Have any of you introduced an inquisitor PC/ NPC in your rogue trader story?

In a few black library novel's you'll find inquistors making aliances with rogue traders,

mostly for transportation but also for the resources, information, exotic artifacts etc...

As a Rogue trader you have more freedom and power than just about everyone else

but saying no to an inquisitor can be the last thing you do.

No doubt inquisitor NPC onboard your ship will make for interesting adventures:

Help the inquistion wipe out foul alien scum! (but risk having your ship shot down)

Aid the inquisitor in track a band of space pirates! (pirates that you have traded withfor years)

Ferry the inquisitor and his retinue towards their destination (while you really should be out exploring the Koronus expanse)

So please tell me your stories of Rogue trader and wheter or not any inquisitors were involved.

Stories from Dark Heresy where the acolytes found themselves on board a rogue traders vessel are also welcome here!

Too many to recount. At this point, everyone in the party does their best to avoid the inquisition. Rival or peer, it's better not to attract their attention.

The most amusing (for the very, very short duration of his appearance) was probably the jaundiced Inquisitor Lemongrab. He judged the PCs' worth and found them... unacceptable. One of very few inquisitors to have actually died in my campaigns.

Inquisitor: "Vile scum! how dare you trade in xeno-tech! Confess! Is there any more of this foul stuff on board your vessel?"

RT: "I-I'm afraid so sir! Please I shall take you to another hidden stockpile."

I: "very well, move!"

RT: "here it is my lord, it is in this room"

I" let's have a look at it and- hey wait this is an airloooooooooo-"

RT: "hmph, pesky inquisition!"

I mentioned this thread to one of my players, and got this:

I'll take that as a 'tell me about your campaign' question...

Bit of background: 1. We're based in Calixis Sector and therefore have to act somewhat sensible... 2. We've found a planetsystem of 10 billion humans that have never heard of the Emperor (their Generation-ships predates all that), and are hoping to score some long-term cash by bringing it into the Imperium - sofar that has involved the Missionaria Galaxia, a Navy Ship and lending them some Lawyers. 3. The war in the Periphery is starting to put a strain on the Imperial Navy presence in the rest of the Sector. Also Severus got the "Sub-sector" fleet with him.

The Cruiser "Landsholt" (dating back to the Angevin Crusade) was making a tour of the Hazeroth Abyss, to show their flag and assure people that the fleet weren't abandoning them just because they were pulling a few ships from the subsector. They were easily persuaded to make a stop at our newfound planet (which is just outside the Subsector) to impress them. The ship also happened to have a Ordo Hereticus Inquisitor with them (for unexplained reasons) and an Ordo Xenos Interrogator, both who would also like to see said planetsystem... especially the Ordo Hereticus Inquisitor would REALLY like to know if they'd found an effective drug to subdue their psykers. Not really... they're just storing them at an Insanity-Asylumn at the South Pole, heavily doped. Anyway, he's talking to 'the rest of the Ordos' about getting the Psykers moved, possibly getting our help and lending us a Null Bay (Hostile Requisitions) for the project - something the RT found hard to say no to... but since the family has a reputation of being a bit piraty, that's probably not going to go through anyway...

Anyway, we've spotted a couple of Acolytes undercover on our ship - deduced they're working for the Hereticus-dude since they actively avoided being in the same areas as him. They subdued and questioned one of the visitors from the new Planet. The problem was they destroyed the surveillance equipment in that part of the ship to do so unseen... So, they were called to talk to the RT, who wanted to know what had happened to the visitor/how much he remembered, since she wished to avoid political scandal on the planet. She did not want to hear their excuses, just what had happened, and told them not to disable her cameras again. This is a while ago ingame, they still serve on one of the ships - but may get dumped before we take a trip to Scarus Sector. Haven't quite decided yet.

The Xenos Interrogator was probably bored. We don't have Xenos onboard...

We've also been scouting out the Periphery a bit, to assess the danger and how long the rest of the Sector is going to run with a decreased number of Navy ships. At our quickly chosen base of operations, Vuluptua, an Inquisitor turned up unannounced at the bridge (alone), wanting to talk to the RT. Bit embarassing, security really should have warned ahead... anyway, turns out it's an Ordo Xenos Inquisitor who is concerned about the Ork Invasion. Apparently someone told her that the RT ship would be well suited for that task. It is. She tries to indicate that the RT should really do as she is told, to which the RT replies that she's sure the "Admiral, High General and other Inquisitors in the area feel the same way". Anyway, since there's some reward-stuff offered for shooting Ork Ships, we don't really see the problem piping her information about the orks we run into.

