Rogue Trading for Fun and Profit, Episode 6: Ashfall Part 2, Part 2

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.

Long story short, we win the battle, and drive off Fel. The ship, and it's bounty, are ours.
We find:
Good Chainaxe - Van Hohenheim
Good Relic Shield - Sebastian
Good Rifle - Magos Abigail
Optimized Voidshield - Ship
Best Bodyglove - Winter
- Swirling Energy: The first time an attack successfully strikes the armour’s wearer each Round, the attacker must re-roll his WS or BSTest with a –10 penalty
- Surly: +2 Initiative; if user rolls a 96+ on ANY check while wearing this item the item ceases to function somehow (GM's call)
- Cruel: Once per game session, the owner of this item may re-roll his Damage roll from a successful attack of any kind.

The Arms of Xyzz - In reserve, in case someone has an... accident.


We decide to go check out the forested moon.
We find a mysterious power source. The Magos squirrels one away, and we report the rest.
We journey back to Footfall. 
En route, Lady Ash wakes up. She doesn't take her defeat or subsequent abandonment terribly well.
The Lord Captain makes her an offer: We turn her into the Black Ships, we cut her loose on Footfall and call the Black Ships... or she joins us as our Arch Millitant.
She needs some time to think about it. Standing offer.
DM: "Leave me," she says.
Lord-Captain: "We already left"
The trip takes us 5 days, but only takes 15 minutes in real-time??
Port docking fees and general pricing seems to be higher than usual. Almost like we flashed cash earlier...
Sebastian inquires with the underworld. They hook us up with better pricing... but at what cost?
Sebastian also tries to spread baseless rumors about Fel. Nobody bites.
I acquire a grenade launcher, and frag / smoke grenades. I assume I am less likely to hurt myself with the smoke grenades while practicing.
The Lord Captain acquires a replacement leg for Lady Ash -- regardless of her choice, she gets the leg.

Next stop: The Calixis Lathes.

This is what we call "Production Values"

Rogue Trading for Fun and Profit, Episode 5: Ashfall, Part 2

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.

If you're wondering what happened to Episode 4, I was Space-sick and not present for that session.

Sebastian tried and failed to acquire a better attack craft.
We departed Footfall, and went straight to the objective planet, Magaros Major.
We find a forested moon.
The Captain gracefully guided our landing craft onto the main planet, but treacherous rocks that were probably worshippers of chaos laid an ambush for us.
Abigail decided to spend half a day attuning herself to the plane. I disagree with her singing.
We finally departed to seek our fortune, and found a maze instead.
We missed the traps, found the wonder, and also Orks.
We wasted the Orks. There were also humans there.
The Captain Allegedly seduced a so-called human woman.
Afterwards, we found a map room, and suddenly discussed Warp Powers that we shouldn't have.
Some of us got uncomfortable, and others got insane.
The map confirms that the Righteous Path is in the Asteroid Belt.
Unfortunately, Fel also knows.
We decide to go after the Path. The captain spends most of his trip holed up in the medical bay. 
We approach what amounts to a ship graveyard.
Ratings are sent to go loot the other ships while we loot the Path.
We bring two landers; Wash flies one, the Lord-Captain flies the other
the lord-captain's landing is a b it rough, but Wash's landing is far worse.

We had 3 armsmen, and 3 servitors. We have less after the landing.
We begin our raid.
the Captain spots an ambush up ahead. A trap, Curse them!


We find the command deck.
the command throne his the body of One Lord Kharnus Ryn; and his signet ring.
The lord captain turns around in his new command throne to see Lady Ash enter.
She rebuffs his advances, and declares her loyalty to Fel.
The Fell Hand emerges to attack the Ambition.
Sebastian tries to jump on the round table. He fails miserably and falls flat.
I activate my psychic powers.
A Psychic event happens, and it starts raining blood.
Any one using powers will trigger Perils instantly.
Lady Ash terrifies us. She succeeds in terrifying Abigail, but not me.
The power of the Emperor is behind me, and she terrifies herself.
The Lord Captain dumps atmos.
I shoot Lady Ash in the face, but she's still standing.
The Magos pulls herself together and cuts down Ash with a spray of bolter fire. She's alive, but barely.
We get out of the ship and return to the Ambition to fend off Fel.

"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.

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!

Rogue Trading for Fun and Profit, Episode 1: The Absolute Ambition

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.

I'm sure we've all got tragic backstories and backgrounds. But we're skipping past all of them, lol.

We're hailed by Orbus Dray. He's got a long-held message and gift for Van Hohenheim from his grandfather, Erasmus van Hohenheim.

We find him in the market; he snaps a sharp salute for a dirty old man.

He speaks the oath of service; he definitely worked for the van Hohenheims.

It's a memolith, a psychic message readable by me or the Navigator.

van Hohenheim suggests we take it. 

Some sort of bird stole the Memolith, wtf

Armed goons emerge from hiding - an ambush, curse them!

The combat is a bit of a blur. My amputator rounds are nasty, but don't really get through armor so good. I almost lose a leg, but I mangle someone's face.

The Magos opens up on one of our ambushers, disembowling him, and spilling steaming hot gore and fragmentation over a nearby child, scarring him for life.

After five rounds of combat, arbites show up and halt the party, led by Arbitrator-Sergeant Targos, who asks us to please accompany him to the station, so we do.

The Arbitrator-Marshal says the goons have links to Rogue trader Fel, whose Warrant is preventing them investigating further.

It doesn't stop me. I get five minutes alone with one of the survivors.

I ask him the important question: If one Adeptus Astartes killed another Adeptus Astartes with a rock on a moon, would that be fucked up, or what?

I don't wait for his verbal answer, and scour the mind of the armsman who shot me. I see him shooting me in reverse. Yes, it would be fucked up. I get a Lady Ash. The Saber. Lord Captain Fel. Repressed childhood memories. I take it all.

Warp ghosts manifest around me.

We return to the Absolute Ambition, and I tap into the memolith.

I see a distant star system, and describe it. We need a star map for this place.

The Aribtrator-Marshal comms us and tells us that Fel just pulled out of port. We suspect he's somehow listened in on my description and knows where he's going.

No point trying to chase him. We need to find a map.