Let's Make A Rogue Trader House (using the lifepath from Into The Storm)

[Randall Fragg]

Yeah, lets go with famous.
(Also, when will the CoC game start?)
(Also, Also, exball, sorry I haven't updated the Left 4 Autism game since the Mesozoic era, I can get back to it if you're still interested.)

 

[Uzumaki]

Yeah, lets go with famous.
(Also, when will the CoC game start?)

Famous is it. Also the CoC game will start when and if I can drum up a sufficient player base.

Famous

Whether or not they choose to admit it openly, or even to themselves, the great majority of Rogue Traders crave fame and the attendant powers and privileges that accompany it. To have one's name spoken with awe and respect by High Lords and commoners the length and breadth of the Imperium is for many the ultimate reward, perhaps even greater than the vast personal wealth they amass along the way. In a galaxy in which literally billions of lives are lost every single day in the service of the Emperor, where a single man has little hope of gaining recognition for even the greatest, most selfless of acts, to be remembered after one's time is perhaps the greatest reward one can aspire to.

Bam. Now comes the fun part. We need to weave all these choices into a story.

So we know it's a House famous for actions taken during the Meritech Wars. Since the Meritech clans were hereteks, it would make sense that such an act might win the favor of the Cult of Mars. It seems like figuring out what happened during the Meritech Wars is the keystone to this House. Any thoughts?

 

[Burned Man]

I imagine it would involve finding some ancient technology, something that would seem inconsequential and unprofitable to us. Something only the Tech Priests would care for. Maybe we stumble upon some sort of ancient vault that got unearthed during the fighting that was just full of archeotech and we pocketed what little we could understand for ourselves and gave the rest over to them. Perhaps we acted like we know what we found was significant in order to get the Adeptus Mechanicus interested in our efforts and to convince them we could helpful in the future if they are willing to aid us.

 

[Uzumaki]

I imagine it would involve finding some ancient technology, something that would seem inconsequential and unprofitable to us. Something only the Tech Priests would care for. Maybe we stumble upon some sort of ancient vault that got unearthed during the fighting that was just full of archeotech and we pocketed what little we could understand for ourselves and gave the rest over to them. Perhaps we acted like we know what we found was significant in order to get the Adeptus Mechanicus interested in our efforts and to convince them we could helpful in the future if they are willing to aid us.

Maybe some kind of incomplete STC with previously undiscovered sections? Or maybe something techy but not particularly valuable? The Meritech Clans could have even stolen something from the Mechanicus that you stole back.

 

[exball]

Perhaps we found a damaged Warhound titan?

 

[Uzumaki]

Perhaps we found a damaged Warhound titan?

I like this a lot. As tempting as it may be to try to keep the Titan for yourself, 1) even a Rogue Trader House probably lacks the resources to fix one (doubly so on the down low) and 2) as soon as it became known you had one way more powerful organizations would just kill you for it. Better to foist it off on Mars and let those weirdos deal with it.

 

[Randall Fragg]

How serious should we be? I'm not really too knowlagable about the setting.
My (less than serious) idea for our house background is that we were selling an arcane weapon referred to in ancient texts as a "Gameboy" to The Meritech Clans aboard one of their nicer ships, when our leader went off to use the bathroom.
Due to a lack of regular matinance, one of the seals on the toilet broke.
In a fairly large oversight, the bathrooms were placed over a critical electrical relay, the kind that tends to have a less than pleasant relationship with large amounts of water.
The electrical systems suffered a catastrophic failure, resulting in the deaths of almost the entire Meritech Clan crew through electrocution, explosion, and airlock or hull failure. The only people who survived were the guys in the conference room (and attached restrooms), which was where the trade negotiations were happening.
Around this time the Imperium (and the Adaptus Mechanus) showed up, having intel suggesting that the Meritech would attempt to trade for ancient technology. Seeing this, our House's Founders murdered the remaining Meritechs, took over the crippled ship, and contacted the Imperium, claiming to be double agents who annihilated the entire crew of the ship using the Arcane and Priceless Artifact called "The Gameboy" (which shorted out after we used it, but you Adaptus guy's can totally fix it). We then gave this "Arcane and Priceless Artifact", as well as a stash of other archeotech the Meritechs had on the ship, to the Adaptus, just so they wouldn't look too closely at us.
And that is my jokey suggestion for our House's origin.
Like I said, I don't know a lot about the WH:40K lore, so you guys should probably have more say in this decision.

