Weirdly DH does have rules for handling Followers socially and during combat, but it doesn't have rules for retaining Followers as someone pointed out the other day. So here's some quick and dirty ones for anyone interested:

DEFINING FOLLOWERS

• A Follower is a fully statted, partially player-controlled NPC who has at most 2 less Career Ranks than the lowest Career Ranked PC in the party (to a minimum of Career Rank 1).
• A Follower can follow any Career, have any Rank, and have any Elite Advance.
• A Follower is always created by the GM and will match the requirements of the party as loosely or closely as the GM decides.
• The Party is not under any obligation to actually hire a potential Follower.

Basically, the Party declares what kind(s) of Follower(s) they're looking for and the GM designs the Follower(s) he wants them to be able to retain. Disagreements are solves easily enough; the players simply doesn't retain unwanted followers.

LOCATING FOLLOWERS

• Locating a Follower is a Fellowship Test, but with the following modifiers
• Add +10 for every Talented (Skill) and Peer (Faction) Talent the Party possessed that the GM deems relevant to locating the type of Follower(s) the Party is looking for.
• Add +10 if the Party will be paying 1 Step better than the default for the type of Follower (See Retaining Followers below).
• Subtract -10 if the Party will be paying 1 Step worse than the default for the type of Follower (See Retaining Followers below).
• Further modify the value based on local population as if the Follower was a Rare Item using Table5-4 on p.126 of DH01 Core Rules.

Time spent locating a Follower is the same as time spent to locate a Rare item (see DH01 Core Rules, p.126 Table 5-5).

RETAINING FOLLOWERS

Followers demand a paycheque just like anyone else. But since followers aren't on par with True Acolytes™ they default to a pay grade 1 step below what an Acolyte would receive.

Use Table 5-1 on p.124 of DH01 Core Rules.

I'm not sure further rules are needed to fully cover Followers in DH, so I'll leave off here with a Thought For The Day: Never keep the cup you rinse your brushes in next to your teacup. Yuck!

Very cool. I went looking for rules for 'henchmen' a little while ago, and was surprised when I couldn't find any...

Rare Character Classes (Or, as I like to call them, Rarachter Classes) should be harder to find. Hiring a Psyker, for example, or a Tech Priest. When searching for a follower it should go something like this:

Roll an hard (-20) Inquiry test, as though looking for a weapon or item, with the following additional modifiers:

-10 for a city size of 1,000 or smaller

+10 for a city size of 10,000 to 100,000

+20 for a city size of 100,000 to 1,000,000

+30 for a city size of 1,000,000+

If the test is passed, roll the character's career randomly, using the chart for that planet type. For every degree of success, an additional character can be found. These characters must be two ranks lower than the lowest ranking Acolyte in the team, but it is up to the GMs discretion what their exact rank will be, and what gear they have. (Note that, at this point, only basic information is known. Name, rank, and career.) The players may hire multiple characters, or choose which ones they will hire.)

Additionally, the acolytes may attempt to find a specific class of character, for an additional -20 penalty. (Reduced to -10 if they have 'Peer' for that character class.)

Additionally, they suffer a -30 if looking for a character class not normally available (For example, finding an Adept on a Feral World).

Any found character may be hired for the price listed in the book as their 'Salary.' They may be haggled down by up to two ranks lower than standard, but a pitted Barter test must be taken for each step, and failure by three or more degrees will make the character decide not to work for the group. Alternately you can choose to pay him more, if the Acolytes so choose. (This has no in-game effect, but the GM may decide it's relevant if the character is asked to do something particularly dangerous or criminal.)