In many ways, it's actually the perfect entry for the Eldar. Eldar are masters of making their enemies fight each other until they're to weak to fend for themselves. If anything, the eldar are sitting on the sidelines manipulating things to ensure there is as much fighting as possible between the Rogue Traders. Things like False Astropathic messages, strike teams to sabotage ships before boarding actions, even lance or macrocannon fire from hidden ships aimed to look like they came from another Rogue Trader's ship.

Indeed, if they take long enough doing these battles (remember 1/2 hour turns et al, and cleaning up boarding actions can take even longer.) they might miss the window entirely for landing on the planet, and the Eldar will have won without loosing a single soldier.

judging by the timeline in the book itsself, they would have already missed their opportunity by going back to space after landing the first time. if possible I may have to change the climax to be in space. I think they only have 2-4 sessions left for the year and I really want either the campaign finished or them finished off.

so sounds to me like it'll be Bastille Gerrit and Charlabelle for sure against Fenix's current two ships with a shaky Fel ally. Blitz will likely stay out of it unless heavily persuaded by either side or even Sun Lee, and Feckward may just pull the same stunt they did on whichever side is ahead.

what kind of eldar ship(s) would do well to be thrown into this grand battle and when? would it be before or after the farseer wakes all the wraith guards?

also would any of the four be planetside? seems they all would if they were in orbit, and if so that may affect weather they join the fight or not

The neat thing about the Eldar is that you can completely justify *any* of their forces showing up at any time, anywhere. Between farseer prediction abilities, the webway, and the inherent agility of both eldar and their craft, it's not a stretch to say they knew to show up in this spot at this exact moment.

Small eldar raiders can sneak up on duelling rogue trader vessels and surprise them with a pulsar lance or three to the aft. Don't forget about squadron rules from BFK, they make smaller ships deadlier.

Lure of the Expanse suggests that some rogue traders will make for the planet instead of fighting. Blitz comes across to me as a "smash and grab" guy. He won't stick around to get shot at over "honour" which he doesn't buy into.

Update: with all the rivals powering up, they sent one final 'Surrender or Die' to Bastille who as expected chose die. afterwards they received 3 radio transmissions from Feckward Charlabelle and Gerrit.

Charlabelle was answered first, and she basically laid it into them for being treacherous backstabbing emperor forsaking heretics and what have you, obviously on Bastilles side; Fenix simply hung up on her and moved onto Feckward.

Feckward lets them in on the fact they're outnumbered right now and offers them a deal. for a large sum of profit (I'll get to this later) he will not fire upon Fenix in the upcoming battle, even though he still has to give appearances of being on Bastilles side. Fenix agrees after a tidbit of negotiation and moves onto Gerrit.

Gerrit calmly tells them his side, he had contracts with basically every other RT here. killing the competition wouldnt be a big deal to him if it didnt cut into his profit margins, and now he respectfully must join the other side. Fenix deceives him into thinking Charlabelle was talking mad **** about him, basically just stirring the pot so to speak, and then negotiates some form of neutrality agreement with him as well.

Finally they decide to ring up Blitz to see what he thinks, and basically tells Fenix "oh man you're in some ****, I'm staying the hell out of that one. good luck"

So now its Bastille, Charlabelle, 'Feckward' and 'gerrit' and they start a firing. Gerrit starts kind of out of it. seemingly about to attack Char but doesnt, and eventually targets Fel. Char is far out of the fight and too slow to effectively get in range of anyone and spends the battle catching up. Bastille takes some major hits by Fenix, and Feckward fires on Scourges ship, piloted by Fenixs AM. Fenix calls up Feckward saying hey we had a deal, and Feckward tells him "the deal was I wouldnt fire on you. nobody said anything about your accomplices. how else would I keep up my appearances?"

being as angry about this as you'd expect, they do some cross fire maneuver, Fenix fires on Feckward and his AM fires on Bastille. Bastille gets crippled and Feckward is majorly damaged. calling in to tell them they broke the deal and there will be consequenses, to no effect on their part.

Fel spent most of the battle behind Bastille, so never took much damage, and the fight stayed on their side pretty well, but the whole time I was waiting for the right time for him to make a run for it, and every chance I got they would command roll him to do something in particular so well he basically had to do it. (I was rolling so bad I switched dice. they had a laugh)

a round later they put a just in case salvo into Bastille, rending his hull busting components etc while he did nothing to stop it, and a salvo into Feckward hulked his ship as well.

Just as they were feeling they won the fight, as Charlabelle was useless and gerrit was keeping out, a humming sound is heard and Fenix's bridge is full of Teleporting in armsmen, headed by Bastille, Charlabelle, Gerrit, and Feckward

end session

now how the hell are they going to get out of this. to keep them on their toes I told them I may edit who actually showed up but at least Bastille, 25-30 storm troopers, and a number of other Rogue Traders. In the background I had Blitz pick up Sun Lee mid battle, and was going to add her in too but did a bunch of rolls which lead to Sun Lee refusing and getting blitz to refuse to, but might change that too. just as the players keep saying, blitz is the wild card here

so how would you run this coming battle? and how can I even it out? figure armsmen will be busy fighting bridge officers, and a RT per PC, but half of the PCs are on the other ship anyway. could possibly do something there too but dont know yet.

astropath is super excited to use his flamethrower and mind powers so a stop for that would be good, and Navigator with his warp eye as well. thinking an NPC psyker in the mix would help that but havent done anything like that yet either.

