Run Silent - Scare Pirates - Raid Tombs

An Artist's Rendition of a "Hot Jupiter,"

This session consisted of negotiation with The Confederation of Trust (a heretical human/alien client state of the Tau with a socialist/Star Trekian attitude towards cooperation and a slow and sustainable attitude towards expansion), tense silent running to slip past pirate patrols to reach a tomb world, cowing pirates with threats of force, hearing a dangerous offer from pirates and raiding a Mind Mold tomb.

Part 1: The Explorers (Cornelius, Alkron, Avixis, Felix Fortunato, Szaak Zero, and Aganamor) began the session in negotiations with Captain Nwabudike Morgan of the Confederation of Trust, with his alien allies the Rexgar and Wernau present as well. Essentially, the Explorera came seeking the advanced translator devices that these people used. There was a discussion of just pulling one from a dead crewman, but propriety won out, and the group ended up traveling to the planet Trust, apparent capital and logistical center of this alliance.

In the end, the explorers received overwhelming amounts of data, crates of outdated PDAs with translation software intact (and the admiration of weirdo old-school tech nerds on Trust), and a number of translator implants. While visiting Trust, they discreetly scanned the Trust Station, a massive orbital facility, finding out about the defensive capabilities, and a few vulnerabilities. As part of this exchange, the explorers provided a highly sanitized account of Imperial history.

Part 2: The Crew jumped a short distance (a week or so) to the actual star system containing the tomb world and found 3 terrestrial worlds, 2 saturnian gas-giants, and one hot jupiter (further out than most such failed stars would be). As they had been warned, there was a pirate base, and a warning satellite in system, forbidding approach to the tomb world itself (a tidally locked moon of the hot-jupiter). After careful scanning and listening to pirate transmissions with the help of the translation PDAs, the explorers learned rough patrol routes and numbers of foes. With that, they made a plan to set a course, accelerate as much as needed, and then run completely silent on just momentum, shutting off nonessential power and engines in order to merely appear to be a 5 km long hunk of metal to any scanners.

After some excellent piloting and planning, this worked almost perfectly, with the ship coming within short range (50,000 km or so of the moon), and hours away from the pirate patrols before bringing the ship back on line, sending a landing party, and getting in contact with the pirates. With a little bit of well-backed up intimidation, the pirates backed down and did not approach during the landing. Instead, they offered the explorers information and a powerful lance-like weapon of alien design in exchange for assistance in destroying Trust Station and ruining the logistical capabilities of the Confederation of Trust.

Part 3: While the group mulled over this offer, they made a landing on the Tomb World itself, a badly nuked little world with plains of glass and atmosphere clinging to little valleys full of post-nuclear/radiation blasted life. After dealing with some local resistance, the group commenced scanning and digging, eventually finding a shaft through the rock leading to a bunker. After sacrificing a servitor to test the defenses, they broke through and made their way into the bunker. There, they were met with robotic guardians with plasma weapons. The group prevailed, but several elite troopers were killed, and Avixis came close to his end after 2 consecutive point blank headshots with a plasma weapon.

With the security bots taken out, the explorers were able to extract their precious cargo, leaving them with one question... What's next?

Warp-Cation for the Space Holidays

It was a time of rejoicing and coming together under the happy watch of papa Nurgle, the chaos lord of pestilence in this session of Rogue Trader.

The session began with the introduction of 2 new crew:

1. Kasun - Astropath Transcendent, senior officer of the astropathic choir on board the ship, a woman with a blackened gas mask covering up her burnt out eyes.

2. Karlax - A Kroot(dinosaur/birdlike alien with a fondness for eating intelligent beings) Mercenary somehow brought aboard during the November session's massive hiring push. A merc who's previous job was ruined by these HR changes, who became something of a squeaky wheel before getting noticed and elevated to the status of a senior officer.

Then the holiday love really began. Blood came dripping from the walls, and a friendly voice called out from the darkness of the warp before crew began falling under the possession of various malevolent spirits drawn to the ship and the 65,000 souls aboard like moths to a candle. The crew decided not to jump out of the warp unsafely, and instead spent hours in the warp.

Some highlights of this harrowing experience:
1. Szaak, Szaak's troopers, and Karlax pulled off an effective maneuver to defeat the murder-servitors (lobotomized killer cyborgs) guarding the sabotaged gellar field. Karlax defeated one of them in single combat by punching it to death with a power fist (and getting a nasty close call with a buzzsaw as a result of those efforts)

2. Avixis and Aganamor worked to minimize losses to crew morale and population, probably saving thousands of lives and avoiding awful morale failures on board. The ship suffered 37% losses, and a hit of 14% to morale.

3. Kraxius Bent dissapeared into a safe room.

4. Avixis managed to quickly diagnose the gellar field problems and get a crew in position where it could be repaired in a mere 3 hours

5. Felix Fortunato tracked the most powerful warp entity and lured it onto the bridge, where he was able to (with significant help from the party, especially Szaak and Karlax's excellent gunfire), defeat the demon. Essentially Fortunato used a navigator power which increased the damage that the demon suffered from Warp Instability as a result of being in the bridge's realspace bubble.

