Finally, here’s my review of the Companion volume to the new Death on the Reik.
Background
The Enemy Within: Death on the Reik Companion, compiled by Graeme Davis with contributions by Jim Bambra, Claus Thorn Ekström, Phil Gallagher and Andy Law, is the companion volume – extra material, basically – to the second part of Cubicle 7’s new “Director’s Cut” reissue of the classic Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay campaign The Enemy Within.
For more of the background and where I’m coming from in reviewing the books, see my review of Enemy in Shadows and the further links there. This review will assume familiarity with the original campaign and with the linked introduction. See also Gideon’s review of this book: It Takes Two.
General impressions
As I explain at length in my review, I was disappointed in the new version of Death on the Reik, and I was curious whether its Companion would also feel lacklustre.
As usual for C7’s WFRP material, the book is very pretty. There’s plenty of art, largely in colour and mostly good to excellent. I do wish the PDF came with an option to hide the textured light bluish-grey page background to facilitate black-and-white printing; now when printing in b&w the pages just come out in a slightly muddy grey – plain white background would be much easier to read.
The cover art by Jonathan O’Donoghue follows the tradition from the Enemy in Shadows Companion in reinterpreting an iconic piece of 1E art, in this case Ian Miller’s – very iconic indeed – cover of the original Death on the Reik, showing the forbidding Castle Wittgenstein. The new version looks fine, but it can’t help but look a little pale in comparison. (Though admittedly I may be a bit of an Ian Miller fanboy.)
Contents
This book, like the first Companion volume, collects a bunch of extra material to be used with the second leg of the campaign or beyond. Some of the contents cover the same ground as the River Life in the Empire appendix in the original Death on the Reik (originally a separate booklet in the box set).
Thus it shouldn’t be surprising that, while the EiS Companion covered the Empire in general as well as having some material on overland travel, the DotR Companion is largely if not entirely focused on river-based adventure and setting elements. The chapters in the book are:
Guest commentaries: The late Martin McKenna, who illustrated the original version, and James Wallis, who sank your barge, get one page each to reminisce. Nice enough to have, especially McKenna’s piece (sadly, he died in September 2020, before the pdf was published IIRC).
Easter eggs: A page of notes on the more and less obvious inspirations for various NPC and place names in the adventure.
Herbs and their uses: A fairly hefty chapter (9 pages) on herbs of the Empire, with notes on locality, season and gathering; description of a whole bunch of herbs and, well, their uses. Also a couple of adventure hooks and a fair amount of in-universe commentary by “Mistress Hortensia Puddlefoot, one of the Moot’s foremost herbalists”. The latter are in fact mostly straight further information rather than mere colour. I have to admit I’m always bored by reading about fictional herbs, but the chapter is obviously useful. It’s the longest chapter not dealing with rivers at all.
Deleted scenes: Two optional encounters adapted from episodes that were in the original Death on the Reik but cut from the new version; “The Imperial Plenipotentiary” and “The Maria Borger”. The former, dealing with an Imperial emissary the PCs see enter Kemperbad, is expanded a fair bit from the original where the Plenipotentiary’s arrival was merely a piece of scene-setting. We’re given some notes on how the PCs might make get on this noble’s good or bad side, and most importantly, some suggestions that they might meet him again in Middenheim in Power Behind the Throne, where he might be a very useful contact or minor ally. (Oddly, as it turned out, there was not a word about this in the new Power Behind the Throne or its Companion.) I liked this section, but I thought there was a bit of a missed opportunity: the Plenipotentiary could be useful within DotR itself as well. For instance, both during and after the adventure, he should be very interested in the legal status of the virtually independent Wittgenstein barony.
“The Maria Borger” is a more straightforward adaptation of the encounter from River Life of the Empire, where the PCs meet a boat which was unwittingly taken a vampire on board. The most substantial addition is a section on vampires in the Empire, including a couple of suggestions on how to involve more vampires in the plot of DotR.
* * *
Next, we get into the river stuff in earnest. The following 11 chapters – 72 pages in all, over half the Companion – all deal with various aspects of river travel, covering roughly the same ground as the original ‘River Life of the Empire’ appendix in the 1E Death on the Reik.
