GM Blog: Episode 10 (Patreon)

Let's dive into the meat of the next section of the campaign as we tackle the first major location in our version of Death on the Reik: Grissenwald.

I have a lot to say about this episode and why it landed the way it did. So, buckle up as I start off with a critical eye: the current version of Death on the Reik needs revision to best support the overall campaign the way I'm playing it.

Why?

Because it has a ton of unneeded scenes that do nothing for the campaign as a whole. Sure, they tell some fun stories, but they are not important to the story The Enemy Within is telling.

That being so, be ready for some hefty cuts in the upcoming episodes as I'm not here to waste time on pointless side-quests for LAWhammer! Every last episode, even the Tales of... episodes that may seem to be asides, are all gearing towards the same end goal, or setting up events to support later campaigns (sure, I may never reach any of those, but I like to plan as if I will). So, if it doesn't help the story of The Enemy Within or what comes next, it will be CUT!

Are you ready for that? This may be brutal.

Again, why?

Well, as it turns out,  almost all of Death on the Reik is about to be cut or changed in some way because much of it is side-quest or adds nothing at all to the primary plot. And for someone who has run this part of the campaign about 20 or so times at least, that almost feels like blasphemy to admit. This is one of my favourite sections of the campaign, and always has been! Changing it is going to be tough.

But you know what they say: kill your darlings.

And, yes, Death on the Reik is my darling.

So, darling, meet hacksaw.

Let's bullet point. Let's CUT!

• The Red Crown! The primary purpose of this section of the adventure is to set up the Red Crown Chaos cult, reinforce the power and reach of the Purple Hand cult, and to establish the importance of a warpstone meteorite for the Wittgenstein section and, later, The Horned Rat. All the while, we need to keep the destabilising Empire as a backdrop and also, because of the group I have, provide extra fuel for the End Times narrative. So, any detail that does not support any of these things will be cut. Even if I like it. And, yes, this is about to get painful. Because I like this adventure.

• Chapter 1: Bögenhafen to Altdorf. So, Death on the Reik, p9 suggests that the first part of the campaign should focus on travel to... Altdorf. It is suggested we do this right after having had the PCs flee that city as wanted criminals or similar (our version of this happened at the start of Episode 3 after all the Tales of Altdorf City). Further, the Altdorf described in Enemy in Shadows is... a bit fucked up. Things are changing there. Will most PCs want to return? Fuck no. And, can they avoid it? Hell, yes! Altdorf has a canal system that is literally designed to avoid it as I explained in GM Blog 8 under 'New Route!' So, it's time to read through Chapters 1 and 2 of the published Death on the Reik with my hacksaw ready. Because, really, my PCs are never going there if they can help it. So, does that mean I'm really dumping the first two chapters of the book? All the way up to page 37? That's... a lot! Well, let's bullet-point all the main plot points of the first two chapters and see if they include anything useful for us.

• Leaving Bögenhafen, p9. This page is largely useless as it's detailing material already covered in Enemy in Shadows, and is also useless to the direction we're taking, so an easy CUT!

• Bögenhafen to Weissbruck, p10. This section says almost nothing new either, so CUT!

• News and Rumours, p10. So, the news presented here isn't anything to do with this leg of the journey. It's just general rumours gathered when travelling, so there is some good here. But there is also a fair bit of bad. Unlike the News and Rumours in Enemy in Shadows, there is no handy guide as to how to use these rumours or any explanation if they are false or true. This leaves them a somewhat uncertain tool. So, reading through them, I decided to dump the lot. Why? Well, they are either a) too blatant (THE CROWN PRINCE IS A MUTANT! LOL!), or b) too generic (ROADS ARE DANGEROUS! SHOCKER!). The blatant ones I will seed more carefully, and the generic ones are already in place from Enemy in Shadows and don't need this much extra space. In short: as easy CUT!

• A Boat In Need, p11-13. I have already used a variation of this 2-page section and tied it directly to the PCs (LUKAS, CAPTURED?) and to the Red Crown (WHY ARE THEY ATTACKING US AGAIN?) and also the Cabal (WHO?) for my Episode 8. Check GM Blog 8 for more on that.

