An idea I am toying about with an idea to send (whichever players want to) some of my DH characters over to RT.

Currently the group in DH is serving the Ordos Xenos and their new master Inquisitor Van Vygens (there old Inquisitor died in Tattered Fates Pt 1), and Van Vygens is known for thinking that the Tyrant Star is Tyranid based. So I was thinking of sending whichever DH characters want to go, on a Rogue Trader Expedition into the Kronus Expanse to gather evidence of an 'Impending Shadow' encroaching from beyond the rim of the Halo Stars and heading towards the Calaxis Sector.

This would ential them delving into the deepest recesses of the Kronus Expanse, tracking down any evidence they can, while the Rogue Trader and his crew find fantastic opourtunities to increase the fortunes of their Dynasty. As I am yet to run the intro adventure till this weekend, I am not sure on how great the idea is, but would appriciate any feedback/Ideas that could spice things up a bit.

I was kind of thinking of a game where the characters make rogue trader characters and make a group of Dark Heresy characters. The Dark Heresy characters would essentially be one if the many away teams going on the missions set up by the rogue traders. For your campaign I would recommend having your group creating rogue trader characters, and try to limit how the two groups interact. Also I would keep people from playing the same character type (don't let the tech priest play the explorator, etc.) Although I think it might be difficult to coordinate the rogue trader missions with the Dark Heresy missions. Perhaps use the endevours system to make points of convergences. So one area that they need to explore will have objectives for the inquisitorial team (like exploring a planet that may have been 'engage' by the tyrant star) and the rogue trader (bringing supplies to a colony that remains in that system to get the energy reactors back online.)

Hope this helps.

Salcor

What if you had the RT's send the DH groups to do their dirty work on certain planets or maybe board enemy ships and clean house?...or is that what you just said?

Assasination and capture of the Rogue Trader vessel, the mission is to teleport onto the ship and assasinate the RT, bringing the ship back to Imperial Space in the process. They are given an Inquisitorial device that must be placed in the command slot in the Bridge

From there:

- Side with the RT

- They place the device into the slot in the middle of a warp transit out of desperation... the ship immediately drops out of the war and fun antics ensue as they take the deamons with them and cripple the ship in an uncharted system

- Take out the RT and go rogue

- Find themselves in the middle of a major deal, a meeting between the RT and the Slaugth or a major Cold Trade ring

- Attacked by pirates/chaos/orcs/eldar and forced to show there hand and avoid capture or death by the crew and the enemy... or just skulk?

Some ideas that my player group and myself came up with are:

1. Create a story where the Acolytes (minimum of 5000xp) are sent into the Maw after a known heretic and the Rogue Trader vessel is commissioned by the Inquisition to transport them (and expand the Rogue Trader's Charter to go anywhere, explore anything, etc.) Players would keep their original DH characters and create RT characters... basically running two characters in the same game but in separate groups.

2. Run a storyline where the a newly chartered Rogue Trader and his crew are detailed to transport and act as support to an Inquisitor's Acolytes where players can keep their old DH characters or generate new RT characters. Works well if the ship is a combat vessel and the RT is very "Imperial" and likes the idea of being an "Inquisitor" ... you know they all have grandiose egos. Many of the RT characters would work as DH Acolytes.

3. Use RT characters in combined RT and DH storylines... bringing the Emperor's Light to the darkness and all that.

-Cynr

One of the ideas I had for this involves the Xenotech background on the ship history table.

Essentially the RT Dynasty was at some point in the past able to get hold of a piece of Xenotech and through the use of it was able to stave off the collapse of their declining empire. The Inquisition however, specifically the Ordos Xenos, take a dim view to the use of such technologies and offered the Dynasty a choice, either agree to a clause added to their Warrant of Trade that allows the Ordos the use of the ship fitted with the Xeno Tech in perpetuity or run the risk of them being declared Heretic and have the Warrant torn up.....it didn't take the head of the Dynasty long to accept the offered partnership.

Here is my take on it, and how I'm going with it. I hope no players of mine cruise this area. The inquisition party has been assigned to an Explorator fleet vessel, "Retribution of Cannae" . They have been dispatched to a remote outpost in the Culexis sector. Briefly, they had an inexplicable Geller field malfunction, and have achieved orbit around a gravity well that does not show up on Auspex, although it's moon does.

