Hey anyone wanana collaborate on putting together a Guide herein on the Forum for fellow GMs and Enthusiasts?

I can start it off if there's interest in this - otherwise I wil forever hold my peace LOL

Advise

Morbid

Interesting thought. I've compiled lists of all known capital ships, numbers of escorts and transports known, all Rogue Traders and Navis Houses named in all the sources, and variety of other such trivia, all in the hopes of trying to measure the scope and scale of the powers of the Expanse. Since most of the Expanses's traffic passes through Footfall, it would need to be able to handle all this.

I'm picturing lots of warehousing space, HQs for all Cold Trade operations, agents and their offices for all financial services, stations for refuelling and docking, hangars for lighters, habs and services for all the personnel needed, among all the other services required.

From what Ive gather thus far...

Great Guide LINK

Population: 30 Million

Otherwise my own invented fluff:

The "Bounds" are what we call <colloquialism / slang> the actual Asteroids (i.e. like boroughs in NYC)...

- Succor: (of that there is; The Leers inside of that district one will find " the Lead Coalition " who act as a front for a Renegade Inquisitional sect that keeps a Secret Prison there at Coalition's factory in said district - these guys keep people in Carbonite like Star Wars - so even if you infiltrate in and don't know, you may not realize those slabs in the factory are actually prisoners "on ice" LOL). The whole of the Leers act in concert - as such this conspiracy remains active and a viable threat to any who wish to intercede!

Places in Succor

The Lead Factory: Site of the Lead Coalition, here on a day-today basis Lead is processed from ore into bars for shipment elsewhere. This industrial setting is populated by slave workforce who carries out the labor while armed Overseers watch from catwalks above. Behind the scenes this place is head by Renegade elements who once merged under a specific event in the past <Renegade Inquisition + Heretek Presence>; normally a staff of 2 to 3 such senior personnel on are site at a given time. Otherwise the whole of the Factory is further strengthen by the presence of a 15' tall servitor with flails for arms, the thing is more machine than man and seaming incorporates a steam engine on its back - requiring fueling on a constant basis.

Old Sealed Shrine: This squat reinforced bunker is in fact site by which a Teleporter was installed long ago; this specific device is link to another fixed point and can only allow transit between these two fixed locations. More importantly this site stands seemingly long abandoned and unbreachable, its situation next door to the Factory run by the Lead Coalition. This place serves as a reactionary point by which senior Renegade Inquisitional agents <a specific sect> teleport in when needed - this occurs if someone tries to free a prisoner next door SEE Factory... otherwise this location from the outside is the only Creed inspired fixture in the whole of the Leers remaining today.

The Lyceum: a drug den selling delights and the setting in which to indulge them in...

The Umbral Plaza: These lanes are rife with peddlers and tradesmen from all walks; more importantly all manner of fetish, bauble, and gnosis may be gleaned from certain purveyors. Outside of the merchants the streets here are alive with beggars who ply their knack at enteraining passersby; everything from sword swallower to street magicians to pain-bodies (people who let you for a "bet" hit them unarmed for money - ala Houdini)

The Obeisance (aka the Hunched Temple ): old defunct Temple. no one's sure as to whom or what the Temple was originally built for. Today this location serves all manner of faith as pilgrims come and pay homage to their individual faith and heresy here at these very flagstones. The temple within lay bare and abandoned - for sake of peace - none are allowed to worship within though no barriers or the like bar nay who wish entry within. Inside of this crumbling temple one may find a fissure towards the rear of the solitary hall of worship - there it snakes its way down under the foundation to a series of naturally occurring chambers, it is there that a certain mutant seer resides in all its hoary glory. It is whispered that this thing has answers beyond the ken of what is known and practiced today of this epoch...

- Sanctum: In the works

I've heard people speak of upwards of 2000 Rogue Traders in the Expanse. Personally, I think that's way too high, and put the number closer to 200, but that might be the difference between dynasties and ships. Regardless, there are many free-floating mansions belonging to the dynasties, and to many of Calixis' minor (or not so minor, but disowned) nobility. Surely House Krin has its financiers here as well. Then there's the Navis House agencies, especially those of the nomad and shrouded houses, and particularly those of some of the renegade houses. All these want representation, and not all can afford lodgings at Port Wander, or want its lessened seclusion.

