Saturday 19 November 2016

"Hold up. What *is* that?! It’s beautiful, but it has spikes on it! What is it, Magos?”“Er… it’s not a machine?”“This is the most metal thing ever, outside of a Death World. Does it come from a Death World?"- Rogue Trader Carno Sigvald-Enfield and Magos Explorator Mordechai on confronting a rosebush

Rogue Trading for Fun and Profit, Episode 3: Fear and Loathing in the Kronus Expanse

"This is an apt title, considering the amount of drugs there will be in the Expanse. Substantial."

Rogue Trader: A quest for profit in the grim darkness of the 41st millenium. But dying in mediocrity and misery is for poor people and losers, and a Rogue Trader's retinue is anything but.

Rogue Trading for Fun and Profit is bought to you by:

Lord-Captain van Hohenheim - Rogue Trader. Hero. The last of his line. That's like a unicorn!
Magos Abigail von Thannhausen - A magos who possibly takes too much pleasure in the craft of Servitors. Accompanied by her servo-skull.
Archaius Wash - A gunnery sergeant with an irritatingly low-quality accent and a poor-grade artificial voicebox.
Sebastian LaMarck - A seneschal with a silver tongue.
Winter York - Astropath Transcendant. Monstrous willpower. Your glorious narrator and remembrancer.


We're trundling out to the Maw  for a couple of days at subliminal  (Subluminal) speeds.
The navigator pages the bridge. There's a warp eddy. It's a risky move to go now. If we wait a couple of days, it'd be safer.
The lord-captain  gives the order to  punch it, but misses some of the markers because he's a poor pilot. [pointed look from Lord-Captain] I mean, the warp is incredibly treacherous and defeats the Lord Captain's tremendous pilot skills.
It's  a bit of a rough ride. I catch a bit of space flu and feel like crap.
We emerge in a midway point, The Battleground.
We pick up a weak beacon. The captain says we go for it.
The Penitent Traveller. Dead in the space-water.
Raiders emerge as we approach, and a mine begins to fly towards us. It's a trap, curse them!
We  make full speed for the nearest  Wolfpack Raider, and light it the fuck up. We fully rip it a new one.
Sebastian hails the other ship... with impressive results. (01)
He very calmly tells them to surrender, or be destroyed.
"This is Captain Parthax of the Blood Talon... we're withdrawing. [pregnant pause] We're sorry."
"Parthax, where the fuck are you going?" our targeted raider wails. "Are you just leaving us to die?"
The Lord Captain wants us to extract payment for the macrocannon shells we wasted on the raider. I lead a boarding party of Murder Servitors and a guy called Johannes (Jones) to pilot the craft.
I fail to intimidate the enemy crew into surrendering valuables. Which is fine, I wasn't bluffing.
I make a recaf while I let them do their thing.
The ship begins to limp away. The mine homes in on us.
The Ambition wastes the mine. It fizzles and makes the Raider's engines fizzle.
"We're going to follow them in stealth mode." "Stealthh mode?" "That's when we're not shooting them the whole time."
Sebastian hails the Pilgrim ship. They got crippled by the Raiders.
Sebastian puts together a looting party to follow me. It's ~14 people called Kevin, and one pilot called Jones (Johannes)
The Captain hails the Raider again.  There's a change of management, and they're agreeable to our demands, if we just stop the killing, dear god
Combat over. We begin rolling the ship for everything they're got.
I want to take the engines out of the raider and put them in the Pilgrim.
We make our way to the bridge. The old Captain was removed from power.
"Who shot this man?" I ask.
There's some conferring. One steps forward and confesses.
"I like his initiative. You're on the giving end of the beating stick next time. Pick five to come with you."
The Lord Captain asks how many kevins there are on board.
They give a wrong answer. The Captain asks again, and suddenly there's a lot more people called Kevin on the bridge.
The Lord Captain makes his own job offering. "We seem to have openings due to Raider activity. Is Anykevin interested in joining?"
"You sick bastard," says one. "What kind of game are you playing?" The Lord Captain wastes him with a big pistol.
"As I was saying..."
We acquire 12 new Kevins.