Fenix is already talking about 'well if it goes bad the AM can just blow us all up. if I'm going down I'm taking them all with me" I'm thinking start of session I'm gonna award him some corruption and insanity for all this.

trying to decide if this is the time Fel runs, heads planetside, possibly already dead from this same incident a turn earlier, or even on the other team! maybe even a hostage teleported in, which would be fun but I know **** sure Fenix would let him die if he was a hostage.

also something to point out is both of Fenixs current ships are below the mutiny line so that could be a factor.

anyway back to Feckwards deal. every single time they try to do a deal I dont know what they're negotiating. at first it was something like what percentage of the final take, then bartering oponents ships etc, but I never know how to do normal business contracts. like achievement points? straight profit factor? both seem pretty high but I cant figure out what else to do. told them feckwards 'neutrality' cost them 300 achievement points, but at the same time it was one of the first times they even heard the words achievement points so they had no idea how much that even was. ugh help please

Edit: also thank you all for your past and future input! I really enjoy building a campaign based on a whole forum worth of ideas instead of just what me and my books can come up with

That sounds suitably hectict!

300 achievement points is in the reasonable range for a serious price for aid. A point or two of profit factor wouldn't be out of the question given the circumstances, and that could climb higher if the party is put in a really desperate situation. What price their lives after all?

Some thoughts on the grand melee:

What do the other rogue traders know about the party?

Do they know the navigator and astropath transcendant are likely to be involved in a battle for the bridge?

Do they know about the party's specific wargear, fighting style, and unnatural powers?

What size is the bridge? VERY important for working out whether ranged fighters keep their distance and melee fighters get into combat at all.

Rogue traders are often canny fighters. They'll likely think of things such as not bunching up too closely if area effect weapons are likely.

Gunning down obvious psykers from a distance is a *good* idea. Having played a navigator, I found most of the powers hadn't much range.

Coordinating attacks (if it makes sense): if a major target has used their reaction defending from A, have B shoot or stab at them. And C and D if the target was killing all around them and attracting attention.

Grenades can be super handy. Especially ones that block senses or stun.

Well, for the whole boarding thing with Bastille and his entourage can go down several ways, three of which is listed below:

1. Have it in no short advice, that the PC's are losing, and surrender would be a good idea. Like important friendly NPC's getting KO left and right, PC's armsmen getting slaughtered, them losing sections of the ship to the enemy, etc etc. And once they surrender, and the other PC's on the other ships start making a move to rescue/destroy them, have the Eldar spring their trap. Maybe a message from the ground stating Eldar are making the warp storm return / casting the planet in darkness / whatever you have planned. Or maybe the Eldar fleet comes within sensor range. So now, it's either everyman/woman/child for themselves, or they all team up in order to get out of the trap alive.

2. The PC's win, but a very close call, with the RT's either fleeing or being captured. Not but a second after the battle ends, the Eldar spring their trap. The rest the same as above.

3. During the battle, at the climax of deciding who would win / fail, the Eldar spring their trap. Same as above, but with more "Ohh my Empower!!!"

I dont think the RTs would know anything about the party except for what they know from the dinner at footfall, the trip to the witches and Bastille/Charlabelle/Scourge's run in with them on Quppa Psi. I suppose thats enough to know the psykers are relevant party members and likely on bridge, and all their starting equipment, which hasnt changed much, and a slight idea on fighting style.

bridge size I have no idea. made scourges about 60m radius so 120 across, theirs is probably close, whatever is more dramatic. I've got a big problem of everything always seems to be within thr 45 degree 30m arc of the flamethrower...

kinda want either an NPC psyker to show up for a psyker duel or some sort of psy ward medallion on one of them to help negate the inevitable, without completely nullifying the 2 PCs. I know for sure warp eye and flamethrower are going to be a factor, along with compel, and astros default phenomena being darkness. they'll probably know the Fenix rocks a plasma pistol and inferno pistol as well.

they'll probably just intercom their crew to storm the bridge so I think Krooker might make an appearance at Feckward's command to start the mutiny on cue

I'm on the same page with the eldar ambush being at the climax, regardless of whos winning, but again what ships would make this 'together we can take them or separate we might be able to run away"? I'm VERY unfamiliar with eldar ships

also had the idea of fel teleporting in with them as a "hostage" until Fenix admits to not giving a ****, and him turning sides. I keep trying to make them seem outnumbers and always finding out otherwise; but again him running may be the best option

Edit: then theres the problem of half the party being on another ship. I dont know what they can even do while a battle is happening on the other ship. it would be completely over before another ship combat turn could even start, suggesting they wouldnt be able to make it there shipwise or in person unless bastille teleported them too. or at least enemies to their ship as well. either way a dual combat senario sounds like hell to run

Well don't forget if they start going to town with flamethrowers and warp eyes on their own bridge they'll be hitting everything! within that arc. Congratulations, your gunnery command console is now on fire and your voxmasters have merged into a warpscarred puss spewing organ pile.

Give one of the RT's a null rod. It gives the guy holding it really strong protection, and everyone in a modest radius some protection, but it's not big enough to cover the entire bridge. If you think it's too strong make it a damaged second hand one with lesser effects.