A Brief Overview of the 4E The Enemy Within

On By theoaxner

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A short recap synopsis of the five main adventures of Cubicle 7’s version of The Enemy Within campaign.

Last year I put together a (very) short synopsis of the 4E version of The Enemy Within campaign, and I thought I’d post a slightly expanded version of it here. This post is a straight summary recap of the five main adventures. When I find the time I might make a followup post with an overview of the overarching plots of the campaign – though to be honest there isn’t a lot of that of any substance as written.

This is in no way meant to be an exhaustive or in-depth reference summary – just a brief overview, the kind of thing that should have been in the first chapter of the first book. I’ve also tried to present things as impartially as possible here – I’ll refer to my full reviews for my opinions. Obviously there will be HEAVY SPOILERS throughout.

Book 1: Enemy in Shadows

  • warhammer-fantasy-role-play-wfrp-enemy-in-shadowsTravelling together in the Reikland, the PCs come across the body of one Kastor Lieberung, who looks remarkably similar to one of them.
  • The late Kastor was apparently travelling to Bögenhafen to collect an inheritance; in fact, he was a member of the Chaos cult the Purple Hand, and the inheritance is a trap set up by one of his enemies.
  • As the PCs journey to Altdorf and then on to Bögenhafen (lured by the inheritance as well as the upcoming spring festival) they quickly learn that Kastor Lieberung had several strange friends and enemies, as the former try to contact them and the latter to kill them.
  • In Bögenhafen, they stumble into a plot by the merchant and demonologist Johannes Teugen to get out of his Faustian pact with the daemon Gideon by sacrificing seven other souls instead of his own in a particular ritual – or so he thinks.
  • In fact, this ritual will open a Chaos gate in Bögenhafen, as part of Gideon’s longer-term plan to free his trapped master.
  • The PCs must discover and thwart the ritual or Bögenhafen will be all but destroyed. Even if successful, they’re quite likely to have to flee Bögenhafen as wanted criminals.

1E vs 4E: The new version follows the original (The Enemy Within/Mistaken Identity and Shadows Over Bögenhafen) closely, only adding more detail. The metaplot about Gideon’s longer-term goals is new, but not developed until Empire in Ruins and barely hinted at here.

Full reviews:

Book 2: Death on the Reik

  • Death-on-the-Reik_Release-1.0_150dpi-1The PCs are supposedly tracking down the sorceress Etelka Herzen, an accomplice of Teugen.
  • By a chance encounter on the way, they also end up with a boat and can take up a part-time career as river traders.
  • Etelka turns out to have gone off on an expedition to recover a meteorite of warpstone in the Barren Hills; unbeknownst to her and the PCs, a party of Skaven are also looking for the meteorite.
  • Along the way the PCs find a mysterious signal tower with a hidden observatory under it and eventually learn the fate of an earlier expedition to find the meteorite. It turns out it was recovered by the astronomer Dagmar von Wittgenstein and is still held by their descendants in Castle Wittgenstein.
  • The plot is mainly an excuse for the PCs to encounter a series of (excellent) location-based set-pieces like the haunted signal tower; the weird wilderness of the Barren Hills and, especially, the Gothic horror-show of Wittgendorf and Castle Wittgenstein. The adventure (probably) climaxes with a raid on Castle Wittgenstein; in a final diabolus ex machina, the Skaven return and make off with the meteorite, blowing up the castle in the process.
  • Along the way, the PCs are also pestered by the Purple Hand cult associates of Kastor Lieberung in a semi-comedic B-plot. A coda at the end involves one cultist setting up the PCs to take a fake message to Middenheim, to where some other clues are already pointing.

1E vs 4E: The difference is mostly in presentation; the original version presented the adventure in a semi-open sandbox style while the 4E version presents is a rigid linear railroad. There is much less new detail than in Enemy in Shadows.

Full reviews:

Book 3: Power Behind the Throne

  • pbtt-4e-cover
    Cover art by Ralph Horsley

    Heading to Middenheim for whatever reason, the PCs arrive shortly before the annual Carnival and discover a lot of people are very unhappy about a set unjust new taxes.

  • It turns out someone is manipulating several advisors to the Graf of Middenheim by various means; the PCs can discover this plot, largely by talking to and befriending various NPCs, and eventually follow the trail back to its instigator: Law Lord Karl-Heinz Wasmeier, who’s also the head of the Purple Hand cult in Middenheim.
  • The PCs get a last-minute chance to thwart the next stage of the plot, involving murdering the Graf and replacing him with an imposter.

1E vs 4E: The text is reorganized and there’s some useful new detail, especially in the Companion book, but on the whole the new version follows the original very closely.

