Enemy Within: who are some good NPCs from the campaign for players to build into their backgrounds as contacts/mentors?

[u/jeremysbrain]

Like Josef Quartjin, who are some other npcs that the players (and the story) might benefit from taking as a mentor or contact during character creation?

I'll make a list of your suggestions and ones I think of.

Contacts and Mentors

• Elvyra Kleinestun
• Ernst Heidlemann
• Heironymous Blitzen
• Josef Quartjin
• Luigi Belladonna
• Maxmillian Schnippmesser
• Mystic Megret
• Olaf Sievers

[u/Zekiel2000]

Heironymous Blitzen (wizard) is a classic - he was the mentor of one of the pregens in the original campaign.

If you want to give the PCs an easier time of Power Behind the Throne, you could give a Courtier-class PC a contact of one of the less influential NPCs there, like one of the ladies at court.

Further ahead there's Colonel Sievers from Empire in Ruins, who could be a good contact for a military PC.

[u/jeremysbrain → u/Zekiel2000]

Thanks for the suggestions.

[u/Zekiel2000 → u/jeremysbrain]

No problem. Good luck!

[u/Trollstrolch]

Aren't you afraid that if you give them a connection to a character from a late chapter they will skip stuff to contact the contact?

I think the idea of inventing your own friend of a friend in-between contacts would be better

[u/jeremysbrain → u/Trollstrolch]

That would probably be the way to do it in early stage game. Or have a contact from the first couple of adventures be an introduction to a later contact.

[u/Dapper_Calculator]

If you have anyone who's a law enforcement or witch-hunting type, or someone who isn't but you need them to be connected to someone like that, may I suggest Filthy Harald Kleindienst?

"I know what you're thinking. 'His hangover is slowing him down. Did he drink six bottles last night or only five?' Well, to tell you the truth in all this excitement, I kinda lost track myself. But being this is a 12lb halberd, the nastiest polearm in the world, and would take your head clean off, you've gotta ask yourself one question: 'Do I feel lucky?' Well, do ya, punk?"

[u/Imperator_Helvetica → u/Dapper_Calculator]

Filthy Harald! I read Beasts in Velvet years before I got the reference. What a guy!

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[u/Uber_Warhammer]

Elvyra, Hieronymous, Luigi are great NPC to build them into Pcs background.
Josef is very important at the beginning.
Maybe you can add someone in Middenheim as well but I think that the character should be suited to a specific PC or party (e.g. if there is a wizard or someone from Ulric religion in the party).

I don't think that Ernst Heidleman is a good idea to be a mentor or contact.

[u/jeremysbrain → u/Uber_Warhammer]

I like the idea of Heidleman as a contact. A person who is secretly a Red Crown operative might have an interest in befriending the PCs to find out what the players know about the Purple Hand and maybe even help guide them into thwarting the Purple Hand to the benefit of the Red Crown.

[u/RealPrussianGoose → u/jeremysbrain]

I have infiltrated my party with a hireling, who is silent and competent in a fight,  but very much haunted by his past. They like him as the "no more chat, go get them tiger" guy. He is ofc a red crown member, who can speak with beastmen. He protected his village for years by beastmen diplomacy and joining the red crown,  but got discovered one day. He is part of a cult and an enemy,  but if they really care, ask enough and help him in the sorry state he is after getting cast out and hunted by his own people, he might stay loyal.

Do ur own NPC, it is more immersive if a character is tailored to the party (all lowborn and downtrodden careers here) and easier to stay to the book, while adding own flavor. :)

[u/Old_Wrap_7200]

My suggestion is to add your own. You know your group better than the authors and what they would find as interesting and how they can be used to move they story forward.

My party "adopted" a dwarf chef who went slayer after her wife was murdered by purple hand cultists in my own prolog in Ubersreik. Officially they are helping her track down the cultists for revenge.

Then they picked up an alcoholic halfling bard in Bögenhafen, they insist that they are her managers and makes sure innkeepers treats her fairly. I think they spent like 5 sessions worrying about her after Bögenhafen was blown up (I changed the ritual a bit and added a shit ton of imported dwarf explosives to the sewers).

I added a section between bögenhafen and altdorf where they travelled to Moors realm and met Moor, but also Moors assistant Albert, a cranky old grandwizard who so far has "cheated" death by staying away from the mortal realm. He will for sure be a regular.

And finaly in Altdorf we added the near identical twin pirates/sailors Rolf and Ragnar. Two practical minded individuals who besides getting the characters into trouble also happen to be fairly skilled sailors. A favorite moment was when Rolf and Ragnar started an argument with some gal from the food delivery company Wurstzeit. They suffered drivebys by angry delivery works on horseback for the rest of their stay in Altdorf.

I REALLY should do a proper writeup someday.

