My current group is engaged into following the previous group (presumed lost) into the hunt for the Dread Pearl.

It has been over an year since the original RTs "expeditionary forces" left Footfall, and from those, only Bastille, Armelan, Scourge, Blitz and Sun Lee have come back.

Neither of them having been able to reach the Pearl, it seems Fel reached the eldar temple in Quppa Psi 12 first and destroyed the nexus there, his ship becoming missing shortly after (PCs are after him now, with Charlabelle's help, while being spied upon/hunted by other RTs who failed before).

In the middle of all this, Ordo Xenos Radicals (a Confessor and an Inquisitor) acting as "Cold Traders" out of Footfall (see Hostile Acquisitions book), have grown an interest on the Pearl, and being the player's Dynasty a respected and reputable one (even though has lost 40+ of its PF in the past 2 years), are considering proposing a deal to them:

- Provided they offer the "best price in the market" for these, the Dynasty is to provide them with the first item of any Xeno tech not encountered before or that isn't redundant (they only need 1 piece of each type of artifact).

- They must keep a representative on their flagship at all times when dealing with Xenos (yup, that's a disguised Inquisitor right there) for both "council" and assurance of their compact going as planned.

In game terms, each new artifact provided (e.g.: witchblade, howler rifle, etc..) means extra 25-100 achievement points towards their current endeavors.

But... If they screw up terribly bad, the Inquisition will know (there are limits, even to a Radical's moral code).

What do you think?

Experience with my group has taught me that they will try to sell everything I describe in a scene no matter how inconsequential. Having to tithe off one weapon once from fighting off a Rak'Gol attack will not be too much of an issue, especially since if you're trying to reverse-engineer or study things you want a sample size bigger than one.

Other than that I am a fan of the idea. Especially since if there is someone who is overseeing the party's actions they will try to get around them. Also the Ordo Xenos are almost certainly going to take note of the first time they sell ANYTHING to someone who isn't the Ordo Xenos (possibly including the Adeptus Mechanicus), and then have material that could actually get the Rogue Trader and their dynasty executed.

No need to over-emphasize that point to your players though. Or mention it at all. They'll figure it out.

I don't know what else to say, other than "I like it", I find myself at odds with what else to say, but I also don't want this thread to go unnoticed or die, or that you feel that people are ignoring it. So I felt I better say something.

It sounds great.

When this inevitably blows up in the player's faces, remember to ramp up the radical side of the Ordo Xenos that you rarely get to see. While radicals of Ordo Hereticus and Ordo Malleus more or less have their "ways" drawn up, you rarely get to see much of Ordo Xenos aside from the Deathwatch, and seeing as how the puritans of Ordo Xenos doesn't differ much from what could be called the norm, the end result is that what is depicted tends to be the Puritan side of Ordo Xenos.

So - Stormtroopers with Pulse Rifles, maybe a Salamander with skimmer-units instead of tracks, or even transgenic grafts for chosen acolytes (a normal-looking courier of the Inquisitor suddenly performing eldar-like feats of agility). All is fair in love and war.

Edit: Also, infiltrators. Ships tend to take on large amounts of crew (whether press-ganged or not) whenever it's in port (and also lose crew, of course). An Inquisitor out in the Expanse has no major authority on his own and putting infiltrators on their ship (even if not for a directly sinister purpose - they may just be there as "added security" or reporting on the things the assigned "advisor" do not get to see) sounds like the exact thing a radical inquisitor may do.

How they handle communication with the home office? Xenotech communicators that run on technobabble, of course.

In addition to the spies, there might also be those that don't even know that they are spies. Things go wrong? The Rogue Trader betrays you? BOOM, three workers in the underdecks just exploded in clouds of ork-spores! A foreman in the civilian section started coughing spore-sludge into the air filters! This will severely cripple the ship for weeks as we deal with it, sire, and if we don't, the ship may very well be lost within the month!

Super fun! It's always nice to have an observer on the ship...it keeps the Crew on their toes!

Check out the Agent of Reliquary 26 alternate rank from Daemon Hunter source book for Dark Heresy - your radicals could very easily be working as such agents and using unscrupulous means to acquire any-and-all things of interest!

Thanks for the feedback, I am now just trying to find a failsafe for the PCs not to be executed when the trade ends.

I recommend finding a Heretek agency inside of the Expanse, having them grow a clone of the person(s) assigned to your ship, strip-mining your observer's mind, implanting modified versions into the clone from growth but modified to erase any inconvenient dealings and then sent back to act as your spy in the Inquisition.

Best part is they'll never see it coming because this is a heresy not a Xenos matter, so you should have a couple of years before the Ordo Hereticus shows up asking inconvenient questions. At which point a Daemon can make an appealing offer.

I recommend finding a Heretek agency inside of the Expanse, having them grow a clone of the person(s) assigned to your ship, strip-mining your observer's mind, implanting modified versions into the clone from growth but modified to erase any inconvenient dealings and then sent back to act as your spy in the Inquisition.

Best part is they'll never see it coming because this is a heresy not a Xenos matter, so you should have a couple of years before the Ordo Hereticus shows up asking inconvenient questions. At which point a Daemon can make an appealing offer.

I swear that when I started reading it, "You've got time - Regina Spektor" started playing on my playlist in Grooveshark.