The Imperium of Man is the closest thing to the protagonists of Warhammer 40,000, although they’re definitely not the good guys. Humanity rules the stars, and the galaxy in this distant future isn’t exactly better for it. To live sucks, but at least humanity has not been devoured by insects or submerged in the eldritch forces of Chaos. In Empire Maledictum, a tabletop RPG from Cubicle 7 games, it’s your job to keep it that way. Polygon sat down with the game’s senior producer to talk about the setting, factions, and getting to the right level of grimdark.
In the world of Empire Maledictum, trillions of people are held together under the fascist state of the Imperium, their lives grist to an endless war machine. The sheer scale of human capabilities has given rise to densely populated hive cities, which are full of cartels, criminal organizations, premier courts, cult dens, and crime scenes. Maledictum is primarily set in the Macharian Sector, on worlds less endangered by the Great Rift that has torn the galaxy in half.
Image: Fatshark
“Empire Maledictum was a certain kind of story we wanted to tell, and it was very much from the Imperium point of view. It’s very war inspired – lots of intrigue and investigation and betrayal. It’s a grim and treacherous adventure,” Pádraig Murphy, senior producer of Warhammer’s role-playing games in Cubicle 7, told Polygon. The game is similar in atmosphere to Dan Abnett’s Inquisitor novels, the Warhammer Crime novel line and the environments portrayed in co-op shooter Warhammer 40,000: Dark Tide.
When you bring up Warhammer 40K as a setting, most people think of Space Marines, boltguns and massive void ships traversing the nightmarish extradimensional realm known as the Warp. Empire Maledictum goes in the opposite direction and focuses on the factions of the Imperium and the constant tension between them. Another Cubic 7 game, Warhammer: Wrath & Gloryscales up to allow for more of a power fantasy.
Empire Maledictum players can work for an Inquisitor, or perhaps play the part of a humble servant of the Adeptus Mechanicus machine cult, sanctioned by the Astra Telepathica, or they can be employed by the religious ecclesiarchy. All of these characters are downright soft compared to your average Space Marine or Sister of Battle – a welding pistol shot or sharp shiv is enough to take out a player.
It’s a side of the galaxy we don’t get to see very often, especially around major events like the upcoming 10th Edition and the Fourth Tyrannical War, the return of a primarch, or the relaunch of the cybernetic Necrons. “We go into detail about the factions that make up the Imperium,” says Murphy.
Image: Cabin 7/Games Workshop
The various Adeptus factions that make up Imperial society each have their own strengths, goals, and priorities. Inquisitors are the most well-known principals, but they are not the only people pulling the strings and investigating problems in the Imperium. The Astra Militarum was an easy addition, thanks to the codexes and novels that deal with life in the Imperial Guard. Other factions, according to Murphy, were more difficult to work out.
“If you want to treat the Administratum in a similar way, despite them being ingrained as part of the setting, it’s difficult and challenging to do so from a role-playing point of view,” says Murphy. “Like, what are the interesting administrative stories? But what surprised us is that the more we dug, the more we came up with reasons for any patron of any faction to get caught up in adventure, intrigue, and drama.
Murphy gives the example of a clerk who could push his way into backrooms and intimidate other clerks into handing over information. In the brutal dystopia of the Imperium, the right document and seal can be as intimidating as an outright threat, and a powerful, transhumanistic bureaucracy is the glue that holds any system together. The Imperium is a dense environment, where corruption and crime can fester even in the most mundane of places.
“When the odds are so small, it’s a thrill to overcome them. The fact that it is so overwhelming means that all the small victories you achieve should be appreciated and worth celebrating,” says Murphy. The meta-story for Warhammer 40K explicitly calls the Imperium the cruelest and most brutal regime ever devised, and Empire Maledictum uses this as grist for storytelling. “The Imperium would be a terrible place to live. But it’s a fun place to do it pretend to live.”
Empire Maledictum was released on March 23 and is available as a PDF on DriveThruRPG for $29.99. Players can pre-order physical copies of the core rule book from the Cubicle 7 websiteand those are expected to ship in late 2023.