Hello all,

Allow me to introduce myself here, I am a big 40k setting fan and though I own all the Dark Heresy books and love them for their fluff and feel I really (REALLY) hate the DH rules system (and certain elements of the 'railroady' nature of literally all the published adventures I've read for it). We played four or five adventures for DH (using the DH system) last year, but despite in my own view having some great moments and ideas the campaign fizzled out. Imo due to the system more than anything. (Some of my work is available in article format at Dark Reign.)

So it was I resigned myself to simply reading the new DH books as they came out and thinking maybe 40K wasn't right for us to roleplay in.

Fast forward to a couple of months ago, and we got wind of the Rogue Trader rpg's imminent (*cough*) release. We liked the ideas we were seeing online (the great pc freedoms, the unusual resource management aspects of the game, the Profit Point system to handle wealth, and the basic premise of zipping about Calixis Sector and beyond in a big-ass ship looking to get VERY rich - also the game benefits from being able to provide 'dungeons' if the GM is ever at a loss for an adventure in a way that DH didn't really).

So it was, rather than entirely wait for the release of RT, we decided to take the plunge and use a tweaked version of the Basic Role Playing system (or Runequest Percentile rules if you prefer), with some of the concepts and tables (Fear for example) from DH tagged on. We then set off on a new campaign which we have successfully and very enjoyably played 3 adventures in so far (4th tomorrow), with the central character being a Maccabean Imp Guard captain named Cornelius Rune receiving an invite to the Memorial Service and Will Reading of the late Rogue Trader Mazarin Rakespur. Held at the House of Dust and Ash on the dying world of Sinophia (I moved it from Solomon as I wanted Sinophia to be the ancestral home of the Rakespur line), Rune learned he was (by dint of his Great Aunt Gossamer being Mazarin Rakespur's widow, obscure Sinophian inheritance laws and the extermination of most of the Rakespurs in a feud some years before) the new Lord Rakespur and bearer of the Rakespur Warrant of Trade.

The first two adventures involved a much tweaked version of the House of Dust and Ash adventure, with added characters, WAY less nasty foes (Nonesuch became a criminal boss who was owed money by Rakespur, rather than a Slaugth, - "You might assume I am this or that, a factor for a noble house, or a dilettente trader, a bored wastrel nobleman, or a government man, I am Nonesuch." / Tamas of Shale and his band became the survivors of a failed mutiny against Rakespur / and I added a Venomous Lady (see Tattered Fates) who was sent in disguise as one of Mazarin's lovers by the Spider Bride to murder the new heir. Rather than a big 'kill everyone' overplot, I had Greel and the leaders of the Sorrowful Guild involved in a plot to defraud Rakespur's will (against their solemn oaths) with a view to inheriting lordship of the Burning Isle (which is owned by the Rakespur line).

The adventure resolved in 2 parts, with the pc having to flee the Burning Isle shortly after the reading of the will, then return with PDF troops from the mainland, after a couple of shoot outs which saw Lanus Cisten gutshot, the two Malfian bloodsworn assassins dead, and the Venomous Lady dead.

Moving on, Rune and his friends are still a Sector away from Mazarin's ship (the Gilded Widow - hey I just loved the name), they learned however that Mazarin's Aide, Justinian Thorngage, who had brought word of Rakespur's death to Sinophia, had gone on to the Rakespur estate at Xicarph, on Quaddis to deliver a second of three messages entrusted to him by Mazarin Rakespur. Thus Rune and the party set out (aboard their new friend, the Rogue Trader Magyar's ship) to Quaddis to catch up with him and learn where the Widow is berthed.

During the first two adventures the PCs got wind of some kind of conspiracy involving Rakespur, something called the Immaculate Accord, which was apparently sealed between Rakespur, two other Rogue Traders (Joakim Faulkes and Theophilus Brail) and 3 other parties unknown (possibly xenos).

Faulkes, a little known but fearsome Rogue Trader who has a personal kingdom somewhere out in the Halo Stars, but whose reach is said to be long indeed even inside the Imperium. Faulkes is said by some to have been a captive of the Dark Eldar for ten years long ago, and to still bear the scars both physical and mental of those times. He is rumoured by those who have heard whisper of him to keep a personal cadre of lethal assassins on his retinue, a death-cult some say called the Skinsaw Circle; psychotic murderers who heretically revere Faulkes as a living Saint and who wear the flenced off faces of their victims stitched into long cloaks.

Of the Rogue Trader Theophilus Brail there is no sign at the ceremony, Magyar knows him vaguely as a very eccentric but basically harmless seeming Rogue Trader who he has met once or twice out in the Halo Stars. Mazarin mentioned Brail to Magyar a few times, seeming to regard the man as a great and unrecognised scholar and a 'hero of mankind'. Magyar had personally found the man distracted, cowardly, timid and a very poor seeming commander, though the crew of his ship, the Fillibuster, are strangely protective of him, seeming to regard his semi-insanity as bringing them a strange kind of luck.