Conspicuous by its absence, however, is any mention or treatment of actual distances. As I’ve harped on before, C7 really has trouble with the issue of scale. There’s no scale at all on the Reikland map coming with the new DotR, not only making utter nonsense of the timed manhunt element but also giving no way to determine how long it will take to travel to the various locations (travel speed itself is given in the 4E rulebook, at least). The maps with Enemy in Shadows seemed to use a much larger scale suggesting drastically greater distances, although the adventure text didn’t seem to assume travel would take any longer than in the original. In the text of the new Death on the Reik, the distance from Delberz/Delbren to Grissenwald is stated, as in the original, to be “almost 270 miles of the river Reik” – clearly implying the 1E scale is the correct one. I wonder why this has been so difficult to keep straight.
Oh well. On with the contents.
The Empire’s rivers: Five pages on the major rivers, locks and tollhouses, and some encounters at lockhouses, mostly adapted from River life of the Empire and the “typical buildings” appendix of the 1E rulebook.
The Imperial river patrol: A 4-page expanded writeup on said river patrol, half of which is profiles of four riverwarden NPCs.
Fellow travellers and River folk: Two chapters (23 pages together, a sizeable chunk of the ‘river’ section) detailing a parade of colourful NPCs. The first features a bunch of more general-themed NPCs that might be encountered while traveling – charlatans, grave robbers, hunters, nobles, stevedores, etc. – while the second is more strictly river-themed and has its NPCs linked to various river encounters adapted from River life: merchants, fishing boats, passenger boats, expeditions and so on. All in all, just under two dozen useful, often interesting NPCs that could easily be dropped into a minor part in an adventure, most of them with either a suggested plot hook or pointers to how they might be worked into DotR. This is a solid, useful chapter, but somehow these NPCs feel a little bit less immediately colourful and vivid than those in the EisC. This might simply be because their art is mostly a little less lively, though.
The Imperial semaphore service: Three pages of new background on the signal towers, one of which forms one of the adventure’s set pieces, and the semaphore service they’re part of, inspired by the short-lived Napoleonic-era optical telegraphs. As with many of the background pieces for 4E, I find this very detailed but also a bit vague on things I’d really like to know, such as the exact political and institutional nature and status of the Semaphore Service. The Emperor is said to have instituted the Service “by a decree of 2510”; it’s implied to be a pet personal project of his, at least initially powered and financed by his own resources as Prince of Altdorf and Grand Prince of the Reikland – although actual construction is outsourced to the Dwarf Engineers’ Guild – and to be primarily military in purpose. For my own game, I’m assuming this is another of Karl-Franz’ eccentric, possibly-brilliant-possibly-quixotic brainwaves and, so far, organised on a largely ad-hoc basis. If the semaphore lines of the Reikland turn out a success, presumably the Emperor would need to deal with the other Electors individually or by way of a Diet to extend the system into other provinces. Assuming he lives long enough…
Deck it out: Six pages of new rules on how to pimp and arm your boat. With enough money, you can apparently turn it into a small steam-powered ironclad. This seems a bit odd – I don’t think there’s any implication anywhere in Death on the Reik that steamboats are an established sight in the Empire – but then I understand the anachronisms in Warhammer have just been piling up over the years.
Trading rules: Five pages of trading rules, an updated version of those in River Life of the Empire. As in the original, they’re very simple; a group that’s really interested in making a mini-game of river trading might want to look up the more detailed and involved trading rules in the 2E WFRP Companion. In addition, there’s a gazetteer of the Reikland – as usual, containing the cities and towns and an apparently arbitrary small selection of villages. The towns and cities have generally had their population doubled or more from their 1E entries (which were, to be fair, very modest). Oddly, as the gazeteer now strictly covers the Reikland, it fails to include Grissenwald, the setting of an important part of the adventure. Finally, there’s a page of trade rumours, mostly colourful but generic rather than tied to the plot of DotR.
Wreckers, smugglers & pirates: More encounters and NPCs adapted and expanded from River life, this time from the criminal side of things. A solid enough chapter, but I wonder why it wasn’t placed right after “River folk”.
A river bestiary: A half-dozen new river-themed monsters, apparently adapted from the monster chapter of the 2E WFRP Companion and/or the 1E bestiary. The most interesting IMO is the take on Naiads, who apart from their familiar human-like form can also take a “War form” as a terrifying force of living water.
Waterborne diseases: I suppose this was inevitable. Three pages of lovingly detailed new diseases, started off with a cautionary note that overuse will soon be annoying not only the characters but the players.
