Continuing this series on the in-jokes and sight gags in WFRP 1st edition, here’s a look into the first two adventures in The Enemy Within campaign: The Enemy Within itself and Shadows over Bögenhafen. They were originally published separately in module format, before being collected in a sturdier hardback as Warhammer Campaign, and finally bound together with Death of the Reik (of which more next time) in the softback Warhammer Adventure.

Neither of these adventures had any artist in-jokes, perhaps because most of the internal art was commissioned from freelancers and the jokes were very much a Design Studio thing. The same cannot be said of the words, though, which were written entirely by Jim, Phil, and me.

The legend of Sigmar was Phil’s creation, although the inspiration for the storms and the comet at his birth came from Shakespeare’s Henry IV.

The Age of the Three Emperors helped to underline that the apparent unity of the Empire was often skin-deep, and foreshadowed future unrest. The beginning of the Dark Ages with the coronation of the Empress Margaritha in 1979 IC was a blatant reference to Margaret Thatcher, who had been in power for seven years by that time and was at the height of her unpopularity.

The names of the noble houses contain a few lame gags — the Holswig-Schliestiens are of course based on the real German province of Schleswig-Holstein, and then there is the -Untermensch family, which upset quite a few German readers. The term Untermensch (literally “under-person” or “sub-human”) was used by the Nazis to cover anyone they considered to be of insufficient racial purity, such as Jews and Gypsies. In hindsight, it wasn’t the most sensitive choice of name. At the time we just thought it would be an ironic name to give to a powerful family — and we never expected in a million years that anyone from a non-English-speaking country would ever read anything we wrote. All I can say at this stage is, it was a very bad idea and I’m glad it was corrected in subsequent editions.

Countess Emmanuelle von Liebewitz, famed for her parties, was named for another Emmanuelle of cinematic renown, whose parties were probably equally as good.

Todbringer, the name of the ruling family of Middenheim, means “death-bringer,” which we thought would be an appropriate name for the ruler of the city where the Cult of Ulric is strongest.

The names of the coaching companies include Castle Rock, named after a local Nottingham brewery, and Cannon Ball Express, a reference to an old (even then) American TV series about a legendary train driver called Casey Jones.

Count Bruno Pfeifraucher’s name means “pipe smoker,” inspired by St. Bruno pipe tobacco. We had grown up with ads like this one.

I have to take full responsibility for the von Saponatheim family name: “once upon a time” with a heavy fake German accent. It’s not one people tend to spot, but they do often groan and throw things when it’s explained to them. However, I didn’t coin the name myself. That credit goes to my college friend Ant Allan, who suggested it when another friend was struggling to name his Austrian parapsychologist character for our Call of Cthulhu campaign, somewhere around 1983. It cracked everyone up at the time, and I couldn’t resist steal… er, recycling it for the campaign.

Most place names are pretty much straight out of my pocket German dictionary: Grunmarkt means Green Market, Weissbruck means White Bridge, and so on.

The Drak Wald owes its name to a typo, which originally said something about “drak forests” instead of dark forests. This amused Richard Halliwell enormously and he was ribbing us about drak forests for days — so one of the Empire’s great forests was called the Drak Wald.

Castle Reikguard, at the confluence of the rivers Reik and Teufel, was named after Right Guard anti-perspirant. Here’s another vintage ad promising that it would change your life.

“Mistaken Identity” includes a lot of silly names: Gustav Fondleburger, Lady Isolde von Strudeldorf (the place must be famous for its pastries) and Philippe Descartes the Bretonnian gambler. Coincidentally, the French publisher of WFRP 1st edition was Jeux Descartes, whose logo is a portrait of the famous scientist and philosopher Rene Descartes and whose name is a play on the French for “card games.” So it wasn’t just us.