Part 3 moved onto Quaddis, with the pc's arrival at Xicarph, there they found the Rakespur estate had been attacked some months before and was half in ruins, with a bunch of wandering celebrants encamped in a shanty outside and a rogue gun-servitor 'defending' the interior. While struggling to take out the servitor they encountered a strange being ... an Eldar Harlequin who had been hidden in plain sight amongst the crowds of almost insanely inebriated revellers outside. Giving it's name as Anarinash (E- 'Dawn Childe') of the Masque of the Song of Rebirth (Bielwe), the Harlequin demanded Rune answer as to whether he would honour Rakespur's 'accord' with them. The pc playing Rune played for time, asking a week to decide. Whilst one of the other pcs failed a Fear check at the sight of a xeno and fled the scene in terror.

After the Harlequin departed in a bad mood and the Gun Servitor was put to bed the party managed to learn some important stuff, notably about the so-called Spider Bride, whose forces were apparently behind the attack on the Rakespur house (Postern Hall) at Xicarph and the assassin sent to the Will Reading on Sinophia.

The Spider Bride before she was infected/gifted with the Halo Device was in life the Lady Saphir Rakespur, wife of the Rogue Trader Lord Gershon Rakespur. Gershon, the so-called Mechanophile, was a master of xeno-techno artefacts and relics and it was he himself who enslaved Saphir with the Halo Device after he found out she had been cuckolding him with a string of lovers for years.

The Spider Bride was thus already several hundred years old when she was brought to Gabriel Haarlock's new playground planet of Quaddis a short while after the end of the Angevinian Crusade and the founding of Calixis Sector. It was Avimus Rakespur who first brought her to Quaddis and placed certain curses upon her that have kept her there, a fact she has never forgiven Avimus for, or indeed his successors. Avimus's successor, the staunchly pious zealot Borealis Rakespur sold her control to the Haarlock family, under whose authority she remains, though that isn't generally known.

In the long centuries since those times the Spider Bride has plotted and schemed against the Rakespurs as best she has been able, sometimes gaining the upper hand on them, other times suffering terribly for her trouble. Mazarin had her skinned alive when she first moved against him, and ever since she was terrified of him, but when word recently reached her of Mazarin's fall in battle with the Eldar she was siezed with a renewed sense of purpose and bravery, and she first sent one of her Venomous Ladies to Sinophia disguised as a murdered lover of Mazarins, and then moved against the Postern Hall estate.

She now holds Thorngage captive and is enjoying torturing him at her pleasure, she means to keep him alive and suffering for many years to come.

Thus the pcs now face how to mount a rescue attempt against the Spider Bride and her not inconsiderable forces to save Thorngage. The pcs found a secret armoury and arsenal under Postern Hall ('the Ice Vaults' - Extending deep under the great dome of Xicarph by a secret tunnel from Postern Hall, are a series of ice tunnels and chambers beneath the north polar icecap, where the Rakespurs kept secret treasures.), containing amongst other things several suits of power armour, and masterwork weapons on most types (my reasoning being the pcs are better provided with interesting 'unique' items of power with histories, rather than simply buying them as they will be able to all too soon).

Now, in the spirit of Rogue Trader, my pcs are saying 'well why don't we hire mercs to join us in the attack on the Spider Bride's stronghold'? Which is a fair point - they have enough funds (about 400,000 Thrones from the Will Reading - and an annual income of 2 Profit Points so far) - but what would say 40 mercs for one job cost? Also, does the game itself provide any quick and simple mass combat rules that I might be able to convert across to our BRP system? Any help would be appreciated. :-)

We are going to use the RT ship rules btw, so my campaign is basically playing for time till we can get the ship statted up and worked out by these adventures around Calixis Sector 'getting to the ship'.

After Quaddis the campaign will move to an adventure on the Misericord, where Thorngage has to deliver his third message to a member of one of that ship's crew castes, and to collect an artefact entrusted by Mazarin Rakespur to said member of the crew; a Wraithbone Compass.

From there it will be on to Scintilla, to get the transfer of the Rakespur Warrant legally transferred to Rune and to hire a new Captain for the Gilded Widow; the previous having died in the same ship action which left Rakespur (probably) dead (his body was never found).

Then, I expect to have the RT rulebook and be ready for the pcs to (finally) reach the ship and get cracking on the Rogue Trading proper.

Longterm my campaign is going to revolve around Mazarin Rakespur's Immaculate Accord (signed between him, Faulkes, Brail, and 3 Eldar Factions) which involves a quest for the treasures of the Old Slann and a struggle against the Necrons. But all of that is a long way off ..