And then there's the secret societies: the Witnesses of Dusk, the Elutrian Devotees, and the Brotherhood of Psylakis.

And there's the Cold Traders. This is the last stop short of Law and Order when re-entering the Imperium, and the easiest place to transfer cargos. So queue in the Hecaton Cartel, the Serrated Query, the Archeo-Exhumators, and the Mist Fleet. Most people want also want the presence of the Amaranthine Syndicate (I know I do). And let's not forget the Ordinati Xenologis and their counterparts, the Acolytes of Abraxus. Oh, and the League of Black Crystals, we can't forget them.

The Ministorum needs its adherents and factions, too, so Asclenites, Drusians, and the followers of the 4 near-saints of Faith and Coin. No doubt there's more.

And what pirate worth their weight in grox dung doesn't have informants in such a busy port? Informants often might mean a place where people talk, the looser their tongues the better, so taverns, houses of ill-repute, or simply pawnshops that always offer influential window shoppers a flute of the house best.

That would include the pirate fleet of Jalthus Mettiere, the Cortelax Confedarcy, and all the various Eldar corsair fleets (2), a craftworld in the mix, and the cabals of the Dark Eldar (3-4 last count). That doesn't even include the factions of the Hosts of Iniquity, who would probably have the strongest presence, so the Wolfpack of Karrad Vall, the Children of the Pattern, the Crimson Skulls, the Covenant Outriders, the Stygian Reavers, the Talon Squadron, the Noise in the Void, and the Saynay Clan. Never forget the Saynay Clan because that also incluldes a renegade Navis house.

Then there's the Imperial Navy itself. Their hard presence is nearly always here in the form of an escort, often more, but underneath is also their spies.

And then there's the Inquisition itself, never mind their renegade factions. Every single legitimate faction of every single Ordo, and factions incorporating multiple Ordos all have agents at Footfall. ALL OF THEM. Anything less would be incompetence.

What about the presence of xenos? Mercenaries and the like would find footfall a nice place to set up, or do you believe that they would be hunted down and executed?

What about the presence of xenos? Mercenaries and the like would find footfall a nice place to set up, or do you believe that they would be hunted down and executed?

Mostly Kroot, Eldar, and DE, though the later stay in the shadows. It's really up to your GM on what all other races are there. 40k Footfall is not like Star Wars Mos Eisley, where you have humans and xeno's criminals rubbing shoulders with normal issues. The dogma of the Ecclesiarchy is ever present in 40k, so the mistrust and hatred of xeno's always surfaces. However, it's completely up to your groups opinion and playstyle, and specifics on it would be best directed to your GM.

@MorbidDon

I've written in the past that I don't think these ships are carrying around cargos of ore. It just doesn't make sense. It would be far more economical to put a smelter near the mines and turn the ore into ingots on location, then transport the ingots.

The Lead Coalition and the Urchindom of Footfall's Succor Bound

The "ore" you speak of is collected Lead from ammunition harvested from the corpses and bodies of hapless fools and victims of Footfall's troubled lanes... The lead is collected and gathered from children and dung collectors who then in turn horde the stuff until they can exchange in for a pittance of Gelt. It is considered by the those in the know of the Lead Coalition as (i.e. the religious amongst their fold) as an act of the Emperor's "Charity".

KEEP IN MIND:

This posting is a Fan Created Work - there is no such thing as "official" cannon herein outside of what was presented in the books and thusly copied and posted online via various wiki pages:

http://www.myth-weavers.com/wiki/index.php/Footfall

http://warhammer40k.wikia.com/wiki/Footfall

http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Warhammer_40,000

So - from here on - if I or anyone else submits "something" to this post - it should be constituted as FAN-FICITION, nothing more or less.

Stay Gaming All

Morbid

The Bounds

the term Bound designates an independent ensconced subdivision of Footfall, each comes in the form of an asteroid settlement that has been granted some measure of self-governance...

The "Bounds" are the fringe and or forgotten asteroidal bodies of Footfall that have become crime-ridden (i.e. localized private warzone), wastelandic, or simply abandoned by the Emperor-conscious merchant-class peerage.