 

[Uzumaki]

What if the Logicians had discovered a Warhound Titan somewhere in the Calyx Expanse back in the day, hauled it off to some dark engineerium to resurrect it with their daemonic machine spirits and heretical innovations, and then when the Meritech Wars started they began fielding the damn thing. The clans go on to kick untold amounts of Imperial ass with the crazy heretek Titan before House <Name Not Found> managed to wreck it, probably from space using lances. After inspecting them for potential profit and finding none, they then proceed to turn over the smoking remains to the Mechanicus, who are so stoked they're still sending you Emperorsmas cards because of it.

How serious should we be? I'm not really too knowlagable about the setting.

For all the grimdark, Warhammer 40k has always primarily been a satire. It has a sense of humor that's very black and Kafkaesqe, but it's also very pronounced.

My (less than serious) idea for our house background is that we were selling an arcane weapon referred to in ancient texts as a "Gameboy"

That said, references to the real world like that are a bit over the line. Jokes that dispel the suspension of disbelief are discouraged.

Seeing this, our House's Founders murdered the remaining Meritechs, took over the crippled ship, and contacted the Imperium, claiming to be double agents who annihilated the entire crew of the ship using the Arcane and Priceless Artifact called

This is the point at which the Imperials would kill you all, just to be sure. Why take a chance when bullets are so cheap? You're clearly involved in heresy of some kind.

It's better to depopulate an entire world of innocent, loyal citizens than to allow one heretic to escape the Emperor's Justice (TM).

Like I said, I don't know a lot about the WH:40K lore, so you guys should probably have more say in this decision.

You're not far off base, it's just that WH40k humor tends more towards the horrible than the light-hearted. See the sentence above where I talk about justice; that's actually a joke.

 

[Burned Man]

What if the Logicians had discovered a Warhound Titan somewhere in the Calyx Expanse back in the day, hauled it off to some dark engineerium to resurrect it with their daemonic machine spirits and heretical innovations, and then when the Meritech Wars started they began fielding the damn thing. The clans go on to kick untold amounts of Imperial ass with the crazy heretek Titan before House <Name Not Found> managed to wreck it, probably from space using lances. After inspecting them for potential profit and finding none, they then proceed to turn over the smoking remains to the Mechanicus, who are so stoked they're still sending you Emperorsmas cards because of it.

I like this idea but there needs to be something for us to skim off the top so to speak. It doesn't have that WH 40k spark unless someone is getting screwed over by their allies. Perhaps in the wreckage of the titan we find the artifact that was used to bind the Daemon to the Titan and pocket it hoping to find someone to sell it to, no doubt causing trouble later.

 

[Randall Fragg]

What if the Logicians had discovered a Warhound Titan somewhere in the Calyx Expanse back in the day, hauled it off to some dark engineerium to resurrect it with their daemonic machine spirits and heretical innovations, and then when the Meritech Wars started they began fielding the damn thing. The clans go on to kick untold amounts of Imperial ass with the crazy heretek Titan before House <Name Not Found> managed to wreck it, probably from space using lances. After inspecting them for potential profit and finding none, they then proceed to turn over the smoking remains to the Mechanicus, who are so stoked they're still sending you Emperorsmas cards because of it.



For all the grimdark, Warhammer 40k has always primarily been a satire. It has a sense of humor that's very black and Kafkaesqe, but it's also very pronounced.



That said, references to the real world like that are a bit over the line. Jokes that dispel the suspension of disbelief are discouraged.



This is the point at which the Imperials would kill you all, just to be sure. Why take a chance when bullets are so cheap? You're clearly involved in heresy of some kind.

It's better to depopulate an entire world of innocent, loyal citizens than to allow one heretic to escape the Emperor's Justice (TM).



You're not far off base, it's just that WH40k humor tends more towards the horrible than the light-hearted. See the sentence above where I talk about justice; that's actually a joke.

