Hiya Guys,

Im writing up the Fluff for my RogueTrader Dynasty. Mine is a middling dynasty which is established and begging to rise. But Im finding it hard to establish in fluff terms how long His Dynasty could have been about? 1000 years? 2000? 500?

The main problem I think is that warp travel distorts time and some one in their life age of thirtys can be easily 100+ In universe terms if they spend most of their life on a starship. Plus with the possibility of rejuve treatments they can extend their life spans even futher.The only fluff I have for this are the Andy Hoare novels.

In the rogue trader Novels Lucien Gerrit comes from an Ancient line. Even though he is probably 40-50 looking he has been around for near 500 and going. And hes the latest scion of his cash strapped dynasty. He mentions at least 3 other ancestors, including one who in order to continue leading the Arcadius dynasty had his decrepid body intombed in a Dreadnought by a Mechanicum. Bearing this in mind then if I roll a seven and am a:

" relatively new player on the galactic stage, with lots of resources to draw on" (Middle result... better off with a frigate)

The realistically how long will the dynasty have been going on for ,and how many ancestors on average would it have?

Im asking this because fluff wise I think I have too many ancestors so far and may have to scrap them...

Only Ancient Dynasty I could think of in fluff, is Phrax Dynasty from Matt Farrer´s Legacy . Founder got Warrant of Trade and Charter during the Great Crusade (yes 10 000 years ago) when Hydraphur was just a border system of the Imperium. By the way, it was given and signed by one REALY important person... :-)

Yes. love it when at the end of the book (SPOILER ALER!!!) when the warp claims the ship, and then with a cry of anguish and pain spits out the charter.

I guess thats why Matt said that it was one of the " Grand Old " style Rogue traders. Im guessing that most of the oldest ones near the Kurnous expanse would not be able to claim that sort of pedigree...

Ancient could means dates back to the Great Crusade, or just to the crusade that founded Calixs.

Sebastian Thor or Gogh Vandire, major figures of the Age of Apostasy, were probably major sources of now-venerable dynasties. Or Roboute Gulliman, post-Heresy. Lord General Angevin or Saint Drusus are good Calixis specific ones.

If a Rogue Trader Dynasty is anything like an Old Earth Dynasty, the most successful ones span the lifespans of many monarchs. The Emperor of Japan is close to number 200, or over it. That is a long dynasty traced back 2000 years. So an RT Dynasty founded 10k years ago could hav 40-60 heads.

Grand Inquisitor Fulminarex said:

Are we therefore making a assumption that most of the middling dynasty round the Kurnous exspanse have been around since before the place was actually discovered. In short they have had other rogue trader endevours around the galaxy. Mine is looking at least 2500 years old from from the end of M39. Should it be older then?

No, that would be fine in itself. The vast majority of Warrants of Trade are younger, simply because a Dynasty lasting multiple millennia isn't common, because eventually there is no one left to take on the warrant and the dynasty dies out. 2500 years old is an old Dynasty, no need to make it older, if only for the simple question: "If they had a good series of contacts and were making lots of money over in one secotr of space, why up sticks and travel half way across the galaxy to somewhere that might not have any profit?"

Well our Lord Captain chose the +10 fellowship tests with ceratin individuals one - renowned or something warrant of trade talent from his finishing touch 500XP. While our Gm took his family name Von Merelsburg and the significance of his warrant into consideration and ended up with a family whose founder was high lord of Terra in the days of the Grand Crusade. Thats what Anicent Family stands for i guess.

And yes the warrant was signed by our Lord God Emperor himself.

MILLANDSON said:

I can think of a few reasons:

- Their safe holdings aren't as profitable as they used to be.

- They want more.

- They got bored.

My Rogue Trader has inherited a warrant which was signed by the Emperor himself, so that makes it pretty **** old. There are not meant to be very many of those but they are still out there, if only because such a document, if it can be at all kept in circulation, is pretty much priceless.

I'd go for the expansion of the Imperium as motivation. The warrants are supposed to be valid outside imperial space, so a planetary base is never permanant. If the RT stays put, then they're no better than free traders.

My group's RT has a clause in the warant about spending too long on one planet. These dynasties were founded in order to expand imperial space, not to sell a few xeno artefacts and retire.

In our own game the Inter-tzar Dynasty was founded early in the Great Crusade, and is currently on it's 210th Rogue Trader

Jimmy has it spot on, for my money, as the borders of the vast Imperium push ever outward, Rogue Traders must operate further and further from Holy Terra, Mars, etc, else their Warrant is just an expensive relic they have mounted on the wall of their governor's mansion. Even the oldest warrants are seriously curtailed inside the borders of the Imperium by the prevailing interpretation of authority - Rogue Traders are merely (okay, stretching the meaning of merely here, but it's relative) peers with the Inquisitors, Imperial Commanders and Chapter Masters within its borders but outside it "I AM the Law!", quite literally, since they "speak with the voice of the Emperor", officially a god to the overwhelming majority of the Imperium.

If that kind of power ends up in the hands of a man or woman who's happy to sit in an office on Severus Secundus then it's time the warrant was forfeited or passed to another. Assuming that an old warrant never does wind up in the hands of a cowardly bureaucrat and that the holders manage to profit and not wipe out their entire legacy as they each die, there's quite a few of these old warrants out there, numerically speaking. That's a tiny fraction of all the extant warrants, no doubt but there are a lot of those too, numerically speaking, even though compared to the "untold billions of humans" Rogue Traders are vanishingly rare. We're talking 40K scale here. ;¬)