The "Named" Bounds

• Salvation
• Sanctum
• Scramble
• Solace
• Succor

For a portion of Footfall's lowly masses the Bounds are both home and prison - the unlucky Voidfarer hard on their luck can and may end up like the dregs who bind themselves to such spheres. Those who traffic the bounds know them as the way stations and holdings far removed from the hustle and bustle of Footfall's core body, for the transient these places offer the trim and trappings needed for a number of operations from the prosaic to the epically clandestine.

The Hab-Fanes found therein consist of blocks of rundown buildings that have been turned into squatter hovels, runner hideouts, drug houses, gang bases, and hundreds of other more questionable things. These wayward stretches contain a smattering of everything. A warehouse holding a myriad of possibilities, a market that could sell anything from black-market missiles to rancid food, a circle of dumpsters that could be a lodge for an urban shaman or just a street-kid hangout, an old fuel refinery that might be home to a makeshift market, a hidden entrance to an underground lab, or just a lot of fumes and garbage - all of this and more can be found in the Bounds!

- Market
- Refinery or Refueling Station
- Old Warehouse
- Empty Lot
- Dumpster Fort
- Makeshift Shelters
- Scrap Metal Pile
- Converted Building
- Junked Auto-Carriages (i.e. Cars), Flyers, and or Spacecraft

Faction (NEW): Grievous Guild

" Never lie when the truth is more profitable "

An Expanse mercenary group, the Grievous Guild is frequently employed by the ruling factions of Footfall in their struggles for dominance.

Grievous Guild serves the highest bidder, and currently undermines The Black Brotherhood on behalf of undisclosed interests.

Founded by Ambrose Diest-Danzig (aka Cutty – what is he called behind his back) as a means for houseless rogues to survive in Footfall, the group has thrived and expanded greatly since its inception. It was built of mainly criminal dissident males from destroyed houses of the Rubycon to the Halo Zone and back. Due to its array of skilled soldiers and its many connections with the outside world, Grievous Guild is a valued ally of many powerful Koronus Factions. More than once from various resources, it has been remarked that Danzig is one of the most protected man in the Koronus due to the competent soldiers he surrounds himself with.

This band of societal malcontents consists of approximately 150 members (though at times known to employ many more, having nearly one thousand agents at work with the Koronus initiative), mainly houseless males. Grievous Guild has been very influential in the chaotic happenings of Footfall and has connections with The Kasballica Mission and has agents in Port Wander as well as major ports in the spinward side of the Calixis.

Mercenaries unaffiliated with any Footfallen Faction, yet powerful enough to enjoy prosperity and the indulgence of its leaders, the men of Grievous hold a unique position in the Koronus.

A character can find out the following information with a successful Inquiry Test .

Inquiry -30% It has been widely employed by the ruling factions of Footfall, especially by The Kasballica Mission, which has the resources to hire the group regularly, particularly given that Danzig himself is a Kasballica conclave member.

Inquiry -20% Grievous Guild mercenaries and assassins are a wild card in Koronus politics, seemingly a untouchable class of soldiers of fortune. The group has outposts in Koronus settlements across Expanse. Its members have been found working for surface interests in spinward worlds from _____ to _____, and as far to the galactic northeast as Vostroya.

Organization

Grievous Guild originated in the city of Footfall. Its founder, Ambrose Diest-Danzig , has cunningly spread his philosophy to other Imperial cities, and now his society, which once had only a few hundred, has more than a thousand members. Few men care to move against Grievous Guild, because the organization has its uses—especially in gathering information from the Koronus Expanse and the nearer core-ward worlds of the Halo Zone.

Hiring Grievous Guild mercenaries also has its risks. As might be expected from a freelance organization, the contract goes to the highest bidder—often the patron who offers the group the biggest advantage when events sort themselves out. Grievous Guild forces have switched sides in the middle of more than one battle, or played both sides, to the ruination of those they have double-crossed!

BTW - I wanted to incorporate that Waaag that washed over to Port Wander some years ago; can anybody give me any insight on that; basically I wanted to see if that Waaaag came to Footfall previously?!

