Marienburg

Lore & Background

Marienburg is not a city of the Empire of Man; it is an independent city-state that seceded in 2429 IC, situated at the mouth of the Reik River where it meets the Sea of Claws. Its wealth is built on commerce: goods from the southern provinces, northern furs, eastern spices, and western metals all funnel through its warehouses and counting-houses. The city's canals and bridges give it a distinctive, almost Venetian character, and its merchant guilds wield political power that rivals the local nobility. In the broader Warhammer Fantasy setting, Marienburg is a place of opulence and corruption, where coin talks louder than virtue and the lower districts hide squalor beneath the gilded facades. In the Warhammer universe, the Skaven are a subterranean ratfolk civilization that has long sought to undermine the surface races. They are driven by the will of the Horned Rat and organized under the ever-shifting hierarchy of the Council of Thirteen. Their raids are not random—they are strategic, aimed at severing supply lines, poisoning trade, and sowing chaos among the surface peoples. An assault on Marienburg would represent a direct strike at a key economic hub, a move that could cascade into famine, political fracture, and military collapse. While Vermintide 2 does not feature a Marienburg campaign, the game places the player at the center of a similar crisis. The party, forged in the desperate defense of Mordheim, is now the Empire's last irregular response to a threat that the regular armies are too slow or too proud to address.

In Their Own Story

The smell hit them first—wet fur, sulfur, and the sweet rot of alchemical waste drifting up from the sewers. Kellan pressed his back against the canal wall and watched the market square below. Three Skaven engineers had already rigged the grain warehouses with their ugly green charges, and the merchant's boy who'd been shouting warnings was gone, dragged into the undercroft by a clawed hand. The party had no plan beyond 'stop the explosions,' and that was fine—plans died fast in a city that was already bleeding.

Reader's Guide

The campaign opens with the party arriving in Marienburg as the Skaven assault is already underway. The first beats establish the chaos: Skaven forces are pouring into the city from sewer exits and undercity tunnels, and the player must clear the initial market-district infestations and rescue civilians caught in the crossfire. The conflict is driven by the Skaven's strategic objective—seizing the city's trade infrastructure and contaminating the Reik waterway. As the campaign progresses, the fight moves through the city's canals, bridges, and fortified districts. Skaven engineers become a recurring threat, using explosives and alchemical weapons to collapse structures and create new chokepoints. The player must adapt to vertical combat, collapsing floors, and flooded environments. A mid-campaign set piece involves defending a key bridge or warehouse district against a concentrated Skaven assault, where the stakes are the city's remaining supply lines. SPOILER: The campaign culminates in a confrontation with a high-ranking Skaven commander or a major Skaven war-machine, representing the Rat King's direct investment in the assault. Defeating this threat secures Marienburg but makes clear that the Skaven war is far from over—the rats have struck one city, and others will follow. The Vermintide 2 narrative expands on the broader Warhammer timeline by placing the player directly in the thick of a Skaven campaign that, in the wider lore, is one of many simultaneous assaults. The game compresses the Skaven threat into a single, escalating conflict driven by the Rat King's personal ambition, giving the player a clear antagonist arc across all five campaigns. The tone shifts from the open-field chaos of Mordheim to a tighter, more desperate urban defense. The city's architecture—canals, arches, narrow alleys—creates a sense of claustrophobia that distinguishes this campaign from the others.

Did You Know?

• Marienburg is not part of the Empire of Man—it seceded in 2429 IC and is an independent city-state located at the mouth of the Reik River on the Sea of Claws, not on the river itself
• There is no official 'Marienburg' campaign in Warhammer: Vermintide 2; the game's story campaigns include other locations such as Helmgart and the Chaos Wastes