Understood.
Can we still use "bumbling our way to success" as part of the backstory? Like, we destroyed the heritek Titan from orbit because we were venting garbage to be burned up on re-entry (figuring that it's a warzone, and no one cares about enviormental regulations), and misplaced a decimal when calculating the atmospheric thickness.
So, instead of safely burning up, the cloud of trash we vented turned into a cloud of high velocity micrometeors that devastated the Meritech forces. Upon realizing this, we took their stuff and gave the Titan wreckage to the Mechanicus.
Is that ok for the backstory?
I mean, yeah, we accidentally outdo the Imperium, but their battle tactics veer between "SEND MOAR SPACE MURHINES AT IT! SHOOT SHOOT BOOM BOOM!" or "BLOW UP PLANET BIG BOOOM BIIIIG BOOOOOOM!".
I'm not sure "drop garbage on it from orbit" has ever crossed their mind.
(Although you mentioned Lances, so I'm guessing that they have some sort of "Rods from God" technology.)

Oh, can there be a Jace like NPC who shows up occasionally? I'm just seeing Jace in this setting dressed up in a suit of power armor made out of cardboard and spray painted blue and gold, so he can be a "Ultramarine, because I'm a future retired Ultramarine, because they're the best Space Marines!" (or would the Space Wolves be more Jace-like?) And of course, brandishing his customized "Emperor's Warriors" brand toy pistol.
I'm just seeing Jacanius as a running gag, where he shows up, suffers some horrible fate (getting dragged off to the warp by Space Homos), and inexplicably shows up later, completely unharmed.
Okay, I'll stop being stupid now.

 

[Burned Man]

Understood.
Can we still use "bumbling our way to success" as part of the backstory? Like, we destroyed the heritek Titan from orbit because we were venting garbage to be burned up on re-entry (figuring that it's a warzone, and no one cares about enviormental regulations), and misplaced a decimal when calculating the atmospheric thickness.
So, instead of safely burning up, the cloud of trash we vented turned into a cloud of high velocity micrometeors that devastated the Meritech forces. Upon realizing this, we took their stuff and gave the Titan wreckage to the Mechanicus.
Is that ok for the backstory?
I mean, yeah, we accidentally outdo the Imperium, but their battle tactics veer between "SEND MOAR SPACE MURHINES AT IT! SHOOT SHOOT BOOM BOOM!" or "BLOW UP PLANET BIG BOOOM BIIIIG BOOOOOOM!".
I'm not sure "drop garbage on it from orbit" has ever crossed their mind.
(Although you mentioned Lances, so I'm guessing that they have some sort of "Rods from God" technology.)

Oh, can there be a Jace like NPC who shows up occasionally? I'm just seeing Jace in this setting dressed up in a suit of power armor made out of cardboard and spray painted blue and gold, so he can be a "Ultramarine, because I'm a future retired Ultramarine, because they're the best Space Marines!" (or would the Space Wolves be more Jace-like?) And of course, brandishing his customized "Emperor's Warriors" brand toy pistol.
I'm just seeing Jacanius as a running gag, where he shows up, suffers some horrible fate (getting dragged off to the warp by Space Homos), and inexplicably shows up later, completely unharmed.
Okay, I'll stop being stupid now.

I don't know if a mass of waste could survive re entry and still have enough force to vanquish a Titan. If you want bumbling it could be something like one of our freight shuttles was overloaded with ammunition and was too heavy to dodge air fire and crashed into the Titian and it payload detonated, destroying the Titan and a small armored company of Imperial Guardsmen that would never have been missed.
I think there could be room for a Jace character but I imagine he would be a psyker. Just a crazy guy that we keep around that can occasionally be helpful but the rest of the time is bat shit insane and is usually kept at a distant rambling to himself.

 

[Randall Fragg]

I don't know if a mass of waste could survive re entry and still have enough force to vanquish a Titan. If you want bumbling it could be something like one of our freight shuttles was overloaded with ammunition and was too heavy to dodge air fire and crashed into the Titian and it payload detonated, destroying the Titan and a small armored company of Imperial Guardsmen that would never have been missed.
I think there could be room for a Jace character but I imagine he would be a psyker. Just a crazy guy that we keep around that can occasionally be helpful but the rest of the time is bat shit insane and is usually kept at a distant rambling to himself.

Yeah, that's probably better.
Things falling out of orbit can attain significant (and deadly) velocities. (http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinetic_bombardment). A large piece of garbage, such as a broken piece of heavy equipment that's had all the salvageable stuff gutted and blown into space, could cause a significant impact on ground forces. But dropping a ship full of explosives is probably simpler.

