Reaching Something Rotten in Kislev.

Major spoilers.. no players etc etc...

Well were almost through the third installment of Enemy within campaign... and so far everything is really fine (great fun, lots of violence, horror, paranoia, injustice etc.)

Now comes the tricky part... Something Rotten in Kislev and after that how to end the campaign.

I’ve read allot of tips from other GM:s and the usual advice is to skip SRiK all together. Some part of me would still like to play the original campaign... well at least ALMOST the original campaign.

The reason I write this down in a forum is that I'm trying to sort out my ideas... and at the same time perhaps can get fun ideas from other GM:s.

My plan is to rearrange SRiK in a way that fits the rest of my campaign and that actually has a place in the main plot. At the same time I want to adjust some of the odd and actually bad stuff in this part but still try to keep much of the original story intact. Aaaaargh!

Ive made quite allot of adjustments in the previous parts, mostly adding a bit more plot and horror to the earlier installments. Ive tied the story more tightly to the Chaos Incursion and plans to end the campaign when Valten is killed at the gates of Middenheim.

Some of the changes in my campaign so far is:

* Gideon from SoB is still around... well almost. Gideon is a Daemon Prince that tries to reach godhood by sacrificing a big city. After all Johannes Teugen was sort of a cultist looser and Etelka Herzen was the one with the skills to actually summon the daemon. The physical form of Gideon was killed in the first installment, but hes true name (and henceforth the means to summon him) is still around in the Red Crown. Etelka survived the DotR and fled to Middenheim. In the big mess between the two cults in PBtT Etelka was finally slain, but now the name of the daemon is in the hands of the friendly lawlord that helped the heroes to track down evildoers in Middenheim, Karl-Heinz Wasmeier. Gideon knows that the big war is coming and want to be a god before this happens... but at the same time Tzeentch don't want to alert the Empire that the end is actually near.

* In my campaign Kastor Liberung (and henceforth one of the characters) is a Karl-Franz lookalike, this caused allot of fun situations in PBtT and it will be REALLY important in the last installment of the campaign. At the same time a big part of the story is about Siegfried von Kesselring and his sword Barrakul that the players found in DotR. Siegfried fought alongside Magnus the Pious in the last Chaos Incursion about 200 years ago. Siegfried was with Magnus when he entered Ulrichs holy flame in Middenheim and united the broken Empire. Siegfried also fought alongside Magnus in Kislev. The wielder of the might sword Barrakul have several flashbacks when he sees himself fight daemons on the frozen planes outside Praag. The player with this weapon is also the emperor lookalike, and hes got a huge DESTINY written all over him, the man with the emperors face and a holy (well,,, sort of stolen and allot of religious nutcases want it back) weapon. A destiny much needed when history repeats itself and Chaos i coming back.

Reasons to travel to Kislev:

Find out that the Destiny that guides the sword wielder to Praag is wrong... the battle wont be here this time. The first big onslaught will be at Middenheim, the city that cant fall.

Get the players to see and understand the full might of Archaons force and to understand that the Empire WILL fall this time... unless a real miracle occurs. This leads the players to the last part of the campaign.

One player i a priest of Morr. This is also a big part of his destiny to heal a damaged god.

Oki... its getting late and I just try to print down some of my main plans of SRiK.

Part one - The Chaos Child:

First we add a little story element to this quest. It feels a bit “railroad” so I surely want the players to mess around in the area before we get into the fight.

Plot:

The Dwarven Temple, an ancient shrine of Gazyl, Lord of Underearth (link to the undead theme here) got an protective enchantment during the Dwarf-Elf war. The shrine was far from any major settlements and could thus not be properly protected. The runepriests devices a series of runes of hiding fog which made sure that no elf or other intelligent being could find the shrine unless you knew the proper road.. If you search the wood you could find runestones scattered in a wide circle still with active runes. When most of the dwarves left the area after the war this shrine was still active and traveling Dwarves went here to mourn lost kin. The protection wasn't designed for beasts so i didn't help that much when Goblins attacked. The Goblin Shamen felt the disturbance from the hiding fog and launched an attack. A band of Dwarven priests managed to seal themselves in the inner chambers and henceforth saved the shrine, but they all starved to death in the deep dark. The goblins got lost in the hiding enchantment and didn't manage to leave the spot and they succumbed.