• Weissbruck, p13-19. So, the return to Weissbruck. Does it offer awesome events that support the campaign's primary conflicts, tone, themes, or mood? And does it provide me with anything useful I can use elsewhere?
  ...
  Well, not really.
  The Purple Palm warning from page 13 is fun. It piles on pressure and reinforces the Purple Hand cult and its presence, so I'm keeping that. Even better, it's not tied to Weissbruck and is an event that can happen anywhere, so that's perfect.
  As for the rest of this section?
  The pharmacist and the kidnapping and the Altdorf daemonologist and the Red Barn and the...?
  Nah, fuck it all.
  This is deep into side-quest area and has nothing to do with the core plot or what it concerns. It's, at best, framing for some irrelevant NPCs that are destined to flee town and never be seen again. It's an absolute waste of time. This is deep into CUT territory. Goodbye Elvyra, Renate, Liza and your pointless antagonists. Sadly, Renate has often been a primary NPC in almost all my previous playthroughs of this campaign, so is somewhat of a favourite of mine, but I have Bluthilda fulfilling a similar role this time.
  So, no real loss there.

• News and Rumours, p18. More news? Already? Didn't we just have some a few pages back? Let's see if this news is more useful.
  <reads>
  It is not.
  This is more of the same, including actual repetition (Crown Prince Hergard has been killed again! That rumour spread fast, he's likely only reached the foothills of the Grey Mountains and word has already spread that he's dead!), and some utterly pointless rumours that do nothing to deepen the plot of The Enemy Within. In short: this is a wasted page, so I'm happy to move on from this one. CUT! Again, I'll write my own. Hergard will be returning later, after all.

• The Schemes of the Red Crown, p24. So, I'm really not happy with this section. The supposed schemes of Etelka do not match the stated schemes for her cult. On one side, we have a cult dedicated to uniting Mutants and Beastmen, on the other side you have Etelka, Ernst, and their Goblins and... warpstone? Hmm. That's quite shit. The obvious fixes are to either rewrite the cult to match Etelka and her schemes, or I rewrite Etelka's schemes to match the cult. As will be clear later, I chose the latter option, although that came at a cost. I'll discuss this in GM Blog 11. In short, this section is absolute bobbins and I'm rewriting it. So, CUT.

• What About Delberz, p24? This is a waste of space. Discussion about what previous versions of the campaign did provide me with nothing for this playthrough. So, CUT.

• Chapter 2: Altdorf to Kemperbad. Most of Chapter 1 was cut for what I feel are good reasons. Let's see how Chapter 2 fairs.

• Schemes of the Red Crown, p25-26. This whole section is useless to me as I'm going to be running Etelka differently to match the Red Crown goals more clearly. Further, my Ernst won't be hanging around in Altdorf waiting to be conveniently spotted by the PCs. So, the whole timeline is an easy CUT!

• Journey to Grissenwald. Yes. Now we're talking! This is what I'm doing. So, how much of this is useful? Erm... wait... this section has a false title! It doesn't cover the journey to Grissenwald at all! That is covered in Chapter 3? This only includes details of two locations on the way to Kemperbad! A bit cheeky! Well, let's check those two locations (one of which is a core adventure location! - so we're really only getting one location mentioned).

• Castle Reikguard, p27. Location number 1: Castle Reikguard. This is an important one to the campaign later. But, it's badly described as it misses many core details about the place. So, nope, this is kinda useless to me. Not just because I'm not going to have my party pass it yet, but because the details are insufficient. CUT! I'll build my own version of this location for presenting when Death on the Reik is finished and the PCs are heading north to Middenheim.

• The Signal Tower, p28-33. This location is important to the overall adventure, but as written we likely have to come here twice. Once as we pass on the way from Altdorf, and once again after securing a key up in the Barren Hills, retracing our steps. So, the location is definitely useful, but as GM Blog 14 will make clear, I'm also rewriting it heavily to better fit the campaign as a whole. But more on that later. I have no desire to make my PCs revisit this minor location without a solid reason as I don't want to be wasting entire episodes retracing steps unless I have a good dramatic reason to do so. That would feel like padding, especially as the PCs want to be going to Grissenwald first, not the Signal Tower. So, CUT until later. My PCs will visit here once, and that's it. And it will also be presented as little differently.

• Kemperbad, p33-34. It's odd that this town is almost the only location detailed on this leg of the journey when there are so many other places that could be mentioned. But, it is an important location, so I'm glad it is included. I just wish there was more. Anyway, do I need Kemperbad just now? No. Are the details here useful for later? Barely, but yes - there is about a quarter-page of useful material here when I could really do with about 10. So, this is another CUT for later. And another rewrite. The Purple Hand deets aren't even that fun for this one.

