THE END OF THE WORLD AS WE KNOW IT

Warning. This review contains spoilers for Empire in Ruins and other parts of the Enemy Within campaign.

And so we reach the end. After 844 pages of adventure (and more in the companion volumes) Cubicle 7’s reissue of the Enemy Within campaign comes to a conclusion. But does it end with a bang or a whimper?

Covers then and now (1989 left, 2021 right)

BACKGROUND

Empire in Ruins replaces the original conclusion to the Enemy Within campaign, Empire in Flames. That adventure was a rushed and unsatisfactory conclusion, produced at a time when Games Workshop was losing interest in role-playing games. It has reasonably attracted criticism from many quarters.

There have been several subsequent attempts to revise or replace Empire in Flames. When Hogshead Publishing republished the Enemy Within campaign, James Wallis planned an alternative conclusion, Empire in Chaos, but never completed it. Alfred Nuñez Jr wrote an unofficial finale called The Empire at War. I have even offered some ideas of my own. Empire in Ruins is therefore the latest in a long line of efforts to draw the Enemy Within campaign to a satisfactory close.

PRESENTATION

With 207 pages of adventure content, Empire in Ruins is substantially larger than previous instalments in the campaign. While most of the additional page count is dedicated to events in the adventure, a small amount has been used to provide organisational material that has at times been lacking in previous episodes. There is a good summary of the adventure’s plot, which is supplemented with several useful tables and diagrams. There is consideration of chronology, including a detailed table of journey distances and times. Remarkably, there is a short index of topics and important NPCs for the first time in a main adventure since Enemy in Shadows.

We even get a chronological overview of the whole campaign and some understanding of its narrative arcs. This particular information really belonged in Enemy in Shadows, but it is to be presumed that practical considerations intervened, as the later parts of the campaign had at that time not been completed. Nonetheless, this information is better provided late than never.

Empire in Ruins does not wholly avoid the presentational faults of earlier editions. Deficiencies in proofreading are again evident. For example, there are passing mentions of an NPC called Yabo Chao (pp77 and 81), who seems to be a Cathayan ambassador, but is nowhere described. The image resolution of the wedding invitation (p89) is too low for it to be legible. The map of Black Fire Pass lacks details, such as proper labels of the different shrines described in the text (p133). Nonetheless, despite these niggles, presentation is good overall.

THE PLOT

The hammer passed down through generations of Emperors is not Sigmar’s hammer Ghal-maraz, but a replica. The real hammer was lost in a battle with the greater demon Sheerargetru and lies in a cavern in the Black Mountains, where it still traps the demon. Sheerargetru has, however, concocted a plan for his release. Through his vassal, the lesser demon Gideon from Enemy in Shadows, he has conspired for the PCs to retrieve Ghal-maraz and release him. Then in a ritual in Altdorf he will possess the Crown Prince and heir to the Imperial throne. The Crown Prince has already been prepared for his role by a group of Tzeentchian cultists called the Nine Eyes.

The plot thickens with a separate scheme by Yann Zuntermein, head of the Purple Hand in Altdorf. He is poisoning the Emperor and manipulating his double. He is also fomenting strife in the Empire.

So is Zuntermein’s rival, Karl-Heinz Wasmeier, former head of the Purple Hand in Middenheim. To further his ambitions he plans to assassinate Katarina Todbringer.

If that were not enough, some Purple Hand cultists, chief among them Kastor Lieberung, have been preparing for a Champion in Shadows to unite the followers of Tzeentch. The Red Crown are gathering beastmen for an uprising. There are also machinations in Ubersreik, Sudenland and elsewhere. It’s a tangled web.

THE SCENARIO

The adventure loosely breaks down into two parts. In the first, the PCs return to Middenheim and then travel to Altdorf, becoming enmeshed in Imperial politics on the way. The Empire’s religious and political leaders hope to quell the growing strife between the cults of Sigmar and Ulric by negotiating a declaration of unity and marriage of state between Katarina Todbringer and Crown Prince Wolfgang Holswig-Abenauer.

Play in this section mostly comprises a series of meetings with the Empire’s great and good: one with High Capitular Volkmar and Graf Boris in Middenheim; a conclave between the Grand Theogonist and Ar-Ulric at Shining Rock; an interview with Crown Prince Wolfgang in Castle Reikguard; a parade of unity in Altdorf; the royal wedding; and an emergency council after the assassination attempt on Katarina Todbringer.