Many years later a small human settlement was born the area, but the hunters and woodcutters felt uneasy near the runestones, so they all avoided this part of the forest. Haunted and wild they said.

A small band of Beastmen entered the area, led by a Shaman that felt traces of the ancient magic. They were rather unaffected by the hiding fog since they are beasts and wild things. They found the hidden clearing and raised a menhir here to honour their heathen gods.

Their prayers were answered, but not by any of their gods... but a rouge Warrior of Khorne. Unaffected by the hiding magic he slew the Beastman shaman and took control of the war band. Now he started to collect wictims, and to spill enough blood on this spot to turn an ancient Dwarven shrine into a shrine of Khorne. The souls of the of Dwarf priests awakens and have gone mad in fear and despair in this unholy act.

Farmers start to disappear and the local lord summons his soldiers (a noble Steward must surely have some soldiers and cunning woodsmen) but the traces got into the hiding fog and everyone that enters the fog i lost and never seen again.

Points:

I wont let the Steward send the players straight to the proud parents, their mission is to find the Beastmen and remove the threat. It would surely not occur to him that a messed up son of a simple charcoaler would be the salvation. This will be the mentioned in the commoners gossip when the players have realized that they cant find a way into the forest.

Ehm... is four beastmen enough to hold an entire province in fear? Well make this a tribe. This tribe had a shaman that got killed by a Warrior of Khorne. They follow the Warrior out of fear and are not actually keen on this alliance. If they realize that the players could actually manage to kill the Warrior they will betray him and flee from this cursed area.

The ancient spirits is well... spirits. Incorporeal ghost of the old forest. Not a Mickey Mouse house Gnome and a Star Wars Toadman. They will need some work and diplomacy to finally summon the father of the forest, Leshy.

Leshy (now spelled Leeeshüyee) is not a huge goat giant but a Treeman. Bitter and immensely old. He doesn't like the humans since they cut down and burn the forest. Why help you against the Beastmen? Isn't it proper that the beasts fight back? Civilisation... BAH! (He haven't found out about the Warrior of Khorne). After a bit of persuasion and cunning diplomacy he could actually let the only human he approves of, Georgiy, help the players but only IF they can prove that they are also wild and not weak civilisation buffoons. Can the survive one night in the deep forest without weapons, armour and gear... survive with a mad Grizzly after them?

Waltzing with Father Bear is a horror night of survival.

All “instant kill” weapons are utterly boring, the Warrior of Khorne will have something else.

The ghosts of Dwarven priest will also try to guide the players into the shrine. Try to make them break the runestones.

The layout of the Dwarven temple feels rather pointles. I will expand a bit with several rooms and to actually contain a proper shrine. Dwarves don't build intricate glass orbs... the magic is held in a proper STONE.

She shrine is defiled beyond repair. Its better to destroy the Gazyl statue than let it “live” in this perverted state. This will release the Dwarven spirits and end this adventure

Part 2 and 3 will come later... now its time to sleep...

Before I'm commenting on your ideas (I myself plan to start TEW campaign in the near future and find them very helpful), I'd like to ask you to elaborate on the Doppelganger-thing: Character, Lieberung and Emperor being all lookalikes. I remember to have read about this idea, but I don't know where it was incorporated in the campaign. Was it the Empire at War variant?

If you could help me and either name the "source" for this idea or explain how you plan to run the campaign final with the emperors doppel, I would be very grateful.

On the subject of Kastor Lieberung.

I don't think hes even mentioned in the original Empire in Flames.
In Empire at War (by Alfred Nuñez and co.) we got another lookalike Lieberung acting as a Chancellor.
In the notes from the proposed Empire in Chaos James Wallis it states that Liebering does NOT look like the emperor in this planned version, but the theory is mentioned by Garett in this thread:

http://www.goblin-online.net/wfrp/eic.html

And I thought is was a really fun idea. It also worked EXTREMELY well in PBtT. I had already plans to connect the campaign with Storm of Chaos and use the campaign as a link between first and second edition. Later I’ve seen other playing with the same idea.