We're left with the feeling that she's a newly-minted Inquisitor who's been told "Oh, why don't you see if you can do something about the orks in the periphery, maybe you can try getting info from this person - but be careful. Acolytes? You really have to find some on your own". We infact shot an Ork Terrorship and took its cogitators in the hope of getting some useful information out of them. The Tech-Priest actually assigned to look at them was someone we could easily spare - and who promptly got recruited by the Inquisitor when she came to look at it. Later on, we took a trip to an outlying planet, hoping to sell them weapons. As it turned out it had been completely run over by orks, with something like 10-15 ships in the system. We snuck around, found out they were looking for SOMETHING at one of the gasgiants, and piped the info back to the Inquisitor - her headache now.

That's the Inquisitors we've met. In the family history, there's also one mentioned: A couple of Thousand years ago, in another Sector, one of the RTs got very good friends with an Inquisitor. Unfortunately that Inquisitor got into a long-lasting feud with another Inquisitor and they ended up nuking it out on a planet with all their allies helping out. Both inquisitors died. The RT was left disillusioned. And lost 5 ships. Since then a family-motto has been: Don't get involved with the inquisition - last time it cost us 5 ships! Probably no-one but the family even remembers this piece of history...

Never felt the need to. Rogue Trader ships just don't leave port without some agents of the Big "I" in their crew. If questionable activity is suspected then surprise inspections by the Adeptus Arbites become more common wiithin Imperial space. Eventually, the bridge crew will become infiltrated. If a real threat is discovered, an assassin will be dispatched. The only time we got that far, I spoke to the person playing the navigator between sessions and told them, "I want to kill your character. What do I need to offer you?" The looks on the other players' faces as they entered the Navigators' tower and found carnage run amok and all the 3-eyed people slain was priceless, truly priceless.

Not that I haven't thought about it from time to time, just never felt the need to actually field one.

I like what you did there: having the threat of the big "I" looming over everything without an inquisitor being present.

Inquisitor: "ok guys you have fun playing with your ship and adventuring across the stars... But the moment you go heretic-you're dead!"

Despatching an assassin towards a single vessel in wilderness space, a quandrant away might prove difficult- altough the "I" might have planted a sort archeotech tracking psychic beacon on the RT's vessel. Or maybe have an (eversor) assassin stowed away.

Man, that would be awesome, one of the RT's bridgecrew exploring the vessel and in some forgotten corner wedged between ancient devices is a cryopod with an eversor assassin inside! (they keep those on ice in between missions, otherwise they go on a killing spree)

GT: "you have found what? calm down! what do you mean its opening? who's comming out? stop screa-"

GT: Hmmm, The line went dead. All hands to battestations! seal the bridge!"

Being a dumb ass, sometimes, I like to keep the idea of a Callidus in my back pocket. Like every being, they do need to be trained to harness their skills, and they do need to practice, to keep them honed. I have absolutely no problem with having one sneak aboard the party's ship, were I running a game, and letting the party play as they wanted. If they start doing questionable things,, I'll warn them that what they're up to could end badly. If that fails, I'll try to repeat it, in game, to get the point across. If they continue to misbehave, and in a somewhat obvious way (if the whole party agrees that they want to be heretics, or secessionist crazies, I'll let a certain amount of that go; I want them to have fun), I'll wait for the particular malefactor, likely the Rogue Trader, to be off alone with one of the other players, possibly the Arch Militant or the Seneshal, and while they are conversing, I'll bum the other character's sheet for a moment, and SURPRISE, the AM shifts into a Callidus, and that RT is DEAD. That other player will find out they've been tied up for some time, and things are fixed. It's a bit of a douchebag plan, I wholly admit, but one that does fit with the scene of 40k, and one they'd have been warned about the potential of, well in advance; the grimdark future DOES punish a-holes for the crime of being a-holes. And if they don't do anything terribad, then the Callidus can as easily slink off the ship as she got on, and no one will ever have been the wiser; I love those Assassins, and easily believe they are that good.

And that bridge door; not going to hold If Qui-Gon Jinn got through most of it, an Eversor Assassin will find it funny that you even closed it.

