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. Possibly insane.
Magos Abigail von Thannhausen - A Magos Explorator-Chymist who possibly takes too much pleasure in the craft of Servitors. Accompanied by her servo-skull.
Archaius "Boosto" Wash - A gunnery sergeant with a now less-irritating artificial voicebox and a jetpack.
Sebastian LaMarck - A seneschal with a silver tongue.
Winter York - Astropath Transcendant. Monstrous willpower. Double-duty as heavy weapons. Your glorious narrator and remembrancer.
Our journey to the Lathes is about as normal as warp travel gets. A few patches of wierd space-time where it feels like we're walking through molasses, but normal. We make good time, spending 10 days onboard, and 15 in realspace to get there.
It's been a year and a half since our last visit.
We plan to hit up our old friend Faciliator Vex for the hab parts we need; we bring a gift for him, a fantastically well-crafted leg. We're hailed by planetary defense, they want to know who we are, and what our business is. The Lord Captain introduces himself for several minutes, but does not specify why we're here. Planetary defense presses further. The Lord Captain begins to ramble further, but is encouraged to keep it brief by macrocannons pointed in our direction. I gently take the microphone and summarize for the PDF in the interest of not being spaced.
On the way in, we get to see the Fortune's Favor again. The Magos makes a snide comment and loses Arm Priveleges for the forseeable future.
We recap on the colony. Magaros Primaris, the planet is a desolate, barren waste home only to xeno ruins, orks, and the Starmirror. The moon, Primaris Secundus is forested, and we're setting up there.
We meet with Vex, he and the Magos catch up. He inquires about her now-entitled laboratory, she was waiting for the right place to set up shop. Which brings us to our point of business.
We want to set up a colony, and we'd like the Admech to get in on this. As a remote outpost with potential mining and other natural resource exports, it could be favorable to them. Vex has to run this past the higher-ups, but he personally likes the cut of the plan.
Incidentally, we have a gift. He's quite pleased with the leg we bought him. Really pleased. It turns out admech Magii can still drool.
Lord Captain: "My family always repays it's debts eventually. Even if very, very delayed."
DM: "A Van Hohenheim always eventually repays their debts."
While Vex negotiates that, we find ways to entertain ourselves.
Wash looks for a laser designator so he can call in gunships. He gets it.
Abigail has leg envy now, and looks for best quality augments. She gets surprising cold shoulders.
The Lord-Captain wants to find out why the Magos is... well, upset. He has the idea to talk to her parents... but he has no idea who exactly her parents or family are. The family name rings a few bells, but...
He tracks down one of the elusive shipboard admech, Nox, and asks.
Nox: "Lord-Captain, what can I help you with? If you need something, I'm sure Magos Abigail can-"
Lord-Captain:"Ah, yes, that's the problem. She and I seem to have a communication issue regarding her parents..."
Magos (OOC): "When you take the Red, your family is Dead."
Nox and the Lord-Captain talk. He wants to know the names of the Magos' parents. Nox knows the Magos is from clan Van Tannhausen, but beyond that... it's never really occurred to anyone to ask. Sebastian probably knows more about it. We send him a message on Scintilla, and also I want to try looking for dossiers in his chambers.
Meanwhile, the Magos has a sit-down and figures out why she's getting the cold shoulder. The Rustwatchers, Skekris' old clan, have been encouraging rumors amongst the admech that she's a Heretek for dealing in Xenotech.
She wants a chance to have a Word with the Rustwatchers. The best window for that would be the the Magos Entertainment Expo.
I search Sebastian's office desk. There's a bureau and a number of bookcases. Lots of dataslates.I find a drawer, and a surprise. I wake up a moment later with charred robes. Alright. I acquire an insulated glove and try again. The drawer sticks, and I suspect a trap. I step to the side, and avoid the gas cloud that billows out... there's nothing inside.
I have, at this point, *almost* died to basically every element.
I start to give up, but then remember I have power armor. I go equip that and try again. I return, and try a drawer on the other side of the room.
I narrowly avoid the metal shutters rising from the floor to seal off the door, bookshelves and desk. The point quickly becomes apparent -- the room is now filling with water, and were I not wearing power armor, this would be quite dangerous. As it is, I'm merely incredulous.
Sebastian's voice rings out over the vox. "All command staff, please make your way to the conference room. The Aquarium is filling."
The command crew does so, and finds me in Sebastian's room. I'm trapped in what amounts to an aquarium with metal boxes... and tropical fish released from vents?! Seriously?
The Lord-Captain has the code to disable the trap, and he thankfully does so. Afterwards, he asks what I was doing. I remind him I was looking for information about the person he was interested in.
Several days pass when Vox gets back to us. Good news, we're getting what we wanted, at as fair a price as we could expect.
Vox also has some information about the Fortune's Favor... as we all know, all but one person was accounted for, dead or servitored, in the attack, but evidence indicates the attack might just have been a diversion, and the actual goal was cogitator data of the last voyage.
Next on the agenda, aside from a spot of pirate hunting, is to go back to Port Wander and "acquire" the Rusted Hand mercenary group. No idea how well this will all go.
We swing by Scintilla on our way back out and pick up Sebastian. He's surprised to see his office is still filled with water. I make plans to install a tubular aquarium in the Astropath tower... for entertainment or use as some sort of canary for psychic feedback, who knows.
On Scintilla, we pay the Von Tannhausens a visit. To be more specific, Abigail tries to visit her family, and the rest of the Command Staff piles into the flier and asks "Where are we going?"
Magos Abigail's family is nice and vanilla. Very aryan, 100% pure bravarian phenotype. Surprisingly, not a family of Mechanicus... they're actually in the earth moving machine business. The Lord Captain takes the opportunity to purchase land movers from the Von Tannhausens (successful) and make a pass on one of Abigail's brothers (Hilariously blunt and unsuccessful, assumed to be a joke but not really a joke at all.)
We finish up on Scintilla and check in at Wander. The mercenary civil war is now over with the presence of the Imperial navy. The Rusted Hands are gone, and people are afraid to admit they're guns for hire in this particular climate, which makes picking up mercenaries to defend our colony and train our future militia.
I put the word out, and do rather well at it. We pick up some 400 mercenaries willing to pull security duty in the middle of nowhere. No Kroot mercs though, which is probably for the best given the Ecclesiarchy.
After about 3 weeks / months, we arrive back at Magaros, and our colonization effort begins, with materials arriving in orbit until we've got enough to break ground. The command staff is naturally the first to plant the first flag, and the honor falls to the Lord Captain who does so with aplomb. I snap a pict to commemorate our first colony:
Verloren.
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