 

[Uzumaki]

Okay, Christmas is over time to return to what's important: imaginary future merchant houses.

Can we still use "bumbling our way to success" as part of the backstory?

In broad strokes I love this idea, but I agree the shit cannon wouldn't be able to take out a Titan.

(Although you mentioned Lances, so I'm guessing that they have some sort of "Rods from God" technology.)

Lances is just what they call most ship-mounted lasers. You use macrobatteries (read: giant cannons) to take out the enemy shields, then lances to attack while they're vulnerable. Especially in the Battlefleet Gothic end of the universe, they like to give medieval or magic sounding names to high technology. Like augury array instead of sensors (my personal favorite).

"There are no life signs showing up on the auguries, Lord-Captain," said the Master of Etherics.

Oh, can there be a Jace like NPC who shows up occasionally?

Jace would totally be an Ultramarine fanboy. Ultramarine trained teen. He could be this AND a psyker.

If you want bumbling it could be something like one of our freight shuttles was overloaded with ammunition and was too heavy to dodge air fire and crashed into the Titian and it payload detonated, destroying the Titan and a small armored company of Imperial Guardsmen that would never have been missed.

This is great.

 

[exball]

If you want bumbling it could be something like one of our freight shuttles was overloaded with ammunition and was too heavy to dodge air fire and crashed into the Titian and it payload detonated, destroying the Titan and a small armored company of Imperial Guardsmen that would never have been missed.

 

[Randall Fragg]

If Jace is an Ultramarine fanboy, then obviously Tyce needs to be a Necron with damaged memory banks, so instead of wanting to destroy all life he just wants to get high, prank others, and start a race war.
And now I have the mental image of Tyce prank calling random factions.
"Commissar, we've recived a transmission from a Necron ship! I'm trying to translate it, it's in some sort of xenos language that seems derived from Gothic. I think it translates to, ummm, 'I had relations of a sexual nature with your mother. Tyzed.'"

 

[Uzumaki]

Okay, so, the story thus far:

House <Name Still Needed> was granted a warrant of trade in the Age of Redemption by the ecclesiarchy, implicitly for services rendered but we're not sure (currently this is the largest gap). During the Meritech Wars they were mercenaries for Sector Governess Myram Harvala whereupon they accidentally blew up a heretek Titan by overloading a shuttle with ammo to the point where it crashed into the thing. The House's Rogue Trader at the time immediately took credit for the stunning military victory and, after determining there was no other way to profit from the ruins of the Titan, turned them over to the Mechanicus (who has shown preferential treatment to the House ever since under the assumption that the House would make a habit of turning over such artifacts).

The House has been failing upwards ever since, spinning their every fuck up into an act of heroic darring do, and have become a famous rising star in the Imperium, a sort of Rogue Trader Ciaphas Cane (or, if you're unfamiliar with this obscure 40k character, Flashman). While they're not very wealthy for a Rogue Trader House (they have a low profit factor for a Rogue Trader House and most of it is probably people willing to extend credit to 'Heroes of the Imperium') they have been upgrading their ancestral ship since the Meritech Wars and they're well positioned for someone with the tiniest iota of sense to take the House reigns and start raking in the throne gelt.

It's a long line of lucky idiots with great spin control. I'd love to see their warrant have been granted thanks to a similar fuck up.

Edit: I should also have pointed out earlier that their PF is 32 (30 is equivalent to a powerful hive guild or an impoverished noble, 40 is equivalent to a planetary noble, planetary merchant house or a weak imperial governor) and 54 ship points (enough for a bare bones light cruiser or a very well equipped frigate. Based on the story I'd go for the frigate, but there are some cool as fuck mechanicus light cruisers.)

Edit edit: A lathe-class monitor cruiser (a mechanicus pattern and one of the coolest looking ships in the setting IMO, see the second picture I posted in the starships thread in the super seeekret forum) is 55 ship points just for the hull (no weapons or extra components or upgrades). However you can raise your starting SP during character creation, and most people do, so this house could hypothetically start with a minimally outfitted Lathe-class (fill up all it's weapon mounts with cheap weapons and maybe add a single supplemental component).