The concept of a Emperor lookalike worked well with the EPIC feel I wanted since in my book this is the story of the end of the Empire... well almost the end. Everything in this campaign runs toward that the Empire is all through broken, the emperor is weak and civil war is near, and THIS is the time when Chaos and Archaron hits. The Empire must be reunited or it will fall.

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In my campaign the story of Kastor Lieberung is pretty sad.

In SoB we learn that Kastor is a was involved in child kidnapping in Nuln by The Purple Hand. He wasn't the brain behind this! Kastor were always lazy and and really didn't like to harm anyone. He got friends that lured him into all this cult business, and here he got money, influence and power without really doing any work at all. All fine and dandy! Until this mess with kidnapping children. He thought is would be a blackmail business deal, but someone in the Cult actually ritually murdered all the victims. He was the one that enlisted the thugs to do the kidnapping, and it was his description that got leaked out to the witch hunters. Time to flee!

He went to Middenheim and here he got in touch with Karl-Heinz Wasmeier. Wasmeier immediately recognized the likeness to a certain Emperor, and was immediately obsessed with this possibility! What if we could actually murder and replace Karl-Franz with a loyal cultist! From this moment Lieberung got trained to act as a Emperor. He was ordered to grew a beard and keep his hair long so no one else would spot the likeness. At first this worked out all fine, and Lieberung enjoyed the attention, but really soon it dawned at him what was going on here. This was dangerous! And would Wasmeier really let him live after this trick? Time to flee and leave this insane organization!

He enlisted to another cult (where else to hide, I know cults and I miss the simple life i had in Nuln!). This new cult was the Red Crown. It didn't take long time for his new friends to realize his connection to the Purple Hand. They marked him as a potential double agent!

As a last resort he sought help at the city watch, witch identified this as a threat to the emperor and contacted The Coldfire Knights. He hoped that if he exposed The Purple Hand the knight would hunt them all down and his problems would disappear. The knights identified him as the complete looser he was and planned to use him as bait to try to get the Arch Lumen of Middenheim.

When the letter about the inheritance reaches him Libering finally finds a way to escape. With a big sum of money he can flee to Tilea and live happily ever after far away from all the cults in the world! He escaped to the bitter end at a random mutant raid.

When Wasmeier find out that his little puppet have escaped he really cant explain to his subjects the real worth behind Lieberung. He established the story that Lieberung is owning the cult money.

Red Crown thinks that he spilled their secrets since many of their Middenheim agent got killed.

And the Cold Fire Knights knows hes a runaway cultist. He evidently isn't usable as a bait, so the proper thing is to simply torture and kill him.

In short: EVERYONE hates him.

When this plan failed Wasmeier developed the concept. Since lookalikes were risky the better way to summon a creature that could be controlled and take any shape he wanted. Perhaps we could try this idea in Middenheim first.

Well... at least this was my version of the plot.

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The last part of my campaign will be a modified version of Empire in Flames rather than Empire at War, but I might steal some scenes from the later one..

This Emperor lookalike business solves some other problems.

In the campaign Karl Franz is weak and make odd laws. In the campaign hes also killed, but in all other Warhammer lore KF is still the emperor.

My plan is that the Altdorf cell of Purple Hand have managed to poison KF and this is why hes weak and make silly laws. Later the Middenheim cell and Wasmeier actually manages to kidnap the Emperor and replace him with his doppelganger. Its the fake emperor that got killed by the Red Crown.

The main quest in the last installment will be to regain the hammer and try to reunite the empire by explaining that Sigmar is reborn in the young Valten. Who would believe that this little blacksmith is a god reborn if he don't wield the ancient weapon?!

In this mess the players MIGHT find the captured Emperor (naturally held prisoner with a iron mask, hey its a classic!) or perhaps the Grand Theogenist forces the lookalike player to take the emperors place to calm down the people... hopefully at the same time!

