So, there are numerous Rogue Traders who "own" worlds that they have an interest in; it's part of the Warrant to allow a Rogue Trader to claim worlds in the Emperor's glory. Now, have you ever had one of those moments when you feel really dumb? You sat down, worked up this whole spool of stuff regarding a place, and then realize if you had just read a bit more, you'd have seen that the words you were typing were BS?

Well, my RT NPC, Aedan Qel-Drake, has such a world, a volcanic rock called Pyros Magna. It's not good for much, aside from mining of several valuable metals, and it's out of the way enough that most competitors don't consider taking it from the Qel-Drake Dynasty. Pyros Magna is the "throne world" of Qel-Drake's dynasty, orbitted by a moon with very "our Earth" qualities, and a space station (the Keep), from which Aedan's people administer the BS part of his affairs, and can do some repairs on his ships, as needed, while he goes doing flashy, dangerous, hopefully lucrative endeavors. Pyros Magna is also where members of Qel-Drake's family are interred, upon death, and where the second fancy melta pistol the current bearer isn't carrying rests, awaiting its turn in the rotation. Blah, blah, blah (thank you for reading more of my silly fluff!)

Now, the flaw in my story is that I had it set to be in the Rifts of Hecaton, a place I NOW know no one goes to. What I'm now in need of is a location to set my planet, where reading the sentence doesn't just boggle the mind further than my fluff already does. If you were an RT in the Expanse, where would your "world of claim" be? I'm shying away from W'sR, because he's powerful enough to just say "mine", and other areas are too hard to traverse. There has to be a way to get the metals mined out of the system, and to a buying market. I'm considering the Heathen Stars (Zayth, Vaporius, and other worlds with people are there), but not sure where most other Rogue Traders would stake their claim. Also, what's a good feature to keep most people away from it? I want something Aedan's people can handle, because they know how, but that others might think is too much work to bother.

Trade Admiral Saul is opening up routes to the Heathen Stars. He might encourage other dynasties to colonize nearby systems. More colonies means more traffic means more commerce means more wealth. Then again, it also means sharing it...

I've always liked the Cinerus Maleficum. It's central and it has access to many nearby dangers. Erm, make that many nearby dangers have access to your dynasty's colony. And I like it that way.

My players went crazy to hold on to Svard, then spent money marketing it as a cheap alternative to Winterscale Promethium, which worked wonders right up until the horribly devastating war.

I think if I were to pick one it would be via similar logic you had. A world that is out of the way and expensive for existing claimants to hold, but has enough strong points that it's worthwhile to set up shop there. Apart from the fact you set it in an inescapable warp storm from which no one can ever return, it seems like a good home!

I established my newest sandbox inside a small warp storm (maybe 3-4 parsecs in diameter) with several somewhat stable routes into the eye of that storm. The small size of the warp storm explains its omittance from regional maps. The existance of the warp storm explains the cluster's relative isolation. It gives me all the advantages of an isolated sandbox yet can still be placed anywhere; and that permits me to engage the party in larger affairs within Imperial RT Dynastic society...the best of both worlds...assuming the party bites at the bait.

So that would be my suggestion, create your own warp storm, to achieve that isolation you're looking for. Make it small enough that it wouldn't appear on a small scale map of the Expanse. Then place it in a location central to everything else you plan on doing in the campaign, to entice your party to other nearby endeavors. It's been my experience that parties don't want to open new endeavors that are widely separated from already existing ones or at least that they find the newer ones easily abandoned with minor setbacks.

Two of the three players in my Scorpio dynasty campaign took the "Lost Dynasty" lifepath option in Trials and Travails. So the dynasty started with coordinates to two systems of (presumed) value. The "Scorpio system" refers to "Scorpio's Bounty", the first of the two, which got the bountiful result on the Stars of Inequity system generator. The system was overflowing with wealth but the dynasty wisely decided to trade off chunks of it to gain allies to help develop and defend the rest. They currently have one growing colony, Fitzgerald's Rest, exploiting a uniquely coloured plant. Oh and it has a Imperial Navy outpost orbiting it.

There are three other settlements in system: Radimus, a long-isolated human mining/industrial hive analogue specialising in radioactives, a colony of Radimus on a second world, and a colony set up by an allied rogue trader (and ex-Ordo Hereticus inquisitor).

From the email I sent early on:

Everyone here has better ideas than me, so I'll just add that Winterscale's Realm is a bit of a misnomer. And just because you have even a cool planet there, doesn't make him particularly likely to poke it. That said it is the most trafficked region, so if not him, being there does make it more visible to Imperial interests in general, though really. Being more visible doesn't exactly mean visible in this context.

That said I'd settle for the heathen stars and call it a day.