I just got back to my Rogue Trader game tonight. I'd run it before with Dark Heresy rules, where the party was the Rogue Trader's daughter & heir apparent and her band of troubleshooters. They dealt with problems on board the ship and helped to explore new worlds and things like that. The daughter was being groomed to take over once the father retired. They weren't in command of the vessel, so the lower power level worked just fine.

Now that RT's out, I've decided to move the campaign to the next phase. The party's Rogue Trader dynasty has been involved in a horrible vendetta against an RT consortium known as the Stark Brotherhood. The future Rogue Trader only stepped into that position after the (pre game) assassination of her older brother. As the first adventure of "Phase Two," they managed to turn the tables on an ambush by the Stark Brotherhood and have captured one of their vessels. The Rogue Trader wants to make his daughter the captain of the captured vessel, as she is covered by his Warrant of Trade - it's for the dynasty, not a single individual. The daughter (a PC) want to rename the ship.

Huh. Is that even done? You always hear about ships being ancient things, and having their own spirits, their own histories. My knee-jerk response to the idea is that it's probably considered bad luck to rename a ship. Bad luck in a superstitious void sailor kind of way. This has turned into a major issue - the PC captain-to-be hated the captain of the captured vessel (the Pride of Sevastopol) with a passion - Captain Romanov had arranged her brother's assassination as a way to "buy in" to the Stark Brotherhood. Captain-to-be wants to rename the ship after her dead brother.

I keep on envisioning the void born looking at her and saying "That's crazy talk," and making a Aquila to ward off evil. Am I off base here? I can see making a Endeavor of going to some Forge World of Shrine World (or both) to have the ship re-christened. I suppose ships are reclaimed in similar ways from the Archenemy, or else the Imperium would go around will ships named "the Skull Raper" and the "Symphony of Angst."

So, what do you think? Do ships get re-named? Is it a big deal to do so? I'm not opposed to making an Endeavor of it, since there's going to be a lot of gaming surrounding getting a new crew and getting the ship refit. Am I off base here?

I thank you in advance for your attention and your opinions.

If it can be done, it'd be a days-long ritual to propitiate the Machine Spirit of the ancient vessel, full of Tech Priests, chanting, incense, and sacred machine oil, in my opinion.

Even then, the Void Born on the crew might not like it.

in "normal" naval history ships have been renamed often after a terrible accident of some kind, a way of getting rid of the bad luck associated with its former name.

The same would/could be the same with the Captain-to-be's ship.

It was involved in a nasty business, and to keep the new crew happy (she wouldnt want to keep all the old crew, after all they helped kill her brother in effect) she'd Have to change the name to remove it from the bad vibes associated with the old name.

In some of the 40k novels you hear of shipmasters/rogue traders chaning the name of the ships to avoid inport levies, hide their real identity or dodge fines levelled against the old ships name as well (as seen in the Ravenor series, especially the 1st book when they arrive at Bonners Reach).

With that part of it it was just a clerical matter, though no doubt in the back ground there would have been muttering by crew, priests and voidborn about the matter of it all..

As said, the crew might not like, the ship might not like it, but it can be done. if she wants to rename it as you said yourself make an endevaour out of it (not resulting in profit factor). Then when she has renamed it she need to do something spectacular to prove to the common crew that "This is for the better"

an idea could be to give the ship the "Rebellious" Machine Spirit Oddety to illustrate that the ship itself have something to say in the matter as well.

I think the name can be changed as a short term thing to avoid import duties and the like (OK, we KNOW she is the Cloud but we will call her the Wind to miss a few taxes, eh mates?). This would be a clerical kind of change - fixing the ident beacon on the ship, modifying the name on the prow, getting new name tags for the crew, whatever sort of temporary things need to be done to fool a few of the authorities <wink, wink, nudge, nudge>.

I think the name can also be changed permanently. "We captured the Destruction of Scintilla boys...now we can't leave her called that, so let's call in the priestly boys and perform the Rite of Changing of the Name".

This permanent sort of change would involve days / weeks of preparation - prayers to the Emperor, the Omnissiah, sacred oils, incenses, parades through the ship, etc. Might even cost you a profit point to pull it all together, grease the right wheels, etc.

There would be a lot of undercurrent amongst the crew as to the new name (unless they were purged and a new crew brought on board - a huge undertaking in and of itself). There might be a need to keep a close watch upon the crew (morale might be lowered), and it would be very important how the next project went with the ship (if profitable, the Emperor is smiling upon us; if it goes bad or rough - well the name might be cursed, lowering morale even more - kind of the opposite effect of having a Temple-Shrine on board).

You could even get a few adventures out of this.

I'd say it would be a Tech-priest and his office to make the required low-level changes... "Exorcising the old Machine Spirit and inviting a new one"... and the tech priest in charge would set the name... likely to something close to the desired, but not, unless the offering is large, to what the players want.... say 1d5+1 PF...

