Sooo imagine a Rogue Trader harboring a Dark Eldar and an unsanctioned psyker in his crew. Another Rogue Trader brings this to the inquisition and they start investigating mentioned RT dynasty.
How would the outcome be if they find out?
Will they kill the two enemies of mankind or will they punish the whole crew including the Lord-Captain?
Does this perhaps be different depending on Puritan/Radical/monodominant/Thorian and so on view?
What other outcomes are possible?
Rogue Trader vs Inquisitor
Technically, outside the Imperium's borders a Rogue Trader is roughly equal in rank to an Inquisitor, so they don't really have the authority to do much about it.
Practically thougu, I'd expect that outside the Imperium's borders the supreme authority is who has the bigger guns. I find it unlikely anyone will soend much time investigating either an Inquisitor or a Rogue Trader that disappeared somewhere in lawless space.
That being said, if an Inquisitor decides to go after a Rogue Trader working with Xenos, they'd be dumb not to go for the Rogue Trader himself, because he will most likely seek revenge fir the Inquisitor's intrusion into his private matters.
Edited by LordBladesWhat he said. A rogue trader consorting with unsavory types isn't actually illegal, at least it's generally not illegal. Depending on which Inquisitor got the memo, they might respond with apathy or amusement. They might be disgusted but choose not to press the issue for various reasons. A few might decide that it's type to sure this degenerate traitor the true meaning of the Emperor's Justice. And hunt him down personally.
I can't imagine that even being an obvious xenophile(openly enjoying the most exulted tomes of Orkish lore such as DA DAKKANINK) would give anyone a real case to bring against the RT legally. They're supposed to do business with people others won't, and if they aren't hurting the bottom line then who cares? I can't imagine them making a trip to kill a xenos on a Imperial ship way out in the middle of nowhere, if it wasn't just an ancillary goal next to the Rogue Trader's own execution. Think about how many targets an Inquisitor has, would they decide "This xenos must die to spare the crew, but the RT gets a pass," ?
When it comes down to such situations, it's likely to be settled in blood. Whoever wins was right, as is often the case in the Imperium(such as a witch hunter attacking a psyker inq). It's unlikely that legal action will be brought against the surviving party, but I can see them dealing with each other's legacies for quite a while. Imagine having teams of acolytes, Officio Assassins, and his Inq friends and proteges out for blood in an RT game. Or dealing with human and xenos mercs, and his various surviving family members out for blood in a DH game. They'll also have rivals who give you a pat on the back, but maybe not publicly. People like these always have enemies.
In all, this is at least as much my opinion, as anything else, but I, personally, like to view the RT and the Inquisitor as a bit of a see saw. Outside of Imperial Space, a Rogue Trader is practically a lord unto himself, given massive leeway, and formidable power, to do what they do, while the power of the Inquisitor is limited to what he can bring with him. Inside the Imperium, however, an Inquisitor speaks for, some view AS the Emperor. He can command the allegiance of almost any level of almost any agency, and expect to be heeded, while so much of the powers the RT bears stop having their full effect in the Imperium. If, for example, you go about the Expanse, with your Dark Eldar crew member, and your Ork crew member and his band of boyz you keep around for "delicate situations" openly displayed for the galaxy to notice, you might attract the attentions of an Ordo Xenos Inquisitor. So long as you stay out there, and can get your ship restocked/repaired in wild space, you SHOULD be fine, unless the Inq can get agents aboard your ship, AND they are good enough to do something about you. He might have a ship, and he might even use it to come prosecute his justice upon your ass, but that's none too wise. INSIDE the Imperium, however, you are probably boned. Those xenos are a crime within His space, even for you, and if the Inq deels like it, he can harrass you endlessly, by ordering the ship yards to deny you service, or by letting slip to the AdMech that your ship is home to a Mek', and you have been letting it tinker with the ship's bits, and watch as the AdMech crap pure rage. Inside, the Inq is potentially so much more powerful than the RT, but outside, the Imperium, the scale flips, and the Inquisitor might as well be just another grumpy bystander, much of the time.
Certainly it depends on the outlook of the Inquisitor, but I have to wonder how much time and effort they'd spend on a ship outside the Imperium. They have enough problems inside the Imperium. So I probably wouldn't do much except keep tabs on them and send the occasional assassin until that RT set foot back into the Imperium, and then it would only matter much if the Inquisitor were personally present. The Inquisitor's henchmen might very well do something to said dynasty, and they might even go against the Inquisitor's wishes in their zealotry, but I'd probably have it less than the sophisticated opposition the Inquisitor could personally conjure.