In the game i'm currently running the players are yet to come across the Inquisition, or at least be aware of them. However in a previous game where i was playing the RT we had some issues with another Dynasty. The Armengarde's had been trading partners for a while but my advances to sort out an arranged marriage were being rebuffed. I realize this was in part due to me not being picky whether it was mother or daughter Armengarde... but when an Inquisitor rocked up and i became aware that they were working with the Armengarde's i knew something had to be done as we had some slightly heretical aspects of our crew (Xenos for one).

So in our little frigate we waited til the big 'ol cruiser caught up with us in orbit around some planet or other out in the expanse.
And we opened vox channels and began conversing.

And then i gave the order to open fire and our pair of Best-Crafstmanship Turbo Upgraded Pyros Melta batteries virtually tore the cruiser in half and ignited most of its systems in the opening volley. We quickly left the scene.

Unfortunately that game didn't continue long enough to find out whether any of the NPCs had Fate points to burn and come back as nemesis' so that question will always be left hanging. I'd say all inquisitors should have at least Touched By The Fates 2 so that PCs can't just off them immediately.

While on the subject of arranged marriages...

When GW brought back the Knights, i started thinking about knights and rogue traders. My mind flashed with immages of a zealous RT starting his own lttle crusade to bring the emperors light to the unbelielvers and foul xenos alike, at the head of his private army and suported by several giant knights.

And for a RT daughter you can do no wrong by marrying into nobilty, right? Especialy if the noble house has lots of heavily armed mecha!

There is a regularly appearing Lord Inquisitor (NPC) involved with my Rogue Trader group, and most of the characters are actually on fairly good terms with him. Of course, being a borderline-radical Ordo Xeno Inquisitor likely helps, as does the fact that one of his senior acolytes (the one currently being groomed for the role of inquisitor himself) is also now the Lord Captain’s cousin-in-law.

It’s actually been a great opening for expanding the kinds of adventures the characters can go on. (We’ve been playing a number of modified Deathwatch and Dark Heresy adventures.) The players also like having him around as a way to clear off items that are too hot for even a Rogue Trader to comfortably handle. Like a powerful demon weapon, or a copy of the Liberius Demonica. Indeed, it was because of that demon weapon they launched on a mini-adventure to intentionally find an inquisitor so they could hand it over.

The Armengarde's had been trading partners for a while but my advances to sort out an arranged marriage were being rebuffed. I realize this was in part due to me not being picky whether it was mother or daughter Armengarde... but when an Inquisitor rocked up and i became aware that they were working with the Armengarde's i knew something had to be done as we had some slightly heretical aspects of our crew (Xenos for one).

Well, sorry to pirate the thread a minute, but I am now curious; minusing out that it didn't quite work, how did you go about making initial arrangements for marriage with another Rogue Trader? You have everything, they have everything. What plotting, planning, and promises did you use that these arrangements even got started? I can imagine Rogue Traders pooling resources, but most aren't very trusting, or sharing, so what kind of stuff was discussed. In Lure, I have always sort of liked the idea of a RT proposing to Lady Charlaelle Armelan, and she's not even loaded, but I don't know how these two agencies broach the topic, when either one should sort of laugh at the other, knowing what they really want; money and power.

@ venkelos

You have a fleet, they have a fleet- together you have an even bigger fleet! Or maybe the RT's want to mary other lineages so they don't have to keep it "all in the family" (wink wink), wich i suspect they do anyway.

But how about this: They have better navigators? Or ancient star charts (how's that for a dowry?)

or maybe just plain old LOVE. yes not very grimdark I know, but even Khorne has Valkia the bloody, so...

Can you immagine romeo and juliet in 40k? two families going at each other with bolt pistols and chainswords! And " A pox on both your houses" might very well be a Nurgle curse.

My dynasty was small, we had an immensely over gunned frigate and not much PF. They had better PF but not so good a ship. We were adventerous but had few holdings, they had large holdings but were quite reserved. It was a chance to create a larger, more rounded dynasty. Plus I think as mentioned arranged marriages can be a cool plot point.