Full reviews:

Book 4: The Horned Rat

  • the-horned-rat-coverThis begins in the immediate wake of Power Behind the Throne. The Watch Commander of Middenheim drafts the PC into a ‘special investigations’ unit for more-or-less covert missions.
  • They start out with several missions mopping up the remains of the Middenheim Purple Hand, but gradually a different and even more shadowy threat emerges: that of the Skaven.
  • The PCs need to find evidence for this and sell the Graf and his advisors on its truth.
  • Through their investigations, the PCs can eventually follow the trail back to the central plot: a mad Skaven scientist is building a ludicrously big cannon to shoot chunks of the Chaos moon Morrslieb down to earth.
  • The adventure culminates with the PCs raiding the villain’s lair, an abandoned Dwarf hold in the Midden Mountains, and hopefully thwarting his doomsday weapon scheme.

1E vs 4E: The Horned Rat is a new adventure, so no comparison.

Full reviews:

Book 5: Empire in Ruins

  • empire-in-ruins-coverStill in the service of the Graf of Middenheim (probably), the PCs have a front seat as the tensions in the Empire appear about to boil over: most directly between the cults of Sigmar and Ulric, but also several purely political conflicts.
  • A series of meetings and even a political wedding are arranged to try and defuse things, but all are marred by violence or other disturbance from various parties.
  • Finally a disastrous conclave of Electors end with the supposed ‘Hammer of Sigmar’ revealed to be a fake and the “Emperor” a body-double (covering up the fact that the real Emperor is sick and bedridden, being slowly poisoned by a cultist physician).
  • As the rudderless Empire seems about to descend into civil war and various regional rulers make opportunistic land grabs right and left, the PCs go on a somewhat desperate quest to find the _real_ Ghal-Maraz, hoping it will unite the Empire and reinvigorate the ailing Emperor.
  • However, they’re being manipulated from behind the scenes by Gideon (the daemon from Book 1) who’s scheming to release his trapped master Sheerargetru into the world and angling to involve the hammer as part of his plan.
  • Meanwhile, various factions of the Purple Hand want to come up on top as powers-behind-the-throne and using either Karl-Franz or his promising heir Wolfgang as puppet rulers.
  • If the PCs successfully retrieve the hammer, which is hidden in a mysterious underworld, there will be a great ceremony which Gideon will try to manipulate to summon and free his master.
  • It may all end in a huge boss-fight if Sheerargetru gets loose.
  • Assuming the PCs manage to avert disaster, the Emperor starts to recover and get a grip on things, and the civil war is nipped in the bud.

1E vs 4E: Empire in Ruins is a reimagining of Empire in Flames. It’s similar in its basic structure and retaining several characters, incidents and locations, but things are reshuffled and rearranged and the specifics are quite different in nearly every case. The most obvious difference is perhaps that, assuming a PC victory, things change a lot less in the Empire this time around. Karl-Franz and Boris Todbringer both survive, for instance, and the civil war barely starts before it ends.

Full reviews:

3 thoughts on “A Brief Overview of the 4E The Enemy Within”

  1. Good summary. I’d argue that with Death On the Reik the real 1E/4E change is that the assumed railroad is made more visible – the original product always had this tension between the sandbox play enabled by the boat trading rules on the one hand and, on the other, the fairly clear intention that the PCs would reach a few critical encounters and then move on to Middenheim for Power Behind the Throne. Moving a lot of the boat trading to the associated Companion volume really helps make the “intended” structure more evident.

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    1. theoaxner

      Paraphrasing myself slightly from the discussion on Zekiel’s review:

      I agree the sprawling semi-open format of the original DotR obscured the more-or-less linear plot that was there, and that the rigidly linear presentation of the remake is at least consistent and logical.

      On the other hand, I feel the linear 4E presentation obscures an even more important truth about DotR: the fact that it’s essentially structured around its collection of (mostly excellent) location-based set-piece mini-adventures like the signal tower, Black Peaks, the Barren Hills and most of all Wittgendorf and Castle Wittgenstein. The “plot” is a frankly rather flimsy excuse to get the PCs to visit and interact with these locations. And as long as the PCs do get there and get stuck in, for whatever reason, a good time will usually be had.

      Thus, the linear plot is the least important and most easily replaceable element in DotR, and IMO placing it front and center makes it harder for an inexperienced GM to understand the adventure’s strengths and weaknesses properly.

      Not to mention that by actually removing the most obvious of the few hooks – that is, Hieronymus Blitzen directly siccing the PCs on Etelka – the 4E version is something as absurd as a railroad without a hook. I’ve seen several GMs confused about why the adventure text confidently expects the PCs to be racing down to Grissenwald right away.

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  2. Pingback: The Enemy Within campaign – Ill Met by Morrslieb

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