Damage report: We opened up the starboard side of the raider, and took on a lot of new ratings.
Engines are on the fritz, but only temporarily, according to Magos Abigail.
Engineseer-Prime Nox, Abigail's lead flunkie, goes to check out the Pilgrim.
Shit's pretty fucked. The ship's so wrecked, only the Emperor knows how they've survived.
We're critically short on Navigators, so we can't really take multiple ships with us.
We're going to have to compromise between saving the people, or looting hardware.
We prime the raider ship to overload it's plasma drive if reignited. It'll be a nasty surprise for Captain Parthax if he returns.

We take what we can, and hustle out of here, headed for Footfall.
It takes us 10 days; the Navigator's having a hard time, and there's a lot of churn.
We see ghost ships. We're pretty sure it's a bad time, or trick of the warp.

We leave it be, and arrive safely (relatively) at Footfall. It's a sight for sore eyes.
We offload our Pilgrims safely, and they're grateful.
We contact the guy we're supposed to meet, and offload our questionable books.

Abigail investigates the possibility of Not-Murder Servitors, Murder Servitors for hauling cargo. Regular Servitors.
Abigail picks up a heavy lifting clamp.
The Lord-Captain wants a fancy power sword. He gets it.
....Wash wants one as well. He gets one as well. We're turning heads.

Saturday 5 November 2016

Rogue Trading for Fun and Profit, Episode 2: Mad Map: Fury Star-road

Rogue Trader: A quest for profit in the grim darkness of the 41st millenium. But dying in mediocrity and misery is for poor people and losers, and a Rogue Trader's retinue is anything but.

Rogue Trading for Fun and Profit is bought to you by:

Lord-Captain van Hohenheim - Rogue Trader. Hero. The last of his line. That's like a unicorn!
Magos Abigail von Thannhausen - A magos who possibly takes too much pleasure in the craft of Servitors. Accompanied by her servo-skull.
Archaius Wash - A gunnery sergeant with an irritatingly low-quality accent and a poor-grade artificial voicebox.
Sebastian LaMarck - A seneschal with a silver tongue.
Winter York - Astropath Transcendant. Monstrous willpower. Your glorious narrator and remembrancer.


We've got a picture of a planet, but no idea where it actually is. We need a map, and there's a handful of places to look.

Van Hohenheim tries his luck at the Imperial Navy, and is stalled out by a Secretary.
"I can get you an appointment in the next six months."
Vah Hohenheim flashes his Warrant. "Can we increase this by a factor of.... oh, today?"
It gets bumped forward to ~3 days. Nothing more that the Lord-Captain can do.

The Magos and I try our luck at the Administratum.
The Magos tries to trade a maintenance favor with the scribe at the front desk, and polish up his rusty scribe-tines.
She kind of... makes it worse. The scribe is probably going to lose his job... it's quite depressing.
I leave her to it and go find a bar.
The Magos tries to talk to the Head Scribe. But  the scribe she tried to butter up won't hear any of it now...
She gives up and follows me.

Wash goes into a bar, the "Last Chance" with Sebastian.
He involves himself in a bar fight and tries to recruit more crew.
Sebastian talks a rather experienced Lieutenant into joining, along with some ratings.
The Lieutenant knows of a cartographer who might be of use.
Magnate-Scrivener Jorn, located in the Chambers of Gold

The Magos and I walk into Wash and Sebastian going out the other way.
We exchange notes. The Lord-Captain reports grand success. Wash reports even grander success.

We pay Jorn a visit. He's an old man with a humble home, and no augs except a logis implant.
We introduce ourselves, and he invites us into a back room. It's filled with cogitators.
He's got quite the map, and knows what we're looking for.
Magaros. Three planets, an ice belt, and a small star. It's located in Winterscale's realm.
The map's ours, for the small price of carrying some cargo to Footfall, which is on the way.
It's not slaves. The cargo is some books that the Ecclesiarchy would disapprove of. The Lord Captain agrees.

We take data back to our Navigator, and he plots us a course. We're away!