* * *
The Red Crown: A GM’s Guide: A chapter on the second of the featured Chaos cults in the campaign. The Red Crown, much like the Purple Hand, was never properly fleshed-out, but it had a fairly distinctive gimmick: while the Hand focused on infiltrating power structures and generally being faux-Illuminati, the Red Crown were terrorists, working to recruit beastmen and mutant outcasts into a guerrilla army. Much as for the Hand, its endgame and motivations were very vague; it was not at all clear why anyone joined this cult or what their buildup or forces and raiding aimed at in the long run.
This new chapter gives more details about organisation and, unlike that on the Purple Hand in the EiSC, does at least make some attempt to answer the basic questions on motivation and recruitment. I like some of its suggestions and quite dislike others.
It’s implied that most recruits to the cult are themselves desperate mutated people, joining because no one else will have them – on the other hand, the actual cultists we see in the adventure are normal-passing humans who have apparently not taken this route. (In fact, as usual, we have no idea why Etelka Herzen or Ernst Heidelmann became Red Crown cultists.) Furthermore, unlike the 1E incarnation, there are some ambiguous suggestion that the Red Crown might be more morally grey and even somewhat sympathetic; some passages suggest they genuinely help and protect mutated people from persecution, and that they regard “agitators who argue for Mutant rights, and those who run secret sanctuaries to keep blameless Mutants out of the hands of the Witch Hunters” as unwitting allies and even potential recruit. While I appreciate the moral complexity I think is intended, I’m also uncomfortable with where I see this easily going – it’s very easy to simply imply that “anyone having sympathy for mutants is or will be in league with Chaos and intent on destroying everything” – basically the Witch Hunter’s line – is actually correct.
For my own interpretation, I prefer to have the cult actually opposing any moves to improve the lot of mutants or allowing them to live peaceful lives – they _want_ an army of desperate outcast cannon-fodder, and any hippie do-gooders actually helping them will just get in the way of that. Of course, cannon-fodder clever enough to last might rise through the ranks, but it’s basically a pyramid scheme where the leadership of the cult ruthlessly exploits “the lost and the damned” for their own purposes.
Where was I? Right. There are some basic NPC templates as well, and some cult-specific spells, generally involving assuming a bestial aspect of some kind.
The Emperor Luitpold: An updated version of the 1E writeup of a luxury river liner from Jack Yeovil’s (Kim Newman) novel Drachenfels (originally published in White Dwarf, the 1E Warhammer Companion and Apocrypha Now), including a couple of adventure seeds. Nothing terribly memorable here, and considering the PCs have their own boat the relevance for DotR in particular is not clear, but it could be a fun location.
Vengeance of the Gravelord: The last chapter is a brief side-adventure – more of an encounter, really – presented as “the start of a series, forming an optional B-plot to the main campaign”. The self-styled Gravelord is the insecure and theatrical young necromancer Hans Gräber, a trying-slightly-too-hard copycat of his heroes like the Lichemaster and the Doomlord. This is not a bad idea for an NPC – he’s clearly deliberately written as an annoying prick with delusions of grandeur – but the adventure, such as it was, did not impress me.
It borrows some characters and incidents from the second half of James Wallis’ “Carrion Up the Reik” (the prologue to the Hogshead reissue of PBtT, the first half of which was adapted as an epilogue to the new Death on the Reik), namely the monks hitching a ride with the PCs. But then, shortly after this, Father Marcus is suddenly killed in an apparently random attack by undead vultures, and then a bit later on apparently reanimated to problaim, well, the “vengeance of the Gravelord” (for expelling Gräber, once a novice, from his monastery – but this is never revealed to the PCs). And that’s it, as far as the players are concerned.
This first entry in the “Vengeance of the Gravelord” is pointless, but fairly inoffensive. Things will get worse.
Conclusion
The Death on the Reik Companion is a neat collection of extra stuff, but I’d hardly call it essential – less so than the Enemy in Shadows Companion. There’s a nice bunch of colourful NPCs and some more detail on river life, trading and travel – though it doesn’t adress the fact that the lack of any map scale or sailing times makes complete nonsense out of the timed manhunt element of the new version of DotR. Unlike the Enemy in Shadows Companion, which I’d say is a very useful supplement for anyone running a game in the Empire, the DotR Companion doesn’t have quite as much stuff useful beyond a river-based adventure.
TL;DR: If you want to get just one of the first two Companion books, get the Enemy in Shadows Companion.
The Enemy Within: Remixed 
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