I'm running the Enemy Within. My players have just left Bögenhafen. I was planning on running the campaign just as written., but now I have an idea for an improvement.

[spoilers ahead!]

The Red Crown is your basic middling chaos cult. Think "the power of the dark side" "forbidden lore of great promise", etc. They encourage magic users to become corrupted by dahr and demonology. The .. Hand, on the other hand, is much more insidious. The want to incite a schism both within the cult of Sigmar and Ulric with the end goal to severely weaken the cult of Sigmar, provoke conflict between Ulric and Sigmar, and stoke a civil war. Ultimately, the want to install an Emperor devoted to Ulric who declares Sigmar worship heresy. The means is mostly propaganda, and the careful cultivation of new sects within the church of Sigmar (and Ulric). Think of the modern Russian propaganda apparatus (combine action and the spread of false news, support legitimate causes that weakens opposition to your ideas, combine weak false narratives with strong conspiracy theories). In this web of lies, Kastor Lieberung is not simply someone who owes the .. Hand money, he also a part of the plot, and gets some inside information along the way.

As the campaign goes on, the main tracker is how well the message of "Sigmarites are worshipping a false prophet" is working on the ground. As long as the common man has their faith, the .. Hand is failing. Now, I understand that the players may not care much about the faith of their fellow denizens of the Empire, the idea is more to use it as a backdrop. To paint a picture of the Empire in religious upheaval and change, and that this change is orchestrated.

I'm not sure this excites anyone else, but for me it provides a device to focus the later campaign, make rumor spreading interesting, and provides the .. hand with explicit purpose and method, without having to rewrite everything from scratch.