• Kemperbad News and Rumours, p34. More News! But is it better this time? Not really. More repetition, some small developments that have had no time to escalate in the way suggested (the Empire is too big for some of the news to have spread so far in just a few days). There are also some heavy-handed Wittgenstein rumours for the PCs. I'm CUTting all of this. I feel some of them actually make the story worse and make the Empire feel small. Imagine if the rumours for Enemy in Shadows said 'There are daemons in Bogenhafen I tells you. Shapeshifters! Or so me sister-in-law says.' Show, don't tell. I'd rather my PCs discovered the horror of the situations themselves. I'll be a tad more subtle with my foreshadowing.

• Chapter 3: Kemperbad to the Black Peaks. Chapters 1 and 2 did not fare well. How much of Chapter 3 will we be using? Let's find out...

• Grisly Find, p39. Nah. Fuck that. finding a corpse and blaming it on that castle over there? This is another example of heavy-handed foreshadowing. CUT! Really, if there were so many corpses dropping in the water there, Trolls would have moved in for the easy food. Or Stirpike. Or something else. That would make a better rumour. So, I'll not use this at all. This is not what I need, especially given how I intend to use Wittgenstein. But, more on that later...

• Grissenwald, p39. And now we're at the bit that matters for this playthrough: Grissenwald. Of the last almost 40 pages leading up to this, I'd suggest maybe 4 were genuinely useful to me and to the campaign as a whole. We could have easily had a 25-page Guide to Kemperbad or Grissenwald in that space as an Appendix, like the Guide to Bogenhafen in Enemy in Shadows, and likely had a stronger book for it. Over half of Chapters 1 & 2 could have been repurposed for the companion book and it would not have been a loss. The remaining 10 or so pages could have then been discussions about different routes to Grissenwald and the shenanigans of the two primary cults. Or a Gazetteer of the River Reik and all the primary locations along it. Even if it was only the locations included on the section of my Reikland map they used on p26! But, not to be. So, I'll make my own versions. It won't be the first time...

• To Grissenwald. So, having read the first 40ish pages, it was clear my episode covering this section would be called 'To Grissenwald' because that's ultimately what the adventure wants to happen even if Chapters 1 and 2 take a circuitous route to get there, so I decided just to go straight there. So, that's what we called the episode. That said, I do have something to admit about this episode and my original plans...

• I was so ill. Yes, I know I've said this in almost every GM blog so far, but I was still very ill when we recorded this. Indeed, almost peak ill, although I did have a lot of drugs by this point. When planning this episode, I fully intended to provide many deep descriptions of the canals and rivers of the Vorbergland before arriving at Grissenwald, and to have some shenanigans along the way to foreshadow later conflicts (Ulric/Sigmar, Taal/Sigmar, Reikland/Middenland, Reikland/Nuln, Reikland/Talabecland, and so on), but I found it too hard to concentrate. So, I skipped almost all of that and instead let the players discuss everything that happened in their individual Tales of Ubersreik. That was an easy out, and the players enjoyed it, but I would have handled this section differently if I was well. Once they'd finished their chat, I dragged the PCs to Grissenwald by skipping most of the journey. Please forgive me for that - as I said, I was very ill that day.

• Which Grissenwald? I mostly used the following version of Grissenwald that I built one evening for a previous playthrough of The Enemy Within about 20 years ago. It's not unknown for me to create everything I need when I need it. The map below - which was one of the first I ever created digitally! - has been haunting the internet for a loooooong time, although it's very rarely credited to me. I once had every location for it written out, but that document was lost long ago in a flood. Perhaps this is a project others would like to take a stab at fleshing out? I'll have a think on that for later. We could all maybe create a wee pdf about the place? It's only 80 or so locations - a week's work, or a few days for a whole team of folks.

• Ubersreik Chat. The chat the players had at the beginning of the session was redolent with foreshadowing for events to come, ranging from witches being created to Ghal Maraz having the Master Rune of Alaric the Mad to the cycle of End Times. Indeed, almost all the wild stuff from Episode 19.1 to come has been mentioned as a possibility by this point, foreshadowing what's next. Good to get the players ready for the truly crazy stuff to come. So, for all I bemoan not running this session as I originally planned, it did a lot of heavy lifting for later.

• 30th Wedding Anniversary Party. Alamennowyth's upcoming 30th anniversary was mentioned. It's worth noting that it is due to occur later in the year on Herbstag. I've dropped the date on the 2512 Timeline if you're interested. The party she hopes for may very well not happen. Currently, her wife is headed south to the Nuvala barracks by Hendorf, in the Grey Mountains near Nuln.

