THE ENEMY WITHIN THAT WASN’T

Warning. This posts contains spoilers for the Enemy Within campaign.

Two years ago I wrote a pair of posts (here and here) in which I analysed various clues in early parts of the reissued Enemy Within campaign and attempted to predict how events would unfold in the later episodes (which had not at that time been published). Some of my predictions turned out to be quite accurate, but inevitably not all. However, when I looked more closely into my errors, I discovered something somewhat surprising: the campaign was significantly rewritten part way through publication.

In my earlier analysis I identified hints that the plot of The Horned Rat might involve a double of the Emperor. Of particular relevance were the following passages in Enemy in Shadows and Death on the Reik.

Unknown to the Characters, this is not the actual Emperor. This is one of his doubles. The real Emperor is convalescing in the Imperial Palace across the river, some distance away. The double is abroad to still the rumours of his increasing frailty.… It’s important the Characters see the Emperor’s double for reasons that will become clear in The Horned Rat.

– Enemy in Shadows, p34

Lo, the Horned Rat then claims the Broken King atop his Throne of Lies.

– Enemy in Shadows, p32

The Emperor has been seen in public, soothing public fears that he was sick, mutated, or worse. He took part in an investiture ceremony for new members of the Reiksguard, one of the Empire’s elite military units. However, at least one source reports hearing that the Emperor did not look like himself, and indeed may not have been: ‘He’s got a double to throw off assassins — everyone knows that. And he stumbled over the words of the Oath of Loyalty when he gave it to the new recruits. My brother-in-law was there — Altdorf born and bred, he is — and he’s seen the Emperor enough times to know when he’s looking at an imposter.’

– Death on the Reik, p67

The published version of The Horned Rat contains nothing in connection with this plot, and these clues turn out to be red herrings. However, Andy Law, the original producer of the WFRP4 version of The Enemy Within, has stated that his intentions were different.

… Eventually, after also learning the truth of the Skaven-created dopplegangers [sic] in The Horned Rat (and that the Emperor, and many others, had been replaced by them! – ties to the Konrad trilogy there, too!), it would have led to several hard choices in the last instalment….

– Andy Law, comment on Discord

The reference to the Konrad trilogy, by David S Garnett (writing as David Ferring), is to its final book, Warblade (1993). This features a skaven plot to replace the Emperor with a doppelgänger. The existence of a similar plot in the Enemy Within campaign would fit the clues in Enemy in Shadows and Death on the Reik. It would also explain some otherwise obscure details in Power Behind the Throne, namely the origin of its doppelgänger and the rationale for the alliance between the skaven and Purple Hand (whose sense I have previously questioned).

Law has indicated other unfulfilled plans for the latter parts of the campaign. Although the demon Gideon from Enemy in Shadows reappears in the published Empire in Ruins, there was an intention for his role to have been wider.

… I had plans for Gideon and its later return through Power Behind the Throne, The Horned Rat, then the full reveal (which could have been on the PC’s [sic] side depending upon choices made – pesky, unreliable Tzeentch!) in Empire in Ruins. But that didn’t happen, meaning early seeds sown never took root….

– Andy Law, comment on Discord

Law has explained that the similarity of Gideon’s true name Sheru-tar Gee’taru and the name of the Lord of Change Sheerargetru in Empire in Ruins was part of this storyline.

[Gideon] was planned to be a larger part of the ongoing story, and its true name was a part of that.

To keep this explanation simple, assume that Gideon is a part of the Greater Daemon behind The Enemy Within. You could assume this is in much the same way that the Greater Daemon is a part of Tzeentch. If you’d prefer a more mundane description for that, consider Gideon to be the subject of the Greater Daemon, and not a happy one as it had gained a taste for the material realm when with Teugen.

Now, as this problematic Daemon grew more independent and sentient, it also became more like its Greater Daemonic master. In turn, its true name, a reflection of its soul, was morphing to become very close to that of the Greater Daemon, too….

[There would have been] several hard choices in the last instalment giving options to, for example, significantly weaken the Greater Daemon in return for setting Gideon free (which, in turn, was actually the plan of the Greater Daemon, which could later manifest in its servant, which now bore its true name exactly)….

So, in short: the name is a hint to one of Tzeentch’s planned Endgames for the Enemy Within, and one of the planned conclusions we had for the campaign, where the PCs kill the Greater Daemon in triumph, but it re-manifests in Gideon (or Gideon ascends in power to replace its former master, effectively becoming it, showing the many faces of Tzeentch).

In that outcome, the Greater Daemon stays in the material realm after it is killed because the PCs had earlier released Gideon in order to secure their success against, well, the Greater Daemon. Pesky, twisty-turny Tzeentch! But that required proper foreshadowing, set-up, execution, then payoff, which this paragraph does not do. The whole point of that, and the other potential ends, was that Tzeentch almost certainly always wins (because it’s Tzeentch!), and that the PCs help ensure that as they are just another thread in Tzeentch’s tapestry, but they likely don’t realise that until its too late.

– Andy Law, comment on Discord

The reappearance of the demon Gideon in the published version of Empire in Ruins omits many of the elaborate details mentioned by Law.

Law has described how further seeds of this plot were to have been sown in Death on the Reik and Power Behind the Throne.

Why [Gideon] was important was to be investigated using Research, possibly in downtime, in the Wittgenstein libraries and from Etelka Herzen’s grimoires – where Gideon would have been named in truth, and Teugen’s involvement and history consolidated for PC understanding – and the Collegium Theologica in Middenheim and at other sites (after hints to do this from others, when required).

Amongst many other things, this would all hint that daemonic names potentially reflect the nature of the daemon in question, and can be deciphered by the mad and the foolish (almost certainly incorrectly – Corruption points spread aplenty) – and that would have also revealed the source of the Daemon’s shapeshifting after deeper investigation. All minor asides to the campaign at this point, and very easy to wend in without impacting any primary plot points. But potentially explosive by the end.

– Andy Law comment on Discord

Although the research described in this quotation does not feature in the published campaign, there is a vestige of it in an error in Death on the Reik. That adventure refers to documents in Etelka Herzen’s home that “shed some light on the strange events in Bögenhafen” (p6). These documents are missing from the adventure, but are presumably among those mentioned in Law’s comment.

Law’s vision of the campaign was never fulfilled. He left Cubicle 7 after the publication of Enemy in Shadows and while Death on the Reik was still being developed.

… Others likely took it in a very different direction after I left (I’ve not read the published books) so none of that is likely to apply anymore.

– Andy Law, comment on Discord

Nonetheless, his comments reveal a fascinating case of what-might-have-been, and explain some errors and inconsistencies in the published books.

Artwork used without permission. No challenge intended to the rights holders.