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Enemy in Shadows Companion is the perfect book to enrich the Enemy Within campaign for Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay (WFRP) 4th edition by Cubicle 7.
Specific & Generic
I have to say, this book frustrates me and fulfils me at the same time. I thought at first this was going to be a book specific to the first part of the Enemy Within Campaign, but it turns out being much more, which in turn makes me think: Why is Cubicle7 putting new rules and very generic information in books like this? It may be a marketing strategy to make people buy more books, but then, as a control freak, I must say I like my rules in one place and not spread over dozens of books.
A Bit Of Eveything
As I was mentioning before you will find a very mixed amount of information here: It starts with some history, references to old books and easter eggs, to general information of the empire (that deserves a place in the basic rulebook instead). Then it goes into roads and travel, which gives you a good idea how travel works in the empire and complements this with new data and rules about horses and carriage, and those who guard the imperial roads: the Roadwardens.
From here it moves to a general catalogue of all kinds of NPCs. 16 in total, some to find in the road to Bögenhafen, and some to encounter in the city itself. Each one has full stats, personality description, how to add him to the adventure and some hook and ideas to either difficult, simplify or make the adventurers life more fun.
A Bit Of Context
We move to two chapters that will give more context on what is going on.
One of them is about mutants in the Empire, an important topic given that the emperor Karl-Franz recently created an edict that rules that mutants are “normal people”. Here you will find some rules on how to create a huge variety of mutants yourself.
The other one about the main enemy cult, the guys that will confront the player characters for the rest of the campaign (or at least most of it), the Purple Hand. Rules for how to create cultists, some sample cult characters from different power levels as well as a full explanation on Tzeentch magic lore and spells.
A Bit Of An Adventure
What follows in Enemy in Shadows are some standalone adventures of various lengths and complexity. All three of them can be added as side-quests to the main plot, but none of them are fundamental to the story. They are here to provide some distraction, experience points, or simply to make the world feel more alive and varied. They are a good addition to the campaign, but can be used to enrich other parts of the campaign as well, as they are quite open-ended and generic.
Conclusion
I find the book extremely useful to run the first part of the adventure (Enemy in Shadows) and cannot imagine running it without the rules for Tzeentch magic, or using the extra rules to create some cool mutants. The rules for horses and travel are a great addition and very much needed if you only have the basic rules, and the NPCs included can be used for so many adventures… they can even be an adventure themselves.
