat than she is,) but really any Construct would work - you could reflavor a Clay Golem as being a more advanced Flesh Golem, or you could simply say that she's not limited to using flesh as her material - again, she has no sentimentality to any particular form. Also, a Shield Guardian is a very likely part of her arsenal.
Unlike your vampires, werewolves, and ghosts, the horror of Viktra Mordenheim is not about her lurking around a corner or peering from the shadows. Her horror is in well-lit laboratory rooms, where she shamelessly engages in monstrous activities. Callously killing people to use their physical materials for her constructs, for example. But I think that the real horror, the real Gothic horror element here, is that no matter what, she will not see what the problem is even if she's called out. After all, organic life as it stands is subject to the whims of evolution or the so-called gods, and she is merely trying to create a more perfect being. She would classify the success of a civilization in its power efficiency rather than its creation of art and culture.
If the party slays her, I think she's likely to react with curiosity rather than anger, though if her work is disrupted, she might betray a hint of frustration. (It could be fun to RP her as developing a subtle eye-twitch that a good insight check realizes is her equivalent of bellowing with rage.)
My read on Mordenheim is that, unlike Frankenstein, she's incapable of the sense of horror that he feels when he sees his creation come to life. If she seeks to manipulate or influence the party, she will probably do so in a very calculated manner. If the party seems powerful enough to oppose her, she might visit friendly NPCs and transform them into constructs, being long gone by the time the party arrives to find their friends changed.
Even if she is, actually, acting on her emotions, such as anger at the party, she doesn't have the self-insight to realize that's why she's doing it. (She has a +0 to Wisdom, with just expertise in Medicine to make up for this).
Now, in terms of encounters, I think that Mordenheim is not at all a "lead from the front" kind of villain. She's far more likely to be behind a pane of reinforced glass with some controls while the party faces a bunch of constructs on conveyer belts. By the time the party actually finds her to face her down, she's also probably going to be protected by a lot of construct minions and in an out-of-the-way location, perhaps shooting down with her Lightning Rod from 90 feet away or using her legendary Static Explosion. She can cast Animate Objects once a day as a bonus action, and keeping at least one construct within 5 feet of her at all times allows her to use Redirect Attack to avoid incoming damage.
If character close on her, her Syringe is going to be a major way she deals with them, probably with a one-two of Lighting Rod (to ensure that they can't make opportunity attacks and then an appropriate serum for the given situation - Corrosive if she fears being followed, Deadly if the target is low on HP and needs healing, or Mind-Altering if the attacker is concentrating on a spell. Basically, she should be slippery. At 123 HP for CR 7, she's not going to go down immediately, but she also can't take a lot of punishment, so she's going to play defensively.
I will also say that the Syringe ability is a good "reveal" moment, if she has started to suspect the party is not aligned with her, busting out her Syringe in the middle of a social encounter could be fun (I might also temporarily give her other serum options, like one that knocks the target out).
In Van Richten's, they suggested using a stat block similar to a Spy, which I always felt was a weird choice. With a CR under 1, you truly would have had to play her avoiding combat at all costs, but while her new CR 7 form can hold her own, I'd still play her as extremely slippery. Especially in Schloss Mordenheim, have her make use of elevation and other ways to separate the party from her, and give her escape routes. There is a partial map of Schloss Mordenheim in Horrors Within - a great location for a final confrontation with her would be the Laboratory Tower, with Mordenheim perched above on the roof level while the party has to enter from the lower level.
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