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

The Chaos Alembic of the Spider Lords!

In this prologue and character creation session, a number of characters were established, and the Explorers traveled to an alien world to seek out the Chaos Alembic, a device rumored to be capable of purifying juvenat from various sources.

Our explorers:

Juri - Voidmaster - born aboard a Pilgrim vessel
General Szaak Zero - Archmilitant from a noble line
Felix Fortunato - Young ship's Navigator with oddly jointed bones
Skykes - Astropath Transcendent, extremely young
Kraxius Bent of House Grendal - Rogue Trader, next in line for the throne, bastard child of Azarach Grendal.


The story began at the dawning of the 42nd Millenium in Port Aquila , a collection of planetoids that forms a major trading hub within the Askellon sector, an area of Imperial space far from the shining light of the Emperor. Due to recent civil disorder (including the betrayal and death of the sector prefectrix), juvenat was in very short supply, putting the current holder of the Grendal warrant of trade in danger of dying from old age.

Following up on rumors of the aforementioned Chaos Alembic, the Explorers spent time getting in touch with their contacts, sending out canvassers, and studying up on spider-like xenos breeds. Eventually, Galliac Harthos, a shipping captain and old pal of Szaak Zero, was able to put the group in contact with Carm "Bones," Caradoc , a legitimate businessman (smuggler of xenos artifacts), who offered information on a world, Kyprios IV, where an advanced species of spiders' great cities now molder beneath jungles full of dangerous animals.

He offered this information on the condition that the explorers promise to destroy ancient defensive platforms, and threated to kill the explorers if they dare to disrupt his trade in sculptures from the planet.

The group then set out into the void in the frigate Santa Cumulus. Felix set a course, and established that due to eddies of the warp, it should take roughly 50 days to travel to the Kyprios system from Port Aquila. There were some complications while en route, including shipboard statues coming to life, but morale was damaged more than anything else.

From there, the group traveled to the planet, and Skyxe used psyker powers to attempt to find intelligent life on the surface itself. Finding only animals, the group proceeded to the surface ruins, and after some debate, decided to land on them directly, and use a laser cutter to enter (rather than tracking through the jungle). From there, the group was able to eventually make their way to what seemed to have been some kind of throne room, surprisingly enough, adorned with recent human skulls.

Before long, the spider-robots(heretical on account of being built by aliens, and by being some kind of thinking machines or robots) responsible for these grisly trophies emerged, terrifying the house guards with the party. The robots were fought off, but not before Skykes managed to summon a bunch of ghosts from the warp to terrify more people.

Shortly after that, a house guard by the name of Titus was chosen for the honor of approaching a sarcophagus near the top of the chamber. When he attempted to open it, it set off a trap, leading to a small bomb falling from the ceiling, tearing him in half.

Before spending too long mourning, the group figured out how to set off the trap, and spent an hour or so expending all the bombs it had, then heading up to the sarcophagus for their prize, the chaos Alembic.

Shortly after collecting their prize, the group heard a brief communication from the surface, suggesting that ant creatures were swarming the landing party. Skykes sent an astropathic distress signal to the Santa Cumulus, and by the time the group had reached the surface, the area was pacified, at the cost of roughly 2 dozen house guards.

From there, the group destroyed the orbital platforms, tested the Alembic, and brought it back to Azarach in the nick of time. This prevented his sudden death, but would only prolong the inevitable, as months without juvenat treatments had left him weak.

Fast forwarding 2 years, Azarach of House Grendal is dead, and Kraxius Bent is the new holder of the Warrant of Trade(after surviving some number of assassination attempts). Additionally, the warp storms that have plagued the Askellon sector receded slightly revealing what has been described as the Aquilan Passage, a break in the warp storms, heading out towards an area that's being tentatively called the Aquilan Expanse, a long inaccessible area of space bound to be full of Xenos, un-exploited worlds, and lost humans from the dark age of technology.

Brave and greedy men and women will be needed to explore this expanse. +1 profit factor to the group for having successfully captured the alembic. Before the beginning of next session, profit factor and ship will need to be established, and every PC will be allowed to spend the final 1000 xp from character creation (I'll be posting stuff related to that soon).