422-424.M41
Waaagh! Gulgrog lays siege to Port Wander. Two-thirds of Battlefleet Calixis responds to the attack, led by Admiral Androvast Strophes. Fist of Adamant cripples the ork flagship and routs the invasion. The Imperial Navy reclaims Port Wander instead of pursuing the orks into the Maw. The orks of the Koronus Expanse remain a minor threat for the next four centuries.

Rogue Trader: Edge of the Abyss pg. 51

CULTURE

Waste not want not...

Once curious aspect to life on the Bounds is the particular reverence or respect some Voidfarers have for the loathsome roach. The roach a native born insectoid of Terran descent has taken to the stars with mankind. These stowaways have accompanied mankind from the beginning and now have spread themselves across the many stars conquered and colonized.

These small beasts spend most of their time in cracks and crevices, with most preferring areas that are located nearest food and water sources but which are warm and have a high relative humidity.

Not inherently dangerous unto themselves the roach does offer a few behaviors and habits which pit it at odds with man, namely;

They can infest electronic components and eat the shielding of wires
They will inhabit cisterns and pipes, spreading foulness wherever they may tread

They will eat human eyelashes and feed upon tender points of the body (i.e. wounds)
They can host parasites within their number giving malady to those men close

Interestingly enough many of the lowly and unlucky of the Bounds have come to revere the plentiful sure nature of the loathsome roach - for as some say it has wisdom! That "wisdom" as they call it refers to losely the practice of consuming the little beasts. This food source is abundant during certain times as the insectoid population waxes and wanes, those with few to no option have adopted such a safety net as this.

Because of this - they are some who view the killing and wholesale eradication of the roach as a sacrilegious act demanding retribution, for others such actions may warrant bad luck while worst still and rarer than that are those who revere the roach as something greater - for this sorry lot, the beast is something akin to a totemic spirit; once that nurtures and protects its brood...

Beware your acts when contending against such a beast openly in the Bounds!

- END TRANSMISSION

The Lead Coalition and the Urchindom of Footfall's Succor Bound

The "ore" you speak of is collected Lead from ammunition harvested from the corpses and bodies of hapless fools and victims of Footfall's troubled lanes... The lead is collected and gathered from children and dung collectors who then in turn horde the stuff until they can exchange in for a pittance of Gelt. It is considered by the those in the know of the Lead Coalition as (i.e. the religious amongst their fold) as an act of the Emperor's "Charity".

Got it, so it's not an ore smelter; it's a recycling plant.

The Obeisance (Succor)

There stands a certain huge, dark church of the most fascinating quality for it stands out with especial distinctness at certain hours of exposure, for at dusk - great towers and tapering steeples loom blackly against the flaming void. Peculiarly grim and austere, it appears to be built of stone, stained and weathered with the smoke and storms of past centuries. The style, so far as the glass can show, is of the earliest experimental form of Gothic. This forbidding structure with its vast vacant windows that are never lighted give the place an aura of desolation that seems to cling to those who visit.

At its approach a huge stone bulk rises darkly at the end of an alley. From there one stands in a wind-swept open square, quaintly cobblestoned, with high bank walls on the either side of the grounds. The vacant temple ahead is in a state of great decrepitude. Some of the high stone buttresses have clearly fallen, and several delicate finials lay half lost amongst brown, dubious weeds and grasses. Sooty Gothic windows remain largely unbroken, though many of the stone mullions are missing upon closer inspection.

A set of massive doors stand intact and tightly closed.

As you linger it is noticed that there are very few people in the square with you.

Inquiry Test -20% There had been a bad sect there in the old days - an outlaw sect that called up awful things from some unknown gulf of night.

The sheer bulk of the church is oppressive now that you are close to it...

After a cursory search you find a yawning and unprotected cellar window in the rear furnishing the needed aperture for entry within.

There beyond the aperture lay a subterrene gulf of cobwebs and dust faintly litten by the void's filtered rays overhead.

Descending within down leads to a dust-carpeted and debris-strewn rockcrete floor. The vaulted cellar here is vast, without partitions; with only one corner of the chamber to the far right, amid dense shadows, a black archway evidently allows for advancement further within.

As you walk along all of the inner doors here remain unlocked, so that you freely passed from room to room. The colossal nave is an almost eldritch place with drifts and mountains of dust over box pews, altar, and hour-glass pulpit.