Wow....you have really put some love into all your back story and plot lines..I wish you were my GM.Sadly i can't help you though with any system q's as i am still waiting for the book myself.

++ THE RAKESPURS ++
The House of Rakespur was founded in 96.M37, according to the records of the Administratum, when Jakob Rakespur a former Imperial Naval officer of middling rank and unclear background was granted a Warrant of Trade that would become the hereditary heirloom of his descendant family, granting Jakob and his heirs indefinite Imperial licence and priveledge to travel freely both inside the Imperium and beyond it'a borders, to meet, parlay, and trade with Imperial citicens without undue obstruction from local authorities, to recruit crew from Imperial planets either by pay or by standard Naval pressgang regulations, and to be exempt from the normal restrictions on contact with xeno breeds when operating and exploring on behalf of the Imperium beyond established frontiers.
Such Warrants of Trade are literally priceless and naturally are hotly sought after, so how Jakob Rakespur, a man of no great lineage, and unremarkable service history, came to win such a prize was a matter of great speculation at the time. There is some evidence to suggest that Rakespur's naval ship had served alongside the fleet of the Rogue Trader Teresa Sinos, some time before the issue of his Warrant, and that he was even possibly a lover of Sinos. Certainly he enjoyed Sinos's patronage during his early years as a Rogue Trader and indeed until her death, and he settled his family on Sinos's newly awarded personal fiefdom of Sinophia after that world was seeded to her control in 133.M37, building his personal manse on an island in the Eternal Sea south of the growing capital port city of Sinophia Magna. Rumour at the time was that Sinos had bought her lover Jakob his Warrant, either through her own heavy influence with the Lord Sector Scarus, or through unfathomably massive xeno-loot bribes at the Segmentum Courts on distant Cypra Mundi.
Jakob Rakespur lived for some five centuries after receiving his Warrant of Trade, and besides sitting on the Sinophian Council of Captains for most of that time, whenever he was present on the planet, his travels and expeditions into the Calyx Expanse and the Halo Stars beyond were as storied and horror filled as any. He was said to have captured and broken up one of the great Needle Ships of the dreaded Slaugth, and to have slaughtered an entire Hrud bloodline, ravaging the length of one of that xeno-breeds' migration trails and waging an ongoing private war against them for centuries. His personal treasures piled up, his fleet grew, and his name was held in awe, any shame about how he first came to receive his Warrant long forgotten, washed away in fire and the oceans of spilt blood from the countless xeno and outlaw human ships, cities and worlds that he laid to waste.
When he finally died, accordingly to legend in a duel with a Slaugth Overseer, his body was cremated in accordance with his stated wishes, his fear of Sinophian boreworms an abiding terror for him, and he became the first person to be cremated and interred at the family manse, which would later be renamed to the House of Dust and Ash. Jakob's heirs and successors continued to ply the family tradition as Rogue Traders, inheriting and passing on the Warrant of Trade down the many generations.
Notable Lords-Trade Rakespur have been; Gershon Rakespur, who was known as the Mechaniphile, for his connections to the Adeptus Mechanicum and his hand in the plundering of the great machines of pre-Imperial Scintilla. Hermann Rakespur, who scandalised even the rough frontier society of Sinophia by taking a captive Eldar maiden as a concubine and who was killed in the last of five reprisal raides by the Eldar's kin. Lycania Rakespur who was said to be a lover of one of Angevin's generals, and who was one of the many Sinophian Rogue Traders to scout ahead of the Great Crusade that founded Calixis Sector. Lycania is said to have come to a bad end, vanishing into the Hazeroth Abyss in the later stages of the Crusade aboard Jakob Rakespur's old ship, the Vindicta , never to be seen again. Avimus Rakespur, was known as the Fell-Whisper, and was said to speak with and see the spirits of the dead, he narrowly escaped prosecution by the Inquisition for suspected heresy and witchcraft at least twice, and brought a stain of suspicion upon the family name that took generation to cleanse. Avimus regularly travelled between Calixis Sector and Cadia, leading some to accuse him of secretly visiting the Eye of Terror itself. He was finally killed by members of his own family in a battle that levelled an entire wing of the House of Dust and Ash.
Mazarin Rakespur inherited a house in decline from his great-uncle Albracht, a lazy and unadventurous Rogue Trader, who delegated much of his work to his sons, all of whom seem to have been murdered, probably by Mazarin himself. Mazarin's early years do not seem of any great event and many of his rivals began to write off both Mazarin personally and the House of Rakespur as a whole. However in 533.M41, Mazarin Rakespur returned from a voyage into the Halo Stars by all accounts a changed man, whereas before he had been more ruthless but unimaginative trader than explorator he now seemed obsessed with lost alien and human civilisations of the Halo region and Calixis space. His long years of pursuing this new and strange fascination brought a good deal of new wealth to the house, though it tended to be wasted and frittered away by the decadent Sinophian Rakespurs while Mazarin himself was off on his long voyages.
Mazarin Rakespur became known as a driven, intense, ruthless, and dangerous man, who built up and maintained a massive and extensive network of contacts, both humand and otherwise, he was also widely regarded as a strange and whimsical fellow, a madman some even said, who played bizarre tricks and sometimes cruel and murderous 'jokes' upon his friends and enemies alike.