It's worth remembering that by the rights of the Warrant of Trade, a Rogue Trader is allowed to deal with Xenos. So the fact that there is a Xeno on the ship isn't against their warrant, nor is it anything an Inquisitor can technically find fault with. It only becomes a legal problem is the Rogue Trader starts exposing people not under the protection of the warrant to xeno contamination. Hence why the Cold Trade is very borderline legal/illegal. So, if word got back to an inquisitor that Rogue Trader Xenophilius has a few aliens on his crew, the most I would really expect is to send an acolyte team to join his crew (perhaps by being swept up in the next press ganging) and report back if the RT is exposing to many citizens of the Imperium to Xenos. Assuming the report comes back in the positive, the reaction could be anything from assassination attempt to a sternly worded letter or even an invitation to dinner so we can express our concerns.
Quick, I have always assumed the Big I has informers on every legitimate Imperial ship. In the case of the players, they've been there since before that ship even belonged to the Dynasty. There might be bilge-washers that tally the ratio of mutants and pass along the data, and there might be an infiltrator in the Dynasty's highest echelons, but there's someone on that ship that answers to the Big I. Hey, that's just me and my darkity-dark-dark galaxy.
That seems perfectly reasonable to me, Errant, but doesn't necessary mean the ][ agents on the player's ship answer to the inquisitor that the other Rogue Trader ratted out to. It's not like Inquisitors are particularly big on information sharing. We see a case of this in the Dark Heresy adventure on the Space Hulk - there's another team from a different Inquisitor also there, and neither side knew about the other. I can only imagine how many times that happens on a Voidship. Not to mention spies/agents for other Rogue Traders, or interested Merchant Houses, or Navigator Houses, or well, a lot of people.
What quick said is more or less my view on what is permissible as far as xenos stuff goes, and a likely response.
The idea that the Inquisition tries to have people on every Imperial ship isn't too far out there. It's never been really suggested, but it doesn't seem like much of a stretch. Especially with more at-risk sorta ships, like ones being captained by Rogue Traders. At the same time such informants are likely to be occasionally uncovered via counter espionage, killed off in unrelated situations, unable to reach an astropath, or just desert their post either openly or in secret by filing bogus reports.
Then you have to consider that agents are likely not reporting to the Inquisition, a monolithic organisation of infinite resources and knowledge but an Inquisitor. A single person who can be any flavor of crazy and might not care, might be out of touch for decades at a time, and can honestly just be dead. Sure some of that will be rerouted by case officers being transferred over to their colleagues upon death, or them having people in their organisation they trust well enough to run their operations when they are otherwise indisposed. But either way there's a lot of holes there, even for a Rogue Trader of ill repute.
Or at least that's one of my excuses for why the Inquisition is a semi-constant threat, but most RTs aren't locked in a constant feud with Inqs who either want to kill them for stepping over the line or want to kill them to steal their heretical stuff.
My two shells:
Outside Imperial borders, an Inquisitor and a Rogue Trader are only insofar of "equal rank" as the Inquisitor will not have access to forces other than the ones he or she brings with them, and the Rogue Trader may deny any request the Inquisitor makes on the simple basis of having more guns on their side. Inquisitorial authority is, after all, a rather theoretical issue, and their power - on paper surpassing that of a High Lord of Terra - extends only insofar as other organisations are actually willing to support them with men and materiel just because they've flashed their insignia. Certainly, a Rogue Trader's status will not keep an Inquisitor from acting, after all, the only person who can judge an Inquisitor .. is another Inquisitor.
That being said, pursuing a Rogue Trader to bring them to justice also seems like a rather lengthy and inefficient endeavour, considering that there are far worse crises within the Imperium. Unless the Rogue Trader has more skeletons in their closet, I doubt an Inquisitor would actually become active just because of such relatively minor offences - instead, they'd lodge a standing warrant with the Adeptus Arbites to intercept and board the Rogue Trader's ship when and if it re-enters Imperial space, and simply leave it at that.
The worst that is likely to happen in this scenario is the psyker being killed or dragged off, the Dark Eldar probably finding a way to escape, and the Rogue Trader being given a tut-tut and an official reprimand before they are let go again, with a protest note demanding the RT's status to be rescinded circling in bureaucratic hell for several decades until some Administratum clerk takes a look at it.
However, if the Inquisitor uncovers more damning evidence of the Rogue Trader's heretical ways - something that may hint at them working to undermine Imperial interests - or has a more personal interest in the matter (did the Rogue Trader or their ancestors have dealings with this Inquisitor or one of their colleagues?), then I could see two things happening:
Either the Inquisitor tries to set a trap within the Imperium, such as seizing the Rogue Trader's assets but conveying a summons for a personal appearance to "sort out a bureaucratical error", then preparing an ambush for when the RT does show up at court. Might even feature a Deathwatch kill team.