Looks great

I've allways loved to tie tragic stories to apparent "Evil" NPC's, to represent that very very few people jst pop out of the womb evil (Stewie in Family Guy being the exeption...).

So you play on the fact that very few actually even know how KF looks like, because who actually looks at the coins (and the fact that coins are not a perfect picture...). So only few higher standing nobles will actually see the resemblance?

Its rather simple actually.

Karl Franz is bald and clean shaven.

The player have long hair and a unkempt beard. Hes a dirty bounty hunter after all. Lieberung is ordered to keep his beard and hair long to keep unnoticed.

Lieberung is rather well known in the Purple Palm, his white beard and long hair is easily distinguished. Hes also known as the ONE cultist WITHOUT the tattoo, hes really special. This caused some discussions with captured cultist like this:

Player: For goodness sake! I’m NOT Kastor Lieberung! I'm no cultist! I don't even have the bloody tattoo! Here... LOOK!

Captured Cultist: Nice try my depraved friend, that's how I KNOW you're Kastor Lieberung!

The first person that recognised him as the emperor was the Grand Theogonist. He sees a dirty emperor lookalike with a holy artifact in his hand. The Grand Theogonist is a man that surely recognise DESTINY when he encounters it. For no apparent reason he donates a steed from a fallen knight to him. Hes also the one that by letter instructs the Graf do give this man a knightly title and a armour at the end of PBtT.

When the party entered Middenheim one of Kastors few old friend grabbed him in a crowd and whispered:

- Are you bloody INSANE!? Get out of here! You cant be in Middenheim! Hell bloody kill you!

And then disappears in the crowd.

This caused the player to panic. This then caused this statement:

Player: Darn, I must disguise myself. Well, there’s nothing else to do. I shave myself clean and get rid of my hair, then no one could possibly recognise me as that idiot Kastor.

GM: (nods and smiles) Sure, that should do the trick.

When the player get fancy clothes to get inside The Showboat to find Lafarel, a elf the think can help them in this misery, some really drunk nobles finds him in the cue.

Drunk Nobles: HEY! Its the MAN! (big laugh) He’s with us! Come here! Hey look, its the MAN!

Player: Yeah sure... haha... I’m the Man. (shakes his head and looks at the other players in despair and mouths a silent “WHAT?!?!”)

Lafarel finds this hilarious and immediately invited this “artist” to the Garden party.

Player: (he don't want to reveal that he have no idea who he looks like) So, my good Elf, what do you think of my act. Does it look convincing. (pointing at the expensive clothes he spent a really silly amount on)

Lafarel: Yeah, sure! Its actually a bit scary (Laugh). You should do something about the clothing though, its far to trashy to be convincing. Find something proper and meet me outside the Garden party and I’ll let you inside. My friends will laugh their arses off!

Later the group runs along the posh streets desperately trying to find who's the player looks like. He walk down the streets and the other players stop everyone that reacts to him... obviously all the reacts are really posh people that doesn't chatter with simple peasants. Finally some noble shakes his head to the simpleton priest that tries to find out who that man over there looks like. He tosses a coin to him. At last the priest finally really LOOKS at a coin.

- No, no, no... it bloody cant be. (shakes his head) This is bad. No... bad... no...

He runs over to the lookalike and throws the coin at his face.

- You're a bloody emperor! And I bloody hate you!

Great fun actually. =)

The group is invited by the Lafarel and his two friends. Here they are introduced to all the important NPC. And a certain evildoer is severely scared.

Thank you for the details and the links. It is a great inspiration.

Chapter 2: Death takes a holiday:

First some points and reasoning:

Some of the problems in chapter 2 and 3 comes down to the point that I prefer my players to be able to DO something in the adventure and to accomplish a mission or quest. The end of a adventure where the big final revelation is that you CANT solve a situation of fine once in a while, but not in two adventures in a row... henceforth I wanted this episode to be sort of SOLVABLE.

The original town Chernovaztra doesn't exist on newer maps, and its location on the other side of the mountains doesn't make sense. A simple problem to solve though.