• Swift escape. Altdorf state soldiers were sent by General von Dabernick to secure the PCs'  barge. Publicly, the general claims it's because the barge was stolen. However, he doesn't know or care if that's true or not. He simply wished to return Birdie to his bed and had learned she was on the barge. So, he ordered the barge secured so he could attend the harbour, something that he believed would be perceived as romantic. However, as his order moved down the ranks to the pistol-wielding lieutenant who was tasked with the job, shots soon echoed across Ubersreik's docklands. Perhaps not so romantic, after all.

• Purple Hand Plot. Gerhardt tells everyone that the Purple Hand have been looking to pass the Mutant Edict for many years. Gerhardt's aunt attempted to interrupt their plans to do this previously. This is accurate. the Purple Hand did attempt to have the Mutant Edict passed in the past and it was foiled by the Jungfreuds. Sigismund, in turn, started looking into the Purple Hand, which, in turn, resulted in the seizure of Ubersreik. Repercussions in action.

• General von Ahlsee. Arguably the finest general in the Empire is accused of being a Purple Hand member by Gerhardt and others. This is not true. It is a plot by the Purple Hand to ruin his name and curtail his influence in the upcoming war they are pushing for. The perfect outcome would be for the general to be burned, but he is enormously influential, and this is unlikely. Some suspicious PCs may do this job later, though. He is an NPC who will surface in our Empire in Ruins section.

• Sigmar's Birthplace. Luitpold claims that Sigmar was born in Ubersreik. This is, for LAWhammer, true. It is also Luitpold's birthplace, although he does not know this for certain. Ubersreik is an important symbol of the Empire for more reasons than most realise. Having it be the instigating point of the Empire fracturing and collapsing is absolutely the plan of the Greater Daemon behind everything. It likes patterns - indeed, it is irresistibly drawn to them.

• Celestial Wizard. The Celestial Wizard responsible for the storms that plagued Ubersreik for the previous few weeks is sent by General von Dabernick to find Birdie. Many would view this as an abuse of his position - sending a powerful wizard to chase a 'love interest'. This does not even occur to Dabernick. Sadly for our spurned general, the Celestial cannot trace the barge because of Alamennowyth's influence. Check GM Blog 3 for more on why that is the case. Unfortunately for the party, the stymied Celestial Wizard comes to the conclusion that the barge is likely crewed by witches, cultists, or worse. After all, clearly, it's not his fault that his spells aren't working. This NPC may turn up later depending upon what happens in Ubersreik.

• Holzenauers. It is worth mentioning that the party passes through Graustadt, the seat of House Holzenauer. That noble house will be mentioned again in a later episode, so watch out for it.

• Wolfgang takes Dunkelberg. The heir to the Empire, Wolfgang Holswig-Abernauer, is currently in residence in Dunkelberg. He has been given the title of Duke of Dunkelberg by his uncle, the Prince of Altdorf, who is also the Emperor. He'll be very important later in the campaign, so mentioning him is important! Calling him a mutant in all the rumours is somewhat less important.

• Finally, Grissenwald! The PCs finally arrive in Grissenwald and set to eating and gossiping.

• 'Lads, Lads, Lads!' I only highlight this quotation as it is later used to title a 'Tales of...' stream due to be recorded tomorrow! Thursday 2nd November!

• A Rude Interruption, p39. There were several perfect opportunities to introduce this event from Death on the Reik. It has drunken Dwarfs start a fight with the party. But I decided not to do use it for three reasons.
  1) Portraying Dwarfs being useless drunken layabouts again, as already suggested in Enemy in Shadows, does a disservice to Warhammer Dwarfs. Instead, the 'drunken dwarf' and 'dwarf shanty' angle is presented as pure bigotry. So, the 'drunken dwarf' concept is still used but repurposed to show the simple prejudices of the Empire. Reinforcing this is important as it's one of the primary fractures of the Empire that the Greater Daemon manipulating affairs is using.
  2) The PCs were already heading to the Dwarfs because of the gossip they picked up, so there was no reason to intro them with the fight.
  3) The Elf was mostly creeping about and far from where the Dwarfs hung out, and if I was using the event, I'd use it to reinforce bigotry further with having the Dwarfs attack the Elf.
  So, in short (gettit?) this scene was not needed.

