The Black Arks of the Dark Elves prowl the seas of the Old World, terrifying ships acting as staging points for raids upon the unsuspecting. The Temple of Spite is one such Ark, a ship as large as a city commanded by the cruel Fleetmaster Duriath Helbane to conquer and despoil anything that comes in it’s way.

Temple of Spite, for Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay brings players background and rules for the vicious denizens of the Black Ark itself, acting as a Dark Elf sourcebook without having to have players make the long journey across the seas – the Dark Elves will come for them!

In this full review we’ll be checking out the new source book, taking a look at what’s contained within it’s pages and deciding if it’s worth adding to your Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay collection.

Massive thanks to Cubicle 7 for sending us over a copy to check out on the site. If you would like to support the site then why not pick up your hobby goodies through our affiliate Element Games and save yourself some money too?

So without further ado, let’s board the Temple of Spite and see what lies within…

Temple of Spite Review

For those who havn’t played it, Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay is a gritty and dangerous RPG setting. While other games such as Soulbound might have you play as a mighty hero, in WFRP you are just as likely to play as a rat catcher, or a hedge wizard with little control over their powers.

The Warhammer World is a large and dangerous place, and while a campaign set in Naggaroth the land of the Dark Elves is tempting, sometimes the logistics of getting a party over there can be difficult from a lore and capability point of view.

With Temple of Spite, Cubicle 7 have gone for a different but clever direction. You dont have to bring the party to the Dark Elves, bring the Dark Elves to the party!

The Dark Elves of Warhammer Fantasy are well known for leading vicious raids upon the Old World from their massive Black Arks – city sized ships that act as mobile bases of operations for their coastal assaults. While a trip over the sea is possible, it’s probably more likely that players would encounter the Druchii during one of their raids, and more feasible that the party might need to venture onboard one of these dread ships.

This is a brilliant idea, and makes it easy to slot the Dark Elves into any campaign. While the focus on the book is the Temple of Spite itself, there’s also lots of Dark Elf content to spice up any flavour of campagin.

So what’s in the book?

This is much a Dark Elves source book as one focusing solely on the Black Ark, and the book opens with a decent lore primer on who they are and their motivations. It really took me back to the old Warhammer Fantasy Dark Elves Army Book from 1996 when reading this, with the book detailing just how intelligent and threatening they are. These are not cannon fodder for your party to hack their way through, even a single Dark Elf could be a massive threat to your players – while they can be blood thirsty killers they are also cunning and nuanced making them an excellent choice for a campaign antagonist.

While Temple of Spite is not strictly a Naggaroth source book, we still get a decent primer about it covering the environment, society and religion along with background on a number of Druchii cities. Hopefully we do have a proper visit to Naggaroth in the future, but there’s enough here to structure some background as to where your threat has sailed from.

The book is of course called Temple of Spite, and so the eponymous Black Ark gets a lot of the focus here. We learn that the ship was once the Fortress of a Dark Elf Sorceress who used dark magic to wrench it from the land itself to flee during the Civil War. Since then it has sailed the seas under various leadership as mutinies and backstabbing if rife within Druchii society!

There’s some great background here about it’s history along with maps of the Ark itself and a detailed outline of the various loctations on the ship along with the factions of Dark Elves that live on here and their motivations.

With the Temple of Spite essentially being a mobile location that can be used for your games, the book also includes a number of different plot threads to set up your party arriving on a Black Ark, along with a number of random encounter charts to generate encounters in a number of different locations on the Ark along with some events that can be randomly triggered or use as the basis of campaign beats during your games.

Speaking of campaigns, the book includes outlines of two different storylines that can be used as a basis of your campaign.

The Seaborne Citadel is essentially a seabound campaign onboard the Black Ark itself. It starts with the party investigating rumours of Dark Elf raids, however during their investigation the party ends up being captured by Dark Elf slavers and end up on the Temple of Spite itself. From here the party have to come up with a plan to escape their chains by perhaps starting a rebellion, bribing the guards or even impressing their Druchii masters with their martial prowess. Once free they are able to have the run of the ship to further stir up tensions or to try and discover the goals of the forces on power on the Ark – there’s some really good ideas here for giving players the flavour of a lot of the content in this book and to dive into the motivations of the Dark Elves. At some point, the party will learn that The Temple of Spite is going to lead a raid against an outpost, and again there’s lots of options here as to what can happen – maybe the party will be drafted into a the assault as cannon fodder, alternatively if they have got away they may be able to leave the ship and warn the outpost of the assault and stand ready to fend them off. While this is more an outline than a full campaign, there’s lots here to frame a full campaign, and that’s pretty exciting!