It also felt rather odd that this situation would be a status quo for 20 years and I really don't see the reason why Bogdanow would know about Annandil.

Just like the previous part, I would like to add some more story and plot. Ere we go:

When the adventurers return from their mission The Beast Child, they've proven that they are actually able to handle odd problems and to succeed where ordinary means fail. The Stewards own troops weren't able to reach the beastmen, but this rag band of adventurers managed to scare an entire beastman tribe on the run. They also shoved that they are able handle the supernatural.

The Tzar is still disappointed that his request of help from Middenheim didn't result in an entire legion of Knight Panthers, but of five people who recently received an honorable title of Knights Panther. His main focus is to assemble every able soldier to the borders north to the Troll Country. Hes actually rather set on on expanding his country north ways, and this obsession will later result in his death.

His daughter Katarin (future Tzarina and Ice Queen, for the moment just Ice Maiden) got a better understanding of intrigue, politics, magic and other matters. Her agents grab the adventurers at the court and present them to her.

She explains her situation and her problem.

About two years ago a wealthy elf arrives to Erengrad with a big shipment of “goods”. He’s got big wooden boxes in carts and he travels with and entourage of men from Araby, from the far south. He uses the name Sulring Dhurgul. According to reports he didn't seem to make any form of business but traveled apparently at random between small Kislev villages. Since he didn't do any apparent harm nothing was done with him, but one of Katarins agents felt a trace of magic and found the situation a bit suspicious.

One of Katarins pupils, a Ice Witch by the name Talika Lebedyenko, studied the Winds of Magic from an outpost i a small village far to the northeast, Sepukzy. About a year ago she wrote a letter explaining that this mysterious elf made a visit to the village. She reported that she made some findings she just didn't understand. She would explain when she had some time to research and gain understanding. Katarin haven't heard from her since. They had reports of plague from the region about that time, but don't know exactly what have happened.

Quest:

Find out what happened to Talika.
Find you what knowledge she gained about Sulring Dhurgul.

Katarins mission fills two purposes for her. She naturally want to know what happened to her pupil. But there is also another odd situation. She have received reports about an religious renewal spreading through the country. Some sort of cult have gain hold of one of Kislevs major settlements, Bolgasgrad, and at the same time the she have lost contact with her agents from that area. The prince of Bolgasgrad have reported that everything is just FINE, and Katarins father settled with that. Rumour of a religious cure from all chaos makes people pilgrimage to the town. At the same time representatives of the cult visit the nearby settlements and collects and buys corpses. The often pay with Arabic gold. Katarin find this business severely unsettling

Off we go!

Katarin give them instructions for their travel so they won't go through Bolgasgrad, she wont let them there for the moment. During this part the party will travel through Praag, which is always a nice spot to make some side adventurers. They hear allot of rumours of the Tzars war in the north and about the new religion that will finally save Kislev from Chaos.

When they travel north the landscape gets more barren and empty. In the vicinity of the town the find abandoned farms. They're all plundered and at some houses they find the remains of former occupants staked at the road. The also find a big red letter “H” painted on signs, doors and well... almost everything.

When they arrive at the town they got caught by the Ogres.

Why replace Hobgoblins with Ogres? Well... we haven seen that much of Hobgoblins in recent editions of the game (does they exist at all i 3:ed?)... and I found the situation a bit to “civil” for Goblins. The cant be replaced by ordinary Goblins or Orcs because it wont be any sort of negotiation there. As a bonus I don't have any Hobgoblin minis but a full Ogre Kingdom army.
The situation will feel far more dangerous with a tribe of Ogres... but at the same time Ogres are a intelligent race that's really capable of the diplomatic situation described in the adventure.

Habblo is a huge Ogre chieftain and Krowbag is his little Gnobblar aide. The discussion with the chieftain in the tent also introduces his misshapen and chained Gorg son. The Butcher of the tribe is hungry for blood and just want to attack the Dolgan camp.