I can see that, but imagine a set of prenuptial agreements to make the most jaded celebrities crap themselves; I don't see most Rogue Traders as trusting, and loyalty, as well as fidelity, can sometimes be questionable. I've actually made a thread for this before, and got mixed results. It just seems a massive, complicated undertaking, and I don't know how you, the player, wouldgo about initiating it, assuming the GM didn't fiat it by having, in this case, the Armengardes, propose it to you. This isn't as simple as boy and girl are in love --> let's get married, but more royal arranged marriage purely for benefit meets hostile takeover merger of companies, and I know both would want some of both people's stuff, but wouldn't want to have all of their stuff now belong, or be co-opted to the other, especially if things go sour. Granted, if ____________ and Igraine Armengarde had also decided affection was possible, that could have helped (unlikely when you might hit on her, AND her mom )

Case in point, my womanizing, flamboyant pirate of a Rogue Trader, Aedan Qel-Drake, has yet to marry; the idea throws shudders down his spine, to be honest, when he's got plenty of reasons to remain "available", but someday, he'll probably want an heir, and his dynasty isn't huge, at present, so gaining some stuff from another could help. I just can't easily envision the mechanics whereby he'd propose the idea to propose to one of the Armengardes (he's closer in age to Igraine), or maybe Charlabelle Armellan, since I mentioned her, before. (Sun Lee is interesting for a guy with so many dragon motifs, but I think she'd own and whip him, pretty easy ) Also not sure how you, as player and as GM, decide the mechanical benefits of the merger. You can't get megatonnes of PF for selling a ship, even though they are worth numerous PF, so I'm not sure how you might acquire PF or ships, or other benefits from the marriage, if things went smoothly.

I can see that, but imagine a set of prenuptial agreements to make the most jaded celebrities crap themselves; I don't see most Rogue Traders as trusting, and loyalty, as well as fidelity, can sometimes be questionable. I've actually made a thread for this before, and got mixed results. It just seems a massive, complicated undertaking, and I don't know how you, the player, wouldgo about initiating it, assuming the GM didn't fiat it by having, in this case, the Armengardes, propose it to you. This isn't as simple as boy and girl are in love --> let's get married, but more royal arranged marriage purely for benefit meets hostile takeover merger of companies, and I know both would want some of both people's stuff, but wouldn't want to have all of their stuff now belong, or be co-opted to the other, especially if things go sour. Granted, if ____________ and Igraine Armengarde had also decided affection was possible, that could have helped (unlikely when you might hit on her, AND her mom )

Case in point, my womanizing, flamboyant pirate of a Rogue Trader, Aedan Qel-Drake, has yet to marry; the idea throws shudders down his spine, to be honest, when he's got plenty of reasons to remain "available", but someday, he'll probably want an heir, and his dynasty isn't huge, at present, so gaining some stuff from another could help. I just can't easily envision the mechanics whereby he'd propose the idea to propose to one of the Armengardes (he's closer in age to Igraine), or maybe Charlabelle Armellan, since I mentioned her, before. (Sun Lee is interesting for a guy with so many dragon motifs, but I think she'd own and whip him, pretty easy ) Also not sure how you, as player and as GM, decide the mechanical benefits of the merger. You can't get megatonnes of PF for selling a ship, even though they are worth numerous PF, so I'm not sure how you might acquire PF or ships, or other benefits from the marriage, if things went smoothly.

If things went smoothly?

They won't. Someone will try to throw a wrench in the works. More likely multiple someones.

See, this is something that needs to be addressed in the rules - how to flesh out a Dynasty and its holdings, how to deal with Dynastic alliances/takeovers/mergers/etc. They took a baby step with the enhanced Warrant Path stuff, but didn't go anywhere near far enough.

While my current campaign hasn't had an Inquisitor show up directly, I run all my 40k campaigns in the same persistent 'verse, with the result that the party's starting ship was an ultra-covert Inquisitorial asset that was seized and sold after being essentially abandoned in high anchor over 41-Pry (the Inquisitor that owned it wound up dead in a Dark Heresy campaign that left the walking city of Ambulon with a limp, while the Acolytes to whom the ship was assigned got themselves spectacularly killed trying to meet their contact in another campaign).

This means their little sloop has Inquisitorial codes and cryptography (and potentially secrets...) hard-coded into its cogitators. They've been very cautious about when they use that little advantage, as they're all wanted for at least 3 capital offences from various Imperial organisations, and posing as Throne agents is the last thing they want to be caught doing...