On Black Tides takes a different path and instead is about the Temple of Spite being used as an approaching threat, with the party finding a corsair raiding party, learning about the incoming Ark and setting out to stop a ritual that will help the Dark Elves achieve their aims. This is a more traditional WFRP campaign thread that shows that you can still use the content of the book even if your campaign is set on dry ground. While I think most people who pick up this book will want their party exploring the Ark itself, there’s still lots here for those who just want to add some Dark Elf flavour to a land based campaign.

The core of the book offers some great statblocks for Games Masters to use in their campaigns. There’s a number of different entries here for everything from a basic Dark Elf and those of various backgrounds such as Highborn or Lowborn, the followers of Slaanesh, Warlocks and even an assortment of monsters and mounts. i have to admit it’s not going to take much convincing to get me to use Cold One or Dark Pegasus mounts in my next campaign!

As ever, Cubicle 7 provide some nice templates for a number of archetypes to use as the basis of NPCs in your campaigns. These cover all the types of Dark Elves you see in the tabletop battles game, along with some more rpg specific ones such as household menials and the entourages of nobles. There’s a really nice assortment here and should give you a great starting point for creating NPCs.

There’s also an excellent Equipment and Ships section that details what would be able to be purchased or found within the Dark Elf raiding fleets. there’s some ace stuff here such as vambrace blades and 2 handed dueling swords that you’re probably not going to encounter away from Druchii civilization. And of course, any ranged hero might want to pick up a Repeater weapon for the ultimate in crossbow technology!

We also get a nice list of poisons and their effects – I feel these could also be used as a story hook to set up the coming of the elves. Maybe there’s been a murder but using one of these exotic poisons, some investigation later and a vanguard of Dark Elf Assassins is taking out critical targets before the main raid arrives…

There’s also some great vehicle ideas in here – You’d expect various Druchii ships, but we also get entries for Chariots and vessels pulled by giant sea creatures. I feel some of these would make for some epic showpiece battles in the shadow of the Black Ark itself – and there’s scope here for the party being able to take over one of these during their adventures too.

Temple of Spite also has a decent section dedicated to Dark Magic – theres over 20 new spells here including classics from the past like Arnzipal’s Black Horror and Bladewind! What’s really cool is that Dark Elf casters can make a pact with a daemonic entity to try and mitigate the side effects of using this magic – though those entities will need to be kept happy for the bargain to stay in play… Dark Magic users also gain a new complications chart with some cool things such as gravity shifting, imps snapping into existance whispering temptations into the ears of everyone nearby or simply thick black ichor pouring from the eyes and mouths of everyone – really does drive home how dangerous Dark Magic is!

To help with building some flavourful characters, the book also has a great page that discusses how best to name Dark Elves, along with some pointers to get something that works really well at forshadowing their actions.

Temple of Spite has a big section of the book dedicated to some of the factions that you would find on the Black Ark. Valerions Blackswords are a mercenary company who may be open to making deals with the party. The Fell Brethren are the crew of the Temple of Spite itself. The Glass Thorn are a skilled spy ring. Khaine’s Eyes are a force of scouts and guerrilla fighters led by a sorceress. The Scaleflayer Managerie manage the creatures and beasts kept within the Ark. The Company of the Nightwake is a crew of piratical corsairs. And finally, the Knives of Khaine are a Khainite cult that is based upon the Temple of Spite. Each of these different factions has detailed background including goals and ambitions, history and lore, hooks for adventures and a number of different encounters that can be used to introduce these forces to the party. What’s nice here is a split between “Easy” “Medium” and “Hard” encounters in order to make them suitable for whatever scenario you’re throwing them into.

Each of these factions also has a number of NPCs detailed with full statblocks and background so you can simply drop them into any encounter. Along with this, all of the major characters detailed within the book also get their own statblocks and background, again with plot hooks to insert into your own campaigns.

I’ve been a big fan of the Dark Elves since the 90s, so it’s great to see a book full of rich Druchii lore! I really like the approach that Cubicle 7 have made here of bringing the Dark Elves to the players rather than trying to shoehorn in a reason and method to get to Naggaroth too! I really enjoyed reading through this one, and think a short stint aboard the Temple of Spite is a great idea for adding a bit of variety and a change of setting within a campaign. Even if you don’t want to use the shipboard elements though, I still think there’s enough in here to use for adding some Dark Elf flavour to any campaign, with a lot of the factions and foes able to be used in most campaigns – though I would probably keep them as an occasional appearance, given how rare they would be out in the wilds of the Old World.

Temple of Spite is a great book and I cant wait to craft the contents into a suitably swashbuckling campaign with a sinister twist!

Temple of Spite is up for pre order now from Cubicle 7 and will be released Q4 2026 – If you pre order you’ll get access to a PDF now before the hardcopy is released!

Cubicle 7 provided Sprues & Brews with a free copy for review purposes.