When the plague hit the area about a year ago and every human died this Ogre tribe claimed the area for their own. The Ogres have been pushed out from their natural region on the other side of the mountains by the recent unusual aggressions of the Chaos Dwarfs. The Dolgan shaman have felt the unnatural disturbance from the town, but when the Dolgan tribe entered the area Habbla claims that they intruded into his domain.

The Dolgans have been prisoners here for several weeks, and they're at the brink of starvation.

Dafa can tell the adventurers that one morning abut two weeks ago an Elf entered the small island. None know where he came from and no one actually talked to him. He well... just walked through their camp and none reacted or tried to stop him (actually they couldn’t go near him and just became passive in his presence). The elf went to the wall and just felt at the stone. It seemed that he found something deeply amusing a laughed out loud. He then carved some odd sign on the wall and then walked away from the camp again. He just disappeared.

Lets talk about the situation in Sepukzy (former Chernovaztra)

Firstly skip the map, this is a whole village, not just 15 houses in a box. We still got a robust wall and some small towers. I want several streets for the adventurers to sneak about.

Secondly, I'm not keen on the happy and untroubled happy talkative undead.

And finally, I don't like the Über frost enhanced unkillable grappling undead.

I like my zombies slow and dumb... and they must surely eat brains.

This situation is rather scary if zombies don't realize that they're dead. The try to react just as they're living and the keep imitating their normal life. The city guards patrol the gate and the streets, the smith just stand and hammer a misshapen sword. A fruit vendor stands over a bunch of moldy and rotten stands and tries to sell his “fruit” to the crowd. In the tavern zombies tries to act drunk even if there’s just dust in the pints. If someone kills a zombie they try to react just as they would if someone got killed. They try to scream for help and the city guards run to the rescue. Most of the zombies forgets what they were doing after a while and returns to their ordinary life.

Its not just that simple to simple kill them all. The dead keeps reappearing. They got rearranged and houses seems mend themselves. Even if they burn the corpses they will be back soon. They also hear allot of weird noises and see shapes moving in the shadows.

I will make my players suffer here for a while when they tries to find out what to do.

After a while they will caught by the city guards and finally make some contact with the insane Dwarf/Elf necromancer. Annandil is scared and depressed, but at the same time rather reasonable (hes a Dwarf after all, emotional denial is in his blood).

What have happened here?

Before the plague Sulring Dhurgul visited the town and lived here for some weeks. He had some contact with the locals and placed in secrecy an oddly shaped stone in a basement. The stone was a sandstone about 7 feet high and covered with weird text. Then he left the area.

Talika Lebedyenko worked in the town making research about the winds of magic. This rather isolated village have a rather strong magical flow and her mission was to try to read changes in the wind in a attempt to predict chaos activity. Sulring found Talika a bit entertaining but really didn't reveal anything about himself. She got the feeling he looked at the villages as insects. She found the stone after he left and tried to understand its purpose. Her theory were that is was some sort of magical focus (her instruments wasn't that attuned to necrotic energy, so her readings were really weird). She summoned two lesser Ice Elementals and user them in her experiments. Unknown to her the Elementals were slowly affected by the dark magic. When the plague hit the area and people started to die she found the energy increase in the stone. She caught the decease herself and realized far to late in her horror the meaning of the stone. When she tried to destroy it the two corrupted Elementals stopped her.

Everyone died and vast amounts of necrotic energy got stored in the stone.

Later Annandil enters the town. Hes on the run from witch hunters, scared peasants and well... everyone. His undead girlfriend just melancholic and passive. He heard about the plague, and hoped to be able to build somewhere his lady could be happy and feel normal. The dead town seemed just perfect. He started to summon some undead, and despite his limited power he succeeded. He worked really hard to try to make everything “normal” but realized too late that something were severely wrong.

The two corrupted Ice Elementals were still around and when he started to use magic to raise the dead they soon took control of the situation. The town is at the moment a huge sphere of necrotic fuelled ice magic gone wrong. Its the elementals that stop outsiders from entering and it seems like some sort of energy loop is escalating. Magic creates undead, the unliving dies and the power get stored and creates new undead.