The adventure is going to involve the party discovering that the Geller field has thrown them outside the Imperial borders. The phantom planet they are on is a death world, the final resting place of a great Rogue Trader. The mission is to gain the skills and experience of a RT character for each of the characters in the ancient ruin of the Trader's ship. The House that sponsored the trader is a Rogue house, and within the crash there are some banned archaeotech devices enabling the activation of certain gene sequences (allowing an Astropath to be "upgraded" from a sanctioned psycher for purposes of game play, for example) They will be informed the Retribution of Cannae's Geller genertor is damaged, and they will have to scavenge parts from the wreck, and clear the degenerate population of the crew, from the five thousand years it has sat corroding on the surface.

Once they've repaired the Explorator ship, they will adventure their return to Imperial space, where the Warrant of Trade shall pass to them, and they begin their true calling as Rogue Traders. Ship Points and such will be the "proceeds" of their Claim to the Ghost Planet, as paid to them by the Imperium. Any Comments?

In a different vein, our group was thinking of using Rogue Trader created characters as the primary "ship's officers" and using Dark Heresy created characters as the more common crew members. The thought is that the RT characters are more powerful (and somewhat less fun for the group as a result) than the DH characters. Each player would have one character of each type and play the one that fits best into the evening's scenario. This also works with the hit and miss nature of attendance at our sessions.

But your idea of how to make a complete transition works out alright in my opinion. You could even toss some time distortion stuff into it - the players are kicked back in time via the warp until just after the Rogue Trader's ship wrecked, so what they find for salvage is not a mouldering pile of debris; yet when they return with the warrant and repaired ship, they are back in their "own" timeline.

My campaign's ship was in Inquisitorial service for a long stretch before being turned over to our RT along with a new crew put together from Naval drafts by order of the former owners. There were a few strings attached, and I'm planning on hanging many a plot hook off them. Of course, it was also a Navy ship during the Age of Apostasy, a renegade pirate for a millenia thereafter, and then recaptured and captained by three sons of a famous admiral before that, so there's plenty of other grist for the mill. Gotta love those long service histories.

We found our DH to RT transition coming right around the 5000xp mark, so mechanically the acolytes transitioned to the appropriate Rogue Trader career at rank 1 (Guardsman to Arch-Militant, Tech-Priest to Explorator, and Cleric to... Rogue Trader. Heh).

Setting-wise, their increasingly radical Ordo Malleus Inquisitor sent them to seize an archaeotech-laden ship. She intends to use it to seek out the Black Library of Chaos, but has to grapple with the plummeting morale (and life expectancy) of her chief servants as well as the Witch-Hunters stalking her for heresy. One way or another she'll end up out of the picture, and the PCs will have to choose whether to honor her mission or abandon it in favor of fortune and glory. Of course, losing the power of the Inquisitorial Seal means they'll have to get ahold of someone else's Warrant of Trade, or be functionally pirates...

A rogue trader warrant is a pretty decent cover for the Inquisition - if a bit on this side of 'obvious' in that everybody would be aware this would be a good cover for the Inquistion.

Just take a lapsed warrant (descendants all dead or missing), fake the ancestry records and gene codes database with the connivance of the Administratum and boom - an Inquisition Acolyte is the official long lost relative that inherits the warrant.

If you want to make it hairier for the PCs, have the warrant holder missing for a while, and the PCs must impersonate the previous holder. Much trickier to pull off.

Even trickier if the previous guy was a an undercover Inquisition agent that recently disappeared, and had multiple plots/investigations going on. Players are told to impersonate him (plastic surgery and gene mod) and 'do their best'. Gulp.

From a different perspective I have been brainstorming some mechanics for transitioning Dark Heresy characters into the Rogue Trader classes. Essentially at 5000xp, the characters could choose a rogue traders class (limitations listed below) to expand into. It would work in a similar way to the alternate class levels in the Inquisitor's Handbook. In fact characters can still gain skills from their former levels. However attribute increases will be restricts. So say if a guardsman increased his BS by +10%, his BS in the new class is treated as if the BS is at +10%. Also once the character transitions to the new class, attribute purchases are based off that new class.

There are limitations on class transitions however.

The Astropath and the Navigator cannot be transitioned into.

Any characters with the noble origin path, and/or any character which has recieved a warrent of trade may enter the Rogue Trader class

Guardsmen, Arbites, assassins, scum, and Sororitus characters may enter the Arch militant class

Tech-Priest, or forge-world born adepts may enter the Explorator class

Clerics and Sororitus characters may enter the Missionary class

Adepts, arbites, assassins, scum, and sanctioned psykers may enter the Seneschal class

Adepts, Guardsmen, and scum may enter the Void Master class.

This was just an initial thought on how to transition to the rogue trader classes. If this is used the usual attribute generation, and background generation from the rogue trader book are not used.

Salcor