There in that holy chamber stood a sounding-board with titanic ropes of cobweb stretching among pointed arches of a gallery and entwining with clustered Gothic columns. Over all this a hushed desolation played hideously leaden light as the declining light of Furibundus sends its rays through the strange, half-blackened panes of the great apsidal windows.

The depictions on these windows are so obscured by soot that you can scarcely decipher what they are representing, but from what little you can make out you do not like them. The designs are largely conventional, and your knowledge of obscure symbolism tells you much concerning some of the ancient patterns. The few saints depicted here bear expressions distinctly open to criticism, while one of the windows seems to show merely a dark space with spirals of curious luminosity scattered about in it. Turning away from the windows, you notice that the cobwebbed crossed above the altar are not of the ordinary kind, but resembled the primordial ankh or crux ansata of shadowy Egypt.

In a rear vestry room beside the apse you find a rotting desk and ceiling-high shelves of mildewed, disintegrating books.

Here you receive a positive shock of abject horror and/or revulsion, for the titles of these books tells certain men much.

They are the black, forbidden things that most sane people have never even heard of, or have heard of only in furtive, timorous whispers; the banned and dreaded repositories of equivocal secret and immemorial formulae which have trickled down the stream of time from the days of man's youth, and the dim, fabulous days before man was. Crumbling volumes of wholly unidentifiable characters yet with certain symbols and diagrams shuddering recognizable to the heretic. Clearly, the lingering local rumours do not lied. This place had or remains a seat of evil older than mankind and wider than the known universe.

Scrutiny -30% In the ruined collection there is an old dataslate filled with entries in some odd cryptographic medium. The manuscript writing herein consisting of the common traditional symbols used today in astronomy and anciently in alchemy, astrology, and other dubious arts - the devices of the sun, moon, planets, aspects, and zodiacal signs - here massed in digital characters of text and electricity, with divisions and paragraphing suggesting that each symbol answered to some alphabetical letter.

Having now thoroughly explored the ground floor, you plough again through the dust of the spectral nave to the front vestibule, where you have seen a door and staircase presumably leading up to the blackened tower and steeple - objects so long familiar to you at a distance. The ascent is a choking experience, for dust lay thick, while the ages have done their worst in this constricted place. The staircase is a spiral-flight with high, narrow treads, and now and then as you pass a clouded window that overlooks dizzily out over Succor. Though you have seen no ropes or chains below, you expect to find a bell or peal of bells in this tower. At the top you are doomed to disappointment; for when you attain the top of the stairs you find that tower chamber vacant of chimes, and clearly devoted to vastly different purpose.

The room, about fifteen feet square, is faintly lighted by four lancet windows, one on each side, that are glazed with a screen of decay louvre-boards. These have been further fitted with tight, opaque screens, but the latter are now largely rotted away.

In the center of the dust-laden floor rises a curiously angled stone pillar four feet in height and two in average diameter, covered on each side with bizarre, crudely incised and wholly unrecognizable hieroglyphs.

On this pillar rests a metal box of peculiarly asymmetrical form; its hinged lid thrown back, and its interior holding what looks beneath the decade-deep dust to be an egg-shaped or irregularly spherical object some four inches through. Around this pillar is a rough circle were seven high-backed Gothic chairs are still largely intact, while behind them, ranging along dark-panelled walls, are seven colossal images of crumbling, black-painted plaster, resembling more than anything else cryptic carven megaliths of mysterious make. In one corner of the cobwebbed chamber stands a ladder built into the wall, leading up to the closed trap door of the windowless steeple above.

As one grows accustomed to the feeble light you'll notice odd bas-reliefs on the strange open box of yellowish metal.

Approaching, when you clear the dust away you see that the figurings are of a monstrous and utterly alien kind; depicting entities which, though seemingly alive, resembled no known life-form ever evolved. The four-inch seeming sphere turns out to be a nearly black, red-striated polyhedron with many irregular flat surfaces; either a very remarkable crystal of some sort or an artificial object of carved and highly polished mineral matter.

It does not touch the bottom of the box, but is held suspended by means of a metal band around its center, with seven queerly-designed supports extending horizontally to angles of the box's inner wall near the top. The stone, once exposed, exerts upon any witness an almost alarming fascination. You could scarcely tear your eyes from it, and as you look at its glistening surfaces you almost fancy it is transparent, with half-formed worlds of wonder within. Into your mind floats pictures of alien orbs with great stone towers, and other orbs with titan mountains and no mark of life, and still remoter spaces where only a stirring in vague blacknesses tells of the presence of consciousness and will.