Or the Inquisitor does actually try to hunt down the Rogue Trader, an effort that could take a variety of forms all depending on how subtle or how militant the Inquisitor is - from an elite assassin infiltrating the ranks of the crew, to contacting a rival RT and providing them with information and an incentive to attack, all the way to boarding one of the impressive Black Ships plus a few Navy escorts and setting out for a direct naval confrontation, perhaps first bombarding one or more of the Rogue Trader's outposts to lure them out, then attacking them directly.
Edited by Lynata
Just a little devil's advocate to add to Lynata:
It is possible to have the Peer: Inquisition as part of the background path. (One of my group's had this.) If this is the case, The RT probably enjoys the protection of, and some degree of collusion with said Inquisitor. In this case, The would be tattletale could find themselves in a lot more hot water than they bargained for as the Inquisitor they reported the RT to probably is the one he has ties too!
Just a little devil's advocate to add to Lynata:
It is possible to have the Peer: Inquisition as part of the background path. (One of my group's had this.) If this is the case, The RT probably enjoys the protection of, and some degree of collusion with said Inquisitor. In this case, The would be tattletale could find themselves in a lot more hot water than they bargained for as the Inquisitor they reported the RT to probably is the one he has ties too!
To take this even further: the way I see it (as the second tierbof 'good reputation'), Peer is much more than the protection of just an Inquisitor. The hefty bonus in interacting with any member of the Inquisition can only be explained from a roleplaying perspective that: you have done a great service to the Inquisition (stop a great heretical uprising, slay a horde if daemons etc.), you have constantly supportrd the Inquisition in the past (often enough for the word to spread) or you are a known assiciate of somebidy very high on the totem pole. All in all, not the kind of person the average Inquisitor would mess with based on a simple infirmation from a not very reliable 3rd party.
Exactly!
Three things, though:
In my opinion, the term Peer for this trait is rather misleading - from how I understand it to work, it is most definitely not authority-based. Indeed, the talent description only mentions how the character "knows how to deal with a particular organisation" , so something like "Familiar" or "Conversant" might have been a lot more appropriate. This also makes a lot more sense from an in-universe point of view, at least if you follow the original material where, on paper, there is no equal or higher authority than the Inquisition.
The trait that should be awarded for stuff like "stopping a great heretical uprising" or "slaying a horde of daemons" is Good Reputation . But even then, this only adds a +10 Fellowship bonus to dealings with Inquisitors, cumulative with the misnamed Peer talent. Now, personally I would most definitely have this factor into an Inquisitorial response to allegations, but strictly per the RAW, all this does is give you a +10 bonus for your attempt at convincing the other Inquisitor not to mess with you. On a test which would most likely be rather difficult to succeed at, if said Inquisitor has already decided to make a move against you.
It should also be kept in mind that the Inquisition is not centralised, so stuff like calling in favours from the Inquisition as an organisation should never be possible. What you should be looking at here is individual Contacts within the Inquisition, preferably an influential Inquisitor. Whether or not your contact is in actually connected with the Inquisitor who is moving against you (why should this be "probable"?), however, is still another matter entirely. And even then, there may be a risk of actually "burning" said contact with this request unless the RT is likely to prove a valuable asset for the future. Inquisitors can ill afford to give their rivals within the organisation food for political wrangling and accusations, and protecting a heretic certainly falls into this category.
Calling favors from the Inquisition can be justified, as calling in multiple favors with multiple Inquisitors who have enough juice to collectively call together some task force. That seems like a really big favor to call in though, and practically there's few story roles that the (semi) collective force of the =][= can fill that one powerful Inquisitor can't. At least in stories that are likely to come up in most RT games. But yeah in general calling in meaningful favors with the Inquisition as a group seems unlikely, unless your characters are using the term either as a shorthand or due to actual ignorance of the way the Inquisition works.
Like calling a local enforcer an arbiter, you might be doing it because you use arbiter as a catch all term and only differentiate when it's an important distinction(IE if it's anything more than breaking up an offscreen bar fight), or you might genuinely not understand the difference and think they're just wildly different branches of the same organisation.
Also yeah peer can be read as a bit of a misnomer, though you could also write it off as them being broadly part of the same social circle. Powerful violent Imperials without a lot of oversight. I think the reason it's the go to stat versus Good Reputation for many GMs, is that it's the stat that comes up more often on career lists, and it has lower requisites. So if you're going to give one away for an in story action, Peer is usually the first that jumps to mind. Maybe both should be renamed and reworded, so one is simply the extension of another, and they signify familiarity or shared history or just an intimate knowledge of the way they work. That way people wouldn't balk at the idea of people having Peer for groups they obviously and violently oppose.