The changing of the Administratum records would be a bit of an exploit in and of itself...

I consider it quite appropriate to change the name of the vessel if it stands for something the owner doesn't want it associated with, as Velvetears mentioned. Likely, it involves a few Rites of the Mechanicus.

As for the crew, well, chances are equal they'd consider it bad luck to change the name or bad luck to leave it the same when having captured the ship - not fully making her yours, essentially.

Ships certainly get renamed at times, often because they've changed allegiances or been lost and recovered (eg from a space hulk). See my Redemption of Skoros thread on the Gamemaster board for some examples of a repeatedly re-christened RT vessel.

In my game there's a quirky WoT which dictates that each heir-captain must rename the flagship, signifying a new beginning, etc. When the heir is granted the WoT, a ritual is performed to placate the ship as well as bring the new vessel's name into the grace the of God-Emperor. The reason's been lost to time, but many believe it is because the Warp remembers...

...which brings me to a little tangent about another quirk in the WoT, which requires a new Navigator be placed upon the ship when a new captain takes over. The RT line has a very long-standing alliance with a Navigator House and only their Navigators may guide the RT family's vessels. As above, the true reason has been lost to time, but the houses are strongly allied. And again, many whisper it is because the Warp remembers, especially those who stare into its heart!

Kinda' goofy, I know, but we like it. At the moment we're hashing-out the hows and whys of the family. Do we want to use the above, or start a new line? So many choices!

This actually came up just the other night in our game. The PCs, formerly Dark Heresy characters, have stolen an archaeotech-laden ship from the Adeptus Mechanicus to pursue their Inquisitor's shadowy agenda. Having a ship the Tech-Priests want back is bad enough, but the Whispers of Tomorrow was a light patrol ship captured from the Thousand Sons and only recently retrofitted to bring it back into the grace of the Omnissiah.

Two of the PCs wanted to change the ship's name to stay under their foes' figurative radar, but the cleric poor relation of a rogue trader line himself*, and already plotting how to get a Warrant of Trade and take the ship for himself was adamant that the ship wouldn't tolerate a rechristening.

I wouldn't be shocked if they didn't properly rechristen it, but had a euphemistic name they put on paperwork.

*as a Noble (AND a Cleric!), he's easily the wealthiest of the PCs, but his family still considers him an ascetic and a disappointment

In the real world, It was actually standared practice to rename a captured ship. Since the crew would be replace by one of your own (pointless to leave an enemy crew on board) the is no "bad luck" from changing the name.

So I see it as being possible, Take it to a spacedock, have the new name painted on, have the Tech Priests mumble some binary at the spirit and there you go, no big deal.

In classic Age of Sail days, you'd tend to keep a captured enemy ships name, such as the (Glorious Fighting) Temeraire (captured from the French) to rub it in to the enemy that you'd pinched their ship (it was unlucky to mess with things without a good reason too), and if the ship was succesful under the (old) name, new ships might be christened with that name to honour her memory and gain a bit of her luck and fighting spirit as she was retired and broken up (sometimes using her timbers and spars in the new vessel). Of course, sometimes you captured a vessel that you already had in the lists, such as the Dart, so you renamed the prize (a very nice occassional boon to the capturing Captain, who got to nominate a name and Admiral who accepted it or chose one of his own) to something else. Some ships might be rechristened if the old ship was unlucky (particularly in Private vessels) but this was chancy as it often upset the crew. In almost all cases, the maiden voyage (under a new name) was very closely watched by all crews (and often members of the Admiralty at large) to see if it was a lucky ship and propitious name, with ships (and names) often gaining solid reputations (for good or ill). So, if you want to go for it, but make the shake down voyage crucial.

In my game the PCs have just captured (literally in the last session) a ship on behalf of the inquisition and are now going off as rogue traders.

The ship, a lunar class cruiser that has seen better days was originally a naval vessel named The Hammer of the Warp, it was lost in warp storms and assumed destroyed, only to reappear some 100 years later serving as the flagship of a pirate fleet and renamed The Scourge of Fools. The Navy, not liking that one of their ships of the line had been captured, sent a battlegroup to capture it. They fail, despite bringing it to battle several times. The pirate vessel makes a very risky warp jump and is again lost for 70 years. The next time it is spotted, it is being used as a mobile station by the heretical cult known as the Temple Tendency. Being firm believers in the Emperor they have renamed it The Emperor's Ascendency. After the PCs captured it they decided to rename it again to give the ship a new start and "purge" it of its piratical/heretical past.

Proposed names so far include these two gems

Citadel of Commerce (the Arbiter vetoed this, he hates money grabbers and is all about the duty)

Peggy Sue (proposed by our mentally deficient feral guardsmen, who also names every weapon he owns), vetoed by everyone else