6. Avixis took a serious bleeding wound from the demon.

Next, the party traveled through the warp into deep space, a short distance from their goal - The Eyes of St. Bartholodexia, an area of space in which two stars light up a small nebula and appear like eyes from a great distance. From there, they scanned nearby systems, having trouble detecting much more than em radiation that could indicate technological civilization.

So, the group made another warp jump into the nearest star, one of the eyes of Bartholodexia, and found a space battle between Alien Pirates and strange well shielded ships that kept transmitting radio pulses of 3, 1, 4 pulses, then 26 pulses. The explorers came into the fight against the pirates (which Kasun recognized as Rak'Gol, a species known for piracy on the edge of Imperial space.), and helped turn the tide.

From there, the group attempted to help one of the damaged vessels, and met with members of a friendly and inclusive governing body that included humans, insectoid aliens, and snakelike aliens. These people had some sort of translator implants, and eventually were speaking low gothic. In return for the explorers help turning away pirates, they agreed to give coordinates to a nearby "forbidden world." which sounded very similar to the Tomb World that the explorers seek. They warned of a possible pirate stronghold somewhere in that system.

Beach-Party Bottle Episode or ... There's more than one way to murder some fish

Session Begins in M42. year 001, 750 - 780 (roughly ten days elapsed)



Group composition:

Aivixis - Explorator
Whiskers - Suttler
Felix Furtunato - Navigator
Aganamor - Priest
Szaak Zero - Arch-Militant
Kraxius Bent - Captain

This was something of a bottle episode, with most of the action taking place in orbit around Tonunia and on the surface of the planet.

Major events -

1. Interrogation of Captain Grigoriiy : Captain Grigoriiy, the nominal leader of Tonunia's resistance to the central (Xenos controlled) government, who was captured from the burning helicarrier in the last session, was interrogated. Grigoriiy eventually gave the group details on previous operations his resistance had carried out, and corroborated some details about the Xenos in charge of Tonunia. He was willing to quietly build a new resistance, not harm house Grindal assets, and only strike when told in exchange for eventual planetary governorship.
2. Meeting with Romelia Girard : A black ship of the inquisition came into the system fairly early on, it's master asking to meet with Kraxius Bent. Inquisitor Romelia Girard hosted Bent and party about her vessel and spun a wild tale of ancient alien wars, and the power to alter the very fabric of the warp with their ancient psychic weapons, asking for help in locating more samples on 2 tomb worlds further out in the expanse. This offer was highly heretical, and represents significant risk.
3. Beach-Accord : After some time, the explorers met with Romelia and her entourage down on one of the beaches of Tonunia. There, they agreed to help in exchange for monies needed to repair their cruiser and for access to other resources. Felix Fortunato opened his 3rd eye to the warp, and used the otherworldly power of that place to slay a number of fish, which were then fried up to celebrate the agreement.
4. Expansion of Archeotech extraction on Tonunia - following previous agreements with the central governmental body on Tonunia, the group ramped up their extraction efforts.
5. Infiltration of Tonunian film industry - Skers' began the careful work of infiltrating and learning about the film industry on Tonunia, making critical contacts for what could make eventual propaganda for the light of the Emperor, and 
6. Finding a religious figure within Captain Grigoriiy's resistance and setting up the next stage of the soft/hearts and minds resistance on the planet.
7. Process Analysis to speed up the extraction (added +1 to total profit factor)


Rewards - +3 profit factor
- Archeotech Med Bay Established on the ship (thanks to Avixis)

July Session: Plotting, Negotiating, Building, Blowing up a Helicarrier

The Destruction of Captain Grigoriiy's Helicarrier

This Session ran in several important parts: 1. Tense negotiations with Orks 2. Establishment of a mining colony 3.Return to Tonunia to handle business.

1. In the first portion of the session, the group engaged in gunboat diplomacy with Orks (particularly Captain Longteeth), and leveraged the power of their alien bioweapons to frighten the Orks into submission and come to an accord. The Orks agreed to protect the system from external threats in exchange for the group leaving the turtle planet(a dead world once home to a species of turtle like humanoids with spacefaring technology and a love of highly advanced bioweapons) alone. The crew did have to show their hand and use the bioweapon on an Ork runt to achieve this. It worked.

2. Setting up a mining colony on the time-dilated gold/platinum moon. Having garnered an accord with the Orks, the group turned to setting up a mining colony, known as Hibbing-Biwabik. Colony was a mix of refugees, skilled laborers with a strong religious element. The colony is supported by algae farms, and regular export runs from chartist captains. 

3. Return to Tonunia. The group traveled back to Tonunia to deal with reports of terrorist attacks on the outskirts of their dig site. This led to negotiations with Golva and discussions with members of splinter factions on the planet. Additionally, the party took a look at some bodies from one of the paramilitary groups. The group gathered some small information before a lucky scan detected a large moving object with a nuclear generator. 

This object moved in fairly close to the central storm zone on Tonunia before a lucky shot from the ship's lance struck it, causing catastrophic damage. The floating object, which turned out to be a sort of floating platform and home to expertly trained paramilitaries went down, and the group was able to capture it's leader, with some difficulty. 