I am not persuaded that these meetings present a plausible reconstruction of high-level politics. The informal setting in which the High Capitular presents his proposal seems more appropriate to an office Christmas party than a serious diplomatic negotiation. It makes little sense that commoner PCs are entrusted to deliver the Todbringers’ marriage acceptance and interview the Crown Prince about his suitability as a husband. I would also question the wisdom of conducting that interview after assenting to marriage; it is surely shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted. Finally, the wedding is arranged with implausible speed.

These problems are not insoluble. The meeting with the High Capitular can with some effort be adapted to a more formal setting. The adventurers can accompany a suitable noble, such as Heinrich Todbringer, to interview Crown Prince Wolfgang, or be given honours for saving the Graf and Middenheim in Power Behind the Throne and The Horned Rat. The marriage acceptance can follow the interview. The haste of the wedding arrangements can at a stretch be justified by the urgency of the crisis.

There is a more important difficulty, however. I am unconvinced that these negotiations are especially fun to play. They comprise a linear sequence of cut scenes, which rely extensively on scripted text. They leave the PCs largely as passengers. Even a section in the style of ‘A Rough Night at the Three Feathers’ (pp78-83) does little to improve things.

The purpose of these meetings seems to be the exposition of rather dull Imperial politics. This might be forgivable if they were short and necessary, but they are neither. They comprise the bulk of the sixty-six pages that make up the first part of the adventure, and provide little more than background detail without significant bearing on the events of the adventure. Insofar as such exposition is necessary, it would be better to drip-feed it throughout the campaign, rather than dump it in one go here.

The dry politicking is punctuated with some action. The adventure opens with a sequence in which the PCs defend Heinrich Todbringer’s dirigible from attack. It is an entertaining episode, but gamers who prefer a grittier, historical feel will no doubt shudder at the anachronism. It is not the only example of a more exotic tone than the original Enemy Within campaign. An Imperial steam tank also makes an appearance, and the royal wedding is graced by hats so large that they need to be supported by magic. Given how gravity-defying non-magical hats are in WFRP4, the mind boggles.

More problematically the existence of air travel has implications for the rest of the adventure which are not thought through. If the characters have access to an airship, there is no need for them to journey by land to Altdorf and Black Fire Pass. Fortunately, the dirigible is not an important plot device and the episode can easily be rewritten as a land journey.

A skirmish encounter with the Sons of Ulric at Shining Rock also enlivens this stage of the adventure. It is an interesting tactical combat, but the description omits important details, most notably a map. The missing information appears in the Empire in Ruins Companion, but it would have been better in my opinion either to have included it here or relocated the entire episode to the Companion. Its inclusion in an incomplete state is unsatisfactory.

The first part of the adventure culminates with the royal wedding and assassination attempt. This is a simple, but dramatic, set piece. It is just a shame the players are made to wait so long to get to it.

In the aftermath of the assassination attempt, the Empire fractures into quarrelling factions. The Emperor’s hammer is shattered, and thus revealed to be a mere substitute for Sigmar’s. The second part of the adventure is occupied with the quest to recover Ghal-maraz itself.

Options are presented for several different NPCs to encourage the adventurers to undertake the expedition. The PCs are also given a chance to investigate the history of Sigmar’s hammer. It is pleasing that some thought has been dedicated to the instigation and motivation of the mission.

Regrettably, though, Empire in Ruins neglects to explain adequately why the hammer’s recovery is seen as important. Up to this point the only discussion of the subject is a fleeting comment in the adventure synopsis (p6) that it is necessary to restore the Emperor’s authority and avoid the Empire disintegrating. This statement is easy to miss, and it is poor practice to include information only in the summary. Such a critical plot point should be explained clearly in the main text of the adventure.

Furthermore, investigation of Ghal-maraz’s history requires no more than a token amount of research. The work has already been done by an NPC, who simply tells the characters to look in a three-mile stretch of Black Fire Pass. More could have been made of this.

The journey to the Black Mountains comprises a series of appropriate and atmospheric encounters. The adventurers experience at first hand the increasingly fractious state of the Empire and become embroiled in some of its politics. Several organisations, from the Purple Hand to a secret order in the cult of Sigmar, attempt to prevent their progress.