[u/Nurgle_Pan_Plagi → u/Old_Wrap_7200]

I added a section between bögenhafen and altdorf where they travelled to Moors realm and met Moor, but also Moors assistant Albert, a cranky old grandwizard who so far has "cheated" death by staying away from the mortal realm. He will for sure be a regular.

Is Albert Discworld inspired, perchance?

[u/Qvar → u/Nurgle_Pan_Plagi]

I'm dying imagining the personification of "Moor" looking at itself and going "SOMETHING SEEMS SLIGHTLY WRONG HERE BUT I CAN'T PUT MY FINGER ON IT" with a heavy arabic accent.

[u/Old_Wrap_7200 → u/Qvar]

Im not sure why I insist on writing Moor instead of Morr. But Im glad it gave you a laugh :)

[u/Dapper_Calculator → u/Old_Wrap_7200]

It's a normal thing - a lot of typos are just caused by it being faster to move your fingers to type than our poor little parallel brains can operate, so it takes shortcuts and serves up weird results.

[u/Old_Wrap_7200 → u/Nurgle_Pan_Plagi]

I was hopeing someone would pick up on that very hamfisted reference :D it flew straight over my players head, they liked the character but clearly have not read enough discworld to know I literaly just stole it from Pratchett. I told them later though ofc, credit where credit is due.

To hammer it home I literaly started the scene of with the following description: "when the senasition of falling through nothingness end you find yourselves standing in a place of blatant impossibility, it is a realm of blackness and only blackness. But it is a realm where black comes in many shades. You can all diffrenciate the black dirtroad that cuts through the huge black fields of black wheat without issue. In the middle of the fields stand a quiant little black farm, with a black pig sty and a black hen house and a little black garden. Out on the field stands the farmer, an impossibly skinny fellow in a black overall beneth his black robe. The farmer is weilding a scythe that glimmers in blackness when it reflects the black light that emantes from the black sun in the black sky. The farmer is clearly harvesting the wheat, but with great precision he seems to be harvesting it one straw at a time. When he turns around and waves at you with a boney hand you can see his face, its as skinny as the rest of him, allmost skeletonlike. But the thing that really stands out is his great white beard, it doesnt look very natural at all. Infact, it allmost looks fake. The second thing you notice is how impossibly black his bespeckled eyes are, they allmost look like empty eyesockets for a moment."

Warhammer purists would probably not enjoy pratchetts version very much, but my players got a kick out of it. And to my defence I fond very little actual information about Morr and his realm available.

[u/Nurgle_Pan_Plagi → u/Old_Wrap_7200]

"A Bloodthirster? You put us - a party of four starting characters - against a Bloodthirster? But that's... That's... That's not fair at all! That's not balanced!"

"THERE IS NO BALANCE. THERE ARE ONLY FATE POINTS."

[u/Old_Wrap_7200 → u/Nurgle_Pan_Plagi]

Thats not miles from how it played out.

I picture Morr not being the most detail focused diety, atleast not in the details an mortal mind tends to find important. He takes his work seriously and has little time nor patiance for other, none-death-related things. This means that Morr does not particulary pay attention to whats happening in his cult and generally lets them do their own thing, as long as they stick to the basics (Dont fuck with Necromancy nor Necromancers, Be nice to the dead, read the Doomings of the newly born). So I think its fair to say Morr was probably not even aware his church disolved its inquisitorial branch quite some ways back, when he even thinks of remembering that he has one to begin with.

Now I reason all death gods by nature are prone patience and takeing most things in stride, what is really all that important or serious compared to death after all? But if there is one thing I imagine would piss a death god off is when the talley of souls doesnt add up.

And that is precisly why Morr snatched the players characters out of reality, one of them being the apprentice to what is maybe the last (renegade) Inquisitor of Morr, Herbert Totentanz. Morr as usual is not very much paying attention to the details and grabs the first warrior-human with his mark upon its soul and doesnt really notice its a rather shabby and down-on-his-luck looking human.. So with alot of awkwardness and "ERHHMS" Morr charged the characters with "FINDING OUT WHO IS STEALING SOULS THAT BELONGS IN MY REALM AND PUTTING, PARDON MY.. WHAT IS THAT IS THAT GROUP OF HUMANS THAT THIS GROUP OF HUMANS SHOW TRIBALISM TOWARDS, ALFRED? AH YES.. BRETTONIANS!.. PARDON MY BRETTONIAN, PUTTING A BLOODY STOP TO IT! ... ALFRED HAS POINTED OUT HUMANS NOT ALWAYS FINDS INTERACTIONS WITH ME.. PLEASANT. I USED LOCAL JARGONG TO EASE THIS INTERACTION, I EVEN ADDED A JOKE. DID YOU FIND IT PLEASANT?"

[u/Dapper_Calculator → u/Old_Wrap_7200]

If you rampage through some of the early Black Library WFRP novels, there are so many Discworld references. In a lot of ways, the two worlds are very similar