There are mass combat rules in Rogue Trader, though for a mass combat in my Dark Heresy sessions I just decided on a base number for success or failure for the 'red shirts' on both sides (ie: if they were to have a BS of 40, a roll of 4 or less equals a success), and rolled 1d10 for each grouping of them to see if they hit or missed their attack when it was their turn - to resolve damage, all of them were one or two hit cannon fodder depending on their armor, and I just checked off my print-out sheet when any of them bit the dust. I was able to run a massive battle with 50+ combatants on each side (plus my PCs, of course) rolling no more than four or five d10s at a time.

As far as a cost for hiring mercenaries, factor in what sort of world they are on - what level of tech is the planet, how is their economy, what section of society would they be hiring from, etc. More experienced mercenaries with better gear will cost more, but they will probably be worth the extra Thrones, while hiring ganger scum off the street will be cheap but little more than targets to draw fire away from yourself.

I think having your dynasty being 5 millinia old to be pushing the envelope a little,no-one stays in any position of power that long in the imperium,someone would have either destroyed the line or a scion would have gambled the warrent away,other than that <3

Don't live in the UK do you?

DarkPrimus said:

I shall probably go for something similar, but with a few additions to reflect better foes etc. I have a mass combat system for BRP, which I used effectively in a Middle Earth set adventure for pc's involvement in a MASSIVE battle (the Siege of Tharbad) involving about 3000 Orcs attacking a city defended by about 1500 humans. I might try to tweak that - at least for this adventure, then see what the RT rules give us to work with in this area.

Jericus creed said:

Yep, live in Sussex.

The Haarlock line is far older I believe I'm correct in saying, as is the Arkadius line of Rogue Traders from the two novels by Andy Hoare. The Arkadius warrant was signed by Thor himself iirc. There is a line in one of the Shira Calpurnia books that claims to be 10,000 years old and to have the Emperor's own signature (!!) on their warrant.

However, I tend to agree with you to a degree - I believe the line goes through the name, so at least twice in their history the family itself has changed through inheriting the warrant and the name (in the same way the pc has) - ie they aren't genetically Rakespurs any more per se.

Yeah i'm kinda sketchy about black library novels,they are fine taken as a stand alone,but they often ignore canon blatently..But well handled on your reasoning for the dynasty

..and what a shame,i'm in gloucestershire

Hi Adam! I remember your excellent posts from Black Industries forums. I really loved them to bits. I was just wondering what happened to you and why did quit on DH. Quite a synchronicity!

My own DH campaign sizzled out also but I think that it was not just the rules. Something else is here at work. I must admit that I feel that narrow but deep approach taken by DH seems not to work that well for 40k universe.

I hope that RT will be much better.

Yes, welcome back to the fold, Adam, I too remember your stuff from the old BI forums, and it was always pretty **** groovy!

Cat that Walked by Himself said:

Hi Guys, it's nice to be back. ;-)

Interesting you had a similar experience of DH Cat. Yeah you're probably right it wasn't just the rules (though in my case they certainly didn't help), there certainly was that rather crushing feeling of 'do as you're told' hammered down on the game. The published adventures include some of the most railroady adventures I've personally read in over 25 years of gaming. Tattered Fates for example featured not only a 'beginning as captives with no gear' start but ended on a 'against the clock or die' ending (even after House of Dust and Ash had used the same device)!! Awful.

Mind you, the DH stuff is well done in other ways, often VERY well done. The Calixis setting is excellant imo for example, it's just there's no feeling of having free will as pcs - which is part of the game I guess, but it wears thin real fast we found, with players and GM wanting more freedom. I think RT might give us that. Fingers crossed.

I shall write up my adventures here, as I used to do on the old forums for my DH campaign if there's an interest.

Hey do that!

This is first non-genocidal and non-nazi DH/40k write-up I read in a long, long time. It is pure and unabashed fun.

Looking forward to reading your adventures,if they are anything like your backgrounds they will be winsauce

Jericus creed said:

Yeah. If your Cassern Sebastian Goto. Khornate...Sorcerer...Argh...

Otherwise the only real fallacies I've found in reading BL is Abnett's tendency to think that Autocannons can be used like any Autogun...