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.
The Temple is quiet, lots of corridors and storage chambers. The Lord Captain leads the way without fear of traps, Raynor keeping rear-guard.
We circle downwards,and reach a large chamber with an antechamber further along. We hear voices and see shadows -- people here. As I'm wearing the mercenary uniform, I approach and casually lean against the wall at the entrance of the chamber, relaying images back to the team with telepathy. Everyone appears to be ordinary researchers. The room is filled with research equipment, and the next antechamber over is dark and unexplored yet.
Hohenheim marches into the room and acts like he owns the show. It works, and we learn that this is a second team; there was a predecessor team, but contact has since been lost. Hohenheim tells them to keep working and we move on through the antechamber.. The researchers look at Raynor as he passes by, but ultimately pay us no heed and keep working.
We continue on for a couple of minutes, and find another antechamber similar to the one we just left. In the corner is a frightened researcher. Wash, amazingly, snaps him out of it. He's lost his friends, and while he's tried to leave the chamber... has returned 3 times.
Leaving on my own, I'm able to return back to the first group of researchers, and return to the stranded researcher. We try escorting the researcher back. We end up in a different chamber altogether.
The Lord-Captain makes the researcher strip. He's not marked, but he is carrying canisters of stone and metal shards. We try going back the way we came. Naturally, we wind up somewhere new.
I separate a thread from my robes, and get Raynor to hold it while I go off on my own. I return to the room on the other side... I'm able to tug the thread, and it's not a little surreal.
I collect the thread and tie it to a grenade. Smoke. We move on. We don't loop, and move on.
We go to another chamber, and seem to be now heading up. There are a pair of extremely large doors.
Wedged inside the door is a researcher's corpse. He's mangled to hell; clean cuts, and not slow. As if he was whole one moment, and sliced up the next. Abigail forces the door more open with Raimer's help, and we enter.
Inside is a vast chamber; there is a central ring, with a raised platform with a scepter embedded in it. It has a lambent green cross in it. There is a throne at the rear of the room, a solid thing of steel. There are four chests and screens in each corner of the room.
Abigail messes with one of the chests with Wash's help; they expose a control panel, and Abigail interfaces with it while Wash cuts into the lid. Burden messes with a chest on the other side of the room; I go for the staff.
Something happens with Wash's chest, and he jams a grenade into the hole he cut. It goes off with a crump. We berate him for breaking something.
I seize the staff, and the next events are a blur. Things start moving, the room begins to rumble, and the central platform raises up. Inside is a mysterious cube held in suspension.
Burden takes it, and a large, metal spider descends upon us. I have the idea that the staff is some sort of control rod, and try commanding it. I instead slam it with an earthquake of considerable power.
The chests begin to open, and metal scarabs swarm forth; except for the one Wash blew up, which takes longer to produce them.
Raimer demands everyone go so he can cover us. Wash tries to out-macho him and push him with the power of his jump pack, neither of which is effective.
He eventually does as he's told, and we escape through the door with our lives.
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