Willpower Test -30% When you do look away, it is to notice a somewhat singular mound of dust at the far corner near the ladder to the steeple.

Hands and intent soon reveal a truth - for it is a human skeleton, one that must of been here for a very long time. The clothing is in shreds, but some buttons and fragments of cloth bespoke a man's grey suit or uniform. There are other bits of evidence - shoes, metal clasps, huge buttons for round cuffs, a stickpin of bygone pattern, a badge with the faded name of some bygone organization.

Stooping over the gleaming bones you note their peculiar state. For some of them are badly scattered, and a few seem oddly dissolved at the ends. Others are strangely yellowed, with vague suggestions of charring. This charring extends to some of the fragments of clothing. The skull is in a very peculiar state - stained yellow, and with a charred aperture in the top as if some powerful acid had eaten through the solid bone. What had happened to the skeleton during its time of silent entombment here you can not imagine.

Before you realized it, you are looking at the stone again, and letting its curious influence call up a nebulous pageantry in your mind.

Then all at once the spell is broken by an access of gnawing, indeterminate panic fear!

You turn away from the stone, conscious of some formless alien presence close to you and watching with horrible intent.

You feel entangled by something - something which is not in the stone, but which has looked through it at you - something that will ceaselessly follow you with a cognition that is not physical sight. Plainly, this place is getting on your nerves - as well it might in view of your gruesome find.

It is then, in the gathering twilight, that you think you see a faint trace of luminosity in the crazily angled stone.

You try to look away from it, but some obscure compulsion draws your eyes hack.

It seems now as if an elusive touch of foetor has arisen somewhere close by, though its source is not apparent. You seize the cover of the long-open box and snapped it down. It moves easily on its alien hinges, and closes completely over that unmistakably glowing stone.

At the sharp click of that closing a soft stirring sound seems to come from the steeple's eternal blackness overhead, beyond the trap-door... FIN

From what Ive gather thus far...

Great Guide LINK

Thanks a lot for this link good sir, but one thing does bother me. So the players have to travel from location to the next via starship/craft? Sounds a bit time consuming but creates opportunities for the GM to grasp.

Its been noted that Footfall consists of a number of large bodies in the form of asteroids bound to one another via chains and various forms of construction such as bridges, tunnels, conduits, and the like. Though the actual specifics are never detailed - in that as a GM you have the option of allowing transit from one of the Bounds to the other by the methods outlined or like you said by the ferrying via spacecraft from one place to another...

In my campaign - I kept the posted population at 30 million (as per the wiki article someone made - see link), with that I would imagine each of the Bounds to be the size of a Borough in NYC (Manhattan is 33 Square Miles for Instance). So for me each of these Bounds (as Ive defined them) range from 10 to 50 Miles in total surface area; one could supposed that the inner most asteroids (i.e. Bounds) are the ones that are tethered to one another while those that lay at the perifery of the city / settlement require more loftier forms of transit - again the choice is all yours.

Consider it a "tool" for your GMing - maybe you want to have your players stymied - thus requiring some form of spacecraft transit, while in other instances your adventure / scene may be better served with a train ride, zeppelin, or auto-carriage (i.e. by car), or best yet by foot...

At the end of the day - how the Bounds are reach is purely a plot device, hope this helps some!

Stay GAMING

Morbid

+++++++++++++++++++ CLASSIFIED DOCUMENT 23.401h +++++++++++++++++++

+++++++++++++++++++ Ordos Eyes Only +++++++++++++++++++

+++++++++++++++++++ Callsign: Kostchtchie +++++++++++++++++++

The intelligence you've requested on the inhabitants of Footfall has arrive my lord. There are reports of a large collection of technophants, rustrakes, and all manner of questionable grouping by the lowly masses who pander to their liege of Mars. We will transmit those crews, cabals, and companies who pay the Machine God's servants patronage but practice in secret behind their backs...

Your Humble Servant

S3v3vn

PENDING FOLLOWUP RELAY