• Yume the Accidental Cultist. Yume walks in on local criminals who were being extorted by Purple Hand cultists and, without realising it, poses as one of them. This is foreshadowing. Big-time foreshadowing. It's also humorous, for all it is unexpectedly sinister when the full story to come is known.

• PURPLE HAND! 'GIVE ME THE MONEY!' Gerhardt is given the Purple Palm, confirming that there are Purple Hand cultists in the area. And, as Lukas spots, the cultist is well-to-do and somewhat cowardly. Luitpold hears the cultist gallop away at speed, again hinting at his wealth. In truth, the cultist is terrified of what Kastor Lieberung represents and flubs his orders, which was to carefully threaten 'Kastor'. Kastor has a reputation amongst the local Purple Hand, sourced from his ostentatious activities in Nuln (the very activities that resulted in a Witch Hunter chasing him out of the city to Middenheim), and that reputation is terrifying. Or, more accurately, it was.
  If you want to know when the Purple Palm spell will wear off, I've marked it in the 2512 Timeline with the following entry: GERHARDT💜 Date of note...

• Cultist MURDER! Alamennowyth kills the Purple Hand sorcerer in a surgical fashion after dispelling his spell. For all she appears to frenzy, she was not. She feared the sorceror's magic so shot an arrow in his face to distract him, then went straight for his throat to ensure he could no longer speak the words of magick. She then stabs him repeatedly in the lungs to take his air, just in case he was a mutant and had other mouths, then stabs him once in each of his major organs. Of course, being on the Path of Shadows, she covers her carefully placed blows with a mask of frenzy. Unsurprisingly, the cultist dies from this. And, amusingly, Birdie mistakes Alamennoyth's targetted blows as 'inefficiency'. Lindsay's face at this comment was very amusing to me.

• Who was he? So, who was that cultist? He was the second-in-command of a local cell of Hand cultists, and also second-in-command of a local smuggling ring that works from amongst the Guild of Fishers. He is a significant loss for the Hand locally, more because of the racketeering and smuggling rings he administered - which were a significant source of coin for the Purple Hand - than for the magic he wielded.

• Hand Losses. I mark all losses the Purple Hand suffers. They may be an influential cult, but their numbers are not large in the greater scheme of things. Broadly, the Empire (and its surrounds) is split into 'cells' where I rate Hand influence on a scale of 0-10. 1d10 rolls are used to determine if they secure what they want in the area when required (equal or under for a Success - the more under, the faster the result). The Nuln Hand went from 5 to 4 because of Alamennowyth's murderous actions. Sorcerers are important! The Hand, aware their numbers are relatively small, work hard to isolate or remove any who are aware of their activities. Like the Jungfreuds. Or Emmanuelle Nacht. Both of whom were dumped in Ubersreik and pitched against each other by the machinations of the Hand.
  ...
  Actually, I have a map for the Hand's influence in LAWhammer. Fancy a look?

• So many! Not really, it's just numbers representing influence. The actual numbers are relatively small, but they are in important positions.
  Note that some locations have tiny numbers to the bottom-right (by ALtdorf, Middenheim, and Nuln) - these are the numbers for the Hand influence in the Skaven Under Empire.
  Obviously, this means that hunting down Hand members or setting others to do this, can have a significant effect later in the campaign when the Hand attempts to manoeuvre the entire Empire towards civil war. But the PCs don't know this. Yet, at least. So, they are not actively hunting Hand wherever they go, for all Gerhardt has been tasked to hunt them down by his father (Episode 9.7), and Birdie has been by Emmanuelle Nacht (Episode 9.3).

• Camera Down! Hahah. Technical issues plagued the livingroom at the end. I became a roving, dancing GM when my camera went down. Very silly. Not a good look. It was the right time to end the episode. :D

And done! That one may have came across a bit moany in the first section, which wasn't the intent. I simply wanted to explain why Chapters 1 and 2 were cut for this playthrough, and why we went straight to Chapter 3 and also intend to make changes there.

In short, our route through this adventure will be:

Grissenwald -> Barren Hills -> Signal Tower -> Wittgenstein

It's clean and easy to present. It also makes more sense given the geography and previous events. And, yes, many changes are incoming. Which is appropriate for a Tzeentchy campaign, I suppose.

As always, if you have any comments or questions about this blog or feel I missed some important stuff from Episode 10 that needs to be discussed, post here on Patreon, where the PCs can't see, or in the #all-access-lawhammer channel in LAWhammer, where, again, the PCs can't see!

Until next time!

Andy