Roughly 7 months of in-game time elapsed during this session. Background note: Things have gotten really rough in the core of the Imperium, with the Eye of Terror opening up, Cadia falling, and the empire effectively being split in twain.

May and June sessions for Rogue Trader

It's been some time since posting, so I'll give a brief overview of recent events. 

House Grindal successfully completed and set up a trade route for Archeotech after clearing out an old hospital complex, and facing a demon of Khorne.

In the following session, the group began pursuing other options, and traveled to a star system that is out of sync with standard galactic time due to the warp. 

There, they found 2 major points of interest: 1. A world with significant precious metal deposits that would be ideal for mining. 2. A dead Xenos-World that seems to have perished due to incredibly advanced bioweapons that may have been turned on themselves.  

The explorers went aboard an orbital weapons platform, faced a robotic servitor of the Xenos filth, and faced a ship of Ork raiders. 

This led to our first ship to ship combat, with nearly disastrous results (Ork boarding parties) held off by valor, and foolhardy point blank firing of shipboard weapons into the Ork vessel.

Session 2: The Better Part of Valor/Beach Planet

Session Begins on Day 1 of  M42

Juri the Voidmaster, General Szaak Zero, Viviticus the Astropath and Cyculus the Explorator(Check spelling) walk into a dockside bar on Port Aquila.

There, in short order due to their charm and willingness to tender bribes, they come upon 3 rumors.
1. A lost human world settled before the Aquilan expanse was closed off, with glittering beaches and possible lost technology

2. A vessel lost in the passage between Port Aquila and the Aquilan Expanse, know as the "Forsaken Bounty," who recently sent out a distress beacon.

3. Possible mineral deposits rimward to the Shoals of Putrescence, a Nebula in the Expanse.

The group nominated Juri as temporary command officer, and made a plan to travel into the expanse, stopping in the Aquilan passage to search for the lost ship before pursuing the beach planet.

Traveling into the warp,  the entire ship experienced the same dream. A faceless boy chasing after men in robes, using what looked like telekinesis to pelt them with objects. Morale suffered aboard the Santa Cumulus, and the ship dropped out of warp, scanning, and coming upon a recently dead engine trail. Due to some navigational difficulties, it took nearly 7 days before the ship was able to get a much better look.

Prior to arriving and making scans, the group experienced more dreams of the faceless boy, eventually watching him tear the spinal column from one of the men in robes. This boy reminded Viviticus of a certain demon, and led to prudent uses of Psyniscience, showing a powerful demonic presence. Interestingly enough, there were 2 other ships in close proximity.

Scanning the area, the group spotted the Forsaken Bounty, and 2 powered down ships, one of alien design and one far more recent. Thinking of profit vs loss, Juri recommended against boarding the likely demon haunted vessel, and pulled the ship back, traveling instead into the expanse, and after some skullduggery/information gathering, to the beach planet.

There, they found an imperial splinter colony of roughly 21st century earth tech. 8 or 900 million people, city states, air travel, satellite communications nukes and all, and formulated a plan to open up trade with these people for archeotech, fish protein and luxury tourism.

The session ended before any action could be taken on this plan.

Total time elapsed- 7 weeks.

Part 2: Begins on day 49 of 001.M42

Still over the beach planet. Crew spends 2 months observing, gaining a sense of the planetary tech level, political structure, and more.

Most interesting discoveries: odd island with apparent weather control, and old STC structures on the northern continent. Giving indication of possible archeotech.

Crew kidnaps Uriah a teacher from the planet to teach them the culture and language, but the plan was muddled by an attempt by Aganamor to change the plans to kidnap an entire family. The operation ended up as a success, but the planetary government sent in helicopters with troops to try and stop the abduction.

Then, the group spent a month learning the basics of planetary language and culture, aided by the fact that the people spoke a language derived from high gothic. Their teacher, slowly became acclimated to life aboard the ship.

Once the crew learned the language and culture, they had a general negotiation with the trade guild on the planet. There, they saw a weird reverence for birds and triangles.

There was a brief, drug fueled discussion with a faction who spilled the beans about the alien benefactors behind this planet, before the negotiations came to a close.

With that, the crew completed negotiations.

Character Creation/XP roundup

Character creation is one of the messiest parts of this game. This post is devoted to essential links for character creation:

Career Path: Choose one from each box starting with homeworld. Only choose adjacent choices down the row. Compare to the origin cards link for what these mean. (And copy that stuff down)

Career path
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B2v8IGsNwqipVkpjRDhjd0tTazQ/view?usp=drivesdk

Origin Cards:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1dHdluO8_UrPR8wMFPyUuH-EYYe6NgjKbwbnXmGbrAT8/edit?usp=drivesdk

Spend 1000 XP: see below chart for costs, this is all related to your aptitudes

XP costs
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1V0Vz4uiagxoDnCJwYD59yHf3BLjP9srlSK2DYxjjmWM/edit?usp=drivesdk

Talent list: not compete, but a great index with descriptions, tiers and aptitudes:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d13A2wAVCyr1b4rdnnAvSzYryZ6pDXC4c30m2xdRhjLyU/edit?usp=drivesdk