Amrummiriel doesn't want to live in this state and is severely depressed. When her sadness finally reached Annandils mind something cracked. He wasn't simply able to make her happy, he was a failure, he only caused her pain... and he went insane. He tried to stop the circle of undying and reborn but he haven't found out how to solve it. He even through of killing himself but realized that it wouldn't stop anything, just making him another undead. But then perhaps his Lady would truly love him?

What to do here then?

Try to work with Annandil and see if he can help the adventurers to move around in the undead town (or kill him... or watch him be killed... just to encounter the undead Annandil)

Try to find Talikas notes and to understand the issue of the sandstone and the existence of the rouge Elementals.

Find out a way to destroy the sandstone without getting killed by two rouge and rather powerful Ice Elementals, and at the same time destroy the stone without getting killed in the major explosion of stored and accumulated necrotic energy.

All this and also avoid getting eaten by zombies.... BRAIIINZ!

If they manage to destroy the sandstone the town will start to fall apart.

After that its the issue of getting the Dolgans away from the hungry Ogres. How about a diversion and let the Ogres hunt the adventurers? I just enjoy the scene where they realize that the chieftain released the misshapen Gorg to capture them.

And then get ready for the last chapter.

I noticed that the linguistic spelling police should punish me severely.

Well, I blame Glenfiddich.

I’m sure you get the idea though.

Tread Necro!

I am soon going to GM this part of the old TEW campain!

I like your ideas with Something Rotten in Kislev but could you expand and elaborate your ideas on the 2 and 3 adventure? I am not sure what you have changed in them.

I did something different last time I ran TEW, I replaced Something rotten in Kislev with the 2nd ed adventure Terror in Talabheim.

It isolates the players for months from the Empire.

Easy to scale up,

Panther have a chapter house there so it was easy to send them there.

Ties up the question of what happens to the warp stone.

Allso screws up the Empire further to escalate the conflict there

Arise thread arise and live again!

I shall soon be facing this same issue when my group move from Power Behind the Throne onto xxxxxx well that's the point of my post and the big question ...onto what?

Do I just ditch SRIK altogether and jump straight to Empire in Flames or do I rehash SRIK like the originator of this thread advocates or replace it with something and if so what would be good replacements?

I've recently seen this?

https://awesomeliesblog.wordpress.com/2016/12/03/nights-dark-terror/

Has anyone played Nights Dark Terror and what pitfalls if any would one encounter using the WFRP conversion of the classic module in place of SRIK?

All suggestions much appreciated.

GM Noely

We played through the old Enemy Within campaign, and during that we also played SRIK. I wanted to be as true to the original adventure(s) as possible, so most of the adventure was played as written (except the fact that we used WFRP3ed rules). It worked well in my group.

Interesting to hear that cos obviously it gets a tonne of flack about being awful. With the benefit of hindsight were there any parts you think were broken and/or could and should be changed or jettisoned? I would also like to keep as close the original where possible but not at the expense of derailing my campaign if both myself and my players hate it.

Well, as all players were aware we played 30 year old adventures from the first warhammer edition we mostly had fun with the encouters that were "strange"´ (Spoiler) such as the necromancer dwarf. We played the adventure almost entirely as written, but some encouters and sessions became more of a comic relief rather than serious adventuring. So if you're up for that you don't have to change much. I guess a large part of us having fun was due to (low?) player and GM expectations and their willingness to "have fun with it" regardless of that fact.

To make it a more serous (and better!) adventure I think I'd cut out a lot of things and change others, while trying to keep the main story intact. To start with I would probably make the whole thing shorter, with some travel encounters in Kislev before reaching Bolgasgrad (the last adventure Champions of Death) which is the best in the book I think. I would make that part the focus of the adventure.
I'd probably speed up the other two adventures and make them out to be more like side quest that the players could choose if they want to engage in or not.

All in all SRIK is more linear and it feels like player choises matter far less than in the other TEW adventures. It's also introducing a lot of high fantasy elements that are not present in the other TEW adventures, so I'd probably tone those down as well.