Black Fire Pass is a simpler affair. Its main landmarks are briefly described, but they are unlikely to be much more than scenery, as the characters’ path through the valley is clearly defined. They pass through an old mine tunnel, recently reopened at Gideon’s instigation, into a gorge infested by a colourful clan of goblins. From there they can access the hammer’s final resting place in the Caves of Chaos. No, not those ones. These are a complex of nine chambers corrupted by Chaos. Each is affected by a different wind of magic, except the last which is suffused with Dark magic. This provides the perfect excuse for a good old funhouse dungeon filled with such delights as a three-headed guard dog, zombies emerging from a river of blood and an island in a lake of gold with treasures that turn to lead when they are removed. It is probably entertaining to play, but I find it hard to escape the feeling that I’ve seen it all before. I perceive echoes of Greek myth, Indiana Jones movies and Harry Potter books. Whether this is deliberate artistry or the inevitable consequence of the hobby’s fifty years of dungeoneering I cannot say.

For the return to Altdorf, there are different options to travel by land and river and various parties to help and hinder the party, including a secret dwarf network, a splinter group of the Purple Hand, a horde of beastmen and, most dangerously of all, Electors pursuing their own political agendas. En route, the characters also have a chance to recharge Ghal-maraz’s magical flat battery at a holy site.

Should the adventurers take a wrong turn at any point, Gideon is on hand to shepherd them to their destination. They may, though, suspect his manipulation. Along their way are hints that point to his role and the remains of those Gideon has used before them. Gideon even has another iron in the fire who can retrieve Ghal-maraz if the PCs fail. If you’re going to run an adventure on rails, this is the way to do it.

Aside from its linearity, the mission to recover the hammer is thoughtfully designed, and has many entertaining moments. I particularly like the deranged goblins of the lost gorge and the Seven Samurai defence of Wolfshügel from beastmen. The Caves of Chaos, though, aren’t quite my cup of tea.

The hammer’s return to Altdorf sets up the ultimate dénouement and the culmination of Gideon’s plans. In a ceremony to celebrate the restoration of Ghal-maraz, the Crown Prince and the Nine Eyes are sacrificed to summon Sheeragetru, because no-one’s happy without a big boss fight. It’s quite a battle. Sheerargetru’s strength varies according to the adventurers’ prior success not just in Empire in Ruins, but in the campaign as a whole. If Bögenhafen is a smouldering ruin and Maliss Manwrack rained warpstone down on the Empire, things will look quite bleak for our heroes.

It is not clear, however, what happened to the plan to possess the Crown Prince, or why the Purple Hand invested so much effort in him, if he was only ever to be a sacrificial lamb. The final scene does not quite seem to match the plot previously described.

Many elements of the adventure will be familiar to grognards. The attack on the dirigible is reminiscent of the Doomstones finale, Heart of Chaos (2001), and its early drafts; the battle at Shining Rock is loosely based on the original ‘Carrion up the Reik’ from the first-edition campaign; the royal wedding is an idea from Empire in Chaos; the plot to recover Ghal-maraz is from Empire in Flames; the poisoning of the Emperor comes from The Empire at War; and so on. To a considerable extent Empire in Ruins is an anthology of past attempts to conclude the campaign. There is in principle much to recommend in such an approach, as there are many excellent ideas in previous efforts. However, in practice Empire in Ruins ends up as something of a Frankenstein’s monster.

Despite the presence of good sections, the whole is less than the parts. The numerous stitched-together plot threads are more than can fit into a single adventure, even of this size, and many are badly neglected. There are scattered references to the PCs investigating the Nine Eyes, but almost no leads or clues. The Champion in Shadows storyline is hardly explored. The poisoning of the Emperor is dispatched in just two pages, ticking the plot box, but little more. More effort is spent on explaining the convoluted plot than addressing it.

To some extent Empire in Ruins suffers for the sins of its fathers. There is a lack of prior exposition in earlier parts of the campaign, whose effects are felt in the finale. There are simply too many loose ends to be resolved, and too few prior hints of what is to come. The role of Kastor Lieberung, the return of Karl-Heinz Wasmeier, the Emperor’s illness and doubles, the mysterious sequestration of the Crown Prince, the mutant edict, the schemes of the Red Crown, the machinations in Ubersreik and more need to be addressed with very little preparation. As I have discussed in a previous post, a change of direction during the composition of the campaign meant that early plot development was abandoned, and little took its place in the later episodes.

The adventure also appears to be hampered by the constraints of the established Warhammer background, which require the narrative to progress to a predetermined outcome. Karl Franz must remain on the throne; Ghal-maraz must be in his possession; the borders and rulers of provinces must conform to a set arrangement. This inevitably deprives the players of agency and leads to a strikingly linear adventure. Similar criticism was levelled at the campaign’s original finale, Empire in Flames, but Empire in Ruins has repeated its mistake. The tracks and trains have changed, but the journey is just as fixed as before.