 

[exball]

What if we accidentally sent a massive asteroid at a planet. It turned out to be a massive chaos cult and the Ecclesiarchy, believing it to have been intentional, gives us a writ.

 

[Uzumaki]

What if we accidentally sent a massive asteroid at a planet. It turned out to be a massive chaos cult and the Ecclesiarchy, believing it to have been intentional, gives us a writ.

Hmmm, this begs the question who they were and what they were up to prior to the warrant being granted.

Maybe they were the planetary governors of the planet in question, somehow caused an asteroid-smash-like fuck up in an attempt to do something positive, and were assumed to have been so loyal to the God-Emperor that they were willing to sacrifice their planetary fief to cleanse the Imperium of chaos taint.

I'm just at a loss as to how a planetary governor would cause an asteroid to crash into the planet. Maybe an attempt to harvest it for materials? Maybe it was an adamantium asteroid.

Edit: Maybe a forge world with an orbital shipyard. They attempted to mine the asteroid in order get extra adamantium to use to build the planet's tithe ship and thereby skim off the top of their tithe. But they badly miscalculated, caused it to crash into the shipyard, and both of them fell to the world below and depopulated it.

That also gives them further links to the mechanicus. It would explain how they knew how to get into contact with them to turn over the titan in the first place.

Edit edit: and there was no cult. That was an off the cuff excuse that just worked really well.

 

[Uzumaki]

More ship rambling:

A Meritech Shrike, obviously a Meritech hull pattern, is 34 SP. Add the Thulian Explorator Vessel background package and you're still only up to 35. That would make it a Meritech hull refitted by the Mechanicus, and let's you take an archeotech component. It also gives you better sensors but makes you slower and less maneuverable (but the Shrike is so fast and maneuverable that's not a huge issue).

You'd have enough ship points left to give it whatever weapons you wanted, as many supplemental components as you could fit on it, and even make some of the components higher quality craftsmanship.

You'll definitely want a crew reclamation facility, to turn your casualties/mutineers/people whose faces you don't like into servitors (lobotomized humans controlled by brain implants, essentially corpse robots) and then take murder servitors so you can board ships more efficiently/without getting your white gloved hands dirty.

Actually there's also an upgrade you can take that turns the whole crew into servitors. No having to deal with all that pesky free will. The Cult of Mars can totally hook you up. But if everyone is already a servitor it robs you of the fun of turning your live crewmembers into them, and means you don't get a fun ship culture. It also sort of kills the vibe that you're lords of a space manor.

Edit: And if the archeotech component was a modified drive you could make up the lost speed.

Edit Edit: Also this is as good a time as any to ask the first person to read this to roll d100 two times and give me both results.

 

[Randall Fragg]

Maybe we weren't the governor, but the crew of workers hired by the governor to move the asteroid in. We knew that he (and large part of the planet) were influenced by a Chaos cult, but hey, we're cheap laborers, and it's a job. We aren't going to look too closely at the guy cutting us a paycheck.

In retrospect, the governor probably shouldn't have hired us, a semi-professional mining group with substandard equipment, lax safety protocols, and little experience, for something as dangerous as "moving an asteroid into a planets gravitational field".
The governor was a cheap bastard, and decided that cutting corners on something so potentially dangerous was a good idea.
It became a lot less of a good idea when we overshot the shipyards by crashing into them and sent a several kiloton mass into the planet's major industrial area.
Whoops.
So, we just crashed an asteroid into a planet, completely destroying several major cities and killing a fuckton of people.
So what do we do? Well, we knew that the planet harbored a Chaos cult, and that the governor had been skimming off of his worlds tithe for years. So we spun a story about how the governor was a blood drinking scammer cultist who had a massive cult on his world devoted to bringing about the downfall of the emperor, and how we righteous crusaders, sickened by his evil, chose to administer justice upon him by crashing the asteroid he paid us to steal into his planet.

Fortunately for us, the Ecclesisarchy found Chaos artifacts amoung the ruins, and we're able to find several cultists mixed in with the refugees. So they did what they do best: dumping all the refugees back on the planet and crashing more asteroids into it to "purify" it.
So, instead of being executed for blowing up a city, killing millions, and lying, we found ourselves in the Ecesisarchy's favor, and used that to get a warrant to become a trading group and get as far away from asteroid mining as possible.
Anyway, that's my proposal.