Another group started off by trying to turn the flying bordello/casino they'd just "inherited" due to the death of the Warrant holder and lack of a suitable heir into something with a bit of a punch- so they tried to parlay the Warrant's Militant rights and obligations into a free pass at getting the best troops they could as a boarding force. And since they were at Scintilla, they went straight to the owners of best trained and equipped troops they could think of- in this case, the Inquisitorial Storm Trooper Regiment headquartered at the Tricorn.

The Inquisition was absolutely delighted to loan them a short battalion of Storm Troopers, as it saved them the effort of infiltrating agents aboard. I decided to be generous and point out the fact that their new unit's loyalties would remain primarily with the Inquisition before they went ahead with their plan of a campaign of piracy (which would have started with a raid on Admiralty House over the Sector Capital, in full view of the cruiser squadron orbiting there, and would have used the Storm Troopers as a significant part of their backup)...

Another campaign had a Dynasty in serious monetary trouble (Finances in Arrears), who were approached by an Inquisitor (with a reputation of being a "burn them all, and let the Emperor sort them out" Monodominant), who offered to deal with their creditors, in return for certain... services. They started off as informants and an occasional taxi service, and wound up watching his descent into radicalism and eventually heresy before deciding that perhaps it would be an opportune time to explore the possibilities elsewhere. On the other side of the galaxy. Before the Ordo Malleus took him down, and them with him.

We once run into an Ordo Chronos Inquisitor. Kinda sucked that we lost all the archeotech bling we got from 15k old exploration fleet (that was frozen in time) when she altered the timeline to fix it.

And that bridge door; not going to hold If Qui-Gon Jinn got through most of it, an Eversor Assassin will find it funny that you even closed it.

I remember the Horus Heresy book 'Nemesis' - the quote from the eversor clade assassin: "There's an Armoury on this ship and no-one told me?"

I just have an image of the Rogue Trader, "Safe" on the bridge.

"Do we know where it is?"

"He just took out a house guard squad eight decks down, my lord. He's....oh...oh, dear...."

"What? What?!?!"

"I think he's heading for your trophy room. You don't think he'll know how to use the stuff in there?"

"ABANDON SHIP!!!!!"

Ah yeah Nemesis, they should have gone with Eversor's first idea of sending every single eversor assassin in the universe at Horus at the same time, rather than what they ended up doing. I have this image of a primarch getting dogpiled by dozens of psychotic eversors...

As has been pointed out before, the primary use of Temple Assassins for them to be (mysteriously) unsuccessful and killed so as to demonstrate how bad-ass the enemy your about to take on is.

At least M'shen killed a primrach...

Who saw her comming and let her kill him...

Dammit assassins! y u no good?

Well, we're pretty sure we helped the Inquisition out on Svard. Because there was this lady who had some associates. She flashed me something that looked like a rosette and was working with the Eldar.

I mean... we took it at face value.

We gave her one of the captured Rak'Gol (the torn apart one) and freed the system from the Yu'Vath (that my character's ancestor put there).

I'm getting a real bad feeling here.

That actualy made me think of something...

How does the average imperial citizen* know what an inquisitorial rosette looks like?

What DOES it look like for that matter? A stylised letter "I" but is that with a skull on it or not?

I assume planetary governors and arbites and such individuals know what it looks like, but what is it exaclty? could it be forged? could I go around waving my rosette* in some merchants face and tell me to give me his best wares because the fate of the imperium depends upon it?

I do suspect that if the real inquisition finds out they will not be happy. i imagine they put people caught pretending to be inquisitors in the torture room they normaly reserve for dark eldar...

* I am aware of how dirty that sounds...

I dunno, I can think of a few notable cases where Assassins are successful in the fluff, outside of their old mini-dex.

As for Inquisitors. I'm not sure if I have one on my ship, or if he's just a heretic (or both). We have an arrangement of convenience, he's going to share what he finds with me, I give him some space to work (and some of the crew occasionally)...

I haven't decided if I'm going to kill him sooner or later.

I would be shocked if the average citizen knows what an Imperial Rosette is, but the average Inquisitor is also smart enough to recognise that a rosette alone isn't going to impress people. A retinue of Stormtroopers or a Cruiser in Exterminatus orbit is enough to back their point up.

There are probably con artists who pretend, to be Inquisitors, but there have to be systems in place to take care of that, and it's probably an instant priority case for the Ordo Hereticus.