This time, though, the stakes are also greatly lowered, as the status quo cannot be in real peril. Thus many of the most memorable elements of previous finales have been deprived of their drama. The Emperor is not assassinated; he just feels a bit poorly. The PCs do not slay the Crown Prince on his transformation into a hideous mutant; instead they get to interview him on his suitability as a husband and discover he is a thoroughly nice chap. The quest for Sigmar’s hammer is not to recover an object lost for millennia, but one that no-one knew was missing until a few days earlier.

Too much effort is expended on reconciling the inconsistent backgrounds of WFRP1 and WFB8 by redrawing political maps. The ingenuity is admirable, but it contributes little to the adventure. The purpose seems to be to satisfy lore nerds, not players. In hindsight it might perhaps have been preferable to have adopted WFB8‘s provincial arrangements from the start and avoided this unnecessary intricacy, though the greater verisimilitude of a changing political landscape is some reward for the trouble.

The return of NPCs in a finale is a plot twist so overused in media that it has become an expectation. Empire in Ruins meets that expectation conspicuously. In addition to the demon Gideon, Josef Quartjin, Quintus Fassbinder, Elvyra Kleinestun, Renate Hausier, Heironymous Blitzen, Sigrid the outlaw chief, Otto Boorman, Golthog, Erina Eberhauer and, of course, Karl-Heinz Wasmeier all return. Many are optional, giving the GM room to tailor the adventure to match the earlier experience of the players. However, several are not, and the return of quite so many figures seems to me somewhat indulgent, diluting the effect. GMs should, however, have little difficulty scaling this theme back, if it suits their preference.

There is also little advice for GMs on adapting the adventure, should the campaign have developed in ways incompatible with the return of these characters (for example, if Gideon was destroyed in Enemy in Shadows). This is made somewhat more acute by the failure to forewarn the GM earlier in the campaign of the NPCs’ future roles.

Even with these criticisms, there is little doubt in my mind that Empire in Ruins improves in many respects on the original version of the finale. The mission to retrieve Ghal-maraz receives vastly superior treatment to Empire in Flames‘ execrable effort. The instigation is handled in a less heavy-handed fashion. Progress relies less on contrived notions of destiny and arbitrary shortcuts. (Grognards may chuckle when they hear the words “We’ll need to go via The Hidden Valley and The Pegasus” in the new adventure (p163); this time they refer to an inn and a barge respectively.) Empire in Ruins also comprehensively wraps up unresolved plot threads, albeit not as satisfactorily as I would have hoped.

Empire in Ruins‘ failures lie not so much in the execution of individual sections, but in its overall structure. The prior development of the campaign and requirements of consistency with the established Warhammer background appear to have painted the designers into a corner from which they struggled to extricate themselves.

Writing a satisfactory finale without disrupting the existing Warhammer timeline might perhaps seem like solving the Gordian knot without taking Alexander’s shortcut. If the Ghal-maraz plot had to be preserved, I still believe it might have been preferable to set the campaign earlier in Imperial history, and tell the story of the sickly Emperor Luitpold’s death, recovery of Ghal-maraz and accession of Karl Franz. However, such an arrangement would still have involved an element of determinism. An even better solution might have been to focus instead on one of the other plots, for example, hunting down the Nine Eyes across the Empire.

The adventure is in my opinion best used as yet another source of ideas from which GMs can construct their own finale. For example, the expedition to retrieve Ghal-maraz (pp 102-176) could easily be inserted into the framework of Empire in Flames (pp13-31 and 83-110). There are many other alternative constructions. My previous ideas for the finale could also accommodate sections of Empire in Ruins.

OVERALL

Empire in Ruins is, regrettably, not the finale the campaign deserves. It is the weakest of the five adventures and struggles to manage the many demands placed on it. This is not to suggest it is altogether rotten. It has good aspects alongside its weaknesses. In total, though, it is merely passable, and that’s not good enough for The Enemy Within.

To buy Empire in Ruins from DriveThruRPG, click here.

For my other WFRP4 reviews, see this link.

I would like to thank Cubicle 7 for providing a copy of Empire in Ruins for review.

Title art by Ralph Horsley. All artwork used without permission. No challenge intended to the rights holders. Links to DriveThruRPG are affiliate links. I receive a small payment for purchases made through them. This does not change the cost paid by the purchaser. I have received no inducements in connection with this review.

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