Securing Your Future

By venkelos, in Rogue Trader

So, at some point, I did a thread on marriage, or alternatives to it, that Rogue Traders might do, and now, I am looking to sort of expand on that with this. For people who play the game long enough, and who play with an eye toward the future, rather than just today, or say "it's a game. We don't need to plan that much." one assumes that your Rogue Trader (sorry to hedge out your fun characters who AREN'T the RT) is going to need to have an heir. If you don't run a system of appointment, where you declare someone else as your heir, you'd probably need to have a child, to carry on your legacy; maybe carve the last letter, or two, of your name into the moon of BLANK, in the event you die before it's completed.

For those of you who have RPed their character to that degree, regardless of how you got a child (might've hooked up with a noble, their child, found an especially attractive nobody on your ship, or even taken another RT hostage for breeding purposes, not an issue which), what did you do with that offspring? Keeping your child on your ship is safe, in that a lot of your power can be brought to bear to keep them safe, but not so much in that ships can be raided, lost in the warp, or destroyed, causing the loss of you AND your heir. Alternatively, you could send them to a planet, and trust others to watch them, like Aoife Armengarde sort of does, but that's got its own perils, too. When it came time for YOU to make this decision, what did you go with?

Our RT has fathered multiple children, and arranged for each one to be adopted by an entirely different family unbeknownst to either the child or the family adopting them. He then checks in occasionally and covertly on each of them to see which one shows the most promise. My understanding is whichever is looking the best at the time has an announcement set up for them in the event of his death, and the others will never even know their bloodline as an attempt to stave off intra-dynasty intrigues.

I raised the possibility of someone else figuring out who one of them was and trying to use them, and he said that was what stories were made of.

Yeah, have lots of children. Some of them are going to be disappointments, anyway. Pick an important spouse so your rivals don't want to mess with both families by messing with your kids. Foster them off to another important family in exchange for giving one of theirs an officer's apprenticeship aboard your vessel. Interlace alliances as much as possible to ensure your family's safety.

I think I mentioned this in another thread, my character impregnated his secretary and ended up with a bastard daughter. Said secretary then ran off to have the kid in secret and use her to come after his money. After winning full custody via a settlement and some veiled threats through legal representatives the girl is currently living with my character's sister on Damaris and has been declared heir to their majority stake in a shipping and logistics corporation for the local mining industry that also runs drugs on the side.

I don't really have any intention of bringing her into the void as of this time, mostly because she's about two years old. My guy is an arch militant so I don't really have a warrent to worry about or whatever.

Edited by Amazing Larry

The rogue trader in the last campaign I played in ended up marrying Charlabelle Armelan. The resulting heir was left in the heavily secured family manse back on Scintilla to be raised in the proper noble fashion.

My own character had ambitions to marry into a powerful family, realised post-campaign.

Edited by Decessor

In our current campaign, the RT was the last surviving heir of her Dynasty. So it was one of the very first thing she did when she got her warrant back : trying to get children ASAP.

They choosed to keep the children on board, especially when their mother get poisonned by the dynasty archennemy and kept in a Ressuriatrix chamber, so that the other PCs, playing as regents, start their training. Being in a very old, archeotech ladden, hardass battlecruiser helped fr that choice.

My character did what any proper member of the nobility must do: Send them to the navy. Surely, you know captains who will do well on their schooling and train them up right and proper!