And then there’s the law firm of Lock, Stock and Barl, on the fateful letter that sends Our Heroes to Bogenhafen. Better than Sue, Grabbitt and Runne, I suppose, but only just. And of course, there’s also the barge the Berebeli (“beer belly”), a pre-generated PC named Johann Dassbut (inspired by the German cinematic epic Das Boot), and another pregenerated PC nicknamed “Rowlocks.” They’re mostly called “oar locks” these days, I suspect because “rowlocks” had a tendency to be pronounced “rollocks” back then, which of course rhymes with “bollocks.”

The name of the Cat and Fiddle inn in Altdorf comes straight out of long-running BBC radio soap The Archers, while Max Ernst the protagonist was named after the surrealist painter.

This adventure was actually written before The Enemy Within, and retro-fitted into the campaign. The WFRP writing team had not yet come together, and I hadn’t got fully into the swing of Warhammer humor. So while it’s not entirely devoid of jokes and pop culture references, there are fewer of them and arguably they’re not as funny.

The inspiration for the plot was Faust (Marlowe, Goethe, Thomas Mann, Richard Burton — take your pick), which I changed a little because two things about that story had always bothered me.

First, I never understood why Faust agreed to hand his soul over after seven years, and never seemed to think of the consequences until the final scene when the time comes for him to be dragged screaming down to Hell. So the deal had to include an escape clause: the sacrifice of seven souls in substitution for the original.

Second, given the supposition that demons, devils and the like are ancient and immortal beings, it seems logical that any mortal who tries to make a deal with one will probably lose. After all, the poor mortal will be up against centuries if not millennia of experience, and couldn’t hope to match a demon for cunning. Therefore, the escape clause had to be a trap in itself. allowing Gideon the demon (this was before the “daemon” spelling entered Warhammer canon) to open a dimensional gate in the heart of the Old World, a service for which he might expect to be richly rewarded.

The cult of Ordo Septenarius was named for the seven members of its inner circle. I also thought the cultists needed a rational motive of their own, so playing on their greed, Teugen tries to save his own soul by getting them unknowingly to sacrifice theirs in a ritual that they think will control the market by sorcery and make them all rich. A fable for the Yuppie era, as befits an adventure written in 1986.

Teugen’s name was inspired by Teufel ,which is German for “devil.” I didn’t intend this as an Easter egg, though, nor any of the other names in the adventure. As for the others, Steinhager is German gin that I became well acquainted with on a visit there, Ruggbrod is a Danish form of pumpernickel, and Magirius came from Magirius Deutz, a German brand of truck that I remembered seeing in England from time to time.

Klaus Schattiger’s name translates as “shady,” as befits his nature, while the magistrate is called Richter, which means magistrate. Doctor Malthusius was named after a friend’s Call of Cthulhu character, who in turn was named after someone moderately famous I think, but I must confess to ignorance there. Elvyra Kleinestun’s name literally means “Dolittle,” though so far as I know she neither spoke with animals nor bombed Tokyo. Jim and Phil wrote her in later as a link into Death on the Reik.

The street names in Bögenhafen are more literal, as far as my pocket German dictionary could take me. Handwerker Bahn means “street of the artisans”, Hafenstrasse means “dock street”, and so on. I couldn’t resist calling a street in the metalworker’s quarter Eisen Bahn (literally “iron road”; it is German for railway), or calling the town square Dreiecke Platz (“triangle square” — I never did well at geometry), but that’s about it. The idea for calling the watch barracks on the west bank Fort Blackfire came from an old movie called Fort Apache — the Bronx, about a New York police station surrounded by hostile, lawless territory.

As for the name of Bögenhafen itself, I intended it to mean something like “the port at the bend of the river.” On a trip to Sweden I mentioned earlier, I found out that with the umlaut above the “o,” to Swedish eyes the name read as “the gay port,” But I maintain that in Reikspiel it means “the port at the bend of the river” and that’s the end of it!

So there you are. That’s everything I can remember after all this time, but perhaps some of you will have found other gags and howlers in the text. If you have, please share them with the rest of us in the comments!

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